Among the Untrodden Review: Twilight Zone Season 2 Episode 5

Among the Untrodden, explained: the setup

Irene is the new girl at St. Mary’s, and within a few minutes of arriving she has moved candles, a stack of Zener cards and a pile of books on psychic phenomena into a disused girls’ bathroom in the basement. Her test subject is Madison, one of the most popular students in the school. Madison scores a zero on every one of Irene’s “Are You Psychic?” tests and takes that as proof that she is perfectly ordinary. Irene points out that pure luck would normally hand her four or five correct guesses on average, so a score of nothing is the stranger result. Her theory is that Madison is suppressing something.

It is a tidy opening, because the episode turns an old schoolyard dynamic into a puzzle. Madison’s clique eats together, studies together and picks on the new girl together. Irene, played by Sophia Macy, arrives looking unkempt and says hello anyway. The clique answers with a quiz that offers only two ways of finishing the sentence about why she is there, and both are insults. When Irene refuses to circle either one, Madison throws a pencil at her head. The pencil turns to dust in mid-air, and nobody else sees it happen.

Madison is played by newcomer Abbie Hern, and the pairing works because the two actresses leave the audience guessing which of them is in charge. The script, by former Saturday Night Live writer Heather Anne Campbell, who also wrote the first season’s “Not All Men,” lets that question sit for most of the running time.

How the friendship starts

Irene proves that Madison can read minds, then helps her sharpen the gift. The deal is simple: Irene wants a seat in the clique. She straightens her hair, learns to apply make-up and ends up drinking beer and getting high on the school balcony, the one spot nobody ever visits. Meanwhile Madison uses her new skill the way a bully would, collecting the secrets of hall monitors, teachers and other students.

Objects begin to appear when Madison wants them, and each one crumbles to dust once it has been used. After Irene seems to fall from the school roof, Madison brings her back by thinking about it. The favor costs her. Irene becomes more popular than Madison ever was.

The look and sound of the episode

The production design is smoky and Gothic, all dark corridors and candlelight in a run-down bathroom. The music is chosen like a supporting character. “Roads” by Rose of the West plays as the two girls start their experiment, Kimbra’s “Top of the World” scores Irene’s swaggering walk into the lunchroom, and “Impulse” by Mrch follows her into her drinking binges on school nights. Ambient trip-hop and indie rock sit under the whole thing, which gives the story a dreamlike pull that most of the revival’s other hours lack.

Who really holds the power

Most of the episode keeps the audience unsure which girl is dangerous. Madison has the visible powers: the pencil, the key to the balcony, the dust that follows every conjured object. Irene has the knowledge, the patience and the plan. She calls the experiment a science fair project, and she teaches Madison to be worse than she already is without any visible fear of what happens when the student outgrows the teacher. That is the question hanging over the middle of the story, and the writing never answers it early. When the clique turns on Irene and the screens explode, it looks like the reveal. The real reveal is quieter and more painful, and it lands because the earlier scenes treated both girls as people with wants, not as plot devices.

It also explains why the cruelty at the start matters. The quiz with two insulting answers is meant to be hateful, and Madison’s squashing of people she dislikes, like insects, sets up how much she needs the friend she wished for.

The twist and the poem

When Madison’s friends humiliate Irene by posting video of her drunken rants, Irene screams, every screen in the room shatters and all three girls drop to the floor. Madison accuses Irene of using her as a puppet, and the episode asks whether Irene was the psychic all along. Irene’s answer is that Madison has powers and used them to protect her because she cares about people, even if she cannot admit it. Madison replies that on Irene’s first day she wished for a normal girl who could be a friend. Irene tells her the wish came true, and then Irene freezes and turns to dust. The final shot shows Madison alone in class until a pale, platinum-haired new girl walks in.

The title comes from William Wordsworth’s poem “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways,” a short lyric about love, loss and the loneliness that follows. The poem is written on the chalkboard behind Jordan Peele during his closing narration, which is the cleanest way the episode could have signed its own ending.

Among the Untrodden easter eggs and details

The episode hides a few references for returning viewers.

• The Wordsworth poem appears on the chalkboard to the right of Jordan Peele during the outro narration.
• A celebrity magazine with MYNX on the cover, the same one Jasmine reads in the previous episode, “Ovation,” lies on the bed where Irene gets drunk with the clique.
• The pile of shattered television sets recalls the shop window from the first season’s “Blurryman,” where the writer wanders past a stack of broken TVs.

Among the Untrodden review: why it works

The Twilight Zone has told plenty of stories about down-on-their-luck actors and comedians, and it has ended the world about a half dozen times, but until this episode it had not told a good coming-of-age story. “Among the Untrodden” teases a master-and-pupil showdown, the kind of tale where two people of equal power finally collide. It never delivers that fight. It becomes a story about two girls who simply want acceptance and happiness, and the shift feels earned because the performances carry it.

Hern plays Madison as the alpha of the school, and the writing gives her a real edge. When she warns Irene that she will destroy her life if the experiment goes wrong, the threat lands. Macy’s Irene is just as convincing as a girl who wants the ordinary pleasures of high school and keeps her cards hidden until the last act. The chemistry between them is the whole episode.

Season 2 of the revival arrived on CBS All Access on June 25, 2020, with all ten episodes available at once, and by the halfway point this is the entry to beat. It is slow-burning, creepy and emotional, and it is the one most worth revisiting. The only complaint is a small one. Halfway through the season, none of the episodes feels preachy or tied to current events, and that restraint is a relief.

Taken together, the first, third and fifth episodes are the ones worth putting on again any day of the week. Of those three, “Among the Untrodden” is the one with the strongest final image, the most unified music and the best pair of lead performances. For anyone choosing a single episode of the CBS All Access run to show a skeptic of the revival, this is the pick.

Sources

• The Twilight Zone (2019 TV series), Wikipedia — Checked against: episode list, cast and crew, and release dates.