**Narrative – Blown to Smithereens **
What's it about?
The episode attempts to explore the dangerous cocktail between technology and social media. The episode follows a man who became addicted to social media, this addition has unforeseen consequences that changed his life forever.
The Good?
One of the only things I liked was the ending. Not only was it left open to who was killed but the impact that it has on us relative to the person involved. To Chris everything over the past few years and the pain he had suffered boiled down to this very moment, his desire to be heard and forgiven. It was what had kept him alive and once he has expressed his pain there was nothing left to live for. I like how at the end it makes it onto peoples news feed for just a second and then it was gone, as quickly as it comes through it left and people move on with their lives without a second thought. Someone’s full life story, their pain, their last moments are just a blip on a news feed radar.
The acting was ok throughout with Andrew Scott being the standout. He was able to portray a broken and desperate man, crushed by his guilt due to the death of his fiancée.
The Bad?
One of the issues from the previous episode was pacing, the first half was too slow and needed to be condensed. This could have allowed time for the exploration of more interesting concepts. The same but to a greater extent could be said for this episode. But that wasn't its biggest issue, a weak plot was.
The episode consisted of a man who had lost his fiancée in a road accident due to using his phone while driving. He then blames the app he was looking at because it was too addictive. He then decides to kidnap an employee of said app company and hold them ransom until he speaks to the boss of the company. The grand finale is a monologue with the boss before attempting to kill himself.
The ideas that it tries to bring to light about social media are nothing new and have been explored countless times before. However, if this was to be the theme the narrative needed to be better than this, much better.
His rationale to justify his actions seem quite ridiculous. He is irresponsible while driving, as a result, he kills his fiancée and then illogically attempts to somehow blame the app that he decided to use while driving. There is an attempt to portray a complex character, but I never felt truly engaged or fully sympathetic to his cause.
The police are complete uselessness, the embarrassing lack of information they have on the suspect or even their inability to handle the situation distracts from any scene they are in which is a lot.
Conclusion
The episode attempts to show us the dangers that social media poses to society, how disconnected we have become to one another and how "big brother" now knows more about us than the government. However, it fails to deliver a true impact because the protagonist is solely responsible for his actions, the consequences of these are solely his to bare.
What we get in this episode is an attempt to blame social media for this tragedy and in this, the greater message gets lost. The underlying concept was good but the packaging was terrible.
