Black Mirror S05 Review

As most people with any interest have probably heard, Season five of Black Mirror is only three episodes. Perhaps because creator and writer Charlie Brooker spent a lot of time and effort making the "Bandersnatch" holiday special. Then again, that aired at the tail end of 2018, and the three season five episodes "dropped" on Netflix on June 5, 2019. Maybe Brooker was busy with other projects. Or maybe he just didn't have much to say.

The end result is three so-so episodes of Black Mirror, at least compared to what has come before. However, it's still better than at least 75% of what is on American TV.

For those not familiar with the show, the title Black Mirror refers to your computer and/or cell phone when there's nothing on the screen. It's an anthology series and looks at how technology can affect humanity, and the often twisted results. Some episodes are set in the near past, some in the present, sometime in the near-future. Many of them feature Easter eggs showing that at least some of the stories are set in the same "universe". Many have compared it to the original The Twilight Zone, and I for one would argue it's better than the newest 2019 Twilight Zone. Your taste and opinions may vary.

Brooker himself has written almost all of the episodes, and that reflects one of the reasons I think the series is better than the new TZ. The stories have a "personal" touch, something I complained about the new TZ lacking, and in the past Brooker has something to say it and says it in different ways. Essentially, technology is bad when misused. Brooker has mellowed a bit in recent years, and his later stories have happier endings. But a lot of Black Mirror stories have a Twilight Zone-style twist that result in something bad happening to the protagonist.

That brings us to Season five. All three of the episodes are set in the modern day, or very close to it. "Smithereen" says it's 2018, but it could easily be 2019. The first story is "Striking Vipers", which features Anthony Mackie as Danny Parker, a husband at some undefined white-collar job. He has a wife, Theo (Nicole Beharie) and son, and a college buddy, Karl (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Danny and Karl link up after years apart, and Karl gives Danny a VR video fighting game. The game lets them take over two of the virtual fighters, Roxette (Pom Klmentieff) and Lance (Ludi Lin).

Danny and Karl soon discover their virtual avatars can have sex, with Karl as Roxette and Danny as Lance. Karl is okay with all of this, and insists the sex is the greatest he's ever had, but Danny wonders if it's a form of cheating on Theo. As her husband focuses more on the game, Theo wonders if she's losing her looks.

In the end, Danny wonders if he's homosexual and, having second thoughts, meets with Karl in the real world to kiss and find out. They aren't attracted to each other, and Danny tells Theo what has been happening. They end up by mutual agreement with Danny and Karl continuing their VR tryst, and Theo picking up a man in a bar on Danny's birthday. The Parkers' marriage is much happier, or so we're led to believe.

Writer Brooker says what he has to say and stops saying stuff when the story is over. There's no big "twist", and both of these are a common factors in all three episodes. Danny is a bit too much of the bored, disinterested husband, to the point where Mackie's performance comes across as if he's bored and disinterested.

All three episodes seem to be Brooker having something to say, but either not quite focusing on one or two topics, or not knowing how to say what he wants to say. There's the question of Danny and Karl's sexuality, there's the issue of Danny and Theo's marriage, there's the whole "Is VR reality better than 'real' reality?" Brooker doesn't really answer any of these issues, but just touches on them and moves on. As such, and with Mackie's somewhat disinterested performance, it's not that interesting an episode.

"Smithereens", the second episode, is probably the best of the batch because it has Andrew Scott (an eccentric Jim Moriarty on Sherlock, among other performances) as the lead, Chris Gilheany. He abducts an employee (Damson Idris) of a tech company, Smithereen, and holds the man hostage to force the company's owner, Billy Bauer (Topher Grace) to speak to him. The police soon run Chris and his hostage off the road, and Chris reaches Smithereen. The CEOs give him the runaround and finally Billy (who is on a retreat) hears about what's going on and calls Chris up even though his underlings advise against it.

Chris reveals he was using Smithereen tech and driving with his fiancée. When he looked at a dog photo, a drunk driver hit their car and the fiancée took two months to die. Chris blames himself and just wanted to talk to Billy so someone would listen to him. Once Billy does and talks about how the company is out of his control and he's just a front-man for it, Chris tries to let his hostage go. The man fights Chris for the gun, a marksman opens fire, Billy later looks very sad, and that's it. Presumably Chris is dead, but we never find out for sure.

Like "Vipers", "Smithereen" is set in the present and brings up several topics. It talks about grief, and the addictiveness of social media, and how tech companies exploit their customers, and is sympathetic toward tech moguls like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, and reveals how tech companies secretively know much more about their customers. The police are astonished by how much the CEOs at Smithereen know about Chris before they can find out.

But again, Brooker brings up all of these topics, touches on them briefly, and moves on. The core of the episode is the hostage situation with Chris versus the police. Scott rants and raves and breaks down and gives a "big" performance. And Grace is surprisingly good as the tech executive who ignores his supposed inferiors, insists on talking to Chris personally, and admits he's just a front-man.

But at the end of the day, "Smithereen" just... ends. Chris gets Billy's attention, he talks to him, Billy offers a few words of sympathy, and then Chris is dead. End of story. Brooker's season five tendency to just stop telling the story when he's done telling the story works against the episode here. You're left wondering what all of the fuss was about, and why you spent over an hour watching Chris take a hostage and then get killed. We get it: tech is bad when abused. It's Brooker's general theme for Black Mirror reduced to its essentials.

The last episode is "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too". And it's a strange mix of an episode. Pop star Ashley O (Miley Cyrus) puts out a line of near-future talking dolls with crude AIs, dubbed "Ashley Too"s. Then her evil aunt Catherine (Susan Pourfar), who is also her manager, finds out Ashley wants to change her image and style from pop to either punk or goth or both. So she secretly slips Ashley enough pills to OD her into a coma. She then uses some convenient technology to extract more pop songs from Ashley's brain, create a hologrammatic version of Ashley named "Ashley Eternal", and tries to take it worldwide.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old high school student named Rachel (Angourie Rice) is having trouble fitting in at her new school after the death of her mother two years previously. Her father buys her an Ashley Too, but her punk sister, Jack, soon gets disgusted with the doll (voice of Cyrus) and its endless recital of Ashley O's pop-feminism mantras. That, and the doll encourages Rachel to do an Ashley number at the school talent show that flops. Jack hides Ashley Too in the attic, Rachel finds out, and eventually Jack gives it back after Ashley goes into a coma from the OD.

This all comes together when Ashley Too sees a newscast about Ashley in a coma. That fries its circuits, Jack does something vaguely technical using her father's computer, and it turns out the company downloaded all of Ashley's brain patterns into the doll to save money. When Jack removes the delimiter, the "real" Ashley lives through Ashley Too. It tells Jack and Rachel what Catherine is up to, and leads them to the manor where Ashley is kept in a coma. It claims to be looking for evidence against Catherine, but pulls the respirator on the real Ashley.

It turns out Catherine has been using the equipment to keep the real Ashley comatose. Catherine's evil doctor tries to put Ashley back under, the two girls use his syringe against him, and drive Ashley to the stadium where Catherine is unveiling Ashley Eternal. In the end, Catherine's evil scheme is revealed and Ashley sings punk with Jack while Rachel and Ashley Too look on.

"Rachel" is an odd mix of genres. It's partly a high-school drama with Rachel's exploits. But those are dropped after her talent show performance. Instead she gets swept up in the intrigue and her sister, Jack (Madison Davenport) actually does more for the plot. She poses as a rodent exterminator because their father is a rodent exterminator, and first distracts a guard and then tasers him with her father's "Mauzr" drone that is designed to taser mice.

The funniest part in a relatively humorless season is probably the Ashley Too doll. I'll admit I got a few snickers out of it, as it goes from reciting Ashley O's mindless mantras to becoming a copy of the real foul-mouthed Ashley. There's the shock of Rachel learning her idol isn't the saint she thought she was, but that's quickly glossed over and we get a high-speed car chase as Jack drives her father's exterminator truck to the stadium to stop Catherine.

As a note: while Black Mirror isn't a comedy and many of the episodes are dead serious, Brooker usually manages to slip in some black humor. That's pretty much absent from the season. Also, Brooker is typically good at crafting sympathetic characters. Check out "White Bear" sometime, where Brooker makes an accomplice to a child's murderer sympathetic. But the characters in season five, not so much. They're just a collection of tropes: midlife-undergoing husband, outcast teenager, man driven too far.

A lot of plot points and reveals are glossed over, just like in the previous two episodes. There's the "image" of a pop star versus the reality, a glance at how adults abuse their celebrity wards for their own benefit, and Ashley's original fans turning against her when she goes punk. But despite the episode is 67 minutes long, a lot of this is glossed over so we get more of Ashley Too cute-cursing, and a teenager caper flick. Again, it seems like Brooker had several things to say, but was too busy, or distracted, or just trying to cram too much in for three episodes when the last couple of seasons have each had six episodes. The story starts split between Ashley and Rachel, but Rachel soon becomes a secondary character in what appears to be her own story once the two characters meet.

As noted, the Ashley Too doll is cute. And the performances are good. The story just doesn't seem to go anywhere because it's too busy trying to say different things to actually tell a coherent story.

Also, Brooker is a writer of many talents. Check out A Touch of Cloth if you get a chance, which is basically a British version of Police Squad!, But writing American-style teenage dramas isn't one of them. It's like he started that way with the episode, but then lost interest and returned to his usual themes and subjects.

Overall, I'd say Season five of Black Mirror is adequate. Hopefully, if there's a season six, Brooker will either take a little more time on it so he can expound on the issues he wants to explore, or let a few more writers take a swing at it. Season five seems rather... rushed. Again, I like stories that reflect the writers' personal views, but Brooker seems so busy just trying to make episodes that he forgot to give us new stories, and just did lesser versions of themes and issues and characters that he's done in much better episodes.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?