The Twilight Zone (TV Series) Rewind (2003) User Reviews

a bit predictable but a nice portrait of a gambling addict.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 15 February 2022]

Jonah is a young man who has a lovely girlfriend and dreams of one day opening his own restaurant with her. However, there's a problem...Jonah is a gambling addict. And, like an addict, he insists he'll one day have that big win. One day he finds that he can manipulate time with a tape recorder...and he feels he is unbeatable.

I could easily predict this one....so the Twilight Zone twist isn't a particularly unexpected one. But at least it shows a nice portrait of gambling addiction...and it's worth seeing.

"There is no telling how long this ride is going to last."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 16 March 2023]

If there's any lesson to be taken from this episode it's that the house always wins. It took Jonah Beech (Eddie Kaye Thomas) just a single evening to learn that lesson, even if he thought he had an inside edge with an unusual gimmick. When a panhandler guilted Jonah into giving him a few bucks, Jonah relented and coughed up his remaining three dollars, for which the street person exchanged a beat-up tape recorder. Playing around with it, Jonah discovered that rewinding the machine would cause the last few minutes of his reality to rework itself to a more favorable outcome. Wearing down his wife (Marisa Coughlan) to stake him to a couple hundred bucks, Jonah looked like he was on a fast track to winning thousands against a formidable casino owner before his dream came to an end. It seems that Conrad Black ((Ben Bass) had a shiny, new version of the same type of device, thereby ending Jonah's visions of glory.

Once a Gambler

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 10 July 2017]

Dueling recorders might be a better name for this. The principle character has thrown everything away gambling. He has a nice girlfriend who has modest aspirations. He, however, can't quit gambling. Even if he wins, he won't quit until he loses it all. One day he helps a destitute man and the guy gives him a beat up pocket recorder. It is discovered that a person can go back as far as five seconds and repeat events. He knows he can use this to know how a hand of poker ended and then redo the final bet, even folding when it was expedient. But he lets ego and his compulsion get in the way of having the start of a great life. Even throwing away the love of his life is worth it to him.