There won't be spoilers, until I say so. Don't worry, the spoiler alert tag will be huge.
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What is Black Mirror?
Unlike a typical TV series, each episode is a brand new story with a different cast and theme. They are really varied in what they cover, but the best way to describe the episodes would be technological dystopia / satire. According to Wikpedia:
Black Mirror is a British television anthology series ... that features speculative fiction with dark and satirical themes that examine modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies.
Each episode picks a certain theme (or themes) which usually involves some futuristic or current technology/system (e.g. social media) and imagines a possible future with it. The result is usually somewhat disturbing or intriguing.
Some commentators have likened it to The X-Files in terms of the show's format, but more technology-centric than supernatural-centric.
Why am I writing this post?
I decided to write this post because I disagreed with how most 'popular' review/recap websites were rating / ranking the episodes. I always read episode recaps from various sources such as EW, Vulture, Vox, and AVclub, but for some weird reason they were dissing the episodes that I enjoyed and loving the episodes that I didn't quite like.
Thus, I decided to share my own point of view... some episodes really deserve more credit!
How will I be ranking the episodes?
I consider some factors such as coolness of technology/system used, pacing of episode, and the 'wow' factor I feel after the episode. I won't be recapping each episode, but will just make references here and there.
Post edit : Wow. This was much tougher than I expected. I had an initial ranking list, but as I wrote my justifications, I realised I disagreed with myself and re-ordered them. And then the more I thought about some episodes, the more I wanted to move them (up or down). The list has underwent a lot of thought and iterations before this final product.
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I will share my rankings before I delve into the explanations, so that those who want a spoiler-free experience can just stop here and decide which episodes to watch.
From worst to best:
#13 - S02E03 - The Waldo Moment
#12 - S03E03 - Shut up and Dance
#11 - S01E02 - 15 Million Merits
#10 - S03E02 - Playtest
#9 - S02E01 - Be Right Back
#8 - S01E03 - The Entire History of You
#7 - S03E01 - Nosedive
#6 - S03E04 - San Junipero
#5 - S03E06 - Hated in the Nation
#4 - S01E01 - National Anthem
#3 - S03E05 - Men Against Fire
#2 - S02E02 - White Bear
#1 - Btwn S2 and S3, Christmas Special - White Christmas
(Warning: SPOILERS ahead)
#13 - The Waldo Moment (S02E03)
I must confess, I didn't watch this episode in full. I watched about a third of it and got really bored. I read the synopsis, and got even more bored. It didn't seem like it would get any better.
Basically, there didn't seem to be any new interesting technology or use of existing technology, and is basically more of a political satire. To quote AVclub.com in their recap of this episode:
What if a truth-telling, apolitical comedian ran for political office and started gaining real traction? This scenario is taken to its logical extreme with Waldo, a profane blue cartoon bear whose entry into a local by-election is initially part of a marketing scheme cooked up by TV execs to promote an impending pilot.
In the light of the Trump presidency, this episode's premise doesn't seem so absurd anymore.
Nonetheless, I didn't like it, I didn't watch it, so technically I should exclude this from ranking. But for convenience, I'll just place this at #13.
#12 - Shut up and Dance (S03E03)
If this was a random short film or an episode not called 'Black Mirror', I may have ranked it a lot higher. The episode had decent pacing, dialogue, build up of tension to its shocking climax, a lot of 'what's going on'. Enough to pull you in... but satisfy you?
I have two main grouses with this episode.
Firstly, Black Mirror tends to involve some kind of technology or have some new media concept as the overarching theme of its episode, and they will stretch it to its satirical extremes. What was it for this episode?? The danger of leaving your webcam on? The lack of an interesting theme was glaring in this very ordinary episode of television.
The trope of 'Character A gets recorded doing something incriminating, gets blackmailed into doing a series of things' is nothing new, and Black Mirror needed to pull it off in a more shocking or twisted way for it to be an effective Black Mirror episode.
Which brings me to my second point - the ending. When a story uses this blackmail angle, there's usually some bigger plot to tie it to, related to the blackmailer's intentions. Other stories have woven this into more complex plots, with the recent trend being to bombings, assassinations, stealing something etc.
However, Shut Up and Dance chose to go for the easy way out - there is no bigger plot at all. It seems like the only purpose was to see how far they could push someone, and then just reveal the 'secret' anyway. It could be viewed as a classic Black Mirror twisted ending that leaves you feeling disturbed, or a convenient cop-out that feels disappointing. For me, it was more of the latter.
#11 - 15 Million Merits (S01E02)
It actually pains me to rank this episode so low because honestly it wasn't bad, and I did like it! But the problem is, there are stronger episodes in Black Mirror (this goes to show how solid the series is on a whole), thus SOME episode HAS to be ranked lower.
The conclusion of the show was disturbingly believable - it made perfect sense given the context they were in that Bing would be given a 'vodcast/show' after his emotional monologue. It was equal parts amusing and disturbing.
What I didn't like about the episode was the pacing of the first one or two thirds, which felt slightly draggy. I understand the need to establish the routine of the 'commoners' and to build up the dystopian world they were in, but it could have been shorter. More time could have been spent developing the relationship between Bing and Abi to make their romance(?) / relationship more convincing, such that he would be willing to give up his inheritance + farm up another 15 million points to get on the show again.
#10 - Playtest (S03E02)
The concept of augmented reality isn't new and has been explored in many other shows (and is even somewhat moving towards reality now). Therefore, for Black Mirror to pull it off as well, the execution needed to be very clever.
The episode tries to do so with its triple fakeout at the end, which some reviewers marked them down for because they felt cheated. Personally, I don't think the idea of a multi-layered experience is bad (hey, we all loved it in Inception didn't we?), but I felt the execution wasn't particularly satisfying.
I did like the irony (?) that in avoiding his biggest fear (that his mother had dementia as well) and ignoring his mother's calls, he somewhat caused his own death as his mother only called at the moment because he had not been picking up his previous calls.
The middle portion of the episode was fairly strong, with the show's take of the horror genre being fairly decent, which kept this episode off the bottom of the rankings.
#9 - Be Right Back (S02E01)
If there was any episode in the pre-Netflix era (i.e. Season 3) that I wish could have been in Season 3 instead, this would be one of them. This episode would have been served better with a slightly longer duration, to further develop the character of Ash before he died.
In not doing so, we are forced to hear lines like 'you didn't use to be like that!' and automatically believe and understand what this meant, when Martha was complaining about android-Ash versus real Ash.
I felt this could have played out a lot stronger if we actually knew Ash's personality better, and thus we, as the audience, can empathize with Martha when android-Ash does not react in just quite the same way as real Ash. Instead, the author chose to make Ash glued to his phone screen, I suppose to hint at the fact that Ash was on social media a lot, and hence the android service could learn from his social media patterns.
The last scene on the cliff where android-Ash immediately learns based on feedback that Martha gave to beg for his life was brilliant - I wish there was more of this slipped in in the prior scenes as well. That would have added to the eerie effect of the android learning to be more and more 'human'.
Overall, a thought-provoking episode on could-be technology (especially given how machine learning is developing so quickly to take advantage of big data), with a classic eerie ending - android Ash is left in the attic, only to be visited once a year.
#8 - Entire History of You (S01E03)
The episode had an intriguing concept - what if you could play back all of your memories to watch and share? It seems like quite a natural point for technology to develop till, and something we could imagine happening.
Even though the episode's arc was predictable, it builds up gradually and makes you root against it. You want to believe that the Ffion did not have an affair, but at the same time you eagerly want Liam to press harder to uncover the truth.
What develops is a captivating downward spiral as revelation after revelation comes, and you can feel the emotional hits that Liam takes with each piece of news. The ending is eerie and solemn, as Liam surgically removes the grain to try to remove the pain.
I would love to have ranked this ep higher, but I felt the other episodes were just better.
#7 - Nosedive (S03E01)
This episode takes a simple idea - that we all crave social validation - and expounds it in a hilarious, all-out manner. I realised it isn't really that far-fetched - Uber already has a similar culture where driver/passenger tries to be nice to each other to get a good rating, and the ratings do have a real effect on you.
The episode shines with the strong performance of Bryce Dallas Howard as Lacie, portraying her believably as being 'disgustingly fake' but still not going over the top. I liked that the plot developed quite naturally and you can't help but root for her.
The last third of the episode is when everything goes downhill and gets a little uncomfortable - from her meltdown at the wedding to the prison. It doesn't make you feel satisfied or happy watching this, but I suppose it's the typical Black Mirror ending that makes you really uneasy, yet feel that 'yea things SHOULD turn out that way'. Lacie finally got cathartic release, and happily unloads on her fellow prisoner. -Cut to black-. Damn.
I originally ranked this ep much higher, because there really wasn't anything WRONG about this. But I feel that the other episodes were just stronger. The core concept of this episode isn't anything new or interesting, and they simply took something that exists today and played out the extreme consequences. A good episode? Yes. A strong episode? There are stronger ones.
#6 - San Junipero (S03E04)
I must confess, I almost felt like turning off the episode after 10 minutes. The ep didn't feel like it was going anywhere, didn't seem particularly compelling, similar to The Waldo Moment. Thankfully, my wife read ahead and said 'KEEP WATCHING!!'
When the twist hits, and you realise what San Junipero really is, BAM. The episode then slowly lays out who Kelly and Yorkie really are, and you can't help but feel for both characters. Yorkie, the 21-yo who became a quadriplegic because she came out of the closet; Kelly, the aged lady whose husband chose a 'natural' death instead of being uploaded to the cloud.
Fascinating concept that was played out really well in the episode. The BDSM (?) club made a lot of sense, as everyone there can't really feel anything, and thus they keep pushing the boundaries to try to feel something, anything.
I did wish the first third of the episode could have been shorter (a niggling issue with many episodes in Season 3... thanks Netflix -_- ), though I guess the director/writer was teasing us and trying to see whether we could gradually figure out (as they popped through the different eras, and the many hints [e.g. "We only have 2 hours tonight!])
I also didn't really like how the episode ended... come on, we can't have happy endings in Black Mirror! Haha but seriously, you would expect a more thought-provoking ending than a simple 'happy ending' of Kelly joining Yorkie in San Junipero.
#5- Hated in the Nation (S03E06)
I must confess, I almost felt like turning off the episode after 10 minutes. The ep didn't feel like it was going anywhere, didn't seem particularly compelling, similar to The Waldo Moment. Thankfully, my wife read ahead and said 'KEEP WATCHING!!'
When the twist hits, and you realise what San Junipero really is, BAM. The episode then slowly lays out who Kelly and Yorkie really are, and you can't help but feel for both characters. Yorkie, the 21-yo who became a quadriplegic because she came out of the closet; Kelly, the aged lady whose husband chose a 'natural' death instead of being uploaded to the cloud.
Fascinating concept that was played out really well in the episode. The BDSM (?) club made a lot of sense, as everyone there can't really feel anything, and thus they keep pushing the boundaries to try to feel something, anything.
I did wish the first third of the episode could have been shorter (a niggling issue with many episodes in Season 3... thanks Netflix -_- ), though I guess the director/writer was teasing us and trying to see whether we could gradually figure out (as they popped through the different eras, and the many hints [e.g. "We only have 2 hours tonight!])
I also didn't really like how the episode ended... come on, we can't have happy endings in Black Mirror! Haha but seriously, you would expect a more thought-provoking ending than a simple 'happy ending' of Kelly joining Yorkie in San Junipero.
#5- Hated in the Nation (S03E06)
So many cool ideas in this episode, but of course the central theme is fascinating and scary - how online shaming can go horribly wrong. It is extremely relevant given how this happens very often now, as online vigilantes can pull out an offending person's personal details and name and shame them.
I felt the show's take of it was very clever, and the twist where it's the participants of the #deathto hashtag that were being targeted was brilliant.
There were also strong and convincing performances by its two female leads, who many have likened to the dynamic between Mulder and Scully in The X-Files. In fact, there apparently was an episode about killer bees in The X-Files too.
Could the episode have been shorter? Yes, of course. But it never really felt draggy at any point, as the plot developed quite naturally and in a believable manner. The ending was strange though - why did Blue have to fake death to catch Garrett Scholes? Didn't really make sense. And what does 'Got him' even mean, is she going to kill him? Feed him to killer bees? Post his photo on Twitter? Not very sure why they chose to end it that way.
I thought of a very Black Mirror-ish way to end it. Parke, after testifying, walks out into a car amidst the angry public, which cuts to multiple tweets of #deathtoParke. Next scene, she's at home, and goes about a very normal routine of changing her clothes, preparing for bed, etc. Then as the camera pans over and out of the window, looking in at her, a robot bee suddenly lands on the window. -fade to black-
#4- National Anthem (S01E01)
This episode seems to rank a little high given how simple and straightforward it was. However, I thought it was a very strong pilot episode that set the tone for the rest of the series, and had little (or no) flaws, thus deserving of its high ranking.
This episode's strength is its directing and pacing. The episode's not-so-subtle dig at how we love and devour sensational media is executed wonderfully. The fact that it uses a very simple, singular and absolutely ridiculous idea, and is able to play it out for a very suspenseful, compelling 45 minutes, shows the strength of the directing and writing.
Similar to Shut Up and Dance, there isn't really any fancy new technology like other Black Mirror episodes. However, the slow, uncomfortable build up to the eventual realisation of 'omg it's really going to happen' makes this pilot episode one of the most compelling ones to watch. I love the subtle lines that the writer includes, such as the Prime Minister's aide advising him to 'take a long time so that it doesn't seem like he is enjoying it'.
This episode seems to rank a little high given how simple and straightforward it was. However, I thought it was a very strong pilot episode that set the tone for the rest of the series, and had little (or no) flaws, thus deserving of its high ranking.
This episode's strength is its directing and pacing. The episode's not-so-subtle dig at how we love and devour sensational media is executed wonderfully. The fact that it uses a very simple, singular and absolutely ridiculous idea, and is able to play it out for a very suspenseful, compelling 45 minutes, shows the strength of the directing and writing.
Similar to Shut Up and Dance, there isn't really any fancy new technology like other Black Mirror episodes. However, the slow, uncomfortable build up to the eventual realisation of 'omg it's really going to happen' makes this pilot episode one of the most compelling ones to watch. I love the subtle lines that the writer includes, such as the Prime Minister's aide advising him to 'take a long time so that it doesn't seem like he is enjoying it'.
And of course, the twisted ending which sets the stage for how Black Mirror episodes are likely to end - leaving you intrigued yet deeply disturbed - the Prime Minister actually did it for nothing, as the princess was released before he started 'the deed'. Oink oink. Well played.
The two complex and thought-provoking issues were brilliantly interwoven in this episode - eugenics, and how technology made it possible to overcome soldiers' reluctance to shoot to kill during war (apparently a true statistic/fact).
I love twists, and the episode sets it up so wonderfully - you are led to believe the episode is going one way - some typical zombie-killing story. Shame on me for thinking that, because this is Black Mirror!!
Like all Netflixed-Season 3 episodes, the episode takes its time to build up the context, and allows some free verbal banter, especially the hilarious crude lines from Raiman (Black Mirror really likes to break gender norms, such as with Raiman, and with the two female leads in Hated by the Nation). It builds up ever so gradually to the twist, and when it hits you, you can't help but feel a sense of oh-shit and oh-no at the same time.
The rest of the episode completes the story, and I thought the idea of MASS is really smart. Soldiers can't shoot to kill? Let them see disgusting zombie-like roaches, and they will fire away. Throw in the bigger idea of eugenics and it rounds up this very thought-provoking and well-written episode of Black Mirror.
The episode ends in classic Black Mirror solemnness - not exactly a happy ending, but is a very natural conclusion, and leaves you feeling uneasy (Similar to endings of The Entire History of You and Nosedive, even Be Right Back).
#2 - White Bear (S02E02)
Wow. I don't even know where to begin. This is one episode where all forty-four minutes are fully utilised, unlike some other episodes (-cough- Season 3 Netflix bloat -cough), even the end credits!
The episode kicks off with suspense, and the audience is as clueless as Victoria as she has no idea where she is or what is going on. I love how she wanders around trying to find out what's happening while all the strangers point their phones at her, a hint towards how people nowadays are more likely to whip out their smartphones to take a photo of an accident rather than call an ambulance.
The action and intensity is kept up for a good 20-30 minutes, until the shocking twist and revelation - that Victoria is not exactly the victim here....
The rest of the episode is almost peripheral, as they let you reel from the shock and process what this actually means, as they indirectly explain the whole thing by showing you the setup and preparatory work before Victoria restarts her day.
This episode almost ranks top for me as it left me feeling SO conflicted and mindblown. Should you feel sorry for Victoria? After all, she did just stand by and video-record when a little girl was being tortured and killed. But to relive this experience of terror and helplessness everyday for entertainment?? Should we really be behind that?
Love the end credits, as they reset the park and you see the preparatory work behind each 'scene'. Interlaced with the black credits, it just gives you sufficient breathing room to shake your head, and the one thing that you probably CAN achieve resolution about is that you are very grateful you are not in Victoria's position.
#1- White Christmas (Christmas Special, between Seasons 2 and 3)
This is one of those episodes where the one sentence synopsis tells you absolutely nothing about what the episode really is about and how brilliant it is. This is the one-line synopsis:
In a mysterious and remote snowy outpost, Matt and Potter share an interesting Christmas meal together, swapping creepy tales of their earlier lives in the outside world.
The episode is a slow burn - the first two acts of the episode are pretty cool ideas on its own, though they seem entirely unrelated. The third act finally reveals what Joe's deal is, but the true reveal comes after that.
The dating coach concept isn't entirely novel or cool, but trust Black Mirror to make things go horribly wrong SO QUICKLY as Matt (played wonderfully by the talented Jon Hamm!) and his student completely misread the situation, and you're just on the edge of your seat going 'no no no' as you realise what's going to happen.
The second act is disturbing by itself - the concept is intriguing and doesn't seem very far-fetched given the current state of technology - creating digital copies to be your slaves. This should be easy to stomach, as after all, they are not human... right? Right?
Who am I kidding. I was extremely disturbed as Matt tortured the digital copy with boredom and solitary confinement, as this is a personal fear as well. I think I will break after one day in that room lol. Is this right, given it's only a digital copy? That's one of the questions the episode leaves us with, as we quickly move on to the next act, as we finally touch on Joe's sad story.
The idea of 'blocking' someone is pretty sad, given you have no way of defending or explaining yourself. We are left as helpless as Joe as he is blocked by his wife without any real explanation, and he visits them every year. The reveal comes gradually, and I guessed it as well with how the scene built up, with the camera only showing the back of his 'daughter' but not her face. (I actually guessed that she was actually black)
Then comes the grand finale, the coup de grace, the big reveal... how does everything that has happened so far fit together? Damn. The conclusion makes perfect sense, and everything that has happened before ties together perfectly. The ending is also classic Black Mirror, leaving you feeling uneasy and with multiple questions in your mind:
Is it worth living as Matt, when he has been blocked from all social interactions? Does he deserve that punishment? Should Joe's digital copy be subject to the mindless torture for thousands of years? Should we be feeling sorry for him (it??)?
All in all, a fantastic episode, and in my books, a truly deserving #1 episode of Black Mirror.
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And that's it! Do you agree with my rankings? Let me know in the comments section below :)
