Straight out of the gate you need to know two things: One, I think that Black Mirror is one of the greatest mindfuck series that has ever been made if not one of the best series of any sort that has ever been made and two: I am going to be spoiling the absolute shit out of this for anyone that hasn't seen it yet.
So if you haven't watched season 6 of Black Mirror yet do not read this because I will spoil everything
Joan is Awful is the first episode of season 6 of Black Mirror and I was actually kind of surprised to find out that season 6 existed. I was unaware of this. Initially I was absolutely delighted to find out that there were 5 episodes of one of my favorite series that has ever been made existed, but honestly, it didn't take me very long to kind of lose that enthusiasm.
I don't know if the writers have just lost interest or if Black Mirror has kind of used all the dystopian stuff that they could think of, but the season as whole is pretty lackluster, especially when compared to past seasons.
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Joan in this episode is a working stiff of sorts. She kind of likes her job, kind of doesn't, but she has risen to a level inside the company that I can relate to in that she kind of feels obligated to stick around because she has made it so much further up the corporate ladder than most people. She goes to work and it seems as though she is respected by all of her underlings (we never meet any of her superiors) so all is well I guess. She has the misfortune of needing to fire someone in the morning and even though she doesn't want to do it, it is part of her job so she does so. Later, when she is vaping outside she accidentally drops her vape and hits the girl in the head that she just fired as she is being escorted out of the building by security.
This doesn't make Joan awful, but it certainly doesn't help.
Later we see Joan at her therapist where she describes her relationship with her fiance and how she thinks it is "vanilla." She also comments about how the food he makes is bland. She also confides in her therapist about how she sometimes longs for her old relationship with her ex because even though it was a bit toxic, it was exciting. These are things that you would tell a therapist in confidence that the information isn't going to get out and even though I have never been to therapy, it is my understanding that this information can never leak, even under court order. Moving on.
Joan also meets up with her ex but doesn't do anything with him particularly bad but anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows that this would be seriously frowned upon by your current partner if you met up with an ex, even if it is was for innocent reasons... which this kind of was.
Joan doesn't tell her fiance about this and this is kind of shitty. Does it make Joan awful? Not really. A bit sneaky maybe, but not awful.
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Things get a bit strange later on when she sits down for a "vanilla" dinner with her "vanilla" fiance and a new show is on their streaming service that is called "Joan is Awful" and the picture looks just like her but it is played by Selma Hayak. Her and her fiance are obviously intrigued but things get very uncomfortable for the real life Joan when episode one is basically a rehash of the day that she literally just went through including everything she told her therapist and the fact that she met up with her ex.
Her fiance is less than thrilled and storms out like a "vanilla" fiance would.
This is where things are supposed to become "Black Mirror" ish. Black Mirror episodes tend to be about the dangers of technology becoming too much of our lives and the reason why this show was able to be made about her life was because of the fact that she, like most of us, gives too much of her private data away on her phone and unbeknown to her, she had given an app on her phone permission to listen to her and track her movements.
I thought this was kind of a ripoff of that SouthPark episode where "nobody ever reads the terms of service" just they turned it into an hour long dystopian style show.
Without getting into too much detail Joan realizes that there is nothing that she can do to stop Netflix (called Streamberry in the show but it is obviously meant to be Netflix) from mimicking her life, so she does her best to try to get the real Selma Hayak's attention by doing something awful in a church knowing that Selma is going to have a problem with this since she is a Catholic.
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This is when we find out that Selma isn't actually live acting any of the script and there isn't really a script. The entire shows are created so quickly because a "quantum computer" is auto generating the content and simply using Selma's likeness. Selma, likewise didn't read the terms of service as is unable to prevent Streamberry from using her likeness regardless of what it is that Joan makes her likeness do in the scenes.
Blah blah blah... I wish it got more interesting than this but basically Selma and Joan team up to take down Streamberry's computer that is making the content only to find out that there are billions of "somebody is awful" shows that are being created in tons of different realities and Joan and Selma aren't actually even alive. They are part of the simulation as well.
It gets kind of difficult to grasp at that point because it is a show about a show about a show about something eventually the resembles real life. It isn't explained very well and honestly, you don't really care at that point and you just want it to be over.
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This is why I start to think that Black Mirror is kind of losing its edge or perhaps it is gone forever. Most episodes in the past left you with some sense of dread or perhaps even a lesson about maybe not depending on technology so much but this one was just kind of dumb. At the end of it all there is no lesson and since the people we are focused on the entire time turn out to not be people at all anyway but are just a simulation, all the stuff that they do in the episode is all for naught anyway.
I don't feel as though this episode sticks with the usual Black Mirror theme and honestly, it just wasn't very good. If I had to give it a 1-5 star rating - which is something I did do on Plex, I would give it
2 out of 5 stars
It's still better than a great deal of what is available out there but a massive step down from what I have come to expect from Black Mirror's previous excellence.