The One on “San Junipero”

What if, instead of dying, you had your conscious mind uploaded into a virtual reality world where you could live out the rest of your days in (relative) peace?

That’s the premise of the fourth episode of Season 3 of Black Mirror. While that certainly sounds like a wonderful way to live out your days, as this episode shows, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies.

I’m incredibly glad that we chose this episode to start our Black Mirror journey with since it really nailed down what this show is all about. Taking a dive into some cool ass technology that comes with its own inherent drawbacks.

For the first half of this episode — as is the case with just about every episode of the show — I was trying to figure out exactly what the hook was. That’s what I love about this anthology format. Rather than try and remember characters or an overarching narrative, you‘re given a self-contained narrative and are forced to piece it all together over the course of an hour. It’s pretty refreshing after watching so many shows like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones over the years. But enough gushing about the show as a whole, let’s talk about this episode.

My initial thoughts about the prospect of this new kind of afterlife brought me to thinking about what Heaven will be like. As a Christian, I’ve been hearing and thinking about Heaven since I was a pup. What will it be like? Who will I see there? How will I look? How will I dress? While this episode is certainly not meant to be based in the church — although much talk centered around there being an afterlife has at least something to do with spirituality — I feel like it was a nice look into what Heaven could be like.

There was no pain in San Junipero. (Well, sort of. Users can select what level of pain they want to feel prior to going in.) Not only that, but everyone was young and free of ailments. While Yorkie was quadriplegic and Kelly was dying in their respective outside lives, they were fine in San Junipero. It was truly an afterlife that should (theoretically) be carefree and amazing.

When we move beyond the theoretical and move into the actualities of the world, we run into trouble.

While some are like Kelly and are just in San Junipero for the thrill of having some virtual fun before dying, others aren’t as carefree. Take Wes, for example. After sharing in that virtual fun with Kelly, he became enamored with her and kept coming back for more. She denies him on subsequent requests since she’s just looking for some fun and he seemingly wants more. This drives him a bit mad, and we later see him at one of the more spicy hangout spots looking worse for wear without her attention.

The same can be said for Yorkie for a time. Prior to their happily ever after, Yorkie also got caught up in the sauce and spent a long time searching for Kelly after their first meeting. Granted, her case was a bit different since Kelly was her first time with a woman and was understandably sprung on her. Still, the juxtaposition between Kelly’s initial outlook on San Junipero and those of Yorkie and Wes was the perfect way to show off the differences in what people who use this service are looking to get out of it.

Another speed bump we saw with San Junipero is one that I’ve thought about in relation to what Heaven will be like. When you die, who will you be with in the afterlife? If I died and Kayla remarried, when we get to heaven, are we together or is she with her new family?

In the context of this episode, while Yorkie wants Kelly to “pass over” with her in San Junipero, Kelly had a family of her own. Her daughter died before San Junipero existed, and her husband chose to die in a normal manner rather than uploading himself into San Junipero. As such, Kelly had planned to use San Junipero as a way to live out her days before dying normally.

Then she met Yorkie and that all changed. Yorkie asked her to stay in San Junipero with her, which felt like the next logical step after Kelly did Yorkie a solid by marrying her in real life to give the okay on her euthanasia request. Kelly didn’t see it so cut and dry — at first. When Yorkie first asked her about it, Kelly was against the idea. Her family died without San Junipero, so why should she be able to live forever in this virtual world while they simply ceased to exist (Kelly didn’t believe in Heaven)?

Once Kelly finally got sick enough and elected to be euthanized herself, her outlook on the situation clearly changed. It was as if she asked herself the reverse of the question above. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to live forever in this virtual, blissful world? As we see in the credits, she found the answer to that question and chose to be with Yorkie forever in San Junipero.

This was such a solid episode and I can see why so many people said this was a good starting point.

Let’s look at some quick hits/random musings before we call it a night for this episode.

• There was a happy ending! While this was my first episode ever of Black Mirror, I’m now almost done with Season 3. That means I know how bleak most of these episodes truly are. Basically every other episode I’ve watched is the complete opposite. Even if it’s seemingly a nice ending, there is some drawback that limits the niceties of the endings. Seeing everything work out so well was a nice reprieve from all the terribleness in other episodes. Although, I admit that I was looking for some sort of catch during the credits to show that everything wasn’t as rosy as it seemed. I was conditioned by Twitter to think that everything in this show was terrible. It was nice to know that it wasn’t all bad.
• It made you think about the afterlife. Thinking about death is not something that I feel we really do very often. Being forced to think about how we would react to this technology was great. This is honestly an overarching positive to this show as a whole since every episode gets into your head and makes you think about these unknown pieces of technology. With this episode specifically, I simply liked that we were thinking about what happens after we die.
• Interracial couples for the win! My parents were an interracial couple. My wife’s parents are interracial. My wife and I are interracial. My sister-in-laws are both in interracial relationships. Basically everywhere I turn, I see an interracial couples. Whenever I see another couple like this either in real life or in movies/TV, I always give an internal thumbs-up. I’m all for diversity and representation. It made it even better than it was a lesbian couple, as we need more instances where a big deal is not made out of the fact that two people of the same sex are dating/in love.

And there you have it! I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and I hope you guys managed to keep up with my rambling here.

Next up will be the actual first episode of the series, “The National Anthem.” What a stark contrast that will be with what we just went over here with “San Junipero.”

See you guys tomorrow!