Black Mirror: Ep.4 " I'll Be Right Back" Review (Spoilers)

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. And guys, today we're going to review Black Mirror episode 4, I'll Be Right Back. And guys, this was a great episode. Uh, what's very interesting and a little bit scary about Black Mirror is that some of the, uh, content that they focus on, the material is, um, very much mirroring what we have today in our real lives and our technology. And I'm finding that many of these episodes, uh, you know, although they kind of seem to be a bit strange and bizarre at certain aspects of it, that, uh, these are, um, things that we can see in our foreseeable future and, and even our near future. Or, and some of the The things that are going on, um, uh, as touched on the national anthem, are things that can happen right now, and there is no reason for them not to happen. You know, under Murphy's Law, if something, you know, can happen, it, it will, right? So found all that very interesting. But this episode is a, again, uh, about technology, social media, the internet, And this is a— has been a very interesting topic, uh, over the last several months with breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, robots coming on the scene like the popular famous robot Sophia. And this is dealing with, um, with artificial intelligence a lot. And, uh, interesting enough, although Uh, you know, we were getting a lot of information in the news about artificial intelligence right now and, uh, robotics. Uh, this was probably done— I think this is season 2 of Black Mirror, so this is probably looking at the 2012-ish, 2013-ish, um, season. And, um, you know, as we spoke about before, Black Mirror's been out a while but got pretty popular in the United States after being added to Netflix. A lot of Americans discovered Black Mirror. But, uh, so this was a few years back, and, uh, now a lot of things that are touched on in this episode, I, I see that, uh, even some of the technology is now available. Um, and, uh, so our, so our main character here is our main characters, um, I believe his name is Donald Gleeson, and he plays a very interesting part. He's playing this character named Ash, and, uh, he's obsessed with his cell phone and the internet. And, um, but what's interesting about Donald Gleeson is, uh, some years later he will star in a movie called Ex Machina, which is one of my favorite movies. And of course it's about robotics and AI. Uh, and, uh, a lot of these, um, actors in this series, I'm finding out that they have went on to star in big, uh, productions. Um, I believe her name is Hayley Atwell, uh, his co-star in this episode. And she, uh, if I'm not mistaken, I think she plays Agent Carter in the Captain America movies and got her own series. I could be wrong, guys. I'll have to check out and look that up, but she a great deal like Agent Carter. Um, uh, so, you know, as we got to see in the episode, uh, Ash, uh, you know, he's obsessed with his cell phone, he's obsessed with technology. He goes off, uh, one evening, uh, you know, lets, uh, uh, you know, lets his girlfriend here know. And I hear her name is escaping me for, for some reason. I'm just gonna call her Haley. I think that's her real name. But, uh, he lets her know that he'll be, you know, he'll be going out and he'll be coming back. And I'm not exactly sure where he's headed, but she gets a bad gut feeling about, uh, him not coming back right away, uh, hence the title of the episode, I'll Be Right Back. She's calling her family, they're assuring her everything's fine, and then she gets the police lights at her house, and that lets her know the worst has come. And that Ash has died. Now, of course, you know, we move forward to her dealing with grief, uh, at the loss of a loved one. But what's so very interesting, uh, as we fast forward, you know, to the day from the time this episode was made, was that, um, there was actually a real-life story about, uh, a computer programmer who lost her loved one under unexpected circumstances. And I wouldn't even be surprised if the incident inspired this episode. But under very similar circumstance, she loses her, a loved one. And she admits she's a computer programmer. So she immediately starts to scrap all his data from social media, from his Facebook accounts, and she creates this chat algorithm. And through this chat algorithm, she's able to grieve and get through her, you know, her bereavement by chatting with this algorithm, this program of her dead lover at night. And she actually launched, I believe, a business or a company where people can now upload the data of their dead loved ones, and they can, through this chat program algorithm, communicate with them. So that's very much real, and that's very much happening today. There's also a, uh, a— was it MIT graduates who create— who created this company called, um, uh, I believe it's called Eterni Internal Internally Me or something to that effect. And what they're doing is a very similar thing where you can upload data and, uh, conversations, email, and the like, um, and create, recreate through a chat program, uh, lost loved ones. And, uh, they're able to still share experiences. You can ask them advice. And this all reminds me too of one of my favorite superhero shows, and that's what we got in Superman, you know, particularly the Donner films. In the Man of Steel films, I think it was a little bit too advanced because, you know, it was just like the voices from the past were kind of in front of you and that was that. But I think the older Superman films, the Donner films, where they were kind of like in these crystal projections and holograms and computer programs from the past that simulated uh, Superman's father, um, and, you know, and I was able to share with him, give advice for the day. Because we find in this episode, Haley's getting a lot of, uh, advice from Ash after he's dead from the algorithm, the W.I.Z.D. program, and it's working very well. And, uh, you know, and I don't know what the year is supposed to be that where this takes place in, but it's clear to me that this this would be somewhere like near future, far future, because there's a scene where he tells her, we can take this to the next level, but it's going to be very expensive. And we know that, you know, there are advances in robotics. We've seen robotics that simulate human skin on their bodies. I believe the company is called Hanson Robotics, and they create this skin called, uh, Flubber, I believe it's called. And it's the same, it makes the same robot Sophia, who's become so popular, who's become a citizen of Saudi Arabia and just has spoken at the United Nations and is doing all this very interesting stuff around the world. Um, so she basically gets something of some sort like that. She's, uh, you know, purchased this and, and, and now there is a physical version of Ash in an artificial intelligence form. And he's almost like the perfect version of Ash. He does everything Ash does, but he does it so much better, except where his data is limited. And there are certain areas where his data is limited. So much data the brain can hold, it's only so many files files and algorithms that can be done by machines, etc. So, uh, she's finding shortcomings in his emotional, uh, uh, behavior, whereas, uh, in normal relationships, romantic relationships, sometimes where a partner may argue with you and actually want you to do the opposite of what they're suggesting, of course the robot wouldn't be able to, uh, uh, uh, process that like a human would. And so the robot would take, uh, you know, pretty much everything at face value and go, okay, this is what you want me to do. But it can't read between the lines. Uh, it, uh, she talks about in the episode about he should, uh, he should strike her, or she don't know if, uh, it's a good idea to strike her or not, but she wants him to do something, something unexpected, something that lets her know that he is not a machine because she's starting to see his shortcomings as this robotic being now and seeing the differences between what is real and what is artificial. And as we got to see finally in the episode, he's kind of tucked away like an object in the attic. You know, he's just a sophisticated toy now. Something for her, her, uh, child to, to play with, you know, to, uh, learn from. Um, and of course this was the child of the real Ash, and she's actually pregnant, you know, when he died. Uh, and that was also very tough for her, which drove her to, um, uh, you know, going down this path of, uh, uh, you know, you know, trying to get through so much alone. And although there were friends trying to, uh, uh, and family members trying their best to, uh, be a support structure for her, uh, you know, I, I think also for Indy, for the, uh, and, you know, for the way that the episode was done, it was very important to show just how isolated a person could be in a situation like this where they depend on social media or they try to substitute social media, try to substitute artificial intelligence for real human interaction and real human emotion. And so I think it was very important to show that just how isolated she was in the scene. But in considering all this, I also found it very interesting to say, in the particular good parts of the episodes or the good experiences she had with Ash, I found that very interesting that Uh, as long as her thought process was, um, in the thought process of that he was actually Ash, everything was fine. I don't think it mattered that, uh, he was a robot or artificial intelligence. And I found that very interesting until she was reminded of the— of that he wasn't. As long as she wasn't reminded through some action that he wasn't, everything was fine. She was just, um She was just as, you know, happy without the knowledge, right? And I find that also very interesting because like when we talk to another human being, as technology reaches a point where it becomes indistinguishable from real humans or robots become indistinguishable from real humans and you're talking to a robot, you can't tell the difference. You quote unquote, they passed the Turing test and you're talking, which is, you know, this of course, this test that that was created by this professor, Professor Turing, who was able to create a test that said when a robot becomes indistinguishable from a human being, that's when they, you know, they can pass the test. That's when there are, you, it's no really no, a human cannot recognize any differences. So I think it's only a matter of time before that actually happens. But when that does happen, my question would be to you all viewers and people watching, is will it matter that it's a, it's a robot or artificial life? Because in the episode it didn't seem to matter to her, uh, that, uh, he was in the earlier parts of the episode when she was isolated on the cliff, uh, she seemed just as happy. There's also a scene where she drops the telephone and she's crying saying that she dropped him. She's identifying him as real and she seemed very, uh, as far as her psychological, um, state, uh, from that perspective, uh, it seemed like there wasn't a whole lot of harm to her at that point, uh, other than just the knowing of, uh, what was going on. As long as she didn't know, she was fine, uh, but I just find that very interesting because, um, at the physical level, as human beings, we can't be— we really can't be empathetic. We can be sympathetic Meaning we can eternalize feelings of another, but we can never really know or experience the feelings of another human being. So in that sense, we're outside of them. We're outside of their world in a sense. And because of that, it just drives the mind, will it really matter if it was a robot unless you just knew it was a robot? And you just have to internalize it's a robot, things like that. But I found this a good episode, very interesting, guys. Um, let me know if you like this episode, or, and let me know out of the 4 we've done so far, because this is episode 4, let me know which ones are your favorite out of 4. Guys, if you like content like this, don't forget to like, subscribe, and until next time, take care.