Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too
A pop star's AI doll helps two sisters.
"Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too" is the third and final episode of the fifth series of the anthology series Black Mirror, written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by Anne Sewitsky. It follows a pop singer whose creativity is restricted by her controlling aunt, and two teenage sisters who have recently lost their mother. The episode was released on Netflix on 5 June 2019, alongside "Striking Vipers" and "Smithereens".
Quick Facts
- Series
- Black Mirror
- Writer
- Charlie Brooker
- Director
- Anne Sewitsky
- Photographer
- Stephan Pehrsson
- Editor
- Tony Kearns
- Length
- 67 minutes
- Released
- 5 June 2019
Facts from the source article.
Plot
After their mother's death, sisters Rachel and Jack Goggins live with their father Kevin, who spends his time inventing mouse-control devices. Rachel, who has no friends after moving, receives an interactive AI doll of her favourite pop star Ashley O for her fifteenth birthday. The doll, Ashley Too, encourages and tutors Rachel, but their relationship annoys Jack. Rachel dances to Ashley O's song at a school talent contest but fumbles and leaves embarrassed; Jack blames the doll and hides it. Meanwhile, the real Ashley O is unsatisfied with her life and wants to reinvent herself as a rock musician. When she writes broody music and stops taking medication, her controlling aunt and manager Catherine Ortiz laces her food with drugs to render her comatose. Catherine and an unscrupulous doctor begin extracting commercially viable music from Ashley's brainwaves. Six months later, Ashley Too reactivates and glitches after seeing a news report on the coma. Jack connects the doll to diagnostic software and removes a limiter, revealing Ashley Too as a duplicate of Ashley O's consciousness. The doll persuades the sisters to look for evidence at Catherine's house. They drive there, and while Jack poses as a pest control technician, Rachel takes the doll to where Ashley O lies comatose. The doll unplugs the life support, but the machine was perpetuating the coma, and Ashley wakes up. They subdue staff members and flee with both Ashleys. Ashley O directs them to a venue where Catherine is debuting a holographic replacement; they drive through the back entrance, and Ashley O emerges on stage.
Production
A fifth series of Black Mirror was commissioned by Netflix in March 2018. The interactive work Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, initially part of series five, was separated and released as a standalone film on 28 December 2018. Series five comprises three episodes, as Brooker viewed this as preferable to making viewers wait longer. The episode was written by Brooker, based on a comedy sitcom script from years prior about a punk band whose members are hanged and return to life to see their manager exploiting their deaths. It also took inspiration from holographic performances of deceased artists such as Prince, Whitney Houston, and Amy Winehouse. Brooker considered AI as a means for creating a program imitating John Lennon's songwriting or serving as a celebrity virtual assistant. An unused idea saw Catherine revealed as non-human. Filming took place in late 2018 for five weeks in Cape Town, South Africa. Ashley O performs "On a Roll" and "Right Where I Belong", adaptations of Nine Inch Nails songs. "On a Roll" was released by Cyrus and appeared on several national music charts, receiving a Guild of Music Supervisors Award nomination.
Analysis
Critics described the episode as an uncharacteristically upbeat story about subverting sinister tech toward good ends, combining a critique of celebrity fandom with a thought experiment about brain uploading. It was seen to expose conflict between artistic integrity and financial interests. The title was suggested to be a pun on the film Rita, Sue and Bob Too. Some critics noted a tone change around halfway, calling the latter half a fun, high-concept heist film or an adult take on a 1980s kids' adventure caper. The episode explores themes such as AI, storage of human memories, and drugs. One critic said it was not so much science fiction as science fact, because technologies already exist to facilitate hologram performances and produce new music using an artist's voice and image without consent. Another viewed it as mostly allegorical, employing technological tropes to raise questions about human agency. A critic found that it asks what images celebrities are allowed to project and what fans receive in return. Another commented that the episode criticises people who tell kids to have faith in themselves for cynical purposes, but nonetheless wants kids to believe in themselves.
Reception
The episode received a 51% approval rating from 41 critics on Rotten Tomatoes, reflecting a divided response. Critics generally agreed that it had trouble weaving its many ideas into a coherent whole, though Miley Cyrus’s fully committed and compelling performance was widely praised as its strongest element. Ratings included three out of five stars from both The Telegraph and The Independent, two stars from the BBC, a 5.5 out of 10 from Paste, and a C+ from The A.V. Club. A few reviewers considered it the best episode of the fifth season, while others ranked it the worst, with one calling it among the worst episodes of Black Mirror overall. A BBC critic described it as the show at its most crudely parabolic, and a Hollywood Reporter critic saw it as an unintentional Disney movie spoof due to its ridiculous plot and obvious writing. Several critics found it weaker than typical Black Mirror episodes, with one calling it a corny, scattershot installment and another labeling it the most majestically wrongheaded episode of both Black Mirror and prestige television that year. On the positive side, one critic saw it as an intermittently fascinating pop-music melodrama, though bizarre, and another appreciated that it wasn’t pointlessly bleak. Many noted that the episode contained interesting ideas that were never fully developed, pointing to earlier episodes like “Be Right Back” and “White Christmas” as better explorations of cloning and AI. One critic observed that the episode had about fifteen potentially fruitful topics but failed to find a satisfying direction from its premise, blaming a fundamental unseriousness of tone. Another found fascinating ideas scattered throughout but felt they relied on vaguely banal statements about pop culture’s emptiness and the exploitation of its stars. In dissent, one critic argued that Charlie Brooker did a solid job juggling three big ideas, preventing any single theme from dominating or fully developing.
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