LogFAQs > #882627725

13. The Waldo Moment

As I mentioned at the beginning of the topic, this show really does a great job talking about so many different messages and delivering on so many unique concepts that I could see a hundred different rankings being viable. I could also see the argument for any individual episode of Black Mirror to be someone's favorite.

Any episode, that is, except The Waldo Moment.

I do wonder what happened with this episode. I'm sympathetic to the notion that, in an anthology series, when you've got three shots to tell an amazing story per season, it feels weightier when one is a dud and it may be hard to identify when it's just not coming together until it's already too late. However, Waldo is, for me, the only objectively mediocre episode of the show's entire run. No other episode of the show left me feeling quite so immediately underwhelmed in virtually every capacity.

For starters, we should address the core concept of the whole story. I've heard lots of people compare Waldo to Trump, but let's be fair and objective in our analysis -- they are not very good parallels. Trump might be crass, he might have rallied the cynics and people who wanted to say "fuck the system," but Waldo is not Trump. Waldo is Cartman. Actually, worse, Waldo is Cartman if Cartman wasn't remotely funny. I don't think a single Waldo line actually made me laugh in the episode. The greatest issue with Waldo Moment stems from this -- it is already a tall task asking us to believe that Waldo was even popular, let alone that he could somehow ascend to some Big Brother-esque figurehead as we see by the end of the episode. Waldo running for election in real life would net a little attention, but in the end, he was an unfunny, uncharismatic comedian and a rebel-without-a-cause as a politician. I never once bought he could've made anywhere near the impact he made, and to me, that undercuts the whole thing. What makes Black Mirror so deadly and effective is that it always calls us to picture a terrifying scenario that unsettles us because we know it isn't THAT outlandish. Waldo Moment doesn't pass that test. In order to pull off the concept as something I could buy into, they'd have needed to make Waldo something less than completely obnoxious. I didn't even think his second place election finish was "earned" by the show, let alone the absolute asspull finale.

I could forgive the failure of execution in making Waldo a funny character in the first place if I found the rest of the characters surrounding him compelling, though. However, that really wasn't the case. Jamie is unlikable and miserable, and while some of my favorite Black Mirror stories feature those types of characters, in Jamie's case, less was not more -- we needed either a little more context for why he was so dejected, or he needed more of an arc. I can run with unsatisfied failed artist as an archetype, but he felt pretty 2D to me. His stereotypical greasy manager falls into the same trap of being a walking trope. The scene with the two of them and the guy from the oh-so-mysterious "Agency" just left me rolling my eyes. How many cliches can we jam into one scene?

Anyway, I've railed on the episode enough -- a couple positives were the charming (and unfortunately underused) Gwendolyn, and a particularly nice performance by Tobias Menzies as Liam Monroe. The best scene in the episode by far was that talk show debate where Monroe ripped into Waldo and Waldo ripped back. I thought that was excellent, and hoped the episode would go further in that direction with the Waldo character. Oh well.

Luckily, the worst episode of Black Mirror was still a decent watch. I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again, but I didn't hate it. It just falls sadly short of standards.
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-Shred