USS Callister: This was the much-ballyhooed Star Trek-inspired episode. I remember when the first images of this were posted people thought it a little odd for a show like Black Mirror to do a Trek parody. And soon you realize that this isn't a Trek parody so much as a hatchet job on Trek and gamer culture.
Basically there's this VR game called Infinity (which ironically was a gaming platform operated by Disney that incorporated its cartoon properties, Marvel, and Star Wars, but not Star Trek) and the co-creator of the game has his own special version that he programs to be a simulation of the old Star Trek-like series Space Fleet. Except we soon realize that all the characters in the game are people he works with and like one of the asshole omnipotent aliens on a Trek episode like Q or that one where Kirk kisses Uhura, he mostly uses it to demean and denigrate his coworkers. Unfortunately it's all PG-rated so he can't do anything more than basic kissing. Which is weird they didn't go there.
The twist is the creations all know they're not real. He's apparently "cloned" them with DNA taken from coffee cups or a lollipop in one case. I'm not sure if that's a real thing or not. Most of them have gotten used to being playthings, but the latest addition wants to fight back and rallies the others.
As much as I liked parts of the episode it was really hard to watch. It seemed like the basic premise was that gamers (and Trek fans) are repressed, anti-social assholes who can't get laid. Which really is just playing into the worst stereotypes. I mean all they needed was for the guy to live in his mom's basement and they'd have the complete package of nerdy fan/gamer stereotypes.
At the same time, the crew outwitting an omnipotent alien was the plot of several Trek episodes so I guess in that way you can call it a parody. (2/5)
(Fun Fact: The episode stars Jesse Plemmons, who was in the last season of Breaking Bad as Todd and at the end an anonymous gamer is voiced by Aaron Paul, who starred in that show.)
Arkangel: A woman's daughter briefly goes missing and so she jumps at the chance to get an implant installed in her daughter that lets her monitor her daughter at all times and even see through her eyes and blur out things she doesn't want the girl to see. That's pretty awesome for a few years, but as the girl gets older, it starts to become problematic to have Mom watching all the time. So she puts the monitor away.
But when the kid is 15 she starts making some bad life choices: sneaking out with a guy, fucking the guy, getting knocked up, and doing a line of coke. The mom starts monitoring again and sees her daughter's sins and starts interfering with the kid's life.
This wasn't all that great. It felt like a Lifetime movie only more high-tech. I guess there was supposed to be something of the Greek tragedy in wanting to protect the daughter from disappearing and in the end driving her away. That's probably why they referenced Oedipus in the girl's English class: his father of course tried to avoid his fate and wound up being killed by his son, who then married and fucked his own mother. At least this didn't go that far. (2/5)
(Fun Fact: This episode was directed by Jodie Foster, who made waves by saying that superhero movies are ruining cinema. If this is the alternative...no thanks.)
Crocodile: It's kind of like I Know What You Did Last Summer, only without the Gorton's Fisherman guy, but about the same body count.
Years ago a woman and her grungy boyfriend hit a hiker and throw the body into the ocean. In the present, the woman has a new husband, child, and
Outside the window a man is hit by a self-driving pizza delivery vehicle. An insurance investigator uses a special device to read people's memories to get a better picture of the accident, which is important since the cameras in the area were conveniently defaced and the one on the vehicle was out. (So how was it driving? By radar?) She unfortunately does her job too well and tracks down the murderess, who tries to bluff her way through the memory probe, but of course ends up blowing it and then has to kill the investigator. It loses some points for using that horror movie cliche of the investigator's car not starting at a crucial moment. And then the murderess kills investigator's family, including a baby.
But in a darkly comic twist, she forgot one witness: the guinea pig the investigator's husband bought only days before! I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling guinea pig!
Most of it was pretty boring and predictable, but that twist at the end was pretty good. (2.5/5)
(Fun Fact: A song featured in the episode "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" has been used in several previous Black Mirror episodes. I think by now it's kind of a running joke.)
Hang the DJ: This was sort of a retread of the prior season's "San Jupinero," in that it's a love story taking place in a virtual world. Though like The Matrix they don't know it's a virtual world--for a while. The idea is there's this dating service called "the system" (because I guess we couldn't be bothered with coming up with a fake name like "Infinity") that is supposed to be 99.8% effective in hooking people up.
The hitch is that it doesn't find your ideal match right away. You have to go through numerous dates first so it can figure out who your ideal mate is. It reminded me of this book I read, Date Night on Union Station, where the main character is steered by an AI dating service into a few bad dates before it hooks her up with the right one.
In this case Frank and Amy meet and are told they only have 12 hours the first time. They don't have sex but have a good time. Then they each get stuck in longer-term relationships that end up sucking. Eventually they're brought back together but when Frank looks at the timer and Amy doesn't, he's punished by having it wind down from 5 years to only 20 hours. And then he has to pine for months while she goes on one short relationship after another.
In the end what they find out is the whole thing is a test. Those who rebel against the system are the true perfect matches. And then it turns out that the whole thing was really just a computer simulation that then tells the real Frank and Amy to hook up.
It was decent, but not as good as "San Jupinero." I mean that episode I was so worried they might not end up together that I was on the edge of my seat just begging my TV for a happy ending. This time...not so much. I guess sometime's it's better to be first. (3/5)
Metalhead: I was hoping for a biopic on the annoying late 80s GI JOE villain, but this is a lot more like Terminator Salvation. A bunch of evil robots ("dogs") have taken over with humans scurrying around, trying to avoid them. A woman and two men go to a warehouse for...reasons and run afoul of a dog. It kills the two men while the woman is chased by the dog and even treed for a short time before the dog runs out of battery power.
This is the shortest episode of the season at just 40 minutes. Maybe because there's really not much to it. Robot chases woman, woman kills robot, robot tags her with trackers as it dies, woman kills herself. The End. We never really learn anything about whether the "dogs" are rogue AI like Skynet or aliens or what. But at the end we find out they went to the warehouse for...teddy bears. Um, yeah, that sounds like it was worth 3 lives. I think they could have just stuffed a bag full of straw or something and given it to the kid they wanted to comfort. (2.5/5)
(Fun Fact: This whole episode was done in a kind of sepia tone for...reasons.)
Black Museum: In Nevada a British girl stops at a place called the "Black Museum" that's not a museum on African-American culture. It's a museum full of weird stuff run by this guy who specialized in bizarre neurotechnology. So he shows the girl some exhibits and tells her about some things.
One is a headset that transmits impulses from one person's brain to another's body. So a doctor uses it to feel the pain of patients to get a better idea of their disease. But after someone dies on him, he turns into a weird sado-masochist who gets off on the pain. Until he goes too far and puts himself in a coma.
Then there's a stuffed monkey that inside which is the mind of a comatose woman. The woman met a guy some years back but after they had a kid together, she got hit by a car and went comatose. But eventually the owner of the museum comes up with a way to put her mind in her lover's body. They'd essentially be sharing a brain. But she can only observe, she can't control anything; she's just a passenger. Which is awesome...for a while. But eventually they get sick of each other. And so they put her into a monkey that can only say two things: "Monkey Loves You" and "Monkey Needs a Hug." But at least she can see their kid...for a while. Until like Puff the Magic Dragon he outgrows the toy and she ends up in the museum.
Finally there's a hologram of a murderer who was electrocuted a while ago. At the time of his execution he agreed to have his mind recorded. And then the guy is placed in the museum where people can have fun electrocuting a murderer. At least until his family raises a stink and people stop going--except weirdos.
And then comes the big reveal: the girl isn't British at all. She's the murderer's daughter! She puts the museum owner in the hologram's brain and then kills them both and burns down the museum--though she takes the monkey with her. Sweet. That was an unexpected twist, but mostly I think this one just got too dark and weird. I mean sure it's Black Mirror, but when it starts getting into all this S&M stuff, it's kinda gross. (2.5/5)
(Fun Fact: One of the props in the museum is the device the guy uses in "USS Callister" to make his virtual
This was an OK season but not as good as Season 3 in my opinion. Not that my opinion matters. I'm sure it's already been renewed for Season 5. But at least this season they didn't have any of those fucking eye implants. If you read my previous review you'd know what that means.
1 comment:
I haven't started season two yet, but I'll be prepared for the fourth one to be iffy. Seems that's about the time a lot of series to go off the rails.
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