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Reviews
Black Mirror: Smithereens (2019)
There's watching emotion, and then there's feeling emotion.
I finished this episode and thought this would make a great finale to end off the show.
The phones aren't the point. It's empathy. People try to fix with money, feigning kinship, anecdotes, brute force, all this superficial stuff. He's in pain in an uncaring world just like ours where people are easily distracted from harsh realities and shy away from the ugliness. A problem he himself feels to be a major part of. And all he wants is to be listened to.
I wonder if Billy was meant to serve as a stand-in for the viewer. He's as curious about the kidnapper's situation as we are, he's only shown being isolated in a desert just as we are also technically removed from the show's reality, and as he tries to speak about himself he gets cut off, because it's not about him. His role is to listen, observe, spectate, while the kidnapper says his piece. And then, the last shot, we look at his eyes. He closes them, which cuts to credits because he was our perspective.
Black Mirror: Black Museum (2017)
Justice?
The three mini stories, which I'll refer to as the first part, feature the recurring motif of sharing and transferring ones experiences through futuristic tech. I just knew it wasn't going to go well for these scenarios, but I still had to watch them unfold. A lot of what Black Mirror means to me is to explore these very unlikely but interesting "what if" scenarios.
As soon as the curator presented the first scenario, I knew he was going to be a shady guy. I guess it was just a question of exactly how shady? As we find out leading into the second half, he's the worst of the worst. A sadist catering to other sadists (if we are to assume that these digital human consciousnesses are "alive" anyway, but that would be a long tangent), and an egomaniac who'll cross the boundaries on ethical experimentation. Our protagonist reveals her identity and lays down her justice upon him for torturing her falsely convicted father. I thought it was odd she literally kept the curator's screams as a memento to hang on her mirror, but to each their own I suppose. She frees the poor human-monkey chimera (yes, I'm calling it that) from her glass prison and you're left to interpret her fate. Hopefully there's tech that can transfer her consciousness somewhere more expressive than a doll with two phrases. They add another twist that the protagonist seemingly cohabits her brain with her dead mother, successfully? With this episode, Arkangel, and The Entire History of You, this show has given us more reason to believe surrendering the privacy of your mind to others does more harm than good, so I wish this wasn't just a random little twist they shoved into the ending and that they actually expanded more on how this anomaly worked.
I feel like this episode deserves a second watch to see if there were any more themes that went over my head. There were certainly human rights issues being presented. I want to believe that even the title "Black Museum" is a double meaning.
It's good. Maybe a little recycled, but still good.
HouseBroken (2021)
Don't expect too much.
I love animals so I was really curious about this premise. I still went in with low expectations because apparently this show has been out for a year and I only heard of it this week.
The writing's not deep, and the animation appeared to be standard, but there was just enough material there to keep me invested. I like the jokes. Now if you're looking for something that will get you wheezing, keep searching because this show's not it. I also found myself getting attached to the characters, worrying about how things would turn out for them.
I can't explain why I like it, but it was a pleasant escape for me. Sometimes you just need a show that doesn't try to be super thought provoking. That has cute talking animals that make silly fart and pet jokes. I'm keeping the score modest because I don't see this show being for everyone, but I feel that it's still fun enough to get a score above negative.