Sunday, 7 January 2018

Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 6 - Black Museum

Black Mirror (2011-)
Season 4 - 6 episodes (2017)
Watch Black Mirror Season 4 on Netflix
Created by: Charlie Brooker
Starring:
Douglas Hodge, Letitia Wright
Watch the trailer
Black Mirror Main Page


Plot 
Each unconnected episode examines the pitfalls when technology and society intersect. What happens when technology goes off the rails, creating a horrifying situation? Does technology make us happier, is being connected at all times beneficial, and does it do more harm than good? The stories are known for their harrowing nature and depressing conclusions.

The sixth episode of season four is Black Museum, where a woman on the way to visit her father visits a strange museum of various oddities involved in crimes.

Verdict
This episode felt very Black Mirror, with three vignettes that fold into the larger story, this hearkens back to the Christmas special, White Christmas.. We get medical break throughs that develop disastrous consequences. This episode is full of easter eggs, and the individual stories funnel into the overarching narrative.
Watch it.

Review
 Nish, driving a classic car that is passed off as futuristic, seemingly stumbles across a museum of curiosities involved in crimes.
 
The curator Rolo Haynes begins to tell her the story about a headset on display. A doctor could feel the pain of others through the headset and interface screwed into his skull. He becomes a great doctor, but when he experiences death by proxy, he develops an addiction to feeling others' pain. It just so happens that the biomedical engineer that sold the doctor the headset was Rolo, at least that's the story he tells. As with most addictions, the doctor's appetite can't be satisfied. He loses his job and resorts to harming himself. The doctor's need for pain leads to one of the goriest and disturbing clips in Black Mirror. When we see the state the doctor's in, how he's managed to maximize the amount of pain extracted from his body but still be alive, it's horrid.
I figured the show would have him jump straight to killing people, but it doesn't. It teases the dark hole the doctor is descending. What we see is worse than if he did just kill people.
We see quite a few exhibits that contain items from other Black Mirror episodes. The assimilation device from episode one, the tablet from episode two, and the bath tub from episode three appear among others from previous seasons.
 
The next story is about a woman's consciousness trapped in a teddy bear. She was in a terrible accident resulting in a coma. Through the advent of modern medicine, and again through the aid of Rolo Haynes so we're told, her consciousness can be transferred to her husband. He has his wife back inside his head, but someone watching everything you do soon becomes tiresome. At first he is able to silence her by "pausing" her. It's not long before the husband wants rid of her. He transfers her to a teddy bear, giving it to their son, but kids soon tire of toys. Rolo claims transferring the consciousness got him fired, but he also couldn't delete the consciousness. Now she's relegated to this museum.
These stories lead up to Rolo's main attraction, a digital copy of a convicted killer Clayton Leigh. Rolo persuaded Leigh to sign over his consciousness before Leigh went to the electric chair for killing a reporter. The reporter slaying was heard in the background during the story of Rolo's first exhibit about the doctor.
Leigh became Rolo's main attraction with visitors able to pull the switch and kill an already dead killer through a self aware facsimile that experiences the event. It's unsettling that people would want to do that, but Black Mirror posited how sadistic people can be to convicts in season two's White Bear. That same idea was revisited in White Christmas. As a bonus visitors get a key chain with Leigh's consciousness in eternal agony. Years of abuse have left Leigh a non-responsive shell of a human.
The pieces begin to click into place. Nish is visiting her father on his birthday, he lives in the desolate area. Nish is out for revenge and her father is Clayton Leigh. Nish crafted a trap and puts Rolo in her father's place. Nish uses Rolo's tricks to trap him in a key chain of eternal agony.
Nish leaves the museum with key chain and teddy bear in tow, and we get an even bigger twist, her mom is in her head, just like the teddy bear story.

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