User reviews

A kid lives in a home with a monster. The monster is his father...and angry, abusive jerk who controls the family through violence and intimidation. The boy has had enough and makes a wish that his comicbook hero, Azoth the Avenger, comes to protect him.

The idea of this episode isn't bad. But the ending narration is pretty sappy and I can't help but think that this should have been better...and with more of a twist.

Someone get scriptwriter Brent V. Friedman and host Forest Whitaker a tape of the actual Serling show. Its name is The Twilight Zone, not The Zone. Say it with me: The Twilight Zone.

"Azoth the Avenger Is a Friend of Mine" is an episode plagued with the horrifically bad acting that characterizes the 2000s revival of The Twilight Zone (again, not The Zone). Particularly, Patrick Warburton is awful, though in all fairness, he wasn't given much to work with- lines like "I sense we're kindred spirits" come out as laughably ridiculous. Rory Culkin is largely passable, but is monotonous, finding that tone of voice to use throughout the whole episode that doesn't make you cringe, but he never acts afraid, or brave, or surprised, or anything. The characters in this episode react completely incomprehensibly- the mother character tends to Azoth's wounds? In the early 2000s, she would have called the police. "A leather hanging out with a 12-year-old boy," as the dad puts it, would have raised very serious concerns about what this man was doing to the boy.

The new intro to the noughties revival also doesn't do justice to the original Twilight Zone (again, not The Zone, still can't get over that) - too flashy, not unnerving at all, with a similarly splashy title logo.

Adorable child-actor. Interesting overall and deep ending.