Joan Is Awful

"Joan is Awful" is the first episode in the series after a four year hiatus. After three of the weaker episodes of the entire series aired in the previous season, I did not have sky-high hopes for this new season as many die-hard fans did.

But "Joan is Awful" was a welcome addition to the Black Mirror series. And a perfect introduction episode after a long time off as it was one of the more comical episodes of the show. It lets the audience dip their toes back into this universe without jarring us.

You can expect to hear rave reviews for Annie Murphy's performance. She had to run through virtually every emotion and mood in an actor's arsenal, and she did it seamlessly without overacting.

While Annie Murphy carries the episode on her back, there are still good performances all around. It helps that most of the roles were obviously written by Charlie Brooker for certain actors specifically. Salma Hayek does well; and comedy fans will appreciate cameos from Rich Fulcher (Mighty Boosh, Snuff Box) and Michael Cera.

A welcome return from Black Mirror.

An evening's telly and a new show has a tile, it looks familiar but on playing there's no smile, as your day is played, relayed, with Salma Hayek being payed, to enact what's taken place, but in her style. It's quite surreal and you're not sure how it's been done, and then your boyfriend realises you've had fun, with a partner of the past, this is bizarre, you feel harassed, but the small print means the past can't be undone; exasperation causes food to be binged on, and washed down with laxative as libation, a line is duly crossed, and the floor needs a good wash, but the nightmare will not cease, will not be quashed.

As imaginative as ever.

Review

This is a review of Joan is Awful, the first episode of the new series of Black Mirror, but also, a critique of Black Mirror in general and the state of current technology. Let's see how long this essay stays relevant before it looks quaint and is superceded by whatever the latest tech breakthrough is.

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So, if you've seen the previous 5 seasons, or know the general premise of the show - I feel obliged to point out that we may be becoming desensitised to these kinds of dystopian "near future" storylines. For two reasons - firstly, because of the five previous seasons and knowing partially what to expect! But mainly, because they don't feel futuristic any more.

I don't think there are many episodes that haven't had at least a small part of their premise become less than fictional and actually come to fruition in one way or another. You can Google several articles I'm sure on the subject.

The head Black Mirror writer, Charlie Brooker, has always been involved in some form of tech journalism and part owns an electronics exchange franchise (CEX). Of course, it helps that he is extremely intelligent and clearly aware of society at large and our general destination. We stroll arm in arm with an increasingly growing digital presence in our lives.

Anyway, all that being said should in no way detract from the fact that this is a superbly acted, well written and important statement on the current zeitgeist of modern life

Deepfakes, multiverses (some dramatic license taken in this episode, Quantum computing, digital likenesses of actors, our rights when it comes to privacy and the terms of conditions of any product that we all click 'Agree' to (quite ready... all sans personal Intellectual Property Lawyer that, of course, we all keep on speed dial for whenever we install a new app.)

At this point it's getting increasingly difficult to discern drama from satire - the money grabbing sociopaths at silicon valley are pushing exactly these sort of horror scenarios at us with little concern for the outcome.

The Social Dielemma being a fantastic documentary on Netflix about these addictions to not just put phones, but more worryingly, what other people think of us. The Facebook algorithm and their Dopamine Department that tests the addictive nature of their entire site down to the shape of the "Like" button.

Facebook's Metaverse, companies offering digital copies of dead people based on their posts and messages, chat bots generating entire articles and arguing with both themselves and real people online and perhaps most worrying for even higher paying creative jobs - the ability to generate from a text prompt; articles on any subject, art, music and even code. I honestly can't think of many jobs that can't be replaced by AI. Even something as hands-on as cooking. Precision robotics is evolving too - stick an AI powered arm in a kitchen and provide a recipe, robotic chefs are now a thing - even at the bottom, a million teenage coming-of-age burger flipping summer jobs are in jeopardy.

Partly why AI is so terrifying is not because it can't be made safe or neutral, but because there is little incentive to do so when the potential profit incentives are so alluring, even at the expense of redundancies - and eventually, people's lives. We are in the middle of an AI arms race. Same exact scenario as the Atomic bomb. Dangerous new science that we all need in order to protect us from whatever the other guy has. Except, instead of a stalemate. These intelligences WILL be used - not all in nefarious ways - but also because we are hitting the limits of our own intelligence - a singular human simply cannot know everything there is to know about even a single subject due to its complexity. The sheer amounts of data being generated within individual experiments requires a supercomputer to sift through and make sense of it. The LHC generates terrabytes of data every second it's running. Simulated physics is a new field of science that couldn't have been explored without the computing power we have now. Mega underground farms of servers all linked together ploughing through data looking for answers. Eventually, it will be automated to the point where the computers are asking the questions, designing the experiment (or simulating it) and deriving new understanding for us

The 6 month "pause to consider the implications" open letter that was put forward by top AI scientists a few months ago, has largely been ignored.

The current thinking is that; if you're the last country to the party with tech, then you could be looking at a failed nation, left far behind as a super intelligence basically invents everything you need to become the next leading global superpower.

What starts off slow, begets a number of significant breakthroughs until it is in full exponential upswing and we move from yearly breakthroughs, to monthly, to even hourly updates as we teach intelligences to self improve. At which point, the evolution of such an intelligence is largely out of our hands - with the exception of the "off switch" which even then, is no guarantee of safety.

With people living their lives increasingly online, both socially and for work - their self esteem directly correlated with the number of "likes" received over their food snaps or heavily filtered selfies. (To the point of teenage suicides - on the increase in huge numbers) these sorts of stories are losing their impact because they are actually happening now in real time. We may have reached the Black Mirror tipping point where truth is stranger than fiction.

It was likely that this episode was written before the latest AI milestone (CHAT-GPT) and way before Apples new leap into VR/AR tech with a headset.

But here we are. Aside from the multiverse macguffin, all of this episode is now entirely possible. Phone records your day and renders in real-time a photo realistic avatar, lip synced and script reviewed and rewritten by Chat-GPT.

Nvidia literally only this week demonstrated AI characters in-game that can respond to your voice, hold a conversation and discuss their backstory which can be written for them.

Unreal Engine 5, the latest 3D game making software just added photoscan and meta-humans. Within a couple of minutes, just using an iPhone camera to scan a person - that data is then imported, turned into a digital copy. Then, add your voice after taking a few language samples and you're done.

The next generation of games will have full unscripted characters that can converse on-the-fly with minimal work, except for adding a few bullet points as back story.

I predict that the next series of Black Mirror won't be released fast enough for it to become prophetic and will rather be labelled as historic.

For most people, I'm sure it seems like a fun sci-fi show. But for those in the know, it really is a black mirror of possibilities.

Excellent. As always.

5/5.

This episode had everything, and it should have been a kick-ass start! I thought Black Mirror would have a hard time generating new, unique ideas. However, in this case, it was really a good idea. But... yes, there's a "but." They decided to execute it in a cliché Hollywood-ish way that would please teenagers. Black Mirror is all about provoking thought, not offering solutions. The challenge presented here with the deepfake technology was truly alarming, providing ample food for thought. Sadly, it was all undermined by the actions and plot twists. It ended up being disappointingly mediocre and catering to the crowd. What a tremendous waste of opportunity! I did enjoy it, but as a Black Mirror fan, it didn't live up to the mark.

The central idea is classic Black Mirror, but each moment that had potential for dramatic tension is undermined by a script that ranges between silly and simply dull. It seems like they came set with an interesting idea but had no idea what to do with it. Lots of celebrity references and cameos that ended up being flat name dropping. The ending feels hurried and certainly didn't leave me "thinking" as the best Black Mirror episodes did.

I gave it a six because there are moments of humour. The cast seemed to have done their best with what they were given. Many people will find it a pleasant time waster, but if you are looking for dark compelling sci-fi drama or techno horror, you will be disappointed.