Black Mirror Has Become Its Own Black Mirror Episode
Disclaimer: This contains spoilers for the sixth season of ‘Black Mirror’.
Black Mirror used to be our gateway to the stars. Following in the footsteps of past sci-fi greats, Netflix’s anthology dystopia was quirky, larger-than-life, and bone-chilling in its accuracy. It painted a grim picture of the world, not only as it was to come, but as it already was.
Now, when Collider offers me a worst-to-best ranking of Season 6’s episodes, I don’t even bother. It’s a perverse pleasure, when the series’ final season, from first to last, sucked.
Actually, amend that, I stopped after Episode 3, since I still want to retain some positive image of this once-astonishing series.
Netflix’s cutesy-cringe self-mockery
Much has been made about “Joan is Awful”, the self-deprecating kickstarter of Season 6. The episode revolves around a seemingly ordinary woman (portrayed by Annie Murphy) who turns on the TV one night, only to discover streaming giant Streamberry has created a bizarre show of her exact life.
It’s an episode that kicks off with huge potential, and seems, at first glance, true to Black Mirror’s reputation. Yet, as the hour draws on, it somehow fails to deliver. It’s as if writer and creator Charlie Brooker forgets the plot halfway through, and instead, decides to pander to the unripe, 10-second-attention-span viewer crowd. Crammed with cringy comedic references and one-liners from an A-list cast (Salma Hayek and Michael Cera, to name some), “Joan is Awful” is awful.
It tells no story. Forget the grim dystopic foreshadowing we’ve come to expect, “Joan is Awful” hardly manages to stay coherent, culminating with the protagonist smashing the quantum computer that generated the show.
What I found particularly insulting, however, was Netflix’s crude idea of humility. As Streamberry is the only observable villain of the episode, some publications applauded the streaming giant’s willingness to ‘poke fun at themselves’. For a giant of the entertainment industry, I would’ve expected they knew the definition of ‘comedy’ and ‘fun’.
With a solid reputation for soiling everything it touches, and producing crap mass content, Netflix isn’t taking a bow here. It’s only pretending to, perhaps to alleviate our own embarrassment at allowing ourselves to be dumbed-down and fed this kind of content.
When you run out of ideas, you’re supposed to stop.
Yet, sadly, many entertainment giants, such as Black Mirror itself, think themselves above this rule. The next two episodes feel like someone didn’t stop in time. Like they had a good starting point, then allowed it to draw on. And God forbid anyone goes back and edits their work. Both episodes feel like the crude first-drafts of a once-great screenwriter and are ~ for someone who genuinely used to enjoy the show ~ a pain to behold.
The series’ second episode, “Loch Henry” (another program available on Streamberry, as it turns out) is marginally better, or at least, it would be, if it were an actual crime drama series. Following a young couple of would-be filmmakers, the episode descends into a small-town murder investigation in rural Scotland, and comes up with some dark, too-close-to-home findings.
One way in which “Loch Henry” glimmers (‘shines’ would be pushing it) is it captures the average human’s potential for evil and inhumanity very well. The few recorded scenes of the deranged serial killers, I thought, were very on-point. Then again, the first season of Monsters does that, too (in another league, all-together).
Finally, the third episode, “Beyond the Sea”, explores a parallel 1969, where space astronauts are able to stay with their families by the use of artificial, lifelike replicas. When David, one of the astronauts, witnesses, helpless, as a deranged cult slaughters his family (and destroys his replica), things aboard this two-man spaceship become tense. The man’s partner, Cliff, touched by his friend’s grief, invites him to use his own replica to go back down to Earth every once in a while. What begins as an initial gesture of humanity and good will soon gives way to a creepy, hostile merging of boundaries.
Where does your peace end, and my grief begin? the episode seems to ask, yet once again, fails to deliver. First off, body-swapping? Really? When everyone from Mickey Mouse to the X-Files has done it, it may be a sign you need to lay the idea to rest. Especially when you’ve got nothing to add to it, as that only makes you look bad.
Predictably, the episode ends in bloodshed when David, spurned by Cliff’s wife, locks his partner out into space while he slips into his replica, and slaughters his entire family. It’s cute. If this were a writing group short story, I’d applaud it. But it’s one of the highest-grossing series currently on Netflix. In other words, it’s not enough.
As I said, I haven’t watched the last two episodes, nor do I think I will, since they’re ranked way worse than the first three.
And thus, Black Mirror leaves us with a sour taste.
Whether or not the series will return for a seventh season seems to be in the balance. Personally, I hope they call it before it spirals further into its own parody.
With its sixth season, Black Mirror sells off its privileged position as harbinger of the apocalypse to come. And for what? To pander to a crowd of disinterested, mass-consuming viewers, and qualify as a solid way to waste 60 minutes of your life?
The sixth (and I hope final) season of Black Mirror is, beyond a doubt, precisely the sort of empty entertainment that earlier seasons used to make fun of.
As with everything on my blog, this is an opinion piece. Whether you agree with what you read here or not, if you decide to share your opinion, please do so respectfully. If not, feel free to move along. You don’t need to agree with everything on the Internet ;)
