Twilight Zone: The Comedian Recap
The episode follows Samir Wassan who after five years as a stand-up comedian is struggling to find success.
Every time it seems like he’s getting somewhere in a gig, the comedian drops a political joke about The Second Amendment, which, like these videos, bombs every time.
One night after a very rough show, Samir meets J.C. Wheeler, a comedian that Samir has been a long time fan of. J.C. tells Samir to drop the political stuff and to actually start talking about himself rather than things around him.
The next night, Samir puts this into action and tells a story about his Dog named ‘Cat’ which causes the audience to burst out laughing. All seems to be going well, however, when Samir returns home, he can’t find his dog anywhere and things get weirder when his girlfriend tells him that they never had one.
The next night, Samir does another show and after his political material bombs once more, he turns to his 10-year-old nephew Devon and begins roasting him. Whilst the crowd love it, Devon disappears and upon asking his girlfriend, she tells him that they don’t have a nephew and that her sister can’t even have kids.
Yikes.
Samir’s Power
Clearly, something is going on and Samir quickly realises that the subjects of his jokes are slowly disappearing whenever he mentions them. Initially, this seems like a bad thing, however, on the flip side, Samir realises that he can make whoever dislikes this video disappear from existence.
Samir wipes out a whole group of people and this sends him on a path to success. Unfortunately,girlfriends though, Samir slowly starts running out of people to talk about and therefore jokes.
The entire thing backfires when Samir begins joking about his Girlfriend’s mentor from law school who he thinks is a total creep. Whilst the comedy club initially love the material, Samir realises that in removing David from ex-girlfriend’s entire life has been altered and she ends up working as a waitress because of it.
J.C. pays Samir another visit and the comedian seems pretty desperate to reverse all of the changes and the comedian reminds him of just how close he is to achieving his dreams. Samir reluctantly gets on stage but has a mental breakdown and begins listing tonnes of names in quick succession. This gets to the point where Samir is even ready to make a joke about his own girlfriend but at the last second he switches to mocking himself and his desire to become a comedian.
The audience loves this and in the end Samir ends up yelling his own name and erasing himself in the process.
This causes all of the people who have previously been erased to come back. The episode closes with Samir’s friend and competing comedian ecountering J.C. Wheeler at the bare and asking him for some Career Advice.
The Comedian Ending Explained
To me this episode is about a quest for fame and how in striving for it we are set to lose those around as as the two don’t really tend to go well together. Samir was pretty ruthless and ambitous in his quest for recognition and because of this he was willing to sacrifice those around him until he eventually realised that he had become a monster and that the world would be better off without him.
However, the ending shows that there will always be those willing to step up and attempt to make their mark no matter the cost and Samir ultimately becomes a victim of his own success, doomed to fall by the wayside before he was able to make it due to the bridges he burned along the way.
My Thoughts
Overall I thought the episode was ok, but I don’t really think that the series should have lead with this. The story in comparison to twilight zone episodes from the past was pretty weak and it didn’t really inspire me all that much. I really hope the rest of the season is better than this one because it was quite middling and a bit of a disappointment after all the hype.
Your Thoughts
So, what did you think of the episode? Is there anything I missed and are you excited for the rest of the series? Make sure you leave your review in the comments below and
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