This article contains minor spoilers for the new season of Black Mirror .
Technology is changing faster than anyone can keep up with, but the problems it's designed to solve remain largely the same, with every conceivable variation, or at least every variation Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker can imagine, in the tech forewarn over the course of 12 years and six seasons, but the pull to create new ones only became more apparent. Time has passed, as has an apparent reluctance to think that the franchise can run its course. So, in the show's sixth season, Brooker takes aim at one remaining foe that's just as good at draining or letting touch: Netflix itself.
Technically, the villain of "Joan Is Awful," who also stars in "Loch Henry" and has a cameo in "Majesty Day," three of the five new episodes, is an online streaming service called Streamberry. But at launch, Telltale TwoDoom's streaming app is clearly recognizable for its user interface, algorithmic concepts, and willingness to let simple greed dictate what its viewers see. The Zone stars Annie Murphy as a mid-level tech executive trying to turn her life into a TV show as quickly as possible. He comes home one night to find a show called "Joan Terrible" at the top of his strawberry recommendation, and its appearance on television relives his surprise of the day: the embarrassing firing of a subordinate at the behest of a company. Invisible Edge, secret hookups with exes who want to get back together, even therapy sessions where he talks about how it made him feel. Sure, the lighting is a bit better, the dialogue is a bit sharper, and in a number of situations, she can find a way to be happy that Salma Hayek is playing her. But the fact that everyone she knows turns her worst moments into instant consumables makes it hard for glamorous people to focus on glamor.
Plus, it turns out she's not actually Salma Hayek: she's a digital avatar licensed from streaming to star in Insta-generated stories about the lives of its users. Joan can argue, but seems to have given up her right to live somewhere in the middle of the book terms she agreed to when she first joined the Strawberries, as well as allowing them to enjoy the passive control that comes with living in the same house. . the connected world. Why the show looks so bad seems like the most effective way to make people feel glued to the screen. A Streamberry manager told him that they tried an approach where they could create a program called Joan is Awesome , but found that the "scary" version wowed users and actually increased engagement.
Streamberry's list shows how Joan and her future ex-boyfriend were thinking before settling on "Joan the Terrible" and suggests where the next episode of "Loch Henry" is headed. (A third possibility stars an actor who commits suicide after being chased by paparazzi on the set of Madge Day in the 1990s.) The episode follows a documentary filmmaker (Samuel Blenkin) and his high school sweetheart. Cinema (Myha'la) Harold), when they return to the sleepy English town where they grew up to work on their next film. Like most of the season 6 episodes, technology plays little part in the "Loch Henry" story, unless you count the room full of VHS tapes of his mother and late father's favorite TV detective show. . But like the big bad villain waiting in the wings, Stremberry rushes into the final act, eager to turn the director's dark personal story into a brutal true crime.
Among the season's other episodes, two, "Mage Day" and "Demon 79," lean more toward supernatural horror than dystopian similes (both are set in the past, not the future), while the other, "Beyond Sea" is so vague. and obviously it seems that it is not about anything. So at least give credit to the opening episodes of the season for knowing who its villains are. But the best episodes of Black Mirror are the ones that use technology to "take human desire to an inescapably dark extreme." The problem with the dark future of these episodes is that we're already in it. Netflix already has an almost infinite number of true crime documentaries. it's private. The idea that tragedy and bad feelings keep people more in line. It has guided social media practices for years. But what if you don't feel paralyzing fear? Like a vague feeling of recognition: you too, huh?
The non-modeling episodes of the season aren't bad either: Anjana Vasan and Papa Esiedu make a great couple in "Demon 79," set in late-1970s London, and director Toby Haynes' vision of a department store. vintage as a certain circle shows. Hairspray from hell. He's a big fan of Peter Strickland's In Fabric . But they feel like Black Mirror episodes because Netflix forced them to underscore. The streaming service is still the bad guy, even at a time when watching internet TV is just a pipe dream.
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