Happy Tuesday!  Welcome back to TV Tuesday… it’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted one of these. Since I talked about the previous 5 seasons, it’s only fair I talk about season 6 too, so that’s what we’re doing today, gabbing all about the sixth season of Black Mirror.

Black Mirror is back, it feels like it’s been ages, but it’s back and I couldn’t be more excited. This show is really good at taking mundane things and turning them on its head and I love it. Although this season kinda went way past the mundane. This season was just alright to me; I didn’t love all the episodes like I feel like I have in the past.

Let’s just dive into each of these episodes (5).

Joan is Awful was something else. I thought this was so creative and yet so true. This is the one story that I’ve heard the most about – I haven’t heard anything about any of the others (and maybe there’s a reason for that because I think this was the best out of all of them), but I knew going in that this was a great way to start the season, and it was.

So we follow Joan as she lives her normal life. Then she comes home to see this new show on “Streamberry” called Joan is Awful. Everyone is talking about it and they all think it looks exactly like Joan. The show follows her life to a T, the only exceptions are that it’s played by actress (but it’s not really the actress, but an AI version of the actress, Salma Hayek) and they took what actually happened out of context and make it worse than how it really went down. Joan is freaking out because this makes everyone in her life turn on her.

Joan quickly realizes she can’t sue Streamberry because when she signed the terms and agreements, she gave them permission to use her life and her person and use it as content. That was so creepy, but it really makes you think about the hundreds of terms and conditions/agreements we agree to all the time to use apps and whatnot… what we’re actually signing up and agreeing to. It makes you think twice about reading all those pages they supply you. I know I probably won’t read them, even after this, but it’ll definitely make me think when I do it again.

So, the only thing she can think of doing to get attention is to do something bad. She takes a really big dump in a church… which means that Salma Hayek’s image has to do it and she’s pissed! But even she can’t get out of this contract she has. This world is crazy!

So Joan and Salma team up to take down Streamberry. This is where it got a little too meta for me and the whole Michael Cera exposition scene just hurt my head. We learn that Joan isn’t really Joan, but the actress Annie Murphy playing Joan and no one is really who they are – it was a lot and it hurt my brain. I loved the concept of this story, but that ending was not my favourite. There was too much going on and I don’t like the way we learned everything in a very quick rapid moment, it was this huge info-dumb on the viewer and Michael Cera was talking so fast, it was like what just happened?! I feel like that could have been better, but like I said, still a great story.

Loch Henry started off really boring and I didn’t honestly think it was going to go anywhere. We meet this couple, the guy, Davis, is going home after a long period of time with his girlfriend, Pia. They’re off to shoot a nature documentary… but then the story takes a turn.

Pia notices how beautiful it is in this small town in Scotland and she wonders why no one comes to visit it. That’s when the truth of the town comes out. Years ago, there was a young couple on their honeymoon who were kidnapped and never found. Police suspected one of the local guys, Simon as he was brought to their attention that he was kidnapping and killing people.

Davis hates the guy because he killed his father. His father was a police officer and was shot when he went to investigate… allegedly. Pia then tells Davis they need to do their documentary on this. Davis isn’t completely on board, but he soon starts to sway.

When his uptight, ridged mother finds out what they’re doing, he tells her they’ll only continue if she’s okay with it. She’s 100% on board for what happened to her husband… which looking back is interesting. You’d think she wouldn’t be because she wouldn’t want to be found out, but I guess she was tired of living the lie and she seemed really lonely.

So they even interview her. Looking back again when she says I haven’t been on camera since your father is so eerie.

Again, Pia and her detective skills. I liked her; she was a go-getter and did what she wanted. Davis was such a wilted flower, like even the way he looked was just so meh. Like he never made a single decision just kinda bent to everything and that’s so boring to watch.

So she notices that his mom has a lot of VHS tapes of this show, I don’t remember what it’s called, some Scottish detective show. She uses one of them to tape over when they illegally go to the Simon’s house to capture any footage and see if there’s anything new they can shed light on.

WELL!

After they attempt to shoot footage, they get into a car wreck. This leaves Davis in the hospital and Pia at home alone with his mother. While she’s looking at the footage they shot, it also plays some from the show… then on top of that footage is some creepy ritual performed by Davis’ parents, with Simon… and the couple who went missing. We soon start to learn that maybe there’s more to this high-strung woman after all. Pia just wants to get away and get to Davis… but the mother is onto her.

Geeez that was creepy. Although I didn’t see that ending coming. Like I said earlier, you’d think she would have run or tried to hide. But instead, his mother looks at the trinkets she took from her victims, pulls the VHS tapes out (which they were videos of all their victims!!), writes a note to her son saying it’s for his documentary… then she hangs herself. I honestly couldn’t have predicted that ending.

I would have liked to see more of a chase or something. Maybe Davis confronting his mother… because by the end, Davis is still a crumpled up piece of paper – which I get, but he’ll never get answers since both his parents are dead and maybe confronting his mom could have given him some sort of life.

But anyways, Pia ends up dying, I’m not sure if it’s because his mom killed her or because she died trying to get away from her, they don’t really say.

In the end he makes the documentary and it’s on Streamberry and wins this award, but he’s all alone with no one to share it with because he was supposed to make it with Pia. His friend Stuart is happy for him, but that’s all he’s got.

It was a slow start, with a packed punch of a middle, and then a bit of a sad ending. It wasn’t my favourite episode, but it wasn’t bad either.

The next episode, Beyond the Sea was I think the longest of the season. It didn’t feel as long as the hour and twenty minutes it was, but I also don’t get why it needed to be this long. I liked it because I never knew where it was going to go, because boy did this get tense and tragic.

We meet two men, Cliff and David. The two of them work together, but we don’t exactly know that yet.

It took a bit to get into this one because the set up was strange. Everyone knows who they are, they’re like celebrities. When someone comes up to David and asks if she can touch him and says he feels life-like – I was like, what the heck is this?!

So, these two are astronauts to an extent. They work up on a space station on a four-year mission. But when they go to sleep, they return to their robotic bodies on earth. To sum that up, their real bodies are in space and their fake ones are on earth.

They wear these watches that tell them when it’s time to go back up to space (or when to put the robot to sleep).

This group of kids find David and want to know what he’s made of; claiming he’s not natural – that he and his family should die. So they kill his family, wife and two kids, and they burn his robot body, so he can’t return to it.

Cliff on the other hand, lives far out in the country so that, that won’t happen to him.

Day in and day out, David is left to live on the space station. That is, until Cliff suggests using his chip/card to go to earth, just to get away and to make him feel better, for his mental health.

So they do it, and it helps David. So they agree to let David do it once a week. David gets to go down and paint… and interact with his wife. David can see how lonely Cliff’s wife is. I liked that they were becoming friends, but I also knew it was going to get to the point where David would want more. Cliff’s wife wanted more too, but she wanted it with her own husband and I’m glad she told him that because she is lonely… but Cliff, even after this, still doesn’t care about what she wants.

She even tells him she doesn’t want David coming down because he hit their son and Cliff doesn’t care, he goes ‘I do that all the time’. I mean, their son even calls him ‘Sir’ like that right there tells you the kind of father and person he is.

So when David wants to be there for her, Cliff can’t stand it.

I thought David was going to go down and pretend to be Cliff, but I think she would have figured that out. Then when they’re both back on the station and he fakes this report to make him go out into space to fix something, I thought David was going to leave him out there (I mean, serves him right, right?!) and they almost let us think that for a good minute, but then, David one-upped that. Cliff comes back and goes where’s my chip/card, David pulls it out of his pocket nice and slow.

Cliff is freaking out, he goes to earth to see his wife and son killed. Wow, I truly didn’t see that coming. David kept telling Cliff he didn’t know what he had and Cliff wanted none of that, so David made sure he knew by making sure he lost them. WOW. So, did David really love Cliff’s wife if he was willing to kill her? I guess he saw that as setting her free from Cliff… but still, dark. Now, I guess he feels they’re even. Both lost their families, lost themselves, stuck in space. Dark.   

I’m not really sure what I watched in Mazey Day.

This one was another one where it took time to get into and to set up the story.

We meet Bo who’s a paparazzi photographer. I have to say we spend a lot of time getting to know her and I’m not really sure why. We see that she no longer wants part of the game anymore and she tries to find work here and there to pay the bills, but nothing pays quite as well as being a paparazzi.

When this A-list actress, Mazey Day goes missing from set of her recent movie… they are paying the big bucks to the next person who catches a photo of her. This catches Bo’s attention.

Meanwhile, we meet Mazey, sorta. We’re not sure what is happening because everything is in a daze. She took some sort of drug that made her loopy. She cut her finger and decided driving was a good idea. Well, she hits something and we’re all led to believe it’s a person.

She’s obviously freaking out, so she feels she needs some form of rehab.

Bo learns where Mazey is staying by going to Mazey’s favourite food place. From there she sees a car leave and she decides to follow it – which they were the only two cars on the road, did she really think that the car in front wouldn’t know it’s being followed? Then she pulls into the same small diner?! It was so obvious. The guy cuts her tires and she’s stranded. She calls a buddy and the two are able to find out what rehab centre she’s at.

Next thing they know, two more paparazzi show up and they’re all trying to get in and get that 30K photo.

Bo sees that’s being kept chained up and wants to set her free because it’s illegal. They break in and try to set her free, but they realize too late why she’s chained up.

Mazey Day turns into a werewolf.

I don’t know why that was so underwhelming, but it was. I did not see supernatural coming into play at all.

So, Mazey gets loose and starts to kill people. We find out that the person she thought she hit… was really another werewolf and that changed her. Her behaviour was because of her changing and not remorse for what she did. I don’t know it just felt so weird. Plus, the entire time the three guys couldn’t stop taking pictures… oh well, they were goners anyways.

In the end, Mazey begs to be shot, but Bo just puts the gun in her hands and lets her kill herself. Alright, that’s one way to go.

This story had action, but I felt bored by it. I thought the dial-up Internet and paper maps were nostalgic to see.

The season ends on Demon79. I’m wondering 79 because that’s what year it’s supposed to be.

This opens like a classic 80s horror movie. We meet Nida, she lives a very basic life. She lives alone, works in a department store, in the shoe section – it’s all kinda sad. Her coworkers don’t like her, honestly it’s 100% a race thing because they do not make their comments subtle. 

Like, this whole story starts because she’s forced to eat her lunch in the freakin’ basement because her coworker can’t stand the smell of her food, like bitch.

In the basement is where she finds this talisman. When she brings it home… it starts talking to her… then it appears to her… looking like lead singer of Boney M, the group who sing Rasputin – sidenote, I know this song, but I never knew who sang this, nor what they looked like, this was eye opening to me… I love it!

Anyways, his name is Gaap and only she can see him. He’s a demon, trying to get into demon school. He tells her, she must kill four people in the next few days, each before midnight in order to stop this Armageddon from happening. 

She doesn’t believe him, but he has the power to show her the future of things. She’s still skeptical. They meet their first victim and Gaap is able to show her what kind of man he is, that’s he’s abusing his daughter and if Nida kills him, she’ll be saving the kid’s life.

So, there goes kill number one.

I have to say, this got really weird for kill number two because it’s the guy she knows killed his wife… but it was just so weird that she went about it like she was going to sleep with him before she actually killed him. Bleh. Then she kills the brother because he’s there and they can’t have a witness.

Gaap has to call his demon people to see if the second kill counts because apparently there are rules as to who you can kill… seriously?! Apparently the brother didn’t count.

By this point, Nida is turning into a completely different person. Where she used to be shy and timid, she is no longer. She kinda becomes this badass… and that totally scares Gaap. So much so that he leaves her. Which I have to say, thank goodness because he talked A LOT. Like the guy never shut up… I don’t know how Nida could think with him around.

Nida is now deadest on killing this politician, but Gaap warns her that it probably won’t count and Nida can’t see how because in the future if he’s elected, it’s like Satan ruling their country. It’s funny because even her coworker looked freaked out by him… that shocked me.

Nida has this plan to catch him after his speech… but the police get to her first, asking her questions about one of the other deaths. She manages to talk her way out of it, but Gaap knows that the detective didn’t buy it. Nope he did not because as soon as she leaves, the detective follows her.

She almost gets away with killing the guy, but the detective catches up to her and brings her in. She admits to all her murders, but she also admits to the talisman and Gaap too. They think she’s lost her mind… until the sirens go off and the world starts exploding.

So I guess the end of the world was coming and she wasn’t so crazy.

Gaap comes back one last time to as Nida if she’ll follow him to wherever it is he resides and she agrees. They literally go off into the fiery sunset holding hands.  

It was such a bizarre story, and such a weird way to end the season.

These stories were engaging and captivating, but they weren’t exactly the kind of weird I was expecting. I think I was expecting more of what the first episode had to offer and less supernatural. It was still a good season, but probably not my favourite.