Black Mirror Season 5 Episode 1 (Series): Review.
In this review I will cover Black Mirror Season 5 episode 1, Striking Vipers, without spoilers.
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Year: 2019
Category: Science Fiction.
Director: Owen Harris.
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole Beharie, Pom Klementieff, Ludi Lin, Greg Kriek, Jordan Carlos, Abdul Hakim Joy, Julian Ferro, Austin Michael Young, Monique Cynthia Brown.
Plot
Danny and Karl, two old friends of the university, are reunited in a virtual reality game, and their nocturnal games will have unexpected consequences.
Opinion
I'll be honest, from the beginning I've never been a big fan of Black Mirror, although the format of the series and its theme is something that I like, I feel it is too inconsistent, giving us sometimes very good episodes, like The Entire History of You, Be Right Back, Nosedive, USS Callister and several others, and then really lousy episodes like all season 5.
This first episode focuses on a topic that we previously saw in San Junipero, which is the development of a virtual homosexual relationship, in which one of the characters in real life has a traditional life. However, here are two new elements, the dubious condition of the protagonist and adultery.
The episode has several problems; his approach is repetitive, since we have seen it in previous occasions in the series; neither does it approach the complexity of the virtual world, something that San Junipero besides doing it first does it better; it does not generate a philosophical discussion about immortality or death, but neither does it about anything; in addition its development is completely one-dimensional and monotonous, there is no surprising twist.
Apparently Charlie Brooker not only lack inspiration to develop interesting ideas, but also his scripts are not so solid, the main character is not well built, events happen the way they do it by magic. However, Owen Harris, same director of San Junipero and Be Right Back, does a good job and manages to generate some good moments, like the dinner scene in which one of the characters sexually harasses another.
In conclusion, it is an episode with a decent direction and interpretations, but that the flaws in the script are evident and irremediably affected the whole work from the beginning. I'd like to be more specific and talk more about it, but doing it without mentioning a spoiler is impossible.
Trailer
Score
5/10
Good direction and performances, a weak script, and an unoriginal idea make this one of the weakest chapters of the entire series.
I've enjoyed all the episodes so far "The National Anthem", "Fifteen Million Merits", "White Bear", "White Christmas", "Nosedive" are some of my favorites. I've heard many good things about Series 4. But 5/10 for the first episode of Series 5 is just low. I guess the good times are ending for a great series.
Those episodes that you mention are also some of my favorites. This season especially I did not like, each episode is somewhat defective, probably this is the one that best approach the Black Mirror concept, but at the same time the development was not the best. I think the series can be recovered, but maybe it's time for Charlie Brooker to get help from other writers.