Jason Alexander’s episode of “The Twilight Zone” is very different from Robert Redford’s, but they both find Death teaching a human being about the complexities of mortality and the importance of life’s finality before they take them to the great beyond. Jason Alexander is excellent in the role, never once playing the character for a joke, even if it does seem like it would be mildly amusing to cast a famous comic actor in the role of the Grim Reaper.
Robert Redford never made another “Twilight Zone” but Jason Alexander sure did. After his appearance on the UPN reboot, Alexander starred in four installments of “The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas,” a collection of classic episode remakes and new weird tales that ran between 2002 and 2012, for a staggering 176 episodes. Alexander starred in “The Obsolete Man” as a man put on trial because his job as a librarian no longer exists after books have been banned, “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” as a soldier who finds himself at the bottom of a giant cylinder with four strange characters, “Caesar and Me” as a ventriloquist whose dummy starts to talk to him, and “No Time Like the Past” as a man who goes back in time and tries not to change the course of history.
Yes, Jason Alexander may not be as famous for “The Twilight Zone” as he is for playing George Costanza on “Seinfeld,” but he’s got a lengthy connection with the long-running anthology series. Meanwhile, Robert Redford only did the one episode. Check and mate, Redford.