Summary: Marie gives birth to baby Sara and is overprotective. She loses Sara by accident once and installs a device called Arkangel which allows her to watch everything that Sara sees and also filters things which stress out Sara. As Sara grows up, the filters start doing more harm than good so Marie stops using the Arkangel. When Sara becomes a teenager she starts doing rebellious teenager things with her boyfriend Trick. Marie isn't sure where Sara is at one point and returns to the Arkangel to find her. She discovers all of Sara's activities and starts interfering with her life. Sara eventually discovers this and turns on her mother, beating her unconscious and breaking the Arkangel. Sara leaves home.
The Good: This felt much more like a Black Mirror episode as it examined themes and explored the effects of humans improperly using technology and how it does more harm than good. This was more focused on being its own creative storyline and didn't try to imitate anything else and I welcome the return to unconventional storytelling. The concept of the Arkangel is fantastic and allows a lot of opportunities for exploration of how this technology could affect the upbringing of these kids and how such intense helicopter parenting could do more harm than good. There are some really good scenes here and the concept adds a lot of stuff to this. The early half of the episode was particularly affecting for me because the idea initially felt ingenious, before I quickly realized how much harm the Arkangel could do. Watching the Arkangel used with the young Sara was really fascinating and created some exciting possibilities for the story to go towards. For one, I loved the exploration of how the filter drove Sara to want to see more violent things and ultimately be pretty unaffected by the horrors because she just wanted to know what they were like. I love the detail that the Arkangel ended up shaping Sara to become a more violent and careless person because she spent so much of her early life being curious to discover what the world is all about without all those filters. I especially love the little touch that Sara became friends with the dog which scared her as a child. Marie's character was really good. From the first scene it established her overprotectiveness of her daughter and how much she wants to shelter her. There were numerous nice touches of this overprotectiveness like the protein shakes, Marie taking Sara to the park in a stroller and more. This makes it more believable for her to go back to the Arkangel to find out where Sara was, and also makes it more believable that Marie would interfere with all of Sara's life to "take care of her". It was easy to understand why Marie made these stupid decisions and that's very important for this episode to work. The tragic ending to the episode was fairly powerful and logical too. It had to go in the direction that Marie ultimately ruins her relationship with her daughter and I think it was decently powerful after getting to see their relationship. I also love the final touch of Sara deciding to get into a car with a stranger to end the episode, which is the exact thing that Marie wouldn't want her to do as an overprotective mother. The Bad: The episode is way too predictable in its second half though. It goes in the exact direction you would expect and hammers the "helicopter parenting is bad" point in way too hard. While there was nothing offensive from this, it was very disappointing and failed to hit as hard as all of the best Black Mirror episodes. The examination of how the Arkangel would affect the upbringing of kids wasn't explored enough. The best scenes in the episode focused on that in the first half, but unfortunately it abruptly stopped examining that and had very little payoff later in the episode. I found that aspect of the episode to be the most fascinating and I would have much rather preferred to get insight on that instead of on helicopter parenting. Sara nearly killing her mother with the Arkangel certainly didn't feel earned. I can buy that Sara is very mad at her mom, but I really can't buy that she nearly killed her and left with no second thought. If that was trying to make a point on how Sara became violent because of her sheltered upbringing (and I think it was), there wasn't nearly enough focus put on that to make it feel like the reason for her behaviour. This hole makes the climax far less powerful than it should have been. The Unknown: Where does Sara go now? Would she have fixed her relationship with her mother if she had stayed? What will the stranger in the truck do to her? Could this have been averted if Marie had talked to Sara instead of making her decisions for her? Was the Arkangel a good concept at all? It seems to have positives but does a lot of harm. Is there potential in the idea with a few tweaks to it, or is it just a really bad idea in general? Did the Arkangel actually end up getting banned? Best Moment: I'll pick the moment where Sara started to draw violent pictures and even stab herself with a pencil to try to see some blood. It was truly horrifying and examined what could happen if you try to protect your kids too much from reality. Character of the Episode: Marie. Conclusion: This was a good episode and was better than the previous 2, but it felt like a missed opportunity. There was emotion here but not enough, there was thematic exploration here but not enough. This was a great concept but the execution as off and so we only have a good episode instead of another great episode. Score: 66
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
February 2024
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