On paper, Peacock’s new show Twisted Metal seems like a can’t-miss kind of project. It’s based on one of the biggest first-wave 3D video games, it features a stacked cast led by Anthony Mackie and Stephanie Beatriz, Deadpool film scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick serve as EPs, and it’s a hilarious, action-packed joy ride from one end to the next. And while everyone’s mileage will vary (vehicular pun intended), I think most would readily agree that one of Twisted Metal’s biggest strengths is a secret weapon called “faithfully adhering to 30-minute runtimes.”
That may sound like a silly form of accolade to lay upon the show’s head along with a matching sash, but the value of hard-and-fast TV runtimes cannot be underestimated or ignored, especially in the current era of streaming platforms whose programming length isn’t automatically hindered by the need for commercial breaks. But Twisted Metal showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith & Co. have gloriously pulled out the old rulebook in breaking down its first season, and as far as I could tell when watching episodes made available for review, every episode clocked in at under 30 minutes without credits.
But even if that isn’t exactly right, it’d only be off by 90 seconds at the most, without any danger of viewers having to sit around for 50-110 minutes wondering why the events were split up into different parts. (Or, in less desirable cases, wondering why half of the footage was deemed good enough to film in the first place.) Which isn’t to say that every single TV show that regularly releases hour-long eps is automatically guilty of overkill. For example, many Stranger Things fans were just as quick to defend Season 4’s gargantuan final episode sizes as others were to decry them, so not everyone will agree on what the perfect time capsule is.
That said, Twisted Metal fits enough action, stunts, emotional beats, comedic moments, and more into each half-hour that I wish writers and producers from other series would take note, and challenge themselves to aim for the shortest length possible, and then expand out from there if absolutely necessary.
The series follows Mackie's John, a delivery driver tasked with bringing a package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland while being chased by the government (or what serves in its place), and desperately greedy thieves, among other threats. Along the way, he connects with Stephanie Beatriz's car thief of few words, nicknamed Quiet, and a maniacal killer driving an ice cream truck who goes by Sweet Tooth (as portrayed by AEW star Samoa Joe and voiced by LEGO Batman vet Will Arnett). Without spoiling anything, it's safe to say John and Quiet experience all kinds of shit throughtout the season, such as Thomas Haden Church's Agent Stone, whose shirt is so blue you might think something is weird with your TV.
But no matter what happens, you can be damned sure everything is going to work itself out will arrive at a proper stopping point right around the 30-minute mark, which is a blessing that I truly miss about the pre-streaming era. Obviously HBO and other cable platforms would also push boundaries with runtimes, but not to the needless extremes that have become the norm.
If I'm being 100% honest here, Twisted Metal may itself have too much going on during those half-hour blocks, in a way that may be a detriment to its winning qualities. Which basically comes down to things getting a little more confusing as it goes along and more characters come into play. So in a perfect world, maybe all of that could have been sorted out so that an eleventh episode would have been necessary to move things around successfully. But guess what? Before you can actually think to yourself, "Wait, is this confusing?" that episode is already over, with the next one queued up to continue the fun.
When I spoke with co-star Thomas Haden Church ahead of the premiere (and also ahead of the SAG-AFTRA strike), I asked him if bringing Twisted Metal's 30-minute eps together compared at all to his past work on half-hour sitcoms such as Wings or Ned and Stacey, and he said the one that fit the bill the most was his HBO comedy Divorce with Sarah Jessica Parker. Here's how he put it:
I can actually sort of make a comparison with Divorce, that I always saw Divorce - whether we did ten episodes, or eight episodes or six - I always saw it as like, it's a five-hour movie. And with this, you know, I see this as a five-hour movie. To me, I just connect it. One's not isolated in any way. Obviously, it's a continuing storyline, with a lot of different characters kind of flying in and out, but to me, it's just a big long feature story, but with crazy, chaotic, comedic, dangerous, hilarious circumstances and characters.
There are many times where Hollywood talents will refer to TV seasons as mini-movies, and those comparisons are almost always a stretch to say the least. But Thomas Haden Church actually gets it right with that assessment, since Twisted Metal zooms so quickly along that it doesn't ever feel like the action is truly being paused from one to the next.
Also, would I have taken 30 minutes solely of Samoa Joe’s Sweet Tooth and Anthony Mackie’s John Doe belting out Sisqo’s “Thong Song” and other ‘90s jams? I mean, probably. At least as a featurette.
All ten episodes of Twisted Metal Season 1 arrive on Thursday, July 27, for streaming with a Peacock subscription. So don’t waste time before checking it out, even though you’ll actually have time to spare with this one.
