Black Mirror - Season 4 Review
This review of Season 4 of Black Mirror is spoiler-free and super late!
For those who remember the article published at the beginning of January, I stated that Black Mirror was one of my favorite shows that I've ever witnessed. With Season 4 just having come out, the intention was for me to immediately begin watching it after posting my retrospective. So the watching part did happen, but I never got around to writing about it but since then I've had an idea of how I want to write this piece. Quick preliminary thoughts though on Season 4 are that it definitely isn't the best overall season for Black Mirror, but it does contain a few episodes that I consider to be among the best in the series. In this piece, I'm going to focus my writing on three different episodes, first I will talk about two episodes I really liked, and finally the one episode I think was absolutely awful. So, let's get right into it with the first episode I liked!
Hang the DJ is about two people: Georgina Campbell's Amy and Joe Cole's Frank. They're in a futuristic world that attempts to match people with their perfect partner through multiple different calculated relationships. In this world, relationships before the final match are given specific time periods to learn about the person in the program. In this, Frank and Amy begin to connect outside of the system and that begins to cause problems. They love, they fight, and they struggle. For me, this episode was another unique episode in the vein of San Junipero. It's the lighthearted episode in the group, granted though it does have a rather dark premise when thinking about it. For me though, what makes this episode so great is the chemistry between Joe Cole and Georgina Campbell. They have a palpable connection that almost feels like it's not just a character to character relationship. At first, what seems like a one side emotional affair does come full circle and while the story does at times feel generic, I actually didn't realize how much I loved this episode until left to think on it.
Splitting up my two favorite episodes, I want to spend some time tackling what I believe is the absolute worst episode of Black Mirror ever. Coming in this season, we have Metalhead. For some, this episode is eerie because it connects to reality in a strange way. Essentially the episode's entire plot is based around the idea of a hunt. Bella (Maxine Peake) is attempting to get away from a robotic dog that is seeking to kill her. The truth of the matter is that this episode just didn't have enough context or story to really make me care at all. While I praise the decision to film in black and white as it's a unique idea that Black Mirror has avoided up until this point, it just felt that if it was lengthened out to an actual episode of Black Mirror there could have been hoped. Sure it's a connection to the Boston Dynamics' dogs but it really doesn't do anything for Black Mirror and just felt completely out of place in comparison to the other episodes.
Ahh, quietly becoming one of my favorite actors in Hollywood we have a man known by many as Meth Damon. Jesse Plemons is a man who has been showing up in everything as of late, and here he takes a starring role in a fantastic episode known as USS Callister. His character of Robert Daly is a gifted coder who helped to found an MMO known as Infinity. Seeing as he's a rather lonely person he developed an offline version of the game that's based on his favorite film series Space Fleet (akin to Star Trek). Here he is able to pull people in from the real world with rather strange consequences. This episode is one of very few that has special effects often and a lot of real comedy. For me, this combination of things makes USS Callister such a fun and different episode.
Season 4 of Black Mirror took a lot of risks. Some of them landed (ala USS Callister), while others failed. For this reason, I can't come out and say that as a whole this season was the best of the crop. But, I can look at a specific few episodes this season and point out just how powerful they are and how they fit in with the best of the best from the series. After watching this season, I decided that I wanted to look at the series as a whole and begin my newest Ranked pieces focusing on every episode of Black Mirror! Regardless, for me, Black Mirror's fourth season had great moments and terrible moments. Balancing between fantastic and generic, Charlie Brooker continues to make a show that's necessary viewing.
