Fourteen years after the series first launched, Black Mirror Season 7 has more or less reached, if not surpassed, those near futures. As it has marched on, the show has lost much of its ability to shock. That can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your outlook. As a result, the Charlie Brooker-created sci-fi anthology has become increasingly focused on the human elements of its stories, particularly in this most recent offering.

While the show has always been at least partially interested in questions of mortality and memory, they now feel like prime concerns. Every episode of Black Mirror Season 7 keys in on the. The result is a consistent melancholic baseline throughout. It may be the show’s most mature to date and the most reliable in quality since the jump to Netflix. There are, nonetheless, installments that work better than others. Thus, discussing each, one by one, is the best way to tackle this review.

Common People

While an uneven offering, the ending and overall emotional tone stick with the viewer when the episode ends. It kicks Black Mirror Season 7 off on an emotionally devastating note. Amanda (Rashida Jones) and Mike (Chris O’Dowd) are a largely happy middle-class couple until an inoperable brain tumor fells Amanda. However, Gaynor (Tracee Ellis Ross) offers Mike hope through a new technology that can somehow circumvent the tumor, allowing Amanda to not just wake up from her coma but resume her life almost unchanged. The only initial drawbacks are a 300-dollar monthly subscription charge and the need for a couple more hours of sleep.

Like so many modern subscription services, though, even this lifesaver succumbs to the need to generate infinite growth. New subscription tiers are introduced, each extracting a steeper price. The original tier becomes the least useful, forcing Amanda to cough up ad copy unaware and without warning. The new tiers offer more for your buck, sure, but most of the bells and whistles aren’t what Amanda and Mike want or need in the first place. Still, to get what they want, they must pay. That pushes Mike to engage in increasingly humiliating acts on a kind of nonsexual Only Fans site where viewers pay directly for people to drink their own urine, pull their own teeth, and more.

That last element is the weakest part of “Common People,” recalling the Prime Minister’s live encounter with swine but to considerably less impact. However, it is a bum note in an otherwise emotionally compelling story. Unfortunately, the most emotionally affecting turn in the story takes place in the final third which I can’t discuss. Suffice to say, it broadens the episode’s focus beyond the evils of capitalism to something deeper to the bone and far more human.

Bête Noire

Hinging on a killer central premise, “Bête Noire” is the rare installment of the series that likely would’ve been better at a longer running time. While not the weakest of Black Mirror Season 7, it does feel like the biggest fumble of a strong idea.

In brief, Maria (Siena Kelly), a food scientist, is unnerved to see a former classmate, Verity (Rosy McEwen), in a focus group for one of her products. Things only grow more distressing as Verity somehow jumps from that group to a full-time job at Maria’s company without any satisfactory answers about why or how. Maria’s boyfriend, Kae (Michael Workéyè), suggests she might just be feeling a bit of the green-eyed monster, but Maria is increasingly sure something darker is afoot.

Besides McEwen’s character’s groan-worthy name, this installment’s biggest problem is it lacks time to let the dread build and marinate. Things go from a bit surprising to unnerving to total panic so rapidly that the viewer is left playing catchup instead of experiencing Kelly’s well-portrayed emotional state alongside her. One of the characters even comments in-universe how rapidly this has all gone down. As a result, there isn’t much time to do more than marvel at the core idea rather than truly enjoy it.

Hotel Reverie

Black Mirror Season 7’s third installment is likely to gain comparisons to “San Junipero” stemming from its central sapphic romance and emotional valence.

Judith Keyworth (Harriet Walter) owns a vast library of classic films. Unfortunately, that isn’t translating into revenue or modern audience attention. But Kimmy (Awkwafina) has an idea to partner with Streamberry (Mirror’s Netflix analog) to make everything old new again.

The plan is, through a technology described just as much as it needs to be and not a bit more, to recast the lead role in a classic film with a modern actor, Issa Rae’s Brandy. The rest of the film will, ideally, remain unchanged, except for Brandy romancing the targeted for death heiress (Emma Corrin) instead of the original straight white man lead. “Ideally,” of course, rarely happens, especially in Black Mirror. Things quickly go awry, and Brandy has to go off script, changing the “world” of the film in increasingly significant ways.

Ultimately, “Hotel Reverie” lacks the kind of resonance “Junipero” achieved. While Corrin and Rae have excellent chemistry with Rae especially selling the film’s new ending, it never seems to accomplish the same gravity. It remains a compelling enough watch, though. Additionally, as a film lover, I also appreciated the parallels to previous “update classics” movements like Ted Turner’s obsession with colorization. The episode never directly takes a stand, but the implications are clear if you look for them.

Plaything

Black Mirror Season 7’s second biggest attempt to mine its own history for more stories proves the weakest of the season. The problem lies not with Peter Capaldi as the story’s narrator and protagonist, Cameron Walker (played in flashbacks by a very different feeling, Lewis Gribben). At first, presenting as near catatonic, Walker becomes activated when brought in on a decades-old murder charge. Stringy-haired and manic, he begins to unspool a tale of a “game” Colin Ritman (Will Poulter, reprising his “Bandersnatch” character) passed him. Capaldi gives Walker the cadence and bearings of a hippie street preacher. He’s a kind of “doomsday is coming, but it’s good!” for the taking it easy technobro set.

The problem is the episode doesn’t have much to say in the midst of Walker’s story. There’s a bit about the thoughtlessness and cruelty of humanity, but none of that is new or especially well-observed. The episode builds nicely to the ending in its best sequence. However, without a clear thesis entering into that moment, it never hits a strong final note. The ambiguity of the ending doesn’t unnerve or excite. It only incites shrugs and a reach for the remote to click “Watch Next Episode.”

Eulogy

For this writer, “Eulogy” is far and away the high point of Black Mirror Season 7. A two-hander between a middle-aged Phillip (Paul Giamatti) and a computer construct Guide (Patsy Ferran), it quickly becomes an acting showcase for Giamatti with Ferran smartly getting out of the way save for some well-timed moments of excellent support work.

The Guide arrives via package to help the family of Phillip’s first love create a multimedia eulogy. However, deeply wounded in the wake of their breakup, Phillip spent years laying waste to his memories of her. He’s even destroyed every physical image of their time together with Sharpies and cigarette burns. Not to be dissuaded, the Guide pokes and prods at him, pushing him past his convenient narrative of that time of his life.

There’s some great visual imagery here with Giamatti moving in and around still figures of his past. Nonetheless, it really does all come down to him holding the screen for the entirety of the episode’s running time. To do so, he strikingly is as emotionally naked and ugly as all of our pasts make us.

USS Callister: Into Infinity

 You know what was great? 2017’s “USS Callister.” You know what’s pretty good? Black Mirror Season 7’s “USS Callister: Into Infinity” episode. It still wrestles with some heady themes, for sure. However, those that mirror the first episode received stronger exploration there. Those new this time have popped more and been considered more deeply and intriguingly in other works. For instance, “Into Infinity” ’s consideration of how “real” the digital DNA copies within Infinity compared to their flesh and blood analogs. That treads similar ground as Severance in a shallower and more flippant manner.

Cristin Milioti as meek programmer Nanette Cole and hero of the USS Callister in Infinity Nanette Cole is still excellent. She does great work showing how the experiences of that previous episode have changed her in both worlds. Jimmi Simpson is delightfully slimy as the company’s remaining living founder, Walton. The look of the Infinity world is pleasingly simplistic and brightly colored. It’s a smart rendering of how living inside a video game might look if you were a “native” to it. Even the ending is a fun joke when taken on its own terms.

The problem is, “Into Infinity” isn’t on its own. It takes place in its predecessor’s shadow and fails to either match or exceed it at every turn.

Black Mirror Season 7 castigates your smart appliances from Netflix starting April 10.

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