In this review I will cover Black Mirror season 5 episode 2, Smithereens, without spoilers.
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Year: 2019
Category: Science Fiction.
Director: James Hawes.
Cast: Andrew Scott, Damson Idris, Topher Grace, Ruibo Qian, Crystal Clarke, Ambreen Razia, Daniel Ings, Monica Dolan, Jim Quirke, Conrad Khan.
Plot
A man desperate and tired of the addiction of people to social networks and electronic devices decides to kidnap one of the employees of the most important technology company and demands to speak with the CEO.
Opinion
Smithereens is an episode that instead of showing the impact of technology from a future perspective decides to show a story that relates to our present, a world in which the presence of people in social networks is almost total, where users are bombarded with much information, in which any event becomes a notification that must be seen instantly to also be forgotten instantly.
Chris Gillhaney, a man who is dissatisfied with these situations has a similar reaction to William Foster in Falling Down, kidnaps a Smithereens employee with a single goal in mind, talking to Billy Bauer, Smithereens CEO, the network most important social, with a power over the information of people similar to the one Mark Zuckerberg has.
Smithereens has a story that starts from something small but quickly gets complicated for the characters, however, its narrative is quite simple for the viewer, it keeps the tension and the mystery during almost the whole episode, but unfortunately when the moment of the revelation arrives, the motivations and the reasons of the main character are not very creative.
Until a certain moment this was the episode that I liked most of the season, it is easy to identify with the initial situation of Chris, and the mystery that surrounded the real reasons that pushed him to want to talk to Billy Bauer, however, when the episode unfolds, we discover that the plot is based on a kind of poorly elaborated MacGuffin, something that soon becomes disappointing.
James Hawes, who previously directed, according to my consideration, one of the worst episodes of the series, and I mean Hated in the Nation, does an acceptable job in Smithereens, creates an excellent atmosphere and an entertaining rhythm, this was the only episode of the season that kept me entertained from the beginning to the end. And although the development is not bad, the problem is the Charlie Brooker script, who built the plot with a weak structure, and although each actor does his job well, the motivations of the main character by themselves are not enough.
Trailer
Score
6/10
Smithereens is far from being the best episode of the series, but it is not the worst, if I had to choose a favorite this season, I would definitely choose this one.
