July 19, 2023

Spoilers

This is another episode out of official order on Prime. I will continue to do the write-up according to Prime’s listing, but include the actual order/numbers.

“Number 12 Looks Just Like You”

Another mysterious and dark future is shown to us in The Twilight Zone where a dystopian future has every young person at the age of 19 is transformed into a beautiful body of their choosing, surgically. There are only a handful of choices to be made and everyone looks alike.

“Given the chance, what young girl wouldn’t happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one? What girl could refuse the opportunity to be beautiful? For want of a better estimate, let’s call it the year 2000. At any rate, imagine a time in the future where science has developed the means of giving everyone the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow, but it happens now, in The Twilight Zone.”

The episode reminded me of Pixar’s The Incredibles. In that movie, Syndrome, the villain, wanted to give weaponry to the world because he had a hatred of the super people and he believed that “… when everyone is super… no one will be.” The same idea is going on in this episode, except instead of ‘supers,’ it is beautiful people. In fact, the quote “when everyone is beautiful, then no one will be” is used a couple of times in the episode.

The episode implies that the surgery is not voluntary, and that there is someone behind the scenes that is pushing for this conformation for all. As Marilyn had chosen not to undergo the transformation, but she is taken to the hospital and basically forced into having the surgery.

The three actors: Richard Long, Pam Austin, and Suzy Parker played all of the different roles to show how everyone in this world looked alike. Richard Long, in particular, took on all the male roles in the hospital, from doctors to orderlies to Marilyn’s father and uncle. Collin Wilcox gives a strong performance as the young girl who did not want to join the collective and become just another beautiful person. The ending of the episode is quite tragic and dark.

This is an episode that does a decent job of world building, but does not feel as if it were complete. I think this is one that could have been a successful episode in season four when there were more time for the story.