The Black Mirror Episode “White Bear” is by far the best in the series. The anthology series has already built a reputation for wacky and horrible scenarios by the time the viewer arrives at season two, and the beginning of the episode is set up to meet this expectation. Our dependence on cell phones has come back and bitten us on the ass when someone uploads a virus controlling anyone looking at a screen, at least that is what many of the supporting characters lead us to believe. But as we follow our forgetful lead through to the end of the day we discover along with her and to both our horror the truth behind this snapshot of a world gone wrong. This is Black Mirrors strongest delivery of its message. By putting us in the passenger seat and letting us experience a day in the life of our main character we see the extent to which the justice system in this place has been perverted.

Black mirror enjoys taking a aspect of our current day society that is somewhat benign as of now and extrapolating it until we can see the dangerous paths these aspects create. I feel that the aspect that this episode targets is much more deep then some of the others. Surface level we can see the commentary on bystander effect, and the new fad of living and experiencing through screens, however after the big reveal we are left with something that is much more intertwined with human nature. The fact that we are all not that different. We are all capable of terrible things and instead of realizing this in ourselves we tend to dehumanize those of us who have done wrong as a way of distancing ourselves. The world shown in this episode has taken this to extreme and are placing their guilty under horrid conditions. This is why the decision to keep the truth of our main characters crimes ambiguous until the end frames its message so clearly. By rooting the character in the protagonists position and placing us in her point of view the show humanizes her and by the end we are confronting this aspect of society within ourselves. We are all uncomfortable and asking to what extent she deserves this, how different could she have been from one of us. This is where I believe Black Mirror has sent its most poignant message and it is the reason behind why it is the episode I recommend to others.