Black Mirror: The Entire History of You

The Entire History of You is the third episode of Black Mirror, unfortunately (unlike the first two episodes) I find this to be one of the weakest episodes of not just series 1, but the entire show as a whole. Now maybe that is a little too harsh (considering some of the stinkers in the later series) but I've always found the story of this one to be a bit boring and the characters are honestly unlikable. They all seem like upper class snobs who live in big houses, drinking expensive wine, just insufferable corporate types who have giant egos. Perhaps that's the point, the characters are supposed to be vain and that's their (or more accurately his) downfall, setting up the whole plot of the show. The main protagonist in this one is extremely petty at times and is incredibly insecure, later he becomes a bit of an alcoholic and his drunk acting feels awkward, goofy and ultimately awful. Therein lies the biggest problem, unlike the first two episodes where the main characters were likable men in horrible, disturbing situations, this guy is painful to watch because of how nasty and short tempered he is. I honestly feel more bad for Jodie Whittaker's character (who should've been the main protagonist) because she gets abused by her partner repeatedly because he's paranoid that she's been cheating on him with this business friend of theirs. You see the episode is about this piece of technology that allows you to revisit memories, which brings me to the plot overview.

The plot:

A business man attends a shareholder meeting and he suspects it didn't go well. That night he shows his girlfriend (played by Jodie) what happened by projecting his memories onto their television screen, using this new piece of technology called "Grain" that lets you share or revisit your own memories like how a phone can record videos and be shared among friends. At first we see the couple examining this interview, poking fun at each other, it actually seems like a fun piece of tech. Later they all attend a house party and he catches his girlfriend talking, somewhat flirtatiously, to another man. Later they all sit round a dinner table and the same guy mentions how he revisits old memories of times he's had sex, to please himself (I'm trying to keep things PG here, bare with me!) while making Jodie laugh or blush upon bringing this up. Obviously her boyfriend (the main protagonist) begins to suspect these two have already met and through examining the memories of the house party over and over again (throughout the whole episode) he begins to get extremely paranoid and discovers the two of them have already met and did have sex at one point. This drives the main protagonist down a rabbit hole of alcoholism, resulting in him breaking into the other man's house and fighting him, demanding that he delete the memories of romantic this encounter. However, upon revisiting the memories of this fight, he sees that Jodie has slept with this man in his own home, as he recognises his own bedroom in the images of the other man's memories that he deleted in front of him. Then it's revealed that the main protagonist's own son might not be his own, but the other man's instead. He begins fighting with her, this cuts to black, then the ending has our main guy revisit fond memories of his girlfriend, before he slices out the "Grain" from behind his neck. Presumably he killed Jodie, but this fact is left ambiguous, leaving us with more questions than answers.

Review: I left a lot out of the plot synopsis because I wanted to criticise and analyse certain scenes. Firstly, I still think this episode has a lot of the classic darkness that made original Black Mirror episodes so special. Obviously the story itself is creepy and disturbing, but we also see the characters eyes turn white and stare blankly into oblivion whenever they use "Grain", making them look like lifeless zombies. The most horrifying scene of this is when the main protagonist makes love to his girlfriend, by revisiting an old memory of them having sex, but then it cuts to them mindlessly bumping together with those lifeless white eyes, it's actually one of the creepiest images to come out of the whole series! The ambiguous ending is also terrifying, hinting that he may have murdered his own girlfriend out of this paranoid jealousy brought on because of this futuristic technology. However (as I've mentioned before) the characters here are mostly detestable. I hated the main protagonist and could never sympathise with him, his alcohol addiction only makes the guy seem irrational and dangerous (like I said, if Jodie was the main protagonist it would be a lot scarier). The other characters are smug too and the guy Jodie cheats with is honestly disgusting. Even though I felt bad for the girlfriend, she still lied to her partner about their kid together, which is fairly hard to forgive too, so not even she is fully lovable. A lot of the episode is just the main guy analysing old memories over and over again this gets very repetitive in my opinion. From the poor, unredeemable characters to the bad drunk acting, this episode is a mess but the concept is still cool, creepy and dystopian. It's still better than a lot of the more utopian episodes of later series, but it's still a sad end to an otherwise excellent first series of a great show.

I rate this 2 out of 5 stars.