LogFAQs > #883155323

7. Shut Up and Dance

Now that we are at roughly the midpoint of this list, we have arrived in the territory of episodes that get a "man, that was great" with no reservations. No more "that was great, but"s, aside from perhaps a few nitpicks here and there that differentiate them. Kicking off this section of the list is, for my money, the funniest episode of the show, Shut Up and Dance.

As an anthology, one would not say Black Mirror is known for its laughs, and this episode comes packed with many, many grim moments of its own, but I have to say the strongest aspect of the whole thing to me comes from the absolutely bizarre and profoundly uncomfortable buddy-cop dynamic between Ser Bronn of the Blackwater and a pedophile CEman. An already promising set-up really jumped up another level with Jerome Flynn's entrance as Hector. and the absolute horrors he and Kenny went through were always underscored by the grimmest (yet funniest) shades of black comedy. Some personal favorite scenes are the awkward car ride with the woman and, even more so, the absolute skewering that Hector gives Kenny prior to the bank robbery. "Your hot little face, blurred fist, dick burping fucking spunk everywhere? Your mom's gonna love that on Facebook" has to rank towards the top of excellent Black Mirror quotes.

On a less humorous note, the premise of the whole thing, particularly with the reveal that the hackers were only after vigilante justice, is eerily realistic and one of the few Black Mirror concepts that could absolutely happen tomorrow. I had no idea the show was going for the social critique of Anonymous and similar groups, so I thought that was a great touch. For whatever reason, the revelation that Kenny had looked at child pornography didn't particularly shock me -- I figured it had to be at best some kind of severely weird fetish shit for him to be worked up about it to the point of robbing a bank -- and the endgame being a fight to the death between two pedophiles before ratting everyone out anyway makes a whole lot of sense from the vantage point of holier-than-thou vigilantes.

Though, that said, perhaps the vigilantes actually ARE "holier" than the people they victimized. That is the most interesting question that Shut Up and Dance asks you... is your sympathy for Kenny greatly reduced when you find out the full extent of his indiscretions? Do you instantly shift from "this poor kid" to "well... I guess he kinda had it coming." It's admittedly a similar question to one White Bear has already asked, but worth revisiting through this different lens. To me, the person who actually seemed to have been the most unfairly punished was Hector -- dragging him through all that and exposing him anyway for the crime of hiring a hooker one time seemed pretty harsh, as despicable as doing that to his family was. Even as I type, I find myself questioning "well, did he deserve to be found out and lose his family?" The answer may be yes, but did that give the hackers the right to play judge, jury, and executioner?..

Down the rabbit hole we go.

These is compelling stuff, and gets right to what Black Mirror does so well at its best -- making us question ourselves as opposed to just wagging a finger at others. Perhaps the trollface at the end was a bit dated, but when that jumps out as one of the only things I can think to actively criticize, you know you've got a good episode of television on your hands. The sole reason it doesn't rank higher is because it didn't really fuck me up afterwards and linger quite as much as the remaining episodes did, but make no mistake, Shut Up and Dance is pretty darn great.
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-Shred