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I am a creative. What I do is alchemy. It is a mystery. I do not so much do it, as let it be done through me.

I am a creative. Not all creative people like this label. Not all see themselves this way. Some creative people see science in what they do. That is their truth, and I respect it. Maybe I even envy them, a little. But my process is different—my being is different.

Apologizing and qualifying in advance is a distraction. That’s what my brain does to sabotage me. I set it aside for now. I can come back later to apologize and qualify. After I’ve said what I came to say. Which is hard enough. 

Except when it is easy and flows like a river of wine.

Sometimes it does come that way. Sometimes what I need to create comes in an instant. I have learned not to say it at that moment, because if you admit that sometimes the idea just comes and it is the best idea and you know it is the best idea, they think you don’t work hard enough.

Sometimes I work and work and work until the idea comes. Sometimes it comes instantly and I don’t tell anyone for three days. Sometimes I’m so excited by the idea that came instantly that I blurt it out, can’t help myself. Like a boy who found a prize in his Cracker Jacks. Sometimes I get away with this. Sometimes other people agree: yes, that is the best idea. Most times they don’t and I regret having  given way to enthusiasm. 

Enthusiasm is best saved for the meeting where it will make a difference. Not the casual get-together that precedes that meeting by two other meetings. Nobody knows why we have all these meetings. We keep saying we’re doing away with them, but then just finding other ways to have them. Sometimes they are even good. But other times they are a distraction from the actual work. The proportion between when meetings are useful, and when they are a pitiful distraction, varies, depending on what you do and where you do it. And who you are and how you do it. Again I digress. I am a creative. That is the theme.

Sometimes many hours of hard and patient work produce something that is barely serviceable. Sometimes I have to accept that and move on to the next project.

Don’t ask about process. I am a creative.

I am a creative. I don’t control my dreams. And I don’t control my best ideas.

I can hammer away, surround myself with facts or images, and sometimes that works. I can go for a walk, and sometimes that works. I can be making dinner and there’s a Eureka having nothing to do with sizzling oil and bubbling pots. Often I know what to do the instant I wake up. And then, almost as often, as I become conscious and part of the world again, the idea that would have saved me turns to vanishing dust in a mindless wind of oblivion. For creativity, I believe, comes from that other world. The one we enter in dreams, and perhaps, before birth and after death. But that’s for poets to wonder, and I am not a poet. I am a creative. And it’s for theologians to mass armies about in their creative world that they insist is real. But that is another digression. And a depressing one. Maybe on a much more important topic than whether I am a creative or not. But still a digression from what I came here to say.

Sometimes the process is avoidance. And agony. You know the cliché about the tortured artist? It’s true, even when the artist (and let’s put that noun in quotes) is trying to write a soft drink jingle, a callback in a tired sitcom, a budget request.

Some people who hate being called creative may be closeted creatives, but that’s between them and their gods. No offense meant. Your truth is true, too. But mine is for me. 

Creatives recognize creatives.

Creatives recognize creatives like queers recognize queers, like real rappers recognize real rappers, like cons know cons. Creatives feel massive respect for creatives. We love, honor, emulate, and practically deify the great ones. To deify any human is, of course, a tragic mistake. We have been warned. We know better. We know people are just people. They squabble, they are lonely, they regret their most important decisions, they are poor and hungry, they can be cruel, they can be just as stupid as we can, because, like us, they are clay. But. But. But they make this amazing thing. They birth something that did not exist before them, and could not exist without them. They are the mothers of ideas. And I suppose, since it’s just lying there, I have to add that they are the mothers of invention. Ba dum bum! OK, that’s done. Continue.

Creatives belittle our own small achievements, because we compare them to those of the great ones. Beautiful animation! Well, I’m no Miyazaki. Now THAT is greatness. That is greatness straight from the mind of God. This half-starved little thing that I made? It more or less fell off the back of the turnip truck. And the turnips weren’t even fresh.

Creatives knows that, at best, they are Salieri. Even the creatives who are Mozart believe that. 

I am a creative. I haven’t worked in advertising in 30 years, but in my nightmares, it’s my former creative directors who judge me. And they are right to do so. I am too lazy, too facile, and when it really counts, my mind goes blank. There is no pill for creative dysfunction.

I am a creative. Every deadline I make is an adventure that makes Indiana Jones look like a pensioner snoring in a deck chair. The longer I remain a creative, the faster I am when I do my work and the longer I brood and walk in circles and stare blankly before I do that work. 

I am still 10 times faster than people who are not creative, or people who have only been creative a short while, or people who have only been professionally creative a short while. It’s just that, before I work 10 times as fast as they do, I spend twice as long as they do putting the work off. I am that confident in my ability to do a great job when I put my mind to it. I am that addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponement. I am still that afraid of the jump.

I am not an artist.

I am a creative. Not an artist. Though I dreamed, as a lad, of someday being that. Some of us belittle our gifts and dislike ourselves because we are not Michelangelos and Warhols. That is narcissism—but at least we aren’t in politics.

I am a creative. Though I believe in reason and science, I decide by intuition and impulse. And live with what follows—the catastrophes as well as the triumphs. 

I am a creative. Every word I’ve said here will annoy other creatives, who see things differently. Ask two creatives a question, get three opinions. Our disagreement, our passion about it, and our commitment to our own truth are, at least to me, the proofs that we are creatives, no matter how we may feel about it.

I am a creative. I lament my lack of taste in the areas about which I know very little, which is to say almost all areas of human knowledge. And I trust my taste above all other things in the areas closest to my heart, or perhaps, more accurately, to my obsessions. Without my obsessions, I would probably have to spend my time looking life in the eye, and almost none of us can do that for long. Not honestly. Not really. Because much in life, if you really look at it, is unbearable.

I am a creative. I believe, as a parent believes, that when I am gone, some small good part of me will carry on in the mind of at least one other person.

Working saves me from worrying about work.

I am a creative. I live in dread of my small gift suddenly going away.

I am a creative. I am too busy making the next thing to spend too much time deeply considering that almost nothing I make will come anywhere near the greatness I comically aspire to.

I am a creative. I believe in the ultimate mystery of process. I believe in it so much, I am even fool enough to publish an essay I dictated into a tiny machine and didn’t take time to review or revise. I won’t do this often, I promise. But I did it just now, because, as afraid as I might be of your seeing through my pitiful gestures toward the beautiful, I was even more afraid of forgetting what I came to say. 

There. I think I’ve said it. 

I was completely moved by Joe Dolson’s current article on the crossroads of AI and availability because I found it to be both skeptical about how widespread use of AI is. In fact, I’m very skeptical of AI myself, despite my role at Microsoft as an accessibility technology strategist who helps manage the AI for Accessibility award program. AI can be used in quite productive, inclusive, and accessible ways, as well as harmful, exclusive, and harmful ways, just like with any tool. Additionally, there are a lot of uses in the subpar midsection.

I’d like you to consider this a “yes … and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m just trying to contradict what he’s saying, but I’m just trying to give some context to initiatives and opportunities where AI can make a difference for people with disability. To be clear, I want to take some time to speak about what’s possible in hope that we’ll get there one evening. There are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday.

Other words

Joe’s article spends a lot of time examining how computer vision models can create other words. He raises a number of true points about the state of affairs right now. And while computer-vision concepts continue to improve in the quality and complexity of information in their information, their benefits aren’t wonderful. He argues to be accurate that the state of image research is currently very poor, especially for some image types, in large part due to the lack of context-based analysis that exists in the AI systems ( which is a result of having separate “foundation” models for text analysis and image analysis ). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant ( which should probably have descriptions ) and those that are purely decorative ( which might not even need a description ) either. However, I still think there’s possible in this area.

As Joe points out, human-in-the-loop editing of ctrl text should definitely be a factor. And if AI can intervene and provide a starting point for alt text, even if the quick reads,” What is this BS?” That’s not correct at all … Let me try to offer a starting point— I think that’s a gain.

If we can specifically teach a design to consider image usage in context, it might be able to help us more swiftly distinguish between images that are likely to be attractive and those that are more descriptive. That will help clarify which situations require image descriptions, and it will increase authors ‘ effectiveness in making their sites more visible.

While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way ( even for humans ), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s say you came across a map that was simply the description of the chart’s title and the type of representation it was: Pie map comparing smartphone usage to have phone usage in US households earning under$ 30, 000 annually. ( That would be a pretty bad alt text for a chart because it would frequently leave many unanswered questions about the data, but let’s just assume that that was the description in place. ) If your website knew that that picture was a pie graph ( because an ship model concluded this ), imagine a world where people could ask questions like these about the creative:

• Perform more people use have telephones or smartphones?
• How many more are there?
• Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these pots?
• That number, how some?

For a moment, the chance to learn more about graphics and data in this way could be innovative for people who are blind and low vision as well as for those with various types of color blindness, cognitive impairments, and other issues. Putting aside the challenges of large language model ( LLM) hallucinations, where a model only makes up plausible-sounding “facts,” It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.

What if you could ask your browser to make a complicated chart simpler? What if you demanded that the line graph be isolated into just one line? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you could ask it to switch colors for patterns? That seems like a possibility given the chat-based interfaces and our current ability to manipulate images in modern AI tools.

Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. Perhaps it could convert that pie chart (or, better yet, a series of pie charts ) into more usable ( and useful ) formats, like spreadsheets, for instance. That would be incredible!

Matching algorithms

When Safiya Umoja Noble chose to write her book Algorithms of Oppression, she hit the nail on the head. Although her book focused on how search engines can foster racism, I believe it’s equally true that all computer models have the potential to foster conflict, prejudice, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A large portion of this is a result of a lack of diversity in the people who design and construct them. There is still a lot of potential for algorithm development when these platforms are built with inclusive features in mind.

Take Mentra, for example. They serve as a network of employment for people who are neurodivers. They match job seekers with potential employers using an algorithm based on more than 75 data points. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. It takes into account the workplace, the communication environment, and other factors. Mentra made the decision to change the script when it came to typical employment websites because it was run by neurodivergent people. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in, reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.

When more people with disabilities are involved in the development of algorithms, this can lower the likelihood that these algorithms will harm their communities. Diverse teams are crucial because of this.

Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For instance, if you followed a group of nondisabled white male academics who spoke about AI, it might be advisable to follow those who are disabled, aren’t white, or aren’t men who also speak about AI. If you followed its advice, you might gain a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of what’s happening in the AI field. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward ) those groups.

Other ways that AI can assist people with disabilities

If I weren’t attempting to combine this with other tasks, I’m sure I could go on and on, giving various examples of how AI could be used to assist people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round. In no particular order:

Voice preservation You may be aware of the voice-prescribing options from Microsoft, Acapela, or others, or you may have seen the announcement for VALL-E or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS ( Lou Gehrig’s disease ) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. We need to approach this tech responsibly because it has the potential to have a truly transformative impact, which is why it can also be used to create audio deepfakes.
• Voice recognition. Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are actively recruiting people with Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they intend to expand this to other conditions as the project develops. More people with disabilities will be able to use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as a result of this research, which will lead to more inclusive data sets that enable them to use their computers and other devices more effectively and with just their voices.
• Text transformation. LLMs of the current generation are quite capable of changing text without creating hallucinations. This is incredibly empowering for those who have cognitive disabilities and who may benefit from text summaries or simplified versions, or even text that has been prepared for bionic reading.

The importance of diverse teams and data

Our differences must be acknowledged as important. The intersections of the identities that we exist in have an impact on our lived experiences. These lived experiences—with all their complexities ( and joys and pain ) —are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. Our differences must be reflected in the data we use to develop new models, and those who provide it need to be compensated for doing so. Inclusive data sets produce stronger models that promote more justifiable outcomes.

Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you include information about disabilities that is written by people who have a range of disabilities and that is well represented in the training data.

Want a model that uses ableist language without using it? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. Despite this, AI models won’t be replacing human copy editors anytime soon when it comes to sensitivity reading.

Want a copilot for coding that provides recomprehensible recommendations after the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.

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I have no doubt that AI has the potential to harm people today, tomorrow, and long into the future. However, I also think that we can acknowledge this and make thoughtful, thoughtful, and intentional changes in our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.

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Thanks to Kartik Sawhney for assisting me with writing this article, Ashley Bischoff for her invaluable editorial assistance, and of course Joe Dolson for the prompt.

I offer a single bit of advice to friends and family when they become new parents: When you start to think that you’ve got everything figured out, everything will change. Just as you start to get the hang of feedings, diapers, and regular naps, it’s time for solid food, potty training, and overnight sleeping. When you figure those out, it’s time for preschool and rare naps. The cycle goes on and on.

The same applies for those of us working in design and development these days. Having worked on the web for almost three decades at this point, I’ve seen the regular wax and wane of ideas, techniques, and technologies. Each time that we as developers and designers get into a regular rhythm, some new idea or technology comes along to shake things up and remake our world.

How we got here

I built my first website in the mid-’90s. Design and development on the web back then was a free-for-all, with few established norms. For any layout aside from a single column, we used table elements, often with empty cells containing a single pixel spacer GIF to add empty space. We styled text with numerous font tags, nesting the tags every time we wanted to vary the font style. And we had only three or four typefaces to choose from: Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman. When Verdana and Georgia came out in 1996, we rejoiced because our options had nearly doubled. The only safe colors to choose from were the 216 “web safe” colors known to work across platforms. The few interactive elements (like contact forms, guest books, and counters) were mostly powered by CGI scripts (predominantly written in Perl at the time). Achieving any kind of unique look involved a pile of hacks all the way down. Interaction was often limited to specific pages in a site.

The birth of web standards

At the turn of the century, a new cycle started. Crufty code littered with table layouts and font tags waned, and a push for web standards waxed. Newer technologies like CSS got more widespread adoption by browsers makers, developers, and designers. This shift toward standards didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It took active engagement between the W3C and browser vendors and heavy evangelism from folks like the Web Standards Project to build standards. A List Apart and books like Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman played key roles in teaching developers and designers why standards are important, how to implement them, and how to sell them to their organizations. And approaches like progressive enhancement introduced the idea that content should be available for all browsers—with additional enhancements available for more advanced browsers. Meanwhile, sites like the CSS Zen Garden showcased just how powerful and versatile CSS can be when combined with a solid semantic HTML structure.

Server-side languages like PHP, Java, and .NET overtook Perl as the predominant back-end processors, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the trash bin. With these better server-side tools came the first era of web applications, starting with content-management systems (particularly in the blogging space with tools like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress). In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened doors for asynchronous interaction between the front end and back end. Suddenly, pages could update their content without needing to reload. A crop of JavaScript frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and jQuery arose to help developers build more reliable client-side interaction across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like image replacement let crafty designers and developers display fonts of their choosing. And technologies like Flash made it possible to add animations, games, and even more interactivity.

These new technologies, standards, and techniques reinvigorated the industry in many ways. Web design flourished as designers and developers explored more diverse styles and layouts. But we still relied on tons of hacks. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes (such as rounded or angled corners) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks). Complicated layouts required all manner of nested floats or absolute positioning (or both). Flash and image replacement for custom fonts was a great start toward varying the typefaces from the big five, but both hacks introduced accessibility and performance problems. And JavaScript libraries made it easy for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, although at the cost of doubling or even quadrupling the download size of simple websites.

The web as software platform

The symbiosis between the front end and back end continued to improve, and that led to the current era of modern web applications. Between expanded server-side programming languages (which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Alongside these tools came others, including collaborative version control, build automation, and shared package libraries. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

At the same time, mobile devices became more capable, and they gave us internet access in our pockets. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.

This combination of capable mobile devices and powerful development tools contributed to the waxing of social media and other centralized tools for people to connect and consume. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media offered connections on a global scale, with both the good and bad that that entails.

Want a much more extensive history of how we got here, with some other takes on ways that we can improve? Jeremy Keith wrote “Of Time and the Web.” Or check out the “Web Design History Timeline” at the Web Design Museum. Neal Agarwal also has a fun tour through “Internet Artifacts.”

Where we are now

In the last couple of years, it’s felt like we’ve begun to reach another major inflection point. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. There are many different ways to make a website, from the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators to content management systems of all flavors. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other tools of the IndieWeb can help with this, but they’re still relatively underimplemented and hard to use for the less nerdy. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.

Browser support for CSS, JavaScript, and other standards like web components has accelerated, especially through efforts like Interop. New technologies gain support across the board in a fraction of the time that they used to. I often learn about a new feature and check its browser support only to find that its coverage is already above 80 percent. Nowadays, the barrier to using newer techniques often isn’t browser support but simply the limits of how quickly designers and developers can learn what’s available and how to adopt it.

Today, with a few commands and a couple of lines of code, we can prototype almost any idea. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. But the upfront cost that these frameworks may save in initial delivery eventually comes due as upgrading and maintaining them becomes a part of our technical debt.

If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks—which used to let us adopt new techniques sooner—have now become hindrances instead. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And when scripts fail (whether through poor code, network issues, or other environmental factors), there’s often no alternative, leaving users with blank or broken pages.

Where do we go from here?

Today’s hacks help to shape tomorrow’s standards. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks—for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we’re unwilling to admit that they’re hacks or we hesitate to replace them. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

Build for the long haul. Optimize for performance, for accessibility, and for the user. Weigh the costs of those developer-friendly tools. They may make your job a little easier today, but how do they affect everything else? What’s the cost to users? To future developers? To standards adoption? Sometimes the convenience may be worth it. Sometimes it’s just a hack that you’ve grown accustomed to. And sometimes it’s holding you back from even better options.

Start from standards. Standards continue to evolve over time, but browsers have done a remarkably good job of continuing to support older standards. The same isn’t always true of third-party frameworks. Sites built with even the hackiest of HTML from the ’90s still work just fine today. The same can’t always be said of sites built with frameworks even after just a couple years.

Design with care. Whether your craft is code, pixels, or processes, consider the impacts of each decision. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Rather than rushing headlong to “move fast and break things,” use the time saved by modern tools to consider more carefully and design with deliberation.

Always be learning. If you’re always learning, you’re also growing. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. You might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year, even if you were to focus solely on learning standards. (Remember XHTML?) But constant learning opens up new connections in your brain, and the hacks that you learn one day may help to inform different experiments another day.

Play, experiment, and be weird! This web that we’ve built is the ultimate experiment. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be courageous and try new things. Build a playground for ideas. Make goofy experiments in your own mad science lab. Start your own small business. There has never been a more empowering place to be creative, take risks, and explore what we’re capable of.

Share and amplify. As you experiment, play, and learn, share what’s worked for you. Write on your own website, post on whichever social media site you prefer, or shout it from a TikTok. Write something for A List Apart! But take the time to amplify others too: find new voices, learn from them, and share what they’ve taught you.

Go forth and make

As designers and developers for the web (and beyond), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s imbue our values into the things that we create, and let’s make the web a better place for everyone. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then share it, make it better, make it again, or make something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Every time you think that you’ve mastered the web, everything will change.

Picture this. You’ve joined a squad at your company that’s designing new product features with an emphasis on automation or AI. Or your company has just implemented a personalization engine. Either way, you’re designing with data. Now what? When it comes to designing for personalization, there are many cautionary tales, no overnight successes, and few guides for the perplexed. 

Between the fantasy of getting it right and the fear of it going wrong—like when we encounter “persofails” in the vein of a company repeatedly imploring everyday consumers to buy additional toilet seats—the personalization gap is real. It’s an especially confounding place to be a digital professional without a map, a compass, or a plan.

For those of you venturing into personalization, there’s no Lonely Planet and few tour guides because effective personalization is so specific to each organization’s talent, technology, and market position. 

But you can ensure that your team has packed its bags sensibly.

There’s a DIY formula to increase your chances for success. At minimum, you’ll defuse your boss’s irrational exuberance. Before the party you’ll need to effectively prepare.

We call it prepersonalization.

Behind the music

Consider Spotify’s DJ feature, which debuted this past year.

We’re used to seeing the polished final result of a personalization feature. Before the year-end award, the making-of backstory, or the behind-the-scenes victory lap, a personalized feature had to be conceived, budgeted, and prioritized. Before any personalization feature goes live in your product or service, it lives amid a backlog of worthy ideas for expressing customer experiences more dynamically.

So how do you know where to place your personalization bets? How do you design consistent interactions that won’t trip up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve found that for many budgeted programs to justify their ongoing investments, they first needed one or more workshops to convene key stakeholders and internal customers of the technology. Make yours count.

​From Big Tech to fledgling startups, we’ve seen the same evolution up close with our clients. In our experiences with working on small and large personalization efforts, a program’s ultimate track record—and its ability to weather tough questions, work steadily toward shared answers, and organize its design and technology efforts—turns on how effectively these prepersonalization activities play out.

Time and again, we’ve seen effective workshops separate future success stories from unsuccessful efforts, saving countless time, resources, and collective well-being in the process.

A personalization practice involves a multiyear effort of testing and feature development. It’s not a switch-flip moment in your tech stack. It’s best managed as a backlog that often evolves through three steps: 

1. customer experience optimization (CXO, also known as A/B testing or experimentation)
2. always-on automations (whether rules-based or machine-generated)
3. mature features or standalone product development (such as Spotify’s DJ experience)

This is why we created our progressive personalization framework and why we’re field-testing an accompanying deck of cards: we believe that there’s a base grammar, a set of “nouns and verbs” that your organization can use to design experiences that are customized, personalized, or automated. You won’t need these cards. But we strongly recommend that you create something similar, whether that might be digital or physical.

Set your kitchen timer

How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The surrounding assessment activities that we recommend including can (and often do) span weeks. For the core workshop, we recommend aiming for two to three days. Here’s a summary of our broader approach along with details on the essential first-day activities.

The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

1. Kickstart: This sets the terms of engagement as you focus on the opportunity as well as the readiness and drive of your team and your leadership. .
2. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
3. Work your plan: This phase is all about creating a competitive environment for team participants to individually pitch their own pilots that each contain a proof-of-concept project, its business case, and its operating model.

Give yourself at least a day, split into two large time blocks, to power through a concentrated version of those first two phases.

Kickstart: Whet your appetite

We call the first lesson the “landscape of connected experience.” It explores the personalization possibilities in your organization. A connected experience, in our parlance, is any UX requiring the orchestration of multiple systems of record on the backend. This could be a content-management system combined with a marketing-automation platform. It could be a digital-asset manager combined with a customer-data platform.

Spark conversation by naming consumer examples and business-to-business examples of connected experience interactions that you admire, find familiar, or even dislike. This should cover a representative range of personalization patterns, including automated app-based interactions (such as onboarding sequences or wizards), notifications, and recommenders. We have a catalog of these in the cards. Here’s a list of 142 different interactions to jog your thinking.

This is all about setting the table. What are the possible paths for the practice in your organization? If you want a broader view, here’s a long-form primer and a strategic framework.

Assess each example that you discuss for its complexity and the level of effort that you estimate that it would take for your team to deliver that feature (or something similar). In our cards, we divide connected experiences into five levels: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to focus the conversation on the merits of ongoing investment as well as the gap between what you deliver today and what you want to deliver in the future.

Next, have your team plot each idea on the following 2×2 grid, which lays out the four enduring arguments for a personalized experience. This is critical because it emphasizes how personalization can not only help your external customers but also affect your own ways of working. It’s also a reminder (which is why we used the word argument earlier) of the broader effort beyond these tactical interventions.

Each team member should vote on where they see your product or service putting its emphasis. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. The intention here is to flesh out how different departments may view their own upsides to the effort, which can vary from one to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

The third and final kickstart activity is about naming your personalization gap. Is your customer journey well documented? Will data and privacy compliance be too big of a challenge? Do you have content metadata needs that you have to address? (We’re pretty sure that you do: it’s just a matter of recognizing the relative size of that need and its remedy.) In our cards, we’ve noted a number of program risks, including common team dispositions. Our Detractor card, for example, lists six stakeholder behaviors that hinder progress.

Effectively collaborating and managing expectations is critical to your success. Consider the potential barriers to your future progress. Press the participants to name specific steps to overcome or mitigate those barriers in your organization. As studies have shown, personalization efforts face many common barriers.

At this point, you’ve hopefully discussed sample interactions, emphasized a key area of benefit, and flagged key gaps? Good—you’re ready to continue.

Hit that test kitchen

Next, let’s look at what you’ll need to bring your personalization recipes to life. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. Their capabilities are sweeping and powerful, and they present broad options for how your organization can conduct its activities. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

What’s important here is to avoid treating the installed software like it were a dream kitchen from some fantasy remodeling project (as one of our client executives memorably put it). These software engines are more like test kitchens where your team can begin devising, tasting, and refining the snacks and meals that will become a part of your personalization program’s regularly evolving menu.

The ultimate menu of the prioritized backlog will come together over the course of the workshop. And creating “dishes” is the way that you’ll have individual team stakeholders construct personalized interactions that serve their needs or the needs of others.

The dishes will come from recipes, and those recipes have set ingredients.

Verify your ingredients

Like a good product manager, you’ll make sure—andyou’ll validate with the right stakeholders present—that you have all the ingredients on hand to cook up your desired interaction (or that you can work out what needs to be added to your pantry). These ingredients include the audience that you’re targeting, content and design elements, the context for the interaction, and your measure for how it’ll come together. 

This isn’t just about discovering requirements. Documenting your personalizations as a series of if-then statements lets the team: 

1. compare findings toward a unified approach for developing features, not unlike when artists paint with the same palette; 
2. specify a consistent set of interactions that users find uniform or familiar; 
3. and develop parity across performance measurements and key performance indicators too. 

This helps you streamline your designs and your technical efforts while you deliver a shared palette of core motifs of your personalized or automated experience.

Compose your recipe

What ingredients are important to you? Think of a who-what-when-why construct: 

• Who are your key audience segments or groups?
• What kind of content will you give them, in what design elements, and under what circumstances?
• And for which business and user benefits?

We first developed these cards and card categories five years ago. We regularly play-test their fit with conference audiences and clients. And we still encounter new possibilities. But they all follow an underlying who-what-when-why logic.

Here are three examples for a subscription-based reading app, which you can generally follow along with right to left in the cards in the accompanying photo below. 

1. Nurture personalization: When a guest or an unknown visitor interacts with  a product title, a banner or alert bar appears that makes it easier for them to encounter a related title they may want to read, saving them time.
2. Welcome automation: When there’s a newly registered user, an email is generated to call out the breadth of the content catalog and to make them a happier subscriber.
3. Winback automation: Before their subscription lapses or after a recent failed renewal, a user is sent an email that gives them a promotional offer to suggest that they reconsider renewing or to remind them to renew.

A useful preworkshop activity may be to think through a first draft of what these cards might be for your organization, although we’ve also found that this process sometimes flows best through cocreating the recipes themselves. Start with a set of blank cards, and begin labeling and grouping them through the design process, eventually distilling them to a refined subset of highly useful candidate cards.

You can think of the later stages of the workshop as moving from recipes toward a cookbook in focus—like a more nuanced customer-journey mapping. Individual “cooks” will pitch their recipes to the team, using a common jobs-to-be-done format so that measurability and results are baked in, and from there, the resulting collection will be prioritized for finished design and delivery to production.

Better kitchens require better architecture

Simplifying a customer experience is a complicated effort for those who are inside delivering it. Beware anyone who says otherwise. With that being said,  “Complicated problems can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes.”

When personalization becomes a laugh line, it’s because a team is overfitting: they aren’t designing with their best data. Like a sparse pantry, every organization has metadata debt to go along with its technical debt, and this creates a drag on personalization effectiveness. Your AI’s output quality, for example, is indeed limited by your IA. Spotify’s poster-child prowess today was unfathomable before they acquired a seemingly modest metadata startup that now powers its underlying information architecture.

You can definitely stand the heat…

Personalization technology opens a doorway into a confounding ocean of possible designs. Only a disciplined and highly collaborative approach will bring about the necessary focus and intention to succeed. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, hit the test kitchen to save time, preserve job satisfaction and security, and safely dispense with the fanciful ideas that originate upstairs of the doers in your organization. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

This workshop framework gives you a fighting shot at lasting success as well as sound beginnings. Wiring up your information layer isn’t an overnight affair. But if you use the same cookbook and shared recipes, you’ll have solid footing for success. We designed these activities to make your organization’s needs concrete and clear, long before the hazards pile up.

While there are associated costs toward investing in this kind of technology and product design, your ability to size up and confront your unique situation and your digital capabilities is time well spent. Don’t squander it. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been fascinated with movies. I loved the characters and the excitement—but most of all the stories. I wanted to be an actor. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on exciting adventures. I even dreamed up ideas for movies that my friends and I could make and star in. But they never went any further. I did, however, end up working in user experience (UX). Now, I realize that there’s an element of theater to UX—I hadn’t really considered it before, but user research is storytelling. And to get the most out of user research, you need to tell a good story where you bring stakeholders—the product team and decision makers—along and get them interested in learning more.

Think of your favorite movie. More than likely it follows a three-act structure that’s commonly seen in storytelling: the setup, the conflict, and the resolution. The first act shows what exists today, and it helps you get to know the characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two introduces the conflict, where the action is. Here, problems grow or get worse. And the third and final act is the resolution. This is where the issues are resolved and the characters learn and change. I believe that this structure is also a great way to think about user research, and I think that it can be especially helpful in explaining user research to others.

Use storytelling as a structure to do research

It’s sad to say, but many have come to see research as being expendable. If budgets or timelines are tight, research tends to be one of the first things to go. Instead of investing in research, some product managers rely on designers or—worse—their own opinion to make the “right” choices for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That may get teams some of the way, but that approach can so easily miss out on solving users’ real problems. To remain user-centered, this is something we should avoid. User research elevates design. It keeps it on track, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of the issues with your product and reacting to them can help you stay ahead of your competitors.

In the three-act structure, each act corresponds to a part of the process, and each part is critical to telling the whole story. Let’s look at the different acts and how they align with user research.

Act one: setup

The setup is all about understanding the background, and that’s where foundational research comes in. Foundational research (also called generative, discovery, or initial research) helps you understand users and identify their problems. You’re learning about what exists today, the challenges users have, and how the challenges affect them—just like in the movies. To do foundational research, you can conduct contextual inquiries or diary studies (or both!), which can help you start to identify problems as well as opportunities. It doesn’t need to be a huge investment in time or money.

Erika Hall writes about minimum viable ethnography, which can be as simple as spending 15 minutes with a user and asking them one thing: “‘Walk me through your day yesterday.’ That’s it. Present that one request. Shut up and listen to them for 15 minutes. Do your damndest to keep yourself and your interests out of it. Bam, you’re doing ethnography.” According to Hall, “[This] will probably prove quite illuminating. In the highly unlikely case that you didn’t learn anything new or useful, carry on with enhanced confidence in your direction.”  

This makes total sense to me. And I love that this makes user research so accessible. You don’t need to prepare a lot of documentation; you can just recruit participants and do it! This can yield a wealth of information about your users, and it’ll help you better understand them and what’s going on in their lives. That’s really what act one is all about: understanding where users are coming from. 

Jared Spool talks about the importance of foundational research and how it should form the bulk of your research. If you can draw from any additional user data that you can get your hands on, such as surveys or analytics, that can supplement what you’ve heard in the foundational studies or even point to areas that need further investigation. Together, all this data paints a clearer picture of the state of things and all its shortcomings. And that’s the beginning of a compelling story. It’s the point in the plot where you realize that the main characters—or the users in this case—are facing challenges that they need to overcome. Like in the movies, this is where you start to build empathy for the characters and root for them to succeed. And hopefully stakeholders are now doing the same. Their sympathy may be with their business, which could be losing money because users can’t complete certain tasks. Or maybe they do empathize with users’ struggles. Either way, act one is your initial hook to get the stakeholders interested and invested.

Once stakeholders begin to understand the value of foundational research, that can open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making process. And that can guide product teams toward being more user-centered. This benefits everyone—users, the product, and stakeholders. It’s like winning an Oscar in movie terms—it often leads to your product being well received and successful. And this can be an incentive for stakeholders to repeat this process with other products. Storytelling is the key to this process, and knowing how to tell a good story is the only way to get stakeholders to really care about doing more research. 

This brings us to act two, where you iteratively evaluate a design or concept to see whether it addresses the issues.

Act two: conflict

Act two is all about digging deeper into the problems that you identified in act one. This usually involves directional research, such as usability tests, where you assess a potential solution (such as a design) to see whether it addresses the issues that you found. The issues could include unmet needs or problems with a flow or process that’s tripping users up. Like act two in a movie, more issues will crop up along the way. It’s here that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this act. 

Usability tests should typically include around five participants according to Jakob Nielsen, who found that that number of users can usually identify most of the problems: “As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again… After the fifth user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings repeatedly but not learning much new.” 

There are parallels with storytelling here too; if you try to tell a story with too many characters, the plot may get lost. Having fewer participants means that each user’s struggles will be more memorable and easier to relay to other stakeholders when talking about the research. This can help convey the issues that need to be addressed while also highlighting the value of doing the research in the first place.

Researchers have run usability tests in person for decades, but you can also conduct usability tests remotely using tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other teleconferencing software. This approach has become increasingly popular since the beginning of the pandemic, and it works well. You can think of in-person usability tests like going to a play and remote sessions as more like watching a movie. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. In-person usability research is a much richer experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. You also get real-time reactions—including surprise, agreement, disagreement, and discussions about what they’re seeing. Much like going to a play, where audiences get to take in the stage, the costumes, the lighting, and the actors’ interactions, in-person research lets you see users up close, including their body language, how they interact with the moderator, and how the scene is set up.

If in-person usability testing is like watching a play—staged and controlled—then conducting usability testing in the field is like immersive theater where any two sessions might be very different from one another. You can take usability testing into the field by creating a replica of the space where users interact with the product and then conduct your research there. Or you can go out to meet users at their location to do your research. With either option, you get to see how things work in context, things come up that wouldn’t have in a lab environment—and conversion can shift in entirely different directions. As researchers, you have less control over how these sessions go, but this can sometimes help you understand users even better. Meeting users where they are can provide clues to the external forces that could be affecting how they use your product. In-person usability tests provide another level of detail that’s often missing from remote usability tests. 

That’s not to say that the “movies”—remote sessions—aren’t a good option. Remote sessions can reach a wider audience. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. And they open the doors to a much wider geographical pool of users. But with any remote session there is the potential of time wasted if participants can’t log in or get their microphone working. 

The benefit of usability testing, whether remote or in person, is that you get to see real users interact with the designs in real time, and you can ask them questions to understand their thought processes and grasp of the solution. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. Furthermore, you can test hypotheses and gauge whether your thinking is correct. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. Act two is the heart of the story—where the excitement is—but there can be surprises too. This is equally true of usability tests. Often, participants will say unexpected things, which change the way that you look at things—and these twists in the story can move things in new directions. 

Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. And too often usability testing is the only research process that some stakeholders think that they ever need. In fact, if the designs that you’re evaluating in the usability test aren’t grounded in a solid understanding of your users (foundational research), there’s not much to be gained by doing usability testing in the first place. That’s because you’re narrowing the focus of what you’re getting feedback on, without understanding the users’ needs. As a result, there’s no way of knowing whether the designs might solve a problem that users have. It’s only feedback on a particular design in the context of a usability test.  

On the other hand, if you only do foundational research, while you might have set out to solve the right problem, you won’t know whether the thing that you’re building will actually solve that. This illustrates the importance of doing both foundational and directional research. 

In act two, stakeholders will—hopefully—get to watch the story unfold in the user sessions, which creates the conflict and tension in the current design by surfacing their highs and lows. And in turn, this can help motivate stakeholders to address the issues that come up.

Act three: resolution

While the first two acts are about understanding the background and the tensions that can propel stakeholders into action, the third part is about resolving the problems from the first two acts. While it’s important to have an audience for the first two acts, it’s crucial that they stick around for the final act. That means the whole product team, including developers, UX practitioners, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other stakeholders that have a say in the next steps. It allows the whole team to hear users’ feedback together, ask questions, and discuss what’s possible within the project’s constraints. And it lets the UX research and design teams clarify, suggest alternatives, or give more context behind their decisions. So you can get everyone on the same page and get agreement on the way forward.

This act is mostly told in voiceover with some audience participation. The researcher is the narrator, who paints a picture of the issues and what the future of the product could look like given the things that the team has learned. They give the stakeholders their recommendations and their guidance on creating this vision.

Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. “The most effective presenters use the same techniques as great storytellers: By reminding people of the status quo and then revealing the path to a better way, they set up a conflict that needs to be resolved,” writes Duarte. “That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently.”

This type of structure aligns well with research results, and particularly results from usability tests. It provides evidence for “what is”—the problems that you’ve identified. And “what could be”—your recommendations on how to address them. And so on and so forth.

You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be visual, like quick mockups of how a new design could look that solves a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the end of the session when you’ve wrapped everything up in the conclusion by summarizing the main issues and suggesting a way forward. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. This stage gives stakeholders the next steps and hopefully the momentum to take those steps!

While we are nearly at the end of this story, let’s reflect on the idea that user research is storytelling. All the elements of a good story are there in the three-act structure of user research: 

• Act one: You meet the protagonists (the users) and the antagonists (the problems affecting users). This is the beginning of the plot. In act one, researchers might use methods including contextual inquiry, ethnography, diary studies, surveys, and analytics. The output of these methods can include personas, empathy maps, user journeys, and analytics dashboards.

• Act two: Next, there’s character development. There’s conflict and tension as the protagonists encounter problems and challenges, which they must overcome. In act two, researchers might use methods including usability testing, competitive benchmarking, and heuristics evaluation. The output of these can include usability findings reports, UX strategy documents, usability guidelines, and best practices.

• Act three: The protagonists triumph and you see what a better future looks like. In act three, researchers may use methods including presentation decks, storytelling, and digital media. The output of these can be: presentation decks, video clips, audio clips, and pictures. 

The researcher has multiple roles: they’re the storyteller, the director, and the producer. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters (in the research). And the stakeholders are the audience. But the most important thing is to get the story right and to use storytelling to tell users’ stories through research. By the end, the stakeholders should walk away with a purpose and an eagerness to resolve the product’s ills. 

So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or you’re speaking to stakeholders about research that you’ve done, think about how you can weave in some storytelling. Ultimately, user research is a win-win for everyone, and you just need to get stakeholders interested in how the story ends.

Bridging the Courage Gap in Your Business written by Jarret Redding read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Margie Warrell In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Dr. Margie Warrell, bestselling author, leadership coach, and global authority on courage and risk-taking. We unpacked the core ideas from her latest book The Courage Gap: Five Steps to Braver Action—a must-read for anyone navigating the […]

Bridging the Courage Gap in Your Business written by Jarret Redding read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Margie Warrell

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Dr. Margie Warrell, bestselling author, leadership coach, and global authority on courage and risk-taking. We unpacked the core ideas from her latest book The Courage Gap: Five Steps to Braver Action—a must-read for anyone navigating the often uncomfortable decisions that come with running a business.

From Fortune 500 boardrooms to small consulting firms, Margie has helped leaders overcome fear, self-doubt, and the imposter syndrome that hold them back from realizing their full potential. Our conversation explored the emotional triggers that prevent entrepreneurs from raising their rates, making bold decisions, or having tough conversations. Her advice? Business courage isn’t about fearlessness—it’s about action in the presence of fear. Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or leading a team, closing the courage gap could be the difference between surviving and thriving.

Dr. Margie Warrell’s insights offer an actionable framework for overcoming fear, boosting your entrepreneur mindset, and leading with integrity. Bridging the courage gap could be your most powerful strategy for small business growth.

Key Takeaways:

• The Courage Gap Is Real: The space between what you know you should do and what you actually do is often filled with fear and hesitation—not a lack of knowledge.
• Bravery in Leadership Starts Small: Margie emphasizes that courage is like a muscle. Daily habits like journaling, exercising, and intentional pauses help strengthen it.
• Pause or Procrastination?: Learn to distinguish between a strategic pause and fear-based delay. Clarity leads to action.
• Imposter Syndrome Affects Everyone: While female entrepreneurs often face a unique set of challenges, courage gaps affect all leaders—especially when it comes to pricing strategy and self-worth.
• Raise Your Rates With Confidence: Stop questioning your value. Consider what your service is worth to them, not just what you feel comfortable charging.
• Move Through the Unknown: Waiting for certainty leads to stagnation. Small, courageous steps build momentum and inform your next best move.

Chapters:

• [00:09] Introduction to Margie Warrell
• [01:01] What is the Courage Gap?
• [02:57] The Difference Between Fear-based and Strategic Pausing
• [05:06] What Role Does Imposter Sydrone Play?
• [09:48] Finding the Courage to Charge Your Worth
• [12:15] Habits to Build Courage
• [14:35] Dealing with Fear of Rejection
• [17:10] Being Couragous Through the Unknown

More About Margie Warrell: 

• Check out Margie Warrell’s Website
• Connect with Margie Warrell on LinkedIn

Warning: contains spoilers for Black Mirror episode “Bête Noire”. It’s done it. Black Mirror has finally delivered its most horrific, depraved vision yet: a universe ruled by someone who thinks that miso is an appropriate addition to a chocolate bar. Honestly, what sick mind comes up with this stuff?  That’d be writer Charlie Brooker, who can now […]

The post Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 2 Review: Bête Noire appeared first on Den of Geek.

Early adopters of sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror were once able to rattle off their list of favorite episodes with ease. Back in the show’s Channel 4 days in the U.K., there were only six installments (“The National Anthem,” “15 Million Merits,” “The Entire History of You,” “Be Right Back,” “White Bear,” and “The Waldo Moment”) so it wasn’t too challenging to gather them all up in one’s brain and spit them out in a preferred order.

Since 2016, however, Netflix has stepped in to start mass producing new episodes of Black Mirror as fast as creator Charlie Brooker can write them. The episode number (now at 34 with season 7) has become a bit more unwieldy so making sense of where they all rank is a taller order. Thankfully, it’s a a challenge we’re happy to take on.

What follows is our official list of every Black Mirror episode from worst to best. You will disagree with it because how could you not? Just be sure to let us know how foolish we are in the comments.

34. Shut Up and Dance

Season 3 Episode 3

The third installment of season 3 does indeed present a worthwhile original concept, as most episodes of Black Mirror do. Hackers contact teenage boy Kenny (Alex Lawther) and instruct him to perform an increasingly complicated series of chores or they’ll release an incriminating video taken from his webcam. He teams up with Hector (Jerome Flynn, who has been sent on a similar mission from the same hackers).

Unfortunately, “Shut Up and Dance” is simply too ugly for its own good. While the episode is able to tap into modern anxieties about loss of privacy and autonomy well, it introduces a depressing third act twist that unwittingly argues we’re all terrible animals who don’t deserve our stupid privacy anyway.

33. The Entire History of You

Season 1 Episode 3

“The Entire History of You” was a popular choice for fan favorite following the show’s tiny three-episode first season. The concept of being able to literally watch one’s own memories Dumbledore’s Pensieve-style was definitely appealing. The episode struck such a chord that Robert Downey Jr. even optioned it to make a still as of yet unproduced movie. Problem is: “The Entire History of You” has aged incredibly poorly.

The initial concept remains appealing – so much so that the mind projection “nubbin” has recurred several times – but the story wrapped around it is just awful. Lead character Liam (Toby Kebbell) is such a monstrous prick that it negates any salient point the episode may try to make. It’s hard to be taken in by the episode’s fascinating technology when it’s presented within the most standard and boring infidelity plot imaginable. 

32. The Waldo Moment

Season 2 Episode 3

“The Waldo Moment” is a popular choice for worst Black Mirror episode ever and it’s not hard to see why. Central “character” Waldo is just absolutely unfunny and insufferable. The plot introduces tortured comedic genius Charlie Brooker…I mean Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby), whose animated bear-like creation Waldo embarks upon a satirical run for office.

In a more modern context when we’ve seen creatures far worse than cartoon characters elected to office, “The Waldo Moment” isn’t quite as ridiculous. The notion of co-opting sarcastic revolutions from frustrated voters is pretty right on. Still, Waldo is just the fucking worst. He’s like how Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a show that wanted to depict a comedic variety show but was completely unable to write believable sketches.

31. Men Against Fire

Season 3 Episode 5

“Men Against Fire” is actually pretty solid. Its biggest issue, however, is that it’s nearly impossible not to guess its big twist very early on in the episode. Once the episode gets that inevitability out of the way, a lot falls into place and “Men Against Fire’s” central message is effective and disturbing.

Still the ease in which the narrative trickery is worked out holds it back – as does its clear lack of a necessary budget. It’s a story and a concept that just needed some more time and money to marinate.

30. Crocodile

Season 4 Episode 3

“Crocodile” is one of Black Mirror‘s best-looking episodes. Director John Hillcoat (The Road) makes the absolute best of the setting’s still, disquieting Icelandic landscapes. And that interesting concept of accessing memories comes up again – only this time in a more primitive form.

The technology being developed and primarily used by insurance investigators is entirely logical and intelligent on the show’s part. The plot that Brooker creates around it is again just too bleak. It’s not clear what the episode is trying to say other than that the truly monstrous walk among us – which is a lazy theme for a show this good.

29. Hated in the Nation

Season 3 Episode 6

At this point in the list, we enter into a series of episodes that are flawed but still mostly enjoyable. “Hated in the Nation” has two big factors working against it: it is both season 3’s longest and last episode, carrying an added level of import that it just doesn’t earn.

There’s too much going on here with the show combining a modern social media terrorism plot with….robot bees? It’s all a bit much and at times flat out silly. It’s still a fun episode that combines moments of sharp humor and real intensity. It’s also one of the few Black Mirror episodes to tackle social media and does so in a pretty smart way.

28. Mazey Day

Season 6 Episode 4

“Mazey Day” feels like it should be a more consequential Black Mirror episode than it ends up being. This season 6 installment about a troubled actress and the paparazzi who want to make their riches off of her goes in an ultimately unprecedented direction for the anthology.

While that direction is pretty clever, and the episode’s breezy running time is inoffensive, Mazey Day can’t really elevate itself beyond those two slight adjectives. You’ll have some fun here but for the most part this Zazie Beetz-starring installment isn’t Black Mirror at its best.

27. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch is a bit of an odd duck in the Black Mirror oeuvre. Released late in 2018 as a standalone, Bandersnatch is Netflix’s first ever “choose-your-own-adventure” showcase for adults. The story follows young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) as he attempts to create a videogame based on the works of his favorite author. Sadly that author went crazy and killed his family, and as the choices for Stefan began to develop, it becomes clear that the viewer may be guiding him to a similar fate.

Bandersnatch works surprisingly well as a pure Black Mirror episode, devoid of the narrative tricks. Stefan and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) are both strong characters and the episode’s warped version of 1984 comes across quite nicely. It’s those darn choices though that get in the way of the things. In a way that’s fitting, as Bandersnatch might be about how choice is an illusion anyway.

26. Arkangel

Season 4 Episode 2

Like its season 4 companion “Crocodile,” “Arkangel” is another episode that looks flat out beautiful. Jodie Foster is clearly in her element as a director, creating a richly realized portrait of a near-future small-town America. Not only that but she creates a touching portrayal of mothers and daughters.

So much of “Arkangel’s” runtime is staggeringly poignant, with a mother doing truly destructive things to her daughter all in the name of love. Rarely has an episode of Black Mirror fallen apart so precipitously in its third act, however.

25. Smithereens

Season 5 Episode 2

“Smithereens” follows Chris (Andrew Scott) a rideshare driver who spends most of his days outside of social networking app company Smithereen, waiting to pick an executive up. When Chris finally gets his wish (or thinks he does) he springs his hostage plan into action with one singular goal in mind: talk to the Smithereen CEO (Topher Grace) on his phone.

“Smithereens” is perfectly fine, but unremarkable. It joins other episodes like “Shut Up and Dance” and “The Entire History of You” that help establish dark sci-fi bona fides of the show in the public consciousness but aren’t the most compelling statements Black Mirror has to offer.

24. Black Museum

Season 4 Episode 6

Considering that Black Mirror itself is an anthology, maybe it’s no surprise that it’s able to handle anthologies within a single episode pretty well. “Black Museum” is the “finale” of season 4, and it’s an easter egg bonanza for Black Mirror fans wrapped around a pretty compelling story.

An unnamed woman (played by Black Panther‘s Letitia Wright) pulls into a desert U.S. rest stop where she enters a creepy museum curated by the bombastic Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). Rolo takes his visitor on a tour of the museum, telling stories about how he came to acquire its many technological curiosities. “Black Museum” is in some respects just as dark as the brutal “Crocodile,” but it comes along with a winking Twilight Zone black humor that makes it all the more palatable and engaging.

23. Common People

Season 7 Episode 1

Season 7 opener “Common People” isn’t the best episode of Black Mirror, nor is it the worst, but it might just be the most Black Mirror episode of Black Mirror yet. Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd star as Mike and Amanda, a working class American couple just looking to get by. That goal becomes even more challenging when Amanda falls into a tumor-induced coma, only to be resurrected by the tech firm Rivermind.

There’s no catch here! The good folks at Rivermind bring Amanda’s brain back online for free. All it costs to keep it that way is $300 a month via the subscription model. Wait, did we say $300? It’s actually closer to $1300 now, you know with the upgrading of the cell towers and all. Also, can we interest you in Rivermind Luxe? It’s the only way to remove ads. Blessed with a creative concept and saddled with a typical ending, Common People is as close to a “replacement level” episode of Black Mirror as you’re likely to find.

22. Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too

Season 5 Episode 3

Each successive season of Black Mirror feels like it works harder and harder to subvert viewers’ expectations in logical yet thrilling ways. The show has indulged in Star Trek-like adventure in “U.S.S. Callister,” post-apocalyptic horror in “Metalhead,” and basically straight up romance in “San Juinpero.” Season 5’s “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” might be the series’ most striking tonal departures yet. If not for the occasional F-bomb, this is basically a madcap childrens’ movie.

“Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” follows sisters Rachel and Jack, who are struggling to fit in at school and come to terms with their mom’s death. Ashley O (played by Miley Cyrus naturally) is a pop star who finds herself under the thumb of her evil aunt. When Ashley O’s aunt makes a truly wild and destructive power play, Rachel, Jack, and a robot named Ashley Too seek to defeat her. Many a lesson is learned along the way. “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” doesn’t have the depth of many other Black Mirror episodes and takes far too long to get really rolling. Still, it’s hard not to fall for the charms of this strangely wholesome installment.

21. Playtest

Season 3 Episode 2

There’s quite a bit of time-padding in “Playtest.” Despite a reasonable running time of 57 minutes, the first act feels like it’s nine hours long. Once that hurdle is cleared, however, no episode of Black Mirror is able to more succinctly accomplish what it sets out to accomplish.

In “Playtest’s” case, that’s to be the first flat out techno horror movie episode of Black Mirror. It’s hard to imagine the episode succeeding in this goal more effectively. “Playtest” is far scarier than one could reasonably expect. The episode’s success is tempered yet again by having more endings than The Return of the King but the meaty middle portion is enough to place “Playtest” firmly in Black Mirror‘s middle class.

20. Loch Henry

Season 6 Episode 2

Black Mirror does true crime in “Loch Henry” and it does so quite well! The episode picks up with young filmmakers Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and Pia (Myha’la) returning to Davis’s native Scotland to film a Herzog-ian documentary about a guy who defends endangered bird eggs. When Pia stumbles upon the story of a grueling double murder that Davis’s cop father investigated, she rightfully decides that’s their angle instead.

Loch Henry works as both an engaging crime saga and a criticism of our own seedy fascination with pop culture murder. The twist is fairly easy to guess but the absolute human devastation it eventually reaps certainly makes up for that. In an increasingly bleak series, Loch Henry might just offer up one of Black Mirror‘s bleakest-ever endings.

19. Bête Noire

Season 7 Episode 2

Oftentimes it’s the simplest of human emotions that lead to the most incisive Black Mirrors. Case in point is “Bête Noire,” the second episode of the show’s seventh season. Things are going well enough for food researcher Maria (Siena Kelly) until an old face from her past stops by work. Soon enough Verity (Rosy McEwen) is brining the concept of gaslighting to new sci-fi heights.

At the center of it all is the bête noire, or black beast, herself: jealousy. Turns out you can travel a whole multiverse of possibilities and never get over your childhood pain.

18. Beyond the Sea

Season 6 Episode 3

It’s hard to find the right spot for “Beyond the Sea” on this list. Technically-speaking, it’s one of Black Mirror‘s most impressive episodes. Beautifully-shot by director John Crowley and capably acted by leads Josh Hartnett, Aaron Paul, and Kate Mara, this brings the show’s sci-fi concept back to the 1960s space age where it fits quite well. But then there’s that ending.

Is the hard turn that Beyond the Sea takes in the end coldly logical or the result of Charlie Brooker hitting the “we’re at 80 minutes and must self-destruct” button? Opinions vary at Den of Geek and we suspect they might vary out there as well.

17. Plaything

Season 7 Episode 4

While “USS Callister: Into Infinity” was touted as Black Mirror‘s first-ever direct sequel, it is actually sneakily beat to the punch two episodes previously with “Plaything.” Bandersnatch‘s Will Poulter returns as video game developer Colin Ritman in this short and sweet ode to mankind’s love for fuzzy little guys.

The fuzzy little guys in this equation are Thronglets, digital critters created by Ritman but not in any way under his control. All the Thronglets want is to be given the chance to create their own Throng and Cameron (Peter Capaldi) is going to help them out. Despite featuring one of Black Mirror‘s many trademark bleak endings, there’s something endearing about Plaything. Maybe it’s the Thronglets themselves or the open question of who’s really the “plaything” here but this installment is firmly enjoyable.

16. Metalhead

Season 4 Episode 5

“Metalhead” is beautiful in its simplicity. It’s among the shortest, most direct, and most exciting episodes of Black Mirror. Brooker presents us with a simple black and white story of survival. Black and white literally and black and white figuratively: man (in this case woman) vs. machine.

Maxine Peake is phenomenal as our protagonist in a Walking Dead-style future in which humanity is pursued by terrifying packs of robotic “dogs.” “Metalhead” never gives us straightforward answers (though those robots do seem to like to gather around Amazon-like fulfillment centers) but what it does give us is a careful, straightforward examination of the human spirit’s drive to survive.

15. Hang the DJ

Season 4 Episode 4

Frank (Joe Cole) and Amy (Georgina Campbell) meet through a dating service app that dictates the entire direction of your dating life. “The System” takes users from relationship to relationship, gathering information to find the user’s one true love. Problem is: Frank and Amy believe they’ve already found it and yet The System isn’t ready to let them quit just yet.

“Hang the DJ” is the rare episode of Black Mirror (or anything else for that matter) that features a twist that both elevates and reinforces the original premise. It’s a wonderful, clever, and emotional love story.

14. Hotel Reverie

Season 7 Episode 3

“Hotel Reverie” is what you get when you combine a timely tech topic with some resonant emotional storytelling. That is to say: a great Black Mirror episode. Issa Rae stars as famous actress Brandy Friday, who jumps at the opportunity to play the male lead in a remake of her favorite black and white film, Hotel Reverie. Of course, like many Black Mirror characters in season 7, she doesn’t quite read the instruction manual.

Even before things go inevitably, terribly wrong, Hotel Reverie’s premise of inserting modern day actors into classic films is queasy enough. In addition to capably exploring that topic (in a post-SGA strike landscape no less), this episode makes room for a compelling, offbeat love story that transcends time, space, and celluloid.

13. White Bear

Season 2 Episode 2

“White Bear” may rely a bit too much on its third-act twist but damn, what a twist it is. Folks who have never seen Black Mirror may be under the mistaken impression that the show thrives on “tricking” its audience. That’s obviously not always the case. But it is in “White Bear” and the results are incredible.

Black Mirror is able to manipulate us into believing it’s a much simpler, maybe even derivative show with the first two-thirds of “White Bear.” That last third, however, presents a fundamental truth about the all-consuming human desire for vengeance that’s as uncomfortable as anything the show has produced thus far.

12. The National Anthem

Season 1 Episode 1

Black Mirror‘s first episode is among its most polarizing. It’s incredible that this is what Brooker chose to lead off with. Granted, he couldn’t have known what the franchise would eventually become, but the story of an English Prime Minister blackmailed into copulating with a pig on national television remains as bold and darkly funny as ever.

The prime minster in question is the uninspiring Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear). After a domestic terrorist kidnaps a beloved princess, Callow has a chance to be the hero…by doing the unthinkable. Even all these years later, “The National Anthem” serves as a fitting, and bizarrely prescient, introduction to this TV institution.

11. Joan Is Awful

Season 6 Episode 1

The cultural conversation surrounding Black Mirror in its latter seasons always seems to comes down to the question: “do we even need this show anymore? Reality has basically become an episode of Black Mirror.” Brooker himself has copped to occasionally feeling hamstrung by the world’s increasingly dystopian tendencies. But then you get an episode like season 6 opener “Joan Is Awful” and realize why this project has plenty left in the tank.

Joan Is Awful uses the Black Mirrorification of our reality to its advantage. This disturbingly plausible hour finds the titular Joan (Annie Murphy) discovering that Netflix Streamberry has finally put all that data it collected on her to good use and just made a TV show about her life. It’s a perfectly Black Mirror concept that episode writer Brooker knows just what to do. And thanks to the star power of Murphy and Salma Hayek Pinault, it’s all marvelously entertaining with an unexpectedly empowering conclusion.

10. White Christmas

“White Christmas” is the first and superior of Black Mirror‘s two anthology episodes. Jon Hamm stars as Matt Trent, a proprietor of a home-helper technology, dating expert, and all-around creep. “White Christmas” follows Trent through three seemingly unrelated stories before they cross in fascinating and terrifying ways.

White Christmas is just terrifying, good science fiction and in many ways the technological concepts presented in it have resonated throughout future seasons of the show.

9. Striking Vipers

Season 5 Episode 1

Even before the “turn” in “Striking Vipers,” this is still a beautiful and bittersweet episode of television. Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Beharie brilliantly capture the anarchic sense of freedom and joy of youth and then just as capably capture the nostalgic sadness of adulthood. At first glance, this is an episode about growing old, growing apart, and not being able to reconcile your new self and your old self.

Then the twist hits. Suddenly “Striking Vipers” explodes into a whole host of philosophical, emotional, and sexual questions that the episode invites you to ponder. Through a silly little Mortal Kombat style videogame, Black Mirror makes the audience reconsider their own relationships and values. Just like all the truly great Black Mirror episodes this is a love story. But who loves who, how do they love them, what does that love mean, and where do we all go from here?

8. USS Callister: Into Infinity

Season 7 Episode 6

When it comes to Black Mirror episodes, fans and critics sometimes get hung up in trying to Figure Out What It All Means. What’s the technology here? What’s the message? What’s the parable? Sometimes, however, Charlie Brooker and company opt to craft an episode with the mission of “what if we just make something that rips?”

Enter: “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” the follow-up to season 4’s “USS Callister” and the Black Mirror franchise’s first-ever direct sequel. While this Cristin Milioti-led installment contains some timely commentary about the nature of digital identities and mankind’s heart of darkness, it’s seemingly just an excuse for the show to revisit a cast and concept that everyone had a ton of fun exploring the first time. Lo’ and behold, it’s a ton of fun the second time around too.

7. Nosedive

Season 3 Episode 1

Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Lacie Pound, a woman living in a near future that is even more obsessed with social media and status than we are. Lacie decides she wants to get into a hip new neighborhood but to do so she must maintain a 4.0 score on the dominant social media app. The effort to do so sends her into a … well, a nosedive.

A fun aspect of Black Mirror is being able to recognize certain plot points and themes in real life. Ok, so it’s not always fun. Usually it’s terrifying. For “Nosedive,” though it’s somehow both. Despite its too close for comfort premise, the episode is a lot of fun and it will forever change the way you view your Uber rating.

6. Demon 79

Season 6 Episode 5

“Demon 79” represents the Black Mirror‘s attempt to do something completely new. In fact, this was initially written by Brooker (alongside co-writer Bisha K. Ali) to be an installment of an entirely separate companion show called Red Mirror. As such, it is an unabashedly fantasy horror experience complete with a literal demon and a grim prophecy of the world’s end. And it all works!

Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu both shine as the human-demon duo who are tasked with killing three people to avoid the apocalypse. Despite its non-Black Mirror origins, Demon 79 has every spiritual element of the original show in place: it’s violent, it’s political, it’s angry, it’s funny, and it’s clever. It’s a hell of a fun watch that operates as a much-needed reset and fresh beginning for the franchise overall.

5. Eulogy

Season 7 Episode 5

If you’re bringing one of planet Earth’s best actors aboard for an episode of your silly sci-fi anthology show, you’d better know what to do with him. Thankfully, Black Mirror not only knows what to do with Paul Giamatti, it gives him an incredibly meaty role in “Eulogy.”

The technology of Eulogy is simple and certainly not what you’d call dystopian. Giamatti’s Phillip is granted a nubbin and an AI assistant to guide him through some old photos and prompted to remember some material for his old flame’s eulogy. What the episode lacks in flash, however, it makes up for his heart. This is a touching, bittersweet installment that stands out as one of Black Mirror‘s best.

4. 15 Million Merits

Season 1 Episode 2

“15 Million Merits” is all over the place. It satirizes talent shows like The Voice and American Idol. It satirizes the app culture that’s invading our phones and computers. It satirizes the weight loss industry. It’s a lot, and it’s hard to fully categorize. Instead of all these elements detracting from the story at hand, they enhance it.

“15 Million Merits” is genius dystopian fiction. It’s Brooker’s sense of humor placed neatly over Orwell’s 1984. It’s only the second episode of the entire series and it’s as auspicious a beginning as possible.

3. USS Callister

Season 4 Episode 1

“Wait, this was supposed to be the fun Star Trek parody” a viewer might think to themselves as they watch Captain Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) use God-like powers to remove the mouth of his crewmate Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) so she can neither breathe nor scream. Well, “USS Callister” is Black Mirror‘s “fun” Star Trek parody. It’s also a compelling examination of bad men and the damage they do.

“USS Callister” is one of the most complete and exciting stories the show has told yet. We know TV types get testy when episodes are compared to movies, but “USS Callister” really is just a fantastic movie. Brooker has a stronger sense of story and wonder here than ever before, and “USS Callister” marks an exciting new direction for the show altogether.

2. San Junipero

Season 3 Episode 4

The success of “San Junipero” seemed to catch Brooker and Netflix by surprise. Black Mirror was always a bleak, sometimes ugly little show that had fun doing its Twilight Zone schtick in the shadows. And then season 3 debuted on Netflix and nestled within it – in the unassuming position of the fourth episode – was a romantic masterpiece. A show that was sometimes about things that go viral suddenly had a “thing that went viral.”

San Junipero won the show its first Emmy and took up more server space of discussion on the internet than any other episode. It’s all more than well earned. San Junipero is near perfect. It’s the story of the love between two people, Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), who are only able to meet because of technology. For once technology brings people together on Black Mirror instead of tearing them apart.

1. Be Right Back

Season 2 Episode 1

“Be Right Back” is Black Mirror‘s smallest episode – its quietest, its most intimate. Domhnall Gleeson and Hayley Atwell (before they were the Domhnall Gleeson and the Hayley Atwell) star as married couple Ash and Martha. They are happily, comfortably in love, even if Ash does have a bit of a problem pulling himself away from his phone.

One night, Ash heads out for a drive on a snowy road and the unthinkable happens. Martha is faced with a lifetime on her own until one of her friends puts an idea in her head. There does exist the technology now where a company can recreate the personality of a lost loved one through all of their social media posts and online presence. So Martha goes through with it and tries to fall in love again with a facsimile of Ash. As we all know, however, technology can get pretty close to human but can it get all the way there?

“Be Right Back” is beautiful and sad because it’s human. It’s imperfect. And it gets to a truth about all technology. Life is a race to experience love against the clock of death. So much of our technology and our innovation is about extending that clock, enhancing our capacity to love or in the rarest of instances: defeating death. Death, life, love, grief, technology, and time all come together for a bittersweet little parable in “Be Right Back.” It’s Black Mirror‘s best episode.

The post Black Mirror: Ranking Every Episode appeared first on Den of Geek.

Warning: contains spoilers for Black Mirror season 7 episode 2 “Hotel Reverie” When season three’s “San Junipero” came out in 2016, it made a splash. Acerbic, cynical Black Mirror – a series in which a man had sex with a pig, a child killer was tortured for public entertainment, and the Christmas special featured a five year old freezing […]

The post Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 3 Review: Hotel Reverie appeared first on Den of Geek.

Early adopters of sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror were once able to rattle off their list of favorite episodes with ease. Back in the show’s Channel 4 days in the U.K., there were only six installments (“The National Anthem,” “15 Million Merits,” “The Entire History of You,” “Be Right Back,” “White Bear,” and “The Waldo Moment”) so it wasn’t too challenging to gather them all up in one’s brain and spit them out in a preferred order.

Since 2016, however, Netflix has stepped in to start mass producing new episodes of Black Mirror as fast as creator Charlie Brooker can write them. The episode number (now at 34 with season 7) has become a bit more unwieldy so making sense of where they all rank is a taller order. Thankfully, it’s a a challenge we’re happy to take on.

What follows is our official list of every Black Mirror episode from worst to best. You will disagree with it because how could you not? Just be sure to let us know how foolish we are in the comments.

34. Shut Up and Dance

Season 3 Episode 3

The third installment of season 3 does indeed present a worthwhile original concept, as most episodes of Black Mirror do. Hackers contact teenage boy Kenny (Alex Lawther) and instruct him to perform an increasingly complicated series of chores or they’ll release an incriminating video taken from his webcam. He teams up with Hector (Jerome Flynn, who has been sent on a similar mission from the same hackers).

Unfortunately, “Shut Up and Dance” is simply too ugly for its own good. While the episode is able to tap into modern anxieties about loss of privacy and autonomy well, it introduces a depressing third act twist that unwittingly argues we’re all terrible animals who don’t deserve our stupid privacy anyway.

33. The Entire History of You

Season 1 Episode 3

“The Entire History of You” was a popular choice for fan favorite following the show’s tiny three-episode first season. The concept of being able to literally watch one’s own memories Dumbledore’s Pensieve-style was definitely appealing. The episode struck such a chord that Robert Downey Jr. even optioned it to make a still as of yet unproduced movie. Problem is: “The Entire History of You” has aged incredibly poorly.

The initial concept remains appealing – so much so that the mind projection “nubbin” has recurred several times – but the story wrapped around it is just awful. Lead character Liam (Toby Kebbell) is such a monstrous prick that it negates any salient point the episode may try to make. It’s hard to be taken in by the episode’s fascinating technology when it’s presented within the most standard and boring infidelity plot imaginable. 

32. The Waldo Moment

Season 2 Episode 3

“The Waldo Moment” is a popular choice for worst Black Mirror episode ever and it’s not hard to see why. Central “character” Waldo is just absolutely unfunny and insufferable. The plot introduces tortured comedic genius Charlie Brooker…I mean Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby), whose animated bear-like creation Waldo embarks upon a satirical run for office.

In a more modern context when we’ve seen creatures far worse than cartoon characters elected to office, “The Waldo Moment” isn’t quite as ridiculous. The notion of co-opting sarcastic revolutions from frustrated voters is pretty right on. Still, Waldo is just the fucking worst. He’s like how Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a show that wanted to depict a comedic variety show but was completely unable to write believable sketches.

31. Men Against Fire

Season 3 Episode 5

“Men Against Fire” is actually pretty solid. Its biggest issue, however, is that it’s nearly impossible not to guess its big twist very early on in the episode. Once the episode gets that inevitability out of the way, a lot falls into place and “Men Against Fire’s” central message is effective and disturbing.

Still the ease in which the narrative trickery is worked out holds it back – as does its clear lack of a necessary budget. It’s a story and a concept that just needed some more time and money to marinate.

30. Crocodile

Season 4 Episode 3

“Crocodile” is one of Black Mirror‘s best-looking episodes. Director John Hillcoat (The Road) makes the absolute best of the setting’s still, disquieting Icelandic landscapes. And that interesting concept of accessing memories comes up again – only this time in a more primitive form.

The technology being developed and primarily used by insurance investigators is entirely logical and intelligent on the show’s part. The plot that Brooker creates around it is again just too bleak. It’s not clear what the episode is trying to say other than that the truly monstrous walk among us – which is a lazy theme for a show this good.

29. Hated in the Nation

Season 3 Episode 6

At this point in the list, we enter into a series of episodes that are flawed but still mostly enjoyable. “Hated in the Nation” has two big factors working against it: it is both season 3’s longest and last episode, carrying an added level of import that it just doesn’t earn.

There’s too much going on here with the show combining a modern social media terrorism plot with….robot bees? It’s all a bit much and at times flat out silly. It’s still a fun episode that combines moments of sharp humor and real intensity. It’s also one of the few Black Mirror episodes to tackle social media and does so in a pretty smart way.

28. Mazey Day

Season 6 Episode 4

“Mazey Day” feels like it should be a more consequential Black Mirror episode than it ends up being. This season 6 installment about a troubled actress and the paparazzi who want to make their riches off of her goes in an ultimately unprecedented direction for the anthology.

While that direction is pretty clever, and the episode’s breezy running time is inoffensive, Mazey Day can’t really elevate itself beyond those two slight adjectives. You’ll have some fun here but for the most part this Zazie Beetz-starring installment isn’t Black Mirror at its best.

27. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch is a bit of an odd duck in the Black Mirror oeuvre. Released late in 2018 as a standalone, Bandersnatch is Netflix’s first ever “choose-your-own-adventure” showcase for adults. The story follows young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) as he attempts to create a videogame based on the works of his favorite author. Sadly that author went crazy and killed his family, and as the choices for Stefan began to develop, it becomes clear that the viewer may be guiding him to a similar fate.

Bandersnatch works surprisingly well as a pure Black Mirror episode, devoid of the narrative tricks. Stefan and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) are both strong characters and the episode’s warped version of 1984 comes across quite nicely. It’s those darn choices though that get in the way of the things. In a way that’s fitting, as Bandersnatch might be about how choice is an illusion anyway.

26. Arkangel

Season 4 Episode 2

Like its season 4 companion “Crocodile,” “Arkangel” is another episode that looks flat out beautiful. Jodie Foster is clearly in her element as a director, creating a richly realized portrait of a near-future small-town America. Not only that but she creates a touching portrayal of mothers and daughters.

So much of “Arkangel’s” runtime is staggeringly poignant, with a mother doing truly destructive things to her daughter all in the name of love. Rarely has an episode of Black Mirror fallen apart so precipitously in its third act, however.

25. Smithereens

Season 5 Episode 2

“Smithereens” follows Chris (Andrew Scott) a rideshare driver who spends most of his days outside of social networking app company Smithereen, waiting to pick an executive up. When Chris finally gets his wish (or thinks he does) he springs his hostage plan into action with one singular goal in mind: talk to the Smithereen CEO (Topher Grace) on his phone.

“Smithereens” is perfectly fine, but unremarkable. It joins other episodes like “Shut Up and Dance” and “The Entire History of You” that help establish dark sci-fi bona fides of the show in the public consciousness but aren’t the most compelling statements Black Mirror has to offer.

24. Black Museum

Season 4 Episode 6

Considering that Black Mirror itself is an anthology, maybe it’s no surprise that it’s able to handle anthologies within a single episode pretty well. “Black Museum” is the “finale” of season 4, and it’s an easter egg bonanza for Black Mirror fans wrapped around a pretty compelling story.

An unnamed woman (played by Black Panther‘s Letitia Wright) pulls into a desert U.S. rest stop where she enters a creepy museum curated by the bombastic Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). Rolo takes his visitor on a tour of the museum, telling stories about how he came to acquire its many technological curiosities. “Black Museum” is in some respects just as dark as the brutal “Crocodile,” but it comes along with a winking Twilight Zone black humor that makes it all the more palatable and engaging.

23. Common People

Season 7 Episode 1

Season 7 opener “Common People” isn’t the best episode of Black Mirror, nor is it the worst, but it might just be the most Black Mirror episode of Black Mirror yet. Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd star as Mike and Amanda, a working class American couple just looking to get by. That goal becomes even more challenging when Amanda falls into a tumor-induced coma, only to be resurrected by the tech firm Rivermind.

There’s no catch here! The good folks at Rivermind bring Amanda’s brain back online for free. All it costs to keep it that way is $300 a month via the subscription model. Wait, did we say $300? It’s actually closer to $1300 now, you know with the upgrading of the cell towers and all. Also, can we interest you in Rivermind Luxe? It’s the only way to remove ads. Blessed with a creative concept and saddled with a typical ending, Common People is as close to a “replacement level” episode of Black Mirror as you’re likely to find.

22. Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too

Season 5 Episode 3

Each successive season of Black Mirror feels like it works harder and harder to subvert viewers’ expectations in logical yet thrilling ways. The show has indulged in Star Trek-like adventure in “U.S.S. Callister,” post-apocalyptic horror in “Metalhead,” and basically straight up romance in “San Juinpero.” Season 5’s “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” might be the series’ most striking tonal departures yet. If not for the occasional F-bomb, this is basically a madcap childrens’ movie.

“Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” follows sisters Rachel and Jack, who are struggling to fit in at school and come to terms with their mom’s death. Ashley O (played by Miley Cyrus naturally) is a pop star who finds herself under the thumb of her evil aunt. When Ashley O’s aunt makes a truly wild and destructive power play, Rachel, Jack, and a robot named Ashley Too seek to defeat her. Many a lesson is learned along the way. “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” doesn’t have the depth of many other Black Mirror episodes and takes far too long to get really rolling. Still, it’s hard not to fall for the charms of this strangely wholesome installment.

21. Playtest

Season 3 Episode 2

There’s quite a bit of time-padding in “Playtest.” Despite a reasonable running time of 57 minutes, the first act feels like it’s nine hours long. Once that hurdle is cleared, however, no episode of Black Mirror is able to more succinctly accomplish what it sets out to accomplish.

In “Playtest’s” case, that’s to be the first flat out techno horror movie episode of Black Mirror. It’s hard to imagine the episode succeeding in this goal more effectively. “Playtest” is far scarier than one could reasonably expect. The episode’s success is tempered yet again by having more endings than The Return of the King but the meaty middle portion is enough to place “Playtest” firmly in Black Mirror‘s middle class.

20. Loch Henry

Season 6 Episode 2

Black Mirror does true crime in “Loch Henry” and it does so quite well! The episode picks up with young filmmakers Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and Pia (Myha’la) returning to Davis’s native Scotland to film a Herzog-ian documentary about a guy who defends endangered bird eggs. When Pia stumbles upon the story of a grueling double murder that Davis’s cop father investigated, she rightfully decides that’s their angle instead.

Loch Henry works as both an engaging crime saga and a criticism of our own seedy fascination with pop culture murder. The twist is fairly easy to guess but the absolute human devastation it eventually reaps certainly makes up for that. In an increasingly bleak series, Loch Henry might just offer up one of Black Mirror‘s bleakest-ever endings.

19. Bête Noire

Season 7 Episode 2

Oftentimes it’s the simplest of human emotions that lead to the most incisive Black Mirrors. Case in point is “Bête Noire,” the second episode of the show’s seventh season. Things are going well enough for food researcher Maria (Siena Kelly) until an old face from her past stops by work. Soon enough Verity (Rosy McEwen) is brining the concept of gaslighting to new sci-fi heights.

At the center of it all is the bête noire, or black beast, herself: jealousy. Turns out you can travel a whole multiverse of possibilities and never get over your childhood pain.

18. Beyond the Sea

Season 6 Episode 3

It’s hard to find the right spot for “Beyond the Sea” on this list. Technically-speaking, it’s one of Black Mirror‘s most impressive episodes. Beautifully-shot by director John Crowley and capably acted by leads Josh Hartnett, Aaron Paul, and Kate Mara, this brings the show’s sci-fi concept back to the 1960s space age where it fits quite well. But then there’s that ending.

Is the hard turn that Beyond the Sea takes in the end coldly logical or the result of Charlie Brooker hitting the “we’re at 80 minutes and must self-destruct” button? Opinions vary at Den of Geek and we suspect they might vary out there as well.

17. Plaything

Season 7 Episode 4

While “USS Callister: Into Infinity” was touted as Black Mirror‘s first-ever direct sequel, it is actually sneakily beat to the punch two episodes previously with “Plaything.” Bandersnatch‘s Will Poulter returns as video game developer Colin Ritman in this short and sweet ode to mankind’s love for fuzzy little guys.

The fuzzy little guys in this equation are Thronglets, digital critters created by Ritman but not in any way under his control. All the Thronglets want is to be given the chance to create their own Throng and Cameron (Peter Capaldi) is going to help them out. Despite featuring one of Black Mirror‘s many trademark bleak endings, there’s something endearing about Plaything. Maybe it’s the Thronglets themselves or the open question of who’s really the “plaything” here but this installment is firmly enjoyable.

16. Metalhead

Season 4 Episode 5

“Metalhead” is beautiful in its simplicity. It’s among the shortest, most direct, and most exciting episodes of Black Mirror. Brooker presents us with a simple black and white story of survival. Black and white literally and black and white figuratively: man (in this case woman) vs. machine.

Maxine Peake is phenomenal as our protagonist in a Walking Dead-style future in which humanity is pursued by terrifying packs of robotic “dogs.” “Metalhead” never gives us straightforward answers (though those robots do seem to like to gather around Amazon-like fulfillment centers) but what it does give us is a careful, straightforward examination of the human spirit’s drive to survive.

15. Hang the DJ

Season 4 Episode 4

Frank (Joe Cole) and Amy (Georgina Campbell) meet through a dating service app that dictates the entire direction of your dating life. “The System” takes users from relationship to relationship, gathering information to find the user’s one true love. Problem is: Frank and Amy believe they’ve already found it and yet The System isn’t ready to let them quit just yet.

“Hang the DJ” is the rare episode of Black Mirror (or anything else for that matter) that features a twist that both elevates and reinforces the original premise. It’s a wonderful, clever, and emotional love story.

14. Hotel Reverie

Season 7 Episode 3

“Hotel Reverie” is what you get when you combine a timely tech topic with some resonant emotional storytelling. That is to say: a great Black Mirror episode. Issa Rae stars as famous actress Brandy Friday, who jumps at the opportunity to play the male lead in a remake of her favorite black and white film, Hotel Reverie. Of course, like many Black Mirror characters in season 7, she doesn’t quite read the instruction manual.

Even before things go inevitably, terribly wrong, Hotel Reverie’s premise of inserting modern day actors into classic films is queasy enough. In addition to capably exploring that topic (in a post-SGA strike landscape no less), this episode makes room for a compelling, offbeat love story that transcends time, space, and celluloid.

13. White Bear

Season 2 Episode 2

“White Bear” may rely a bit too much on its third-act twist but damn, what a twist it is. Folks who have never seen Black Mirror may be under the mistaken impression that the show thrives on “tricking” its audience. That’s obviously not always the case. But it is in “White Bear” and the results are incredible.

Black Mirror is able to manipulate us into believing it’s a much simpler, maybe even derivative show with the first two-thirds of “White Bear.” That last third, however, presents a fundamental truth about the all-consuming human desire for vengeance that’s as uncomfortable as anything the show has produced thus far.

12. The National Anthem

Season 1 Episode 1

Black Mirror‘s first episode is among its most polarizing. It’s incredible that this is what Brooker chose to lead off with. Granted, he couldn’t have known what the franchise would eventually become, but the story of an English Prime Minister blackmailed into copulating with a pig on national television remains as bold and darkly funny as ever.

The prime minster in question is the uninspiring Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear). After a domestic terrorist kidnaps a beloved princess, Callow has a chance to be the hero…by doing the unthinkable. Even all these years later, “The National Anthem” serves as a fitting, and bizarrely prescient, introduction to this TV institution.

11. Joan Is Awful

Season 6 Episode 1

The cultural conversation surrounding Black Mirror in its latter seasons always seems to comes down to the question: “do we even need this show anymore? Reality has basically become an episode of Black Mirror.” Brooker himself has copped to occasionally feeling hamstrung by the world’s increasingly dystopian tendencies. But then you get an episode like season 6 opener “Joan Is Awful” and realize why this project has plenty left in the tank.

Joan Is Awful uses the Black Mirrorification of our reality to its advantage. This disturbingly plausible hour finds the titular Joan (Annie Murphy) discovering that Netflix Streamberry has finally put all that data it collected on her to good use and just made a TV show about her life. It’s a perfectly Black Mirror concept that episode writer Brooker knows just what to do. And thanks to the star power of Murphy and Salma Hayek Pinault, it’s all marvelously entertaining with an unexpectedly empowering conclusion.

10. White Christmas

“White Christmas” is the first and superior of Black Mirror‘s two anthology episodes. Jon Hamm stars as Matt Trent, a proprietor of a home-helper technology, dating expert, and all-around creep. “White Christmas” follows Trent through three seemingly unrelated stories before they cross in fascinating and terrifying ways.

White Christmas is just terrifying, good science fiction and in many ways the technological concepts presented in it have resonated throughout future seasons of the show.

9. Striking Vipers

Season 5 Episode 1

Even before the “turn” in “Striking Vipers,” this is still a beautiful and bittersweet episode of television. Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Beharie brilliantly capture the anarchic sense of freedom and joy of youth and then just as capably capture the nostalgic sadness of adulthood. At first glance, this is an episode about growing old, growing apart, and not being able to reconcile your new self and your old self.

Then the twist hits. Suddenly “Striking Vipers” explodes into a whole host of philosophical, emotional, and sexual questions that the episode invites you to ponder. Through a silly little Mortal Kombat style videogame, Black Mirror makes the audience reconsider their own relationships and values. Just like all the truly great Black Mirror episodes this is a love story. But who loves who, how do they love them, what does that love mean, and where do we all go from here?

8. USS Callister: Into Infinity

Season 7 Episode 6

When it comes to Black Mirror episodes, fans and critics sometimes get hung up in trying to Figure Out What It All Means. What’s the technology here? What’s the message? What’s the parable? Sometimes, however, Charlie Brooker and company opt to craft an episode with the mission of “what if we just make something that rips?”

Enter: “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” the follow-up to season 4’s “USS Callister” and the Black Mirror franchise’s first-ever direct sequel. While this Cristin Milioti-led installment contains some timely commentary about the nature of digital identities and mankind’s heart of darkness, it’s seemingly just an excuse for the show to revisit a cast and concept that everyone had a ton of fun exploring the first time. Lo’ and behold, it’s a ton of fun the second time around too.

7. Nosedive

Season 3 Episode 1

Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Lacie Pound, a woman living in a near future that is even more obsessed with social media and status than we are. Lacie decides she wants to get into a hip new neighborhood but to do so she must maintain a 4.0 score on the dominant social media app. The effort to do so sends her into a … well, a nosedive.

A fun aspect of Black Mirror is being able to recognize certain plot points and themes in real life. Ok, so it’s not always fun. Usually it’s terrifying. For “Nosedive,” though it’s somehow both. Despite its too close for comfort premise, the episode is a lot of fun and it will forever change the way you view your Uber rating.

6. Demon 79

Season 6 Episode 5

“Demon 79” represents the Black Mirror‘s attempt to do something completely new. In fact, this was initially written by Brooker (alongside co-writer Bisha K. Ali) to be an installment of an entirely separate companion show called Red Mirror. As such, it is an unabashedly fantasy horror experience complete with a literal demon and a grim prophecy of the world’s end. And it all works!

Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu both shine as the human-demon duo who are tasked with killing three people to avoid the apocalypse. Despite its non-Black Mirror origins, Demon 79 has every spiritual element of the original show in place: it’s violent, it’s political, it’s angry, it’s funny, and it’s clever. It’s a hell of a fun watch that operates as a much-needed reset and fresh beginning for the franchise overall.

5. Eulogy

Season 7 Episode 5

If you’re bringing one of planet Earth’s best actors aboard for an episode of your silly sci-fi anthology show, you’d better know what to do with him. Thankfully, Black Mirror not only knows what to do with Paul Giamatti, it gives him an incredibly meaty role in “Eulogy.”

The technology of Eulogy is simple and certainly not what you’d call dystopian. Giamatti’s Phillip is granted a nubbin and an AI assistant to guide him through some old photos and prompted to remember some material for his old flame’s eulogy. What the episode lacks in flash, however, it makes up for his heart. This is a touching, bittersweet installment that stands out as one of Black Mirror‘s best.

4. 15 Million Merits

Season 1 Episode 2

“15 Million Merits” is all over the place. It satirizes talent shows like The Voice and American Idol. It satirizes the app culture that’s invading our phones and computers. It satirizes the weight loss industry. It’s a lot, and it’s hard to fully categorize. Instead of all these elements detracting from the story at hand, they enhance it.

“15 Million Merits” is genius dystopian fiction. It’s Brooker’s sense of humor placed neatly over Orwell’s 1984. It’s only the second episode of the entire series and it’s as auspicious a beginning as possible.

3. USS Callister

Season 4 Episode 1

“Wait, this was supposed to be the fun Star Trek parody” a viewer might think to themselves as they watch Captain Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) use God-like powers to remove the mouth of his crewmate Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) so she can neither breathe nor scream. Well, “USS Callister” is Black Mirror‘s “fun” Star Trek parody. It’s also a compelling examination of bad men and the damage they do.

“USS Callister” is one of the most complete and exciting stories the show has told yet. We know TV types get testy when episodes are compared to movies, but “USS Callister” really is just a fantastic movie. Brooker has a stronger sense of story and wonder here than ever before, and “USS Callister” marks an exciting new direction for the show altogether.

2. San Junipero

Season 3 Episode 4

The success of “San Junipero” seemed to catch Brooker and Netflix by surprise. Black Mirror was always a bleak, sometimes ugly little show that had fun doing its Twilight Zone schtick in the shadows. And then season 3 debuted on Netflix and nestled within it – in the unassuming position of the fourth episode – was a romantic masterpiece. A show that was sometimes about things that go viral suddenly had a “thing that went viral.”

San Junipero won the show its first Emmy and took up more server space of discussion on the internet than any other episode. It’s all more than well earned. San Junipero is near perfect. It’s the story of the love between two people, Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), who are only able to meet because of technology. For once technology brings people together on Black Mirror instead of tearing them apart.

1. Be Right Back

Season 2 Episode 1

“Be Right Back” is Black Mirror‘s smallest episode – its quietest, its most intimate. Domhnall Gleeson and Hayley Atwell (before they were the Domhnall Gleeson and the Hayley Atwell) star as married couple Ash and Martha. They are happily, comfortably in love, even if Ash does have a bit of a problem pulling himself away from his phone.

One night, Ash heads out for a drive on a snowy road and the unthinkable happens. Martha is faced with a lifetime on her own until one of her friends puts an idea in her head. There does exist the technology now where a company can recreate the personality of a lost loved one through all of their social media posts and online presence. So Martha goes through with it and tries to fall in love again with a facsimile of Ash. As we all know, however, technology can get pretty close to human but can it get all the way there?

“Be Right Back” is beautiful and sad because it’s human. It’s imperfect. And it gets to a truth about all technology. Life is a race to experience love against the clock of death. So much of our technology and our innovation is about extending that clock, enhancing our capacity to love or in the rarest of instances: defeating death. Death, life, love, grief, technology, and time all come together for a bittersweet little parable in “Be Right Back.” It’s Black Mirror‘s best episode.

The post Black Mirror: Ranking Every Episode appeared first on Den of Geek.

Warning: contains spoilers for Black Mirror season 7 episode 4 “Plaything.” You have to admit, the man has a point. Peter Capaldi’s “Plaything” character may have spent the last four decades tripping balls in a funky-smelling attic while serving as a wide-eyed acolyte for a bunch of potentially murderous Tamagotchi, but he’s right about human violence; look […]

The post Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 4 Review: Plaything appeared first on Den of Geek.

Early adopters of sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror were once able to rattle off their list of favorite episodes with ease. Back in the show’s Channel 4 days in the U.K., there were only six installments (“The National Anthem,” “15 Million Merits,” “The Entire History of You,” “Be Right Back,” “White Bear,” and “The Waldo Moment”) so it wasn’t too challenging to gather them all up in one’s brain and spit them out in a preferred order.

Since 2016, however, Netflix has stepped in to start mass producing new episodes of Black Mirror as fast as creator Charlie Brooker can write them. The episode number (now at 34 with season 7) has become a bit more unwieldy so making sense of where they all rank is a taller order. Thankfully, it’s a a challenge we’re happy to take on.

What follows is our official list of every Black Mirror episode from worst to best. You will disagree with it because how could you not? Just be sure to let us know how foolish we are in the comments.

34. Shut Up and Dance

Season 3 Episode 3

The third installment of season 3 does indeed present a worthwhile original concept, as most episodes of Black Mirror do. Hackers contact teenage boy Kenny (Alex Lawther) and instruct him to perform an increasingly complicated series of chores or they’ll release an incriminating video taken from his webcam. He teams up with Hector (Jerome Flynn, who has been sent on a similar mission from the same hackers).

Unfortunately, “Shut Up and Dance” is simply too ugly for its own good. While the episode is able to tap into modern anxieties about loss of privacy and autonomy well, it introduces a depressing third act twist that unwittingly argues we’re all terrible animals who don’t deserve our stupid privacy anyway.

33. The Entire History of You

Season 1 Episode 3

“The Entire History of You” was a popular choice for fan favorite following the show’s tiny three-episode first season. The concept of being able to literally watch one’s own memories Dumbledore’s Pensieve-style was definitely appealing. The episode struck such a chord that Robert Downey Jr. even optioned it to make a still as of yet unproduced movie. Problem is: “The Entire History of You” has aged incredibly poorly.

The initial concept remains appealing – so much so that the mind projection “nubbin” has recurred several times – but the story wrapped around it is just awful. Lead character Liam (Toby Kebbell) is such a monstrous prick that it negates any salient point the episode may try to make. It’s hard to be taken in by the episode’s fascinating technology when it’s presented within the most standard and boring infidelity plot imaginable. 

32. The Waldo Moment

Season 2 Episode 3

“The Waldo Moment” is a popular choice for worst Black Mirror episode ever and it’s not hard to see why. Central “character” Waldo is just absolutely unfunny and insufferable. The plot introduces tortured comedic genius Charlie Brooker…I mean Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby), whose animated bear-like creation Waldo embarks upon a satirical run for office.

In a more modern context when we’ve seen creatures far worse than cartoon characters elected to office, “The Waldo Moment” isn’t quite as ridiculous. The notion of co-opting sarcastic revolutions from frustrated voters is pretty right on. Still, Waldo is just the fucking worst. He’s like how Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a show that wanted to depict a comedic variety show but was completely unable to write believable sketches.

31. Men Against Fire

Season 3 Episode 5

“Men Against Fire” is actually pretty solid. Its biggest issue, however, is that it’s nearly impossible not to guess its big twist very early on in the episode. Once the episode gets that inevitability out of the way, a lot falls into place and “Men Against Fire’s” central message is effective and disturbing.

Still the ease in which the narrative trickery is worked out holds it back – as does its clear lack of a necessary budget. It’s a story and a concept that just needed some more time and money to marinate.

30. Crocodile

Season 4 Episode 3

“Crocodile” is one of Black Mirror‘s best-looking episodes. Director John Hillcoat (The Road) makes the absolute best of the setting’s still, disquieting Icelandic landscapes. And that interesting concept of accessing memories comes up again – only this time in a more primitive form.

The technology being developed and primarily used by insurance investigators is entirely logical and intelligent on the show’s part. The plot that Brooker creates around it is again just too bleak. It’s not clear what the episode is trying to say other than that the truly monstrous walk among us – which is a lazy theme for a show this good.

29. Hated in the Nation

Season 3 Episode 6

At this point in the list, we enter into a series of episodes that are flawed but still mostly enjoyable. “Hated in the Nation” has two big factors working against it: it is both season 3’s longest and last episode, carrying an added level of import that it just doesn’t earn.

There’s too much going on here with the show combining a modern social media terrorism plot with….robot bees? It’s all a bit much and at times flat out silly. It’s still a fun episode that combines moments of sharp humor and real intensity. It’s also one of the few Black Mirror episodes to tackle social media and does so in a pretty smart way.

28. Mazey Day

Season 6 Episode 4

“Mazey Day” feels like it should be a more consequential Black Mirror episode than it ends up being. This season 6 installment about a troubled actress and the paparazzi who want to make their riches off of her goes in an ultimately unprecedented direction for the anthology.

While that direction is pretty clever, and the episode’s breezy running time is inoffensive, Mazey Day can’t really elevate itself beyond those two slight adjectives. You’ll have some fun here but for the most part this Zazie Beetz-starring installment isn’t Black Mirror at its best.

27. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch is a bit of an odd duck in the Black Mirror oeuvre. Released late in 2018 as a standalone, Bandersnatch is Netflix’s first ever “choose-your-own-adventure” showcase for adults. The story follows young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) as he attempts to create a videogame based on the works of his favorite author. Sadly that author went crazy and killed his family, and as the choices for Stefan began to develop, it becomes clear that the viewer may be guiding him to a similar fate.

Bandersnatch works surprisingly well as a pure Black Mirror episode, devoid of the narrative tricks. Stefan and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) are both strong characters and the episode’s warped version of 1984 comes across quite nicely. It’s those darn choices though that get in the way of the things. In a way that’s fitting, as Bandersnatch might be about how choice is an illusion anyway.

26. Arkangel

Season 4 Episode 2

Like its season 4 companion “Crocodile,” “Arkangel” is another episode that looks flat out beautiful. Jodie Foster is clearly in her element as a director, creating a richly realized portrait of a near-future small-town America. Not only that but she creates a touching portrayal of mothers and daughters.

So much of “Arkangel’s” runtime is staggeringly poignant, with a mother doing truly destructive things to her daughter all in the name of love. Rarely has an episode of Black Mirror fallen apart so precipitously in its third act, however.

25. Smithereens

Season 5 Episode 2

“Smithereens” follows Chris (Andrew Scott) a rideshare driver who spends most of his days outside of social networking app company Smithereen, waiting to pick an executive up. When Chris finally gets his wish (or thinks he does) he springs his hostage plan into action with one singular goal in mind: talk to the Smithereen CEO (Topher Grace) on his phone.

“Smithereens” is perfectly fine, but unremarkable. It joins other episodes like “Shut Up and Dance” and “The Entire History of You” that help establish dark sci-fi bona fides of the show in the public consciousness but aren’t the most compelling statements Black Mirror has to offer.

24. Black Museum

Season 4 Episode 6

Considering that Black Mirror itself is an anthology, maybe it’s no surprise that it’s able to handle anthologies within a single episode pretty well. “Black Museum” is the “finale” of season 4, and it’s an easter egg bonanza for Black Mirror fans wrapped around a pretty compelling story.

An unnamed woman (played by Black Panther‘s Letitia Wright) pulls into a desert U.S. rest stop where she enters a creepy museum curated by the bombastic Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). Rolo takes his visitor on a tour of the museum, telling stories about how he came to acquire its many technological curiosities. “Black Museum” is in some respects just as dark as the brutal “Crocodile,” but it comes along with a winking Twilight Zone black humor that makes it all the more palatable and engaging.

23. Common People

Season 7 Episode 1

Season 7 opener “Common People” isn’t the best episode of Black Mirror, nor is it the worst, but it might just be the most Black Mirror episode of Black Mirror yet. Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd star as Mike and Amanda, a working class American couple just looking to get by. That goal becomes even more challenging when Amanda falls into a tumor-induced coma, only to be resurrected by the tech firm Rivermind.

There’s no catch here! The good folks at Rivermind bring Amanda’s brain back online for free. All it costs to keep it that way is $300 a month via the subscription model. Wait, did we say $300? It’s actually closer to $1300 now, you know with the upgrading of the cell towers and all. Also, can we interest you in Rivermind Luxe? It’s the only way to remove ads. Blessed with a creative concept and saddled with a typical ending, Common People is as close to a “replacement level” episode of Black Mirror as you’re likely to find.

22. Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too

Season 5 Episode 3

Each successive season of Black Mirror feels like it works harder and harder to subvert viewers’ expectations in logical yet thrilling ways. The show has indulged in Star Trek-like adventure in “U.S.S. Callister,” post-apocalyptic horror in “Metalhead,” and basically straight up romance in “San Juinpero.” Season 5’s “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” might be the series’ most striking tonal departures yet. If not for the occasional F-bomb, this is basically a madcap childrens’ movie.

“Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” follows sisters Rachel and Jack, who are struggling to fit in at school and come to terms with their mom’s death. Ashley O (played by Miley Cyrus naturally) is a pop star who finds herself under the thumb of her evil aunt. When Ashley O’s aunt makes a truly wild and destructive power play, Rachel, Jack, and a robot named Ashley Too seek to defeat her. Many a lesson is learned along the way. “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” doesn’t have the depth of many other Black Mirror episodes and takes far too long to get really rolling. Still, it’s hard not to fall for the charms of this strangely wholesome installment.

21. Playtest

Season 3 Episode 2

There’s quite a bit of time-padding in “Playtest.” Despite a reasonable running time of 57 minutes, the first act feels like it’s nine hours long. Once that hurdle is cleared, however, no episode of Black Mirror is able to more succinctly accomplish what it sets out to accomplish.

In “Playtest’s” case, that’s to be the first flat out techno horror movie episode of Black Mirror. It’s hard to imagine the episode succeeding in this goal more effectively. “Playtest” is far scarier than one could reasonably expect. The episode’s success is tempered yet again by having more endings than The Return of the King but the meaty middle portion is enough to place “Playtest” firmly in Black Mirror‘s middle class.

20. Loch Henry

Season 6 Episode 2

Black Mirror does true crime in “Loch Henry” and it does so quite well! The episode picks up with young filmmakers Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and Pia (Myha’la) returning to Davis’s native Scotland to film a Herzog-ian documentary about a guy who defends endangered bird eggs. When Pia stumbles upon the story of a grueling double murder that Davis’s cop father investigated, she rightfully decides that’s their angle instead.

Loch Henry works as both an engaging crime saga and a criticism of our own seedy fascination with pop culture murder. The twist is fairly easy to guess but the absolute human devastation it eventually reaps certainly makes up for that. In an increasingly bleak series, Loch Henry might just offer up one of Black Mirror‘s bleakest-ever endings.

19. Bête Noire

Season 7 Episode 2

Oftentimes it’s the simplest of human emotions that lead to the most incisive Black Mirrors. Case in point is “Bête Noire,” the second episode of the show’s seventh season. Things are going well enough for food researcher Maria (Siena Kelly) until an old face from her past stops by work. Soon enough Verity (Rosy McEwen) is brining the concept of gaslighting to new sci-fi heights.

At the center of it all is the bête noire, or black beast, herself: jealousy. Turns out you can travel a whole multiverse of possibilities and never get over your childhood pain.

18. Beyond the Sea

Season 6 Episode 3

It’s hard to find the right spot for “Beyond the Sea” on this list. Technically-speaking, it’s one of Black Mirror‘s most impressive episodes. Beautifully-shot by director John Crowley and capably acted by leads Josh Hartnett, Aaron Paul, and Kate Mara, this brings the show’s sci-fi concept back to the 1960s space age where it fits quite well. But then there’s that ending.

Is the hard turn that Beyond the Sea takes in the end coldly logical or the result of Charlie Brooker hitting the “we’re at 80 minutes and must self-destruct” button? Opinions vary at Den of Geek and we suspect they might vary out there as well.

17. Plaything

Season 7 Episode 4

While “USS Callister: Into Infinity” was touted as Black Mirror‘s first-ever direct sequel, it is actually sneakily beat to the punch two episodes previously with “Plaything.” Bandersnatch‘s Will Poulter returns as video game developer Colin Ritman in this short and sweet ode to mankind’s love for fuzzy little guys.

The fuzzy little guys in this equation are Thronglets, digital critters created by Ritman but not in any way under his control. All the Thronglets want is to be given the chance to create their own Throng and Cameron (Peter Capaldi) is going to help them out. Despite featuring one of Black Mirror‘s many trademark bleak endings, there’s something endearing about Plaything. Maybe it’s the Thronglets themselves or the open question of who’s really the “plaything” here but this installment is firmly enjoyable.

16. Metalhead

Season 4 Episode 5

“Metalhead” is beautiful in its simplicity. It’s among the shortest, most direct, and most exciting episodes of Black Mirror. Brooker presents us with a simple black and white story of survival. Black and white literally and black and white figuratively: man (in this case woman) vs. machine.

Maxine Peake is phenomenal as our protagonist in a Walking Dead-style future in which humanity is pursued by terrifying packs of robotic “dogs.” “Metalhead” never gives us straightforward answers (though those robots do seem to like to gather around Amazon-like fulfillment centers) but what it does give us is a careful, straightforward examination of the human spirit’s drive to survive.

15. Hang the DJ

Season 4 Episode 4

Frank (Joe Cole) and Amy (Georgina Campbell) meet through a dating service app that dictates the entire direction of your dating life. “The System” takes users from relationship to relationship, gathering information to find the user’s one true love. Problem is: Frank and Amy believe they’ve already found it and yet The System isn’t ready to let them quit just yet.

“Hang the DJ” is the rare episode of Black Mirror (or anything else for that matter) that features a twist that both elevates and reinforces the original premise. It’s a wonderful, clever, and emotional love story.

14. Hotel Reverie

Season 7 Episode 3

“Hotel Reverie” is what you get when you combine a timely tech topic with some resonant emotional storytelling. That is to say: a great Black Mirror episode. Issa Rae stars as famous actress Brandy Friday, who jumps at the opportunity to play the male lead in a remake of her favorite black and white film, Hotel Reverie. Of course, like many Black Mirror characters in season 7, she doesn’t quite read the instruction manual.

Even before things go inevitably, terribly wrong, Hotel Reverie’s premise of inserting modern day actors into classic films is queasy enough. In addition to capably exploring that topic (in a post-SGA strike landscape no less), this episode makes room for a compelling, offbeat love story that transcends time, space, and celluloid.

13. White Bear

Season 2 Episode 2

“White Bear” may rely a bit too much on its third-act twist but damn, what a twist it is. Folks who have never seen Black Mirror may be under the mistaken impression that the show thrives on “tricking” its audience. That’s obviously not always the case. But it is in “White Bear” and the results are incredible.

Black Mirror is able to manipulate us into believing it’s a much simpler, maybe even derivative show with the first two-thirds of “White Bear.” That last third, however, presents a fundamental truth about the all-consuming human desire for vengeance that’s as uncomfortable as anything the show has produced thus far.

12. The National Anthem

Season 1 Episode 1

Black Mirror‘s first episode is among its most polarizing. It’s incredible that this is what Brooker chose to lead off with. Granted, he couldn’t have known what the franchise would eventually become, but the story of an English Prime Minister blackmailed into copulating with a pig on national television remains as bold and darkly funny as ever.

The prime minster in question is the uninspiring Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear). After a domestic terrorist kidnaps a beloved princess, Callow has a chance to be the hero…by doing the unthinkable. Even all these years later, “The National Anthem” serves as a fitting, and bizarrely prescient, introduction to this TV institution.

11. Joan Is Awful

Season 6 Episode 1

The cultural conversation surrounding Black Mirror in its latter seasons always seems to comes down to the question: “do we even need this show anymore? Reality has basically become an episode of Black Mirror.” Brooker himself has copped to occasionally feeling hamstrung by the world’s increasingly dystopian tendencies. But then you get an episode like season 6 opener “Joan Is Awful” and realize why this project has plenty left in the tank.

Joan Is Awful uses the Black Mirrorification of our reality to its advantage. This disturbingly plausible hour finds the titular Joan (Annie Murphy) discovering that Netflix Streamberry has finally put all that data it collected on her to good use and just made a TV show about her life. It’s a perfectly Black Mirror concept that episode writer Brooker knows just what to do. And thanks to the star power of Murphy and Salma Hayek Pinault, it’s all marvelously entertaining with an unexpectedly empowering conclusion.

10. White Christmas

“White Christmas” is the first and superior of Black Mirror‘s two anthology episodes. Jon Hamm stars as Matt Trent, a proprietor of a home-helper technology, dating expert, and all-around creep. “White Christmas” follows Trent through three seemingly unrelated stories before they cross in fascinating and terrifying ways.

White Christmas is just terrifying, good science fiction and in many ways the technological concepts presented in it have resonated throughout future seasons of the show.

9. Striking Vipers

Season 5 Episode 1

Even before the “turn” in “Striking Vipers,” this is still a beautiful and bittersweet episode of television. Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Beharie brilliantly capture the anarchic sense of freedom and joy of youth and then just as capably capture the nostalgic sadness of adulthood. At first glance, this is an episode about growing old, growing apart, and not being able to reconcile your new self and your old self.

Then the twist hits. Suddenly “Striking Vipers” explodes into a whole host of philosophical, emotional, and sexual questions that the episode invites you to ponder. Through a silly little Mortal Kombat style videogame, Black Mirror makes the audience reconsider their own relationships and values. Just like all the truly great Black Mirror episodes this is a love story. But who loves who, how do they love them, what does that love mean, and where do we all go from here?

8. USS Callister: Into Infinity

Season 7 Episode 6

When it comes to Black Mirror episodes, fans and critics sometimes get hung up in trying to Figure Out What It All Means. What’s the technology here? What’s the message? What’s the parable? Sometimes, however, Charlie Brooker and company opt to craft an episode with the mission of “what if we just make something that rips?”

Enter: “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” the follow-up to season 4’s “USS Callister” and the Black Mirror franchise’s first-ever direct sequel. While this Cristin Milioti-led installment contains some timely commentary about the nature of digital identities and mankind’s heart of darkness, it’s seemingly just an excuse for the show to revisit a cast and concept that everyone had a ton of fun exploring the first time. Lo’ and behold, it’s a ton of fun the second time around too.

7. Nosedive

Season 3 Episode 1

Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Lacie Pound, a woman living in a near future that is even more obsessed with social media and status than we are. Lacie decides she wants to get into a hip new neighborhood but to do so she must maintain a 4.0 score on the dominant social media app. The effort to do so sends her into a … well, a nosedive.

A fun aspect of Black Mirror is being able to recognize certain plot points and themes in real life. Ok, so it’s not always fun. Usually it’s terrifying. For “Nosedive,” though it’s somehow both. Despite its too close for comfort premise, the episode is a lot of fun and it will forever change the way you view your Uber rating.

6. Demon 79

Season 6 Episode 5

“Demon 79” represents the Black Mirror‘s attempt to do something completely new. In fact, this was initially written by Brooker (alongside co-writer Bisha K. Ali) to be an installment of an entirely separate companion show called Red Mirror. As such, it is an unabashedly fantasy horror experience complete with a literal demon and a grim prophecy of the world’s end. And it all works!

Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu both shine as the human-demon duo who are tasked with killing three people to avoid the apocalypse. Despite its non-Black Mirror origins, Demon 79 has every spiritual element of the original show in place: it’s violent, it’s political, it’s angry, it’s funny, and it’s clever. It’s a hell of a fun watch that operates as a much-needed reset and fresh beginning for the franchise overall.

5. Eulogy

Season 7 Episode 5

If you’re bringing one of planet Earth’s best actors aboard for an episode of your silly sci-fi anthology show, you’d better know what to do with him. Thankfully, Black Mirror not only knows what to do with Paul Giamatti, it gives him an incredibly meaty role in “Eulogy.”

The technology of Eulogy is simple and certainly not what you’d call dystopian. Giamatti’s Phillip is granted a nubbin and an AI assistant to guide him through some old photos and prompted to remember some material for his old flame’s eulogy. What the episode lacks in flash, however, it makes up for his heart. This is a touching, bittersweet installment that stands out as one of Black Mirror‘s best.

4. 15 Million Merits

Season 1 Episode 2

“15 Million Merits” is all over the place. It satirizes talent shows like The Voice and American Idol. It satirizes the app culture that’s invading our phones and computers. It satirizes the weight loss industry. It’s a lot, and it’s hard to fully categorize. Instead of all these elements detracting from the story at hand, they enhance it.

“15 Million Merits” is genius dystopian fiction. It’s Brooker’s sense of humor placed neatly over Orwell’s 1984. It’s only the second episode of the entire series and it’s as auspicious a beginning as possible.

3. USS Callister

Season 4 Episode 1

“Wait, this was supposed to be the fun Star Trek parody” a viewer might think to themselves as they watch Captain Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) use God-like powers to remove the mouth of his crewmate Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) so she can neither breathe nor scream. Well, “USS Callister” is Black Mirror‘s “fun” Star Trek parody. It’s also a compelling examination of bad men and the damage they do.

“USS Callister” is one of the most complete and exciting stories the show has told yet. We know TV types get testy when episodes are compared to movies, but “USS Callister” really is just a fantastic movie. Brooker has a stronger sense of story and wonder here than ever before, and “USS Callister” marks an exciting new direction for the show altogether.

2. San Junipero

Season 3 Episode 4

The success of “San Junipero” seemed to catch Brooker and Netflix by surprise. Black Mirror was always a bleak, sometimes ugly little show that had fun doing its Twilight Zone schtick in the shadows. And then season 3 debuted on Netflix and nestled within it – in the unassuming position of the fourth episode – was a romantic masterpiece. A show that was sometimes about things that go viral suddenly had a “thing that went viral.”

San Junipero won the show its first Emmy and took up more server space of discussion on the internet than any other episode. It’s all more than well earned. San Junipero is near perfect. It’s the story of the love between two people, Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), who are only able to meet because of technology. For once technology brings people together on Black Mirror instead of tearing them apart.

1. Be Right Back

Season 2 Episode 1

“Be Right Back” is Black Mirror‘s smallest episode – its quietest, its most intimate. Domhnall Gleeson and Hayley Atwell (before they were the Domhnall Gleeson and the Hayley Atwell) star as married couple Ash and Martha. They are happily, comfortably in love, even if Ash does have a bit of a problem pulling himself away from his phone.

One night, Ash heads out for a drive on a snowy road and the unthinkable happens. Martha is faced with a lifetime on her own until one of her friends puts an idea in her head. There does exist the technology now where a company can recreate the personality of a lost loved one through all of their social media posts and online presence. So Martha goes through with it and tries to fall in love again with a facsimile of Ash. As we all know, however, technology can get pretty close to human but can it get all the way there?

“Be Right Back” is beautiful and sad because it’s human. It’s imperfect. And it gets to a truth about all technology. Life is a race to experience love against the clock of death. So much of our technology and our innovation is about extending that clock, enhancing our capacity to love or in the rarest of instances: defeating death. Death, life, love, grief, technology, and time all come together for a bittersweet little parable in “Be Right Back.” It’s Black Mirror‘s best episode.

The post Black Mirror: Ranking Every Episode appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for the Black Mirror episode “Eulogy.” Wait, was that the best episode of Black Mirror ever? That thought incepted itself into my brain once credits began to roll on “Eulogy,” the fifth episode of Black Mirror‘s seventh season. Eventually, that thought trickled its way back out. There are better Black Mirror […]

The post Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 5 Review: Eulogy appeared first on Den of Geek.

Early adopters of sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror were once able to rattle off their list of favorite episodes with ease. Back in the show’s Channel 4 days in the U.K., there were only six installments (“The National Anthem,” “15 Million Merits,” “The Entire History of You,” “Be Right Back,” “White Bear,” and “The Waldo Moment”) so it wasn’t too challenging to gather them all up in one’s brain and spit them out in a preferred order.

Since 2016, however, Netflix has stepped in to start mass producing new episodes of Black Mirror as fast as creator Charlie Brooker can write them. The episode number (now at 34 with season 7) has become a bit more unwieldy so making sense of where they all rank is a taller order. Thankfully, it’s a a challenge we’re happy to take on.

What follows is our official list of every Black Mirror episode from worst to best. You will disagree with it because how could you not? Just be sure to let us know how foolish we are in the comments.

34. Shut Up and Dance

Season 3 Episode 3

The third installment of season 3 does indeed present a worthwhile original concept, as most episodes of Black Mirror do. Hackers contact teenage boy Kenny (Alex Lawther) and instruct him to perform an increasingly complicated series of chores or they’ll release an incriminating video taken from his webcam. He teams up with Hector (Jerome Flynn, who has been sent on a similar mission from the same hackers).

Unfortunately, “Shut Up and Dance” is simply too ugly for its own good. While the episode is able to tap into modern anxieties about loss of privacy and autonomy well, it introduces a depressing third act twist that unwittingly argues we’re all terrible animals who don’t deserve our stupid privacy anyway.

33. The Entire History of You

Season 1 Episode 3

“The Entire History of You” was a popular choice for fan favorite following the show’s tiny three-episode first season. The concept of being able to literally watch one’s own memories Dumbledore’s Pensieve-style was definitely appealing. The episode struck such a chord that Robert Downey Jr. even optioned it to make a still as of yet unproduced movie. Problem is: “The Entire History of You” has aged incredibly poorly.

The initial concept remains appealing – so much so that the mind projection “nubbin” has recurred several times – but the story wrapped around it is just awful. Lead character Liam (Toby Kebbell) is such a monstrous prick that it negates any salient point the episode may try to make. It’s hard to be taken in by the episode’s fascinating technology when it’s presented within the most standard and boring infidelity plot imaginable. 

32. The Waldo Moment

Season 2 Episode 3

“The Waldo Moment” is a popular choice for worst Black Mirror episode ever and it’s not hard to see why. Central “character” Waldo is just absolutely unfunny and insufferable. The plot introduces tortured comedic genius Charlie Brooker…I mean Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby), whose animated bear-like creation Waldo embarks upon a satirical run for office.

In a more modern context when we’ve seen creatures far worse than cartoon characters elected to office, “The Waldo Moment” isn’t quite as ridiculous. The notion of co-opting sarcastic revolutions from frustrated voters is pretty right on. Still, Waldo is just the fucking worst. He’s like how Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a show that wanted to depict a comedic variety show but was completely unable to write believable sketches.

31. Men Against Fire

Season 3 Episode 5

“Men Against Fire” is actually pretty solid. Its biggest issue, however, is that it’s nearly impossible not to guess its big twist very early on in the episode. Once the episode gets that inevitability out of the way, a lot falls into place and “Men Against Fire’s” central message is effective and disturbing.

Still the ease in which the narrative trickery is worked out holds it back – as does its clear lack of a necessary budget. It’s a story and a concept that just needed some more time and money to marinate.

30. Crocodile

Season 4 Episode 3

“Crocodile” is one of Black Mirror‘s best-looking episodes. Director John Hillcoat (The Road) makes the absolute best of the setting’s still, disquieting Icelandic landscapes. And that interesting concept of accessing memories comes up again – only this time in a more primitive form.

The technology being developed and primarily used by insurance investigators is entirely logical and intelligent on the show’s part. The plot that Brooker creates around it is again just too bleak. It’s not clear what the episode is trying to say other than that the truly monstrous walk among us – which is a lazy theme for a show this good.

29. Hated in the Nation

Season 3 Episode 6

At this point in the list, we enter into a series of episodes that are flawed but still mostly enjoyable. “Hated in the Nation” has two big factors working against it: it is both season 3’s longest and last episode, carrying an added level of import that it just doesn’t earn.

There’s too much going on here with the show combining a modern social media terrorism plot with….robot bees? It’s all a bit much and at times flat out silly. It’s still a fun episode that combines moments of sharp humor and real intensity. It’s also one of the few Black Mirror episodes to tackle social media and does so in a pretty smart way.

28. Mazey Day

Season 6 Episode 4

“Mazey Day” feels like it should be a more consequential Black Mirror episode than it ends up being. This season 6 installment about a troubled actress and the paparazzi who want to make their riches off of her goes in an ultimately unprecedented direction for the anthology.

While that direction is pretty clever, and the episode’s breezy running time is inoffensive, Mazey Day can’t really elevate itself beyond those two slight adjectives. You’ll have some fun here but for the most part this Zazie Beetz-starring installment isn’t Black Mirror at its best.

27. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch is a bit of an odd duck in the Black Mirror oeuvre. Released late in 2018 as a standalone, Bandersnatch is Netflix’s first ever “choose-your-own-adventure” showcase for adults. The story follows young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) as he attempts to create a videogame based on the works of his favorite author. Sadly that author went crazy and killed his family, and as the choices for Stefan began to develop, it becomes clear that the viewer may be guiding him to a similar fate.

Bandersnatch works surprisingly well as a pure Black Mirror episode, devoid of the narrative tricks. Stefan and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) are both strong characters and the episode’s warped version of 1984 comes across quite nicely. It’s those darn choices though that get in the way of the things. In a way that’s fitting, as Bandersnatch might be about how choice is an illusion anyway.

26. Arkangel

Season 4 Episode 2

Like its season 4 companion “Crocodile,” “Arkangel” is another episode that looks flat out beautiful. Jodie Foster is clearly in her element as a director, creating a richly realized portrait of a near-future small-town America. Not only that but she creates a touching portrayal of mothers and daughters.

So much of “Arkangel’s” runtime is staggeringly poignant, with a mother doing truly destructive things to her daughter all in the name of love. Rarely has an episode of Black Mirror fallen apart so precipitously in its third act, however.

25. Smithereens

Season 5 Episode 2

“Smithereens” follows Chris (Andrew Scott) a rideshare driver who spends most of his days outside of social networking app company Smithereen, waiting to pick an executive up. When Chris finally gets his wish (or thinks he does) he springs his hostage plan into action with one singular goal in mind: talk to the Smithereen CEO (Topher Grace) on his phone.

“Smithereens” is perfectly fine, but unremarkable. It joins other episodes like “Shut Up and Dance” and “The Entire History of You” that help establish dark sci-fi bona fides of the show in the public consciousness but aren’t the most compelling statements Black Mirror has to offer.

24. Black Museum

Season 4 Episode 6

Considering that Black Mirror itself is an anthology, maybe it’s no surprise that it’s able to handle anthologies within a single episode pretty well. “Black Museum” is the “finale” of season 4, and it’s an easter egg bonanza for Black Mirror fans wrapped around a pretty compelling story.

An unnamed woman (played by Black Panther‘s Letitia Wright) pulls into a desert U.S. rest stop where she enters a creepy museum curated by the bombastic Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). Rolo takes his visitor on a tour of the museum, telling stories about how he came to acquire its many technological curiosities. “Black Museum” is in some respects just as dark as the brutal “Crocodile,” but it comes along with a winking Twilight Zone black humor that makes it all the more palatable and engaging.

23. Common People

Season 7 Episode 1

Season 7 opener “Common People” isn’t the best episode of Black Mirror, nor is it the worst, but it might just be the most Black Mirror episode of Black Mirror yet. Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd star as Mike and Amanda, a working class American couple just looking to get by. That goal becomes even more challenging when Amanda falls into a tumor-induced coma, only to be resurrected by the tech firm Rivermind.

There’s no catch here! The good folks at Rivermind bring Amanda’s brain back online for free. All it costs to keep it that way is $300 a month via the subscription model. Wait, did we say $300? It’s actually closer to $1300 now, you know with the upgrading of the cell towers and all. Also, can we interest you in Rivermind Luxe? It’s the only way to remove ads. Blessed with a creative concept and saddled with a typical ending, Common People is as close to a “replacement level” episode of Black Mirror as you’re likely to find.

22. Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too

Season 5 Episode 3

Each successive season of Black Mirror feels like it works harder and harder to subvert viewers’ expectations in logical yet thrilling ways. The show has indulged in Star Trek-like adventure in “U.S.S. Callister,” post-apocalyptic horror in “Metalhead,” and basically straight up romance in “San Juinpero.” Season 5’s “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” might be the series’ most striking tonal departures yet. If not for the occasional F-bomb, this is basically a madcap childrens’ movie.

“Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” follows sisters Rachel and Jack, who are struggling to fit in at school and come to terms with their mom’s death. Ashley O (played by Miley Cyrus naturally) is a pop star who finds herself under the thumb of her evil aunt. When Ashley O’s aunt makes a truly wild and destructive power play, Rachel, Jack, and a robot named Ashley Too seek to defeat her. Many a lesson is learned along the way. “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” doesn’t have the depth of many other Black Mirror episodes and takes far too long to get really rolling. Still, it’s hard not to fall for the charms of this strangely wholesome installment.

21. Playtest

Season 3 Episode 2

There’s quite a bit of time-padding in “Playtest.” Despite a reasonable running time of 57 minutes, the first act feels like it’s nine hours long. Once that hurdle is cleared, however, no episode of Black Mirror is able to more succinctly accomplish what it sets out to accomplish.

In “Playtest’s” case, that’s to be the first flat out techno horror movie episode of Black Mirror. It’s hard to imagine the episode succeeding in this goal more effectively. “Playtest” is far scarier than one could reasonably expect. The episode’s success is tempered yet again by having more endings than The Return of the King but the meaty middle portion is enough to place “Playtest” firmly in Black Mirror‘s middle class.

20. Loch Henry

Season 6 Episode 2

Black Mirror does true crime in “Loch Henry” and it does so quite well! The episode picks up with young filmmakers Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and Pia (Myha’la) returning to Davis’s native Scotland to film a Herzog-ian documentary about a guy who defends endangered bird eggs. When Pia stumbles upon the story of a grueling double murder that Davis’s cop father investigated, she rightfully decides that’s their angle instead.

Loch Henry works as both an engaging crime saga and a criticism of our own seedy fascination with pop culture murder. The twist is fairly easy to guess but the absolute human devastation it eventually reaps certainly makes up for that. In an increasingly bleak series, Loch Henry might just offer up one of Black Mirror‘s bleakest-ever endings.

19. Bête Noire

Season 7 Episode 2

Oftentimes it’s the simplest of human emotions that lead to the most incisive Black Mirrors. Case in point is “Bête Noire,” the second episode of the show’s seventh season. Things are going well enough for food researcher Maria (Siena Kelly) until an old face from her past stops by work. Soon enough Verity (Rosy McEwen) is brining the concept of gaslighting to new sci-fi heights.

At the center of it all is the bête noire, or black beast, herself: jealousy. Turns out you can travel a whole multiverse of possibilities and never get over your childhood pain.

18. Beyond the Sea

Season 6 Episode 3

It’s hard to find the right spot for “Beyond the Sea” on this list. Technically-speaking, it’s one of Black Mirror‘s most impressive episodes. Beautifully-shot by director John Crowley and capably acted by leads Josh Hartnett, Aaron Paul, and Kate Mara, this brings the show’s sci-fi concept back to the 1960s space age where it fits quite well. But then there’s that ending.

Is the hard turn that Beyond the Sea takes in the end coldly logical or the result of Charlie Brooker hitting the “we’re at 80 minutes and must self-destruct” button? Opinions vary at Den of Geek and we suspect they might vary out there as well.

17. Plaything

Season 7 Episode 4

While “USS Callister: Into Infinity” was touted as Black Mirror‘s first-ever direct sequel, it is actually sneakily beat to the punch two episodes previously with “Plaything.” Bandersnatch‘s Will Poulter returns as video game developer Colin Ritman in this short and sweet ode to mankind’s love for fuzzy little guys.

The fuzzy little guys in this equation are Thronglets, digital critters created by Ritman but not in any way under his control. All the Thronglets want is to be given the chance to create their own Throng and Cameron (Peter Capaldi) is going to help them out. Despite featuring one of Black Mirror‘s many trademark bleak endings, there’s something endearing about Plaything. Maybe it’s the Thronglets themselves or the open question of who’s really the “plaything” here but this installment is firmly enjoyable.

16. Metalhead

Season 4 Episode 5

“Metalhead” is beautiful in its simplicity. It’s among the shortest, most direct, and most exciting episodes of Black Mirror. Brooker presents us with a simple black and white story of survival. Black and white literally and black and white figuratively: man (in this case woman) vs. machine.

Maxine Peake is phenomenal as our protagonist in a Walking Dead-style future in which humanity is pursued by terrifying packs of robotic “dogs.” “Metalhead” never gives us straightforward answers (though those robots do seem to like to gather around Amazon-like fulfillment centers) but what it does give us is a careful, straightforward examination of the human spirit’s drive to survive.

15. Hang the DJ

Season 4 Episode 4

Frank (Joe Cole) and Amy (Georgina Campbell) meet through a dating service app that dictates the entire direction of your dating life. “The System” takes users from relationship to relationship, gathering information to find the user’s one true love. Problem is: Frank and Amy believe they’ve already found it and yet The System isn’t ready to let them quit just yet.

“Hang the DJ” is the rare episode of Black Mirror (or anything else for that matter) that features a twist that both elevates and reinforces the original premise. It’s a wonderful, clever, and emotional love story.

14. Hotel Reverie

Season 7 Episode 3

“Hotel Reverie” is what you get when you combine a timely tech topic with some resonant emotional storytelling. That is to say: a great Black Mirror episode. Issa Rae stars as famous actress Brandy Friday, who jumps at the opportunity to play the male lead in a remake of her favorite black and white film, Hotel Reverie. Of course, like many Black Mirror characters in season 7, she doesn’t quite read the instruction manual.

Even before things go inevitably, terribly wrong, Hotel Reverie’s premise of inserting modern day actors into classic films is queasy enough. In addition to capably exploring that topic (in a post-SGA strike landscape no less), this episode makes room for a compelling, offbeat love story that transcends time, space, and celluloid.

13. White Bear

Season 2 Episode 2

“White Bear” may rely a bit too much on its third-act twist but damn, what a twist it is. Folks who have never seen Black Mirror may be under the mistaken impression that the show thrives on “tricking” its audience. That’s obviously not always the case. But it is in “White Bear” and the results are incredible.

Black Mirror is able to manipulate us into believing it’s a much simpler, maybe even derivative show with the first two-thirds of “White Bear.” That last third, however, presents a fundamental truth about the all-consuming human desire for vengeance that’s as uncomfortable as anything the show has produced thus far.

12. The National Anthem

Season 1 Episode 1

Black Mirror‘s first episode is among its most polarizing. It’s incredible that this is what Brooker chose to lead off with. Granted, he couldn’t have known what the franchise would eventually become, but the story of an English Prime Minister blackmailed into copulating with a pig on national television remains as bold and darkly funny as ever.

The prime minster in question is the uninspiring Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear). After a domestic terrorist kidnaps a beloved princess, Callow has a chance to be the hero…by doing the unthinkable. Even all these years later, “The National Anthem” serves as a fitting, and bizarrely prescient, introduction to this TV institution.

11. Joan Is Awful

Season 6 Episode 1

The cultural conversation surrounding Black Mirror in its latter seasons always seems to comes down to the question: “do we even need this show anymore? Reality has basically become an episode of Black Mirror.” Brooker himself has copped to occasionally feeling hamstrung by the world’s increasingly dystopian tendencies. But then you get an episode like season 6 opener “Joan Is Awful” and realize why this project has plenty left in the tank.

Joan Is Awful uses the Black Mirrorification of our reality to its advantage. This disturbingly plausible hour finds the titular Joan (Annie Murphy) discovering that Netflix Streamberry has finally put all that data it collected on her to good use and just made a TV show about her life. It’s a perfectly Black Mirror concept that episode writer Brooker knows just what to do. And thanks to the star power of Murphy and Salma Hayek Pinault, it’s all marvelously entertaining with an unexpectedly empowering conclusion.

10. White Christmas

“White Christmas” is the first and superior of Black Mirror‘s two anthology episodes. Jon Hamm stars as Matt Trent, a proprietor of a home-helper technology, dating expert, and all-around creep. “White Christmas” follows Trent through three seemingly unrelated stories before they cross in fascinating and terrifying ways.

White Christmas is just terrifying, good science fiction and in many ways the technological concepts presented in it have resonated throughout future seasons of the show.

9. Striking Vipers

Season 5 Episode 1

Even before the “turn” in “Striking Vipers,” this is still a beautiful and bittersweet episode of television. Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Beharie brilliantly capture the anarchic sense of freedom and joy of youth and then just as capably capture the nostalgic sadness of adulthood. At first glance, this is an episode about growing old, growing apart, and not being able to reconcile your new self and your old self.

Then the twist hits. Suddenly “Striking Vipers” explodes into a whole host of philosophical, emotional, and sexual questions that the episode invites you to ponder. Through a silly little Mortal Kombat style videogame, Black Mirror makes the audience reconsider their own relationships and values. Just like all the truly great Black Mirror episodes this is a love story. But who loves who, how do they love them, what does that love mean, and where do we all go from here?

8. USS Callister: Into Infinity

Season 7 Episode 6

When it comes to Black Mirror episodes, fans and critics sometimes get hung up in trying to Figure Out What It All Means. What’s the technology here? What’s the message? What’s the parable? Sometimes, however, Charlie Brooker and company opt to craft an episode with the mission of “what if we just make something that rips?”

Enter: “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” the follow-up to season 4’s “USS Callister” and the Black Mirror franchise’s first-ever direct sequel. While this Cristin Milioti-led installment contains some timely commentary about the nature of digital identities and mankind’s heart of darkness, it’s seemingly just an excuse for the show to revisit a cast and concept that everyone had a ton of fun exploring the first time. Lo’ and behold, it’s a ton of fun the second time around too.

7. Nosedive

Season 3 Episode 1

Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Lacie Pound, a woman living in a near future that is even more obsessed with social media and status than we are. Lacie decides she wants to get into a hip new neighborhood but to do so she must maintain a 4.0 score on the dominant social media app. The effort to do so sends her into a … well, a nosedive.

A fun aspect of Black Mirror is being able to recognize certain plot points and themes in real life. Ok, so it’s not always fun. Usually it’s terrifying. For “Nosedive,” though it’s somehow both. Despite its too close for comfort premise, the episode is a lot of fun and it will forever change the way you view your Uber rating.

6. Demon 79

Season 6 Episode 5

“Demon 79” represents the Black Mirror‘s attempt to do something completely new. In fact, this was initially written by Brooker (alongside co-writer Bisha K. Ali) to be an installment of an entirely separate companion show called Red Mirror. As such, it is an unabashedly fantasy horror experience complete with a literal demon and a grim prophecy of the world’s end. And it all works!

Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu both shine as the human-demon duo who are tasked with killing three people to avoid the apocalypse. Despite its non-Black Mirror origins, Demon 79 has every spiritual element of the original show in place: it’s violent, it’s political, it’s angry, it’s funny, and it’s clever. It’s a hell of a fun watch that operates as a much-needed reset and fresh beginning for the franchise overall.

5. Eulogy

Season 7 Episode 5

If you’re bringing one of planet Earth’s best actors aboard for an episode of your silly sci-fi anthology show, you’d better know what to do with him. Thankfully, Black Mirror not only knows what to do with Paul Giamatti, it gives him an incredibly meaty role in “Eulogy.”

The technology of Eulogy is simple and certainly not what you’d call dystopian. Giamatti’s Phillip is granted a nubbin and an AI assistant to guide him through some old photos and prompted to remember some material for his old flame’s eulogy. What the episode lacks in flash, however, it makes up for his heart. This is a touching, bittersweet installment that stands out as one of Black Mirror‘s best.

4. 15 Million Merits

Season 1 Episode 2

“15 Million Merits” is all over the place. It satirizes talent shows like The Voice and American Idol. It satirizes the app culture that’s invading our phones and computers. It satirizes the weight loss industry. It’s a lot, and it’s hard to fully categorize. Instead of all these elements detracting from the story at hand, they enhance it.

“15 Million Merits” is genius dystopian fiction. It’s Brooker’s sense of humor placed neatly over Orwell’s 1984. It’s only the second episode of the entire series and it’s as auspicious a beginning as possible.

3. USS Callister

Season 4 Episode 1

“Wait, this was supposed to be the fun Star Trek parody” a viewer might think to themselves as they watch Captain Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) use God-like powers to remove the mouth of his crewmate Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) so she can neither breathe nor scream. Well, “USS Callister” is Black Mirror‘s “fun” Star Trek parody. It’s also a compelling examination of bad men and the damage they do.

“USS Callister” is one of the most complete and exciting stories the show has told yet. We know TV types get testy when episodes are compared to movies, but “USS Callister” really is just a fantastic movie. Brooker has a stronger sense of story and wonder here than ever before, and “USS Callister” marks an exciting new direction for the show altogether.

2. San Junipero

Season 3 Episode 4

The success of “San Junipero” seemed to catch Brooker and Netflix by surprise. Black Mirror was always a bleak, sometimes ugly little show that had fun doing its Twilight Zone schtick in the shadows. And then season 3 debuted on Netflix and nestled within it – in the unassuming position of the fourth episode – was a romantic masterpiece. A show that was sometimes about things that go viral suddenly had a “thing that went viral.”

San Junipero won the show its first Emmy and took up more server space of discussion on the internet than any other episode. It’s all more than well earned. San Junipero is near perfect. It’s the story of the love between two people, Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), who are only able to meet because of technology. For once technology brings people together on Black Mirror instead of tearing them apart.

1. Be Right Back

Season 2 Episode 1

“Be Right Back” is Black Mirror‘s smallest episode – its quietest, its most intimate. Domhnall Gleeson and Hayley Atwell (before they were the Domhnall Gleeson and the Hayley Atwell) star as married couple Ash and Martha. They are happily, comfortably in love, even if Ash does have a bit of a problem pulling himself away from his phone.

One night, Ash heads out for a drive on a snowy road and the unthinkable happens. Martha is faced with a lifetime on her own until one of her friends puts an idea in her head. There does exist the technology now where a company can recreate the personality of a lost loved one through all of their social media posts and online presence. So Martha goes through with it and tries to fall in love again with a facsimile of Ash. As we all know, however, technology can get pretty close to human but can it get all the way there?

“Be Right Back” is beautiful and sad because it’s human. It’s imperfect. And it gets to a truth about all technology. Life is a race to experience love against the clock of death. So much of our technology and our innovation is about extending that clock, enhancing our capacity to love or in the rarest of instances: defeating death. Death, life, love, grief, technology, and time all come together for a bittersweet little parable in “Be Right Back.” It’s Black Mirror‘s best episode.

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