The Wokest TV shows in town

[Rev. Rye]

As for the show itself, I haven't actually watched it (I don't have CBS All Access and frankly, what I've seen from TVTropes' recap pages doesn't inspire much confidence), but here's an old-school TZ fan's take on what he's gleaned: The original series got political as fuck rather frequently. "He's Alive" dealt pretty blatantly with the rise of Neo-Nazis, quite a few dealt with racism (in allegory in many cases, but also in more concrete form with episodes like "Quality of Mercy" and "The Encounter") in an era where the government wasn't sure about treating nonwhites with anything resembling equality (he even had one episode, "Big Tall Wish," have a the three principals be black, and this was in 1960), the spectre of nuclear war (which was very much a real threat when the show was made) looms over many episodes, and one, "In Praise of Pip," even dealt with the tragedy that was the Vietnam War before the Gulf of Tonkin incident even took place.

But one thing I'm not getting from what I've read about the show: they seem to lean a bit too heavily on politics. I understand that politics is an all-encompassing force and that trying to completely avoid it altogether, even in the most seemingly banal details, is a fool's errand. That doesn't justify a laser-focus on politics to the exclusion of everything else, up to and including telling a good story. Many of the episodes could easily be read as just some sci-fi/horror stories, and well-made ones at that (except for the ones that weren't, likely because Rod Serling had to keep churning out scripts, so a few duds were inevitable). The only episode of the original series ruined by its politics is arguably "The Encounter," and that's mostly because of the factually-bunk and ethically-questionable twist that Takei's father was the Japanese inside man at Pearl Harbor (there was nobody of the sort involved in the planning of the attack.) So far, we've found an 11-year-old boy becoming President of the US, and all the men in a Rhode Island town turning violent because of a fucking meteor shower. To be fair, it looks like the second season's at least a bit more subtle in this regard. If I actually watch the show, I might modify my opinions. To compare this with something I have seen, Bojack Horseman can be very preachy, giving morals about feminism with all the subtlety of getting blown apart by a mortar to the point where it can really rub people who are normally pretty sympathetic to feminism the wrong way (making the secondary female characters invariably more sympathetic than their male counterparts is particularly annoying; maybe use the sort of nuance you put into the main cast, Raphael-Bob), but I can at least put that aside (even if the last couple episodes still leave me cold) because it at least has the decency to wrap all that in an interesting story with well-rounded and interesting main characters that never forgets to give the audience some laughs, even in the most horrifying episodes. With this new series, I'm not seeing much hope of that being the case.

Also, given that the fourth season of the original series, the only hour-long season, is generally considered the weakest season because it led to most of the episodes feeling padded as fuck, the fact that this season is also a full hour and that one of the most universal criticisms of this series is that it feels padded really helps ensure the nipples of Mother Hope run dry.