Hotel Reverie

This was actually a good episode ruined by a single character that is Brandy Friday, i didn't mind Awkwafina that much, she was bland but she did nothing to ruin the episode. Hats off to Emma Corrin, she single handedly carries this entire episode on her shoulders, mesmerizing performance. Dear showrunners, you need to get the casting right when you have such a good premise. Brandy Friday was horrible, i have never seen the actress before, maybe she's a fine actress in her other works but dear god she was insufferable in this episode. An easy 8 and above episode brought down to an average 6 for me.

Some really nice moments and the concept was entertaining. But there were many illogical moments that were very frustrating to watch. E.g. With Redream; it's a company with 'state of the art' technology, which hires A List actors, but it gets the actors to run through their scenes live, with absolutely no ability to pause, cut or rewind? Its unbelievable that they would use a system that would waste resources like that and risk scenes and storylines not going to plan.

As many others have said as well, Issa Ray as Brandy was so oddly awkward, her speech and facial expressions and tone of voice did not fit in place here. She is supposed to come across as a bit odd and out of place as she's a modern woman in the world of 100 years ago, but her interpretation of this is jarring and unnatural to watch. It makes her look like she is just a bad actor or was given terrible direction.

Which takes me back to my first point, as if the producers and directors of Redream would allow the kind of bad acting (of the character Brandy) to continue in the scenes without doing a second take! There was no pause button built into the million dollar system used to record??

Emma Corrin was wonderful and the concept of acting within a virtual AI world was really interesting though. I hope they give this concept another go but improve on it.

I've never seen anything from this actress before, but after watching her in this, I'm shocked she has any sort of career. The worst bits were in the movie-within-a-movie, where she stood out like a sore thumb. I suspect a small part of that may have been intentional, but why would the people within the movie cast the actor she's portraying if she was so obviously bad. And then the scenes outside the movie-within-a-movie aren't much better. I don't generally like to blame one person for a movie or show not working, but she's simply terrible -- so much so that after a half hour or so, I gave up on this episode.

The starting was pretty good but overall disappointing. I didn't understand what the directors and keyworth production were trying to achieve. Their intention was to copy everything from the original version of Hotel Reverie, they even kept it black and white. I mean what's the point of a remake when you keep literally every single same? All they did was just recast the main character. I know it ended very differently, but their intention was to keep it same. The best thing about this episode is Emma Corrin, she absolutely nailed that role. Her portrayal of Dorothy or clara was so convincing, she truly felt like a sophisticated 1940s movie star. I would say her performance was Oscar worthy (i know for series its emmy).

I'm only giving it a 5 and not a 1 because the girl who played Dorothy had a 10/10 performance and sadly it was wasted having to act along side Issa Rae. Idk who decided to cast Issa Rae in this but she lacked emotion and was a terrible choice for a lead. Anyone else would have been better, hell even Akwafina would have been a more suitable choice. Great idea for a plot, could have been amazing but super disappointing. Dorothy was fantastic and I hope she does more amazing movies and shows because she had talent. Black mirror take note next time that you don't need to hire popular stars for your shows. Just hire the best option.