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| Black Mirror vs Electric Dreams vs Twilight Zone |
If you missed the first three installments and you're a chronic completionist, check them out here first for some context. Or if you'd rather start at the creme de la creme, do that. I'm not in the business of telling people how to waste their time.
Part One: #52-40
Part Two: #39-27
Part Three: #26-14
THE FOURTH QUARTER
OK. It’s crunch time. This is where the supermax contracts are made. Nobody loses their mind over a borderline backcourt violation with 8 minutes to go in the second quarter. We’re now in the end game. And to close this ridiculous metaphor, these are the spades. And in their titular game, the spades rule all. King of Hearts? Not as good as the 3 of spades. Ace of Diamonds? Here’s a tiny little two of spadados. And you can send those clubs back to the medieval days. The spades rule this world. At least until we add another five Black Mirror episodes to the 52 total episodes and screw everything up. Anybody know of something that comes in 57s?
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| Well, how about that? |
And into the final period of play (or the spades, if the metaphor… suits you), we have Black Mirror ahead by 16 points with 64%, Electric Dreams in second with 80%, and the Twilight Zone in what we’ll call last place with 85%. Though if you’ve been paying attention to this unbelievably poorly-thought-out method of scoring, you’ll realize that at the end of the “game,” all three series will be tied with 100% of their movies in the top 52. This really takes the suspense out of the list. HOWEVER, I will reveal to you who won after you’ve sat through and read about which episode was higher. Because that’s really why you’re here. At least I assume. Or else this is like 15 years later and I’m running for office or won some reality TV thing and somebody is looking for a reason to cancel me. Which is honestly pretty cool. ANYWAY…
#13
Autofac, Electric Dreams 1.2
Featuring - Juno Temple, Janelle Monae
Summary - Three years after the near nuclear destruction of the world,
the few people who seem to be left alive are fighting with Autofac, a
completely automated factory that continues to produce items the people don’t
need, and in doing so, is depleting the world of the resources needed to
survive. Headed by a programming expert, the survivors hatch a plan to
infiltrate the factory.
Analysis - If you enjoy your TV programming with lots of twists and
turns, this is your episode. It is ultimately a heist wrapped in a riddle and
just when you think you have it all figured out, it turns on you. This is a
rare episode that probably kept me thinking about it for days afterwards trying
to fully assess what had happened.
When is a 2 also an 8? - For some reason, depending on where you look,
this episode is either labeled as episode #2 or episode #8. I don’t know why.
It allegedly doesn’t really matter because it’s an anthology series – unlike
the way Fox famously mishandled Firefly – but you can imagine that there may
still be an order that’s preferable to another for the creators of the show. I
mean if you were to start your entire series with a politician fucking a pig,
you might turn off some viewers. So why is it different on Amazon than it seems
to be on IMDB? Hell if I know, but I recommend you watch this one 2nd,
because that’s how I watched it and I want people to do things the way I do
them.
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| Your shipment of umbrellas shoes is on its way! |
#12
White Bear, Black Mirror 2.2
Featuring - Lenora Crichlow
Summary - A woman wakes up without any memory of who or where she is and is
immediately thrust into a situation where she is being hunted by a masked
person with a shotgun while onlookers take pictures and video of her. She tries
desperately to piece together who she is while doing what she can to save her
own life and cursing these onlookers who are so unwilling to help her.
Analysis - The great thing about this episode is that it puts you
directly in the shoes of the main character. She only gets information as it is
given to us. And then the big reveal at the end (and please go through all the
credits) takes a turn I probably wouldn’t have guessed in 100 attempts. It is a
fantastic surprise the first time through, and a little unfortunate that this
feeling of surprise can’t be replicated in future viewings.
Taking credit - This episode came out in 2014, well after Marvel showed
us the magic of putting in content after the credits have already begun. But
where they used it primarily to market their next billion dollar enterprise, this
particular episode told the rest of the story. And not just fluff, but story
that would be germane to the plot. What separates this from Autofac – besides one
place in these rankings – is that White Bear was already a great story before
the reveal. And then the mid-credit scenes – which basically made up the entire
third act – just piled it on. They would do the same thing in San Junipero two
seasons later with equal effectiveness. And because the credits already started
rolling, the tone is so much lighter and different. It’s a really interesting
technique taken as far here as I can remember. Suck on that, Bueller.
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| Hey! What the hell did I do? |
#11
Black Museum, Black Mirror 4.6
Featuring - Douglas Hodge, Letitia Wright
Summary - On an abandoned stretch of highway in the Utah desert, a woman
happens by what is called a Black Museum, where a strange and somewhat sexist
proprietor gives her a tour in which he explains the history of three of the
stranger displays. These three displays all have something to do with the
nature of reality, and it concludes with an equally strange example of false
reality played out in real life.
Analysis - This episode takes the White Christmas format and doubles
down. It plays out three vignettes about the manipulation of the brain’s
experiences and closes with the framework becoming part of the story. But in
addition to forcing us to question the reality of simulated experiences (a
recurring trope in this show), this had a fun component of giving a nod to a
few more episodes, creating a shared Black Mirror world.
The Magic of Storytelling - This episode is essentially three unrelated
stories in one, an anthology within an anthology. The final two stories are
ideas that Brooker came up with while thinking of ways to torture his viewers,
while the first is based on a short story by the one and only Penn Jillette. He
got the idea while in a hospital in Spain where he couldn’t get a proper
diagnosis because of the language barrier and thought about a contraption a
doctor could wear to be able to feel the pain the patient is feeling. And from
there, things got a little dark. Now I know why Teller never talked.
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| Help! It's not really a trap door! |
#10
Real Life, Electric Dreams 1.1
Featuring - Anna Paquin, Terrence Howard
Summary - A detective from the future is having such anxiety, she decides
to take what they call a vacation. In this case, that means she goes to sleep
and has a fantasy world injected into her brain. But within that fantasy world
– which seems to exist in a more realistic time period to us – her character
there does the same thing. Eventually it becomes difficult to figure out which
of them is real.
Analysis - I have seen a similar story before, but this really keeps the
viewers on their toes. There are compelling arguments for both versions of
reality being real and the stakes become raised in regard to her decision late
in the episode. When forced to choose, her thought process is what makes this
episode the best version of this story that I’ve seen.
Real Real Life - I awoke one day from a dream that seemed so real, I
thought to myself “Wait? What if this is the dream?” And I don’t even
smoke pot. I was brilliant. I was going to win an Oscar for this screenplay,
maybe an Emmy if things didn’t go right. Then I saw this concept in an episode
of the original Twilight Zone. Then I found out about the story this episode
was based on – Exhibit Piece – written in 1954. So I went back to the drawing
board. I recently woke up thinking “Wait? What if I could see dead people and
the audience didn’t know who was dead?” I’m back in business!
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| Um, I got some more bad news for you. |
#9
Hang the DJ, Black Mirror 4.4
Featuring - Joe Cole, Georgina Campbell
Summary - A couple is fixed up by a relationship app that not only tells
you who your date will be with, but how long it will be. These relationships
range from 12 hours to years. After hitting it off on their 12-hour date, the
couple go their separate ways, stuck in different relationships. They continue
to see each other in passing and wonder if it would be worth breaking the rules
for what they could have.
Analysis - This episode takes the world of online dating to an extreme,
with guards and automated houses and cars making sure you date who you are
supposed to for as long as you’re supposed to. The app tells the couple
separately that it has a design and to trust it to find you a mate. But
something in this world is obviously askew. And what happens if you want to
break the rules and veer from the app?
Spotify for dating - In a short-lived podcast about Black Mirror (Black
Mirror Cracked), Charlie Brooker called this episode “like Spotify for dating,”
in that it takes the data that you have given it (what songs you like), and
then it tries to find you songs (or podcasts) you might like because of your
previously entered data, and whether or not you listen to them or shut them off
immediately, it will gather data from that interaction, so every song – even
the crap you hated – helps to eventually come up with a perfect playlist for
you eventually. It’s times like this when I’m fucking glad I’m already married.
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| Careful. I wouldn't want you to give me a virus. |
#8
Blurryman, Twilight Zone 1.10
Featuring - Zazie Beetz, Jordan Peele, Seth Rogan
Summary - A writer is struggling to finish a script and we enter the
conflict in his head between his artistic vision and whoever is editing his
story by hearing him complain out loud to no one. Suddenly, he looks out the
window to find that his apocalyptic story has come true. Jordan Peele begins
his narration but partway through, he stops and asks for a rewrite, sending
this story deep into the Twilight Zone.
Analysis - This is the meta of all meta stories. It is about a writer
trying to write a Twilight Zone episode about a sci-fi writer who changes the
world with his words. This is a fantastic nightcap to the first season of the
show, and an excellent homage to the original Twilight Zone. It slows down in
the middle while the magician is showing you his empty hand, but the payoff is
well worth it, especially for hardcore TZ fans.
Missed Opportunity - I’m a sucker for anything meta, so when Jordan
Poole stopped his monologue to talk to the writers, I was all in. Some of my
past favorites were Paul Reiser in Mad About You telling Mark that he only saw
the first Alien movie, and when John Lithgow ran into William Shatner in 3rd
Rock From the Sun and told each other about the time they saw something on the
wing of the plane. However, when the Russo brothers directed Avengers: Infinity
War and consciously decided NOT to have Robert Downey Jr. say “No shit,
Sherlock” to Benedict Cumberbatch, I was pissed.
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| You realize only like 86 people in the world will get this joke. |
#7
Hated in the Nation, Black Mirror 3.6
Featuring - Kelly MacDonald, Faye Marsay
Summary - The mysterious death of a journalist sets a couple detectives
down a trail that seems to lead somehow to social media. When another person
dies in a similar fashion the very next day, the two find the most unlikely of
murder weapons was somehow used in both cases. And how it ultimately ties into
Twitter and how they could possibly stop it turns into a race against the
clock.
Analysis - This is brilliant. It is simply awesome. And it’s also the
kind of brilliant where you can pick up something new with every viewing. It
really takes two unique concepts and seamlessly combines them into one story.
This episode is the longest of any of the 52 presented here and it deserves to
be. It is more suspenseful and better thought out than most summer
blockbusters.
Danger, Danger - This episode aired in October 2016, a scant 35 days
after an episode of an actually-decent-for-adults teen superhero show called Henry
Danger aired an episode called “A Fiñata Full Of Death Bugs,” in which the
unwitting tools of murder are one the same. I did not catch the Henry Danger
episode until much later in my life, because I have not been in a while and did
not have until recently a pre-teen kid, but I watched it and thought they
must have stolen that idea from Black Mirror! only to find out that this
episode came out before that one. And as I’m assuming it takes more than 35
days to write, shoot, and edit an episode of Black Mirror, I’m guessing it was
just a coincidence.
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| Hey look! We made it into some random blog! |
#6
Metalhead, Black Mirror 4.5
Featuring - Maxine Peake
Summary - Three people set out in a car across an obviously abandoned countryside to get something from a warehouse. In the warehouse, they find an electronic killing machine they call a “dog” waiting for them. A woman manages to escape, but finds herself tracked by the dog. While on the run for survival, she manages to figure out how to elude the dog for a while, but how long will she be able to keep it up?
Analysis - I would not be surprised to hear this won some Sundance award and Black Mirror just slapped their logo on the front of it, a la The Twilight Zone’s An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge. It is beautifully shot in black and white, and possibly with a different frame rate to add some anxiety to the film. It is never explained how these dogs came to be, but it is clear they have wiped out most of humanity and the real story lies in whether or not this woman can escape with her life.
The Real Survivor - This episode is fantastic in its simplicity. It takes a huge world – which you can ask questions about along the way and for weeks afterward if you like – and makes it all about this one interaction. A person caught in a situation and can they get out of it? It has the same feel of something like Cast Away, Jaws, Fall, or 127 Hours. Only in this story, all of society has collapsed around her, but still the film is able to make you focus on just this one person just trying to survive.
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| Wrong Metalhead |
#5
Try, Try, Twilight Zone 2.9
Featuring – Kylie Bunbury, Topher Grace
Summary - Claudia has a chance encounter with Marc and they share a wonderful afternoon in a museum together. But it turns out this encounter may not have been such a chance one after all. For the rest of the afternoon, the two of them try desperately to get the other to understand their circumstances, but the disconnect between their two worlds may be too far a bridge to gap.
Analysis - The reason I enjoy this so much is because of how earnestly Marc feels like he’s doing the right thing and how well he argues his case. It should obviously seem that Claudia is being manipulated by Marc’s strange circumstance, but Topher Grace plays his character so well, you can empathize with his situation and appreciate his point of view, even though Claudia is the obvious protagonist.
No Spoiler Zone - I decided when I started this exercise that I would avoid spoilers, because these three sci-fi anthology shows often have some sort of a twist, and I know how pissed I would have been if The Daily Show had spoiled The Sixth Sense for me back in 1999. And this was the episode I was worried about. I had no idea how I was going to talk about it without giving anything away. So if it appears that I’ve said absolutely nothing so far, it’s probably because I haven’t. Because I couldn’t. So I guess sorry and you’re welcome. But I WILL say that this episode explores a decades-old concept that should have been tapped for more energy years ago, but really hasn’t until recently when now there’s a new take on the concept every couple of months. There. I probably just said it without saying it. Just go watch this episode. It’s only 42 minutes and it’s on something called Freevee, so I assume it’s free.
#4
USS Callister, Black Mirror 4.1
Featuring - Jesse Plemons, Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson
Summary - The co-founder of a gaming company develops a version of their game for himself based on his favorite show, Space Fleet. He takes the DNA from some of his co-workers and creates a version of them inside the game, and they become his digital, unwilling slaves. When a new coworker is introduced into this ecosystem, she brings some ideas on how to possibly find a way out from under his Godlike rule.
Analysis - This is a perfect episode. It opens with an example of the simulation without explanation and the contrast between that and the real world gives the perfect amount of realism to each of these worlds. The cast is perfect and the subtle differences between the opening scene and the subsequent Space Fleet (a nod to Star Trek) scenes make us believe in that world and root for these digital characters.
You Down with NPC? - Black Mirror took a turn this season to explore life for those people in video games (and related things) and asked “What if they had feelings?” This was done marvelously in this episode, and again in Black Museum, mentioned above (episode 4.6). For a week, I had a crisis of conscience where I started to feel bad for all the Sims characters I doomed to die back in the 90s. And all those worms I killed. What war were we even fighting? And don’t get me started on Leisure Suit Larry. But then I remembered that Black Mirror is just a TV show. Or is it?
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| All's fair in love and Worms. |
#3
San Junipero - Black Mirror 3.4
Featuring - Mackenzie Davis, Denise Burse
Summary - It’s Saturday night in 1987 and an awkward young woman goes out on the town and meets a rather boisterous and popular young woman. They form a rather strange but comfortable relationship, but there are clues of something else going on – something with much higher stakes than simply a fun Saturday night on the town.
Analysis - This is such a well-constructed piece of artwork, I feel that calling it a TV episode wouldn’t do it justice. There are episodes that can tug at your heartstrings, and there is TV programming that does an excellent job of revealing their hand one card at a time to keep you guessing, but it is rare that a piece of work can do both with such elegance, while maintaining a consistent and appropriate tone. Bravo.
An Unlikely Hero - This is one of the less soul-hardening episodes of Black Mirror out there. In fact, it’s one of maybe two where you won’t necessarily feel the need to cry in the shower when it’s over. And it almost didn’t happen that way. Charlie Brooker, who wrote this episode first of all the offerings in Season 3, said he was originally going to end the episode earlier, after a scene in a hospital (successful non-spoiler). But while jogging, he heard Belinda Carlisle singing Heaven Is A Place On Earth and decided to keep writing and exploring Yorkie and Kelly’s journey. And so now you probably still need to shower, but for other reasons. Thank you, Ms. Carlisle!
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| Funny enough, Spielberg got the idea of Saving Private Ryan after listening to Circle in the Sand. |
#2
Among the Untrodden - Twilight Zone 2.5
Featuring - Sophia Macy, Abbie Hern
Summary - Irene walks into the classroom at an all-girls boarding school as a new student. She is immediately picked on by Madison and the popular mean girls, but through a project she does for the science fair, she learns that Madison may have psychic powers. The two girls become close and form an unlikely friendship, but friendship with a new psychic may come at a price.
Analysis - This is my favorite Twilight Zone episode because it manages to throw in a compelling story while perfectly embodying the struggle to fit in in high school. Both young actors are fantastic in their roles. Meanwhile, the story is one you may have seen before, but the episode does such a great job of sleight of hand, you may fail to realize it until the card is gone completely. And you’re better off if you do.
Using Children For Our Amusement - Kids make for great subjects, because they haven’t completely ripened yet, so they can change more easily than adults. Not only that, but because simply of the lack of revolutions around the sun, they aren’t held as accountable for their attitudes or actions. To a degree, of course. So when we are presented with the mean girls being mean, we can completely sympathize with them in the very next scene. This makes it a little easier for this particular episode to turn a very common trope on its head.
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| Don't even get me started on the mode girls. |
#1
White Christmas - Black Mirror 2.4
Featuring - Jon Hamm, Rafe Spall, Oona Chaplin, Rasmus Hardiker, Natalia Tena
Summary - In a series of three intertwined vignettes, two men stranded together in a desolate icy wasteland on Christmas open up to each other about what led them there. It is unclear if they are there voluntarily or not, but it is clear they are both running away from something. The American was inadvertently a voyeur in a horrible crime, while the Brit did something he couldn’t speak about for the last five years.
Analysis - This is perfection in storytelling. It manages to take these three bleak individual stories of technology and seamlessly intertwine them into a cohesive whole. And with each story, we are kept at arm’s length and only given pieces of the puzzle at just the right time. This episode builds on gut punch after gut punch until you feel like you’ve been in a heavyweight fight by the end. And you feel the pain for days.
Happy Easter! - Charlie Brooker thought when he shot this that it would be the final installment of Black Mirror (as it was the last before Netflix picked it up for a 12-episode run they split into seasons 3 and 4). So he decided to put Easter eggs in the episode for all the episodes that had come before (which, to be fair, was only 6). The Z-eyes was an homage to the grain in The Entire History of You, the pregnancy test was the same one used in Be Right Back, the ticker during a news report brings up the Prime Minister from The National Anthem, and “15 Million Merits,” “White Bear,” and “The Waldo Moment” can be seen in TV as Potter is scrolling through the stations. This means that there is a Black Mirror Cinematic Universe and within that universe, some episodes exist as things that happen, while some episodes exist as television programming. Trying to map out exactly how this universe exists could be extremely confusing and taxing. Which is why it’s what I will do next. Merry Christmas!
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| A shared Black Mirror-verse |
End of the Fourth Quarter (also the entire game)
And there it is. My favorite of these entire series is the
same as everybody else’s favorite. I really didn’t want this to be my favorite
because I quite enjoy pretending I’m a contrarian, but sometimes you just have
to dip your chocolate into the peanut butter and say Yep. Everybody else was
right. And in terms of final score, it was totally my plan the entire time
to just average the place of each of the three franchises. That makes the most
sense and also renders all that other stuff about who was ahead at the end of
the third quarter meaningless. And also medianless and modeless too. (Boomerang
joke!)
In this system, an average score would be a 26.5, since
we’re taking the average of the numbers from 1-52. And in the end, the average
position for the three went something like this. Electric Dreams came in 3rd
place with an average position of 33.6. That’s actually better than I thought
it would be going in. But then again, I was a film major. Math was just a
passionate hobby of mine. The Twilight Zone reboot had an average score of 28.1.
And the uncontested winner is Black Mirror, with an average seed position of
21.9. And more than that, they had 8 of the top 13, which will drag your score
up, if my college hobby taught me anything.
So a congrats to Black Mirror for being the completely
objectively better franchise than the Twilight Zone and Electric Dreams. And
congrats to me for finally finishing this project I started over two years ago
and to you for reading this entire very painfully spoiler-free word jumble. And
one more time, for those of you without Z-eyes, all of these are worth
watching, save for the very bottom of the barrel. The rest of the barrel are
the fun monkeys, swinging around, all proud and red and plastic. I wrote this
actually to hopefully inspire a few of you out there to give one or two of
these episodes a shot if you like the description and then maybe hopefully get
hooked. But if you are just reading this so you can say “No way Blurryman is
better than Hang the DJ!”, that’s cool too.
Once again, thanks for reading and remember that not everything that isn’t true is a lie. I hope to see you all again in that special place between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge and if the shit hits the wall, you could always just kill all others.
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| Winning! |
