“Black Mirror” Season 3, Episode 1 Review

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Abby Hagner, Staff Writer

Spoiler Alert!!

For season 3, episode 1 of “Black Mirror” is a Netflix series that encounters different realities that happen when new technology is introduced to a futuristic society. Season three came out Friday, Oct. 21, and contains six episodes.

My favorite episode in season three is the first episode, ”Nose Dive,” which is about a world that revolves around social media ratings. Bryce Dallas Howard does a brilliant job as “Lacie,” the main character in the episode who applies social media to her life to the point that it’s controlling her. To get the apartment of her dreams, her social rating needs to be above a 4.5, so she tries to get people to like her to get her “score” higher. It takes a crazy turn when Lacie’s old friend Naomi, played by Alice Eve, asks her to be her maid of honor. Lacie tries to keep her “score” up while traveling to the wedding, but it decreases every time a person dislikes her.

Lacie’s score gets marked down when she runs into a lady walking by her house. This causes her to lose her seat on the airplane, and when she screams at the flight attendant, her score gets marked down an entire point and she can only rent an old model car. This scene is everyone’s worst traveling nightmare.

Her luck keeps getting worse when her car runs out of battery and she has to hitchhike with a total stranger. The stranger is an older woman driving a truck, Susan, played by Cherry Jones, who speaks freely to Lacie about the time when she was also obsessed with social media, until her husband died and she no longer felt the need. This creates a human side to the futuristic world.

The least expected part of the episode is when Naomi calls Lacie five minutes before the wedding and tells her that she no longer needs Lacie to come because her score is so low. This sends Lacie into a panic, but she ends up crashing the wedding and is locked in jail. Ending the episode with Lacie locked in jail yelling her feelings to a perfect stranger finally gives her the freedom she has been looking for.

For me, this episode is about not caring what people say. I am my own person. In our society, we use and care too much about social media, and this episode is a wake up call.