Black Mirror has returned with its highly anticipated seventh season — and its first episode has already left viewers as “depressed” as they are impressed.
*Warning — spoilers for ‘Black Mirror’ season seven to follow, episode one*
The new series of Netflix’s hit sci-fi anthology, which was released Thursday, opens with an episode titled “Common People.”
Starring Rashida Jones as a schoolteacher named Amanda, it follows the tragic aftermath of her character finding out she has a life-threatening brain tumor.
In order to save her life, her husband, Mike (Chris O’Dowd), signs her up to a high-tech neuroscience firm offering to do an invasive procedure that involves removing the affected part of her brain and replacing it with synthetic material.
After undergoing the surgery, which promises Amanda a normal and healthy life, she starts reciting advertisements for the company. When the couple raises the issue with the company, the company insists that the problem can’t be fixed unless they agree to pay for a premium subscription.
As a way to make extra money to pay for the higher-tiered subscription, Mike joins a sketchy online streaming site where he’s paid by viewers to mutilate his body. However, after the couple begins to fall behind on payments, Amanda ultimately decides she’d rather die.
While the unnerving installment has left many fans floored — to the point that some have deemed it one of the “best Black Mirror episodes ever made” — it has also left many feeling bleak.
“If you watch Black Mirror, don’t start with ‘Common People’ in the new season,” one X user warned.
“The first episode of the new season of BLACK MIRROR criticizing TikTok lives and even itself and other streaming services that keep increasing their plans so as not to have ads. I finished the episode feeling depressed,” a second noted. “Great start.”
“Netflix playing in our face about the subscription model in the black mirror pilot is crazy,” a third wrote, while a fourth issued a one-word description of the episode: “Disturbing.”
Someone else applauded Netflix for “putting on ads right after the ‘ads’ scene in black mirror's ‘common people’,” calling it “some (genius) evil s***.”
Another praised “Common People” as a “fantastic introduction to the new season of Black Mirror.” “A tragicomic metaphor for the technological society that governs us. Top episode,” they wrote.
“Holy s***,” another declared. “‘Common People’ might be one of the best black mirror episodes ever made.”
In a three-star review of the episode by The Independent’s Nick Hilton, he wrote: “Good Black Mirror episodes set up a premise and then subvert it, but ‘Common People’ takes an interesting jumping off point and then progresses exactly as you’d anticipate. The ending, in its striking bleakness, feels undeserved.”
The seventh season of Black Mirror is out now on Netflix.
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