- Forest Whitaker: When you're at the top of your game like Marvin Gardens, the only thing left to conquer is fear, fear that your success won't last, that maybe, just maybe, you might fall back into a life you once escaped.
- Directed by Risa Bramon Garcia
- Written by Amir Mann and Brent V Friedman
Marvin Gardens (Wood Harris) is a rich and famous rapper who lives in a grand neighborhood with his beautiful wife Jasmine and his son Marvin Jr. He's working on his next album and feels life couldn't be any better.
Over the next few days, he repeatedly finds himself in an interrogation room getting brutally beaten up by angry cops, who call him Dwayne Grant and accuse him of being a Cop Killer. He protests his innocence, but they don't believe him. Jasmine gets worried when Marvin describes these vivid nightmares, but she tries to assure him that it's just the stress of recording his album and everything will be all right.
After several of these nightmares, Marvin sees a psychologist named Dr. Sinclair for help. While describing the problem, Marvin confides that he grew up in the ghetto and used to be a petty criminal to survive, but worked hard to get where he is now. He has never heard of anybody named Dwayne Grant. Dr. Sinclair speculates that the nightmares may be a repressed memory or unresolved issues on his past, but Marvin insists that he left that life behind and is never going back.
When he comes home, he sees Marvin Jr. playing with a toy gun and freaks out, since it reminds him of the violence he left behind. Later, he has the nightmare again, but this time, Sinclair and Jasmine are two of the officers. Sinclair is very brutal, but Jasmine is sympathetic and offers him water. He tries to talk to her, but she only knows him as Dwayne. When he wakes up and sees Jasmine, he snaps at her, then apologizes and promises he will be fine when he finishes his album.
He records at the studio, but collapses and has the nightmare again. He goes to see Dr. Sinclair again, but finds himself in the interrogation room yet again, with the officers demanding he confess. He wakes up and tells Dr. Sinclair that he doesn't need help, and he has created and earned the life he deserves. He goes home and tells his wife and son that they are moving out, and he will make sure they have everything they want. He assures Jasmine the nightmares are over.
We then return to the interrogation room, where Officer Jasmine examines Dwayne and sadly says he's been beaten into a seemingly irreversible coma. Officer Sinclair sneers and says he got what he deserved, but then another officer comes in and says the real killer was just apprehended. Jasmine finds in Dwayne's pocket a piece of paper with the lyrics to Marvin's latest song, talking about his dreams of being a famous rapper.
Tropes for this segment include:
- Acquitted Too Late: The real culprit is found just after Marvin is stuck into a coma.
- All Just a Dream: Dwayne's life as a rapper was actually a fantasy world created by Marvin in interrogation.
- Cassandra Truth: While being interrogated, Dwayne kept saying he wasn't a cop killer, but Sinclair refused to believe him and continuously beats him up. By the time it's revealed Dwayne was innocent, he's stuck in a coma. Sinclair tries to defend himself to Jasmine by saying he had no way of knowing Dwayne was telling the truth.
- Cop Killer Man Hunt: Dwayne ends up being persecuted by the police because it was believed he shot a police officer. Unfortunately, Sinclair took it too far and ended up beating him to near death.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Officer Jasmine is more sympathetic to Marvin instead of Officer Sinclair, who is harsh and keeps beating up Marvin.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Sinclair makes this claim when he beats Dwayne to the point that his mind is snapped. It becomes a frustrated Oh, Crap! when the real shooter is picked up.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Officer Jasmine shoots Sinclair a glare after it's revealed that he beat an innocent man into an irreversible coma.
- Forest Whitaker: For Dwayne Grant, a.k.a. Marvin Gardens, justice was just an illusion. So he escaped into an illusion of his own making. Dwayne Grant...living out his dreams...in the Twilight Zone.
- Forest Whitaker: Jonah Beach has a problem. All of his adult life he's been trying to beat the house and always coming up short. But Jonah may have just found the edge he needs to win, courtesy of the Twilight Zone.
- Directed by Kevin Bray
- Written by James Crocker
Jonah Beach (Eddie Kaye Thomas) goes to a casino and loses big against the owner, Trevor Black. Jonah is angry and tells his wife April, a waitress at the casino, that he wants revenge. He asks her for the $500 in the trust fund they have been saving to start their own restaurant so he can keep playing, but she refuses.
Jonah walks home and runs into a homeless man who asks for $5. When he refuses, the man offers to bet it on a coin toss. Jonah accepts and wins the toss, but gives him the money anyway. In gratitude, the man gives him an old tape recorder that has been patched together with duct tape and promises he won't regret it.
Jonah misses the bus, so he sits down and plays with the recorder. When he hits rewind, to his shock, time rewinds and the bus comes back. A woman bumps into him, so he rewinds time again and avoids her.
He comes home and excitedly tells April what the device can do. He's tested it and found it can rewind time up to five minutes. She doesn't believe him, so he tries to demonstrate, but since she is rewound along with everything else, she doesn't notice anything is happening. He then tries to convince her to give him money, rewinding and trying a different story every time he fails. He claims his mother needs an operation and that when they finally have a son, he wants to be able to look him in the eye and say he is a winner. She relents and gives him $200.
The next day, he goes back to the casino with the recorder strapped to his thigh and hooks up a wire so that he can activate it with a tap of his heel. He plays poker and wins big by rewinding time to correct his mistakes. Trevor has Jonah brought to his office and invites him to a high-stakes poker tournament later that night.
Jonah sees April and pays her back with interest, noting that he's already won $50,000 and now he will clean Trevor out. She tells him to quit while he is ahead, but he insists that he can never lose. She says he has a gambling addiction.
He ignores her and goes to the tournament. Jonah and Trevor steadily eliminate the other players. Finally, only Jonah and Trevor are left. April comes in to serve drinks. Jonah requests they play with no limit. Trevor agrees and asks for a short break. As they wait, April says they now have all the money they can ever need, but Jonah insists he will take every last cent Trevor has. Fed up, April leaves him.
The two men play one last hand and Jonah bets everything he has. Trevor folds. Jonah celebrates and reveals he only had a pair of threes. Suddenly, Trevor activates his own recorder and rewinds time. This time, he stays and wins. Jonah tries to rewind time, but Trevor's guards stop him and confiscate his recorder. Trevor shows him his own brand-new recorder and says the house always wins.
Tropes for this segment include:
- Fingore: The casino's way of dealing with cheaters. At least it's just breaking bones.
- Karmic Twist Ending: Jonah's being caught out and having his hands broken.
- Paranormal Gambling Advantage: Jonah gets his hands on a magical tape recorder capable of rewinding time and decides to use it to gain a fortune in a casino through Save Scumming his way through the games.
- Forest Whitaker: In chasing the big score, Jonah Beach forgot the one unchanging rule of the game: the house always wins, especially in the Twilight Zone.
