"Doo-doo-doo-doo Doo-doo-doo-doo" etc...
ROUND ONE, SECTION I: THE CLASSICS
Title: “Shades of Guilt”
Series: The Twilight Zone
Season: 1 (Second reboot)
Year: 2002
Writer(s): Ira Steven Behr
Storyline: A man who refuses to help a black man who is being pursued by attackers at night, and drives off and leaves him to his fate awakes the next morning with unexplained pain, manifesting itself in cuts and bruises on his body. He then sees in the newspaper (it’s like a printed, solid form of the internet kids: work it out) that the man he left to be beaten up was in fact beaten to death. He’s now wracked with guilt, literally. The pains continue and get worse, but now he starts to exhibit a more frightening outward sign: his skin is darkening, and he’s becoming a black man. Not only that: THE black man, the same one he left to die. Oh, you can see it already can’t you? I bet some of his last words are “I’m not black! Don’t kill me!” or something along those lines. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. His wife doesn’t recognise him (duh) and his dog attacks him and as he runs out of his house his neighbour, who of course does not recognise him either, shoots at him,as you Americans do.
The cops are soon after him, and old Matt McGreevy begins to find out what life as a black person is like. Taxis won’t stop, his credit card is no good, people look suspiciously at him. He has the perhaps not entirely brilliant idea of going to the house of the dead man, John Woodrell, and looking as he does his, or rather, Woodrell’s brother can’t believe it’s not him. He asks to speak to his, that is, Woodrell’s wife, hoping that if she can understand, if she can forgive him, he may change back. The brother is dubious, also disgusted when McGreevy says that if he had known John Woodrell was a college professor he would have helped. As if that somehow makes a difference. But she can see through him. He’s not sorry, only desperate to be changed back. She asks him the most pertinent and damning question she can, and the only one that matters: if her husband had been a white guy, would he have helped him? McGreevy's silence is her answer and she turns away.
The end scene then plays out as you might expect. Wandering, friendless and persistently and knowingly black, he’s jumped by some white guys who kick the s
hit out of him, and when a white motorist happens upon them and he asks for help yadda yadda yadda. The ending writes itself. Oh no wait it doesn’t. My mistake. What happens is that the scene resets. He’s in Woodrell’s body, but kind of not, as it’s him in the car and this time he drives off but then changes his mind and comes back, saving Woodrell. And thereby himself. Okay, not that bad really if a little confusing.
Comments: All right, not quite what I had expected but I do have questions. One, what was John Woodrell doing out in the rain, walking so close to his own house if he knows, as he must, that the area is so bad? And how are the Woodrells able to live in such an obviously whites-only area? He doesn’t run far, so it’s not like he’s miles away when he’s attacked.
Second, at what point does the bodyswap reverse, as it were? When Woodrell is attacked by the skinheads, his demeanour is more McGreevy’s to me - okay he doesn’t say “I’m white”, so I was wrong there but he doesn’t act like he expects to be attacked. So when does time reset? Hard to suss it. I thought this was another white guy stopping for him, then realised it was McGreevy himself, but how can he be in two…
All right, my head hurts. I would have preferred to have seen him stuck as a black man and having to learn to live with that, see the world through other eyes. But the writer took the easy way out and gave us a happy ending. Meh. By now, walk in my shoes, see the world through my eyes, get a new perspective stories have been done to death, and while this has a certain charm it’s nothing new at all. I guess it got its message of “we’re all brothers under the skin” over tolerably well, though the writer does kind of bash you over the head with it. I thought it might have been more effective had the white guy not realised he was black, till he saw himself in the car mirror as he pleaded with another white guy to save him. Meh. Meh I say!
Rating: A -
Note: where I can get them I'll post videos of the episodes.
No, no need to thank me, honestly. Cash will do.