Black Mirror: Season 3 Review
Netflix‘s Black Mirror: Season 3 was the best season of the TV anthology series thus far. It didn’t contain all of the strongest episodes for the series thus far but it contained many of them.
Black Mirror Nosedive Review
The aptly named first episode of Season 3 of Black Mirror was the third best episode of the season. When Nosedive was establishing itself and while Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) social networked, Nosedive treaded water. When Lacie and Naomie (Alice Eve) interacted, Nosedive began to come into its own.
The height of those interactions was when Alice Eve ripped the veil off her true intention behind her marriage invention and how the both of them would have been using each other that day. During that interaction, Naomie revealed herself to be the same person that Lacie’s brother reviled.
Because of how social networking and identity (like in Dave Eggers’ The Circle) were intertwined in Nosedive‘s society, everyone was fake nice and pretentious to one another. Everyone lived in fear of being socially marked down. They were all living in a nightmare of their making. Their two choices in that society: 1.) go along, and 2.) live on the fringes of society, off the social grid (a “2” or below). Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat-satire do not get better or more hellish than in Nosedive.
Howard’s most grueling acting moment and Lacie’s most infamous scene was the wedding speech. Howard played Lacie during that moment as though Lacie had become unhinged. Lacie was barely recognizable from the employed, sane, and upwardly-mobile person that she had been at the beginning of Nosedive.
A version of the social world in Nosedive is coming. Nosedive may be a warning against that perilous path. If it was a warning, it was a rather effective one.
Black Mirror Playtest Review
Playtest was the weakest episode of the third season of Black Mirror. Though Cooper (Wyatt Russell) was charismatic, goofy, and sympathetic, no real emotional connection to him was established. The viewer simply watched him and his misadventures. They didn’t have any reaction to him, even when he died.
One would think that the game developers would tell their test subjects that there was a risk of death with what they were about to experience. Not in Playtest.
The high-point of Playtest was when Cooper was isolated in a house on the game developers’ campus. During these sequences, Playtest, for a time, became a multi-room play. In that, the episode was successful (especially when Sonja (Hannah John-Kamen) showed up). Where the episode failed was that it didn’t take the Sonja build-up to a successful crescendo. Instead, the episode down-shifted with her disappearance and never up shifted again.
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Black Mirror Shut Up and Dance Review
Shut Up and Dance was the second best episode of the third season of Black Mirror. Shut Up and Dance had an increasing engaging and evolving storyline and a twisted ending. Shut Up and Dance also had the second best ending of the season behind San Junipero.
It was hard to weigh the villains in this episode. Was the sadist behind-the-scenes the worst or was it the pedophiles? The pedophiles were sympathetic until what they were was revealed. When that happened, they weren’t two people trapped by the threat of being exposed as self-gratifyers. They were two criminal deviants entrapped by a far smarter criminal who decided to use them as Simon Says playthings. The deviants most telling moment together: “How young were they, in the pictures?”
Unlike some of the other episodes this season, Shut Up and Dance had the most action coupled with an action thriller tone. The viewer felt sorry for Kenny (Alex Lawther) and what he was being put through. This apexed with the bank robbery. The bank robbery emotionally ripped Kenny apart. It may have been Lawther’s best acting in the episode. Millions of people could see his reaction to the robbery as their own. As he walked into the bank, he walked into a living, breathing trauma. Not just for him but for all the people held-up in the robbery. Like them, he would be affected by the robbery for years to come.
Part of the ending to Shut Up and Dance that surprised the viewer was that Kenny won his sine missione fight. I would have thought The Man in the Woods (Paul Bazely) would have won the fight (having strength, size, and experience over his younger opponent). The battered yet victorious Kenny walked away from the battlefield thinking that the worst was behind him (literally). He’d won.
His tormentor proved that assumption to be false and it was wonderful turn of events.
Black Mirror San Junipero Review
San Junipero started off slowly, awkwardly, very much like lead character Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis). By the middle of the episode, after the main characters had met again in an 80’s environment, that was the moment when
If A Walk to Remember had been adapted correctly, it would have had the emotional depth and heart-felt moments that San Junipero possessed.
San Junipero may have been ordinary if it was not for the performances of its three leads: Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), Older Kelly (Denise Burse), and Yorkie. The best moments of the episode were when the leads were expressing their feelings to one another, explaining their point of view, and telling their life stories.
Yorkie not knowing how to say she wanted to go home with Kelly was an outstanding character moment. That moment in the bathroom was the beginning of the TV episode to TV movie transformation. It was that good, helped by Kelly’s reaction and realization of what Yorkie was saying.
Older Kelly visiting older Yorkie in the hospital was an effortless passing-of-the-ball between actresses as the episode transitioned from the digital world to the real world. That segment of San Junipero ameliorated the human heart aspect of the episode. It made San Junipero substantive and real, far realer than any other episode of Black Mirror (though 15 Million Merits and Be Right Back had their moments).
Yorkie’s decision to “pass over” was a no-brainer. After thirty years of being paralyzed from the neck down, choosing to be free of that body and existence was a choice many would make if they had the option.
Kelly’s decision to kill her failing body for a eternal, digital one was also an understandable choice. Unlike Yorkie, Kelly didn’t do it to escape an empty life. Kelly’s choice was more complicated. She did it for true love and because of the state of her failing, real-world body.
Yorkie and Kelly’s finally moments together in the San Junipero were beautiful. Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Belinda Carlisle playing over the end credit scenes made the on-screen moments even lovelier, poignant, and touching.
Black Mirror Men Against Fire Review
Men Against Fire was an episode about covert ethnic cleansing facilitated by advanced technology. Men Against Fire had a clever and thought-out central premise that was revealed in the episode’s third act. Men Against Fire‘s final two scenes were its best. The second-to-last-scene of Men Against Fire was like The Architect scene from The Matrix Reloaded. Like the events in The Architect scene, Arquette (Michael Kelly) explained to Stripe (Malachi Kirby) why Stripe’s existence was in its current configuration.
Arquette’s warfare monologue was the crème de la crème of the dialogue in Men Against Fire. Stripe’s breakdown after he was given access to his real memories validated the monologue’s thesis. My question is: Why would you sign up to be a soldier, knowing that you would have to kill, if you could not deal with the emotional consequences? What did Stripe think he would be doing as a soldier? Washing windows? Did war footage, war pictures, and war news reports not exist in that future?
I know that war pictures and films do match the visceral reality of war but Stripe seemed to be blithely ignorant during his recruitment video and surprised that he was killing during his memory playback. Even if it was a “Roach,” it was still a being with feelings and emotions.
I guess Arquette was right. Killing a Boogeyman (a “Roach” in this case) was far easier than killing a living, breathing human. I was surprised by Stripe’s final choice but in general, it wasn’t surprising. If you could erase murders that you had committed from your head and stabilize your head at the push of a button (instead of being tortured by those memories), why wouldn’t you?
Cypher chose the unreality of The Matrix and Stripe chose the unreality of MASS. The consent requirement for MASS was a new, litigious, and realistic touch.
Black Mirror Hated in the Nation Review
Hated in the Nation was the second TV movie episode of Black Mirror: Season 3. Unlike San Junipero, the other TV movie episode of Season 3, Hated in the Nation did not have a satisfying ending. It was ambiguous, like many episodes of Black Mirror where it was up to the viewer to project where the lead character went from that point in their life. Relying on the intelligence of the viewer is not a bad thing but San Junipero showed how satisfying a closed ending could be over an open ending.
That being said, Hated in the Nation successfully tackled the menace of cyber-bullying, both in its practice and in its result.
The characters in the high-stakes situations in Hated in the Nation were two-dimensional, unlike the characters in The National Anthem. Many viewers felt sorry for the situation that Prime Minister Michael Callow found himself in within The National Anthem. The viewer didn’t feel anything for most of the characters in Hated in the Nation. They were characters that responded to the situations that they found themselves in. Nothing more.
The one character that created the biggest impression in Hated in the Nation was journalist Jo Powers (Elizabeth Berrington). She reveled in the hatred spewed at her. She cared about nothing besides herself, her work, and probably her husband. She was energized by the vitriol directed at her and it showed.
More should have been made of the government surveillance via the Autonomous Drone Insects (ADIs). Spoken of briefly, surveillance by ADI would have major Big Brother implications for the society in question. Since National Crime Agency agent Shaun Li (Benedict Wong) was called to testify on the ADI case, my guess is that U.K. officials weren’t pleased by those implications.
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