The Prison
Subtlety is not The Twilight Zone’s forte. As least not in this reboot it isn’t. Back for another politically driven episode, this time around immigration, The Twilight Zone delivers an interesting social commentary, mixed up in a story that can’t quite decide what direction it wants to go before winding up in someplace entirely different. The episode itself begins with a quaint little house, occupied by a woman named Eve. Her maid, Anna, asks for her permission to use Eve’s address for her child and she agrees. Unfortunately, before she can continue the conversation, the authorities arrive and take Anna away. Stepping down from her sheltered, privileged life up until that point, Eve goes to the shop with her kids and tries to pay for groceries. Only, it turns out her card has been declined. Before she can leave the parking lot, government officials stop her and take Eve and her kids to a government building. Once there, a man interviews her but raises his eyebrows as Eve tries to bribe the man with money. He calls her out for it, eventually letting her kids go home with her husband while she’s forced to spend the night in prison, still unaware of her crime. As she changes into an orange jumpsuit, she’s thrown into a holding room full of other men and women. One of which happens to be Anna. She apologises to her and after a heart to heart, Anna agrees to help her escape. Descending down a ladder into an eerie hallway, Eve meets a worker who takes her to the end of the corridor where a woman stands, seemingly aware of who Eve is. Lamenting her personality change, she tells Eve she’s really an alien from another world. Catching wind of where she is, the government officials grab her and begin the interrogation, asking her true or false questions about inter-dimensional travel. After letting her go, when she returns home Eve discusses it with her husband and questions whether she’s really an alien or not. Only, its all an illusion and it turns out she’s been in the prison the whole time. Thankfully help is at hand and after telling the officials what they wanted to know, Eve is broken out of prison with Anna’s help. Ignoring Anna’s warnings, she hitches a ride with an ice cream truck driver who takes her home where she greets her family at the door. Unfortunately, it appears the ice cream man called the police in the process and her family watch as Eve is taken away by the police. We leave the episode with one final piece of commentary about immigration before closing out the episode. Once again The Twilight Zone delivers an enjoyable episode bogged down in an overwhelmingly heavy-handed narrative, this time around immigration. Given the volatile nature of this topic, the clumsy way the episode makes its point really doesn’t do this one much good. Eve is not a very likable protagonist for large portions of the episode either and although some of the ideas are quite interesting, there just isn’t enough substance here to make for a thought provoking or intellectually stimulating watch like it could have been. Still, it’s not the worst episode of the series and it’s certainly a huge improvement over last week but The Twilight Zone continues to be an unpredictable and uneven series.
