The Twilight Zone episode 9 review: The Blue Scorpion

The Twilight Zone meshes fictional horrors and real-life tragedy once again with critical commentary on guns in direct relation in materialism, faux-safety, and the future generation.

Starting with Jeff’s grief, both following his father’s death and his unfolding divorce with his wife, the ninth episode quickly spirals into the depths of The Twilight Zone.

Like all things related to the rebooted series, the edge of the parallel dimension resides in a slightly creepy, vexing, and self-aware setting. For “The Blue Scorpion,” that comes to life with modern gun issues portrayed in a traditionally nightmarish way.

At slow speed, the episode works with Jeff’s grief to build the framework of his bubbling paranoia, which manifests into an unhealthy obsession with the titular blue scorpion gun. This shows that even in the earliest moments of the episode, it still focuses on the human side of gun issues. Beyond personifying cursed objects even more so than our owns dimension’s relevant myths, the pacing and camera motions are what solidify the sci-fi-related horror in the episode.

It’s a grungy and subversive addition to the parallel dimensions’ growing collection of episodes. With the distorted film angles and strangely coincidental scenarios, “The Blue Scorpion” builds on creepiness.

Out of frame and out of focused shots give us a visual parallel to our unpleasantness. After all,  the commentary in the episode is designed to make us feel comfortable. And the episodic horror mounts to a deeper and increasingly evergreen critiques.

Weaponizing Jeff’s paranoia to showcase what’s driving the character’s excuse for gun obsessions and gun laws is an odd choice, but it works to build and maintain the tension in the episode. Similar to the subject of the episode, the production broods in the darkness. In the nighttime setting of the episode, the tension mounts and even produces a strange conclusion to Jeff’s arc with the blue scorpion gun.

At a near-perfect pace, “The Blue Scorpion” gives viewers just enough time to acclimate to the premise of the episode before swiftly moving through the increasingly distressing horror production. Like so many Twilight Zone episodes, it thrives in the uncomfortable content, and the episode speeds up and slows down dependent on the gravity of the commentary and the mental distress of the main protagonist. Then, the episode remembers to decelerate just before the concluding commentary.

It’s weird to see a triumphant turn to Jeff’s portion of the gun saga. Given the ongoing political climate surrounding gun laws and every arena of gun violence, it’s strange that the series attributed a positive twist to his ending of the discourse. However, as The Twilight Zone recognizes, the discussion doesn’t end there with Jeff or any one person.

Granted, seeing the gun end up in hands of children has a deeply disheartening undertone beneath the surface observations. It shows how gun laws are disproportionately impacting kids at an increasing rate, and the weight guns have on children at such an early age.

With the grief and tragedy that definite the introduction of the episode, the conclusion of “The Blue Scorpion” nods to the sheer inescapable presence of guns and how it impacts children and their mental health.

And with gun laws, guns control, and their weighing effects of mental health, this is an important topic to note in any commentary-driven gun episode. Like guns are manufactured, their impact on society is also constructed into childhood mental health.

Fears of today fester in The Twilight Zone“The Blue Scorpion,” and the episode wields the anticipation over the lengthy history and our apprehensions regarding our manmade issues.