Summary: Joan lays off one of her employees with no spine and goes to therapy where she confides in being disappointed in her relationship with her fiance Krish. She is texted by Mac, her ex, and agrees to meet with him where they kiss before she returns home. At home, she watches Streamberry with Krish and watch a new show "Joan is Awful", but the show is actually just showing Joan's daily life acted by Salma Hayek. Joan is horrified and Krish leaves her after seeing what happened with Mac. Joan tries to take legal action but realizes that it's impossible. Joan then defecates in a church in protest. Salma learns that a digital version of her is doing this and is upset, but is also unable to take legal action. She teams up with Joan and they decide to destroy Streamberry's quantum computer or quamputer that gathers data and creates these TV shows. Joan and Salma break into Streamberry and Joan is about to break it, but she learns that she's not even the original Joan she's one of the AIs produced within the quamputer. She realizes original Joan did it anyways and breaks the computer. The original Joan is placed under house arrest but has more control in her life.
The Good: The title of this episode is definitely accurate because Joan is awful and it's amusing to watch her stumble from situation to situation making everything worse and worse. There is some good comedy throughout the episode that elevates this, and while the lighthearted tone fails to create a realistic atmosphere (see: The Bad), it does provide some quality comedy that I enjoyed. Joan and Salma Hayek are fun to watch and their jokes are elevated by some spirited performances. I like the ideas being explored here. This episode is reminiscent of "Inception" with there being layers of AI within other AI, creating a complex and difficult to comprehend realm of existences all within a computer. This episode is essentially taking the idea of us all living in a simulation and running several miles with the concept. I found this to be interesting and compelling. I also liked the exploration of the control a streaming service can have over the world, and this is a clever idea for a "Black Mirror" episode. The Bad: I can't stand the lightheartedness that "Black Mirror" has used in this episode and the previous episode in season 5. This show tackles serious ideas and disturbs viewers because of how realistic its characters and world feels in each episode. When we see characters behaving like comic book characters with no realistic aspects at all. The actors get lots of comedy out of it, but they never feel like real people with real problems, and I spent the entirety of the episode being unable to take the ideas seriously because of the strange tone. By far the most immersion-breaking aspect of this episode is how nobody ever seems concerned by how the "Joan is Awful" TV show is a total disruption of personal privacy and what it could mean about corporations surveilling people's personal lives. The existence of this show should result in total paranoia, distrust, fear, and genuine anger towards people in power for allowing this to happen. Instead, the characters only care about how other people perceive them in the TV show, which is entirely unrealistic and it makes these characters feel fake at every turn. Nothing feels real because nobody acts like a real person would. I deeply dislike the terms and conditions idea. Instead of exploring realistic consequences of terms and conditions allowing for unfair surveillance of everyone living in the world, the idea is treated like a gimmick. It's implied that all legal power would be moot because of a single signature, which is laughably unrealistic, and it's a cop-out from genuinely exploring the impact that terms and conditions has on our daily lives. Most of the time "Black Mirror" handles exaggerations of real life fairly well because the concept feels like a natural extension of what currently exists in our world. The terms and conditions idea fails at this because corporations creating a TV show targeted towards individuals feels like an idea that would never even be considered, never mind implemented. The Unknown: What happened to all of the AI? Did they all just die, or were they recovered somehow? Did Joan actually stop Streamberry, or would they simply build a new quamputer? What allows Streamberry to take such control through terms and conditions? What happened in this world to make this the norm and to make this level of surveillance legal? Best Moment: I'll go with the sheer comic shock of Joan pooping in the church. Character of the Episode: Joan. Conclusion: This was a disappointing episode. It had good ideas, but the writing and execution was terrible and ruined the episode. Score: 47
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|