There is a long, hard fall in quality from the heights of "ArkAngel", to the lows of its follow-up, "Crocodile", an episode that, if it weren't for the glorious Icelandic setting, would have precious little worth commenting on. Unless I’ve missed the point completely, and it’s actually a brilliant, spot-on send-up of all those “Nordic Noir” procedural TV shows that were all the rage a couple years back.
For the second time this season, we have top shelf talent—director John Hillcoat, two excellent leading ladies in Andrea Riseborough and Kiran Sonia Sawar, and an obviously superlative crew behind the cameras—doing their level best to tell a story that, by the time the credits roll, most will doubt was worth telling.
Pared down to its essence, “Crocodile” is the story of Mia, a successful, intelligent, big deal urban planner whose decision-making process displays all the cognitive sophistication and analytical rigor of a first-generation computer chess program. In order to avoid being held accountable for taking part in the cover-up of a 15-year-old road accident, Mia commits murder, a crime that dwarfs her earlier transgression both in severity and in its potential to destroy the life she’s built for herself and her family. And then, to cover up that crime…
And that’s when the proceedings descend into farce. It’s a well shot farce in a gorgeous, austere and starkly beautiful setting, but it’s a farce nonetheless, complete with unfortunate clichés—like a car failing to start at the worst possible time—and a climax that features the one-two punch of an unnecessarily sadistic irony and a surprise “twist” reveal better suited to Monty Python than Black Mirror.
Looking back on this episode after first viewing it, I couldn’t help but ponder the lost opportunity. The basic conceit—a high-tech update of Rashomon, in which truth dwells somewhere near the intersection of subjective memory and objective reality, with a DePalma style multi-POV puzzle boxy murder mystery overlay—has tremendous potential.
Unfortunately, with “Crocodile”, Brooker seemed content to try and out-bleak all previous Black Mirror episodes, and the end results are so over-the-top and depraved that the entire episode seems like an exercise in nihilistic surrealism. This episode joins “USS Callister” and “The Waldo Moment” in a three way tie for Worst Black Mirror Episode Ever.
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