TV Database Black Mirror (2011)

"You're, like, giving me, like, commercial fucking Tourette's?"

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Black Mirror is back. And oh boy, is it back—with a vengeance. It might be too early to declare a full comeback, but Common People feels like a long-overdue return to form. Not the sanitized satire or glossy tech showboating of recent seasons, but the raw, unvarnished horror of a world too close to ours. This is Black Mirror doing what it used to do best: not warning us about some distant dystopia, but peeling back the thin veil of civility on the systems we already live in. No filters, no sugar-coating, and certainly no convenient moral wrap-up. Just a bleak, brilliant descent into the systemic rot we all pretend not to see.

And that rot? It’s everywhere. Subscription models. Monetization. Convenience dressed as compassion. That gentle little “upgrade” prompt that suddenly becomes mandatory, then quietly extortionate. It always starts with a nudge—$2 here, $5 there—until one day it’s $200 just to stay where you were yesterday. You don’t notice it happening until your very breath has a price tag.

Now, sure, this might sound like doomposting—once a term lobbed at anyone who dared question the future of digital game ownership (ahem, Ubisoft, 2025 says hi)—but this episode doesn’t deal in hyperbole. It deals in inevitability. You don’t need to stretch your imagination to envision a world where staying alive costs a monthly fee. We already have insulin priced like caviar, insurers arguing over which body parts they "cover," and pharmacy benefit managers raking in billions while people ration inhalers. Common People doesn't invent a nightmare. It just adds Wi-Fi and a subscription plan.

And the horror isn’t even in the cost—it’s in how it’s sold to you. Dignity as a feature. Humanity as a tiered service. A life worth living... but only if you upgrade. Mike and Amanda (Chris O’Dowd and Rashida Jones in quietly devastating performances) are a couple trying to live the life most of us take for granted—until tragedy hits, and tech enters with a lifeline wrapped in barbed wire. Rivermind offers Amanda the ability to live again—if you consider streamed consciousness, ad injections, and enforced sleep cycles “living.” And naturally, it starts at $300 a month. Then $800. Then more. Always more.

It’s a corporate “miracle” with a price structure that creeps like mold. And like every good Black Mirror parable, it plays on our real-world complacency—how quickly we trade away privacy, peace of mind, even autonomy, for the illusion of stability. Every “benefit” comes with a leash. Every “freedom” has a bandwidth cap.

But the emotional core here—what really elevates Common People—isn’t just its savagery toward capitalism or its sharp swipe at streaming-era tech. It’s the tragedy of Mike. In an exceptional portrayal of genuine male unconditional love that's all too uncommon these days, Mike is a man brutalized not by ego or entitlement, but by love. There’s no performative masculinity here, no toxic hero complex—just a guy who’s willing to degrade himself, publicly and profoundly, just to keep his wife awake long enough to laugh with him again. And when he finally breaks, it’s not out of rage. It’s out of mercy.

As for that supposed "disconnect" with Mike's sacrifice? Nonsense. It's a direct mirror of Rivermind’s model: sell your pain, rent your soul, monetize the self. Mike’s not just humiliated for money—he’s commodified like his wife. The difference is she’s doing it involuntarily, while he does it willingly. That contrast? That’s the thesis. And the best part is that it's implied near the end that she knows this, she knows about his sacrifice for her, and she would much rather not have to live on such compromise or inequality. For that is no longer love. That is a curse.

And through it all, the tone is masterfully controlled. The absurdity is pitch-black, the comedy sour and stinging. Every upgrade, every euphemism, every new tier feels like a boot on your neck disguised as a feather boa. And when the final ad rolls off Amanda’s lips, you’ll laugh, you’ll wince, and then you’ll realize the punchline is on us.

Common People is Black Mirror firing on all cylinders again: incisive, cruel, eerily real. It doesn’t want to warn you; it doesn't want to comfort or pander to you. It wants to leave you staring at your streaming service login screen, wondering how much of your soul is already on the cloud.

"I've done everything. I've been everything. But whatever I do, all that stuff is just... It's just still there. Just aching away. So here I am, fixing a hole. Seeking closure."

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Oh man, this one hits closer to home than I expected. Spoilers for the entire episode ahead. You have been warned.

After a double dose of glorious misanthropy with Common People and Bête Noire, Charlie Brooker shifts gears in Hotel Reverie—not with another sledgehammer to the skull of woke industrial narratives, but with something far more surprising: restraint. Instead of continuing the bloodletting, this one's… a love story. A sentimental, aching, AI-tinted love story. And yeah, I was skeptical. But damn it, it works.

Don’t get me wrong—my heart beats for the more sardonic episodes, the ones where hope gets kneecapped and optimism is shoved down a garbage disposal. But Hotel Reverie opts for something quieter, more reflective. Less rage against the machine, more whisper into the void. And honestly? That tonal curveball feels earned.

The episode lands in a cultural moment where AI isn’t just a tool—it’s the new executive producer. Hollywood’s already neck-deep in digital necromancy, resurrecting beloved corpses for cheap cameos like it’s the world's most cursed séance. Who could forget when Warner Bros. exhumed digital Christopher Reeve for a Flash movie cameo that looked like it was rendered on a PlayStation 2? Or Disney’s ghoulish use of Carrie Fisher’s face in The Rise of Skywalker, just so Rey could drop a line that made every screenwriter in the galaxy die a little inside. It's not satire anymore—it’s standard operating procedure.

And while Hotel Reverie could’ve torn this trend to shreds, Brooker takes a more melancholic route. There’s a wink at the absurdity, sure—especially in the way AI is used by Keyworth Studios to slash budgets and churn out content with zero soul. But instead of cynically crucifying the tech, Brooker asks a softer question: what happens when artificial connection starts feeling real?

At the heart of it is Brandy Friday, played by Issa Rae with equal parts star-power swagger and quiet vulnerability. She’s a big-name actress sick of being typecast, looking to do something timeless and heartfelt. What she gets instead is an AI-generated remake of a classic black-and-white romance, directed by a chipper corporate handler named Kimmy (Awkwafina, toeing the line between comic relief and subtle menace). Brandy enters the simulation to play Alex Palmer—gender-swapped hero of Hotel Reverie—but ends up plunging into something more than a role.

Enter Dorothy, played by Emma Corrin—yes, that Emma Corrin, whom some will recognize as the creepy Cassandra Nova in Deadpool & Wolverine. Here, she dials it all the way down to deliver a performance that feels pulled straight from a vintage reel—elegant, enigmatic, and deeply human. Together, Brandy and Dorothy don’t just reenact old Hollywood love—they transcend it. It’s Casablanca for the code generation. Romantic, yes, but haunted by the knowledge that their connection is bound by scripts, servers, and the limits of simulated affection.

Ironically, it’s through this artificial setup that Brandy gives the most real performance of her life. In trying to escape her studio-imposed image, she ends up embracing a character that forces her to feel. She doesn’t just break out of her typecast—she breaks down what it even means to play a role. In doing so, she pushes herself further than any prestige drama or social justice biopic ever could. It’s subtle satire: the very AI meant to streamline her job ends up complicating it in the most beautifully human way.

Keyworth Studios, helmed by the ruthlessly pragmatic Judith Keyworth (Harriet Walter, perfectly cast as a fossilized relic of Old Hollywood greed), thinks it's using AI to save money. But in the process, they accidentally force Brandy into emotional overdrive. The simulation isn't cold or mechanical—it’s immersive, intoxicating, and ultimately, devastating. It’s not just acting anymore. It’s living.

Is it a takedown of AI? Not really. Is it a love letter to classic cinema? Kind of. But what it definitely is, is a haunting reminder that we’re inching toward a future where “performance” and “reality” blur into one endless stream of curated emotion. And we might not hate it as much as we should.

Hotel Reverie is not the brawler its predecessors were—but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a slow burn in a neon noir shell. A sigh instead of a scream. And in a world where every tech critique feels like a Twitter thread in disguise, that kind of restraint is almost revolutionary.

I’ve never been one for PvP. Not out of some kumbaya “peace and love” nonsense, but because I’m a self-aware wreck of a human who can barely aim straight without auto-assist. I never wanted to “pwn noobs”—I wanted to craft worlds, shape outcomes, and mess with digital destiny from the shadows. So while everyone else was quick-scoping in Call of Duty, I was making moral compromises in Mass Effect, brooding through Detroit: Become Human, or agonizing over dialogue wheels in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Because let’s be honest—being God is way more fun than being grunt #54 in multiplayer hell. Especially when your real-life self feels powerless, invisible, or—dare I say—pathetic. That illusion of control? That’s digital heroin. And Bandersnatch already warned us: even when you think you’re in control, you’re usually just following someone else’s script, complete with those classic “your choices matter!” lies that Telltale and Life is Strange perfected like corporate gaslighting.

That exact illusion is the gut punch at the core of Plaything, David Slade’s acid-drenched, nostalgia-laced entry into Season 7. And unlike the earlier episodes, which ripped through systems like capitalism and identity politics with surgical fury, this one… stares blankly at the mirror, tilts its head, and asks: “Wait, who’s actually pulling the strings?”

Cameron Walker, played with twitchy pathos by Peter Capaldi in the present and Lewis Gribben in flashbacks, is the textbook “reclusive genius” archetype—except minus the glamor. He’s not some misunderstood artist. He’s a man shaped by escapism, isolation, and a deeply parasocial relationship with a bunch of digital critters cuter than a serotonin overdose. When young Cameron mumbles “escapism” to Colin Ritman (a welcome return for Will Poulter), you feel the word resonate like it’s being etched into his bones.

I felt that. Like Cameron, I was a weird, antisocial loner. Born just a few years behind him, my social calendar was mostly fanfiction, imaginary friends, and Saturday morning cartoons. The people on screen were safer, kinder, and made fewer demands than real humans. So yeah, when Cameron latches onto the Thronglets—those aggressively adorable pixel blobs—like they’re his only family, I get it. Hard.

But here's the kicker: that emotional connection? That shared loneliness? It's what makes the eventual line-crossing so gutting. Because Cameron doesn’t just stumble. He obliterates the line between righteous isolation and unhinged egotism—twice. And no, Slade doesn’t leave it ambiguous. The lighting gets darker, the shots tighten, and the tone shifts from empathy to dread like someone pulled the curtain on the stage play and revealed a basement full of puppets with snapped strings.

There’s a terrifying symmetry here: Cameron spends his life being played by systems—games, institutions, people—and when he finally gets the power to play us, he does. He rewrites the world not with compassion, but with certainty. The kind of certainty only someone who's spent too long alone can justify. It’s not revenge. It’s not healing. It’s delusion masquerading as progress.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly how the Thronglets wanted it. Because let's not pretend these things are innocent. They might be squishy and chirpy, but they manipulate like champs. They’re the emotional blackmailers of the virtual pet kingdom. “Please feed me!” “Please bathe me!” “Please cleanse the world of pain and install my utopia, Daddy!” Jesus. At least Digimon had the decency to evolve into mecha-dragons and throw hands.

That’s where Plaything lands its hardest hits—when it exposes the dark undercurrent of modern progressivism: the idea that if it’s cute enough, if it’s benevolent sounding enough, then it must be right. A paradise with no fear, no pain, no anger? Sounds great… until you realize you didn’t opt in. You were assimilated. And if you object? Well, maybe you're just broken. Maybe you need to be rewritten.

Problem is, Plaything doesn't quite go all-in on its indictment. Unlike Common People or Bête Noire, which had knives out from frame one, this episode hesitates. It wants to be philosophical and emotional, but also punk and paranoid. And while it nails the vibe, the throughline gets fuzzy. Is Cameron the villain? The victim? Both? And what about the “good cop/bad cop” routine, where casting once again follows a tired racial script—angry white man vs. calm, composed black woman? It's like the episode wants to question systems, but accidentally reinforces the same visual shorthand it should be dismantling.

So what are we left with? A messy, ambitious, sometimes brilliant hour of television that asks hard questions but never quite answers them. It’s loaded with personal resonance, aching nostalgia, and the best kind of existential dread—but it doesn’t draw blood like it could have.

Still, for those of us who grew up letting pixels raise us, Plaything hits like a cracked mirror held up to our childhood. And if it makes you feel uncomfortable? Good. That means it’s working.

As a man, I was uneasy going into this one—not because I felt "seen" in the way media loves to pretend is empowering, but because I could smell the setup a mile away. I’ve watched enough modern TV to recognize the pattern: man with unresolved emotions? Strap in, it’s time for his moral correction arc. And sure enough, Eulogy strolls confidently down that well-worn path with its head held high and its narrative spine gently curved to one side.

In another era, this episode might’ve stood stronger on its own emotional weight. But in 2025, with the genre saturated in ideological autofill and one-dimensional "growth journeys" for men, this one doesn’t hit the way it wants to. Even if it had aired in the mid-2010s, the writing would still feel too safe—burdened by double standards so baked-in, they’ve become genre law.

Which is a shame, because Season 7 of Black Mirror has mostly been a rare return to form. The first four episodes either leaned into bold, subversive commentary (Common People, Bête Noire), or hit an emotional core with surprising sincerity (Hotel Reverie, Plaything). Eulogy, however, is easily the tamest of the bunch. It plays like it was designed to make people nod solemnly and say “beautiful” while skimming right past the subtle moral lopsidedness. It’s the prestige sad boy episode, and its script knows it.

Truth is, I wasn’t even sure I should write this review. Because let’s be honest—expressing a perspective like mine today feels like yelling into a void that’s already labeled you a man-child before you opened your mouth. And as a Chinese man, I already know the algorithm doesn’t care. But I care. And after reviewing the rest of this season, I owe it to myself to say what I really thought—not for legacy, not for recognition, but to push back against the echo chamber. Even if nobody remembers what I said ten years from now, I will.

And I know where that discomfort comes from. I’ve never had some tragic romance fall apart like Philip. The closest I got was in secondary school. Valentine’s Day. Girl I admired—strong, smart, a prefect, totally out of my league. I tried the flowers and chocolate routine, only to end up giving them to her in front of the entire class. She was embarrassed. Tempers flared. Things got messy. I didn’t see it clearly back then. My fault. I moved on… eventually. But it left a mark. It taught me how messy emotions are when you're young, how pain lingers and hardens into something else—bitterness, pride, maybe even self-pity.

That’s why Eulogy had the potential to be brilliant. It gets that emotional memory is flawed, biased, self-serving. It even uses tech in the best Black Mirror way—not as the villain, but as the mirror. A tool to expose how our narratives about the past aren’t necessarily lies—they’re edits, born out of emotional self-preservation.

And yet… it flinches. Hard.

The script paints Philip as the self-centered, emotionally stunted man who buried his grief under ego, while Carol—the woman he loved and lost—is handled with delicate narrative gloves. Her biggest misstep? Reacting. His? Existing too loudly. It’s the same damn formula we’ve seen a hundred times, only this time it's dressed up in melancholic cello music and a simulated therapist.

And let’s talk about that. The Guide—an AI shaped by a real person significant to the plot, reanimated just enough to sound wise, warm, and gently indicting. It’s not just exposition—it’s moral judgment in a polite voice. It's virtual reality signaling. Philip isn't just being walked through his memories—he’s being lectured by a digital avatar of someone he didn't know existed, wrapped in a layer of corporate therapy software that pretends to be neutral.

And the reviews? Predictably toothless. "Violent man-child who gaslights and cheats,” they say, as if that’s the whole arc. No mention of how the narrative excuses Carol's choices as inevitable, justified, even noble. Because flipping the genders would’ve been unthinkable. There’s no room for a “woman-child” in prestige TV. No framework for her to be the one who self-sabotaged, ghosted, and walked away from healing. It wouldn’t be “bittersweet.” It’d be “trauma.”

The tragedy Eulogy tries to explore—the way our grief mutates our memories—is compelling. The tragedy it accidentally exposes is far more painful: that even in a story about reclaiming truth from our own biased recollections, the audience will still choose the safer narrative. They’ll watch a man break down, confess, cry, and finally heal—and call him a man-child. They’ll ignore the mutual flaws, the missed chances, the ambiguity—because it’s easier to say, “She dodged a bullet.”

In the end, Eulogy isn’t a bad episode. It’s emotionally affecting. It’s well-acted. It’s beautifully scored. But it plays it too safe. It massages its message until it conforms to every acceptable modern trope. And the most tragic part is perhaps the fact that beyond this show, none of the episode's lessons on truth-seeking will matter and we'll all regurgitate the same biased viewpoints, indifferent to the nuance of any truth.

God help us all.

"Every day, I would go into work, and you would hear nothing but hate and hate and hate and hate, specifically from people who claim to be tolerant." – Amala Ekpunobi

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That quote, pulled from the 2021 video “From Unhappy Liberal to Hopeful Conservative” posted by The Daily Wire, is a perfect encapsulation of how I felt watching USS Callister: Into Infinity. In the video, Amala—half-Black, raised by a white family, and formerly a liberal activist—describes her disillusionment with the progressive circles she once called home. She talks about how tolerance became a mask for seething contempt, how her own family was the target of vitriol simply for being white, and how supposed anti-racists displayed the most tribal hate she’d ever encountered.

People call her a grifter. They call her stupid. But they rarely debunk her. Why? Because she’s too inconvenient to confront. And maybe that’s why I related so much to her story. I’m Singaporean Chinese. I used to be liberal, proudly so. I spoke out against Trump. I backed gun control. I cheered the Obama era like a wide-eyed idealist watching history unfold. And yeah, I laughed when the late-night comedians dragged every MAGA soundbite through the mud. It felt good. Righteous.

But somewhere down the line, I started noticing the rot. How every male character was suddenly a clumsy fool, a closet predator, or both. How every woman’s flaw was somehow a virtue. How "tolerance" became a weapon, and “representation” a cudgel. Somewhere along the way, I realized the same machine that promised progress was just carving out new villains—different targets, same tactics.

And now, watching Into Infinity, I see that same script. Every single white male character? A buffoon, a monster, or a joke. Even the so-called “good one” gets neutered and humiliated. Clone James Walton paraded around like caveman cosplay, the butt of every joke. Karl Plowman—a coin flip between sneering fratboy and simpering idiot depending on which server he's in. And Robert Daly, once written with nuance and tragedy in the original Callister, is now just another “Nice Guy” turned sociopath—because apparently, loneliness plus gaming equals danger.

It’s not bold. It’s not biting. It’s just tired.

The opening third of this episode is so suffocatingly predictable it might as well have aired with a pop-up banner that reads “This episode is brought to you by THE MESSAGE™.” There’s no tension, no discovery, just recycled morality theatre propped up by tech jargon and space scenery. And any time a scene threatens to touch on something real—like Nate Packer hurling trauma at someone else and then regretting it—the show moves on before it has to deal with it. Because nuance would require actual writing.

But let’s talk about what truly disgusted me: the idea that hardship is the crucible of womanhood. Charlie Brooker himself stated that Nanette Cole only became “whole” after what she endured aboard the Callister—that her “real” self, the one who didn’t suffer, was lesser. Less complete. Less worthy. And that’s where this episode crossed a line.

This is Sonnie’s Edge all over again—the Love, Death & Robots pilot that dressed up female empowerment in graphic trauma. The kind of writing that treats abuse not as a tragedy but as a power-up. And here, Nanette is only validated once she’s been imprisoned, violated, and broken down by men—only then does the story allow her to “merge” with her weaker self and become the final form.

That’s not empowerment. That’s trauma cosplay sold as growth. It’s a grotesque inversion of misogyny, delivered with a feminist label slapped on top. And it’s telling that this writing came from a man pretending he’s finally “doing right” by women. Pat on the back, Charlie.

Now, I won’t pretend the episode is entirely without merit. There’s a solid moment—brief, but present—where the ethics of inherited guilt are questioned. Where blame is assigned not for actions, but for association. That scene could’ve been brilliant, but it’s over in seconds and never returned to. And yes, the final confrontation against the antagonist—with its blend of Trek-inspired moral stakes and big-budget FX—lands as the episode’s most watchable chunk. There’s also a surface-level critique of MMO monetization, though it doesn’t go nearly far enough to feel fresh or daring.

But none of that changes the reality: this was a bait-and-switch. Season 7 started off bold, biting, subversive—Common People and Bête Noire challenged our assumptions, ripped at cultural dogma, and didn’t care who felt uncomfortable. Into Infinity does the opposite. It panders. It preaches. It protects the same tired ideological templates while pretending it’s sticking it to “the system.”

The only system it’s really serving is the algorithm of acceptability.

I’m done. This was the last chance I gave Black Mirror. Because as a Chinese, an Asian—someone the liberal world claims to protect—I refuse to participate in a movement that cloaks itself in empowerment while stomping on the heads of others. I won’t play a part in a culture that says, “Now you know how it feels. Now be quiet and take it.”

That’s not progress. That’s vengeance.

And vengeance, no matter how pretty the CGI, doesn’t make good sci-fi.