There’s something oddly “off” (wrong, at least in the sense of unusual) with a little girl named Sara(h) from the very moment of her birth. This is shown in fairly harmless ways (brief delay in declaration of health at birth, a dog barking perhaps a bit too harshly from behind its fence…)
Then she disappears after being taken to a park, apparently wandering off…it fades and then ‘Arkangel’ office is loaded (white and grey, harmless and comforting and “secure”…) and she is taken to a chair…
Things get abruptly odd and creepy when a woman (acting as a Doctor?) loads a needle with something and injects it directly into the side of her head. Said WAAAD doing it seems a bit scared by the process, as if she knows what she’s doing but it still demands her *complete* focus and attention and/or is just an object worthy of fear in the “fear of God” or He’ll KILL YOU! sense.
Or maybe fear of caged aliens in ‘Alien Resurrection’ or they’ll KILL YOU? Anyhoo…
This contrasts with her cordial, nothing-to-it greeting voice and mannerisms right before, and (in recovering from the experience?) right after…
Turns out it was a really really high-tech, state-of-the-art tracking system of not just where Sara(h) is but HOW she is. The WAAAD seems fully back to normal as she explains this to the mother, and shows off the little laptop device that makes it work…doing so pleasantly, seeming friendly and fully back in control, displaying even how incredible/incredibly simple (in an amazingly-so way) the whole thing is; that it’s a wonder there was even the slightest hesitation in the first place…the complete comfort of one that is sure and is explaining facts, not offering theories.
And it’s…just…that…simple.
The woman shows how she can use the device to control the little girl’s perception; as cartoons that she was watching as the two women talked are changed to an image of a man in fatigues firing a machine gun, which is then turned into a very hazy image…of…a blurry object…firing…something like a machine gun. HUH? “It’s all optional.”
The mother, explaining to the girl’s grandfather: “It’s free…and it’s safe.” The grandfather is skeptical, and pines over the way it was “in MY day”. They seem better for a while after, though, and mother uses the haze-out feature to turn the dog into a hazy figure that isn’t barking quite as much/loudly. Seems alright, right?
PROBLEM: Grandfather has an apparent heart attack, but Sara(h) sees only a hazy blur and barely hears him speaking, so doesn’t realize the gravity of the situation (that’s implied, at least…it seems like she would even hazy. Hell, I would).
Mother is warned by the implant, and removes the haze, so he’s saved, but it reveals the dangers of shielding oneself fully from reality: denying reality.
Time lapse done via swing set, back and forth, over and over…and…ADVANCE. Artsy craftsy.
Guess: (shown a little before guess) The avoidance of painful reality, the “ignoring it and it will go away” approach that worked to a certain extent when she was a toddler whose mother ALWAYS kept a watch on her, becomes more and more dangerous as she grows up and her mother worries less and less…
Guess again: (again a little before my guess) The prevention of her seeing reality eventually frustrates Sara(h) to the point of (typical and normal) adolescent rebellion…she goes out of her way to see everything, even bad.
In a nod (that I didn’t get until an Eval) to the company (‘Arkangel’) that started this whole mess, it’s revealed that they were eventually banned, but that the implants aren’t very outgoing.
So the mother has two choices: Keep it on and the daughter will get more and more frustrated, or turn it off and the daughter will face life “on her own”. That’s two opposite things, I guess (before I watch): FREEEEEDOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!! and Oh FCK I’m scared :(
She sees a boy that mocked her before (and inspired her to poke her finger with a sharp pencil to see blood) and he’s on the schoolyard, with a bloody lip. She’s never seen one before, and we’re faced with the quick mental-guess choice: Is she fascinated by this and becomes his friend, seeing pain and wanting to help, and things are nice and sweet and happy…or NOT of course this is bleepin’ Black Mirror!
So cut to him introducing her to porn: “This is porn…”, etc…ahhh…I was worried for a second there. And then, graphic and disgusting violence (all implied, the back of the tablet is to us, just lots of foley)…quick montage, she eventually gets more and more used to (the bad parts of) reality, done via her walking past the dog over and over, more and more comfortably, more and more naturally, with less and less fear…more like a “normal” person would (?)
Question: Will this lead her TOO far in the other direction? Not afraid of things she SHOULD be afraid of? My guess (before unpausing) is Yes. But not a simple yes, this is fcken Black Mirror!
The boy that is now a young man asks her to go somewhere in a van…gee I wonder if she’ll say yes.
It’s implied that it should be scary. I’m scared for her. But she doesn’t seem scared. Is she just NOT scared? Or is she rebelling, STILL, against safe ignorance?
TIME LEFT: 25:07 – What happens? Well, this is Black Mirror…but…this is Black Mirror.
Don’t be afraid.
She gets more and more “normal”, I suppose. Ummm…I’m not a good judge of normal, and to me normal is bad. So let’s say she gets more and more…curious. And…ummmm…what is the word…
Typical.
The sign on the door of the chainlink fence, FOR SALE…now that’s gotta be the “dog house”, and an obvious sign of the passage of time, and/or change, and/or an ending, and/or something unstoppable (eventually, at least, all things…well…almost all things come to an end). I sigh with relief, myself, at my exceptions.
Note: A ‘TUSK’ poster on her wall, and her boyfriend looks like the guy from ‘Tusk’ the movie. Relevance? *shrug*.
11:10-10:51 left: A Boxed Set Of Lessons Learned.
A twist at the end seems gratuitous, an easy way to have a “controversial” and “powerful” ending.
Decent, I suppose, as those things normally go. But not worthy of BM.
A second twist seems quite the opposite.
Love and Hate.
Loss.
Inspirational Quote: “Come on, I just wanna see…Pleeeaaase?”