San Junipero
This episode could shave about 10-15 minutes easily. There's too much focus on a love story that really doesn't have time to develop properly in an hour and it's not really the point of the episode. This show works best when the characters are vessels, much like The Twilight Zone. Here, the episode takes way too long to get to the high concept, but boy is it worth the wait.
I wrote this terrible script one time about people all living in a virtual reality and this episode captured a bit of the spirit I think I wanted but couldn't covey. VR is on the cusp of becoming creepily representative of reality. I consider myself tech savvy, but VR scares the heck out of me. What happens when we can just live in the machine?
The episode also conjures up ideas of heaven, the afterlife, time and mortality. And the end of the episode feels surprisingly optimistic given the dark ending of the other episodes but I feel like Charlie Brooker jabs at this world as kinda disturbing, especially the moment with the machine plugging in the "souls" of the inhabitants. And I feel like playing "Heaven is a Place on Earth" is ironic, not celebratory.
It's a shame the episode takes so long to get to that interesting idea. I would much rather have two thirds of the episode devoted to these ideas instead of spending a good chunk of the episode caught up in a romance that isn't what makes the episode thought-provoking and compelling.