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Those of you who’ve followed me for a while on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
MySpace, Club Penguin, Kongregate and Fax Machine would know that I like watching a
lot of television.
If it wasn’t made obvious by the fact that I constantly make obscure television references
in every single one of my videos or I tend to post a lot of TV related hot takes on Twitter
that I swiftly delete because they don’t get 100 likes in 3 minutes, I am an avid watcher
of the big metal rhombus in the middle of the room.
When I was younger I would be fixated on the television for hours on end until my parents
call me out to dinner to which I respond “I’m coming!”
Nowadays I’ll be fixated on my PC monitor for hours on end until my parents call me
out to dinner to which I respond “Shut up, I’ll shank your cat”
I say that in my head because if I ever said that out loud I’d probably get murdered
on the spot.
What I’m saying is that I watch a lot of television
and as such am constantly looking for new shows to watch on the Gogglebox.
Television is a special form of entertainment for me because in my opinion it takes a lot
more effort to consistently write for a television program than it does for something like a
theatrically released film.
Most of the time, film writers and directors tend to only have one major project that they
work on for about 2 years and they dedicate all their time and energy to making it the
best thing they could possibly be… unless you’re James Cameron and you spend
every day of the next 5 centuries working on a sequel to blue Pocahontas but this time
you fully experience the world in the 5th Dimension by watching it underwater as you
struggle to breathe!
Television showrunners tend to have a much harder job because they have to entertain
viewers for about 12 weeks, which is pretty much an impossible task in the age of YouTube.
I struggle to entertain people for more than 30 minutes before I get too flustered and
leave my channel to gather dust for another year and a half before I come back and pretend
nothing happened!
The point is, writing for television is very difficult and I do have respect for people
who partake in this field: I’m constantly looking for good programs to watch whether
it be on streaming services or cable TV and I’ve learnt not to gain significant interest
in programs that I watched because it’s always the same cycle while watching it.
You’ll find an amazing “underrated” program that seemingly no one has ever seen
before and you latch on to it and gain a relationship with said program over several years, you’ll
sit down to watch a new episode every day.
Only to have the boy put down, massacred if you will, because of a greedy network.
When I was younger I didn’t really care for the quality of a show or whether it was
cancelled or not: as long as the episodes are broadcasting, that’s content for me.
That being said I did get wary that there were no new episodes of a new show and I start
to get Deja Vu because I’m 99% sure that I saw this episode broadcast literally an
hour ago what’s going on did you rewind the telly Mum?
Most of my upbringing when it came to television was with cartoons as opposed to live action
TV, I had the warped mindset that everything and anything that wasn’t animated was an
adult program that only adults should watch.
This was before I discovered anime in the most awkward way possible, and I’ll save
that anecdote for another video.
It’s only recently since I’ve started making content for YouTube and did my time
in the existential nightmare that is school, more specifically English Literature and Media,
that I’ve really started to get much more cynical, which is pretty much my fault, I
can’t really blame anyone else but myself for my change in the way I view films and
TV but at least I’m not watching a random YouTube video and basing all my film opinions
on exactly what they say word for word!
I’ve mentioned the term “intelligent programming” before and a lot of people will notice that
there are more shows that kinda fall into that category nowadays with the intention
to try and stimulate people’s minds and captivate people with just how smart and witty
they are.
Lots of shows attempted it but no show did it better than Black Mirror.
Black Mirror is (or WAS, i’ll explain why later) my favourite show up until recently.
It’s essentially a modern day Twilight Zone anthology series with different episodes covering
a dark future with regards to TECHNOLOGY.
(Oh my god…)
The showrunner of the show is Charlie Brooker, a man who is known for making comedic satirical
shows making fun of pop culture, of video games, or the news with his show Weekly Wipe
being one of my personal highlights of his career.
Brooker initially appeared on my radar because of the work he did on Dead Set, a drama series
parodying Big Brother but this time it’s a
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.
THE ZOMBIES ARE FAST AS FU- SHAKY CAM!!!
A LOT OF SCREAMING AND GORE AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
Um… now he’s tackling TECHNOLOGY and just how BAD and UNCOOL it is.
Now Black Mirror wasn’t always an instant release, it was basically the Sherlock stratagem,
where the network would release 2 long episodes, once a week for 3 weeks then the show disappears
forever for an undisclosed amount of time before it comes back again without warning!
The very first series of Black Mirror premiered in December 2011, on standard TV, now picture
the scene: It’s 9PM on a gloomy miserable British night, moon is shining, grass is dark
and the birds are all dead.
People are asked to tune into Channel 4 to watch a show about the Prime Minister being
forced into doing something he really doesn’t want to do:
“Oh it’s a government thriller about stopping the PM from doing the unthinkable!”
“Wait it’s only one episode?
Then how do they stop him fro- WAIT.
NO.
ARE THEY ACTUALLY DOING IT..?
NO.
STOP.
THAT’S ILLEGAL-” “...well that’s over, best show I’m never watching again!”
“Wait a new episode?
Maybe it’s going to deal with the fallout of the PM’s decision to screw the pi- who’s
this guy? Why’s everyone in a box, is this the same show?”
That was my uninitiated mind on Black Mirror when it first broadcast years and years ago.
Now the first and second season of the show were all made in the Blighty and because they
were made in the British Rainforest they all had that kind of gloomy feel to them.
What kept people returning to Black Mirror every once in a while was the fact that each
of the episodes gave viewers that feeling of existential dread.
Not exactly the best reason to come back to a show if it makes you question why you’re
still alive.
A lot of the episodes were slight exaggerations or hypotheticals based on the way in which
the world is going or has gone.
It’s basically ‘we live in a society’ the show.
Brooker himself stated that ‘if technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug
– then what, precisely, are the side effects?
This area – between delight and discomfort – is where Black Mirror is set.’
Black Mirror was one of the first shows I kept coming back to just because the writing
was so sharp in the earlier seasons of the show.
The concepts were just grounded enough to make you worry a tiny bit about why you’re
spending so much time looking at a screen.
Most people meme that concept now but the earlier episodes were actually well written
enough to make you feel sympathy (or not) for each of the characters or have your mind
blown by what they have to go through.
Imagine being stuck in a place that’s tormented you mentally with loud music playing for millions
of years without being able to sleep or do anything.
But to everyone else it would probably be the best part of 6 days.
That’s a fate worse than death and it was those kind of stories that Black Mirror did
the absolute best.
Now as you can tell I was clearly attached to this show like a villager is to their emeralds.
Yeah that sounds about right.
And you can probably tell what happened to Black Mirror in the midst of my excitement
about the show!
The original network decided to apply the James Charles effect and CANCEL the show,
the show was DEAD, DEAD in the water, DECEASED.
Then Netflix happened.
Everyone who’s watching this video definitely knows who Netflix are!
They’re the guys who murdered Blockbuster and left it to die in a ditch!
Netflix is a multi-billion dollar behemoth and while it is debatable about the quality
of the stuff they put out, what they do have is money that they use to acquire shows and
make them their own, which is exactly what they ended up doing with Black Mirror.
Black Mirror was unable to secure funding for another season so Channel 4, its previous
channel, pulled the plug.
It’s not the first and definitely not the last time a company has pulled that
*COUGH COUGH COUGH* So Netflix scooped up Chocolate Reflection and renewed it for a
new season of 12 episodes!
Quadruple the fun this time around and with a much larger budget from across the pond!
Season 3 was released on the 21st October 2016 and it was released to a lot of success
and very positive critical reception, everyone loved it!
All the worries about the show being bad and “Americanized” were put to bed as the
third season showed that ‘hey, the Americans can actually make decent television!’
Each episode was wildly different from each other, and it seemed like the streak of good
episodes were going to continue throughout the season.
Netflix took what Charlie Brooker built with the first 2 seasons and actually expanded
it well!
San Junipero was a highlight for a lot of people because for once, a Black Mirror episode
ended with an actually happy ending!!
No, Nosedive doesn’t count, that’s BITTERSWEET OKAY.
Anyway Sun Junipero seemingly ended on a high happy note, and one could say that it was
this episode that spelled the beginning of the end for Black Mirror.
Everyone in America seemed to like that episode a lot because it had a happy sweet ending,
whereas a few people in dark miserable UK didn’t like that episode a lot because it
had a happy sweet ending.
This didn’t stop the episode from winning every single TV award ever made under the
sun and it signalled a slight change in direction for Black Mirror as a whole.
Out of all the episodes I’d say my personal highlight is Episode 3, Shut Up and Dance.
Out of all the episodes of season 3, people claim that Shut Up and Dance is the most “Black
Mirror-y” episode.
But what is a Black Mirror...y episode?
Well the concept of the show’s name comes from the fact that you’re watching through
a screen.
End of episode cuts to black and your screen will show a reflection of you looking as if
your family just died in front of you.
A black reflection if you will, therefore x = Black Mirror.
I didn’t need to explain that but did anyway, there’s your Thaf Fact of the Day, use that
to wow your friends at parties!
Now why did people think this episode was the most “Black Mirror ...eee” episode
out of all of Season 3?
Perhaps it was because of the very intricate, sharp witty writing that kept the viewer guessing
until the very end?
Or maybe it was the fact that the episode was seemingly realistic and had stakes that
people could be seen as very rea- who am I kidding, it’s cos it was set in the BLIGHTY!
In this episode, the main character gets caught whacking his willy to something that the viewer
cannot see because he installed an “antivirus” to lear his sister’s PC, now I’mma stop
you right there.
What’s the point of antiviruses?
Seriously what is the point of buying them?
People are spending money on antiviruses like they do on games like FIFA every year.
You see people queueing up for midnight releases to get the newest copy of McAfee AntiVirus,
Black Friday fights to get a discount for Norton Internet Security 2005 Edition, people
going into dark alleyways to get a bootleg copy of Kaspersky Internet Security.
There is literally no point in getting antiviruses, all you need is Windows Defender and the best
antivirus of them all: Common Sense.
Don’t click on dodgy links you idiot!
This guy clearly visited the wrong website from the wrong country and got his PC bricked
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Kenny, the main character is now being told by hackers to do favours for them for example,
robbing a bank and meeting people along the way that have also made the same “mistake”
he did but in different contexts.
Everyone in the show, and the viewer probably won’t understand why Kenny is so uptight
about what he did, even Bronn calls him out on it.
Why is he so scared about the consequenc- and it turns out that he’s been looking
at kids on the internet, fantastic.
The viewers find this out because now he has to fight to the death against another nonce
with a drone streaming it on Twitch live to the hackers.
Even after doing everything that’s asked of him by the hackers, they just end up releasing
everything anyway.
Every single person in the episode that incurred the wrath of these hackers have to deal with
the consequences as they have all well and truly been TROLLED, PWNED, MERKED, LED ASTRAY…
BAMBOOZLED.
With Radiohead’s Exit Music for a Film added in so perfectly, this ended such a tightly
knit episode.
Overall the season was pretty damn good!
8/10, our hopes remain high leading into Season 4.
Now Season 4 is where things were taken in a different direction.
Netflix decided to market each of the episodes of this season as vastly different to each
other as opposed to one season of scary stories to tell in the dark.
A lot of them had completely different genres and settings and this was basically a litmus
test for Netflix to flex just how much money they could chuck down the toilet.
USS Callister was pretty much a Star Trek parody and an episode pretty much dedicated
to calling for robot rights!
Those pieces of ones and OHS just murdered a man in cold blood!!
Granted he wasn’t exactly treating them well.
Yeah treating them well is a bit of an overstatement but what he did is akin to what people who
are young, bored or vengeful would do to their Sims if they got the chance.
It was a well made and well shot episode that really made you feel like Black Mirror.
This episode was followed by Arkangel.
Arkangel is a weird episode, in that it’s essentially a live action adaptation of the
first 20 minutes of Finding Nemo, now hear me out hear me out: Both have an overprotective
parent that doesn’t trust what their offspring is doing and wishes for NSA level surveillance
on them; the offspring hangs out with friends that are seen as ugh…
PROBLEMATIC.
They end of doing something out of pocket and the parent tries to stop them but they
do it anyway after a short argument.
Where they diverge is that after this event in Arkangel, the main protagonist beats the
shit out of her mother for eavesdropping on her.
The tech that was introduced in this episode basically censors any bad thing that happens
to the person using it, which is basically YouTube’s monetisation filter.
Metalhead took the whole concept of Black Mirror in a new direction by having it all
shot in black and white for the extra GRITTINESS.
If it wanted to bait for more awards, then it should have added an intense film grain
filter and call it Le Metalleux.
And have it shot in 35mm.
Metalhead was a gritty story about a future where Boston Dynamics went rogue and manufactured
killer metal dogs that won’t stop until you and all of your friends are DEAD.
Unless you throw stones at it from a tree for half the episode and it falls asleep.
The season finale, Black Museum, was made in an attempt to capture the lightning in
a bottle that White Christmas did, but unfortunately for this episode, it fell very short: like
White Christmas, it was filmed as 3 separate stories, starring Shuri who gets isekai’d
into a hall of inventions hosted by a stunt double for Happy.
The first and arguably best story was an interesting look into an invention by Happy’s stunt
double that allowed the person to feel what the wearer of the weird net hat thing was
feeling.
Naturally it goes south.
In general, Season 4 failed to capture the heights that season 3 did, but it still showed
that Black Mirror kinda still had it in them to make thrilling TV.
After Season 4, there was a major break until Netflix announced BANDERSNATCH.
Bandersnatch was a Netflix interactive game about an interactive game following a main
character who is trying to make an interactive game, but is worried about said interactive
game and thinks he’s in an interactive game and Netflix gives you an interactive game
with choices that would influence the rest of the episode.
Did I mention that it’s an interactive game?
The entire episode pretty much relied on the fact that it was an interactive game.
WOWEE LOOK YOU CAN ACTUALLY CLICK THE BUTTONS WHILE WATCHING WOOOOOAAAAAH.
Bandersnatch contained a character that kind of knew he was an an interactive game and
attempts to keep breaking the 4th wall so people who are watching the show at home can
clap when they recognise that he knows he’s in a Netflix show!
He tells you to take drugs in order to free your mind, like a scuffed version of Limitless
called Limited.
The episode itself was shallow and had multiple endings, but even then it fell flat.
The selling point was that it was seamless and you didn’t have to worry about pacing
issues because the choices flow so well into each other, but when you’re about to make
a choice there’s a clear waiting shot for you to do what you need to do before you are
forced to make a choice.
This episode also spelt what many people believed to be the beginning of the end for Black Mirror
in terms of its quality, as this was when people were starting to meme the episode a
lot for it’s “preachiness”, trying too hard for some in some cases.
Despite it not being the strongest episode writing wise, I would personally commend the
showrunners for attempting something new with the platform and budget that it had been given.
But this was a precursor to the ABSOLUTE WORST SEASO-
Season 5 was a disappointment in so many ways.
I’m pretty sure that everyone can agree that this season was the absolute weakest
season out of the entire show.
Now don’t get me wrong, when the trailers came out, I was really excited.
Only 3 episodes?
Wowee count me in, that’s more time to focus on each of them and make sure that it makes
for some absolutely TOP TIER TELLY.
From the trailers they all seemed like really interesting concepts for Black Mirror episodes,
and it seemed that Netflix were going back to basics for this season, so I went and marked
it right on the calendar!
Arse in seat on the 5th of June and I will enjoy these episodes in a perfect world…
yeah it just didn’t happen.
This season was an absolute mess, especially compared to the previous one, and all the
episodes felt like parodies of Black Mirror.
The problem was that Black Mirror got way too big for its boots and the audience clearly
changed going into this season: before the the other reasons of the show’s decline
are discussed I think it’s probably best to describe the three episodes, so if it hasn’t
been made blatantly obvious from the rest of the video leading up to now, spoilers ahead
for Season 5!
I’m going to say it.
Contrary to what seems like popular belief, I don’t think this episode was downright
awful, it was just mediocre.
I’ve used this word a lot but the episode itself just felt shallow: In the 5 years between
Infinity War and Endgame, all the snapped characters are isekai’d into another reality:
Falcon is an average guy living an average life and he loves playing the alternate reality
version of Mortal Kombat.
He plays it with Black Manta who’s been isekai’d in from the DC Universe and they
pretty much get addicted to the game.
11 years later, Black Manta returns into Falcon’s life to give him an HTC Vive edition of Fisticuffing
Snakes…
X.
In the scene where they play the game for the first time it highlights a problem with
Black Mirror in this series in particular because it feels like it’s too on the nose
and a lot of the scenes that they try and play for drama it just comes out really really
comedic.
(Loud laugh track plays) They fight each other in the game and it turns out *gasp* if you
get hit in the game you get hit in real life!!
So they do what every VRChat player wishes they could do and engage in passionate love
making.
The game swiftly changes from X to Triple X as they log in and have the sex while his
future ex is getting vexxed.
Falcon’s girl isn’t happy with the fact that he seems to be a bit iffy about the relationship
but of course he reassures her that everything is absolutely fine.
It isn’t fine.
And to prove how not fine it is, Falcon locks the game away so that no one can play it ever
again, then tells Black Manta that they should probably stop screwing each other in the gaming
world, it’s a bit weird…
THE BIG DAY arrives and as a show of how much he loves his wife, Falcon the Rapper has another
dinner- SURPRISE, MANTA IS ALSO INVITED.
They decide to test to see if they’re actually attracted to each other, because Manta’s
been testing and he just can’t seem to conjure up the same feeling.
They test, but of course they aren’t attracted to each other, what are you on about, all
their attraction is in the epic gamer world!
Now Falcon things that this is madness, but Manta wants to continue so they get into a
fight.
It just so happens that a police car sees them nearby and arrests them both!
Falcon eventually has to fess up about the situation to his wife and they reach a compromise.
For one night a year, the two boys can have the Mortal Kombat sexy time.
The End.
See what I mean?
The episode is really entertaining to watch if you’re extremely drunk and on several
hallucinogens.
And extra drugs on top.
With some LSD and LCD and OLED and PLASMA sprinkled on the side.
The writing in this episode is absolutely not up to par with other Black Mirror efforts
with amazing lines such as:
The episode itself did have interesting ideas to bring to the table such as virtual personas
and the age old question of “is it gay if we kissed on the Minecraft bed?”
Personally though, not much issues with the episode other than the silly writing and some
of the lines, mainly due to the fact that there are MUCH worse offenders this season.
If you saw this episode as a comedy then you’d probably enjoy it a lot more and because of
that I’m going to rate this a 3.7 out of 5 stars in Black Mirror terms.
Smithereens was an episode that had absolutely everything going for it.
This one was set in the far off year of 2018 (hey wait but isn’t Black Mirror meant to
be about the future???)
And stars Jim Moriarty as an Uber Driver for Tesco Value Uber.
As an Uber driver who probably has to deal with a lot of drunkards going home at 2 AM
in the morning and vomiting all over the windscreen from the backseat, he has to take a lot of
group therapy lessons to deal with his trauma.
In typical Black Mirror style, he finds himself putting his willy up another therapy member’s
bum.
The member, Hayley, is look for information about her daughter’s suicide that is hidden
behind a Persona.
Account.
Moriarty himself constantly waits outside Smithereens headquarters looking for his pray
as if it’s a David Attenborough documentary: And as you can see, the white male predator
is outside the corporation studio, looking for his prey, searching for any sort of opening
so he can abduct the specimen, let us watch this confrontation.
No problem because he nets a young black kid the second time and ABDUCTS HIM AT GUNPOINT.
And once again, the curse of the convenient constable positioning as the police chase
Moriarty on several roads until his car stalls in a place called Nowhere, Middelof.
After this more cars arrive as if it’s a GTA Online session and the player character
punched a random farmer in the face at the top of the mountain where literally no one
lives.
It’s at this point that Moriarty realises that the guy he is holding hostage isn’t
an important member of the company he’s trying to target, so he goes on a very elaborate
rant, which admittedly was very well acted, if not on the nose a little.
Since the lost intern is part of a massive company, the company does the job that the
police are meant to do better than the police themselves, and they find his information
very easily and at a concerning rate: now at this point watching the episode you;d think
it would be a comment on how much data companies own nowadays, with Smithereens pretty much
being a parody of Facebook led by a complete lizard.
Of course that doesn’t happen though.
I absolutely shit you not, the meat of the episode is literally just for the main character
to speak to the manager.
That’s literally it.
And the manager just so happens to be Eddie Brock so you know he’s in good hands.
After a boring few minutes, Moriarty finally gets his phone call and he has an emotional
monologue about the night that his fiancee died and how she died.
It turns out that he killed her!
*gasp* How did he manage that?
Turns out that he checked a notification while driving.
WHAT?
TEXTING AND DRIVING IS BAED?
WOW over an HOUR to reach a conclusion we ALL pretty much knew from the get go?
WOAAAH.
Moriarty signals for the intern to leave him so he can die on his own, effectively letting
him go but the intern, instead of getting out of the car and making sure that he is
safe, decides to fight him for the gun, which puts them both at risk and BANG!
It’s left up in the air who died, but from everyone’s reactions, you could probably
guess who got shot.
This episode starts off really promising but it fizzles out really quickly towards the
middle and the end, with too many plotlines that dilate the point of the episode.
It all boils down to OOO SOCIAL MEDIA BAD!!
PHONES ARE BAD!!!
WHAT IF PHONES…
BUT TOO MUCH!!!
It felt like a parody episode of Black Mirror, only carried by Andrew Scott’s brilliant
acting in this episode.
There just wasn’t a message and if they cut out 2 storylines then the episode could’ve
been so much better, and for that I’ll give it 3 and 2 thirds out of 5.
And now we talk about
Rachel, Jack and Ashley too is the absolute worst episode of Black Mirror to date and
the second worst piece of television I’ve seen this year oh my god this one was so bad-
What was this episode?
I went into this episode with a completely open mind.
Based on the trailer and the general branding around it, I thought it was going to be an
interesting deep dive into the dangers of the music industry, similar to films like
Whiplash and TV shows like Empire, however melodramatic that they are supposed to be.
And with the main protagonists consciousness put into a tiny doll robot that eventually
goes wrong… what could go wrong?
Even though that kind of story line has been tired and used a lot in Black Mirror, it was
used in a different setting that seemed a bit more fresh than usual.
I ended up getting a Disney Channel Original Movie instead.
The writing in this episode was god awful.
Each of the characters were walking cliches.
You had the main character, Rachel, who is a socially awkward girl who can’t seem to
get any appreciation and is portrayed as an absolute LOSER.
Look how much of a LOSER she is, she’s watching music videos on her phone ON HER OWN.
In the middle of a crowded cafeteria!!
Immediately this isn’t realistic because she’d probably be kicked off the table and
relegated to eating outside, but we just have to see how much of an OUTCAST she is.
The episode begins with her just sitting there watching R-rated Hannah Montanna music videos
on her phone like a WEIRDO.
To hammer in just how much of a WEIRDO she is, we’re introduced to her father, who
is basically a SOCIALLY AWKWARD DAD with a REALLY STUPID JOB!!
A mouse exterminator?
Damn that’s kinda cringe and embarrassing!
If you can’t tell already, our main character Rachel is a really big fan of Hannah Montana,
a.k.a Ashley O and she watches and listens to all of her music intently as if her life
depended on it.
Her older sister, Jack, finds her whole obsession thing really weird and CRINGE and she wants
to make sure Rachel KNOWS its cringe.
In extremely typical ABC Family movie fashion, the two sisters have a rift between each other
because of a family tragedy, namely the death of their mother.
Meanwhile it turns out that Hannah M isn’t happy with being Hannah and can’t live with
the best of both worlds, intending to transition into Death Grips meets 2013 Miley Cyrus music.
But her SUPER DUPER EVIL AUNT WHO HAPPENS TO BE HER MUSIC MANAGER WON’T LET HER.
Now in the next episode of “these-characters-are-supposed-to-be-in-middle-school,” Rachel’s 15th birthday rolls around and
she gets a super special present: A doll modelled after Ashley O called Ashley Zwei!
Watching this I thought that the episode would delve a little bit more into obsession, with
Rachel getting too attached to the doll and spelling disaster for the family but NOPE!
Rachel starts treating her toy like a best friend, with Jack finds really really…
CRINGE.
Ashley Deux is basically Alexa with eyes and hair that tells you that you look great today,
Alexa, what’s the weather like today?
Oh wait, I don’t have one.
Later, Alexa Dos convinces Rachel to follow her dreams and become an epic Fortnite dancer,
teaching her how to dance and perform in front of many people in a school talent show.
Does this sound a little familiar *COUGH COUGH COUGH* After a lot of preparation for the
inevitable da- she fails.
Miserably.
And has a big cry about it.
In response, Jack hides the doll and claims that it got lost to save Rachel’s mental
state.
Meanwhile, Ashley O is tired of writing all of these MANUFACTURED songs for the masses
and wants to do 2013 edgelord content.
And of course she has to have been taking drugs prescribed by her EVIL AUNT to suppress
her ability to express herself.
She has an epic argument with her and before she can do anything it’s revealed that her
food had been spiked with loads of the drug and she dies.
The aunt manages to convince the media that Ashley is away due to a massive allergic reaction
and this sets off all the stans in a fit.
6 MONTHS LATER.
Ashley Due is suddenly reactivated by a news report about Ashley O!
Woah woah woah hold on, shouldn’t there be voice recognition on this?
You’d think that a mass media company who can make someone’s consciousness in an AI
would add some sort of vocal recognition.
Anyway, it turns out that her EVIL MASTERMIND OF AN AUNT is making songs based on her vocal
recordings for the dolls, how they do this without making it sound really odd is beyond
me but hey: it’s Black Mirror, you ain’t gotta explain sheeit.
As a result of hearing this news broadcast, Ashley the Second seemingly malfunctions and
the two sisters take it upstairs to their father’s computer where they manage to CSI
their way into removing a LIMITER from the doll that contained HER ENTIRE PERSONALITY.
The doll tells them their plan of action: they’re going to sneak into her maximum
security household and disguise themselves as mouse exterminators using their father’s
van.
Now please bear in mind that Rachel is 15.
Fifteen.
Obviously this plan shouldn’t work, this is Black Mirror we’re talking about here,
something has to go wro- this is the same show that brought as White Christmas and Playtest.
The two sisters manage to bluff their way past a bodyguard who is trained to protect
the household against incoming threats, no matter how small.
Realistically they would’ve been shot on sight:
The two sisters accidentally kill him pretty much so again the curse of the GTA V police
AI comes into effect and now they’re wanted!
They find Ashley O in a coma and Ashley 2 Electric Boogaloo disconnects her from the
machine, thinking that it was her life support, as her original intention was to euthanise
her.
Now right here, if the episode ended right at this moment then it might have been an
effective albeit weak Black Mirror episode about AI and the dark side of the music industry.
But it doesn’t end there!
Turns out that it was just a simulated coma!!
And Ashley’s wide awake now!!!
Now it’s a race against time to stop their evil aunt from unleashing the next step in
her master plan!!
Ashley Eternal, the sequel to Ashley 2016, a superior holographic version to Ashley that
can perform at tours around the world!
Again, followed conveniently again by the feds, the two sisters, the Ashley doll and
Ashley herself crash onto the stage that her aunt is presenting and Ashley herself steps
out of the car, successfully FOILING HER EVIL PLANS and SAVING THE DAY.
Then they have a musical number and the episode ends.
This episode could have been so much better and they really blew it on shoddy pacing,
which is really sad because this season was way off on execution, even for Black Mirror
standards.
The third episode was very unrealistic and it felt like a family sitcom movie from the
early 2000s, which is a far cry from the writing we got from seasons 1 through to 3, for this
I will give this episode a Strong 1.
It’s evident that the show’s had a clear decline, if the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic
ratings for the show are anything to go by, and it looks like the latest episode of the
show has been gamershotted with the worst rating of the show so far.
This could be for a variety of reasons, but personally I just want Charlie Brooker to
take a break from the show and work on new things for the time being.
Maybe the show will improve again over time, but right now it looks like it’s run out
of Steam.
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