Vox - Black Mirror season 3: news and episode reviewshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2016-10-30T22:56:27-04:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/131162732016-10-30T22:56:27-04:002016-10-30T22:56:27-04:00Black Mirror’s "Hated in the Nation" has one true villain — creator Charlie Brooker. (Also, bees.)
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<img alt="Black Mirror" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HwDlxAMl-0hIhWVDamhJZm7u-X4=/0x0:5760x4320/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51455975/BlackMirror_EP5_hated_in_the_nation_00826r1.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Kelly Macdonald and Faye Marsay are the Mulder and Scully of “Hated in the Nation.” | Netflix</figcaption>
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<p>This supersize episode works much better than it should.</p> <p id="NZzbkV"><em>This article is a recap of Netflix’s </em>Black Mirror<em> episode “Hated in the Nation.” There are spoilers and discussion regarding the episode’s plot.</em></p>
<p id="7O6ONG">Why does <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709236/reference">“</a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709236/reference">Hated in the Nation</a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709236/reference">”</a> work? </p>
<p id="XZmxba">I’m not sure I can answer that question. The episode is overlong, at 90 minutes, especially when you can more or less predict much of what’s about to happen in the very first scene, as you watch a woman’s Twitter feed fill with hateful invective directed at her. (She dies just a few minutes later.)</p>
<p id="468SXg">And yet I enjoyed “Hated in the Nation” more than any season three <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/reference"><em>Black Mirror</em></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/reference"> </a>episode not named “San Junipero.” </p>
<p id="nlA5pS">Some of that is surely thanks to its crackerjack cast, which includes <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0531808/">Kelly Macdonald</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3849670/">Faye Marsay</a>, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0938950/">Benedict Wong</a>. Some of it is probably the nasty closing twist (which we’ll deal with in a moment). And some of it is the nicely inconclusive way the episode ends, with the investigation still technically in progress.</p>
<p id="qFjf3c">But if I had to guess what drew me into “Hated in the Nation,” it was probably the bees.</p>
<h3 id="kNjK0g">Watch out for robotic bees</h3>
<p id="PZn3Nx"><em>Black Mirror </em>creator <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/17/13279528/black-mirror-season-3-netflix-preview-interview/in/13116273">Charlie Brooker apparently hoped</a> “Hated” would be his take on Nordic noir, the Scandinavian drama trend that has given us, among other series, <em>The Killing</em> and <em>The Bridge</em><em>.</em> But essentially every critic I’ve talked to about the episode has compared it to <em>The X-Files</em><em>, </em>due<strong> </strong>primarily to the episode’s very <em>Black Mirror</em> take on the Mulder/Scully, believer/skeptic dynamic. </p>
<p id="3y3wLe">Here, Macdonald plays Karin Parke, a grizzled veteran (how wonderful to have Kelly Macdonald playing a <em>grizzled veteran</em>), while Marsay is Chloe Perrine, a tech-savvy younger officer who is more comfortable with computers than Parke is. Flipping that believer/skeptic dynamic to tech-savvy/virtual Luddite is a very <em>Black Mirror</em> way of reinventing a tired trope.</p>
<p id="SA9bIs">But there’s also the way the episode is scary — and scary in a bunch of different ways, no less. There’s the mounting dread of Parke and Perrine trying to defend a victim from a swarm of robotic bees. There’s the strange sadness of the closing sequence, with all of those doomed victims slowly realizing their own fate. And there’s just the simple grossness of someone’s brain being short-circuited by a bee drone.</p>
<p id="YeesuK">But let’s face it: The <em>X-Files</em> comparisons stem largely from the fact that the episode is focused on bees. I mean, yes, they’re technically robotic drones built to look like bees and fulfill their pollination functions, in a near future where colony collapse has led to far fewer bees around the globe. But as with the alien virus–carrying insects of <em>The X-Files</em>, “Hated” gets a great deal of mileage out of the sheer alien horror of a giant swarm of insects.</p>
<p id="9JmjeH">But the use of bees also strengthens the point of<strong> </strong>Brooker’s script without constantly underlining it. (The constant underlining is a <em>Black Mirror</em> problem consistent across all seasons.) The idea of a social media swarm using a hashtag to single out various people for death, only to have the bees actually carry out that death, is a great example of how much power the show can gain from simply making some of its more outlandish ideas literal. </p>
<p id="nFalPU"><em>Black Mirror</em> is about seeing how far technology stretches human emotions. “Hated in the Nation” doesn’t have to push nearly as far as you might expect to go from “social media outrage cycle” to “literal swarms of insects killing people.” </p>
<h3 id="5lJm02">
<em>Black Mirror </em>is about worlds that have ended already — they just don’t know it yet</h3>
<p id="SZQoRx">Truth be told, I was a sucker for “Hated” from the second that first little drone bee crawled around on a flower. The deeper I got into season three of <em>Black Mirror</em>, the more I started to realize that the show is, on some level, about a series of worlds where the apocalypse has come and nobody’s realized it yet.</p>
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<img alt="A robot drone bee pollinates a flower." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VJwzrg3AYgw2ZRJf-zgxYYOxLuw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7322543/blackmirror-bee.png">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>The moment “Hated in the Nation” won me over.</figcaption>
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<p id="9jedX9">So it is with the drone bees. Without bees to pollinate plants, the plants would die, taking life on Earth with them. Thus, humanity comes up with a solution to this problem — as you’d expect — via its technological knowhow. But as always happens on this show, that technological knowhow just turns out to be another way for humans to kill, hurt, destroy, or otherwise disappoint each other.</p>
<p id="UBDkfQ">Now, that underlying skepticism of tech and social media could feel predictable here, as it does in other episodes. But it works because it’s impossible to avoid the sick gut clench of that final twist: Even as Parke warns that the source code for the bee drone override system was too easy to find, everybody plunges ahead, before the “#DeathTo” hashtag can claim a major government official as its next victim. (It figures that things would <em>really</em> step up once the government started being threatened.) </p>
<p id="G0vzJm">The drones, see, have been keeping a record of every single person who used the hashtag — and sure enough, once the source code is overwritten, the switch flips, and the drones swarm all of those hashtag voters. The gun firing the “#DeathTo” bullet turns out to have been pointing both ways.</p>
<p id="CN71fd">We know something like this is coming. The whole episode has been framed as Parke’s testimony before some sort of Parliament subcommittee into what went wrong. (Curiously, the episode seems really centered on the UK. Was nobody in other countries using #DeathTo as well?) And any time an officer is giving testimony in a police drama like this, you know something horrible went down.</p>
<p id="9oOnQu">But that still didn’t quite prepare me for the agonizing slowness with which the final denouement played out. I complained in <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/20/13336942/black-mirror-season-3-review-netflix/in/13116273">my season review</a> about how season three’s episodes often slowed down their storytelling when they should be speeding up, but here it worked really well. </p>
<p id="FLcjFx">The audience realizes why the drones have been keeping all those social media profiles a split second before the officers do — and then all any of us can do is wait for the bloody inevitable, which Brooker and director James Hawes drag out as long as they possibly can.</p>
<h3 id="X6eVAF">A few notes on Charlie Brooker, villain extraordinaire</h3>
<p id="JkTyE0">If there’s a quibble with “Hated” (beyond it probably being 15 minutes too long), it’s that the villain’s plan, ultimately, is kind of stupid. </p>
<p id="l40Zzd">He’s hoping to teach a moral lesson about the fact that words mean something, even when you’re shouting them into the social media void. But because we spend so little time with him (he’s basically a nonentity throughout the episode), the full weight of what he’s done doesn’t register as much as it could.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_dNQ-Cms1h80xWnMe1qmaC11nxE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7322551/bm-deathto.jpg">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>The #DeathTo hashtag in action.</figcaption>
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<p id="We2cRj">And yet the more I think about the episode, the more I become convinced that Brooker almost intends this figure as a sort of self-insertion character. Like Brooker, he’s obsessed with getting his audience to consider the darker side of technology, and like Brooker, he’s full of outlandishly grand ideas. (The two even kind of look alike if you squint.) But where Brooker created a TV show, our villain sets up an elaborate system to murder people using drone bees.</p>
<p id="cWpbKQ">There’s still a sense here of the futility of trying to teach a lesson, of hoping that you might be able to get people to consider their words more carefully in any form of written communication. </p>
<p id="Iq3A8w">Maybe the “#DeathTo” hashtag prompted some sort of national soul searching, but I somehow doubt it. If there’s one thing <em>Black Mirror</em> has taught us, it’s that people are irrational and spiteful and, above everything else, kinda shitty to each other.</p>
<p id="wBE4up">And yet even in this scenario — the one with the murderous robot bees, I’ll say one last time — there’s some grim sense of hope on the horizon. Perrine might not have the criminal captured just yet, but he’s in her sights, and Parke knows her former partner is closing in. </p>
<p id="n8xctK">Instead of having her kill herself (as the episode head-fakes toward), Brooker lets Perrine live — perhaps to catch the villain who just might be him, perhaps to miss that villain until another day. The answers, like so much on this show, lie tantalizingly out of reach, just around that next bend in the road.</p>
<p id="Ytgg0l"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><strong>Black Mirror </strong></a><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><em><strong>season three</strong></em></a><em> is currently streaming on Netflix. Read the rest of our episode </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/black-mirror-season-3"><em><strong>reviews and recaps here</strong></em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<p class="prev" style="float:left;"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/21/13327162/black-mirror-episode-5-men-against-fire-recap-review">Previous episode: "Men Against Fire"</a></p>
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https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13341528/black-mirror-episode-6-hated-in-the-nation-recap-reviewEmily St. James2016-10-30T22:55:28-04:002016-10-30T22:55:28-04:00Black Mirror’s “Men Against Fire” is a warning from the past about our future
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<img alt="Malachi Kirby sits on a bed in the Black Mirror episode "Men Against Fire."" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7TFcS50PVWSnHdIGLkarpMGjcoI=/0x0:5760x4320/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51455207/BlackMirror_EP4_men_against_fire_1492r.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Malachi Kirby wakes up to a frightening site in the barracks. Who’s the real zombies now? | Laurie Sparham/Netflix</figcaption>
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<p>When empathy is a bug, not a feature, who do we blame?</p> <p id="GEr7pk"><em>This article is a recap of Netflix’s </em>Black Mirror<em> episode “</em><em>Men Against Fire</em><em>.” There are spoilers and discussion regarding the episode’s plot.</em></p>
<p id="lWMbIv">Late in “Men Against Fire,” a military psychiatrist (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0446672/">Michael Kelly</a>, who plays Doug Stamper in <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/3/9/11184618/house-of-cards-review-netflix-season-4-clintons"><em>House of Cards</em></a>) tells young soldier Stripe (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3142672/">Malachi Kirby</a>) that most soldiers don’t actually shoot to kill. Instead, they fire above the heads of their enemies. </p>
<p id="yXjO6e">Given the title of the episode, it’s clear he’s repeating the argument of a book called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Men-Against-Fire-Problem-Command/dp/0806132809"><em>Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command</em></a>, published in 1947 and written by World War I vet and World War II combat historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall">S.L.A. Marshall</a>. The book, based on interviews Marshall conducted with soldiers immediately after combat, claims that during WWII, only one in four US soldiers in combat actually fired at their enemy with the intention of killing them — despite their training. The Army, Marshall argued, should increase its effectiveness and invest its resources in training its infantry to shoot to kill.</p>
<p id="qpnQMr">Empathy is a mark of humanity, the psychiatrist tells Stripe, and “that’s a good thing — until your future depends on wiping out the enemy.”</p>
<p id="5uo9dB">Like most <em>Black Mirror</em> episodes, “Men Against Fire” is set in a near future where the promise and optimism of 20th- and 21st-century technologies have been gamed out to their frightening but queasily logical conclusions. According to the show, if the technocrats have their way, humans’ faulty wiring — bugs, if you will — will be systematically replaced with fixes that aren’t really fixes at all, but ways to strip us of our humanity. <em>Black Mirror </em>presumes that we will eventually — and voluntarily — “upgrade” ourselves out of being human.</p>
<p id="S02WYV"><em>Black Mirror</em> is the bleakest possible picture of a post-human world. But interestingly, “Men Against Fire” — while it lacks some of the tension and terror of other episodes — ends in a profoundly chilling place that has nothing to do with our future and everything to do with our past.</p>
<h3 id="PrD2P3">Who’s the real zombie?</h3>
<p id="BFZF37">In “Men Against Fire,” we’re at first led to believe that the bug of this episode is some kind of virus that turns people into zombie-like beings called roaches. Stripe and his fellow soldiers are sent to a shantytown in the midst of a forest, where the villagers’ food supply has been pilfered and contaminated by these roaches. The villagers plead with the soldiers to protect them, and the soldiers promise to help.</p>
<p id="o19i92">The soldiers board a truck headed for the home of the local oddball, known to be deeply religious and, probably, harboring roaches in his home. And so he is. As Stripe’s commanding officer sits downstairs with the man, by turns mocking his beliefs and trying to convince him that the only humane thing to do is wipe out the roaches, the soldiers canvass the house. Eventually, Stripe finds the roaches upstairs, huddled and in hiding. Their faces are flattened and insect-like and their teeth razor sharp; he shoots them and stabs one repeatedly even after he’s dead. </p>
<p id="aadDuE">But then Stripe picks up an object the roach had been waving at him, a small wand that emits a bright green light, and when he looks into it, he hears a high-pitched scream. </p>
<p id="zWU6jc">That high-pitched scream keeps returning, giving Stripe a headache. It becomes more pronounced as time goes on. The headache can pretty much be ignored, but it interferes with his PT and he’s sent to the sick bay for a checkup, where the psychiatrist declares that Stripe’s “implants pass every diagnostic.” </p>
<p id="iZNNY3">“Let’s get you a good sleep tonight,” the psychiatrist says, typing into his computer. “A real good sleep.”</p>
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<img alt="Michael Kelly talks to Malachi Kirby in the Black Mirror episode “Men Against Fire”" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZtQuWnXwr90WZ64zkZ81yC-mJ3Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7313019/BlackMirror_EP4_Men_Against_Fire_0591r.jpg">
<cite>Laurie Sparham/Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Michael Kelly as a military psychiatrist in “Men Against Fire.”</figcaption>
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<p id="5vYEQH">The “real good sleep” the psychiatrist promises Stripe is an amped-up version of his usual dream, which features a beautiful young woman we’ve assumed, to this point, is his girlfriend or wife. But it looks like the implants, not the soldiers’ brains, are generating the dreams. The night after the checkup, Stripe’s implant apparently isn’t fixed, and it gets glitchy, multiplying his visions of the woman (who is no longer somewhat chastely clad in lingerie but stark naked).</p>
<p id="hyERJD">When he wakes up in a cold sweat, he sits up in his bunk and looks across the room. All of the soldiers lie on their backs, like corpses in a row, tucked neatly into their blanket, completely still save for their fingers, which are moving rapidly in accordance with their dream.</p>
<p id="DRqdT3">“Ah!” I wrote down at this point. “<em>They’re</em> the real zombies.” </p>
<h3 id="U5zACs">“Men Against Fire” lacks some of the tension of <em>Black Mirror</em> episodes</h3>
<p id="T0ckCT">By now we’ve started to figure out what’s going on, which makes “Men Against Fire” feel like a middling <em>Black Mirror </em>episode when considered as pure narrative. It’s not all that riveting for most of it, because you feel like you’ve figured it out while there’s still a lot more of the hour-long runtime to go. The final twist happens too late to build narrative tension, and doesn’t have the shock factor of some other episodes because it’s so familiar. </p>
<p id="fVty4f">The best <em>Black Mirror</em> episodes (like its infamous first episode, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_(Black_Mirror)">“</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_(Black_Mirror)">The National Anthem</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_(Black_Mirror)">,”</a> which <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate">turned out to be startlingly true</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate"> to life</a>) are shocking not because of their bleakness but because they go places you can barely imagine. But “Men Against Fire,” having already leaned on familiar zombie tropes — the fear of outsiders, the question of who counts as human — gives you tools to guess what’s going to happen next. In zombie stories, only a few things can happen from here: Our hero is subsumed by the zombies, or he discovers the zombies aren’t what they seem to be, or he learns to empathize with them.</p>
<p id="Cp0ol5">In the end, in “Men Against Fire,” it’s some combination of all three. The <em>real</em> bug, it seems, was the soldiers’ sense of human empathy. And so the implant was created as a tool of control, a way to weaponize humans, and, most importantly, a way to keep them from hesitating when faced with the enemy. </p>
<p id="Zzilla">The roaches’ device that Stripe picked up, we eventually learn, was reverse-engineered by the roaches in order to deactivate the soldiers’ implants. We learn this first when Stripe begins to see roaches’ faces not as the feral, zombie-like visages, but as human faces. We learn it a second time when the psychiatrist explains it all to Stripe, reveals to him that he chose to have the implant, knowing its consequences, and paints it as an important way to “protect the bloodline,” since roaches carry diseases and commit crimes. (Why these people in particular have been deemed roaches isn’t exactly obvious; it seems they’re of Russian or Eastern European extraction, so perhaps a war has erupted and immigrants are being eliminated, but this isn’t the episode’s concern.)</p>
<h3 id="fgo9oK">“Men Against Fire” is less about our future and more about our past</h3>
<p id="uuTwjy">By now “Men Against Fire” is dragging up every heinous crime against humanity from the past century: the Holocaust, internment camps, mass incarceration, and attitudes toward the poor that depend on the idea that poor people are just naturally worse than everyone else and that the future of the human race depended on wiping out the blight. </p>
<p id="hB1zDR">Many of these things, historians warn us, happen because ordinary people turn a blind eye, choosing to see others as less or other than human. (The religious man hiding roaches in his home is almost certainly modeled on the people who hid Jews in their homes from the Nazis.) In other words, atrocities happen because people convince themselves to turn off their empathy.</p>
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<img alt="Malachi Kirby in the Black Mirror episode “Men Against Fire”" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FH-vaPDmHgu0bIxqw5hxcdOJoGw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7313045/BlackMirror_EP4_men_against_fire_0252r1.jpg">
<cite>Jay Maidment/Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Roaches are discovered by Malachi Kirby in “Men Against Fire.”</figcaption>
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<p id="GcBEjW">That’s what’s most startling about this episode, which draws on these shameful histories. It’s not so surprising to imagine a military systematically and technologically removing soldiers’ empathy so they can fight better, by making their targets seem like animals that need to be eradicated rather than people. What is shocking, disturbing, and all too plausible, given recent history, is that ordinary people — civilians who <em>don’t</em> receive implants — don’t see roach faces: They just see human faces on their enemies. But they’re still content to have them brutally murdered by soldiers. </p>
<p id="HUP8oc">Evil, the episode suggests, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem">is </a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem"><em>not</em></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem"> banal</a>. It’s purposeful. What the soldiers are doing is reprehensible, but controlled; on the other hand, civilians have evolved <em>themselves</em> away from empathy without technology at all, in order to “protect the bloodline.” The implant in the episode is almost a red herring, because by calling up the bloody last century both in its title and in its rhetoric, “Men Against Fire” doesn’t warn against the future so much as recall the past.</p>
<p id="j5Vqbw">So here’s the episode’s real <em>Black Mirror</em> twist: We don’t need technology in order to brutalize the other. We’re plenty capable of it all on our own. </p>
<p id="b2im1R"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review">Black Mirror</a><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><em> season 3</em></a><em> is currently streaming on Netflix. Read the rest of our </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/black-mirror-season-3"><em>episode reviews here</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<p class="prev" style="float:left;"><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13354026/black-mirror-season-3-episode-4-san-junipero-recap">Previous episode: "San Junipero"</a></p>
<p class="next" style="float:right;"><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13341528/black-mirror-season-3-episode-6-hated-in-the-nation-recap">Next episode: "Hated in the Nation"</a></p>
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https://www.vox.com/2016/10/21/13327162/black-mirror-episode-5-men-against-fire-recap-reviewAlissa Wilkinson2016-10-30T22:54:00-04:002016-10-30T22:54:00-04:00"San Junipero" is Black Mirror's most beautiful, most hopeful episode yet
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<img alt="Black Mirror" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fOs4Flo1f9-35-RX-gyFFEFCfDE=/1x0:5500x4124/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51456379/BlackMirror_EP1_san_junipero_1642r1.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Mackenzie Davis in “San Junipero.” | Netflix</figcaption>
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<p>Heaven is a place on Earth. How wonderful, and how cruel.</p> <p id="fiyrAm"><em>This article is a recap of Netflix’s </em>Black Mirror<em> episode “</em><em>San Junipero.</em><em>” There are spoilers and discussion regarding the episode’s plot.</em></p>
<p id="u8fSqu">When <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4538072/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">“San Junipero”</a> ends, we sit in a daze for a moment.</p>
<p id="BCuD6E">“If I die, you can spend eternity in virtual heaven with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4496875/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Mackenzie Davis</a>,” I say to my wife, because finding the weak point in the wall around an awkward moment and puncturing it with a joke is a thing I do.</p>
<p id="EqZOou">“I know,” she says, but she doesn’t mean it. We’ve been together a very long time, and imagining a world outside of what we have is hard to do.</p>
<p id="58Mn0G">I have always believed, on some level, that I will live forever. It’s a holdover from spending most of my childhood believing in a more traditional heaven, with mansions of gold and angels floating about. I not only expect immortality — I welcome it. I eagerly follow along with others’ ideas about how humans might cheat death, via medicine or technology, and nod to myself as if I might be the first man to live to 1,000,<a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/10/5/13176068/longevity-study-ceiling-old-age-limit"> despite what the science says</a>. When I die, I’ll feel a little like a failure.</p>
<p id="jKbhL2">My wife and I have argued about this before. The thought of living forever scares her a little bit, because when you struggle with depression,<a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10111656/depression-marriage"> like she does</a>,<strong> </strong>you already know what forever feels like — all those long days locked inside yourself, forgetting where you put the key. If you were truly endless, really and truly eternal, you’d go mad. You’d almost have to.</p>
<p id="2wn9Q5">But <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/?ref_=tt_ov_inf"><em>Black Mirror</em></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/?ref_=tt_ov_inf">’s</a> “San Junipero” opens up these fault lines between us again, like the crinkles in wax paper when you scrunch it up.<strong> </strong>The episode is about two women, one named Kelly (played by the great British actress <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1813221/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Gugu Mbatha-Raw</a>); Kelly outlives her husband, and even though she keeps receiving dire cancer prognoses, she outlives those too. She’s dying, but in the way we all are, where the other end of her life lies somewhere at the end of an indeterminate hyphen.</p>
<p id="CH6QDQ">If Kelly is floating, then Yorkie (Davis), the woman she meets in the town of San Junipero, is fixed. San Junipero is a computer-created afterlife that elderly people can upload their consciousness to — for five hours a week while they’re still alive, and permanently after death. Yorkie knows not just the date of her birth but the date of her death, which will come after she finally marries her fiancé and he signs the papers to allow her to “pass over,” to cease living and become a permanent resident of San Junipero.</p>
<p id="xieOtm">Yorkie, as it turns out, is a quadriplegic. She’s been lying in the same bed, in the same vegetative state, for more than four decades, since she was in a massive car accident at age 21. She came out as a lesbian to her parents, and their angry response prompted her to flee from home, straight into the accident. Her marriage will be a legal formality, as the only thing standing between Yorkie and her desire to die (and permanently pass over to San Junipero) is a living relative to sign the paperwork. Her new husband, a nurse at the facility Yorkie lives in, will handle said paperwork just moments after their marriage is complete.</p>
<p id="CMC9BY">Kelly has no real desire to stay in San Junipero full time. When her husband died, after the couple was married for 49 years, he refused to upload his consciousness to the town. Instead, he believed that death was a vital part of life, and hoped that he might be reunited with the couple’s only daughter — whose death preceded that of her parents and the invention of San Junipero — in traditional heaven. Kelly doesn’t believe in traditional heaven, but she feels she must keep the promise she made to her husband to die as he did, and hope something else is waiting.</p>
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<img alt="Black Mirror" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1kkTZLjz3aP1cfHDN7BdFvVIRQQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7290241/BlackMirror_EP1_san_junipero_0282r.jpg">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Kelly and Mackenzie Davis as Yorkie in “San Junipero.”</figcaption>
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<p id="ZlyvvG">Thus, when Kelly and Yorkie meet in San Junipero and fall in love, it’s inconvenient for both of them. Kelly gives Yorkie something to live for; Yorkie gives Kelly something to die for. The easier promise to violate is the one to Yorkie’s fiancé, who is only too happy to stand aside so Yorkie and Kelly can wed, letting Kelly be the one to end Yorkie’s life.</p>
<p id="HxYZfZ">But it’s harder to break a promise to a ghost, even if you don’t believe he’s a ghost. Kelly knows she can choose to delete herself from San Junipero at any time (though one imagines that in the world of <em>Black Mirror</em>, she’s backed up on a hard drive somewhere). However, spending even a few days in San Junipero after her death, “honeymooning” with her new wife, feels like a betrayal to her. Her husband isn’t alive, and she doesn’t believe he exists in any sort of afterlife where he can judge her for what she’s done. But a promise is a promise, and 49 years is a long, long time.</p>
<p id="LOFNm1">The structure of “San Junipero” is both smart and satisfying, from the way every little clue (even the over-obviousness of the ’80s and ’90s references sprinkled throughout the hour) adds up to the sly wink that is the use of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”</p>
<p id="uhCU1J">But what sets the episode apart from the rest of <em>Black Mirror</em>’s third season is the way it beautifully balances character revelations with plot and setting revelations. Every time you learn something new<strong> </strong>about how San Junipero functions, or discover some new story twist, series creator and episode writer Charlie Brooker is right there with an equally big reveal about Kelly or Yorkie’s backstory.</p>
<p id="Z3Vhik">Though the episode, like the others in this season, is long — just over an hour — it never <em>feels</em> long. It’s a love story, after all, one of the very oldest sorts of stories, and it mostly leaves viewers wondering if these two crazy kids will work through their differences and get together. But it’s also complicated, a tale of second chances that behaves like a story of first love.</p>
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<img alt="Mackenzie Davis and Gugu Mbatha-Raw" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WDjkqzt4RVrk1xWCv-o8YG05Sd0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7322749/BlackMirror_EP1_san_junipero_1660r1.jpg">
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<figcaption>Heaven is a place on Earth.</figcaption>
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<p id="pk93ds"><em>Black Mirror</em> is always at its best when it examines how technology stretches what’s human about us to its breaking point. And though the series deserves much of the credit it receives for its dark satire of tech, it’s simultaneously one of the smartest shows on TV when it comes to love. What becomes of that bond when you stretch it so thin that it threatens to snap? Could love exist in an eternal present, trapped in the amber of youth?</p>
<p id="owsfMw">Previous episodes of <em>Black Mirror</em> — particularly season two’s masterful “Be Right Back” (still my favorite installment of the show) — have argued that technology can undergird love and replicate it, but never entirely supplant it.</p>
<p id="cO4gOf">“San Junipero” is the same way. Its titular town promises eternal happiness but really offers endless lethargy. Hints of that creep in around the edges of the episode, as illustrated by the patrons of a bar called the Quagmire, whom Kelly suggests plunge themselves into deeper and darker pursuits in the name of feeling <em>anything</em>.</p>
<p id="oAtEER">You don’t need to go deep and dark to know where this will go. You just have to be alive and know a little of what love can be like. Yorkie and Kelly will get bored of each other. They’ll fight. They’ll stop finding the sight of each other exciting. They’ll get old, even though they look young.</p>
<p id="JfFWqz">But Brooker doesn’t leave us there. The last time we see the couple in human form, they’re dancing together; then the episode cuts to the blinking lights of their separate but conjoined computer program selves, blipping away in an endless warehouse somewhere. We know what’s coming, but, as with all relationships, we choose to live with the hope that this time, it won’t.</p>
<p id="hDHwkr">I do hope that if I die before my wife, she’ll find someone new. I hope she’ll find some other happiness, because at some point, after all the fighting and the boredom and the creeping spread of age, you realize that love was never about any of that. It was always about wanting the best for the other person — even if it didn’t involve you. Within the gauze of contentment, that can be hard to admit, but deep down, you each hope the other will find the endless expanse of a new, uncharted future.</p>
<p id="QgBuH2"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review">Black Mirror </a><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><em>season 3</em></a><em> is currently streaming on Netflix. Read the rest of our </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/black-mirror-season-3"><em>episode reviews here</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<p class="prev" style="float:left;"><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13353676/black-mirror-episode-3-shut-up-and-dance-recap-review">Previous episode: "Shut Up and Dance"</a></p>
<p class="next" style="float:right;"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/21/13327162/black-mirror-season-3-episode-5-men-against-fire-recap">Next episode: "Men Against Fire"</a></p>
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https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13354026/black-mirror-episode-4-san-junipero-recap-reviewEmily St. James2016-10-30T22:52:40-04:002016-10-30T22:52:40-04:00Black Mirror’s “Shut Up and Dance” reveals that the true source of hackers’ power is shame
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<img alt="Black Mirror" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KDKRskQsNXvAVUq_shPuzGwb5hE=/0x0:5760x4320/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51455053/BlackMirror_EP2_shut_up_and_dance_0884r.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Kenny (Alex Lawther) has a terrible no good very bad day | Netflix</figcaption>
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<p>A weaker episode, but it still gets fantastic performances out of its game leads.</p> <p id="yZBdvH"><em>This article is a recap of Netflix’s </em>Black Mirror<em> episode “Shut Up and Dance.” There are spoilers and discussion regarding the episode’s plot.</em></p>
<p id="WZEgvU"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709230/?ref_=ttep_ep3">“</a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709230/?ref_=ttep_ep3">Shut Up and Dance</a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709230/?ref_=ttep_ep3">”</a> isn’t too concerned with trying to surprise us. </p>
<p id="Tbxiu5">The premise is about as straightforward as <em>Black Mirror</em> gets, taking place squarely in the world as we know it, instead of taking a trip into a dystopian or otherwise alternate reality. Kenny (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3867299/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t1">Alex Lawther</a>) gets filmed through his webcam, and then gets a series of threatening text messages telling him to do exactly as “they” say or the footage will leak to everyone he knows. </p>
<p id="UcNucf">Along the way, he meets other unlucky victims of these mysterious villains — never unmasked — who hack photos, webcams, text archives, whatever it takes to find something incriminating enough to force their targets to act out dangerous and/or debasing acts because...</p>
<p id="o7Ad60">...well, that’s never explained, either. Because they can, I guess? Because morality is important, or something? It’s probably some combination of the two, but it’s never once clear.</p>
<p id="AbmZPu">So, no, “Shut Up and Dance” — co-written by <em>Black Mirror</em> creator Charlie Brooker and William Bridges — isn’t exactly an airtight episode of television. As directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1220140?ref_=tt_ov_dr">James Watkins</a>, Kenny’s nightmare saga only becomes more viscerally horrifying as it unfolds. It’s a predictable trajectory, and if it weren’t for a set of rock-solid performances, there wouldn’t be much else to make this chapter stand out.</p>
<p id="dMOLdQ">But hey, as long as we’re here, let’s see what we can pull out of this episode, for better and for worse.</p>
<h3 id="aXSgCi">For better: The central pair of actors nails it</h3>
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<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>You can barely see him in this publicity still, but we promise that’s Jerome Flynn!</figcaption>
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<p id="lZT76V">As Kenny, Lawther is quivering, desperate, heartbreaking — which is important, given that his character is being blackmailed for masturbating to pictures of children. Being able to sympathize with his terror as unseen puppeteers manipulate him is crucial, and the fact that I could was almost entirely thanks to Lawther’s incredible, vulnerable performance. </p>
<p id="gWTpJN">Still, it’s a relief when Kenny teams up with another blackmail victim, giving Lawther an unexpected scene partner in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0283492/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">Jerome Flynn</a> (whom you might know as Tyrion’s right-hand man Bronn on <em>Game of Thrones</em>). </p>
<p id="Uqy7ae">As Lawther’s Kenny shivers like the skeleton of a crumbling fall leaf, Flynn’s Hector is all coiled anger. Caught in the act of ordering a prostitute, Hector is gruff and to the point, furious at his total helplessness in the face of his invisible tormenters. </p>
<p id="ngeat3">When Kenny and Hector are thrown together, “Shut Up and Dance” gets a brief jolt of energy, a new kind of friction that catapults the episode forward. Neither of them can understand what’s happening to them, but for a minute, they settle into something almost like relief. At least for now, there’s someone else on the planet who knows what they’re going through; they don’t have to do it alone.</p>
<p id="D10wvh">Once that wears off, though, it’s back to the same old routine. </p>
<h3 id="scnoNQ">For worse: You can pretty much guess exactly where this episode’s going</h3>
<p id="d3dJOx">The whole time I was watching “Shut Up and Dance” — through my fingers, because I’m a notorious wimp for these kinds of things — I kept waiting for it to take an unexpected turn. I kept waiting for something ... well, <em>interesting</em> to happen. </p>
<p id="GF5FFp">And though Lawther, Flynn, and Watkins do their best to keep the tension taut throughout, “Shut Up and Dance” deflates as it goes on instead. As my colleague Todd VanDerWerff said in his <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/20/13336942/black-mirror-season-3-review-netflix">review of </a><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/20/13336942/black-mirror-season-3-review-netflix"><em>Black Mirror</em></a><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/20/13336942/black-mirror-season-3-review-netflix">’s entire third season</a>, this new batch of episodes suffers from Netflix bloat, and you can feel every stretched minute of this episode in particular. </p>
<p id="UkbOWS">First, Kenny’s instructed to pick up a cake. Then he has to deliver the cake to Hector, who then drives him to a bank, which they’re instructed to rob. Then they drive to a deserted field, where they split up, and Kenny has to fistfight another victim — another pedophile — to the death. </p>
<p id="fxPymG">It’s just a series of escalating dares, each one a little more dangerous than the last. (See also: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3531824/"><em>Nerve</em></a>, a movie that came out this summer with an eerily similar premise.) There’s not a whole lot of suspense in that, as much as the episode seems to believe otherwise. </p>
<p id="azce8W">Even the final “twist” of the hackers releasing all the information they’ve got anyway — even after Kenny does, in fact, come out of that fight alive, bruised and bleeding — doesn’t hit that hard. The road to get there is predictable enough that the hackers sending the final message of a little troll grin feels more like an easy way out than a moment of any real significance.</p>
<h3 id="yEGfEG">For your consideration: This episode is more interesting as a window into shame than hacking</h3>
<p id="nor48y">This isn’t exactly a new insight, given that Brooker has talked — <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/17/13279528/black-mirror-season-3-netflix-preview-interview">even on this very site!</a> — about the fact that he doesn’t consider technology to be the villain on <em>Black Mirror</em>, but rather<strong> </strong>human frailty. Or, more succinctly: “We can always fuck up in amazing ways.”</p>
<p id="kETcGS">And so “Shut Up and Dance” might ostensibly be about the dangers of hacking, or trying to live a double life in a world that makes secrets all too easy to access, but it wouldn’t go anywhere without shame. </p>
<p id="AyWXzT">If Kenny, Hector, and the various desperate people they meet along their way to the bottom didn’t feel deep shame about the things they had done, the hackers would have no leverage. The episode would go nowhere, be nothing. Though most of the acts “Shut Up and Dance” mentions are illegal — with the exception of a woman trying to keep her racist emails under lock and key — no one mentions being afraid of legal retribution. Instead, they’re terrified of what this information could do to their families, and what their friends would think.</p>
<p id="s0jUQD">And so the burning shame radiating throughout Kenny and Hector compel them onward to do terrible things. Whether or not those things are worse than what they’ve already done is up to us; neither the hackers nor the episode itself seems interested in thinking too hard about comparisons on that front. </p>
<p id="DpTmSy">But whenever “Shut Up and Dance” starts to lose the spark that keeps it moving, it’s shame that brings it back to earth, and makes you wonder: How far would <em>you</em> go to keep your shame safely hidden? How much is too much to bear?</p>
<p id="okrCu4">“Shut Up and Dance” isn’t sure. But in true <em>Black Mirror</em> fashion, part of the point is to absorb that horror and try to understand it within ourselves.</p>
<p id="p5VDTJ"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><strong>Black Mirror </strong></a><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><em><strong>season three</strong></em></a><em> is currently streaming on Netflix. Read the rest of our episode </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/black-mirror-season-3"><em><strong>reviews and recaps here</strong></em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<p class="prev" style="float:left;"><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13322892/black-mirror-season-3-playtest-recap">Previous episode: "Playtest"</a></p>
<p class="next" style="float:right;"><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13354026/black-mirror-season-3-episode-4-san-junipero-recap">Next episode: "San Junipero"</a></p>
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https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13353676/black-mirror-episode-3-shut-up-and-dance-recap-reviewCaroline Framke2016-10-30T22:51:24-04:002016-10-30T22:51:24-04:00“Playtest” is Black Mirror’s sinister look at how we treat life like a video game
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<p>“Playtest” has a protagonist you can't feel bad for.</p> <p id="Avb9vl"><em>This article is a recap of Netflix’s </em>Black Mirror<em> episode “Playtest.” There are spoilers and discussion regarding the episode’s plot.</em></p>
<p id="momPCJ">At the heart of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709242/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_4">“</a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709242/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_4">Playtest</a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709242/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_4">,”</a> the second episode of the third season of Netflix’s sci-fi horror series <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888"><em>Black Mirror</em></a>, is a grim tale — but in the sneakiest of ways. </p>
<p id="FH5xjS">Yes, it’s an episode of terror where the protagonist dies after 40 minutes. Yes, there’s a creepy, dick-faced spider that’s one of the most disgusting things that’s ever been on Netflix. And, yes, looming over the entire episode is the threat that the protagonist might dig an implant out of his neck and thrust the episode into gore. </p>
<p id="2fK6T3">But folded into all of this is the most optimistic view of humankind that <em>Black Mirror</em> has ever shown, featuring humans who actually seem like decent people — something that’s often in short supply on <em>Black Mirror.</em></p>
<p id="NaLa7B">Cooper (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0751518/">Wyatt Russell</a>) is a dopey flâneur who travels the world after the death of his father, who Cooper says suffered from Alzheimer’s. He goes to India and Thailand, and skips around the world in an effort, he says, to find himself. Along the way, he meets Sonja (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4789912/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">Hannah John-Kamen</a>), a one-night stand he encounters in England, who actually gets to know him and lets Cooper come back and stay with her after he loses his money and gets stranded. And Katie and Shou at the video game company Saito Gamer, whom Cooper hits up for a quick job — testing a video game that manifests your darkest fears — to earn cash for a ticket home, are more than accommodating. </p>
<p id="baRwzE">The people Cooper meets, as horror movies and other episodes of <em>Black Mirror</em> have taught us, <em>should</em> be bad people. Throughout the episode, there are flashes where you could swear they’re about to do something nefarious. But it never fully materializes, and they all trust Cooper to a certain degree — much more than he probably warrants and much more than he trusts them. </p>
<p id="C5DNOs">Unfortunately, like every <em>Black Mirror</em> episode (they can only be so happy, right?), once the episode starts unfurling its evil grin, it turns into a harrowing look at how we live today: how our experiences might just be extensions of our apps, games, and smartphones. How we’ve turned our lives into a giant game. And how our grandest desires, even our most sublime dreams, might just be artificial manifestations of our smartphone dependency. </p>
<h3 id="XAFWF8">“Playtest” imagines a world where “stranger danger” doesn’t exist</h3>
<p id="T7hwv4">Back when the world was young, the two biggest warnings my mother instilled in me were to a) not talk to strangers, and b) not get into a stranger’s car. Fast-forward some 25 years later, and here we are conjuring up strangers to drive us places with the touch of the button.</p>
<p id="AVgHnA">And it isn’t just Uber and Lyft. Strangers, and the way we use our smartphones to get in touch with them, are essential parts of our lives now. </p>
<p id="lfPUME">“Playtest” evokes this part of our lives through the manner in which protagonist Cooper travels the world. In the beginning of the episode, the camera follows him as he gathers what’s important to him: his passport and his heaving bag, yes, but really the only thing he needs is his smartphone. </p>
<p id="lLvra4">We learn that Cooper’s phone is the source of his income, as the Oddjobs app allows him to make money when his world travel funds are tight. It also finds him companionship, with apps that stand in for Tinder and Bumble setting him up with intriguing strangers. Cooper’s phone also allows him to live in a bubble, keeping people like his mother out and letting other people like Katie and Shou into his life. </p>
<p id="29e6G7">What’s most fascinating about “Playtest” isn’t how naturally it treats the apps Cooper uses, but rather a suggestion that turns out to be a red herring: that the strangers Cooper lets into his life might hurt him. The expectation, since <em>Black Mirror</em> is all about tech horror, is that Sonja or Katie and Shou are secretly evil — that the world is full of strangers who want to murder you. </p>
<p id="TRvxji">But that never comes to fruition. “Stranger danger” doesn’t exist in this world. </p>
<p id="RREfNU">If you look at their behavior, the people Cooper meets are actually all there to help him. The twist is that it’s Cooper himself who turns out to be responsible for his own demise. Had he just followed the rules, he’d still be alive.</p>
<p id="0WdkOX">For a show that serves as a warning about our dependence on tech, this is a sly little argument: that the greatest threat to yourself isn’t the strangers you meet through your phone, but rather your own dishonesty. </p>
<h3 id="8MrSIF">Life’s a game, and we’re all disposable</h3>
<p id="85aZpW">Some of the most riveting moments in “Playtest” center on the framing of Cooper’s life as a series of games, with the centerpiece of this techno-fable concerning how he volunteers himself to a giant video game company. </p>
<p id="G6BtM7">But the theme is also present in the way he travels from one country to another, using Oddjobs to find work. That work is judged on a scale, which is relative to its pay — a correlation not unlike the one between difficulty level and point value in video games. </p>
<p id="529KHO">The theme is also echoed in the way he meets Sonja, swiping left and right on a Tinder-like app, which itself turns dating into an exercise in game theory: Both people need to swipe right to get matched. Ergo, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/s4a04b9190/yes-men-always-swipe-right-the-game-theory-of-ti-rv5q">on swipeable dating apps</a>, you can improve your outcome by swiping right and then winnowing down your suitors after you’ve both matched. </p>
<p id="EZNjpU">This focus on game playing even extends to a smirky nod to video games late in the episode, when Cooper blows on his debit card in hopes of getting it to work properly — a classic move likely familiar to those who remember blowing on their malfunctioning Nintendo and Sega Genesis cartridges.</p>
<p id="6CXr7U">Cooper has turned his entire life into a game, which can make it hard to feel sorry for him. </p>
<p id="l58NIi">That’s sort of the point right? There are points in “Playtest” where you almost feel awful for him, like the brief flashes where he talks about his father’s death. But for the most part, the episode leans into his bro humor, his Americanness, to really stoke your dislike. That he doesn’t call his mother is the poetic final strike against his character. </p>
<p id="wIFw21">But ultimately — and this what makes this episode so harrowing — we lose compassion for Cooper because he seems more like a video game character than an actual human.</p>
<p id="ZRWle6">“Playtest” questions whether Cooper’s everyday life is sadder or scarier than his death. Through his phone, he can find love (Sonja), money (the video game company), and enrichment (traveling the world). But there’s a blush of menace to it all, too, an idea that our phones can create soulless simulacrums for these abstract objects, taking away from an actual experience. </p>
<p id="k1UtIP">If Cooper met Sonja in real life without the app, would his experience with her have changed? Is his trip to India about finding something in India or taking selfies with India in the background? Is he getting real-life experience, or is he just a performer in these experience exercises? </p>
<p id="1BmbxV">The only time he gets a real-life experience — one that he seems intent on finding — in this episode is when he puts his phone away.</p>
<p id="mQs3pu">“Playtest” forces you to question your experiences, what they are, how you acquired them, and how they came to be — then forces you to wonder if it’s all just something your smartphone created. </p>
<p id="f36VzH"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review">Black Mirror </a><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><em>season </em></a><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><em>three</em></a><em> is currently streaming on Netflix. Read the rest of our episode </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/black-mirror-season-3"><em>reviews and recaps here</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<p class="prev" style="float:left;"><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13360144/black-mirror-season-3-nosedive-recap-review">Previous episode: "Nosedive"</a></p>
<p class="next" style="float:right;"><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13353676/black-mirror-season-3-episode-3-shut-up-and-dance-recap-review/in/13116273">Next episode: "Shut Up and Dance"</a></p>
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https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13322892/black-mirror-season-3-playtest-recapAlex Abad-Santos2016-10-30T22:49:51-04:002016-10-30T22:49:51-04:00Black Mirror’s “Nosedive” is a social media nightmare dressed like a pastel daydream
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tZN0pd9L0H6pbdG8vat9A2E9lsg=/0x0:5760x4320/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51457465/BlackMirror_EP3_Nosedive_0186r1.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) imagines her perfect life | Netflix</figcaption>
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<p>The episode imagines a world where Instagram-friendly perfection reigns, with disastrous consequences.</p> <p id="yZBdvH"><em>This article is a recap of Netflix’s </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/">Black Mirror</a><em> episode “Nosedive.” There are spoilers and discussion regarding the episode’s plot.</em></p>
<p id="qoJ2vt">“Nosedive” would have you believe that it’s about what it might look like if Pinterest, Instagram, and Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle site <a href="http://goop.com/">Goop</a> took over the world. Phones firmly in hand, everyone rates the interactions they have with one another and the photos they post on their profiles — no matter how banal — on a scale from one to five stars. </p>
<p id="xJpkEv">Every rating affects a person’s overall standing. The higher your rating, the more perks you get; the lower your rating, the harder you have to work to keep yourself afloat.</p>
<p id="omAgxv">And holy shit does Lacie (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0397171/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Bryce Dallas Howard</a>) <em>work</em> for her stars. She practices her determined, manic grin in the mirror, then plasters it on before marching into her version of battle: being as pleasant to everyone as possible in exchange for precious points. </p>
<p id="9pmpf0">But Lacie’s plateaued around a 4.2, and with some hard work and skillful sucking up to “high-quality people,” she just <em>knows</em> she could tip herself into the 4.5 “premium user” range that comes with perks, discounts, and, maybe most importantly, prestige.</p>
<p id="oFPCwL">So when Lacie’s childhood friend Naomi (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1404408/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Alice Eve</a>) — a premium user with a sterling 4.8 rating — asks her to be the maid of honor at her wedding, Lacie sees it as an opportunity to give a speech in front of a entirely premium crowd — which, if it goes well, would boost her rating to that coveted 4.5. </p>
<p id="ABpou5">As directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0942504/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Joe Wright</a> — the man behind the sweeping romances <em>Pride and Prejudice </em>and <em>Atonement</em> — this world is drenched in pastels, its edges smoothed, a smile fixed on its face. </p>
<p id="n2HcGs">If you think too hard beyond the basic mechanics of the world “Nosedive” presents, it makes less and less sense, even if it is glancingly clever and even funny (a given, since the script was written by <em>Parks and Recreation</em>’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1321658/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Mike Schur</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0429069/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Rashida Jones</a>). But when it gets into the emotions this aggressively agreeable world suppresses, it can be fantastic.</p>
<h3 id="W8x1Iv">So okay, this world doesn’t make much sense (3 out of 5 stars)</h3>
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<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Naomi (Alice Eve) makes Lacie slash everyone feel terrible about themselves</figcaption>
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<p id="p34N6z"><em>Black Mirror</em><em> </em>is generally thought of as being an uncanny thermometer for how the modern world is evolving in regards to technology and pointing out just how absurd our lives can be. On that front, “Nosedive” is ... <em>fine</em>. </p>
<p id="ScOtAW">Schur and Jones’s commentary on the way we construct our lives online and how superficial it all can be is surface-level stuff. Lacie takes a picture of her latte art and posts it with a glowing review before sipping it and realizing that it’s actually terrible. Everyone at Naomi’s wedding is pristine, their noses wrinkling delicately when Lacie crashes through and destroys the delicate ambience Naomi curated.</p>
<p id="tO8fIg">Whereas “Shut Up and Dance” — a <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13353676/black-mirror-season-3-episode-3-shut-up-and-dance-recap-review/in/13116273">weaker chapter</a> than this one, though my colleague Todd VanDerWerff <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/20/13336942/black-mirror-season-3-review-netflix">disagrees</a> — at least scared me enough to make sure my webcam was covered, “Nosedive” barely made me think twice about the way I interact with people online. Within an hour I was back to constructing the perfect Instagram story, starring some gently falling autumn leaves (while I frantically mopped spilled coffee from my new dress offscreen). </p>
<p id="Um2ClV">What stuck with me far beyond the facts of this alternate reality was exactly how Lacie finds herself screaming in pure fury by the end of the episode, broken and tired and, despite everything, <em>relieved</em>.</p>
<h3 id="1HUhfQ">The unlikely star of “Nosedive” is anger</h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-RgLcoVsQubdcSf08vKJqwvl8tE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7323833/Screen%20Shot%202016-10-21%20at%207.56.48%20PM.png">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Lacie’s wedding toast doesn’t go ... great.</figcaption>
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<p id="enNqFC">A good third of this episode is entirely devoted to Lacie’s quest for a higher rating, which gets repetitive even as Howard gives it everything — <em>everything</em> — she’s got. When Lacie gets a win, her forced shrieks of joy to assure the other person that they made the right choice rating her 5 stars out of 5 made my jaw instinctively clench. Howard’s Lacie is so chipper it’s startling even to the people who live in this reality, which is upbeat practically by mandate. </p>
<p id="g3zCDO">Slowly, eventually, “Nosedive” starts to chip away at Lacie’s story. </p>
<p id="NipedZ">In her determination to nail her maid of honor speech and get the points she’s sure she deserves, Lacie starts to let everything else go by the wayside. She stops pretending to care about anyone who can’t help her rack up points, from the desperate 3.1 at work to her own lazy brother and, finally, the airport employee who informs her that all flights to Naomi’s city have been canceled. </p>
<p id="l00W3W">And <em>here</em>’s where things get interesting. </p>
<p id="NeIcfH">In her shock and frustration, Lacie’s practiced manners shatter to pieces. She erupts in bursts of anger she almost can’t control. “Fuck!” she screams, desperate. “Can’t you just <em>fucking help me?!</em>”</p>
<p id="inUiIA">Not only can the employee not help her, but she gets security involved. Lacie is immediately docked a full point and punished with “double damage” for 24 hours to keep her on her best behavior.</p>
<p id="378IkQ">Thankfully for the episode, Lacie does <em>not</em> comply. Furious and scared, she charges her way toward Naomi’s wedding any way she can. She settles for a shitty rental car she’d never get if she were still a 4.2; she hitchhikes when it breaks down. With every setback, that smile she practiced so diligently in the mirror falls apart, and both the episode and Howard become so much more compelling.</p>
<p id="8bCyWS">In the episode’s best scene, Lacie, out of options, ends up getting a ride from a truck driver with a dismal 1.4 rating. Played with perfect “who gives a shit?” disdain by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0427728/">Cherry Jones</a>, the trucker shares the story of how she, too, was obsessed with her rating, until her husband got terminal cancer and all the stars in the world couldn’t cure it. </p>
<p id="QVTZAp">“So I figured,” she tells Lacie with a grin, “fuck it.”</p>
<p id="Aq2S88">After telling Lacie how amazing it felt to let loose — “like taking off tight shoes” — she tells Lacie she should try it sometime. Though Lacie insists that she couldn’t, oh, she <em>mustn’t</em>, Howard’s eyes nonetheless light up with the hint of a spark. </p>
<p id="39CpUp">So by the episode’s final scene, it’s not exactly surprising that Lacie ends up engulfed in righteous flames — but it is spectacular.</p>
<p id="avz0VY"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><strong>Black Mirror </strong></a><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/20/13352232/black-mirror-netflix-series-review"><em><strong>season three</strong></em></a><em> is currently streaming on Netflix. Read the rest of our episode </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/black-mirror-season-3"><em><strong>reviews and recaps here</strong></em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<p style="float:right;" class="next"><a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13322892/black-mirror-season-3-playtest-recap">Next Episode: "Playtest".</a></p>
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https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/21/13360144/black-mirror-season-3-nosedive-recap-reviewCaroline Framke2016-10-21T17:04:00-04:002016-10-21T17:04:00-04:00Black Mirror’s creator discusses political polarization, artificial intelligence, and the new season
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<img alt="Black Mirror" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NsOfvXJ5vqRC0SKzmpA8wPjrjIg=/0x0:5760x4320/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51381535/BlackMirror_EP1_san_junipero_0282r.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mackenzie Davis star in “San Junipero,” one of six new episodes of Black Mirror debuting Friday. | Netflix</figcaption>
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<p>“Technology is never the villain. … It's always a human frailty or weakness.”</p> <p id="0ME1e2">There are only seven episodes so far, but declaring that something "reminds me of an episode of <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Black Mirror</a></em>"<em> </em>still<em> </em>tends to elicit knowing smiles and nods — a response that’s become even more common since Netflix began streaming the British series back in 2014.</p>
<p id="b82eOD"><em>Black Mirror</em> first aired in 2011, on the UK’s Channel 4, with a promise that every episode would feature a new story and new characters, in the style of <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052520/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Twilight Zone</a></em>. The idea linking all of those stories is technology — every screen we gaze upon is the black mirror of the show’s title, looking back and dimly reflecting who we really are.</p>
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<div data-analytics-category="article" data-analytics-action="link:related" class="chorus-snippet s-related">
<span class="s-related__title">Related</span> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/6/7343559/black-mirror-netflix" target="_blank">The first two seasons of Black Mirror, ranked</a>
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<p><span>The series bounces from futuristic sci-fi to intimate romance to social satire and back again. It’s been credited for predicting everything from the rise of Donald Trump (in </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2386296/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">"The Waldo Moment,"</a><span> in which a venom-spewing cartoon bear becomes a political contender) to, uh, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate">David Cameron’s supposed sexual escapades</a><span> with a pig (in its </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089051/?ref_=ttep_ep1">very first episode</a><span> — which is about a prime minister having sex with a pig). Above all, it succeeds because of its surprisingly soulful take on human nature, and the ways we both enhance and subvert it with our technology.</span></p>
<p id="2EJAVF">That’s thanks to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0111765/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Charlie Brooker</a>, who created the series and has written most of its episodes, including at least partial credit on<strong> </strong>all six installments of the show’s upcoming third season, which launches Friday, October 21 and will air exclusively on Netflix. Both Brooker and his producing partner <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3117428/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Annabel Jones</a> joined me for a wide-ranging conversation on political polarization, reviving anthology TV on a reasonable budget, and, yes, David Cameron (allegedly) having sex with a pig.</p>
<p id="NnfeW9"><em>The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.</em></p>
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<h3 id="VTc4mD">Todd VanDerWerff</h3>
<p id="CiS5By"><em><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888">Black Mirror</a></em> has gotten a lot of credit for all the real-world events and headlines it’s foreseen. What real-world events that’ve occurred since the show debuted in 2011 stand out as something you never could have predicted?</p>
<h3 id="rrC0SM">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="yy8hjj">That David Cameron was actually accused of doing something with a pig totally blew my brain. The fact that, of all the [episodes], that was the one that has come the closest to hitting the incoming meteorite of reality — I genuinely thought I lived in a simulation when that story broke. It was just bizarre.</p>
<h3 id="hEOskv">Todd VanDerWerff</h3>
<p id="cDIGxm">What do you think is unchanging about our relationship to our technology, no matter how good that technology gets?</p>
<h3 id="5GS8Zu">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<div id="GjgTfs" class="c-float-right"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="LFF Connects Television: 'Black Mirror' - 60th BFI London Film Festival" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/71lUeXP18iZ61TDJnK2id63YrRE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7290247/612950546.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for BFI</cite>
<figcaption>Annabel Jones and Charlie Brooker attend a Black Mirror screening.</figcaption>
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<p id="vTMZ5g">If there is a common thread throughout the stories, it's generally about our authenticity and what constitutes an authentic experience, and what reality means in a world where you are constantly slipping into a little coma as you stare at one little screen after another.</p>
<p id="tWP1cX">The unforeseen consequences of powerful tools is another thing that crops up. I am a huge technology lover and an early adopter of all kind of gizmos and gadgets. I used to be a video games journalist in the '90s. We're not <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statler_and_Waldorf">Statler and Waldorf</a>, raising a fist at the App Store. Things like social media, smartphones, all the technology that's come in and sort of upended everything in the last decade, they are very powerful tools</p>
<p id="4zHIjM">But they have unforeseen consequences. It's kind of like we've grown an extra limb. Before you know it, [that extra limb is] knocking over that knife and injuring people. It's kind of like we've been gifted magical powers and we're learning how to use them. That’s an interesting space for stories to occur.</p>
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<div data-analytics-category="article" data-analytics-action="link:related" class="chorus-snippet s-related">
<span class="s-related__title">Related</span> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/27/12304904/black-mirror-season-3-premiere-netflix" target="_blank">Everything you need to know about Black Mirror season 3</a>
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<h3><span>Todd VanDerWerff</span></h3>
<p id="nVvl1q">I’ve read a lot of writing by futurists who say that the next step of evolution may be self-guided, that by enhancing ourselves with machines, we may make ourselves another species, effectively. But I sometimes wonder if that didn’t happen 20 years ago, when the internet first started expanding. How much has the web changed us, and how much has it just brought out our essential humanity?</p>
<h3 id="Bd4Qwq">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="vOAyZ8">My gut feeling would be that we are what we are, and we always have been. I'm sure that when homosapiens first developed speech, it was amazing for an afternoon, and then a fight occurred when somebody insulted somebody else's mother. Human nature has probably always roughly been the same.</p>
<h3 id="xn855p">Annabel Jones</h3>
<p id="V45AU2">It <em>will</em> alter human behavior. We are evolving. We are changing.</p>
<h3 id="6x0j5l">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="se6eFH">We are changing. The polarization that is going on at the moment feels like something that is real, and isn't real, doesn't it? In the real world, you can meet members of your own family or people you know with different political views or different cultural values. In the online world, everyone's retreating into corners and angrily waving fists at each other. That does feel like a consequence of the way we are using technology.</p>
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<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Bryce Dallas Howard stars in "Nosedive," one of six new episodes of Black Mirror.</figcaption>
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<h3 id="i3wFP8">Annabel Jones</h3>
<p id="ajrrji">The louder and more extreme opinions you have, the more…</p>
<h3 id="ZTQ5ae">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="Er3M5m">Entertaining you are. The more you're rewarded.</p>
<h3 id="YnhuVo">Annabel Jones</h3>
<p id="rqLUWJ">With credence, yeah. The disparity between our online persona and our real persona, how we communicate with people, how we interact — it's been in all of these small, small changes. You walk around everywhere, everyone is looking at their phone. Those moments of social interaction are being really reduced, and children will grow up looking here [looks down] first.</p>
<h3 id="9uTbPn">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="TovaBg">Which might be a good thing! I can't tell whether it's bad or good.</p>
<p id="bfDYVM">Lots of people have said to me recently, "Oh that <em><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/11/12129162/pokemon-go-android-ios-game">Pokémon Go</a></em>, that's very <em>Black Mirror</em>, isn't it?" I went for a jog on the day that [the game] was launched in the UK, and there were loads of people out with smartphones, roving around like they were in the "White Bear" episode.</p>
<p id="kjPFaj">The reference suddenly made sense to me, and I thought, "It's quite nice they're enjoying a nice stroll because they're playing a nice game. They're all together. It's brilliant, isn't it? It's great."</p>
<p id="UnbEY6">Obviously there's people been walking into lakes and getting held up. <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12167088/pokemon-go-societal-breakdown-chaos-explained">All sorts of horrific things</a> have no doubt happened, but in general, I don't know that it's bad.</p>
<p id="iW9pT8">In our stories, technology is never the villain, it's always a backdrop or it’s a Mcguffin that allows a human mess up to happen.</p>
<h3 id="QrvTwl">Todd VanDerWerff</h3>
<p id="LiDmeS">It seems like the through-line of so many of your stories is that humans always find the most sinister way to use technology, and that seems to be true across the history of writing about technological advancements. What makes science fiction work so well as a warning signal?</p>
<h3 id="b5pBbG">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="JHD89a">In our stories, technology is fulfilling the same function that supernatural or magic would on, like, <em>The Twilight Zone</em>. In <em>Black Mirror</em>, you can have something inexplicable and cool happen, but it happens for a technological reason.</p>
<p id="4pfCwl">Was it Arthur C. Clarke who said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"?</p>
<h3 id="jniK9y">Annabel Jones</h3>
<p id="tQvdiG">I don't know if it's that people are sinister. When they’re in little spirals in some of the stories, they're not exactly behaving sinisterly. They're just behaving in a way, that because the technology is so seductive, you can easily get sucked into that world. Why wouldn't you?</p>
<p id="NXYQIb">They are behaving in a human way, but quite a grand, incredible way. So the guy who is feeling insecure because he's losing his job and he thinks his wife is having an affair, he uses the tools he has at his disposal to destroy his own life.</p>
<p id="EdcpcG">It’s that theme of, in a world where you can have instant immediate access to nearly everything, or in a world in which everything is recorded, how can you live a normal life? Sometimes, we need to forget things to be able to keep sane. All of those themes are playing around. It’s less sinister and more…</p>
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<img alt="Black Mirror" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jpRCk60m2tgy-3GdLIq7xsRUxRc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7290251/BlackMirror_EP4_men_against_fire_1492r.jpg">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Malachi Kirby stars in "Men Against Fire," one of six new episodes of Black Mirror.</figcaption>
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<h3 id="QM6UXi">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="KfaG4d">We were talking about polarization. As a writer, if you've written something down and published it, it's hard to walk back from that. If you then revise your opinion or you realize you were wrong, that's a bit embarrassing.</p>
<p id="UVPmm0">Now, literally, we're setting everything down in black and white all the time, our opinions and thoughts on things. It's harder to walk back from, and so you end up maintaining a more polarized position than you possibly even do in reality.</p>
<p id="NaRn16">Technology is never the villain in the show, it's always a human frailty or weakness that leads to calamity. We can always fuck up in amazing ways.</p>
<h3 id="uv8lHy">Todd VanDerWerff</h3>
<p id="1gyVdU">What is it about humanity that ensures we will keep fucking up, no matter how great our tools?</p>
<h3 id="KEkQgZ">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="r8DL0l">I should say that [in season three, we're doing six episodes], and there's probably more variety in [season three] than there has been in the previous [two seasons, which were three episodes each]. It's not always about human frailty in these [new] stories.</p>
<p id="QW7us4">We're probably the same as we've always been, so I don't know that I could pinpoint a specific human trait that's our downfall. We're just a bit clumsy.</p>
<h3 id="1hhFTJ">Todd VanDerWerff</h3>
<p id="CiEcIH"><em>Black Mirror</em>’s two past seasons both have jelled very successfully in terms of tone, where you’ll have some big, more satirical take on societal trends like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089049/?ref_=ttep_ep2">"Fifteen Million Merits"</a> followed by a more intimate story like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089050/?ref_=tt_ep_nx">"The Entire History of You."</a> How do you "program" the seasons, essentially?</p>
<h3 id="M1JO7e">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="RSKj7w">Growing up, I was a fan of shows like <em>The Twilight Zone</em>, <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075592/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Tales of The Unexpected</a></em>. We had <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080231/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Hammer House of Horror</a></em>, and the BBC used to put on these one-off plays that were often quite controversial and high concept.</p>
<p id="LZt80e">We felt that was missing from [today’s] television. If you are doing a show where it's a five-season arc, and you've got a cast of characters, I love getting immersed in those shows. But one thing I felt was missing was the freedom to go from a domestic story to a huge hyper-realistic, hyper-bizarre reality like "Fifteen Million Merits."</p>
<p id="d8EjYH">You want to flex that creative muscle, so that apart from anything else, the viewer doesn’t know what the fuck's going to happen next, because all bets are off.</p>
<p id="pHpSAo">It's often quite amusing to see when people stumble across the first-ever episode, and they watch that. They don't know it's an anthology show, and it ends and they go, "What is going to happen next week?" Then they go into "Fifteen Million Merits," and they're like, "Oh, there's no continuity,"</p>
<p id="c6PXfo">We want each story to be as idiosyncratic and bizarre, as exciting and fantastical as possible. For the directors coming in, and the cast, it means they have a lot more freedom than they would in episodic television to forge something completely new each time.</p>
<h3 id="XfsYp6">Todd VanDerWerff</h3>
<p id="ibwK7X">One of the reasons those anthologies took off in the ‘50s is that there were still studio backlots that people could utilize to film a whole bunch of different types of stories. Producers rarely have that kind of access now, so I’m wondering what the challenges are of doing an anthology on a reasonable budget are in the year 2016.</p>
<h3 id="TJuCrL">Annabel Jones</h3>
<p id="tIsCML">We don't just use the word "films" to sound like wankers.</p>
<h3 id="qV5z6E">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="Z0cytQ">Although we do that too.</p>
<h3 id="H7r2jp">Annabel Jones</h3>
<p id="028klQ">They are run like six separate films. They are all totally separate crew, directors, directors of photography. They are expensive beasts as a result of that.</p>
<h3 id="KOLv22">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="e4Evrc">And quite a logistic challenge. There's always a point where you are having to spin several plates mentally at the same time. We've got one that is a police procedural that's feature length, and you're juggling that with a romance that's set in 1987.</p>
<h3 id="W3Tlnq">Annabel Jones</h3>
<p id="r5J8iz">There are pressure points in the schedule, where all six films are live in various stages of either pre-production or post, and you will happen to be in six different worlds, with six different directors and making them all feel like theirs is the most important film. And theirs <em>is</em> the most important film, because they're <em>all</em> our most important films. You've nurtured them all, and you want them all to be great.</p>
<h3 id="MN3Uhx">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="OITHZy">The great thing is, we have the freedom to do almost any story we want, but it also means that every episode both represents the entire season and doesn't represent the entire season at the same time. Especially because this time, we've got a lot more variance. It's quite a challenge to have six completely different stories that are all <em>Black Mirror</em>, whatever that is. It's a flavor, I guess.</p>
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<img alt="Black Mirror" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rOfdHl7Krds_74YsQCEKHFo61Z8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7290253/BlackMirror_EP6_playtest_00455r.jpg">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>"Playtest" is one of six new episodes of Black Mirror.</figcaption>
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<h3 id="fPqv8C">Todd VanDerWerff</h3>
<p id="VMil2v">We’ve talked about polarization a couple of times. Do you see a way to get out of this world where we’re increasingly stuck in our own echo chambers?</p>
<h3 id="HmXvwr">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="BjJGsw">I wish I knew. I guess someone has to tweak the algorithm, just to expose us to stuff. Before, you didn't have a choice, and you were exposed to whatever was on the nightly news. It was easier to walk back your own opinions. I'm guessing someone has to enter a line of code, or tweak a fraction, or something like that, because it is ultimately dangerous, and limiting.</p>
<p id="gZtmeI">We had the Brexit vote in the UK, which was pretty shocking to London media wankers like me, who woke up to discover half the country just didn't agree with us. That shouldn't be such a shock. I should be exposed to all those opinions and thoughts on a daily basis. I am the poorer for it.</p>
<h3 id="3J3YcU">Annabel Jones</h3>
<p id="lkhXSC">People have always chosen the newspaper that they want to project back what they already think. There's always that pre-selection that goes on. Now, it's just much more cocooned.</p>
<h3 id="YyQniU">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="gcalBs">There's no cross-contamination. Maybe it should be a legal requirement that every morning you have to put on a VR headset and be exposed to someone screaming at you opinions you hate. But then they are a reasonable person. It turns out they were kind of okay, really.</p>
<p id="S2gQcE">It’s difficult, because you don't want to subject people to things they don't want. You don’t want to limit freedom of speech. I don't know. It's the great issue of our age.</p>
<h3 id="tlj473">Todd VanDerWerff</h3>
<p id="Sz7buk"><em>Black Mirror</em> doesn’t really deal with things like artificial intelligence supplanting humanity. Would stories like that be bad for your brand of storytelling, or are you just not that worried about the robot uprising?</p>
<h3 id="SuG1H6">Charlie Brooker</h3>
<p id="uo48nm">I feel like I've seen that. We are more interested in the human experience and the human dilemmas. Which isn't to say that if we came up with the ideal robots supplanting humankind story, we wouldn't embrace it.</p>
<p id="unCMXb">I guess that might feel a little like an evil corporation doing something. I think if we were to tackle [AI] as a thing, we'd be focusing on somebody kicking that off by accident, and I don't quite know how we would get there.</p>
<p id="MOluFM">We probably should do it. Deliberately, we've been steering away from AI, because it felt like there were quite a few things that were dealing with it. That's not to say we won't do it for one of the other ones that are upcoming.</p>
<p id="ToRxBt">Black Mirror’<em>s</em> <em>third season debuts </em><em><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888">on Netflix</a></em><em> Friday, October 21.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/17/13279528/black-mirror-season-3-netflix-preview-interviewEmily St. James2016-10-20T10:00:05-04:002016-10-20T10:00:05-04:00Black Mirror season 3 wants you to know Twitter is bad
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<img alt="Black Mirror" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hzUSsGhQFquJe4YHh6XU7y9WLjA=/0x0:4751x3563/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51431527/BlackMirror_EP3_nosedive_0101r.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Black Mirror humbly requests you stop looking at your phone. | Netflix</figcaption>
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<p>The show is still sometimes excellent, but often forgets what made the first two seasons so great.</p> <p id="CcyWNE">Ironically, the worst thing that could have happened to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/?ref_=tt_ov_inf"><em>Black Mirror</em></a>, the British sci-fi anthology series that’s now a Netflix original, was technical innovation.</p>
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<p>Rating</p>
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<span class="rating-number">4</span>
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<p><br id="1476956832147"> For its first two seasons — which were each three episodes long — <em>Black Mirror</em> unspooled on the UK’s Channel 4 (and eventually in the US on the DirecTV-owned Audience Network) in the traditional fashion: one episode per week.</p>
<p id="CJGEGV">Each season had a weird little build to it, even across three episodes that had nothing to do with each other. There was enough space between airings for viewers to digest and dissect each episode before moving on to the next one.</p>
<p id="5Mt6jp">But watching six episodes of <em>Black Mirror</em> across a couple of days (as I did with Netflix’s third season) turns out to hurt some of its rhythms. It becomes that much easier to notice the series’ tricks, to guess where things are going, to get distracted by trappings that keep you from losing yourself in the story.</p>
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<div class="chorus-snippet s-related" data-analytics-action="link:related" data-analytics-category="article">
<span class="s-related__title">Related</span> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/17/13279528/black-mirror-season-3-netflix-preview-interview">Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker talks with us about political polarization and the new season</a>
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<p><span>Of course, many American viewers first became invested in </span><em>Black Mirror</em><span> when Netflix picked up the streaming rights to the series, so maybe this won’t feel any different to them.</span></p>
<p id="eoYlAI">But the fact that the show is now being <em>made</em> for Netflix has altered it in subtle ways, beyond just having six episodes instead of three. And the third season continues the show’s trend of being one-third brilliant, one-third pretty good, and one-third kinda stupid — but now there are two times as much of all of those things.</p>
<p id="iAvfEa">But even as I mostly enjoyed season three, I couldn’t escape the thought that <em>Black Mirror</em> is becoming trapped by its own success.</p>
<h3 id="aCnN51">Season three is more focused on social media than previous seasons, for better or worse</h3>
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<img alt="Black Mirror" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/waWpRqMdeyNkYTNj0e1ZNj_0B2w=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7311785/BlackMirror_EP4_Men_Against_Fire_0591r.jpg">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>Another sign you’re on Netflix: House of Cards’ Michael Kelly is here!</figcaption>
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<p id="F46Y9g">At times, <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888"><em>Black Mirror</em></a> season three feels like an ad hoc attempt to adapt <a href="https://www.amazon.com/So-Youve-Been-Publicly-Shamed/dp/1594634017/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476955379&sr=1-1&keywords=so+you%27ve+been+publicly+shamed"><em>So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed</em></a>, Jon Ronson’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/7/9272781/jon-ronson-publicly-shamed-interview">2014 book</a> on the detrimental effects of social media shaming.</p>
<p id="KP4MNE">One episode in particular features a sequence that feels like a direct adaptation of the moment in Ronson’s book<strong> </strong>where disgraced author Jonah Lehrer is forced to watch a stream of tweets reading him the riot act while he attempts to publicly apologize for plagiarism.</p>
<p id="UBW4l9"><em>Black Mirror</em> has danced around satirizing social media<strong> </strong>before. In the first two seasons, the show’s primary target often seemed to be reality TV; in season three, that previous flirtation with social media satire becomes a deep dive.</p>
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<span class="s-related__title">Related</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888">Watch Black Mirror on Netflix</a>
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<p><span>Creator </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0111765/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Charlie Brooker</a><span> fundamentally believes that technology hasn’t changed human nature, so much as enhanced it and made it more efficient, and he also tends to believe that a big part of human nature is our tendency to form ill-informed mobs. You can see how this would intersect with Twitter.</span></p>
<p id="ZaVLRL">And in some cases, that works out brilliantly. The season’s longest episode, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709236/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">"Hated in the Nation,"</a> is essentially the story of what would happen if Mulder and Scully from <em>The X-Files</em> discovered that Twitter pile-ons could be weaponized (believe me, I’ve spoiled nothing), and it’s both tremendously creepy and a lot of fun —even though its central message that people should remember even words online have consequences is easy to guess from the jump.</p>
<p id="46Pgmj">But more episodes feel constrained by social media satire. The season’s weakest effort, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/?ref_=ttep_ep4">"Nosedive,"</a> visually captures what it might be like to live inside of an Instagram filter, but its idea of a world where everybody rates everybody on a scale of one to five stars, and certain sections of society are closed off to those with scores below a particular number, never advances beyond the suggestion, "Wouldn’t this be awful?"</p>
<p id="bitTUh"><em>Black Mirror</em> is good when it’s either interesting or unpredictable, and better when it’s both, but "Nosedive’s" satire lacks the bite necessary to make the episode sting.</p>
<h3 id="PTDNkQ">
<em>Black Mirror</em> is working against two key disadvantages in season three</h3>
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<img alt="Black Mirror" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/90hRKYcfjBAIQjbn9oqDWfolC8w=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7311789/BlackMirror_EP5_hated_in_the_nation_00826r1.jpg">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>"Hated in the Nation" is a tricky police procedural with a fun Black Mirror twist.</figcaption>
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<p id="klo1xh">In some ways, Brooker is working against a couple of disadvantages this season. In doubling the number of episodes to six, he’s had to rely more on outside writers ("Nosedive" is from TV veteran <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1321658/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Michael Schur</a> and his former <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1266020/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk1"><em>Parks & Recreation</em></a> star <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0429069/?ref_=tt_ov_wr">Rashida Jones</a>), which dilutes some of the potency his best scripts offer.</p>
<p id="vikLEL">What unites <em>Black Mirror</em> isn’t subject matter so much as <em>tone</em>. Where, say, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052520/?ref_=nv_sr_2"><em>The Twilight Zone</em></a> was held together by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0785245/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Rod Serling’s</a> introductory segments and the vague sense there would be a twist ending, <em>Black Mirror</em> is held together by its complicated balance of open-hearted humanism and a darkly gleeful sense that human beings have never met a situation they couldn’t make worse. Brooker plays in that space almost effortlessly; other writers struggle with it more.</p>
<p id="NMxoH3">Yet even Brooker is defeated by a problem beyond his control: Netflix bloat. As with almost all Netflix original series, these episodes of <em>Black Mirror</em> could probably all be shortened by five to 10 minutes without losing too much.</p>
<p id="yy3nRk">There were two hour-plus episodes in the show’s first seven episodes (those first two seasons and a Christmas special), but the other five were all around 45 minutes. Airing on conventional television kept the show tight.</p>
<p id="KjS0Nw">The third season’s episodes all crest 50 minutes, and all but one crest 55, and you can <em>feel</em> it. There’s a point in every episode where, with about 20 minutes left, it becomes obvious where everything is heading, and instead of speeding up, the storytelling slows down. It’s deeply frustrating.</p>
<h3 id="v771iD">But this is still <em>Black Mirror</em> — and that means when it’s good, there’s almost nothing better</h3>
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<img alt="Black Mirror" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IkXWY2Kg-d7kptFr1uSJmAWO05Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7311791/BlackMirror_EP1_san_junipero_1642r1.jpg">
<cite>Netflix</cite>
<figcaption>"San Junipero," starring Mackenzie Davis, is almost good enough to float the rest of the season.</figcaption>
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<p id="N3c3Ut">And yet season three of <em>Black Mirror</em> merits a high score for a couple of reasons.</p>
<p id="6fB38i">The first is that even when it’s bad, <em>Black Mirror</em> is almost never boring. You can be watching a completely predictable, seemingly endless tale unfold, and some aspect of the whole thing will still be enjoyable. For instance, the glossy, pastel visuals in "Nosedive," which is directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0942504/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Joe Wright</a> (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783233/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk1"><em>Atonement</em></a>), make the otherwise weak episode worthwhile.</p>
<p id="RAAfAj">The second reason<strong> </strong>is that when <em>Black Mirror</em> hits its admittedly very tiny target, there’s nothing on TV, traditional or streaming, that works quite at this level. Season three only reaches this height once, in the ’80s-set romance <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4538072/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">"San Junipero,"</a> but watching <em>Black Mirror</em> hit that high is almost worth working your way through the other five episodes, if only to get a sense of how "San Junipero" both informs those episodes and is informed by them.</p>
<p id="L8NgRj">There will be a certain subset of people who read this review and say, "Oh, I’ll just watch ‘San Junipero’!" And certainly, Netflix is counting on samplers, who just check out the episodes that garner the highest marks from critics. (On its press screening site, at least, the episodes aren’t numbered or presented in any obvious order. They’re just listed by title.) Part of the fun of the show — as with any anthology series — is how disconnected every hour is from every other hour.</p>
<p id="pTp4oC">But if I were to recommend the best way to watch <em>Black Mirror</em> season three, it would be to watch one episode every few days, give it time to properly sit, then move on to the next.</p>
<p id="hXIoVX">The series might be made up of disparate stories that seemingly have nothing to do with each other, but the more time you spend ruminating on <em>Black Mirror</em> and turning it over in your head, the more those stories start to seem like part of the same thing, a world we’re all marching toward, like it or not.</p>
<p id="q87JDC">The episodes work sans context; they’re better when consumed as different viewpoints on the same unnamable future.</p>
<p id="t6PW4q">But since you’ll ask, here are the rankings of season three’s six episodes; watch responsibly.</p>
<ol>
<li id="FA9fZE"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4538072/" target="_blank">"San Junipero"</a></li>
<li id="jVKvXc"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709236/" target="_blank">"Hated in the Nation"</a></li>
<li id="uAHgox"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709234/?ref_=ttep_ep5">"Men Against Fire"</a></li>
<li id="XUoPXj"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709242/?ref_=ttep_ep7">"Playtest"</a></li>
<li id="CO5stG"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709230/?ref_=ttep_ep3">"Shut Up and Dance"</a></li>
<li id="GJZura"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/" target="_blank">"Nosedive"</a></li>
</ol>
<p id="rtR7w3"><span>Black Mirror </span><em>season three</em><span> </span><em>debuts Friday, October 21, </em><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888"><em>on Netflix</em></a><em>.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/20/13336942/black-mirror-season-3-review-netflixEmily St. James