Beyond the Sea

I was wondering how would they manage to bring the show back up after a short yet a bit disaster-full season back in 2019. Well, this episode was quite reassuring that Black Mirror is on the right path.

Aaron Paul did a brilliant job in this role playing 2 characters simultaneously and the plot is quite interesting as well. And this episode is possibly one of the darkest in the season, with Loch Henry coming in second. While Loch Henry strayed very far away from the likes of Black Mirror theme, this episode stayed in track with the essence and delivered quite well too.

A solid Black Mirror episode in my opinion.

Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett play two astronauts on a mission in space. But fortunately for them, they get to still see their families, well sort of, with the use of doppelgangers. One of the two experiences a horrific tragedy with his family which leads to decisions the other astronaut would regret. Once you see what's going on, you'll probably agree it's a bit predictable. However the very ending there's a little curve ball twist moment which caps the episode off nicely.

If you're a Twilight Zone fan, you may notice (as I did) one astronaut is named Stanfield and the other is named Ross. In the TZ episode "The Long Morrow", the astronaut who ages by pulling himself out of hibernation is named Commander Stansfield. And lead astronaut in the episode "Death Ship" from season 4 is named Captain Ross. Maybe just maybe Black Mirror was paying homage to The Twilight Zone.

For starters, Aaron Paul does phenomenally here. He hasn't always taken the best roles since Breaking Bad, but he truly gave his all for this performance and it shows. I don't have much to say about this episode other than it's a fantastic technological concept that's executed pretty good. I do think it is a little predictable, I felt like I knew where things were headed after the first significant event. Even so, some stuff happens in this episode that gets pretty dark, even for Black Mirror's sake, and I enjoy getting that chill of disturbance when watching this show. It's one of the better episodes.

The acting is great, especially by Aaron Paul.

The overall plot is interesting and could have been great, but I feel that the writers wanted a final twist so bad that they wrote this ending despite the fact that it's absolutely unsatisfying and makes no sense for David's character.

Very disappointing, something more predictable but more in line with what we had seen of David's character up until the ending would have been better.

Sometimes predictability is good, so long as it's not 100% obvious. But this really looks like they went out of their way *only* for the sake of making it end in a way that most wouldn't expect up until a minute before it happened.

And why would most not expect it?

Because it does not make much sense.

It's like having a "whodunnit" end with the culprit being a character that only comes up at the very end of the story: disappointing.

If, in this future, they are able to make replicants that feel, smell, see, hear and act like their real counterparts, why wouldn't they send the replicants into space instead and keep the real humans on the ground? That wouldn't trigger weird cults either. Nobody thought of this?

This weak premise makes it hard to swallow this story. Some things need to be thought through and covered for, even if it's just a SCI-FI show.

The acting is great. The direction is equally wonderful. The story is predictable but still good. I just hope that writers spend a little bit more time covering for core issues like these.