Diksha Sundriyal
The seventh season of Netflix’s ‘Black Mirror’ delves into different worlds that look and feel close to the real world in more ways than one. The first episode, titled ‘Common People,’ hits home with several relevant themes embedded within it, which is why, perhaps, it is also one of the more heartbreaking and disturbing episodes of the season. It begins with Amanda and Mike, a couple who are deeply in love with each other. She is a school teacher, and he works at a factory. While they don’t make much, it is enough to sustain them and give them a happy life. For their anniversary, they drive to the Juniper Lodge, where they shared wedding vows with each other years ago.
The couple has also been trying to have kids, and they came close enough the last time, but the pregnancy didn’t pan out well. Now, they have an empty crib in their house, which makes Amanda wonder if they bought it too soon and invited bad luck. Mike, however, is more optimistic, and he believes that the crib will come in handy soon enough. Meanwhile, Amanda has blinding headaches, which increase in frequency to the point that she collapses in school. At the hospital, Mike is told that his wife is in a coma and will not wake from it because she has a tumor in her brain, which has progressed to the point that it cannot be treated anymore.
Mike is heartbroken at the prospect of losing Amanda, which is when an alternative is offered to him. He is put in touch with a woman named Gaynor, who is the representative of a company called Rivermind. It is a groundbreaking technology that can bring people back from the dead. What they do is clone a person’s brain and use it to replace the part that has been damaged beyond repair. So, the part of Amanda’s brain that is causing her coma can be removed and replaced with its functioning clone, allowing her to go back to normal. Mike is told that the surgery is free and the service doesn’t cost much. But of course, like always, there is a catch. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Mike and Amanda Get Trapped in a Vicious Cycle of Subscriptions
When Mike finds out about Rivermind’s technology, his first question is the cost of it. He imagines that something like this must be for a fortune, but he is told that it doesn’t cost that much. The surgery is free, which means the clone will be installed in Amanda’s brain. But to keep that clone running is what he will have to pay for. For the payment of $300 per month, he can give Amanda her life back. Since he can afford the amount, though he will have to cut a few corners, it’s totally worth saving Amanda. And for a while, the system works. He drowns himself in extra shifts, and while her sleeping hours increase, he lacks for it. The tension starts to show in their marriage, and on their next anniversary, when Mike plans for them to go back to the Juniper Lodge, Amanda says that perhaps they could skip the tradition to save the money.
The argument comes to a stop when they cross the county line, and suddenly Amanda falls unconscious. They are told that this happened because she went out of range. The tower in that area was temporarily taken down for an upgrade. But it is back up now and works if the couple pays an extra amount. For an additional charge of $800, they can update their subscription to an upper tier, where they will have more room to travel as they will have access to all towers of Rivermind, which means Amanda will always be within range. Because they cannot afford this additional charge, they decide not to upgrade, which is when the ads come in. Suddenly, Amanda finds herself spouting advertisements for all sorts of stuff and is told that she can get rid of that if she updates her package.
When the ads start to affect her job, Mike resorts to a website called DumDummies, where strangers pay you if you do what they say. If they ask you to drink piss, and you do it, you get the money. If they ask you to put your tongue in a rat trap and you do it, you get the money. It is a very demeaning thing, but it allows him to upgrade the subscription and prevent Amanda from being an ad machine. As if the charge of $800 per month wasn’t enough, it turns out that they will have to pay more if they don’t want Amanda to sleep 12 hours a day. The company has increased the sleep time for its subscribers as it allows them to use their brains to run their system, though it should be the other way around. For an additional $1000, they can update their subscription, which will remove the sleep limitation while also allowing Amanda to access a new feature where she can control her sensations and access someone else’s brain to do things she couldn’t herself, like playing tennis or doing parkour.
What Happened to Mike’s Tooth? Why does He Sell the Crib?
When Amanda finds out about the additional $1000 payment, she walks out of the room, but Mike stays back to find out how much a temporary fix, aka a booster, will cost. He buys it for her for their wedding anniversary. It allows her to heighten her pleasure for a few hours, so a shitty burger, an out-of-tune song, and bad sex all feel good to her, as if they are the best she’s ever had. However, the $800 payments become impossible to maintain when one of Mike’s colleagues finds out about his content on DumDummies, turning him into a laughing stock. Mike does not take this well and attacks his colleague, who sustains a major injury when he comes in front of a lorry. Following this, Mike is fired from his job. He and Amanda try to convince Gaynor to give them some time to come up with the money while continuing the subscription, but she refuses.
One year later, the couple is in their worst shape ever. It is also clear that Rivermind’s tier system has advanced to the point where the couple is barely able to afford the lowest one. Still, Mike needs to keep his wife alive, so he resorts to anything that will help him make the payments. All this time, he and Amanda had held on to the crib, hoping that they would have a baby. Despite their loss (before Amanda’s surgery), they had hope that a happy accident might get her pregnant again. But after the surgery, they become so busy with coming up with money that they lose track of wanting a baby. And then, they are told that having a baby means more money to pay to Rivermind because pregnancy changes brain chemistry, and it’s a whole new thing that requires a completely different set of functions that can only be available with an additional $90 per month. This ruins any possibility of having a child, and yet, it takes a year for them to completely let go of it.
In the end, we find Mike opening the door to a boy and a girl who are there to pick up the crib. When he asks them when they are having the baby, they reveal that the crib is for burning for their next video. This breaks his heart even more because he had hoped that if not his, at least someone else’s baby might get to sleep in that crib and give it the meaning that he and Amanda had longed for their entire lives. The selling of the crib not only shows their desperation for money but also the loss of the hope they’d held on to all these years. At the same time, we see that one of Mike’s teeth is missing, which shows that without a new job, he has continued to make videos for DumDummies, daily debasing himself in front of strangers on the Internet. This is a breaking point that he cannot come back from.
Is Amanda Dead? Why does Mike Smother Her to Death?
While the financial pressure sucks the life out of Mike, Amanda feels the brunt of the cloned brain in her head. Unable to pay for any upper-tier services, she is forced to settle with the lowest one, which leads her to sleep for most of the day while ads run through her in all sorts of situations. She is bound to her bed now and is merely a shell of what she used to be. This is no way to live a life, and there is no point in drowning themselves in debt and financial ruin for it. For their anniversary this time, Mike gets her a booster and increases her serenity level to the maximum. It is in the moment of this clarity that Amanda tells him that it’s time for her to go. Clearly, this is a conversation they have had for a while, where they have been forced to weigh the pros and cons of keeping her alive.
It would be terrible for her to die, but it is even more terrible for Mike to watch his wife fade away in front of him and for her to watch him do all sorts of stuff just to keep paying for her subscription. By the time Amanda tells him it’s time, he, too, has accepted that there is no point in going on and prolonging her torture, as well as his. She tells him to do it when she is not there, and sure enough, he chooses the moment when she goes into ad mode. While she speaks out an entire ad, her brain is switched off, which is why she has no memory of it. This is the time when she will not feel anything that happens to her because her mind is not there. And this is when Mike shoves a pillow on her face and holds her down. For the time period that she is in ad mode, she isn’t aware of the suffocation of the pillow. She keeps saying it as if nothing is happening. But when the ad stops, the suffocation falls on her with full force, and after a few moments, she stops breathing, dying for good this time.
Will Mike Kill Himself? Why does He Shut the Door?
Mike loved his wife more than anything else in the world. They were great together, and they would have remained so if not for the tragedies that befell them. Had Mike accepted Amanda’s fate and allowed her to pass away when she fell into the coma, neither of them would have had to go through the hell that came in Rivermind’s fancy packaging that got more and more expensive by the day. The pressure of keeping his wife alive takes an emotional toll on him when he decides to start making content on DumDummies, but over time, it also harms him physically. It starts with things like putting his tongue in a mousetrap, advances to him anally penetrating himself, and ends with him pulling his tooth out, among other things.
By the time Amanda tells him that she is ready to die, he is so defeated that her decision comes as a relief to him. Now, he won’t have to worry about the next paycheck or dread what the people on DumDummies will force him to do next. He will be free of hell, and while he is happy about it, he still has the heartbreak and the horror of killing his wife with his own hands. With all the trauma that he has been through in the past year or so and the anguish of murdering his wife (even if it is a merciful death), it is too much for Mike to deal with. With Amanda gone, he cannot continue living his life, whatever remains of it now. He knows that he is thoroughly unemployable now, especially since he revealed his identity on DumDummies. If he could get a new job, he would have already. But he will need money to sustain himself, and he cannot imagine demeaning and debasing himself on DumDummies for another second.
In the end, after having killed his wife, Mike walks out of their bedroom and into the room where he has the set up to make videos on the website. He closes the door, but before it, he looks right at the audience. A conviction appears in his eyes, which suggests that he has had enough and this will be his last act on DumDummies. We know he is going to make another video because the app is still on in the background, and there is a rush of comments from strangers who have all sorts of ideas about what they want from Mike. The shutting of the door confirms Mike’s intent to never walk out of it again, proving that he is going to kill himself in there.
Read More: Where Was Black Mirror Season 7 Filmed?
