Bookshelf Battle

Memories, like the corners of my mind…is that how the song goes? Paging Streisand.

BQB here with yet another Black Mirror review.

Many years ago, Mia’s then boyfriend Rob did a horrible thing. Rather than go to the police, she assisted him in covering it up, making her an accomplice.

The years pass and Mia marries another man, has a child, a nice house and a great career, having managed to push the memories of that dark day to the corners of her mind. Alas, it all comes back when a guilt ridden Rob shows up at her door, telling Mia he won’t be able to live with himself unless he pens an anonymous confession.

And so, the vicious cycle of cover ups upon cover ups ensues as Mia does something terrible to cover up the cover up. As she is doing so, she witnesses a self-driving pizza truck hit a pedestrian (SIDENOTE: self driving pizza trucks sound like a good idea but only if a) they can be made to not hit people and b) if we can find alternate employment routes for the pizza delivery man and woman lobby)

Insurance investigator Shazia thinks the victim (he lives) of the pizza truck’s case is pretty cut and dry, but goes about her investigation with the assistance of a device that can record memories. She interviews various witnesses, recording the images they have in their minds of the accident, eventually realizing that Mia, according to witness recollection, had the best view of the incident.

Thus opens the proverbial can of worms for Mia. If she declines Shazia’s request to search her memories of the accident, the police will get involved. But if she helps, will she be able to bury her memories of evil doing and so that the machine will pick up only the memories of the pizza truck accident?

Overall, an interesting meditation on the power of memory, what we remember and what we forget and how there can be power in forgetting. When it comes to memory, can we ever be sure they are real?

The plot of this seems like it should belong to a wacky, raunchy comedy but its played as a serious drama.

Princess Susannah, a much beloved member of the royal family, has been kidnapped. The kidnapper has but a single demand – that at 4 pm, the UK Prime Minister get on live television and have sex with…a pig.

Yeah, I know. At this point, you might think the entire writing staff should be fired but maybe not when you realize the whole episode is a commentary about a) the population’s inability to ignore trainwreck-esque spectacles and b) the control that social media has over political decision making.

At first, the UK is united in thinking that the PM should absolutely not do this. It would be too demeaning to himself, the office, the nation and if he does it, terrorists will be kidnapping prominent people every day just to make outrageous demands. Though Princess Susannah’s death would be terrible, it would be worse to cave in to this outrageous demand.

But as the day wears on and the government’s multiple attempts to rescue the princess are botched, the kidnapper retaliates by mailing the press the princess’ finger. Public emotions are stirred and they believe the government is now at fault for the princess’ predicament and as such, the PM should rescue her…by having intimate knowledge of that pig.

And so, the PM must make a decision.

Ultimately, this episode is so ridiculous and yet you can’t look away, wondering what the PM will finally do. It is all very absurd and hard to believe that the leader of any nation would actually consider whether or not to do this. It’s also hard to believe that the people of any nation would actually demand that their leader do this and yet…check out social media sometime and see the weird kinds of mental gymnastics people play when they want to take a position that is wrong or support a politician who has done something wrong or what have you.

In short, I can’t one hundred percent say that if this scenario played out in real life, there wouldn’t be dum dums on social media demanding that the prime minister follow through. Even worse, there would be government officials who actually listen to the dum dums.