Spoilers Black Mirror - Season 5

Trailer for season five Black Mirror dropped today:



The season will be three episodes long and will feature Andrew Scott, Anthony Mackie, Miley Cyrus, Topher Grace, Damson Idris, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and will debut on June 5.

 

Finally! To bad there are only 3 episodes this season, though I guess Bandersnatch was really the 4th episode

 

Looking forward to it!

 

Excellent - thanks for the heads up. I was wondering when they'd finally get around to this.

 

Individual trailers for each of the episodes:

 

Miley Cyrus seems like an odd choice to act in this show...or anything for that matter.

 

I think she got her start as an actress.

 

Yup, in a little thing called Hannah Montana.

 

I agree. It was just a long time ago, and it will be interesting to see how she performs in a more adult, dramatic presentation.

 

I watched all three episodes today. They were above average, but I don't think they were as good as Bandersnatch. My favorite of the three was Striking Vipers. I did NOT see that coming until I was blindsighted. Definitely better than anything The Twilight Zone has put out this year, though.

 

So I guess I'm not the only person who forgot this came out yesterday.

I watched the first two episodes, one hit and one big miss. Spoilers to follow...


Striking Vipers

While I get what they were going for, this episode fell completely flat for me. Remove the hyperrealistic virtual reality game and the story is barely changed: Two men explore their feelings for each other and...that's it. The core of the story is a good one but the episode did nothing with it and barely had any resolution to it. No moral, no classic twisting of the knife, just simply ended with very little happening and very little exploration of the ideas the episode presented. I was left feeling "Okay, whatever," not unlike how I felt about the new version of The Twilight Zone before I got bored and stopped watching.


Smithereens

This episode, however, did a much better job of slowing presenting its multifaceted themes and largely explored the ideas behind to their fullest. Anchored by a riveting performance by the always wonderful Andrew Scott, the story showed how a man marred by tragedy tried and failed to execute a flawed plan to find redemption, only for it to end in tragedy again. I enjoyed how Chris' plan quickly fell apart because of two simple but large mistakes (kidnapping a mere intern and then forgetting the intern's gun in the first car) and I further enjoyed how the combined forces of the police, data mining, and basic social media networking quickly identified him, motivations, and his ultimate goal. I also appreciated when Billy offered Chris anything after he bared his soul, Chris' request was an act of kindness for the woman he slept with earlier in the episode.

 

I like the first episode a lot. Going full speed at our biggest taboos in the face of new technology.

Strikes a major chord in questioning the role of physical versus emotional in our sexual relationships and what will happen when virtual sex really gives us full control over our virtual experience.

I appreciated the ending too where they agreed he gets his weird virtual invest once a month and she gets to cheat on that day. Like a clean antiseptic solution to virtual sex that preserves traditional marriage. Maybe the direction of our culture in 50 years.

Also cool to have an earlier episode in the USS Calister continuity.

 

Rachel, Jack and Rachel Too

A decent episode with two stories converging into one. While it's probably better off not going in the direction that I though it would (i.e. the typical rise of the self-aware AI robots), I wasn't entirely sold on what they did instead. They did a good job getting my blood boiling with Ashley's aunt/manager and her enforcers controlling Ashley's life and career and then drug-inducing her into a coma so they could literally rip music out of her mind. The story has shades of plenty of other young performers (often women) who are taken advantage of by their family and/or handlers, and the story even reminded me of Stan Lee in his final days. I don't know much about Miley Cyrus' personal history, but I couldn't help but wonder if there was some truth to that story on some level.

That said, there wasn't much to the story beyond the rage of seeing what happened to Ashley and then Rachel and Jack coming to her rescue in the nick of time. But I was amused by the adorable Ashley Too doll, especially when the inhibitor was removed.

 

I guess it subverted expectations a little too that in the end it was really the story of the older sister getting her mojo back not the younger one. Though the Nine Inch Nails inspired songs should have been a clue.

 

One of us is probably obligated to go over there and let these people know about the perils of too many "Holodeck" episodes. They've dipped into that brain button VR bag quite a bit & this latest one didn't really offer much imho. In fact, I wasn't overly impressed with anything this season

 

Love Black Mirror but the three episodes of the 5th season all felt mediocre to me. Not bad but not all that memorable.

 

Just watched Smithereens.

It all seemed a tad obvious an observation by Black Mirror standards. I feel like they’ve said they same thing about social media in other episodes but way better.

 

Finally got around to Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too.

Probably the best of this season's episodes. Maybe the earliest on the timeline of the 'cookie' continuity. Even if the observation on pop star personas being fake and having their career controlled is a bit obvious. The doll taking on the real Ashley persona was great

My one issue with the episode is, the idea that pop stars write all their music, and they would actually need the pop star's brain waves to write a pop song in their style.

In real life if Miley Cyrus rebelled against her pop persona, they'd say "Whatever, yer on yer own" and start over with some new naive 19 year old.

 

She went from Disney tween idol to well this:

I think her "pop persona" has gone through some changes.

 

Yeah, but she didn’t leave the pop music sphere, just broadened her audience from kids to all pop music fans. Not like the record company wasn’t on board for that.

One late observation to the episode. The last part reminded me of a Nickelodeon show. Like, the way they rescued Ashley O is the way they’d rescue Alex Mack.