Black Mirror Season 3 Netflix Series Review

Black Mirror (2011-)
Season 3  - 6 episodes (2016)

Watch Black Mirror Season 3 on Netflix
Created by: Charlie Brooker
Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Mackenzie Davis, Jerome Flynn, Bryce Dallas Howard, Alice Eve, Kelly Macdonald, Wyatt Russell

Plot 
Black Mirror examines the pitfalls when technology and society intersect. What happens when technology goes off the rails, creating a horrifying situation? Ultimately the questions are, does technology make us happier, is being connected at all times beneficial, and does it do more harm than good?
Black Mirror is an anthology. Each episode is self contained with completely different actors.

Verdict
This is a good Black Mirror season. I would take a season full of the worst episodes, but thankfully this season has solid ideas and even the worst Black Mirror episodes are better than the majority of television. It's as bleak and ingenious as I expected. All of the episodes display top notch directing and acting. The nuance the actors provide and the directors pick up really adds to each episode. Nearly every episode feels much quicker than it's hour long run time. The sixth episode is 90 minutes, but never feels too long.
I have to take a break between episodes to digest what I saw and what it means. This just isn't a show to be binged. It's often the realizations after the episode ends that makes this show so good. Few shows cause you, or in this case force you, to think after the episode.
Black Mirror has an ability to nail the ending of the episodes. The episodes don't just end, we get a flourish that has far reaching implications and also makes the preceding hour retroactively better. None of these episode supplant the best Black Mirror episodes, but they aren't at the bottom either.
This season is everything I wanted.
Watch it.

Review
Nosediveis the first episode and is a good introduction to anyone new to the show. It's easier to stomach than season one's A National Anthem. While it seems a little too simple, like any good Black Mirror episode it generates big questions. This isn't a world too far off from the one we're in. That's the line Black Mirror follows, they want each episode to be in a world that's just a couple of weeks int other future. The series asks the question, do you really think technology is going to be our savior? With this series, the benefits are often out weighed by the negative side effects. Technology is used to obscure or mask emotions. In every episode technology has an emotional cost.

Episode 1 - Nosedive

Everyone has a ranking attached to their name that determines your position in life. Instead of genuinely caring for each other, every interaction becomes a commodity, a way to boost your score a little higher. If someone buys donuts for the office you wonder why they need to increase their ranking. It generates distrust, because no action is genuine.

It's a testament to this show that the episode with the best story telling isn't even my favorite. The impact from what episodes imply often overshadow what we actually saw. Sometimes its the final image of an episode that makes the already excellent preceding hour even better.

The expanded episode count hasn't hurt this series, and allows it the chance to explore more genres. Playtest is in essence a horror short that questions whether there should be a limit for our desire to have video games indistinguishable from real life. I liked this episode the least from the season because it seemed the least like a Black Mirror episode. There were a few missed opportunities to broaden the audience, but ultimately it stops at gamers. This episode just doesn't take then next step to spread the fear and paranoia.

Episode 2 - Playtest

Episode 3 will make you tape over your webcam and think twice before you download anything from the internet. Somebody, somewhere is out to get you. These characters will do anything to prevent their secrets from coming out. 
You feel bad for the kid put in this situation. You get how strong embarrassment can be, but then you realize at the end it's much more than embarrassment. He seemed fairly innocent, but he isn't.

Episode 3 - Shut Up and Dance

San Junipero has near perfect pacing. It's a well told romance, with a Black Mirror twist, that's wrapped up in the mystery of how this world works or what this world really is. Each scene reveals character and the plot expertly. What do we live for? What do we die for?

This is an episode that had to analyze to feel like I got it. On it's surface it seems like a romance, but like any good episode it challenges you to go deeper.

Episode 4 - San Junipero

Episode five is my favorite from this season because it cuts both ways so strong. The evolution of the soldier is to make them less than human and fully compliant, but this provides insight into psychopaths that kill without empathy. You don't want soldiers to see a human being, you want them to see monsters. It's easy to kill a monster, yet much more difficul to kill a human being. The ending of this episode is slightly vague, but fully devastating. While this series knows how to end an episode, this conclusion was stand out.

Episode 5 - Men Against Fire

Hated by the Nation is in essence a movie at nearly ninety minutes. It never felt long, all of the episodes felt like quick watches because this show doesn't need filler. Each story needs the full amount of time, and I like this episode went long to tell the story it wanted.
It needs that time to cover all the topics, cyber bullying, social media trends, government surveillance, the declining bee population, and even celebrity worship to a degree. Words should have consequences, even meaningless internet hash tags.

Episode 6 - Hated By the Nation