If you would like to read my review of the last episode, click here.
Synopsis: A woman enters the Black Museum, where the proprietor tells his stories relating to the artefacts. (IMDB)
Writer: Charlie Brooker
Director: Colm McCarthy
Rating: TV-MA
Running Time: 69mins
So now we’ve come to an end this season. This episode did a decent job at wrapping up the season as a whole, featuring a few easter eggs to past episode in the series (as far as I’ve read) as well as a compelling series of short stories that loosely connect to previous episode this season (except Metalhead).
The episode was about a woman named Nish (Letitia Wright) who stumbled onto a museum full of criminal artifacts run by a shady man named Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). As Nish examined items from the museum, Haynes would tell her the item’s backstory and how he played a role in it.
The first story was about a doctor named Peter Dawson (Daniel Lapaine) who Haynes convinced to receive an implant that allowed him to feel the physical sensations of others. He would use this as a means to better diagnose his patients but it ended up having unintended circumstances for Dawson, leading him to become addicted to pain and mutilating himself and falling into a vegetative state.
The second story was about a young couple named Jack (Aldis Hodge) and Carrie (Alexandra Roach) who faced tragedy when a car accident left Carrie comatose. Haynes convinced Jack to have Carrie’s consciousness transferred to his brain. Things started off fine for both of them but over time, they got tired of one another. It got worse once Jack met a woman named Emily (Yasha Jackson) for whom Jack had feelings for. This made what was left of Carrie expendable which meant she was relegated to living in a stuffed monkey forever as transferring her or deleting her was deemed illegal.
The final story was about a hologram of a convicted killer named Clayton Leigh (Babs Olusanmokun) whom Haynes got the rights to his consciousness. Now executed, Haynes set up the hologram of Leigh’s consciousness in his museum where visitors can pull a lever making Leigh suffer the pain of the electric chair over and over again and a souvenir keychain to commemorate it. Of course there was a twist and without giving anything away, it kind of came out of nowhere and made the story a little too convoluted thus not having the desired impact.
Each episode this season has featured a standout performance but this episode was the exception. It wasn’t that the acting was bad here, it was just that no one stood out. Douglas Hodge was great as the shady Haynes and did an excellent job at telling the different stories. Wright was good as Nish although she was mostly reacting to Hodge.
Overall, this was a good episode featuring compelling Black Mirror short stories connected by an interesting character with connections to past episodes. Of course the main story had to have a twist to give it a point but it didn’t quite land, coming out of nowhere and making the story feel unnecessarily convoluted.
Score: 8.5/10
This was still a great season and now I really want to go back and watch the rest. I’m a little mad with myself that I didn’t start watching this sooner.
Season Score: 9/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.