Back Through the Looking Glass

Film: Black Mirror Season 7
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

I don’t talk much about television on this blog, but as streaming services occupy more and more space in media, the dividing line between television and movie continues to blur. Black Mirror is an anthology series, but also has episodes that are essentially feature-length films. Are these short movies? Actual movies? Shows? I tend to think of them as kind of like novellas—they don’t tend to have the heft of a full novel, but they’re more involved than a short story.

The series has had its ups and downs. I didn’t hate Season 6 and it had some clear highpoints, but it also felt badly misdirected, as at least three of the five episodes were very clearly horror-themed rather than centered on ideas of technology, especially technology run amok. Season 7 feels much more on track as far as that goes, something like a return to form. If the series continues, this feels like a good place to continue it from.

There are six episodes in the new season. I think it only fair to discuss each of them in turn, since each is very much its own thing. My views will at times be on par with the consensus and in at least one case will be very different from that of most people. Just for easy, I’m going to discuss them in order.

The first episode is called Common People. Schoolteacher Amanda (Rashida Jones) has a life-threatening brain tumor. A company called Rivermind, represented by salesperson Gaynor (Tracee Ellis Ross) offers a solution—a sort of patch that can replace the missing brain tissue. But enshittification takes over—prices rise, Amanda is forced to speak commercial messages, needs massive amounts of sleep, and can’t leave a restricted area without paying more, causing her husband (Chris O’Dowd) into more extreme online humiliation stunts to raise money to keep her functioning. Of all the new episodes, this one feels like the real return to form for Black Mirror. This is really a story about technology gone bad and used badly, and it’s absolutely chilling.

Second is Bête Noire. Food scientist Maria (Siena Kelly) encounters Verity (Rose McEwen), the girl she used to help bully in high school, at a food tasting panel. Verity has soon worked her way into Maria’s life, and Maria starts slowly living in a world that seems clearly defined by Mandella effects. I liked the idea of this one, but it really feels like it spirals out of control. The ending feels a couple of hundred miles away from where it started, and while that’s often a good thing, in this case, it feels like it gets an ending it doesn’t deserve.

The third episode is Hotel Reverie, the second-longest episode of the season and, for me, the most disappointing. A down-and-out film company opts to use cutting-edge technology to put the consciousness of modern A-list actor Brandy Friday (Issa Rae) into a modeled version of a romance from the 1940s, and of course everything goes wrong. It’s a fascinating idea and one that could have been really cool, and it’s absolutely destroyed by the performance of Rae, who I normally like, or at least don’t mind. She’s been transported into this film from the 1940s, playing genderswitched role, needing to romance a character (played by Emma Corrin), and she could not be less believable in the role. Does she try to fit in to the time and mode of the setting? She does not—she sticks out like a sore thumb, speaking in modern vernacular and consistently looking as if she is conscious that she doesn’t belong there. Great idea, and terrible execution.

The fourth episode is Plaything, and probably my most controversial opinion of this season. A man named Cameron Walker (Peter Capaldi in present day, Lewis Gribben flashback) is arrested for shoplifting only to be accused of the murder and dismemberment of an unnamed man. Cameron then spins a tale of an ancient piece of unreleased game software that has accelerated into an artificial intelligence. This is the lowest-average reviewed episode on Letterboxd for this season, but it’s my second-favorite episode. I love it because it felt like nostalgia to me. The backstory takes place in 1994, the heart of my game journalism career. Cameron in flashback has a copy of Magic Carpet on his desk, and I remember playing the hell out of that. It’s probably not as good as I want it to be, but it really felt like this was personal to me and kind of about me.

Episode five, Euology, is the best of the season, and not by a little. Phillip (Paul Giamatti) is contacted by a company to tell him that his former lover has died. New technology will allow them to mine his memories for an interactive experience for the funeral goers, and he takes a trip through his memories and photographs with the aid of a digital assistant (Patsy Ferran). What starts as a simple exercise in memory soon becomes a long, almost therapeutic investigation of Phillip’s past and the relationship that he both couldn’t keep and couldn’t be without. It’s a lovely story, filled with tragedy and heartache, and Giamatti is truly flawless—if the man doesn’t win an Emmy for this performance, it’ll be a tragedy.

The final episode is the one that I think most people were most excited about--USS Callister—Into Infinity. We return to the crew of the USS Callister from Season 4. At the end of that episode, the crew, made of illegal digital clones created by Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons), has escaped from a private server into the server of an MMORPG. We pick up with them only to discover that, as rogues in the game universe, they are forced to survive by hunting down players and stealing their credits. Meanwhile, in the real world, things are threatening the real-world people involved in the game. Honestly, I feel like this was unnecessary. We got a good ending for the characters the first time, and we jump back to them to find that the happy ending has been ruined. I don’t like where this one goes, ultimately and I don’t love the ending. It almost feels like it tarnishes the original USS Callister a little.

This feels like the series is getting back on track. Sure, the season is a little hit-or-miss, but it always has been (as episodes like The Waldo Moment, Mazey Day, and Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too will attest). If this is what we can expect from this point on, I look forward to Season 8.

Why to watch Black Mirror Season 7: Black Mirror feels back in a real way.
Why not to watch: Several episodes strongly miss the mark.