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Scribbles About TV: Black Mirror S4E2 Arkangel

Alright... this was my first really dark episode of Black Mirror that I've seen so far... so I'm kind of weirdly excited about that. Everyone always talks about how dark Black Mirror is... and it totally is... but every episode I've seen thus far has had a pretty good ending... with Nosedive maybe being the exception.

Anyway this episode revolves around a single mother named Marie who loses her daughter, Sara one day at the playground and is so scared of losing her again that she has a chip inserted in Sara's head so that Marie can keep track of her... this chip is called "Arkangel" and it was a free trial to see if this was something that could be ready for the US or not (I suppose?). The chip allows the mother to know where her daughter is at all times, it allows her to see what the daughter is seeing, and it even allows her to conceal any images or words that might be too graphic for the daughter. This is all done through an ipad-looking device I should mention... it's not all the chip that is allowing the mother to see everything... she sees it through a device from the chip.

As Sara becomes older... this becomes more confusing to her. At age 9 she's so fascinated at the idea of blood that she stabs herself with a pencil just to try to feel what it looks like because she can't see it at all. Marie takes Sara to a psychiatrist, who believes the Arkangel is to blame for this- lets us know that the Arkangel was later banned from Europe and it's almost banned from the US and that while there is no way for Marie to take the chip out of Sara, she doesn't need to use the filters and she can throw away the device... so this leads for a somewhat normal period of time for Sara and Marie... until Sara decides to rebel a little bit... Marie gets curious because she hasn't thrown away the Arkangel Device yet... and she checks on it... and sees her daughter having sex and later finds out other things she probably didn't want to know about her daughter... and eventually her daughter finds out about everything and... it leads to a fight.

I thought this episode was very powerful for a number of reasons... One- I definitely think it was cool that we actually got to see Sara grow up... we saw her as a baby and then as a 15 year old that thinks she's a grown up... we see a lot of highs and lows in her life...and I think it really helped us feel connected to Sara and Marie and it made me want them to have a happy ending.

There were also no loose ends in this story whatsoever which made it really satisfying. Everything that was mentioned from Trick showing Sara porn at a young age, to Sara not eating her green vegetables and Marie making her smoothies as a result of this... it all had a purpose in the story and I really liked that. It just all paid off really well.

Plus... this is something I could definitely see from both angles... I could see why Marie wanted to have this procedure done on her daughter... but I also completely see why Sara is rebelling so hard from it! We also see that Sara is a pretty dangerous character because she doesn't really have a full grasp on things like violence since all she really knows is the most extreme circumstances of violence from the videos that Trick shows her at age 9 when her mom turns off the filter. Without giving too many spoilers... we do see Sara act very violently and in the end we see ultimately how that could become very dangerous in the future for Sara... plus... somewhat of a spoiler... we see this whole Arkangel thing eventually led to Marie's worst fear coming true and Sara does eventually leave her. Okay... major spoiler... but it's hard to kind of dance around the end there.

So this is definitely a good episode... I think I'll give it 3 and a half out of 5 stars... As far as storytelling goes this episode was great and it had some really great moments. I think what I've kind of come to expect from what I have seen so far of Black Mirror is that this it's almost the most realistic worst-case-scenario for modern technology and things that already exist... and I think by saying that the Arkangel chip was banned it lowered the steaks a little bit by saying this is no longer available... that's just kind of my thoughts on it if I'm going to grade harshly... I still thought it was really great though... so don't let that deter you from watching...I just feel like there are better episodes to come!

Byeee!
-Shannon

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