You know, when you suspect something, it’s always better when it turns out to be true.
Well, Black Mirror wraps up its brief first season with yet another truly masterful episode. In this episode, the show examines the Grain, a technology that allows for every interaction a person has to be recorded from their perspective, replacing memory, in a sense, with a technological back-up system that can be examined and re-examined at leisure. This is kind of a perfect example of Black Mirror tech in that you instantly think of all the great ways it could be used and then spend the next hour slowly tumbling to all the horrible things it could be used for. This episode really explores the technology in a really fascinating and thoughtful way. Also, this episode is a perfect example of how minimal special effects can be used to really great effect; when people watch their memories, they play out on screens in front of their eyes and the effect of the greyed out eyes is uncanny, creepy and disturbing. The really dark emphasis of the script isn’t on how this technology is itself inherently bad; it’s more that people are truly terrible and so they’ll find a way to use it in sick and twisted ways. The lead performances are quite good. Toby Kebbell, an actor I’ve never really liked except in motion capture roles, gives a really wonderful performance as the main character, a jealous husband who can’t stop obsessing over the way his wife acts around other men. The show isn’t afraid to make him cringe-inducingly unlikable and I love that. Jodie Whittaker, a couple years from Broadchurch and a few more from Doctor Who, is as brilliant as always as the persecuted wife. This episode is, in many ways, just as dark as Fifteen Million Merits, just on a smaller scale; the final scene of the episode is utterly bleak and hopeless, just on a personal emotional level, not a larger societal level. It’s truly devastating and another grim vision of corrupt humanity failing to deal with dangerous tech. Black Mirror’s first season goes out with a bang. 4 stars. ‘
tl;dr – season one of Black Mirror ends with a small personal story of unhealthy humanity and dangerous tech; emotionally devastating and deeply satisfying, it’s another triumph. 4 stars.