Rating: 3.5/5 stars

“Black Mirror” has released its seventh season contending with the themes of human relationships with technology and future dangers it poses. 

The first episode “Common People,” follows a couple after the wife faces a life-threatening brain tumor that leaves her permanently unconscious. Rivermind, a high-tech system, clones part of her brain to allow her to live. The cost is $300 a month in order to keep her alive, yet Rivermind continues to up prices for “premium opportunities.”

The couple, Amanda (Rashida Jones) and Mike (Chris O’Dowd), are a happy, ordinary couple with regular jobs; Amanda is a teacher and Mike is a construction worker. The show starts with the couple celebrating their third wedding anniversary by going to the cheap hotel they got married in. 

The episode does a great job of showing us this beautiful couple in love through ordinary moments. The opening shot is of the couple’s feet intertwined as they wake up on their anniversary. These loving, small moments allow for audience members to connect to the couple, making the illness and descent of Rivermind more heartbreaking. 

Rivermind’s spokesperson (Tracee Ellis Ross), having undergone the procedure herself, meets with the couple regularly about their complaints and issues. 

Rivermind purposefully induces severe She begins to speak side effects onto Amanda as a means to profit off of her illness. Ads about specific topics at random and sleep longer and longer, and the only way to get rid of this is to pay significantly more a month. 

The commentary and hopelessness of the healthcare system is done very well throughout the episode. Healthcare, especially in the United States, has been a heavily debated and discussed topic by American citizens, as insurance and payments to access have become unreato these services sonable at certain points. 

Mike will do anything for his wife, taking more and more hours at work while his wife can barely wake up and work due to the procedure. The demand for money becomes so much that Mike begins to go on a website called “Make Stupid Money” where people get dared to do stupid things online for a profit. 

He first begins by wearing a mask and doing painful activities like touching a mouse trap with his tongue, but when the need for money increases he begins to do more embarrassing and harmful things to himself.

This is a classic “Black Mirror” trope, but honestly it felt like a side piece to the episode. When “Make Stupid Money” was first introduced, it seemed it was going to be a big part of the episode, which it was, but there could have been more. 

The episode was definitely more focused on what extremes the cost of healthcare will make people do and the inhumane aspects of it, so it felt that the “Make Stupid Money” trope did not get as much attention as it would have in another “Black Mirror” episode. 

Amanda’s health worsening and Mike’s mental health declining was a tear-jerker. In “Black Mirror” fashion, the ending was pretty horrible. Mike had continued to do “Make Stupid Money” causing him to lose his job when an accident happened at work from a fight about his appearance on the website, and Amanda was only sleeping because they could not afford the Premium and Lux subscriptions of Rivermind. 

The episode seems to contend with of course the healthcare system but also the inevitability and the human intervention of death. Amanda dies on her own terms, telling Mike to end her life when “she is not there.” The final shot shows Amanda’s feet moving and suddenly stopping when Mike is suffocating her while she is saying another ad about depression medication. 

The final shot of her feet contrasts the beginning of the couple’s feet tangled together. The healthcare system had separated the couple because of capitalist greed in the system. 

While moments and themes with “Make Stupid Money” could have been more intensified, “Common People” did a great job touching on healthcare and other capitalist systems. It is just so relevant right now which makes the episode more heartbreaking and honest.

Image via Cbr.com