Summary: Nish arrives at Black Museum and meets Rollo Haynes who owns it. He tells her the story of several criminal artifacts in the museum. Each of the stories involve Rollo offering technology to some people's lives which ultimately ruins their lives. Rollo takes Nish to his main attraction: a hologram of a criminal who died which is basically alive. He shocks it over and over so it suffers, and it has gotten to the point that the man is emotionally wrecked. Nish reveals herself to be his daughter and she kills Rollo and burns down Black Museum.
The Good: Like "White Christmas", this episode had 3 different stories which came together at the end. Episodes like this work very well and are always very enjoyable. The format just works very well and hits very hard with each story. The first story had some really great moments. I love the idea of the headset which was accidentally discovered while attempts were made to find something else. It added some realism and made the headset feel like a plausible idea. The way the headset slowly took over Dawson and transformed him until he flew completely off the rails was genuinely scary and intense to watch. It was a horrific way to show that by advancing through technology, we may unlock different things we really don't want, like a desire to feel pain. This storyline was filled with brutal and uncomfortable moments, so it definitely got its point across and affected us in the way it wanted to. The second story was another scary idea. It was a good examination of how too much familiarity ends up working against us in relationships, which is an original idea to explore. It was sad seeing Jack and Carrie slowly fall apart and lose their love for each other due to the awkward situation the shared consciousness put them in. The sequence with Carrie being trapped inside the monkey with no form of communication was terrifying and very sad, once more accomplishing the goal of demonstrating how these technologies aren't helping humanity in the slightest and instead are just torturing humans. The "cookie rights" system was a fascinating idea too and it was a very logical reason to not allow Rollo to remove or kill Carrie. These 2 stories accomplished something bigger though. They were intense horror shows, but they needed to be in order to establish resentment to the character of Rollo. He is a despicable and sadistic man with no regards to humanity as he genuinely doesn't care about what negative effects his creations have had on those who tested them. It slowly builds up unease and resentment towards Rollo which is what makes the climactic final story so impressively cathartic. The final story was another brutally sad experience as we learn that Rollo sentenced somebody who was possibly innocent to a life of eternal torture, cementing our hate for him even further. It's by far his most despicable act and makes us really understand why Black Museum is a successful location as it hones in onto those with similarly sadistic minds. This story makes us lose any possible sympathy we may have for Rollo and makes us detest him completely, creating a desire for comeuppance. And comeuppance is what we get. There is a decent twist that Nish is actually Clayton's daughter which is somewhat predictable, but that doesn't really matter because it is satisfying. It allows us to see this awful man get his comeuppance and gives us a sense of satisfaction and justice for all of the awful deeds he has done. In a way this is also a bit of an ironic look at the show as a whole, as the writer Charlie Brooker always creates stories where he tortures his main characters. Perhaps this episode was meant to be a look at how he views himself or thinks that other people view him which makes it an even more fascinating idea. While on the topic of the show being self-aware, I loved the little parody which made fun of how the show always seems to have a "but" which turns everything around on the main characters and tortures them. It was a nice bit of levity in an otherwise dark and bitter episode. The Bad: This episode does feel way more miserable than it should be. There should always be a greater purpose to show so much pain and I feel that this episode's reason wasn't good enough to justify it. Even after the episode I still felt far too uncomfortable and unhappy with what I watched. The show went a bit too far with how miserable the fates of the characters were and that made the episode so uncomfortable that I no longer enjoyed it at times. The stories also felt like greater ideas for the plot of an episode that were just simplified and shoved into this episode. Each of the stories didn't really have emotional resonance since they were shallow and had weak characters. On their own the would feel like episodes which only had torture porn to offer us and that is a really immature take on dark content like this. The first story in particular is hurt by this. When you think about it, the entire first story had no purpose. We only really did need the second story to start hating Rollo, but instead we spent way too much time showing the disgustingness of that first story. Because it feels pointless, the problems with far too much misery stands out a lot more on that storyline. I thought the final twist was unnecessary and stupid. It made no sense that Nish would let her mom share consciousness with her. It was just established that the shared consciousness tech was stupid and had little benefit, so it makes Nish seem like an idiot for deciding to do it with her mom. Furthermore, how did she get her mom's consciousness if she had killed herself? It doesn't make sense and creates a plot hole. This becomes an egregious error when you realize that it adds nothing to the story. It would have been the same without that final twist, making me wish that it just wasn't there. The Unknown: What happened to Carrie afterwards? What does Nish plan to do with her? Will he be saved or will she finally get deleted and be at peace? Also, how did Jack let Carrie become a part of Black Museum? There were tons of easter eggs to other episodes in the museum. Does this officially link all the storylines together or were they only easter eggs? Will Nish let her mom go now that she has avenged Rollo? Was she only there so she could witness his violent death or is there a further purpose to it? Best Moment: The violent suffering of Rollo was great and served as a powerful catharsis to end the episode. Character of the Episode: Rollo. He was a great villain. Conclusion: This episode had an excellent overarching storyline, but the individual storylines were flawed and resulted in far too much misery to be much good on their own. In the end that leaves us with a good but not great episode. Season 4 as a whole was a big step down from previous seasons. I did still enjoy it, but the writing in all episodes (except Hang the DJ) was notably poor and I had a lot of issues with almost every episode. I still enjoyed the season as a whole and there were plenty of powerful moments, but I feel like the show didn't ever really threaten to reach the quality of previous seasons. Score: 68
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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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