Well, what a bummer. Ever since I saw the trailer for this episode, I was pretty excited. Miley Cirus is back (for some reason that got me excited), seemingly an interesting premise, and of course, its Black Mirror. But, while not a bad episode, this is definitely a let down in two of the most important elements of what made the show so great: its script and its use of technology.
This episode stars Miley Cyrus as Ashley O, a new and trending pop singer with a dark side to her. Rachel, portrayed by Angourie Rice, is a lonely, shy, teenage who idolizes Ashley O. Upon hearing about the new Ashley Too toy, a toy that talks and replies to anything it is asked, Rachel immediately gets one. To be honest, this summary was hard to type. Not because I cannot type a summary for it, but because of the convoluted, messy and sloppy nature of the story. This is the best I can do without going into spoilers and this is really all the I remember from the episode itself.
This episode was kind of a mess. The script is all over the place; with two stories that thinnly connect with one another, and with both stories having major issues, none of it seems to fit to a cohesive whole. The story with Miley Cirus starts off with the pop singer all happy-go-lucky when singing and doing interviews, but really upset and depressed when alone in her rich mansion. It is the typical happy pop star with a dark side to them; however, this is barely explored. Without spoiling anything, this story goes from this simple premise and character study of a pop singer, to a convoluted and over-the-top thriller about deceit and deception. This twist makes absolutely no sense when looking at the slow-paced start of the story. It totally changes the tone of the story from a pop singer trying to find her identity, to a convoluted espionage tale in a matter of seconds. By the end of her story, you feel like you just watched 3 other stories that the writer/director were trying to tell, but instead of splitting these stories up they just shoved it into this one instead.
The other story, with the family and the little girl who buys the toy version of Ashley, is also extremely weak and sloppy. It starts off with a girl who is extremely shy, nervous and a loner with no friends. Idolizing Ashley, upon hearing of the Ashley Too toy coming out, she begs her dad to buy her one for her birthday. This sets off the technological aspect that the show thrives on. And on both a narrative level and as an examination of technology, this story fails in both regards. Narratively, this episode switches between a story of an awkward kid in school, to a family drama, to a story about this girls dad and his experiments with mice, to a completely out-of-place sci-fi espionage thriller. None of these parts work together. They are all just a mish-mash of different cliches about a young teenager in school in one second, to a sci-fi espionage in the next. The first half of this story is extremely boring and slow, while the second half is much more faced paced and all over the place. By the end, none of it really makes any sense and your left questioning why the first 40 minutes are just set up to a story that does not need that much set up. In terms of its examination of technology, there is only hints of it in this story. When it is about to really delve into it, it just kind of drops the ball and fizzles out till it becomes a sci-fi espionage thriller.
When combined, this episode really falls flat both narratively and in its examination of technology. Overall, the episode is just so boring. Nothing happens in the first 40 minutes. After the 40 minute mark, the story goes into 20 different directions; trying to wrap up all of its conflicts in too quick of time. The two stories that are told here simply do not work by themselves, but when putting them together into one episode leads into an even bigger mess. Each story in it of themselves have 3 totally inconsistent stories within them, and when combined, it is just a convoluted mess of 7 tonally different stories. None of it goes well together and they simply do not add up. It feels more like a collage than a picture--a pretty mediocre collage at that too
When it comes to its examination of technology, there is barely any of it in this episode. The Ashley Too doll, which provides the shows main tool for examining technology, does barely anything in this episode. Compare this to any other good episode of Black Mirror, such as Nosedive, you see how little use the technology was in this episode. In Nosedive, we see the importance of technology in the narrative. It plays a central role in the characters, their arcs, and for many of the events that take place in the story. Not only that, but it provides an excellent examination of how technology makes us lose our identity and forces us to become something we are not. None of this creativity and craftsmanship is shown in this episode. When looking at the episode as a whole, the technology was put there because it is a Black Mirror episode and you need technology in Black Mirror, not because it was needed for the narrative.
What makes this all the worst is that there is a framework of good ideas in this episode, but it was simply ruined by trying to cram everything together into one episode. There are good aspects to this episode, like the acting is not bad, Cyrus does do a decent job (although, it really is not that amazing), and some good visuals; but overall, it was just a jumbled mess. It failed narratively while also failing to have anything interesting to say about humanity's use of technology.
3/10
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