In these uncertain times (as the TV ads say), it’s not unusual for popular entertainments to acquire a relevance that might not have been entirely intended when they were conceived. Such is the case—sort of—with “A Small Town.” I’m sure some of what this Twilight Zone episode is about was always part of the plan for its credited co-writers Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due: a married couple of genre fiction authors and academics, both keenly aware of the richer subtexts of weird fantasy stories. But their plot still has some unexpectedly added resonance in this strange summer of 2020.
It’s hardly a partisan political statement to say to that in an election year—and especially in one as existentially fraught as this one, marked with concerns about the future of democracy and indeed our very lives—everyone who’s already picked their slate of candidates can’t help but wonder whether the news of any given day helps or hurts them. Is it good or bad when the unemployment rate goes down? What do the latest Supreme Court rulings mean for November? Are protests in the streets tipping the race more to the Democrats or Republicans?
“A Small Town” is a story about the discovery of a magical scale model of a dying small town named Littleton. (Ha-ha.) Whoever manipulates the buildings and vehicles and scenery on the model actually affects what happens in the town itself—effectively allowing this person to play God, and to make the residents’ lives better. That’s a nifty premise. But the real twist comes about halfway through the episode, when the man who controls the model realizes that everything he’s doing to spruce up Littleton is inadvertently helping its lazy, bullying mayor become a local hero. So… should he stop helping others, lest he also help the someone who doesn’t deserve it?
The man with the model is Jason Grant (Damon Wayans Jr.), the husband of the town’s former mayor, Trina, who died a year ago. When Jason discovers this mini-Littleton—and discovers what it can do—he at first starts small with his civic improvements. He paints the local diner, saving the overworked proprietor Ana (Natalie Martinez) and her artsy teenage son Emilio (Andrew Alvarez) some hours they can’t really spare. He fills a pothole. He removes a pesky tree. He installs a lighted sign to coax travelers on the interstate to stop and spend money in Littleton: “The Most Magical Small Town In America.”
The locals take notice. Tourist trade picks up, and people who were thinking about leaving town decide to stay. They all start calling their secret benefactor “the helper.” And they’re pretty sure they know who it is: Mayor John Conley.
Mayor Conley (played with optimum smarm by David Krumholtz) is a classic “Mr. Burns”/“Mr. Potter” villain type. He owns the town’s bank; and he holds the note on a lot of the properties. He was never elected to his office; he was just in the line of succession when Mayor Grant died. And he’s never shown any interest in using any of the money in the Littleton treasury to make cosmetic or infrastructure fixes.
In fact, when Jason paints the diner, Conley—the landlord—flips out and threatens to raise the rent. He also snarls regularly at Emilio, who draws grotesque caricatures of the mayor in his sketchpad. When Jason tries to step between the two of them, Conley has no idea who he is. He doesn’t recognize the man who was the previous mayor’s husband. Mayor Conley is the worst.
Nevertheless, he’s getting credit for what Jason’s doing; and he seems to be coasting to a victory in the upcoming election. This drives our hero nuts.
So Jason starts playing little pranks. He drops a pebble onto his model, which crushes the mayor’s car in real life. He puts his pet tarantula onto the tiny streets, which means Conley gets chased by a giant spider. And finally—perhaps with the best of intentions, perhaps not—Jason soups up his own lighted sign, which overloads the power grid and plunges the county into darkness. The Littletonians quickly turn on their dear leader, Mayor Conley, who suddenly doesn’t have the mojo he seemed to be working just a few days earlier.
“A Small Town” flops a bit at the end. Because he’s a good person, Jason tries to fix the power outage by revealing the existence of the model to Conley… who then promptly tries to seize it. In their tussle, they wreck the thing, which ravages the town. But during that same fight, Jason also drops his wedding ring—which in its now mega-sized form should provide more than enough gold to pay for repairs.
That’s a fine enough finish, but it’s a little underwhelming given how clever the first two-thirds of this episode is. Still, the bulk of the action here—and especially the scenes where the puckish Wayans gets to torment Krumholtz’s character—remains pretty entertaining. And the larger questions the story raises are worth pondering.
As Littleton’s resident reverend Pastor Nichelle (Paula Newsome) observes, when it comes to a broken world coming back together, we shouldn’t “get hung up on the who.” If good news for everybody means that our adversaries get to reap some rewards too, well… Maybe we should just focus on the positive.
Stray observations
- We have an unexpected easter egg quote from the press material for this episode: “An expert on commerce and con jobs, a brash, bright, and larceny-loaded wheeler and dealer who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, must have gone for a beer and missed out.” That’s from “The Whole Truth,” a season two Twilight Zone about a haunted car, a shady salesman, and a lying politician. (Well, we got one out of three of those!)
- This is the one of the few episodes this season that’s not directed by a rising indie film auteur. Alonso Alvarez-Barreda has—thus far in his career—worked mostly in TV, on an eclectic batch of shows that include the new Party Of Five, 9-1-1, The Chi and Snowfall.
- Next (and last): “Try, Try.”
15 Comments
I’d say this was definitely the most ‘Twilight Zone’ of these episodes of The Twilight Zone. I could definitely see this having been part of the old series run. Not a great or classic episode, sure, but it feels like one of the originals.
Agreed, came here to say this feels the most like an old episode, what with the mob and the speeches and the unintended consequences.
Could have saved a lot of trouble by just killing the Mayor.
Krumholtz must live!
This episode was filmed in my small town of Ashcroft, British Columbia back in February, and the bulk of the outdoor filming was done on the block where I work as editor of the Ashcroft Journal newspaper, so I got a front row seat for the action. I’ve seen some still pictures of the model, and apart from one or two CGI additions it’s recognizably Ashcroft. Fun fact: while interior scenes in the church were filmed in our 130-year-old Zion United church, the building was in the wrong place for exterior filming, so the crew built a full-size replica in an empty lot across from my office. Along with a lot of other locals I worked as background talent, and a friend who has seen the episode sent me a screen grab showing I made it in. It’s the scene where the mayor discovers the huge rock on his car, and as I’m the town’s real mayor, a few people asked me about how realistic he was. I replied that swearing in front of a group of constituents is generally considered to be a no-no.I’ve arranged some public showings of the episode (with help from CBS) next week, which will be fun; lots of people have been waiting to see this for a while.
This is so cool! Did they leave it up ala Big Fish? Also: You’re a mayor?! Milk it and set up this tourist trap! Put a big sign up pointing to it.
I asked if the replica could be left up – it’s certainly more interesting than looking across the street at an empty lot – but they disassembled it and said they were taking it back down to Vancouver in case they need to re-erect it for any re-shoots. It was certainly quite the tourist attraction while it was up, though. On a Sunday midway through filming the crew opened up the street to traffic, as there was no filming that day, and the place was like a zoo. I’ve worked at my office often enough on a Sunday to know that it’s usually dead, but on that Sunday it was a steady stream of locals driving, walking, and biking along it to look at the sets and take pictures.
Philip K. Dick has a story “Small Town” about a magic model town and a sad guy who changes things and yadda yadda. I don’t know that it’s particularly famous? But it is famous enough that it gets included in his short story collections.The two stories don’t have much in common, outside of the basic premise. But this episode effectively means that Electric Dreams (which was never officially cancelled, but which also will probably never get a second season) would probably never use that story.The episode itself was okay, but for a lightweight, whimsical ending to work I would have preferred if they’d set it up a bit more. I kindof miss how in the old series you knew you were getting a “comedy” episode because the musical cues were all slidewhistles and cymbal crashes.
the ‘downtime’ episode reminded me of an old matrix comic where the guy’s body was dying in the real world but he was still jacked in. again, not that close aside from the premise but it was an interesting ‘oh i wonder if…’ moment.
One of the motifs that seem threaded through a bunch of episodes seem to be that stained glass design. I seem to have watched them out of order and I don’t know whether it’s tied to a specific thing, but I’m pretty sure that same cellular design was a window in the Hogwarts high school women’s bathroom.
They cut out the scene where he sells the table to Trump but they left the easter egg clue in the box.
This puff piece is bought and paid for by CBS. That is why there is no honesty or integrity in the reviews. This hack loves every episode regardless how racist, woke, or badly produced they are. Total BS
The mayor is a salesman, too. That big sign they kept showing says something about “Bad credit? No problem, I own the bank” and it had his picture and I think it was over a car lot.
I haven’t seen this episode, but it sounds like a somewhat lighter version of the Fred Pohl short story “The Tunnel Under The World”.
I will admit, I literally LOL’d when he put the spider into the model and let it walk down Main Street towards the mayor. Also, no explanation as to how or why he had a spider (tarantula?) in a jar in that attic.Also, the kid that saw the spider from his room seemed pretty calm about it after. He literally saw a giant spider walking down the street, but his reaction was to draw a mural about it and not freak out or tell anyone about it.