Change Your Image
regandlmz
Reviews
Funny or Die's Billy on the Street (2011)
Best Reality TV show in recent memory
I can promise you these are real NYC reactions. Annoying/obnoxious? Yes, BUT this is real and it has me cracking up beyond belief. Like an animal documentary it is beautiful.
Black Mirror: Arkangel (2017)
(SPOILERS AHEAD) Strong first half, but...
Honestly I was anticipating this episode the most since watching the trailer to hearing Jodie Foster was directing, but I had many issues with this episode and I'm just going to lay it out how I saw it.
The first half was fine, it immediately drops you into the story of mother, daughter, grandfather, a small family unit but loving unit. Sara, age three, disappears from a park her mother brought her to which starts the plot line going forward. She is brought to this company who implants a small device in Sara's head, which allows her mother to track her location, view her vitals/statistics, view exactly what her daughter is seeing as she's seeing it, and is actually able to filter things from her vision; all on a handheld tablet. You can almost immediately tell what the conflict of this episode is going to be, and it happens, the over protective parent and this device results in this kid to be bullied/made fun of, unable to identify conflict/emotional distress, and worst of all shows the girl so morbidly curious about these negative feelings that she proceeds to injure her hand for blood (which she can't see as it's filtered/blurred out) and even attacks her mother. Thankfully, the mother makes the decision to remove the controls from the device and lead a new normal non-surveillance life. And that is where the story ends, personally.
What I found trouble with accepting in the later half of the episode is how ridiculous the parenting/relationship with the daughter was. I do NOT mean to come off as preachy, judging, or anything of the sort, but in what world is it acceptable for a FIFTEEN years old girl to be having sex and trying cocaine of all things? I do not think the mother was overreacting to any situation to be honest, I find the only thing I was surprised was that she didn't give a whooping on her daughter like she was yelling at the boy. I know if my child was lying to me about where they were, having sex with an adult at age fifteen, and then later trying coke with the dude I would have kept my daughter locked in the house until a new season passes. The mother's behavior in the second half could be considered helicopter parenting, I do not disagree, but if the daughter was not acting irresponsibly in the first place literally none of the later plot would have happened. Sara should have answered her phone/checked in with her mother, or just not lied about where she was going in the first place. Marie called Sara's friends, their mothers, and used the tablet as a last resource when her daughter was unheard from and had no known whereabouts.
The ending of this episode definitely made it come full circle, but instead of a message of "Overstepping parental boundaries" I found "You did not discipline your child enough here she goes off the walls".