Black Mirror (Season 5, Episode 2) "Smithereens"

                                 

Synopsis: 

Chris works as a driver for the popular ride share app Hitcher. Everyday he picks up clients and takes them to and from their preferred destination. Although it seems as if he is only interested in picking up employees from a Smithereens, a very popular social media company. Chris ends up getting a notification that someone in the Smithereens company needs a ride, and ends up picking up Jaden, a newly employed intern for the company. The story takes a turn for the worst when Chris goes off the grid, and abducts Jaden at gunpoint, forcing him to get in contact with the CEO of Smithereens, Billy Bauer; however, Billy is away on a retreat with limited outside contact. With time running out for Jaden, the police's only hope is to uncover the reasoning behind Chris' episode and what lead him down this dark path in the first place.


Discussion:

Although many people deemed this episode as their "least favorite" of the season (I can agree with this as well), I do believe that this episode has a lot of interesting talking points. The first being that this episode takes place in 2018, which by the time I am writing this is only a year off from present time which makes this episode the most relevant, time-wise. It is more than obvious that "Striking Vipers" and "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too" are set in the future, but "Smitherereens" felt the most like it was "in our time" and the reasoning for that is because it is set in our time. I found this to be quite interesting since (if I'm not mistaken) the past four seasons' episodes have been set in these alternative realities/futuristic worlds, so it was refreshing to see them craft an episode set in present time. After all many of these futuristic worlds do allude to our present time, so why not just cut out the middle man and have an episode set in today's time right?

For this episode, I wanted to section it off to four segments: Chris' present day abduction of Jayden, Chris' flashback with his wife, Hayley's guilt about her daughter's suicide, and Billy Bauer's thoughts on his successful company, Smithereens.

• Chris' Abduction of Jayden: 

Like the previous episodes of Black Mirror, the audience members get more insight on these characters than the other characters in the episode do. We know that Chris isn't a horrible person who just kidnaps people at random because when he found out the first girl he accepted the ride share from was not a worker for Smithereens, he chose to let her go. Also, when he slept with Hayley, he could have harmed her but he did not. Instead, he listened to her vent about her daughter and it was obvious that he could relate to that guilt that Hayley has been carrying. He also attends group therapy which means that he is also hiding some sort of heavy secret, and by attending therapy he is trying to get better. He even admits to Hayley that despite attending these classes, he hasn't been able to share his story with the class which tells us that 1. he has been working up the nerve to confess and 2. the kidnapping and abduction was a sort of last resort and not some spontaneous idea. 

Since we know that Chris isn't a bad guy, it is difficult to not come into this episode without some form of bias. The rest of the world however does not know this about Chris, and all they see is a crazed kidnapper who has some poor man at gunpoint in the middle of the field. They do not care about his backstory nor do they want to hear it. For many people, to hear that these killers have a backstory humanizes them and they do not want to sympathize with these kinds of people. For the audience members however, we do not have that choice since the show presents Chris as a troubled but overall decent person.

When I was watching this episode, I immediately thought of the friends and family members of the shooters/murders that are shown on television. When we read the news articles or when we hear the news or when we look at the pictures, we do not sympathize with these people because we do not know them-all we know of them aside from their pictures is the inhumane crimes they have committed and the lives they have stolen. Yet we never stop and think about how it must have felt for the people that do know these people-these murders are still someone's child, someone's siblings, or someone's best friend. It is so easy to detached ourselves when we are so far from the outside, but I cannot imagine how it must feel to turn on the news and see someone you know get convicted for murder. While this is a feeling that I hope none of you will ever have to face, this episode kind of gives us a taste of "knowing" the criminal before he commits the crime so to speak. 

Even Jayden, the guy literally being held at gunpoint, feels for Chris. He knows that deep down Chris isn't a bad person as he is listening to him confess his guilt to Billy on the phone. Jayden then confesses how his uncle took his own life and how him and the rest of his family never got over it. Jayden begs Chris to reconsider, and I thought that was a very touching moment. It goes back to the very cliche but very true expression "we do not know what people are going through behind closed doors." I do not feel that this episode wants us to sympathize with criminals nor is it saying that we should take Jayden's route and try to reason with them. It is more of a reminder that people do not just wake up one day and decide to kill, that there is always a trigger, and that trigger for Chris, is his guilt over his wife's death.

• Chris's Pain:

Chris' pain can be broken down to two pieces: his wife's death and his guilt over what really happened. There is no denying that losing his fiancee in a car accident destroyed Chris, I mean it would destroy anyone. It seems as if aside from her, there wasn't anyone in his life that he truly connected with or loved as intensely. Losing someone you love never truly goes away, in fact it kind of just shadows you for the rest of your life. I don't mean to sound morbid and honestly, it doesn't have to be this morbid feeling but it isn't something that ever completely goes away. So for Chris, he continues living his life but he doesn't try to cope with what has happened because deep down, he believes that he does not deserve to feel better.

The reasoning behind all of this? He knows the truth about the accident that no one else does: Chris is the person that killed his finance. Well, not directly but he was checking his phone while he was driving because he got a notification on the Smithereens app. That one split second of not keeping his eye on the road, caused him to lose focus and not see the incoming vehicle. Luckily for Chris, the other driver was drunk driving so he took the blame for the accident but that is because Chris did not fess up about his part in the accident as well. He said that his wife was sleeping while he was driving, and I realize that allowing someone to take the wheel while you are asleep is a form of trust that no one truly thinks about. I mean we worry about death from a plane crash or a shooting but those situations are not as likely as death from a motor vehicle. Every time we get in the car with someone, we put our lives in their hands and we trust them to keep us safe. To fall asleep is also a form a trust because she believes that he will be able to keep her safe without her having to keep watch. I am sure the imagine of his fiancée sleeping peacefully in the passenger seat has haunted him since the accident because she trusted him, and he let her down.

On top of all of that, I cannot imagine all of the condolences he must have received from their friends and family. All of these people saying it isn't his fault and there was nothing he could have done, while deep down he had to nod and accept their sympathies while swallowing down his guilt. It must have been horrible for him to not be able to confess. In fact confession might have saved him, and we saw that he did indeed tried when he went to group therapy but found that the guilt has now consumed him and he cannot rid himself of it. In the end when he was able to talk to Billy, it felt more as if Billy was a pastor listening to Chris confess his sins. Billy explains that it wasn't Chris' fault and that he designed the app to be as addictive as possible, and in a way Billy was consoling Chris because he also felt guilty.

While Black Mirror normally tends to take the less subtle route when it comes to their "message" and what is so great about the show is that it encourages conversation. What one viewer might take away from an episode, another viewer might have missed completely. It is what makes this show so great, and why I love it so much. With "Smithereens" however, I do feel the clear takeaway from this episode is the fatal effects of social media. This episode deals with so much death-death by drunk driving, death by carelessness driving, death by suicide, and also death by shooting. It is very crucial that the audience understand just how pivotal a second of carelessness can cost them, and after watching this episode it is hard to not dwell on it.  

• Hayley's Obsession with her daughter's suicide: 

This part was very heartbreaking to watch because although I am not a parent, I can't even begin to imagine the pain Hayley must be going through. She tells Chris that she didn't see the signs, and she has been blaming herself ever since thinking she did something wrong. I do not know anyone personally who has committed suicide, but the stories that I have read and the interviews I have seen, it seems as if the people they left behind drive themselves crazy wondering if there was something they had missed. To see that she has been trying to log into her daughter's Persona's account to see if she can gain any insight on why her daughter decided to take her own life was heartbreaking. To be blindsided like that would be hard for anyone, but especially for a parent like Hayley who believed she was so close to her daughter. I would understand why she would blame and question herself despite the fact that it probably had nothing to do with her. Still, when there is no one to blame, we tend to blame ourselves especially parents who feel as if they should have known better. It was touching that Chris' last wish was a favor for Hayley. It was as if he knew he had gone too far and it was too late for him, but it wasn't too late for her. I do not know if going into her daughter's Persona's account will give her the insight she had been searching for, but I do hope that it will help alleviate some of the guilt and pain she had been carrying.

• Billy Bauer's Smithereens: 

 For someone so young and successful, Billy seems to live a very stressful life. I mean, he had to take a retreat to get away from social media and the rest of the world and if that doesn't say a lot about him then I don't know what can. Yet despite him owning one of the most well known companies, he doesn't seem very happy. When it comes to growing a successful business empire, there is a difference between owning the company and simply being the face of the company. Many people might think that Billy is the top dog, but in actually Smithereens has gotten so big that it is ran by a plethora of employees. Basically Billy's project has gotten to big for him just to handle on his own. I mean if we think about it, the majority of the episode is Chris waiting to get Billy on the line. Billy even admits that he isn't in full control and that he did design his app to be as addictive as possible. Take it how you want, but that what is the point of creating an app for people to use if the targeted audience doesn't care to use it? All of the users downloading his app is what made his company into what it is today, and it is just basic business tactics; however, there is a dark side to these apps and it is something that many people seem to gloss over.

Social media bullying has become a major issue recently because of the explosion of apps such as Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and FaceBook. These companies have to take the bad with the good, and most of these companies do not care as long as they are the top dogs. With Billy though, it seems as if he does care and like Chris and Hayley, it seems as if he is also burden by guilt. To know that your creation indirectly caused someone's death is terrifying and even though he did not know Chris personally, they are both connected by Smithereens. I really appreciate the different narratives that this episode provides. Normally as an outsider, we would only get a rundown of the event base on what the news tell us. We all know that news outlet are bias and they either downplay or they exaggerate details for views. In this episode thought we are able to see what actually happens, the behind-the-scenes if you will, but imagine what the citizens in this episode will read about or hear about later. To them, Chris is just some crazed manic who kidnapped and held someone hostage. They do not care about his story, and honestly as sad as it sounds, his death and story will be trending for maybe a day or two until the next headline shows up. He will be easily forgotten, and that is just the reality of the world we live in.

In a world ran by social media, news comes and goes quickly and it kind of desensitizes us in a way. We no longer see people as people, and we are more connected with our devices than we are with the people sitting next to us. and this disconnect from one another is only going to get worse. 

★ ★ ★/5