Tag: Black Mirror

WARNING: HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE ENTIRE BLACK MIRROR SERIES. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU WISH TO KEEP YOURSELF FRESH!

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Black Mirror captivates us as the spiritual successor to The Twilight Zone because its horrors are both believable and stretch our imaginations. It puts prototypical normal people through the seemingly inconceivable and keeps us on the edge of our seats.

But not every episode in this now legendary anthology series is created equal. Dystopia is a theme that usually rings true — you just have to execute it well.

For example, I wouldn’t necessarily directly compare one of the more uplifting love stories in modern media to a grating bulletin about ferocious werewolves. It simply wouldn’t be fair to the highs of Black Mirror to drag it down with its strange lows. This doesn’t mean I’m against conducting (inexact) science experiments, er, rankings.

There are now six seasons in the books for this inventory of technocratic tall tales. Six seasons and 28 episodes. I’m ranking all of them by quality and not-so-subtly hinting at the terrors I personally find most terrifying and touching.

WARNING: DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED SEASON 6 OF BLACK MIRROR. BETTER YET, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN MOST OF BLACK MIRROR. HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD. 

Ready?

OK. Here we go.

Even more than a decade since its inception, Black Mirror’s simple title always gets me. It refers to the reflective (and empty) black screen when we’re not using our computer, phone or television. And as a result, the show reflects the flaws of advanced human technology and the worst impulses of our nature that it feeds and cultivates.

But not every Black Mirror episode is necessarily about the foibles of technology. Nor is every piece of technology plausible in our present reality. This isn’t to say it couldn’t come about in the future, but some episodes’ conceits feel like they’re decades away rather than years.

More often than not, Black Mirror admonishes us for tearing our world apart together because of our primal selfishness, egos and need to be unique. It resonates expressly because you can absolutely envision the dark side of humanity rearing its ugly head in these stories. Rod Serling and his spiritual predecessor in The Twilight Zone must be so proud.

With the sixth season of Black Mirror now on Netflix, here’s For The Win’s ranking how believable the horror of every episode is. Even if most of these stories are enthralling, not every concept is believable for the time being.

I want to stress that my criteria for plausibility evaluation are rooted in three factors:

• How believable/how far away are we from the central technology or element?
• Is the human destructiveness premise itself, technology or element or not, believable or transferable?
• If both sentiments apply, the plausibility rises accordingly. If it’s one or the other, it’s probably lower on the list.

Warning: Some of these “fictions” have kind of already come to pass off our screens, and coming to terms with that is NOT for the faint of heart.