Black Mirror - Season 5, Episode 01: Striking Vipers
Trailer
Back to the exciting stories of Black Mirror in the fifth season which will be full of mysterious and thriller events. This series focuses on the bad side of the modern technology. As we see in the previous seasons, this technology may be the reason of your death or it can lead you to lose your mind and do many crazy things.
Owen Harris, Carl Tibbetts, Otto Bathurst, Euros Lyn, Brian Welsh, Bryn Higgins, James Hawes, Dan Trachtenberg, Jakob Verbruggen, James Watkins, Joe Wright, Jodie Foster, Toby Haynes, John Hillcoat, Colm McCarthy, David Slade, Timothy Van Patten
"Smithereens" gets in a few interesting jabs, but Charlie Brooker's script is hampered by how thin the plot is, how long it takes for the action to get going, and how simplistic the big mystery turns out to be.
If this is, at heart, a story of a man railing against his own perceived lack of agency, it seems ironic that the scriptwriters should reduce him to such a cipher also.
It's too bad that wasn't what the episode was ultimately about. Though "Smithereens" finishes weakly, the road there is pretty good, but unlike road trip clichés, Black Mirror is more about the destination than the journey.
Black Mirror has had a lot of brilliant episodes, but few have had this level of literary merit, allowing for all sorts of analysis for those willing to plumb its depths.
Scott, superb here, can deliver all of that with just a look. It's his astonishing control and range that elevated a too-tidy plot into something much messier and more profound.
