![]() ![]() ![]() The program then aggregates all of these ratings into a numerical average that hovers above a person’s head like a Sims gem. Patrons might five-star attentive and quick waiters, but the smartphone app can also be used to rate anything from photos your besties post online (dope frittata, five stars!) to phone conversations with family members. In a sanitary-looking, not-so-distant future, everyone is subject to constant one-to-five-star ratings from anybody who crosses their path, based on the quality and congeniality of the interaction. The brain trust of Schur, Jones, and Black Mirror showrunner Charlie Brooker conceived a monstrous premise for this season opener, a setup that extends weird little bits of modernity - forced politeness in an Uber, thirsting for Instagram likes far past the point of healthiness - to terrifying extremes. (His wife even forbade him from discussing it at dinner parties.) And with this carefully thought out, insightful, devastating(ly hilarious) new hour, Schur has produced something worthy of comparison to his idol’s work. Schur wrote his undergraduate thesis on Infinite Jest, currently owns the film rights to the property, directed a music video for the Decemberists based on one of the novel’s most memorable scenes, and smuggled loads of allusions to the novel in Parks and Rec. Michael Schur, a co-writer of the Black Mirror standout “Nosedive,” along with his former Parks and Recreation star Rashida Jones, ranks in the uppermost echelon of DFW’s acolytes. The results of the thought experiments he squirreled into his bigger narrative were often bleak, blackly comical, and deeply unsettling. But more than just imagining, “ What if … video messaging?” Wallace explored the behavioral and societal ramifications that such advances would have on their users. Among the many literary feats that late writer David Foster Wallace pulled off in his mammoth masterpiece Infinite Jest, he predicted such innovations as Netflix, Skype, and Snapchat more than 20 years ahead of time, down to some spooky specifics. ![]()
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