Can we believe the arrival of aliens on Earth with seemingly altruistic intentions? Or is it a Trojan horse, waiting for the right moment to launch an ambush? This is the fundamental question posed by Serving Man, which is under consideration one of the toughest episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. By the time this episode aired on CBS in 1962, Serling's show had already established itself as an anthology series featuring short, twisty episodes about supernatural or psychological phenomena that emerged from the titular Twilight Zone. The original Twilight Zone TV show. is steeped in both rich, engaging storytelling and a deep sense of nostalgia, a mix that is hard to capture or replicate today. However, Jordan Peele took the initiative to do so with his 2019 Twilight Zone revival, which ran for two seasons and featured some intriguing episodic premises.

Peel's approach to the property was measured. Thematically, his version of The Twilight Zone was designed as a direct response to the problems we face today, yet its best individual episodes still felt timely. However, Peele also understood that it was impossible to divorce the revival from the legacy of the original series, so he and his fellow creatives actively paid homage to it. As a result, the revival included many Easter eggs referring to Serling's classic Twilight Zone episodes, and even went so far as to explicitly remake/pay homage to one particularly famous episode with A Nightmare at 30,000 Feet. . This proved to be a double-edged sword, as Peele's revival of The Twilight Zone proved controversial for the way it combined nostalgic appreciation with inspired reinvention.

In addition to reshoots of the episodes, Peele's Twilight Zone revival also featured the sequel To Serve Man helmed by none other than writer-director Osgood Perkins (who knows a thing or two about building and sustaining fear in coded stories with horror). But to better understand Perkins' follow-up episode, "You Might Like It," we first need to talk a little more about its predecessor.

Sspoilers for "To Serve the Man" and its sequel, "You May Like It Too," will follow.

Serling's opening narration for "To Serve Man" introduces the Kanamites, an alien race of nine-foot-tall creatures of unknown origin who arrive on Earth during turbulent times. Following the intervention of the United Nations, the Kanamites declare their intentions to be benevolent and express their willingness to solve Earth's food and energy crises by sharing advanced technology developed by their species. Despite their initial wariness, the world's people and governments begin to relax after the book the aliens left behind is deciphered as "To Serve Man." Over time, the Kanamites terraform the Earth into vast, natural swathes, solving global issues and helping to dissolve all military forces. However, the illusion of this utopia is shattered when Kanamit's true intentions are revealed one of the best Twilight Zone endings ever: Serving Man isn't some altruistic manifesto, it's actually a cookbook.

"To Serve Man" unfolds through the eyes of Michael Chambers (Lloyd Bochner), a cryptographer tasked with deciphering a book left behind by the Kanamites. Chambers represents a troubling human impulse: laziness, combined with a perennial refusal to think beyond self-serving desires. He's terrible at his job (an expert at doing absolutely nothing while pretending to do a lot) and is more obsessed with earning a ticket to the Kanamit home planet for recreational purposes. By the time someone else does his work for him and translates the book, however, it is already too late. Michael's negligence cost humanity everything; the humans of Earth would soon become tasty little treats for an alien race that essentially fattened pigs before slaughter.

The episode's pun-dependent twist is of the same variety as Hannibal Lecter's famous "I'm having an old friend over for dinner" line, though The Twilight Zone makes it work by contrasting Michael's darkly ironic fate with the tension that accompanies the upcoming upheaval. So how does Perkins reinterpret the Kanamite story in a sequel that sees the return of these faithful creatures?

Perkins, who directed such blockbusters as "The Blackcoat's Daughter" and "Longlegs," he knows how to make the most of the understated anxieties that linger on the edge of human consciousness. In You May Like It , this element is present throughout, where Perkins focuses on the smug apathy the Kanamites display in the original, bolstered by their (perceived) superiority over humanity. However, the episode leans heavily on the absurdist humor of Serling's episode, taking things a mile further with tongue-in-cheek product placements that highlight humanity's obsession with gadgets they don't need (but think will fix everything). Here, a wealthy woman named Janet (Gretchen Mol) suspects something is amiss after losing time and experiencing memory lapses, and the arrival of an advertised egg heralds the return of the Kanamites to Earth.

While "To Serve Man" focuses on the failure of the human race to foresee its doom, "You Can Love" satirizes rampant consumerism and how it prevents the masses from recognizing the most glaring moral pitfalls. The Kanamites in the original episode used deception to fool the smartest people on Earth and played the long game to lull humanity into a false sense of inactivity. In the sequel, such detailed planning is not necessary, as the Kanamites can simply use late-stage capitalism to further their goals. You simply must brand your queen's eggs as the next most desirable product that will drastically improve everyone's life. Why and how doesn't matter when something so "life-changing" is 50 percent off.

The reception of Perkins' approach was mixed, and it is admittedly a rather alienating episode. While it was objectively a better choice not to take a self-serious stance for a follow-up to the classic Twilight Zone episode, the nature of the story feels skin-deep. There was an opportunity to dive deeper into the relationship between reckless consumerism and self-esteem, how "being happy" is often a hollow performance for audiences, and how hobbies are constantly fueled. Who are we even performing for? For better or worse, the episode offers no answers. Instead, she just mocks our addiction to The Egg, which promises to make everything right again. Of course, that's not the case.