Black Mirror Season Five Review

I think it’s safe to say that Netflix’s Black Mirror, once the toast of the television universe, has hit the point of diminished returns with its most recent four episodes (the series’s completed fifth season, which dropped this past week, and the interactive episode “Bandersnatch,” which aired at the end of 2018). What was once a sharp-edged commentary on technology has turned into an uninspired series that can still boast some strong performances amidst stories that miss the mark.

“Bandersnatch”

Credit where credit is due: “Bandersnatch” was a heck of a swing from Charlie Booker and the Black Mirror team. People have loved Choose Your Own Adventure tales for years, and if there was ever a series to lean into the precarious nature of such a story, this show was it. But, boy, for all the bells and whistles (and I “played” the show several times through, hitting on all the possible endings), there wasn’t that much to care about in “Bandersnatch.” In fact, the only track that really felt new, original, and interesting was the option that put a meta spin on things (where you, the viewer, tell Stefan that he is being controlled by someone from the future and he’s stuck in a TV show). All the rest just felt like more of the same from Black Mirror: bleak, depressing turns where the “hero” ends up trapped in a cycle he cannot get out of. Which is fun the first few times it appears in the series, but at this stage, it’s become a trope. And a not particularly interesting one at that.

Imagine having a Choose Your Own Adventure story linked to one of the series’s best outings: a “San Junipero” or a “USS Callister.” With those complex and interesting characters and the fun settings, it would have been a hell of a ride to explore other options and see just how far down the rabbit hole you could travel. With something as perfunctory as “Bandersnatch,” it’s impossible not to wonder just how a great story could have worked in this format. But, alas, we’ll never get to know.

“Striking Vipers”

There’s an interesting, complex story somewhere within the mess that is “Striking Vipers.” The episode instead chooses to frame the main conflict as what happens when someone gets so caught up in the world of a video game (and all that it offers for escapism) that they begin to neglect the real people and things in their life. Which is also an interesting (and important, in this day and age) story to tell. This version of that story isn’t particularly well-structured, as so much of the episode is spent trying to navigate the intricacies of what it means to have two (apparently) heterosexual men enjoy having sex inside a VR simulation. Sure, it’s nice to see that neither Danny nor Karl is especially disturbed by the homoerotic elements of this situation by the end of the episode, but the episode stops short of fully exploring what is actually happening here.

Why are they both so drawn to these encounters? Is it just the stimulation combined with deep relationship the men have outside of the game (which seems to be the path the story takes, but there’s no real discussion or investigation as to why they can be openly together in the game but the spark isn’t there outside of it – if we are to take the men at their word)? There’s a ton of interesting character work that could have been done here, but no way a 60 minute episode could get far enough into the weeds to make this the episode it could have been (which is a real disappointment). Instead, the episode cuts past the meat of the story: what happens when Theo gets the full story. We know what happens a year later, once the dust has settled and there’s a plan in place (and good on Booker for making sure Theo got what she wanted out of the arrangement as well). But the interim time is what would have made this episode great. We want to see the characters grapple with the problem, not gloss over it an solve it off screen. “Striking Vipers” was a missed opportunity.

“Smithereens”

If “Striking Vipers” was an exercise in an interesting story that failed in its execution, “Smithereens” was a case of a stunning leading performance that was failed by a perfunctory story. Andrew Scott has had a hell of few months, with his much talked about performance in the exquisite second season of Fleabag (seriously, please, please watch Fleabag – it’s almost certainly going to top my Top Ten Shows list in December), and now this deeply felt performance in Black Mirror. If only the story could match the incredible heights Scott soars to. But, alas, “Smithereens” is a dud, through and through.

The concept of a social media conglomerate having enough personal information to know everything about us is scary, but it’s also something we are all too well aware of. I know Black Mirror can’t always be on the cutting edge of predicting crazy instances with technology, but it’s far less successful when it’s simply telling us things we already know – which is absolutely the case here. Without the strong, tortured performance by Scott, the episode would read like a bad after school special on the dangers of using a phone while driving (which, at its heart, is exactly what the episode ends up being). It’s a great message (which is a rare statement to make about something as focused on darkness as Black Mirror), but it’s also creatively stunted. This isn’t anything we haven’t seen and heard thousands of times before, even if most of those stories don’t include a botched kidnapping and the threat of a murder-suicide. Is it awful that the story ends with Chris’s death? Sure. But that was an ending that was also telegraphed from the word go. In a formulaic episode, one expects Black Mirror to zig when another show would zag. Here, it was just exactly as we expected.

“Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too”

This was a bad hour of television with little to nothing redeeming to speak of. The performances were amateurish (Miley Cyrus was at least fun when she was given a chance to let loose as Ashley Too, but that’s about the only positive I can find), the story was a mess, and the tech was . . . weird? The concept of a Svengali producer who forces an act to perform even when they don’t want to is, again, nothing new to entertainment – both reality and in storytelling. Drugging young starlets is also, sadly, not a new invention of Charlie Booker. And, in Black Mirror, creating an imprint of a person’s mind is also not a new idea (see San Junipero). So, the whole episode was simply a rehashing of familiar plots left and right.

I guess the “happy ending” of the episode was a fresher element of the story, as Black Mirror is rarely known for letting the “good guys” win in the end, but still, slogging through the story to get to that point was more of a punishment than the reward the ending offers. And that’s quite the disappointing note to end this season of the show on. By the time the credits truly began rolling, I was wholly ready to completely write off the series for good. The magic of early installments (when the show didn’t have the apparently crushing weight of expectations dragging it down, along with the requests of every major performer under the sun begging to appear on the show) is well and truly lost at this point. The soulless execution of “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too” proves it (especially coming off the previous two disappointing installments). I’ve really loved Black Mirror over the years, and I’m disappointed to see it lose its potency when we could use it the most. But here we are, watching a tiny robot with Miley Cyrus’s voice rock out while listening to Miley Cyrus cover punk rock. How far this once mighty series has fallen.