Hang the DJ ★★★★
From the very first to last moments of ‘Hang the DJ’, I had a smile on my face. It’s by far the season’s best episode, but also the most uplifting and thought-provoking. Tackling online dating, the episode follows Frank (Joe Cole) and Amy (Georgina Campbell), two people living in a walled-off community where they must follow strict dating instructions from a virtual coach to find their ‘perfect match’.
Frank and Amy’s first relationship is with each other but only lasts a meager 12 hours. They clearly have natural chemistry, and you can tell that both are disappointed when they have to part ways. After going through years of unhappy relationships, Frank and Amy decide that they want to be with each other rather than whomever the system picks for them. Unsurprisingly, the entire thing turns out to be a simulation that checks if they will rebel, determining the compatibility of two people based on how many simulations rebel for each other. The ending shows the real Frank and Amy seeing each other for the first time in a bar, looking down at their app that tells them they are a 99.8% match.
Tonally, the episode is a romantic comedy, which is admittedly a peculiar genre for Black Mirror to work within, but a welcome one nonetheless. Joe Cole and Georgina Campbell have an enthusiastically awkward chemistry, and are an absolute delight to watch share the screen. Their conversations are sharp and snappy, cute and convincing, helped out by equally snappy editing. The coach’s monotone voice serves as an amusing contrast, frequently assuring both while in their respectively miserable relationships that “Everything happens for a reason”.
This is also the most light-hearted episode of Black Mirror yet, earnestly following two people as they navigate an eccentric dating system. It’s cute and heartfelt, but more importantly never ceases to be thought-provoking. The system that the episode proposes actually kind of makes sense: being forced to go through a series of relationships, good and bad, allows an ‘ultimate match’ to be selected. When it’s revealed that all of the episode has been a simulation within a phone app, the implications are even further-reaching.
Dating has always been a complicated mess, but what if there was an app that told us exactly who we were perfect for? Figuring out someone is the ‘perfect one’ is a process that normally takes ages, but with the app can now be done in a manner of minutes. How accurate could this app be? Would it improve relationship issues and infidelity? The episode has a happy ending, but the notion that you could use a phone app without any human interaction to find your soulmate is mind-blowing and a little perverse. It’s true that our world has become increasingly reliant on algorithms in our work and play, but I don’t know if finding true love through computer code is a concept I would be completely comfortable with. I have a feeling that eventually, like the simulated system, many users would grow dissatisfied with having their relationships dictated for them and would rebel themselves.
‘Hang the DJ’, like ‘San Junipero’ before it, proves that Black Mirror doesn’t need to be oppressively bleak to be effective science fiction. It’s by far one of the strongest installments the series has put forth, and one of the few from Season 4 that feels right at home in the show’s canon.
Teleccentric 