Jordan Peele: Jasmine Delancey has spent her entire life in search of one thing: applause. Now that she's found it, it's given her a new sense of meaning. But what, exactly, is the value of an ovation so loud it drowns out the performance? Jasmine's about to find out here... in the Twilight Zone.
The music career of struggling singer Jasmine takes off overnight after she witnesses a tragic incident. Jasmine begins receiving rapturous applause everywhere she goes, but she soon realizes that the relentless recognition comes at a steep cost.
- 15 Minutes of Fame: Jasmine briefly gains celebrity status when Fiji gives her the magic medallion, and then immediately loses it once she gives up the medallion.
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: Once Jasmine starts becoming famous, she gets a big ego, claiming that her music makes life worth living.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Jasmine tells Fiji she wants "what she has", and that's exactly what Fiji gives her.
- Celebrity Is Overrated: The main plot of this episode.
- Cursed Item: The magic medallion. Whoever possesses it becomes an extremely famous musician (though it doesn’t actually make its owner talented, it just makes everyone think they’re amazing), but the owner’s fame will cause them to be harassed by fans wherever they go, and the applause will feel hollow if the person realizes their fans only like them because they’re under the medallion’s spell. Even with the downsides, the fame that the medallion brings is very addictive, making the medallion very hard to give up. Everyone who owns the medallion either ends up dead or arrested by the end of the story.
- Decoy Protagonist: The episode opens with Fiji on a photo shoot, and follows her up until she steps in front of a bus.
- Downer Ending: Having become overwhelmed by too much fame and ovation, Jasmine gives up the medallion to her sister and advises her to throw it in the lake. Though she once again resumes her normal life, she desperately wants to get her fame back. Upon seeing that a new pop star has received the same type of fame Jasmine had and that she might have the medallion, she decides to kill her and steal it back to be famous once again. She kills the new pop star, but she gets apprehended by security and in a cruel twist, it turns out the pop star she killed was her sister, who kept the medallion for herself. Jasmine is then presumably arrested for her sister’s murder.
- Dream Sequence: After Jasmine gives up her fame, she soon misses it so much that she has a dream that she’s back to performing on stage for a cheering audience.
- Driven to Madness: After Jasmine gives up her fame, she ends up missing it so much and becoming so jealous of Minx, the new most famous pop star, that she goes insane.
- Driven to Suicide: Fiji is overwhelmed with her fame but also doesn’t want to go back to living without it, so she gives the medallion to Jasmine and steps in front of a speeding bus.
- Glory Days: After Jasmine gives up her celebrity status, she quickly starts missing the applause and longing to be famous again.
- Green-Eyed Monster: After she gives up her fame, Jasmine becomes insanely jealous when she sees that the public has forgotten her and switched to loving a new pop star, Minx.
- Groupie Brigade: After becoming famous, Jasmine constantly gets mobbed by fans.
- The Heckler: After Jasmine gives up the magic medallion, two jerks heckle her while she’s performing on the street.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: The magic medallion made Jasmine a very famous musician. Once she loses it, she goes back to singing on the street with nobody paying attention to her except two jerks who briefly stop to make fun of her. She then sees the host of the singing show she performed on and greets him, but he doesn’t even remember her.
- Humiliation Conga: See “How The Mighty Have Fallen” above.
- Irony: After Jasmine stabs Zara, a man yells for someone to get Zara a doctor. Zara was a doctor, before she quit to become a singer.
- Large Ham: Jasmine, when she goes insane. She screams a lot and laughs like a crazy person.
- Laughing Mad: When Jasmine sees that Minx has taken her place as the world’s most popular musician, she starts laughing insanely.
- Loved by All: Whoever has the medallion will instantly become a famous musician, with everyone else believing they are incredibly talented. However, when Jasmine owns the medallion, its spell does not affect her sister, for some reason.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Jasmine is horrified when she realizes her sister, Zara, is the pop star she just murdered.
- Sadistic Choice: Whoever gets the medallion will be forced to choose between keeping it and getting endlessly harassed by fans, or getting rid of it and losing the addictive fame the medallion brings.
- The Scream: The montage of Jasmine going insane ends with her screaming like a lunatic.
- Skewed Priorities: Invoked by the medallion’s spell. Jasmine goes to the hospital Zara works at, where she and a group of other surgeons are operating on a patient. When the other surgeons see Jasmine, they stop operating on the patient to clap for Jasmine, due to being under the medallion’s spell.
- Subverted Catchphrase: As seen at the bottom of the page, this is the only episode where Jordan Peele does not give a closing narration. Instead, he pockets the medallion and begins clapping before he walks away.
- Take a Third Option: As mentioned above, Fiji has to either keep the medallion and the suffocating attention that comes with it, or give up the medallion and not be famous anymore. She chooses to commit suicide.
- Title Drop: The singing show Jasmine performs on is named Ovation.
- Too Dumb to Live: Invoked by the medallion’s spell. When Jasmine is riding in a limo and her song comes on over the radio, her limo driver takes his hands off the wheel while he’s driving to clap for the song.
Cue to Applause
