USS Callister ★★★½
‘USS Callister’ isn’t my favorite episode of Season 4, but it’s surely a fantastic start. The longest episode of the season, ‘USS Callister’ follows Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons), CTO of a company behind a multiplayer virtual-reality game. At work, he’s a massive pushover, a coding genius with the social skills of a coconut. At night, Daly escapes into a custom version of his game skinned to look like a Star Trek clone. In the game, he’s captain of the USS Callister, a starship of DNA-produced, sentient copies of every coworker that ever pissed him off. Daly reins over his crew tyrannically, torturing them like toys if they step out of line. Newcomer to the office Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) is placed into the game after she becomes emotionally distant to Daly following a conversation she has with a fellow employee.
The copy of Nanette rallies the crew to find a way out of the simulation, even if it means certain death. Eventually, they find a way to blackmail the real Nanette into stealing the DNA samples Daly has of them and moving their code out of his reach. Daly is left stranded in the game, doomed to starve in real life without a way to exit his rogue installation of the virtual reality.
It’s easy to see why audiences love ‘USS Callister’ so much. It’s got a zany production design, it’s funny and colorful, and most of all, it never gets too dark to handle. The episode takes the ritual of people taking out their anger on video game-copies of their coworkers and dials it up to 11. Robert Daly isn’t torturing code sprites; his toys are real, sentient clones of his coworkers, forever trapped in his nightmarish playpen.
The acting throughout is believable and often downright hilarious. With Breaking Bad, Fargo, and now Black Mirror, Jesse Plemons has proven himself a formidable television star to watch out for. In the game, he play-acts as Captain Daly, a cocky Starfleet officer with a touch of William Shatner. At work, Daly is an awkward, mumbling mess, occasionally making it hard to believe he can pull off such confidence even in a video game. Plemons handles the difference between these two facets of his character flawlessly, and watching him throw adult temper tantrums in a 1960’s science fiction costume is a magnificent mess.
Jimmi Simpson also excels as Daly’s real life grudge Walton, CEO of the company and main profiteer of Daly’s life work. In the game though, Walton’s unashamedly pathetic, and his cheesy overacting when Daly is in charge put me in stitches. There’s one scene in particular where Nanette pushes Daly off while he’s trying to kiss her and Simpson’s reaction is priceless. The witty dialogue is often what makes the episode so fun, putting a fun spin on the otherwise creepy concept of your awkward coworker putting you into his video game so he can play out a Star Trek fantasy.
I still haven’t made up my mind as to whether ‘USS Callister’ is really worth all the praise it’s receiving, but I certainly have to give it credit for its focus and charm. Especially considering how painfully clunky a number of the season’s later episodes turn out to be.
Teleccentric 