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Memphis
Ray
- Forest Whitaker: Ray Ellison just got the kind of news all of us dread. But on the worst day of his life, Ray Ellison's luck is about to change. He's going to have a chance to save his future by altering the past.
Ray Ellison, recently diagnosed with a brain tumor, finds himself in the past of Memphis.
Tropes for this segment include:
- Artistic License – History: When Ray tries to warn Dr. King, a sniper scope focuses on him, but appears to be coming from where Ray is. James Earl Ray shot King from a motel across the street at an angle above him.
- Distinguishing Mark: Lucas has a large port-wine stain on the left side of his head. He still has it as an adult, when Ray realizes that he's his doctor.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Turns out the specialist that could operate on Ray was actually a grown up Lucas, and by saving him from the car crash, Ray inspired Lucas to start a program that allowed patients that couldn't afford surgeries to be treated. He essentially saved his life by saving Lucas.
- You Can't Fight Fate: After realizing where and when he is, Ray thinks he's supposed to prevent the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. He makes it to the Lorraine Motel and shouts for Dr. King to go inside, but then sees Lucas is about to get hit by a car and saves him instead. King and his entourage look on in confusion until the shots ring out.
- Forest Whitaker: Ray Ellison was looking for a fresh start and he only had to go back 35 years to find one. Sometimes the key to our future lies in the past. A lesson courtesy of the Twilight Zone.
How Much Do You Love Your Kid?
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- Forest Whitaker: Meet Donna Saicheck, just another person living beyond her means in uncertain times and looking for a short break from the reality of her existence. We're about to see just how far Donna is willing to go, when another kind of reality intrudes, in the Twilight Zone.
Tropes for this segment include:
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not clear just how much of "How Much Do You Love Your Kid" is scripted and how much is live. The scenario seems to go Off the Rails (see below), but the fact that Nick has a speech and a loaded gun prepared to give Donna right away suggests that it was part of the plan.
- How much Nick Dark is involved in the actual game is also left unclear. When Donna asks what will happen if she fails to find Wylie, he claims that he doesn't actually know and says that he's "just the host." He definitely has the clue answers memorized, as he's able to help Donna with them, but whether or not he's aware of the show's deeper workings isn't specified.
- Apathetic Citizens: Most of the people Donna meets on her journey are remarkably uncaring about the fact that she's desperately hunting for her son. A few seem a bit concerned, but for the most part they ignore her; it's part of the episode's commentary on reality television. The trope is lampshaded when Donna interrogates a passing woman about the kidnapper; when she remarks that she saw them five minutes previously, Donna screams "WHY DIDN'T YOU CALL ANYBODY?"
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Creepily invoked by Ted early in the episode, although it doesn't become apparent until after The Reveal. Despite Donna being forced into a horrible situation and rushing around town looking for clues, she remains fresh-faced and beautiful...but that's only because she was getting a facial, at Ted's insistence, right before the game began—he wanted her to look good for the cameras.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: As noted below, Forest Whitaker's closing speech names television executives as the real villains of the episode. Keep in mind that this aired on television. It's also humorously similar to a predicament Rod Serling himself faced in the initial incarnation of the show, as he had to balance the social commentary of his scripts with the demands of the advertising companies sponsoring them.
- Cutting the Knot: Donna reaches this point as she gets closer to her hour-long deadline. When the second "round" of the game begins and she has to hunt for the kidnapper, she meets someone who is supposed to give her another clue—and whips out the gun she's been provided with a "Tell me where the bastard is, and NO DAMN TRIVIA QUESTIONS!" Needless to say, this works.
- Earlier, Donna receives the question "Name something, other than water, that tastes the same as it did 3,000 years ago." She guesses "Milk," and the man reading the question says that's not the answer on the card, but she yells that there's no way of knowing that she's wrong—"Were you there 3,000 years ago?"—and starts beating him up until Nick says that they'll give her the win.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: After chasing the kidnapper to her own house, Donna is shocked to find that it was really her husband, Ted, who would have gotten three million dollars had he been able to get away with their son.
- Faux Affably Evil: Nick, the host of How Much Do You Love Your Kid?. He appears sympathetic to Donna, helping guide her through the clues, just gives her one answer because she's too stressed to figure it out, and even ups the prize money to $1 million when Wylie is injured in a crash, but it's all an act to gain maximum views for the show. He's completely uncaring when Donna is shocked after killing her husband, cheerfully saying that she's won "the best defense money can buy."
- Forced to Watch: Nick makes Donna watch the video of the kidnapper carrying her son away as he screams for her to help him. It's part of the ploy to get her to agree to appear on the show.
- Foreshadowing: The fact that the kidnapper was able to buy Wylie a hot dog and then take him to a local stable to use the bathroom hints that Wylie wasn't originally scared of them—it must be someone he knows and trusts.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: The kidnapper leads Donna back into her own house, providing a major clue as to who he is right before he's revealed to be Ted.
- Hand Wave: Somehow, a game show that involves abducting children has all the necessary permits and there's nothing the police can do to help.
- Hero Stole My Car: One of the clue holders complains to the film crew when Donna steals his car at gunpoint.
- Immoral Reality Show: It's a reality show with absolutely no consent from the contestant, puts a child's life at risk (the episode shows that the kidnapper is Donna's husband and he says he would get money if he manages to keep Wylie away until the timer runs out, so the implication is that children are (mostly) kept safe - of course, Donna was helpfully not told of this) and allows murder to win. Artistic License – Law does not even begins to describe it.
- Mama Bear: By the final act, Donna has definitely decided to unleash her inner Jack Bauer for the sake of finding her son. She gets extremely violent with two clue-givers so they will hand her the clues without beating around the bush with a riddle and kills her own husband when she discovers that it was him.
- Manipulative Editing: Nick asks the cameraman if he filmed him helping Donna figure out a clue. The cameraman replies that they'll fix it in post-production.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: The bizarre clues of the titular game show are already nearly impossible to solve, and adding a strict time limit and the fact that the solver is a parent trying to save their child's life doesn't make things any easier. An example: one of the questions challenges Donna to identify the franchise that features certain characters. She correctly names it as The Lord of the Rings; a telephone rings when you call it; and Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, thus making him "lord of the rings"—the answer is Bell Stables. Nick is forced to help Donna solve the puzzles to keep the show moving along.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Donna is shell-shocked after she shoots her husband.
- New Media Are Evil: This episode is not kind to reality television game shows, outright calling them cynical cash grabs that bring out the worst in people in the name of entertainment. It helps that, when the show aired, the reality phenomenon had only just begun.
- Off the Rails: As the timer counts down, Donna gets progressively more desperate and starts taking the situation into her own hands: she demands credit for an answer that technically isn't right, then takes over the show's van to speed after the kidnapper. It gets really bad when the villain's car crashes with Wylie inside; even Nick seems shocked by this and swears up and down that things weren't supposed to get this bad.
- Pet the Dog: When Donna embraces Wylie after he's injured in a car accident, the crew rushes over to film it. Nick, who's spent the whole episode trying to get reactions from Donna for the sake of ratings, angrily insists that they turn off the cameras and give her some privacy, and they sheepishly agree.
- The Unreveal: Nick never reveals what would happen if Donna is unable to find her son within the one hour time limit. However, because Ted says they would have received three million dollars if he had been able to get away with Wylie, it's implied that nothing would have happened.
- Would Hurt a Child: The entire premise of the show involves kidnapping children.
- Forest Whitaker: There's reality and there's entertainment. There's a life you lead and the fantasies you're led to, by a small but powerful group of people known as television executives, who recently discovered the entertainment value of real life. And in the future, if you think there's a risk they won't take, a line they won't cross, then we have an offer to make and some time for you to spend in the Twilight Zone.
