So I got an e-mail about Black Mirror Season 5, and I went straight there. I had intended to spread out my viewing, but I ended up bingeing the whole season last night. This sounds impressive (or sad), but it's only three episodes, albeit longer than an hour each.
This was perhaps the least Black Mirror season of Black Mirror. Why I feel that way will hopefully be obvious in my episode recaps.
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Striking Vipers – This started off slow for me, but it gained some speed. Then slowed down again. This isn't the type of story to rush, so I get why they paced it the way they did. I still found myself wanting to get on with it though.
So the short of it is that two best friends play this Striking Vipers fighting game in their 20s. They liked it enough to stay up all night and suffer the consequences of going to work exhausted. Fast-forward 11 years, and the two buddies have taken different, successful paths. Karl gives Danny a birthday gift of a new Striking Vipers with a VR attachment. They play the game and choose their favorite, hot characters, and they end up stopping the fight to have sex.
This episode reflects a lot in our society. I remember people saying that cybersex isn't really cheating, and that discussion came up in their arguments. Danny neglects his family in order to have this torrid virtual affair with Karl in a woman's body. I think this relationship made me nervous because I was expecting some transphobia or homophobia. It turned out my fears were unfounded. When Danny asked Karl to meet IRL in the middle of the night, I was expecting murder, but he wanted to know if the spark would remain outside the game. That was a pleasant twist away from the usual tropes.
In the end, they all work it out. Danny's failing marriage is strengthened once they opened up communication. And this communication allows them to explore passions outside their marriage. I've seen some marriages try going the open route in an attempt to save it, but the problems lie deeper than that. I've also seen marriages succeed at being open, and this episode shows them being pretty happy with embracing the openness, as Theo, Danny's wife, also craved something new. It ends sweetly, which reminds me of San Junipero.
Smithereens – I saw this described as a bad PSA about texting and driving, and I can't wholly disagree with it. It was filmed well, though. They laid out the clues early on with his obsessively looking at the passenger side of the car and him stalking the Smithereens headquarters. Christopher's reaction to smart phones seems over the top, though it does show how traumatized he is.
The short of it is that Christopher kidnaps an intern from Smithereens, a Facebook clone. He was hoping for someone higher up the food chain because the intern was sharply dressed like an intern who really wanted to move up in the company. Christopher is spotted by the police, and he is trapped in a hostage situation. All he wants to do is talk to the president of Smithereens and tell his side of the story. That story is that Christopher was driving his fiancée one night when he was distracted by a Smithereens notification, which caused him to crash into a drunk driver. The other driver was blamed for the accident, but Christopher knows it was his obsession with social media to blame.
It's all a sad tale, though Christopher's methods are rather extreme. I expected this episode to go into some shadowy conspiracy or a revenge tale, but it's really a man raging against himself. He casts some blame on Smithereens because the company has been putting a lot of focus on making their app more addictive. The whole message is as subtle as a brick.
The end is ambiguous, which bugs me. I like some ambiguous endings, like whether Inception ends with Cobb in a dream or not. This ambiguity is a bit sloppy though. We know from everyone's reaction that someone dies, but we have no idea if it was Christopher or his hostage. I'm fine with the ambiguity surrounding the touching subplot of a grieving mother getting into her late daughter's social media account to learn more about her suicide. I would've liked something more definitive with the sniper shot though.
Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too – Probably my favorite of the season, though it is not without its problems. It's an interesting juxtaposition of two stories. Ashley is a pop sensation with super positive songs, including a saccharin take on NIN's Head like a Hole. Meanwhile, Rachel is a fangirl who is thrilled to receive a gadget infused with an AI download of Ashley's persona—at least her poppy, fun façade.
There are two stories going on. Ashley's aunt/manager is really pushing the positive veneer of Ashley and getting rich off it. Meanwhile, Ashley is dying inside and wants out from under her aunt's control. She wants to explore darker music. I don't know that much about the career or Miley Cyrus, but I get the feeling that casting her as Ashley was definitely intentional. Her aunt learns about Ashley's true intentions of breaking the contract and puts her into a coma in order to keep banking on Ashley's popularity, including unveiling a holographic version of Ashley to keep the money flowing.
Meanwhile, awkward teenager Rachel is obsessed with Ashley and treats the AI doll as her best friend. This embarrasses and annoys her older sister, who's more into the Pixies than anything poppy. Through a series of convenient events, Ashley Too goes nuts upon seeing a news story about the original Ashley in a coma. The girls hook her up to a computer and deletes a strange piece in her code. This was a limiter that allowed Ashley Too to only say happy, fun stuff. Now unhindered, Ashley Too becomes the foul-mouthed angry woman that Ashley always was and convinces the girls to break into her home to find proof of her aunt's duplicity.
After a remarkably unlikely infiltration, the three of them manage to wake up Ashely from her coma, and then all four of them drive to the stadium to stop Ashley's aunt's evil machinations. This is a goofy, light-hearted episode, though it does visit some of the darker themes of enslaved AI personalities. In the end, Ashley is now singing Head like a Hole with the proper lyrics.
So not my favorite season. It was still a joy to watch, though it wasn't quite as Tales from the Crypt as previous episodes had been.