Ranking all three Black Mirror Season 5 episodes from crazy to insane
By Sandy C.
3. “Smithereens”
I had originally ranked “Smithereens” at No. 1 and it turned out to be my least favorite of the three. I didn’t find anything intense or action-packed about it, as I believed the trailer made it out to be.
“Smithereens” follows a cab driver, Chris (Andrew Scott), who parks outside the phone-tech company Smithereens. He is purposely picking up people at this location hoping to give one of the employees a ride so he can hold them at gunpoint and demand to speak to the CEO, Billy Bower (Topher Grace).
Once he finds his hostage, the police, a negotiator, and the higher ups at Smithereens begin to scramble to learn more about Chris. Who is he? What is the purpose of this? And how can they free the hostage without anyone getting hurt? It’s all not as intense as it seems, but it did make me curious to learn why Chris wished to speak to Bower so badly.
When we reach the anticlimactic reason behind all of this, it’s a huge letdown. Chris was distracted on his phone and crashed while driving, his girlfriend and the passenger of the other vehicle died. The blame was placed on the other driver and not Chris. But, until now, Chris lived silently with the guilt.
Chris wanted to let Bower know how addicting phones have become, “user feedback” he calls it. Really. That’s it. I understand what Chris is attempting to do, and it must be painful to live with that, but not only are his actions over-the-top and pointless, but the concept comes off as preachy to viewers. Hey, millennials — phones down! We get it.
Rank: Powerful and emotional performance from Andrew Scott, but other than that, it’s unnecessarily long, feeble, and anticlimactic.