\n<\/p>\n
The deal is too good to be true: The setup is free, the monthly fee low. Streaming is unlimited with further benefits still to come. But hidden costs emerge. Intrusive ads pop up. The app\u2019s time in sleep mode becomes longer and longer. Those perks? You\u2019ll have to pay more for them \u2014 much, much more.<\/p>\n
This story arc should be familiar to anyone who has ever downloaded a free app or subscribed to a streaming service, which at this point is pretty much all of us. And it is at the very dark heart of \u201cCommon People,\u201d the first episode of Season 7 of \u201cBlack Mirror,\u201d<\/a> the anthology sci-fi series that helped to give Netflix, which has distributed it since its 2011 debut, artistic cred. All of this season\u2019s six episodes arrive on Thursday.<\/p>\n Is mocking streaming services biting the hand that keeps renewing you? Charlie Brooker,<\/a> the creator of \u201cBlack Mirror,\u201d was more equivocal. \u201cTo be honest, I\u2019m probably more nibbling the hand that feeds us,\u201d he said on a recent video call.<\/p>\n In its past seasons, \u201cBlack Mirror\u201d has promoted a skeptical view, perhaps an utterly nihilistic one<\/a>, regarding the ways in which entertainment is created and enjoyed. In the near future, we are all amusing ourselves to death, or worse. But with the exception of last season\u2019s episode \u201cJoan Is Awful,\u201d written by Brooker and directed by Ally Pankiw, in which a Netflix stand-in creates humiliating shows adapted from its subscribers\u2019 lives, Brooker has never come for streamers so baldly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Brooker first conceived of \u201cCommon People\u201d while listening to true-crime podcasts. He was struck by the disjunction of hearing a host describe a mutilated corpse in one moment and advertise a meal prep service the next. What, he wondered, would make a human integrate sponsorship into their ordinary speech?<\/p>\n At that point, he thought that the show would be, like \u201cJoan Is Awful,\u201d a dark comedy, a funny story. \u201cHe kind of tricked me,\u201d Pankiw, who also directed \u201cCommon People,\u201d said of Brooker\u2019s pitch. \u201cI was like, OK great. Then I read the script and I was like, Oh, it\u2019s actually incredibly devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cCommon People,\u201d Amanda (Rashida Jones<\/a>), a schoolteacher, is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. But a new service, RiverMind, can make a digital copy of her brain and stream it right back into her skull. Her husband, Mike (Chris O\u2019Dowd), signs her up. But then the costs rise, the subscription tiers multiply and the terms and conditions become increasingly onerous. Soon Mike is humiliating, even disfiguring, himself on a social media site called Dum Dummies just to pay the monthly fee. In the real world, a streaming subscription is hard enough to cancel. In \u201cBlack Mirror,\u201d it\u2019s a matter of life and death.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not subtle,\u201d Brooker said. \u201cTo take a comedic idea and then follow it through to an unrelenting conclusion is something that I like to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And as with \u201cJoan Is Awful,\u201d which introduced Streamberry<\/a>, the obvious Netflix copycat, Netflix has been a good sport about Brooker\u2019s critique, never asking him to alter or soften it. \u201cThey seem to have been very relaxed about it, which is almost a shame,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s probably because the real target of \u201cCommon People\u201d is not so much streamers as a health care system that freely bankrupts people who can\u2019t afford lifesaving treatment. Pankiw, who was raised in Canada, finds this as shocking and dystopian as anything that the \u201cCommon People\u201d describes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe episode is so topical, because you have to make decisions under late-stage capitalism that you shouldn\u2019t have to make,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a hellscape out there. Literally, people can\u2019t afford to keep their loved ones alive.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones, who stars in the episode, understands the late-stage capitalism conundrum, especially as it relates to questions of artistic integrity. For her, though the episode may ultimately concern health care, \u201cit\u2019s not not<\/em> about streaming,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of us work for giant conglomerates that do have this unchecked control to arbitrarily change pricing and tell people what their worth is in the marketplace.\u201d<\/p>\n She sees the episode as a treatise on the lack of agency that many of us may feel in the big tech era. And she realizes she\u2019s complicit in that. (Asked which streamers she subscribes to, she replied, \u201cKind of all of them.\u201d) But then again, who isn\u2019t?<\/p>\n Other episodes this season also pose doomy questions of entertainment \u2014 making it (\u201cHotel Reverie,\u201d \u201cPlaything\u201d); being in thrall to it (\u201cUSS Callister: Into Infinity,\u201d a sequel to a beloved Season 4 episode<\/a>); allowing it to destroy the world (\u201cPlaything\u201d again). That\u2019s true of other seasons, too. A generation ago, the promise of being able to watch, hear or play nearly anything almost anywhere would have seemed utopian. Turns out that it\u2019s oddly unsatisfying, and annoyingly expensive. \u201cBlack Mirror\u201d reflects this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n