To fulfill the need of a plot twist, I recently watched the Black Mirror episode, "Hated in the Nation." The episode involves the investigations of the mysterious deaths of the most hated people in the nation. Every day, someone new dies, and law enforcement connects the deaths to the use of a hashtag, #DeathTo, on social media. Garrett Scholes, played by Duncan Pow, created an online game that counts the amount of #DeathTo's sent to each person on the internet, and every day, the person with the most would die after 5 pm that day. The method of killing was to hijack AI bees, called ADI, that were implemented into the environment after bees became extinct. The bees were totally harmless, but Scholes managed to control one per day to dig into the pain center of the brain, and cause such agony that the victims would kill themselves just to relieve it. When detective Karin Parke (Kelly MacDonald) and her assistant Blue Coulson (Faye Marsay) catch on to the pattern, they track down the next person on the list to keep her safe. This lady pretended to pee on a war memorial statue, and people did not take that very lightly and voted her, whether unknowingly or not, to be next. The detectives take the soon-to-be victim to a safe house miles out of town, and lock themselves in, while keeping an eye out for the ADI bees. When one lands on the window, Scholes realizes one may not do the job, and sends a swarm to break through windows and eventually dig into the girl's brain.
Naturally, the next step would be to track down the culprit. When the detectives link the death game back to Scholes, they hunt him down and find his control center. In the control center is a list of every person that used the hashtag, totaling almost 400,000 people. When head detective Shaun Li (Benedict Wong) authorizes the shutdown of the system, every person on the list becomes a target, and the episode hangs off there. This is one the parts of Black Mirror that I enjoy every time, how at the end of the episode it cuts off somewhat suddenly, but you can assume what is happening in that episode's world. In this case, the bees were to track down every person on the list and do what they did to the previous victims. As with most Black Mirror episodes, there is a twist to the episode, or at least something unexpected. Personally that is the reason I watch, because I can follow everything and still be thrown off by the plot.
I love the AI incorporation, which is in most episodes, but especially this one. There is always the threat of being hacked, no matter what the target is. In this case, something that was meant to save the environment turned against hundreds of thousands of people. I also like how the director incorporated internal conflicts withing law enforcement, in addition to the outside danger. Overall, I would rate this episode Good-Good. Every episode of Black Mirror is objectively well made, especially due to the aforementioned lack of predictability. And so far, I have subjectively enjoyed every episode. I love the futuristic aspect of this episode, because eventually our society may need the aid of AI to keep us alive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSBb4VxJavE
This link is the scene where the scientists behind the ADI bees explain their purpose.
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