I came for the Nine Inch Nails songs, I stayed for the fun and fascinating tale.
While the episode was entertaining, it clearly shows a change in writing that does not fit the Black Mirror style at all. It's as if Netflix doesn't understand what the show is about. Where are the questions? Where is the unease?
They could have gone with the same idea in a different order and it would have felt more like Black Mirror: start off with the hologram, then throw in the doll, and slowly uncover what's behind it all and how messed up it is. Same story, different order, classic Black Mirror feel.
genuinely didn't know where the story was going, lots of unexpected turns. great way to start the season.
Silly annoying teen-like episode. Maybe the worst episode in Black Mirror stuff.
Well, that's it huh? I thought that they had gotten that "Bandersnatch" incident out of their system and would have gotten back to the real thought provoking stuff. This episode, while entertaining (kinda) definitely didn't push any of the "what if" buttons. Time to go back and re-watch the early seasons and enjoy the mind stimulating creativity we had been accustomed to.
This is a good Disney movie and a bad Black Mirror episode.
I think we can place this season in the category "My first Black Mirror", the Black Mirror for people who haven't seen much.
The pacing in this episode is completely off. We spend half of the episode living through Miley Cyrus' life until something finally ends up that might be promising. Instead of going shock and awe we slowly drudge through an agonising "let's explain this for you" scene.
By this time I was bored out of my mind and it didn't get any better.
I'm sure you're doing a good job when you're yelling "MAKE IT STOP" in your head the whole time you're watching something.
I almost turned it off... but you don't leave church before the fat... corpulent... body-positive lady sings imo. I managed to get to the end... I'll by crying in the toilet for the next hour.
PS. Worst Nine Inch Nails cover EVER.
PPS As if Miley... sorry Ashley O didn't have a dick in her ass before... RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT... Sure.
PPPS And yeah, i'm sure the audience will be gawking at certain parts with their phones
This was the best episode of the season, it even had a conclusion!
Quite boring and tame for Black Mirror.
Predicted AI music like crazy and the ending is fun but holy what happened here?! I know it's supposed to feel teensy but was the script meant to feel like it was written by a 12 year old too!? And even if you view it through that EXTREMELY generous lens it still fails and feels off.
Also all three of these actresses, especially Miley Cyrus, are super unlikeable.
piece of shit ! like the rest of the season, really
WTF was that? Very weak cliché story. And worst of all, they got Miley on it! That's enough reason to rate this -1
Worst episode of Black Mirror. Seriously, it is just meh.
The worst episode of this show so far. Charlie Brooker seriously needs to take some time off of writing for a year or two. At least for this show. (which he has done.) This episode is an absolute disgrace of predictable, ridiculous tropes that all come together to form the least thought provoking episode yet. Really hope Brooker gets his act together for the next season.
I feel like I just watched a cheap teen comedy movie. What's even the purpose of that girl's school talent show? Just to tell us how much of a fangirl she is? What is even this? The antagonists are shallow, so as the main characters. I mean if I wanted to watch a random silly comedy movie I'd give this a solid 7 out of 10, maybe even an 8, but for a BM episode, this is so bad that it makes me angry.
Okay, maybe that was not "Black Mirror". Maybe it was not dark, but i liked the story.
The dad's software just happened to work with the doll perfectly? And the "dream engineer" turned a metal song into a pop song in a heartbeat? Come on.
The parallels between Ashley and Miley is striking. yet purposeful, but didn't go anywhere deep or meaningful with it besides "music business is bad".
I honestly can't stand this episode. Is this the best they got?
This is such a good episode !! I like it !
Why would Trent Reznor let Miley Cirus sing his songs? Yuck.
Is this even Black Mirror? This was too bad in so many ways.
So so bad. Cliche after cliche. A copy and paste script from a dozen other Disney movies. Also sadly predictable to the very end. Not black mirror at all.
A different episode for change ...
I love the f€£*%# doll !!!
I thought I was watching an episode of a Nickelodeon show...
I just love this episode!
I changed my mind, I actually kind of liked this episode. It started slow, but got better. Still not really what I expected from Black Mirror but oh well.
Miley fckn Cyrus? Seriously? WTF?
Well, seems like the producers are doing this show for obligation/money/hype. What a bad episode!
I would have loved this episode!
If I was still 13 years old...
Did the famous Ashley O seriously start a band with the bitchy sister?
Poor Rachel that is still at the bar, alone, with just her Ashley too..
What a horrible episode... correction... Horrible SEASON!
Goofy, yet totally enjoyable. Miley Cyrus did a good job. I heard the main song she sings was made just for the episode. Which is a lie. It’s a Pop version of the Nine Inch Nails song Head Like a Hole.
Except she just says “Hey I’m a hoe” instead lol. Still pretty much the same song. I don’t get the hate just because it what people wanted.
It easily could have been the Child’s Play remake or M3gan. It’s refreshing that it isn’t about a killer robot.
Some good casting -- adorkably sweet Rachel and evil Catherine, in particular -- makes up for some, but not all, of the wild inconsistencies in the quality of the narrative. The plot holes and moments of sheer stupidity are breathtaking at times and the end result is an impression that someone thought that Miley could carry this one on her own in spite of the bad writing. She did a solid job, though, and that exit song was particularly impressive.
Season 4 was boring, this one started even worse, and now this crap? Black Mirror is dead, unfortunately.
This is not a Black Mirror episode, this is just some Stupid Shit! This 5th season is a mistake I guess. Black Mirror used to have stories, realism, and sense. This episode is like just made for the sake of giving the audience something to watch in the name of Black Mirror.
At least this wasn't completely horrible. To think that THIS would end up being the least shitty episode of this season is saying something.
The only way I could finish this episode was while being on my tablet at the same time.
Loved the episode. It's unfortunate how everyone seems to dislike it because it's not the old Black Mirror. I get it but doesn't turn this great episode of television into a bad one.
this is not b.m. but just a teen movie
Frankly, I liked this episode.
While I fault many Black Mirror episodes for not properly looking at the implications of the technology presented this one probably takes the cake... Transferring the consciousness AND reading brainwaves just used in the entertainment field as mere plot-device for a Disney-story. Expectations subverted I guess?
It's not too much Black Mirror (the doll had bigger potential in that direction), and it played like a "It's hard to be rich and famous" story for a bit, but it turned into something surprisingly weird and fun. It's not the usual perfectly executed gut punch like the episode with the bees, but I found it quite enjoyable nonetheless.
Such a good episode. Not a big fan of Miley Cyrus, but this must have felt cathartic. After two really lame first episodes in the 5th season, this is the Black Mirror, as I like it. Great concept. Great cast. Great execution. It doesn't have to be dark, it just needs to turn the technology/human equation on its head. I give this episode an 8 (great) out of 10.
This one felt somewhat familiar though. #FreeBritney
For having some sinister undertones at the beginning, this ends up being one of the least Black Mirror-esque episodes ever. Its messiness is part of the charm for me though, where it always threatens to go to some place darker, then only to swerve and go with something outrageous(ly fun) instead. Feels like there's some parody of a Disney-esque story Miley Cyrus (who's quite good and really fun) might do in her early career going on, but on the surface fun alone (the doll unfiltered, the over-the-top villain), I have a good time with this.
Well, that was fun. And it had an unconditional happy ending.
So it was nothing like a Black Mirror episode is supposed to feel like.
it was basically a boring cheesy overdone piece of media until about 40 minutes in when it suddenly decided do get descent, and i wil admit, there was some pretty solid scenes... it just wasn't enough to justify the overall unoriginality of the rest pf the episode. Furthermore, once it was finally really on, it still managed to fall flat once and again... i mean, a 4 is a pretty undeserved rating for the whole episode, but i'm giving props to the original material we still got.
black mirror turned into a child/elderly on the nose show
Best episode of the season, but easily the worst season so far. Unrestrained Ashley/Ashley Too was the only convincing part of the show.
Does this make me a Miley fan now?
At least this one is entertaining. Despite the fact that it mainly warns us about the dangers of adolescent popstar live.
It's also very long to start. Its 1h10 could easily be packed into 45 minutes. The whole Rachel awkard teen's story and how she can so easily be influenced by a toy telling her to believe in herself is way too long. First as usual with this type of character, I have a very hard type believing that a girl that looks like her would be in this situation at school. And it's not like she's even useful in anything as a character. She's just a plot device. She wants the Ashley Too, and she wants to do what she says. That's it. She's such a huge fan and that's her whole character. OK, the fact that she says that when face to face with Ashley that is tied to her bed and just woke up from a coma a few seconds ago, that's funny. But she doesn't do a single thing. She's in a back fangirling while Jack drives. She does nothing while Ashley Too unplugs the real one and Jack is handling the bodyguard. She does nothing at the end while Jack is actually playing with her idol. Such a loooong exposition for a character that has nothing to do after. I mean it goes through all the cliches and then deliver nothing...
I'm not really in the Miley Cyrus demographic, never seen her, maybe heard one song, I mostly have seen her in tabloids stories. But wow, I found her very good. As the cheery popstar, as the depressed ex child star (but maybe they're not such composition roles) and very much as the robot voice. Through the whole beginning the only interesting parts were hers, and the real story starts at Ashley Too's awakening.
This second part was fun, though it looked more part of a teen show than a BM episode.
As for the tech part, it's a lot less dark than usual. There's basically no downside. Previous season had a way harsher treatment on the duplicating consciousness thing. That was a constant theme in last season, with very dramatic to horrific consequences, but here it's like they wanted to show, look, it can be fun too. Very not Black Mirrory.
However it's not like we're talking about every day technology as it is usually the case. Even in this world, the tech used seems to be revolutionary. And that makes no sense in the story. So the aunt, or her company, or people who work for her anyway, manages to map an entire mind, industrial scale, and they use it for... a pop star doll ? Also it was cheaper to have a miniature doll with the capacity of containing and running the whole thing and put a limiter on it, than to just map and put the tiny part you want to use ?
Then their holographic tech, that seems pretty good too. Though weird moment when Catherine is in front of the (probably mostly teenage fangirls) audience and does her Apple keynote, being happy to be back into the most lucrative part of the business. She actually says that. Not at a tech investor meeting, in front of the live audience. Also fully customizable (even her clothes!) and scalable, like that's not the easiest part of an hologram.
And then there's this machine that allows to decipher songs from the brain of a coma patient ! That's fucking amazing. The applications just for medecine, are unimaginable. And the other ways it could be exploited...
I can think of a thousand ways to make a shitload of money with that without needing to drug your niece into a coma ! They litterally invent technology worth hundreds of billions of dollars just to make a few millions out of a teenage pop star ! Pretty weird when the aunt's character is just presented as being driven by money.
And what's with the dad's machine ? It shows a brain, so I thought he was working on rat's brains, but he just has a small rat chasing robot ? And, without knowing anything (it's repeated enough), you can plug a toy, see it's brain and edit the limiter on it ? That was worse than any hacking scene in movie history, but maybe it was a joke on that ? Didn't feel like it.
Anyway, by far the best episode of the season, but that's not saying much. And still not a Black Mirror episode. I rate it 7 because it was entertaning, but if I was to rate it as if it was a BM episode, that would be lower.
A real BM episode would have gone over the spying part of the Ashley Too technology. A lot to do with that alone. And like I already said, all the brain mapping thing, there was a lot of ways to exploit that, though it was kinda alredy done in last season, there were still lots of possibilities.
Kinda liked the suggestion that if you're not kept under hallucinogenics drugs you would real music instead of pop :)
Apparently, critics are slamming this episode. Does it have a few problems? Is it "silly" at times? Yes. But it's not a trainwreck like some are saying. It has heart, something to say, and is a fun episode. Charlie Booker specifically said Season 5 would be lighter, so that explains why at least this episode in particular isn't as dark as episodes in the past.
Loved this episode. Very weird themes that work well and the satisfying end was icing on the cake. Definitely my favorite of Season 5.
That was too optimistic for a Black Mirror... but I enjoyed it a lot for some reason. It was fun
Shout by LILITH MEPPADATHBlockedParent2020-04-27T13:40:28Z
Can't understand the hate.This episode is the most real thing I felt in the entire series.It does not always need to be fiction