"Welcome to Winfield" is not a successful segment of the new Twilight Zone.  It was written by Les Enloe, a writer who doesn’t seem to have done anything before this, and only one production after, in 2008.  Due to the use of character actors, this segment plays more like an episode of "Little House on the Prairie" than the Twilight Zone.  As I mention in another review character actors can enhance a production, but in this case they really don't have any value and seem to be a detriment.  I suspect that once again, someone fell in love with the idea of this story, envisioning a grand statement about people called away from their loved ones way too soon and being able to stop Death, but it's written too ineptly to even begin to get anywhere near such an epic vision.  I point to the NTZ's own "Her Pilgrim Soul" as a story that does rise to that epic height.  Many other TV shows and even movies fall in this same trap; the realization is much different than the original story the writer envisioned. 

The major problem with this segment, though, is its length and pacing.  It takes too long to get going, and too long to finish.  The story just doesn't lend itself to anything beyond about 15 minutes worth of screen time.  Gerrit Graham is fantastic as Mr. Death, in a white sportscar with its own Death decal, but he's really the only one in it that is.  The two lovers are completely uncharismatic and you don't care if they live or not (at least I don't), and the other people in town seem to have no separate personalities.  They all act as one.  I know it's easy for me to criticize this, since I wasn't a part of the production team and didn't have to fill an hour each week, but surely there was another story that could have been used to better results than this one.  It's not worthy of the Twilight Zone.