This episode might have found inspiration from a handful of Rod Serling's original stories back in the Fifties and Sixties. "A Kind of a Stopwatch" dealt with the time factor, while "A Most Unusual Camera" and "What's in the Box" covered the camera angle. Not precisely of course, but the germ of an idea was recycled here. When Nina Harrison (Sanaa Lathan) discovered that her hand-me-down camcorder had the ability to rewind time, she used it repeatedly to preempt a confrontation between a racist cop and herself with son Dorian (Damson Idris). The first time would have been enough to establish the racism angle along with the stereotype of a fat, white cop harassing black people, but the story kept hammering the message home enough that it wore itself out. With discretion being the better part of valor, Officer Lasky's (Glenn Fleshler) fellow troopers determined it would be better to retreat than be captured on dozens of cell phone cameras recording bigotry for the world to see. The fast forward to ten years in the future established Dorian as a father in his own right, with a curious daughter of his own whose handling of the camcorder put an end to its magical qualities. Not a bad episode even though it handled its message in a heavy-handed manner.
Review of Replay
