"Meet in the Middle" is the eleventh episode of the 2019 series of The Twilight Zone and is the first episode of the second season.
Synopsis[]
A frustrated bachelor makes a telepathic connection with a complete stranger, only to fall in love with her and learn she may not be the person he thinks she is.
Opening Narration[]
"A voice in your head can mean a few different things. A conscience, divine inspiration, or madness. But what if instead, it were a case of crossed wires? One made through the tangled enigmatic switchboards of the Twilight Zone."
Plot[]
Act I[]
Phil first hears the voice
Phil Hayes is on a date with Julia. While she tries to make small talk, Phil quickly becomes uninterested and makes an awkward comment about her hair. Suddenly he hears another woman's voice in his head. Without actually talking, they start sending thoughts to each other via a mental communication. Phil darts off to the bathroom and wonders if he is going crazy, but the voice insists she is real. Neither likes hearing the others' thoughts -- especially since they don't know each other — and they angrily agree to stop talking to each other. Phil looks in the bathroom mirror and questions his sanity.
Act II[]
A few days later, Phil anxiously sits through an appointment with his therapist. It becomes clear that Phil has become very shallow after years of failed love. He discusses the voice in his head as well as the failed date; the therapist believes that the voice is a coping mechanism to help Phil get out of a date he knew would fail. She suggests he might be suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Suddenly the voice speaks to him out of boredom. They start "talking" as the therapist continues talking to Phil, unaware he is not listening. The voice tells Phil her therapist is just like his, and they laugh over how they treat them. Prompted by the voice, Phil abruptly leaves the session.
The two try to figure out more about this connection they share. Phil goes to a coffee shop and stares at a cute barista, where he learns the voice cannot see what he sees. They also realize they can start "talking" to each other by simply just thinking of the other person, which they both find romantic. She playfully talks Phil into asking the barista out, but he leaves after seeing her talk to another guy. He takes himself out for pizza later, but uses the time to bond more with the voice. He learns her name is Annie Mitchell and that she lives in Diamond Falls, which is "hundreds of miles" from Phil's hometown Ashford City. The two are delighted with their new sense of intimacy. Over the next few weeks, they spend a lot of time "talking" and getting to know one another. Phil enjoys his time with Annie despite not being able to see or be with her; however, he appears to everyone around him as a strange guy laughing and talking to himself.
Annie's Facebook profile
Annie politely asks Phil not to look her up online. While he respects this at first, he eventually caves after she awkwardly says no to them meeting in real life. He finds her Facebook and learns she is married. She admits to being in an unhappy marriage and that her recent connection with Phil helps her escape that. They have a meaningful conversation where Phil wonders his purpose in life and Annie cites their connection as an example of how special Phil is. She assures him he does have a purpose; they fall asleep longing to touch each other. The next morning, however, Annie abruptly tells Phil they have gotten too close and cannot talk anymore because "it's too dangerous". She stops speaking, leaving an upset Phil in awkward silence.
Act III[]
Over the next few weeks, Phil becomes unhinged and walks through life miserable. He stops paying his bills, instead spending his time begging Annie to answer him so he at least knows she was real. When she doesn‘t respond, he moves on with his life and asks another girl out — which goes just as poorly as the first date. Annie suddenly "talks" to him; he jumps out of his seat when he hears her voice. She excitedly tells Phil she wants to leave her husband and be with him, which gets Phil to scream out in joy (despite looking crazy to everyone around him). Annie tells him to meet in Hillson Bay, a town between Diamond Falls and Ashford.
Phil frantically searches for Annie
An ecstatic Phil cleans himself up and boards a train to Hillson Bay with flowers in his hands. They spend most of the ride bonding and anticipating their first meet; their happiness is cut short when Annie tells Phil someone on her train is following her. Phil tries to comfort her by saying he's with her, but she fearfully replies "No. You‘re not." She gets off at the Kingswood Station but is eventually taken by the man, causing her to scream and Phil to have a panic attack on the train. He is calmed down by the conductor, but waits in agony as the train gets to Kingswood. When he arrives, he follows clues she gave him but only finds her broken glasses in the street. Annie "talks" to Phil once more and tells him the man took her into the woods next to an owl. Phil follows the owl's hoot deep in the woods and finds a cabin. He knocks and asks the man home if he is hiding anything in there. The man becomes hostile and tells Phil to leave; Annie quickly confirms to Phil this is the same man who took her. He attacks the man and demands to know where Annie is; he pushes him to the ground and brutally beats him to death with a candlestick. The man's daughter walks in, followed by Annie — the two are horrified at the discovery. Phil, covered in blood, tries to embrace Annie. She swears not to know who he is and threatens him with a meat cleaver. The cops enter and arrest a confused Phil as Annie tells them that he just killed her husband!
Annie and her daughter
Phil sits handcuffed in the back of a squad car and finally starts to believe he has been hearing voices. He sadistically realizes he drove halfway across the country to kill a random person....then suddenly he hears Annie's voice again. Admitting their mental connection to be real, Annie reveals she needed someone to free her from her unhappy marriage and has been manipulating Phil the whole time. He angrily calls her a monster, but she insists that all she did was install a purpose In him. The squad car drives off with a furious Phil squirming and yelling. Jordan Peele (The Narrator) views them from the crime scene as the episode ends.
Closing Narration[]
"What kind of compromise goes into connecting with another human being? Is it meeting in the middle or going all the way to the end of the line? Phillip Hayes found connection, but only with the darkest part of his soul. A region of self that he'll inhabit for the rest of his life, here in the Twilight Zone."
Cast[]
- Jimmi Simpson as Phil Hayes
- Gillian Jacobs as Annie Mitchell
- Kristin Lehman as The Therapist
- Mike Dupod as Annie's husband
Trivia[]
- Episode writers Emily C Chang and Sara Amini cameo in the episode as Lily the barista and Julia.
- This episode was dedicated to Carolyn Serling, the widow of Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling. She passed away on January 9, 2020 before the second season was released on June 25. In spite of her passing, she maintained her executive producer credit for the rest of the series.
| v • e The Twilight Zone (2019) episodes | |
|---|---|
| Season 1 | "The Comedian" • "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" • "Replay" • "A Traveler" • "The Wunderkind" • "Six Degrees of Freedom" • "Not All Men" • "Point of Origin" • "The Blue Scorpion" • "Blurryman |
| Season 2 | "Meet in the Middle" • "Downtime" • "The Who of You" • "Ovation" • "Among the Untrodden" • "8" • "A Human Face" • "A Small Town" • "Try, Try" • "You Might Also Like"
|