Summary: Lacie lives in a community where your social status is judged by a rating from 1 to 5 which is given by other people based off of how much they like you. Lacie is a 4.2 but needs to be a 4.5 to get a house she wants and she needs approval from high 4s. She goes to attend a wedding which will have a bunch of other high 4s, but things go wrong and her rating steadily falls as everything goes to hell. She begins to realize that the ratings won't make her happy. She arrives at the wedding as a 1.1 and gives her speech solely to embarrass her friend. She is taken to jail where she feels more free than ever before and properly connects with a guy in another cell.
The Good: This community is a very frightening concept, and is a great social commentary on social media taking over our lives and us becoming a slave to our devices. Everything is this community is so fake, from the pastel look, to the interactions of the people living in it. There are some really great scenes which really highlight the fake nature of this episode, like the conversation Lacie has with Beth in the elevator which is all about what they post on social media and as no real heart to it. It's a horribly uncomfortable atmosphere which got me emotionally engaged just from the concept. Furthermore, the idea that the higher ranked you are, the better you are, is insane and often it seems to be completely inaccurate as Susan (1.4) comes off as a much better person than Naomi (4.8). Additionally I love how it's implied that when talking with a high 4, it doesn't matter what you do, because they can rank you low and nobody bats an eye, but it's an awful thing to rank them low because it will lower your popularity. Essentially you are being judged for the conversation and they just aren't at all. A great example is Lacie's conversation with a high 4 in the elevator, where this high 4 makes absolutely no attempt for conversation. While most episodes of Black Mirror tend to disturb or leave you extremely tense, this episode instead lets you feel how it would be like to live in this world. In doing so, the episode causes you to feel intense anxiety throughout, while you hope for Lacie to not have too hard of a fall in the episode. The episode is called "Nosedive", and by now we have been accustomed to the horrors of this show, so there is a huge anxiety created in the first half hour as we know that Lacie's fall is coming but we really don't want so many terrible things to happen to her. Of course it has to happen though, and I think that Lacie's fall was handled pretty well and offered some really horrific encounters, like the man listening to porn at the charging station and the terrifying security guard who just smiled through everything as Lacie went through a pretty rough moment. It was uncomfortable to watch of course, and it all led wonderfully to a climax when Lacie arrives at the wedding to finally give the speech she prepared so hard for and ends up doing it to embarrass Naomi and provide some subtle insight to the high 4s on how life is so fake that nothing is real anymore and nothing really matters. The story was really good, but it wouldn't have worked without good motives for Lacie. I thought the motives given were excellent, as we see Lacie wanting to buy a really expensive house. Why? Not because she wanted it, but because the house seemed to promise something real for her. Living in this world without any real human interaction has created a loneliness inside Lacie who longs for something real, and her entire trip to increase her fake social rank is all to get her to something real. It's a great motive because it's relatable and understandable, and it makes sense why her motives led to her downfall. I think that the title "Nosedive" isn't entirely accurate for this episode. Sure Lacie had her rating fall pretty hard, but was it really a fall for her character? I don't think so, and I'm very happy to say that for once it actually feels like a happy ending on this show. Lacie was looking for something real, that was what she wanted, and by falling so hard, it actually led her to exactly what she wanted as she sat in her prison cell, free from the rating system. In the end, she finally found something real as she got to talk to a guy without the crutches of the world she lives in, allowing for the most organic conversation we have seen in the entire episode. The Bad: This episode was notably longer and I think it really does feel its length. The episode tends to drag on more than others, and is hurt by the fact that it doesn't have as many cathartic scenes or devastating twists as every other episode. The episode gives a great message and tells a nice story of character transformation, but it's missing that level of emotion that Black Mirror usually hits in every episode. The episode does feel anticlimactic. There was so much anxiety built up in the first half hour, and honestly there is never really any pay-off for that. Compared to every other character's story, Lacie's suffering is extremely tame and as such I feel unsatisfied when the episode built to such a foreboding ending, only for there to really not be anything that bad at all. I wasn't a fan of Susan's character who was used to spark a change in Lacie. The wise old sage cliché has been done to death and I wasn't a fan of seeing it here. Furthermore, it's implied that you can still have a successful life with a lower rating, so why aren't there more people who just don't care about the ratings system who live their own life. For a system like this to work, everyone needs to comply and that's really hard to buy into, especially when it seems like there aren't any people around who just ignore the system. The Unknown: Prison seems to have more freedom than the actual world. I wonder if people actually go to prison to free themselves from the ratings system? Best Moment: The airport scene was really great. The staff was about as unhelpful as they get and their fake happiness was just annoying. And when Lacie lets out some emotion instead of her fake cheer, she is immediately downvoted by everyone. If that's not a metaphor for how society judges people, I don't know what is. It's really painful to see that success in this world is based off of how other people judge you, and I think this scene best demonstrated the horrors of that. Character of the Episode: Lacie. Conclusion: This was a really good episode with a solid story. I don't think it reached the heights of the best Black Mirror episodes, as this felt very safe and by the numbers, but it was still a really great episode to watch. Score: 70
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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