Black Mirror Season 4 Review
Black Mirror Season 4 released on Netflix on December 29th and so naturally, most people finished it by December 30th. The six episode season was teased out only with a few trailers, and you can read our reaction to those trailers here.
SPOILER WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD, DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED
U.S.S. Callister
From the trailer, “U.S.S. Callister” seemed like it could be lighthearted and goofy but, oh boy, is it dark. This episode manages to make you feel bad for a guy initially while realizing later he’s the worst one of them all (much like “White Bear” from season two).
Here’s the thing about this episode that makes it so dark and typical of Black Mirror: at the end, everyone still sucks (except for The Mother from How I Met Your Mother because she is a saint). In real life, Robert Daly will likely die and it’s highly contestable to say he deserves that fate given how he was treated. Then there’s the rest of the crew. They’re unchanged. While they all vary in how rude they were to Robert, they’re still going to go around leading normal lives. Who we really learned to care for was the digital replications.
So yes, it’s dark, but that’s exactly why we watch Black Mirror, right?
Our grade: B+
Arkangel
In our review of the trailer for “Arkangel”, we noted that this episode would inevitably end up being creepy for the reason that a little girl is experimented on. However, the true experiment ended up manifesting within the mind of the mother, who had to struggle with her temptations to constantly keep an eye on her daughter.
Unfortunately, “Arkangel” followed an incredibly predictable path: helicopter parent overreacts to child’s actions and becomes overly protective. Child rebels. Yes, the technology aspect of being able to see everything your child sees is not available today, but GPS tracking and heart rate monitoring are technologies that exist. We would’ve liked to see more about how filtering out negative images completely affected Sara, especially after she was then quickly exposed to the worst of the worst by Trick. This had to have been monumental to how she developed as a child, yet it seemed to have been glossed over in favor of showing more of the typical helicopter parent relationship.
Our grade: C-
Crocodile
If “Crocodile” was the first ever Black Mirror episode watched, it would probably come across as very shocking and dark. But now that we’re on season 4, it comes across as fairly par for the course. Tell me if you’ve heard this before: the main character makes a mistake and things devolve from there while they try to hold on to what they had before.
Mia, played incredibly well by Andrea Riseborough, really should’ve read the fine print or maybe found a way to delay the testing until she could mentally handle it. While it was a legal requirement, you think that she would’ve had some sense of mind to do everything in her power to avoid having the Recaller used on her. But ultimately, that’s TV logic for you.
Here’s what went through everyone’s mind when she saw the baby: “Oh no. She can’t possibly…oh but she’s come this far. Yep, she’s going to do it.” That lead to a feeling that maybe Mia wouldn’t get caught after all, but then we got hit with an all-time double twist. The baby was blind. She didn’t have to kill it. She only needed to kill one other thing. The guinea pig. That twist is what saved this episode.
Our grade: B
Hang the DJ
Rarely does a Black Mirror episode end on a happy, positive note and for some time, it looked as though this episode would end with a “what if?” of a failed relationship. Once all the pieces fell together and you saw the other 999 simulations, a sense of relief and joy washes over. That feeling of relief is actually the twist. The amount of humor in this episode was fantastic as well and it made the relationship seem that much more genuine, pulling viewers deeper into rooting for Amy and Frank to work things out.
What really allows this episode to shine is it’s thematic commentary on what modern dating is like. With the advent of dating apps and online dating sites, we have gone from a society that generally married people we grew up with, to having what seems like endless options. “Hang the DJ” does a fantastic job of demonstrating this in the montage of Amy’s short lived relationships and how much they wear on her mentally and emotionally.
Our grade: A
Metalhead
We’re sure the opinions on this one will be quite divided. Some people will really like that it was entirely filmed in black and white, which does add to the post-apocalyptic feel in a way similar to The Book of Eli. The premise of “Metalhead” is fairly simple, and that’s exactly where it falls flat. The entire episode is Bella running from the robots. That’s it. The plot of trying to find a teddy bear to help a dying child in a bleak, post-apocalyptic world does help show how bad things have gotten, but it feels like it was tacked on.
The saving grace, if any, of what makes this episode particularly frightening, is that the writer of the episode got the idea for the robots dogs from robots actually being built by Boston Dynamics. Because that’s not terrifying.
Our grade: C+
Black Museum
The best part about “Black Museum” is that we got three different sub-stories all within one episode that all likely could have been standalone episodes. While no person in their right mind would ever agree to have another consciousness placed in their brain (pun absolutely intended), that did lead to an amazing twist at the end when it’s revealed that Nish’s mother was with her the whole time. The pain for pleasure story line was quite interesting as it took masochism to a whole new level in a unique way that isn’t necessarily out of the realm of future possibility.
All in all, the early stories were a great illustrator of how messed up Rolo really is and how he had no real remorse for meddling with people’s brains and lives. It was a dark episode, but ended with a victory for the main character, which is rarely the case.
Our grade: B+
Season Average: B
And now begins the long wait for the next season.
