Black Mirror is enjoying a resurgence ahead of its long-awaited return this week, and with good reason. The show offers rich critiques of social changes wrought by technology, a rarity in popular cinema. No show (besides Mr. Robot) even comes close to Black Mirror’s skeptical episodes, which present harsh, haunting depictions of the Faustian bargain of technological change.

But Black Mirror is an anthology show, and the quality of its critique varies from episode to episode. Ranking the show’s installments has become something of an internet past time (or an easy way to farm clicks) with everyone from BuzzFeed to The Verge to Metro weighing in with a clear favorite: “The Entire History of You.”

Toby Kebbell, as Liam, grapples with total recall.

“Entire History” posits a future in which humans have perfect memory that can be reviewed and shared, though not without consequences. It’s a life-like premise and execution, with powerful performances and a great script. It is, undoubtedly, a solid episode of television. But Black Mirror’s strengths aren’t solely its writing or performances; it’s its deep critiques of technological change and influence. And though “Entire History” offers some tantalizing questions (like, “Is the act of forgetting a necessary part of the human experience?”), only one episode truly serves as a dark reflection of our own society, and it’s “15 Million Merits.”

Every episode of Black Mirror is to some extent a parable, and as such, it’s tempting to view them as a kind of inoculation against a future technological dystopia. Many episodes imagine the world in disturbing, but harmless, what-ifs; what if we had perfect shared memories? What if we had a bot that could mimic dead lovers? Even while the show embeds those queries in a world where technology exacerbates our human flaws, the audience can derive pride from (and hope in) humanity’s foresight. By watching Black Mirror and recoiling at the horrors it depicts, we can convince ourselves we’ll never fall victim to them.

It’s interesting that “Entire History”, like other fan favorites “Be Right Back” (the one about a posthumous recreation of a loved one) or the Christmas special (which features tales about digital copies of our consciousness and ocular implants) focus their gaze on elective technologies that characters don’t necessarily need to adopt. “Entire History” even gives the audience a luddite character as an avatar: A woman in a dinner party remarks that, unlike all the other guests, she’s chosen to forego the destructive piece of technology for a simpler life. See? It’s possible to escape dystopia after all!

We would NEVER waste all day in front of a monitor doing work for other people.

But “15 Million Merits” robs us of such illusions. Unlike most other episodes, it is not a world of what-ifs, not a single, well-defined premise grafted onto our own reality. “15 Million Merits” offers a complete world in which an advanced slave state utilizes mass media to subdue its labor population, who toil away on electricity-generating bikes. Under the glow of televisions, alienated slaves are simultaneously inspired, distracted, entertained, and enlisted in a depressingly-familiar class war. While some of “15 Million Merits”’s characters bring a level of skepticism to their world, none are immune from its pressures and confines. The protagonist sells out, his love interest is tricked, and the rest are reduced to the hapless poser, who gleefully clings onto every trend with nary a thought. It’s that character’s presence — the mindless poser – which cuts so deep. Unlike “Entire History” with its noble luddite, “15 Million Merits” shows us a world from which we cannot escape, and it’s too close to home. Other episodes offers us plausible deniability; they’re not so much a mirror as they are a Snapchat filter that we can delete if we are displeased. Not so “15 Million Merits.”

The same is true of two universally-disliked Black Mirror episodes, “The Waldo Moment” (about a comedian who parodies political candidates until he becomes one) and “National Anthem” (where the British prime minister… well, it’s the one with the pig). Sure, neither packs the rich performances or ambitious scripts of “15 Million Merits” or “Be Right Back.” But it’s telling that both are stories of the horrors that mass media can inflict at the social and political level, rather than personal tales of ruination. In “National Anthem,” it’s the act of looking — the same act that audiences are engaged in at the moment they watch Black Mirror — that enables the antagonist’s actions. “Waldo,” similarly, offers no escape from the seductive, nihilstic ideology into which its world descends. Could these be the reasons audiences hate them?

Pictured: Us.

It’s tempting to imagine that if we don’t like the image presented in Black Mirror, we don’t have to partake in it, but the last 20 years have shown that notion to be a farce. Increasingly, participation in civic society is predicated on the ability to manipulate technology. We use social media to impress employers and (potentially) cross international borders. We receive emergency alerts about the safety of our community by phone. In Florida, a public transit initiative operated by Uber requires users to have a smartphone and credit card. These faculties — traveling around a city, being an informed citizen, getting a job — aren’t frivolities; they’re basic functions necessary to a working democracy. The fact that these roles now require us to use technology is part of the reason why internet has gone from being an amenity to a human right.

“All technology has the Midas touch,” wrote Marshall McLuhan in 1964. “When a community develops some extension of itself, it tends to allow all other functions to be altered to accommodate that form.” Too often, Black Mirror fails to envision those alterations. In one of the show’s most head-scratching choices, it introduces an android in “Be Right Back” which serves exclusively as a dead lover-replacement. In actuality, such technology would find wide application in every facet of society. It probably would have prevented the car crash that killed the lover in the first place. (It would also replace the burly delivery men who bring the package to the protagonist’s door, but let’s not devolve into nitpicking.) The world of the Christmas special — with its cookies and visual blockers– would be altered to the point of being unrecognizable. The changes wrought by technology don’t fit neatly into a writer’s hypotheticals. They ripple through all parts of our lives.

“15 Million Merits,” “National Anthem,” and “Waldo” understand this notion and embrace it as a starting point. Other episodes give us hope that we may never reach it. But, twist ending, we’re already there, and when Black Mirror is at its best, it helps us reflect on that.

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Update: Since writing this, I’ve started a Black Mirror recap/discussion podcast with Alex Fitzpatrick. You can find episodes here.