Black Mirror - Season 2 Episode 3 Review

*CAUTION: The following review contains plot spoilers for this episode of Black Mirror. If you have not yet seen it and wish to do so, then proceed with caution*

Politics is a cruel, frustrating and often confusing world that often passes us by.

It is an interesting world from the outside looking in at how these people really do control what goes on and how much they can mould the world the way want to. It is even more fascinating and extremely worrying how little a largely apathetic public knows or cares about what they get up to, and how little politicians seem to care about getting them back on side.

Voters are becoming more cynical. A lot of news nowadays seems to be being gathered through the buzz around the news, and how it is also being diluted into immediate opinions, jokes, and how it affects us. Politics is ignored in a way like never before, especially by the younger generation who have been turned off by a largely homogenised blend of politicians who look the same and have similar policies.

Or to amend the words of Waldo the animated blue bear, none of us know what these people are for anymore.

Having tackled the dead and the criminals, Black Mirror moves onto a scene Charlie Brooker is more renowned for sinking his claws into - that of politics. The scene is going to be a lot different because politics is an easier subject that is less likely to cause depression as much as the other two.

It's a lighter subject because we are more used to politicians as figures to be mocked as much as figures to be respected, and ironically satirists are one of the targets for this one.

The show is centered around Jamie (Daniel Rigby), a struggling comedian. He works for a late night news comedy, providing the voice and the central animation for an animated blue bear who takes the piss out of politicians. Early on we see how keen he is on his role - not very. This mood is certainly not helped as the main host of the show keeps nicking the main zingers for his monologue.

Despite this he is the show's most popular character. With his normal show taking a break, and everyone wanting more and more of him, he's duly handed his own show. Figuring out how to do a pilot, his producer sends him to try to run for an MP.

Jamie is reluctant, feeling he knows too little about politics to attempt this. It also doesn't help that the main canditate was recently one of Waldo's targets. But before long he's off on the campaign trail in a fictional Surrey seat.

There's something quite amusing about a van with a big blue cartoon bear pursuing an actual politician down a high street. Naturally the humour is the somewhat childish-smart we've come to expect from modern comedy - while not quite the pig-relations antics of the first season opener, one gag involving the bear's boner appears - but there is still some amusement in watching a blue bear stalking a Tory.

It also feels weird - this is after all from a series that has produced heartbreaking sci-fi romance and a psychological torture, and has now gone to more conventional ground, if played with unconventional toys. Obviously Brooker wants this to be an anthology series but this does play like the odd one out.

In confidence to the Labour MP canditate, the comedian says that he is unhappy and is also dissatisfied with the whole system. Strangely though the idea of a dissatisfied anarchist comedian becoming a big political player is not as far fetched as you think - one look at Italy, where one is being talked as a serious canditate in their presidential election, proves this possibility.

After falling in love with and then being ditched by said Labour canditate, things get out of control. A student Question Time/"meet the canditates" session sees the Tory canditate reveal Jamie's past history - ironcially referring to advertising, which Rigby is most famous for - and this incentivises him to go forward with a rant where he dismembers each individual canditate.

Aside from making him even more miserable, it also catapults him into notoriety. Suddenly he's the big star the world is talking about. Feeling embarassed and even more upset, he wants to pull out of this whole charade but the momentum is against the view and his producer's promptly cajole him into carrying on.

Suddenly, the momentum takes an even stranger turn. There's no denying disssatisfaction with our politicians is out of control everywhere but recommending him to be a global revolutionary like Occupy is a surreal tone, and one clearly too much for him.

He tries to rebel against his own creation, only for his producer to overrule him and even get people to maul him for trying to betray him. To general surprise, and the prompt sparking of a riot, Monroe gets the seat. But the more surreal and faintly unnerving touch is the future-set end coda, when a now homeless Jamie sees what he has created - a global phenomenon inspiring revolutionaries worldwide.

The trouble with the episode is that, as politics is now a subject we more easily mock, the only way political stuff can be genuinely affected is if we have full blown crisis stuff. As the subject doesn't feel as close to home, it doesn't feel like as rough, which reduces the character somewhat. So although the set-ups are very well sculpted and the actors all do exceptionally well, it's not really in the same league as it's predecessors.

The episode was developed when Brooker and Chris Morris did Nathan Barley, a 2005 sitcom about hipsters. This does follow the trend of it, with a voice of reason overruled by a "aint-it-cool" loon, with a loon victory leading to dire consequence, but it's easy to feel it may have worked better either as that or starting with Waldo the all-knowing revolutionary global force rather than creating him.

It could have been a lot harder hitting, although the points it did make - not least in Waldo's rant - were rather accurate. The idea of a big blue bear running amok in Westminster would be interesting but as Boris Johnson basically lives this, the idea of satirising it was lost in nob gags and swearing. If the premise had been a malicious individual using his cartoonish points to gain votes, it may have hit harder. But in its guise it just lacked true elevation to get it to the standards of the other episodes and it just felt too weak to be a series finale.

3/5