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Ranked from 1-10 each for:
T - thoughtfulness (how much it makes you think afterward)
WB - world building (how well the world building works and holds up to scrutiny)
H - horror (how scary is it)
E - enjoyable (it may be smart or scary or conceptually interesting, but is it a fun/good view?)
And finally Ranking 1-20
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s1-e1 National
Anthem - the Royal Princess is kidnapped, and the Prime Minister is
blackmailed into doing something really gross on live television to get her back.
This one's uncomfortable as fuck. Not the episode to start with (I didn't come back to Black Mirror for 6 months afterward)
T - 9 | WB - 2 | H - 10 | E - 2 or 8 depending on your disposition -- Ranking #25/28
s1-e2
15 Million Merits - in the future the average person's job is literally
keeping the lights on. As they work they watch entertainments and ads,
and they gain credits. When they're not working they live in tiny
cubicles where every surface is a screen...gaming, entertainment, porn,
and advertising, always..their lives are consumed by it. The only
escape for some: an American Idol-style talent competition.
T - 9 | WB - 7 | H - 2 | E - 7 -- Ranking #7/23
s1-e3 The Entire History Of You - an implant records every moment of your life for you to obsess over and play back. There's no need to misremember things when literally everything is documented. How does this access to one's past affect relationships...not well.
T - 8 | WB - 8 | H - 3 | E - 8 -- Ranking #9/23
s2-e1 Be Right Back - a woman loses her husband after moving to the countryside. She can't stop grieving. She catches wind of a service that will place her husband's memories (extrapolated from all social media and other digital records) in a bio-engineered version of him. It gets a little awkward (stars Agent Carter herself Hayley Atwell)
T - 6 | WB - 5 | H - 2 | E - 9 -- Ranking #2/28
s2-e2 White Bear - a woman wakes up, having been seemingly drugged and kidnapped. Everyone she encounters refuses to talk to her, only monitoring her with their cel phones. Then some masked crazies start hunting her. WTF is going on!?! The world building kind of falls apart at the very, very end but still scary as hell
T - 7 | WB - 7 | H - 10 | E- 9 -- Ranking #6/28
s2-e3 The Waldo Moment - what if a foul-mouthed cartoon character ran for office? It basically predicted Trump. Easily the weakest episode yet still worth watching.
T - 8 | WB - 7 | H - 7 | E - 4 -- Ranking #28/28
Christmas Special - White Christmas - John Hamm tells a story to a coworker at a remote outpost, and the stranger tells one back. There's a mystery here.
T - 4 | WB - 5 | H - 3 | E - 6 -- Ranking #19/28
s3-e1
Nosedive - Bryce Dallas Howard is obsessed with her social media score,
an app that allows people to rank each other that the whole world is
obsessed with and makes every decision around, but it's not high enough
to get into the living community she wants. Her efforts to be a better
person totally backfire. So casually horrifying.
T - 7 | WB - 8 | H - 6 | E - 8 -- Ranking #12/28
s3-e2 Playtest - a man subject himself to playtesting an experimental, immersive virtual reality gaming experience, but what's the game and what's real start getting very confusing.
T - 4 | WB - 8 | H - 7 | E - 6 -- Ranking #27/28
s3-e3 Shut Up and Dance - a young man has his life upended when a hacker threatens to release compromising video of him to his entire contact list. The only way out is to perform 24 hours of errands without fail. The panic level is high on this one, and the ending is a total gutpunch.
T - 9 | WB - 8 | H - 9 | E - 8 -- Ranking #8/28
s3-e4 San Junipero - people can retire into the virtual reality of their choosing, while the young can only visit. Two women fall in love but their ability to find one another and stay connected is a challenge. It's an absolutely beautiful, and hopeful, story. Won two Emmys.
T - 8 | WB - 10 | H -0 | E - 10 -- Ranking #1/28
s3-e5 Men Against Fire - an alien enemy has taken over, they're seemingly everywhere. Military tech help identify them, but what happens when one soldier's tech goes on the fritz? Better taken as an analogy than literal.
T - 7 | WB - 8 | H - 7 | E - 6 -- Ranking #17/28
s3-e6 Hated in the Nation - it's a murder mystery, a police detective show mixed with a bit of X-Files or Fringe. It's practically movie length, and enjoyable but feels so outside of the usual Black Mirror episode...more like a Law and Order episode, or a pilot for a new detective series.
T - 4 | WB - 5 | H - 3 | E - 7 -- Ranking #24/28
s4-e1 USS Callister - technology that allows you to live within a virtual fantasy scenario finds its incel creator living a totalitarian fantasy life within a Star Trek knock-off, where his servile crew are stolen mind-maps of people from his real life.
T - 4 | WB - 8 | H - 4 | E - 9 -- Ranking #5/28
s4-e2 Arkangel - helicopter parenting taken to the next degree. As a parent I can relate to the impulse to protect your child, but when does protection start leading to control?
T - 8 | WB - 8 | H - 7 | E - 7 -- Ranking #16/28
s4-e3 Crocodile - a hit-and-run in a remote coutryside returns to haunt a successful architect when an insurance investigation, using memory-reading technology, threatens to unravel her life. It asks you to relate but it may be the biggest ask in all of Black Mirror.
T - 4 | WB - 5 | H - 8 | E - 5 -- Ranking #20/28
s4-e4 Hang the DJ - a little hopefulness and romance nodding back to San Junipero. It's a cute/sad look at on-line/app dating, how people meet and whether algorithms can truly account for chemistry. The reveal/twist is maybe the most eye-rolling of all though.
T - 7 | WB - 5 | H - 2 | E - 6 -- Ranking #23/28
s4-e5 Metalhead - oops, drone technology got out of hand. Directed by David Slade in glorious black and white, these metal dog things are freaking terrifying.
T - 3 | WB - 7 | H - 10 | E - 9 -- Ranking #4/28
s4-e6 Black Museum - a young British woman (Letita Wright!!) waits for her car to recharge, passing the time at the curious Black Museum. There we see artifacts from across Black Mirror's episodes and are introduced to a few more curiosities. Honestly, I forget how this one shakes out.
T - 5 | WB - 10 | H - 7 | E - 7 -- Ranking #26/28
movie - Bandersnatch - in the 1980's a choose-your-own-adventure novel is adapted by a mentally troubled young man into a video game, but aspect of his past and events of the present threaten to drive him to madness, or murder...you decide.
T - 7 | WB - 8 | H - 5 | E - 9 -- Ranking #3/28
s5-e1 - Striking Vipers - a married man and his estranged best friend from college reunite in a new virtual reality version of the video game they play, which leads to questions about sexual identity, marital fidelity and what constitutes an affair.
T - 8 | WB - 5 | H - 2 | E - 8 -- Ranking #14/23
s5-e2 - Smithereens - a distraught widower takes a hostage in order to talk with the billionaire creator of a social media platform
s5-e1 - Striking Vipers - a married man and his estranged best friend from college reunite in a new virtual reality version of the video game they play, which leads to questions about sexual identity, marital fidelity and what constitutes an affair.
T - 8 | WB - 5 | H - 2 | E - 8 -- Ranking #14/23
s5-e2 - Smithereens - a distraught widower takes a hostage in order to talk with the billionaire creator of a social media platform
T - 5 | WB - 5 | H - 3 | E - 8 -- Ranking #15/23
s5-e3 - Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too - Ashley O is one of the world's biggest pop stars, but she's trapped in a life she doesn't believe in. Rachel is a lonely teen in a new town and she gloms onto her Ashley O fandom as her identity, while her sister Jack is too rebellious for it all. Rachel gets an "Ashley Too" robotic interface which winds up connecting the sisters with the celebrity in a most unusual way.
s5-e3 - Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too - Ashley O is one of the world's biggest pop stars, but she's trapped in a life she doesn't believe in. Rachel is a lonely teen in a new town and she gloms onto her Ashley O fandom as her identity, while her sister Jack is too rebellious for it all. Rachel gets an "Ashley Too" robotic interface which winds up connecting the sisters with the celebrity in a most unusual way.
T - 2 | WB - 4 | H - 1 | E - 6 -- Ranking #22/28
s6-e1 - Joan is Awful - Joan pops on the in-world Netflix to find a TV show starring Salma Hayak who is styled like her and is reenacting moments of her immediate life. Joan's world is thrown into chaos. It gets pretty meta from there.
T - 6 | WB - 2 | H - 2 | E - 8 - Ranking #13/28
s6-e2 - Lock Henry - A young documentary filmmaking student turn his attention on his depressed Scottish hometown, and the murders that rocked it a decade earlier.
T - 7 | WB - 7 | H - 7 | E - 7 - Ranking #18/28
s6-e3 - Beyond the Sea - in a different reality of 1969, two astronauts are on a long-term space mission, but are able to send their consciousness between their real selves aboard the ship and the androids on earth that allow them to continue their lives. Things go unexpectedly bad and then get predictably awful.
T - 2 | WB - 3 | H - 5 | E - 5 - Ranking #21/28
s6-e4 - Mazey Day - In mid 2000s, a reluctant paparazzo chases after a famous starlet who has seemingly disappeared after being fired from a shoot for unknown reasons. What she doesn't know is the starlet was involved in a deadly hit and run and is having a very hard time.
T - 5 | WB - 6 | H - 7 | E - 8 - Ranking #11/28
s6-e5 - Demon 79 - In 1979 England a young shoe sales woman of Indian descent experiences constant racism - overt, veiled, systemic, etc - but when she's accidentally tethered to a demon, she's given the opportunity to let out some of her pent-up frustrations...because she has to kill 3 people or the world will end.
T - 6 | WB - 8 | H - 6 | E - 9 - Ranking #10/28
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T - 6 | WB - 8 | H - 6 | E - 9 - Ranking #10/28
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- San Junipero
- Be Right Back
- Bandersnatch
- Metalhead
- USS Callister
- White Bear
- 15 Million Merits
- Shut Up And Dance
- The Entire History of You
- Demon 79
- Mazey Day
- Nosedive
- Joan is Awful
- Striking Vipers
- Smithereens
- Arkangel
- Men Against Fire
- Loch Henry
- White Christmas
- Crocodile
- Beyond the Sea
- Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too
- Hang The DJ
- Hated In The Nation
- National Anthem
- Black Museum
- Playtest
- The Waldo Moment
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