Sunday, March 4, 2018

The Review: Black Mirror S4E2 "Arkangel"



Black Mirror Arkangel 8/10

This will have spoilers. Black Mirror is known for messing with my brain so much that I started spreading out when I watch episodes. It is not a binge show which most folks learn too late. I finally finished watching the episode titled Arkangel last night and was glad that I didn't feel greasy afterward. This episode starts with this mom named Marie played by Rosemarie DeWitt giving birth in a hospital. There are some complications for a moment but then her daughter is all fine. Later her daughter is a toddler and one day at the park she turns her back and her daughter is gone. She freaks the fuck out and eventually her daughter, Sara, is found. After this Marie is like “Never again shall I not know where my daughter is!” But she takes this shit to a whole 'nother level.


Introducing Arkangel. It is a program to monitor your children. No only does it track where they are at any moment, you can also censor what they and look through their eyes. Yeah. It is as creepy as it sounds. If Sara sees anything disturbing with the press of a button her mother can blur out the image and the sounds it makes. This is all fine and good until one day her older father has a stroke and when Marie checks in on her daughter because her heart rate rises and sees a moaning blur on the ground. She turns the censor off and sees her dad on the ground calling for help. Still, she doesn't remove the device.


Now a little girl and known for having this implant in her head Sara is a weirdo. When kids fight at school she sees nothing but blurs. She has no idea what violence is or looks like because of Arkangel...meaning her mother. One day while at home she stabs her finger with a pencil to see what it looks like and the blood is censored. Her mother rushes in to see what is wrong and tries to stop her daughter and catches five across the eye for it. A psychologist is like “The program is about to be discontinued and can not be removed but you can turn it off and get rid of the monitor you use.” Marie puts it away and lets her daughter attempt to live a normal life. Sara finally goes to school with no censors and is shocked by everything including a dog she walked past since she was a baby barking at her and everything the internet can offer. A kid at school bombards her with the worst shit he can find.


Now a somewhat normal teenager, if there is such a thing, Sara played by Brenna Harding, likes this guy named Trick. He is the one that showed her all the shit online when they were younger. He is a drug dealer so yay. One night Sara says she is going to a friends house but ends up at a party by a lake. She should be home so her mom starts calling everyone and freaking out until she caves in and turns on Arkangel once again and starts to see some shit you would never want your parents to see you doing. And it don't stop there because Arkangel is like Pringles and masturbation. I will not say how this ends but I liked it and this episode because it shows what happens when you have the best of intentions but go about it in the wrong ways. This kind of technology is not too damned far off. So have fun with that, kids.

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