It's always "I love you" and never--

idk what else I can say that's coherent enough for a review.

I love this game.

I LOVE. This. Game.

I have to go back and get the other endings.

But like...fuck.

FUCKING SHIT 😫😫😫😭

My Thoughts on "Black Mirror", Season 3 Episode 5, "Men Against Fire"

*The following contains major spoilers for season 3 episode 5 of Black Mirror.*

Off and on for some time now, I have found myself enjoying an episode or two of the Netflix anthology series "Black Mirror". Today I'm going to be sharing my thoughts on season 3, episode 5 "Men Against Fire", the most recent episode I've watched. In "Men Against Fire," a soldier of the future has his eyes opened to the horrifying realities of his chosen profession. The following will contain heavy spoilers for the entire episode. Let's get started.

The "Black Mirror" episode "Men Against Fire" is one where I guessed the plot extremely quickly, but that may be because I watch too much TV. Many are quick to point out the episode's similarities to the film "The 5th Wave", but I was almost instantly reminded of a slightly older reference.

In the 1995 anthology series "The Outer Limits", there was an episode in its fourth season called "Hearts and Minds". In the episode, a team of soldiers were given drugs that they were told would protect them from an alien virus. In actuality, the drugs caused the soldiers to see their enemies as horrible alien monsters. Malfunctioning equipment causes the soldiers to see through the ruse, and they attempt to contact a group of enemy soldiers to make peace. Unfortunately for the initial group of soldiers, they are all killed as the enemy is also being given drugs that cause them to believe they are the ones battling alien monsters.

I'm sure this story is even older than that one episode of "The Outer Limits"; after all, it's been said that dehumanizing the enemy is a major aspect of real warfare. This just happens to be my earliest point of reference, and I believe it's a good one. "Hearts and Minds" blew my mind when I first saw it and left a major imprint in my memory. Que "Men Against Fire", and those memories came flooding back.

In "Men Against Fire", the soldiers set out to eliminate roaches; from the get-go, it was obvious they didn't mean literal roaches. Roaches are at first revealed to be humanoid monsters that the military seeks to destroy with extreme prejudice. By the time we see our first roaches killed, it's obvious that something is wrong. They are clearly pleading for their lives and offer little resistance until the soldiers start killing them first. I was instantly reminded of another reference in the form of "I Am Legend", (not the 2007 Will Smith version where they left out the entire point of the title and the original narrative). In both the book "I Am Legend" and the 1964 film "The Last Man on Earth" (the earlier film adaptation of the book), the point of the story was that the man had become a legend to the vampiric creatures. The man was the monster from the vampires' perspective, stalking and killing them during the day when they were most vulnerable. Maybe it's because of my familiarity with these kinds of narratives, but I'm pretty quick to assume things are not as they seem, and I was pretty sure that the roaches in this story were not what they seemed. They looked like victims to me, and the reasons for their extermination and harsh treatment were so flimsy—a fear that they might breed with normal humans? Things just weren't right here.

When the protagonist of the story, a soldier nicknamed Stripes, starts having problems with the brain implant that every soldier has, that's when it becomes extremely obvious. "The 5th Wave" and "The Outer Limits" episodes instantly came back to me; this implant is causing the soldiers to see their enemies as monsters. It's not much longer until it is revealed that my hunch is entirely correct. The soldiers are murdering completely normal humans, and the military is using brain implants called MASS to cause digital hallucinations to make these people look like monsters to said soldiers.

One problem with the episode is that I don't completely understand why the soldiers were so highly motivated to detest and exterminate the "roaches" in the first place, as the primary reason both they and we the audience are given is "They'll pollute the gene pool" (a line that should instantly inform most viewers that these soldiers are definitely the villains). Even the protagonist, Stripes, seems to barely fall into this reasoning, as he immediately sympathized with the roaches after learning that they weren't monsters. One would think that in order for a plan like the one proposed by the episode to work, there would have to be a much deeper indoctrination program going on. There's actually some evidence that this is occurring, as Stripes' squadmate Hunter appears to have a very deep bloodlust for roaches. My question is, where does that come from? If there is a deeper indoctrination process, we never see it on screen. A memory wipe and some visual hallucinations come across as pretty unconvincing as the sole means to stamp empathy out of these soldiers. One would expect to hear a speech about the crimes of the roaches or that the soldiers would be informed of a danger far worse than corrupted gene pools. We never get anything like that in the episode. This detail leaves a bit of a disconnect in understanding the motivations and thought processes of several characters.

That said, "Men Against Fire" is still a good episode. It retreads some territory that other writers have already explored, but it's the kind of story that's still worth telling. Themes and messages about military indoctrination, elitism, racism, and turning a blind eye to war crimes are unfortunately much too relevant today. Maybe there are some "Black Mirror" viewers who haven't seen a similar story before, and "Men Against Fire" is a absolutely great way to be exposed to these themes and ideas. If there's one thing "Black Mirror" is good at, it's guiding people to think about deep subjects, and "Men Against Fire" is no different in that regard. I would have liked to understand the thought processes of the main characters a little better, which to me was a significant flaw in an otherwise solid episode. The ending is gut-wrenching; I saw that coming too and almost didn't finish it because I understood ahead of time that there wasn't going to be a happy ending. Stripes ultimately came against forces too large and powerful for him to prevail against. I did (after a brief pause and a deep breath) finish the episode, and I think anyone else who starts the episode should too. It's a story with a message that people shouldn't turn away from, despite its ultimate ugliness.

"Black Mirror" is available on Netflix; the episode "Men Against Fire" is episode 5 of season 3.