The latest season of Black Mirror feels almost therapeutic as we peer over the cliff of civilizational collapse. Everything is awful, but at least we don't have to worry about renting out access to our brains from skeevy startups, or dealing with the consequences of a PC game's super-intelligent AI. Not yet, anyway. While Black Mirror felt like a horrifying harbinger of an over-teched future when it debuted in 2011, now it's practically an escape from the fresh hell of real world headlines.
That's not to say that the show has lost any of the acerbic bite from creator Charlie Brooker. Season 7 of Black Mirror, which debuts on Netflix on today, still occasionally veers into nihilistic territory, and at times it will emotionally devastate you. But now Brooker and his writers — Ms. Marvel showrunner Bisha K. Ali, William Bridges, Ella Road and Bekka Bowling — more deftly wield their talent for cultural analysis.
Minor spoilers for Black Mirror season 7 ahead.
Not all of the new episodes revolve around nefarious new tech, sometimes the tools themselves are genuinely helpful — it's humans who are often the real problem. And I suppose that was always the end-goal for Black Mirror. When our screens are turned off, we see ourselves. And most of the time, we're probably holding a smartphone.
The season's first episode, "Common People," is the most stereotypical Black Mirror tale. A loving husband (IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd) discovers that his wife (Parks and Recs' Rashida Jones) has a terminal brain disease. Her only hope for survival comes from Rivermind, a startup that can digitally encode the damaged part of her brain and stream it to her head via the cloud. For a fee, of course.
You can pretty much guess where things go from there. I won't spoil the specifics, but the episode taps into the universal experience of paying ever more for subscription services that get inexplicably shittier. Cellphone and cable plans are the most obvious parallels, but ironically it also maps onto Netflix's own troubled evolution, which has led to significantly higher prices, confusing new tiers and more limitations around account sharing.
"Bête Noire" starts out like a psychological thriller: A successful confections designer (Siena Kelly) starts working alongside a former schoolmate (Rosy McEwen) who had been bullied for being a nerdy outcast. Inexplicably, McEwen's character becomes the office darling, while the star snack artist appears to lose her grip on reality. While there is ultimately a tech-related explanation for what's going on, the episode works best as an unhinged revenge story.
I'd also classify the season's two sequel episodes as campy fun, but for different reasons. "Plaything" re-introduces Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), the genius video game designer from the interactive Black Mirror episode "Bandersnatch," who developed a Sims-like computer game with adorable AI creatures. But this being Black Mirror, they're obviously more than meets the eye.
The episode kicks off as an older disheveled man (Peter Capaldi) gets arrested, and reveals that he was a former game critic who became obsessed with the game and learned to understand the AI's song-like language. "Plaything" is far from the first episode of the series to delve into the possibilities of AI consciousness, but it's the most explosive spin Black Mirror has taken so far.
"USS Callister: Into Infinity" is a feature-length follow-up to the season 4 opening episode, and it's yet another sign that Brooker and his team simply want to lighten things up a bit. We follow the digital clones from the first episode as they try to survive in a popular online game by robbing other players. Meanwhile, their real-world counterparts discover their existence as they follow player complaints about these robberies.
"Into Infinity" delivers everything I loved about the original "USS Callister" — it's simultaneously akin to an episode of classic Star Trek and a modern cyberpunk thriller, while also being funnier and sharper. It's also a bit strange to see Cristin Milioti and Billy Magnussen paired up once again in a sci-fi show after starring together in Max's Made for Love. (And if you're looking for a bit more Black Mirror-esque dystopia in your life, that show is worth a watch.)
"Hotel Reverie" and "Eulogy," both feature neural connection gadgets that can instantly transport people into immersive digital worlds. (According to a viral marketing site, it's called the Nubbin.) It's sort of like putting on a VR headset and haptics suit, except you only need to place a small puck by your temple. Once again, though, the technology is far from the most interesting aspect of the episodes.
In "Hotel Reverie," an actress (Issa Rae) who is bored with the limited roles Hollywood is giving her gets a chance to do something completely new: Inject herself into a classic film. She's not just remaking the original film, she's replacing the lead male actor and working alongside digitized versions of the rest of the cast. The film, also called Hotel Reverie, was already a tale of forbidden love, but it becomes even more transgressive as a love story between two women. It's not quite as transcendent as "San Junipero," but the episode will definitely make your heart ache a bit.
And speaking of heartache, I'd recommend bracing yourself for "Eulogy," a monumental episode featuring some of Paul Giamatti's finest work. We're introduced to him as an older man who gets a strange call: Someone he used to know has died, and their family would like him to contribute some virtual memories via a company called Eulogy. The startup sends him a neural puck, which is powered by a plucky virtual assistant. The puck can record his memories, but even more intriguing, it lets him step directly into virtual memories via old photos.
Giamatti recounts a tale of lost love, and by the end of the episode you're reminded that few actors can embody soul-crushing regret as well as him. All of the whiz-bang technology in the episode is just a vehicle to see Giamatti's heart fully exposed. (Get you a man who can do that and also give his all as Rhino in the forgettable Amazing Spider-Man 2.)
It took about five seconds of scrolling through Bluesky to snap me back to the hellscape of reality after binging this season of Black Mirror. I was riding high on a wave of emotion and energy, the sort of feeling you get when experiencing the work of talented artists at their peak. One news headline washed that all away. I used to need a breather between earlier Black Mirror episodes to escape Brooker's bleak sensibility. Now, the dystopian show is my balm.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/black-mirror-is-now-a-delightful-escape-from-reality-070019017.html?src=rss
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