After my two previous recaps, we’ve finally arrived at the quintessential pinnacle of Black Mirror with the third episode of the anthology, titled ‘The Entire History of You.’ Claiming its perfection despite the other five fantastic episodes and one complex special isn’t lost on me. The story in Black Mirror episode 3 includes many facets in relatability, obsession, jealousy, relationships with both technology and humans, and satisfying surprises all in a sandwich with the stellar cinematography acting as the bread with a side of a perfectly structured narrative. I’m diving into these aspects as deep and effectively as possible, and will definitely include SPOILERS ahead.
Black Mirror episode 3 stars Toby Kebbell as Liam Foxwell, an unemployed man seemingly happily married to his wife Ffion, played by Jodie Whittaker. Ultimately the entire episode revolves around them, but you also have at least one other crucial supporting cast member in Tom Cullen, who plays Jonas, a former lover of Ffion’s. On the surface, you’ll find the starring married couple leading an insignificant normal life. However, this is Black Mirror, where there is no surface; only a sinkhole where our characters are guaranteed to hit rock bottom eventually.
The technological concept at play in Black Mirror episode 3 is that a majority of the populace has chips installed in their head, linked to their eyes, that allows them to rewind, zoom in, and analyze every moment from their life. They do have the option of storing said moments as long as they want before deletion, just like any computer operates. The sacrifice to those who embrace this technology is privacy. In a brief scene, we see our lead character show a security guard the last 24 hours of his life in rewind before he’s allowed to use public transportation means. Glimpses like this sufficiently build the world around this impossible technology.
Liam’s reason for traveling such distances is a job interview. Like I’d mentioned, he’s unemployed but actively looking for work. His interview didn’t go particularly bad or good; it just “happened.” However, with the technology installed in his eyes, called the Z-Eye, he’s rewinding every moment from it and analyzing it with his wife, attempting to determine where he went wrong, if anywhere. This is one of many uses of this tech that feels like it’d be the way we used it in every day life if we possessed the Z-Eye ourselves. The two go to a dinner with friends, where Liam spots his wife interacting in a somewhat flirty fashion with the aforementioned Jonas. Liam doesn’t recognize the man, but pays no attention to it for the sake of dinner party social convention (which still exists despite the technological innovation) that calls for you to talk with your friends instead of worry.
During the dinner itself, one woman reveals she had her Z-Eye implant (called a “grain”) removed by choice, and states she feels a sense of freedom without it. The conversation also awkwardly explores sex, when Jonas brings up using his previous sexual experiences captured by the Z-Eye as his own personal bank of “pornography” for masturbation. He makes a joke which Ffion exclusively laughs at, and you better believe Liam noticed her reaction. On the way out of the party, Ffion mentions how it feels too early to end the night and invites Jonas back to their house for a nightcap. Jonas turns it down to Liam’s subtle delight. All of these seemingly inconsequential minutiae serve a greater purpose in the long-term story of Black Mirror episode 3.
The conflict in Black Mirror episode 3 picks up when Liam and Ffion arrive home to relieve the babysitter of her duties (their child is already asleep). Liam is bothered by Ffion’s playfulness with Jonas, and lets his insecurities get the best of him as he levels her with question after question about Jonas and her relationship to him. This is a completely real-life scenario, but here, Liam projects his memory of the dinner party to her from his perspective, where he replays her flirting with him from a distance. It might be subconscious, but there’s definitely a bias present in how Ffion views Liam. Ffion relents and admits she dated Jonas years ago for about six months. The two end up arguing because of Liam’s incessant inquisition, Liam apologizes, and then the two make love in one of the most distant sex scenes I’ve ever seen.
While having intercourse, the couple is watching a previous sexual encounter in their individual Z-Eye of a much more steamy and passionate time. Another message creator Charlie Brooker incorporates specific to how technology can isolate us from each other personally while being at our most intimate physically. After Ffion falls asleep, Liam stays up drinking and re-analyzing the dinner party footage. The next morning, Liam presents Ffion new “evidence,” likely developed from his sheer paranoia, where Ffion laughs at one of Jonas’s jokes and stops laughing when she glances back to Liam before she looks down at her plate with discomfort written on her face. Liam is admittedly envious of the way she looked at Jonas over him, her own husband. Ffion eventually ignores his further questions and goes back to bed, but this investigation is only just beginning.
Liam’s next inclination is to visit Jonas’s house while still drunk and violently demand Jonas to delete his memories (called “re-dos” in this world) of Ffion having sex with Jonas. With a broken bottle shard to his neck, Jonas obliges and Liam leaves. On the way home, Liam crashes his car into a tree and passes out. After he recovers, Liam reviews the footage in his Z-Eye from his angry visit to Jonas’s and discovers something horrifying. The showrunner opts to show us this revelation in the next scene, which is a nice touch that improves the pacing of the episode. When he finally makes it home, Liam confronts Ffion with new information: he found in Jonas’s re-do reel (pictured above) a still of Jonas in his bedroom with Ffion 18 months ago, which was around the time Liam and Ffion’s daughter was conceived.
Against her will, Ffion shows the footage of that night, confirming Liam’s otherwise-insane suspicions. In the background, you just hear the audio but see Liam and Ffion’s devastated reactions. Both of their lives are henceforth ruined. The audio reveals that Jonas didn’t wear protection that night, indicating Liam’s daughter isn’t expected to be Liam’s biological daughter. The way this revelation unfolds is equally heartbreaking and riveting. Along this journey, the writing paints Liam as the overly paranoid, desperate villain, which makes his rightfulness all the more bittersweet. The relatable element of the show is having experienced such an obsessive jealousy myself when I was a much younger fellow who didn’t know any better. I know how damaging this behavior can be in a relationship, but having a technology that puts the infallible evidence in front of the perpetrator – that’s a whole other ballpark.
The final scene is Liam reliving otherwise happy moments from his life through the Z-Eye, which included heartwarming moments with “his” daughter, but we’re only being shown these re-dos because Liam is deleting them from his brain. He’s now in an empty house as he performs surgery on himself to remove the Z-Eye implant. Before he can complete the procedure, the screen suddenly cuts to black, indicating our “live feed” into Liam’s shockingly depressing life has come to a halt. Voyeurism is a key recurring motif throughout this series, and here, we were the voyeurs that spied on this uncomfortable but very real, raw scenario. This is just another occasion that demonstrates Brooker’s sheer brilliance with this entire show, but for me, Black Mirror episode 3 is unquestionably the best 40-plus minute stretch I’ve ever experienced in any medium.
Coming Up…
With season 1 wrapped up, season 2 will be recapped next in one article. I’d originally planned to compose an article per episode, but season 2, while great, isn’t as layered as season 1. The Christmas Special episode definitely deserves the attention, but what you’ll see next will be an abundance of information on a loaded season 2. As for Black Mirror episode 3, “The Entire History of You,” this episode is the reason you need to start watching the show (on Netflix no less) if you haven’t started yet. And if you haven’t started yet, why in the world are you still reading this?!?
