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The Twilight Zone reboot has had its fair share of twists that I didn’t see coming and each episode is perfectly built up to ending where Jordan Peele explains the whole secret. With this week’s newest episode, ‘The Wunderkind’, I witnessed the first silly, almost unrealistic episode of the series so far. Last week after the fourth episode aired, we were teased of a political thriller starring John Cho and Jacob Tremblay. What we got was Cho acting as a campaign adviser for an 11-year-old YouTube star who wants to become President.
The episode opens with Cho starring as Raff Hanks, a popular political consultant who is certain that he got one of the least popular Presidents reelected. When the candidate loses, Hanks’ career falls apart and he turns to Oliver Foley, a successful young YouTuber who wants to become President to make the world a better place and to give everyone free video games. Everyone loves Foley’s message and wants him to become President.
When Foley becomes President, he starts trying to promise things that made him popular in the first place such as demanding that video game companies give free games, or he would put them out of business. He also demands that in the future, there will be no old doctors as he stated. This is the only interesting thing about the episode for me. Foley went from being a young YouTuber who was cute and charming and loved his family to someone who was rude and demanding. I was thinking throughout this episode if Foley was acting all this time just so he can get into the White House to get things that he wanted. The episode unfortunately never goes in depth with some of Foley’s decisions and I think this episode could have benefited from a longer run time just so we could have seen the effects of an 11-year-old in the White House.
This is one of the more light-hearted episodes with Foley dancing to a song that encouraged people to vote for him. The fluffy moments perfectly captured how a young kid would act, but it never really had a Twilight Zone feel to it. It remained light hearted up until the last 10 minutes or so.
The episode spent a lot of time focusing on Hanks’ career as a political consultant and how he tried to get his life back on track after a failed campaign. The episode was only about 40 minutes long and half of it was centered around Hanks. I would have felt the impact of Foley becoming President and how one man who is feeding the American dream more satisfying if he was presented much earlier.
The acting was great from both John Cho and Jacob Tremblay. Cho handled his role well as someone who went from being successful to being hated by America. Tremblay is still very young but has had many great roles throughout the years such as his powerful performance in Room. In this episode, he gets to act his age and have fun, which you could tell he was enjoying. When it called for Foley to act as President and try to seem intimidating, he handled those terrifically as well.
I waited for this episode to have some sort of shocking reveal, but it never came. Besides from the good acting and a fun character to watch, the episode never goes in depth at what a young kid would do if he came into power. I knew what the episode was referring to in our current government, but it could have been explored a little more. Next week’s episode takes place in space, which I’m already looking forward to.
What did you think of this episode? Tell us in the comments below!
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