Recap / Black Mirror: Joan is Awful

Recap: Black Mirror Series Six
Joan Is Awful | Loch Henry | Beyond the Sea | Mazey Day | Demon 79

"They're right about you, Joan."

"I feel like I'm not the main character in my own life story."

— Joan

Joan (Annie Murphy), an unsatisfied middle manager, has a bad day at work: she's unhappy with her boyfriend Krish (Avi Nash), she just had to fire a coworker, Sandy (Ayo Edebiri), and her ex Mac (Rob Delaney) is back in town. However, when she gets home, she learns that a video streaming service, Streamberry, has released a drama depicting her life to the letter, starring a CG likeness of Salma Hayek.

Co-starring Leila Farzad as Mona Javadi and Michael Cera as Beppe.

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Tropes:

• Accentuate the Negative: Streamberry's "[X] is Awful" shows embellish real events by making focus characters act more terribly than they do in real life. When questioned why this is, Streamberry CEO Javadi argued that audiences mostly responded to negative portrayals.
• Adam Westing: Salma Hayek describes herself as a "dyslexic, talented actress with questionable English". Throughout her scheme with Joan, she's coming up with airheaded ideas and inserting Spanish words into her dialogue for humor ("quam-puta"). Justified by the reveal that we have actually been watching the simulation's first layer, and the simulation of Hayek's "As Herself" portrayal has taken her public image into account.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: The more fictional characters get, the more handsome they become. The glamorous actress Salma Hayek is cast as the In-Universe actress playing Joan (played by a dressed-down Annie Murphy). Lampshaded by Mac who says that not getting it up to Annie-Murphy-Joan is fine, but his TV self (played by Ben Barnes) not getting it up to Salma-Hayek-Joan would be embarrassing.
• Adaptational Villainy: In-Universe: Salma-Hayek-Joan is significantly more mean-spirited than the Joan we follow. But since the broad events are the same, the people around quickly assume that the whole portrayal is accurate. Presumably, the Joan we follow is also portrayed as less sympathetic than the real Joan, while Cate Blanchett-Joan would have been worse than Salma Hayek-Joan.
• As Herself: Variation. A television show is greenlit about Joan's life, starring CG versions of actors who have signed away their likenesses: Salma Hayek as Joan, Himesh Patel as Krish, Ben Barnes as Mac, Jaboukie Young White as Eric, Camirin Farmer as Sandy, and Lolly Adefope as Joan's lawyer among others. They are even credited as such in the Show Within a Show. And then Salma Hayek herself shows up complaining about the depiction of her...The final twist is that we are already watching the first layer of the Nested Story, and Annie Murphy (Joan) shows up at the end as herself. So Murphy is the only one actually the "real actor" version of herself, Hayek et al are playing multiversal CG renditions of themselves... get it?
• Atomic F-Bomb: When Joan's lawyer immediately shoots down several proposals she brings up about bringing the show's creators to justice, she screams "FUCK!" so loudly that it alerts the people outside the room. When the best advice her lawyer can give is to "try and ignore it", she lets out another one shortly after.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Most of the actors in the Joan is Awful show have a decidedly stilted and fake delivery, with Salma-Hayek-as-Joan speaking most of her lines in a tone of Cold Ham. It would seem that emotion and genuine acting is still somewhat beyond AI in this universe.
• Betty and Veronica: How Joan describes her ex Mac and her fiancé Krish: with Mac it was temperamental and volatile and with Krish it was sweet and safe but vanilla.
• Big "NO!": Beppe when Joan, having surrendered control over herself to the real Joan, begins destroying the quantum computer with the axe.
• Bile Fascination: In-universe. As described by the CEO, the show confirms the audience's innermost fears and puts them in a state of mesmerized horror about themselves.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Streamberry is a reskinned version of Black Mirror's home streamer Netflix, with a red logo against a black background, the exact same "tu-dumm" startup noise, a nigh-identical UI and intro animation at the start of episodes, and subpar offerings ("it blows", "can't really do another true crime"). In addition to the obvious themes about how one views themselves from the perspectives of subject and audience member, it is also about how the streamer-produced show glamorizes and bastardizes its subjects.
• Cardboard Box of Unemployment: After Joan fires Sandy, she is seen being escorted out the building by security carrying a cardboad box of her things. Humiliatingly, Joan accidentally drops her cigarette onto Sandy's head as she walks below. The next day, she is escorted out with a similar box.
• Comically Wordy Contract: When printed out, Streamberry's online Terms and Conditions are the size of a book.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Two of the posters briefly seen on Mac's Smithereens app are Lacie Pound, the heroine of "Nosedive", and Tusk, from "Hated in the Nation".
  • Michael Callow and Colin Ritman are subjects of Streamberry documentaries. The streamer also has shows mentioned in other episodes of the season, such as "Loch Henry: Truth Will Out" (the doc it produces at the end of the next episode) and "Sea of Tranquility" (the TV show starring Justin Camley).
• Didn't Think This Through: Streamberry didn't seem to consider that the average person definitely wouldn't want their public and private lives on display to millions with no control over what's being shown, and actors wouldn't be happy about their likenesses being used in ways they don't approve of. Even if the company does have water-tight contracts that allow them to get away with this without being sued by multiple parties (which frankly seems unlikely; see Hollywood Law below) they'd still have tons of furious people complaining and dragging their brand through the mud, plus there are likely viewers who would take matters into their own hands and try to solve the problem in a more physical manner, as Joan and Salma Hayek/Annie Murphy do.
• Ends with a Smile: The episode ends with Joan and Annie beaming as they talk warmly to each other in the coffee shop, suggesting that Joan's managed to break her spiral of self-hatred thanks to Annie's intervention.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Joan and Salma sneak into the CEO's office at the right time to learn where the quamputer is located.
• Excrement Statement: In a fit of pique over her powerlessness, Joan rebels against the show copying her life by gorging on lots of fast food and drinking an entire bottle of laxatives so she can poop messily in the center aisle of a church during a wedding. Because the fictional version of her is depicted by a digital likeness of Salma Hayek, this offends the real Salma enough to confront her, and the two then team up to try and take down Streamberry. The Stinger shows that the real Joan did this, which suggests similar events played out between her and Annie Murphy.
• Firing Day: First Joan has to fire one of her workers, and later she gets fired herself.
• Flanderization: In-Universe examples:
  • It is shown that each simulation from the original makes the characters more and more stereotypical and flat, with Salma Hayek-Joan being more of a jerk, and this is presumably also the case with Annie Murphy-Joan.
  • Eric complains to his boyfriend that his portrayal in the show made him "the gayest man on Earth".
• Foreshadowing: Eric complains that his TV self is portrayed as "the gayest man ever", despite himself being quite effeminate. This makes sense when you find out that the world we've been following is an already exaggerated simulation of the real world; this complaint probably makes more sense coming from the real Eric, who may not be that camp at all.
• Freak Out: As the "Joan is Awful" show is uncannily accurate to Joan's life, even showing her singing along to the same hip hop song while driving to work, she begins to have a panic attack. She tries to suggest that this must be some elaborate prank from Krish as an attempt to rationalize it but is clearly grasping at straws.
• "Friends" Rent Control: Discussed. When Annie learns she's not the original iteration of herself, Beppe lampshades that the size of her apartment, which depending on where she lives is really big for someone on a middle manager's salary, should have given her a clue she's living in a TV show.
• Full-Name Basis: Salma Hayek is referred to by her full name by almost everyone in the episode. For most, it's out of respect; for Joan when she actually meets Hayek, it's out of a combination of reverence and (initially) fear.
  Joan: I understand that you're mad.
  Hayek: Oh, do you?
  Joan: Please don't kill me, Salma Hayek.
• Hollywood Homely: In-universe. Mac tells Joan (played by Annie Murphy) that it's one thing to not be able to get it up to her, but it's another thing not to be able to get it up to Salma Hayek in the TV show.
• Hollywood Law: The episode is clearly not aiming for anything resembling realism, since it creates an intentionally ridiculous and nonsensical legal environment in order to make its premise work. No matter how ironclad Streamberry's terms of service seem to be, the streaming service wouldn't be able to effectively enslave either its users or the actors that it employs. The terms of service are legally unconscionable, meaning they could never be enforced, and the shows that the service generates as a result of these terms sweep in multiple entities that aren't even party to the original contract.
• Hotter and Sexier: In-universe example, but Salma Hayek!Joan was clearly made to have more sex appeal than the real Joan, which includes passionately kissing Mac at the bar when the real Joan actually pulled away immediately. Likewise, Annie Murphy!Joan was likely made to be a hotter and sexier version of Source Joan.
• Info Dump: Beppe explains the mechanisms of the plot at great length to Salma Hayek and Annie Murphy-as-Joan. When a frustrated Joan hauls off and punches Beppe in the face, Hayek throws up her hands and says, "Thank you! He was so boring!"
• Is This a Joke?: When the Joan Is Awful show begins revealing how detailed its retelling of Joan's day is, the first thing she can think is that Krish has set it up as a prank. She presses him on "how he did it", and he insists he didn't do anything.
• LGBT Fanbase: In an In-Universe moment, the two gay characters take a break from being utterly confused by the show to fanboy about Cate Blanchett's appearance.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: Although Joan and Mac end up in bed together with sexual intents, Mac admits that he can't get hard due to nervousness over how them in bed is going to be depicted on the show. When Joan tries pointing out that it won't be them on screen, Mac responds that he'll have to be seen as "the guy who can't get it up for Salma Hayek".
• Modesty Bedsheet: Joan covers herself with Mac's sheets after getting out of bed with him.
• Mood Whiplash: The roughly first half of the episode has a mostly horrifying and grim tone as Joan's life begins to rapidly spiral downwards as a result of Joan is Awful. The introduction of the actual Salma Hayek leads to the story quickly shifting towards a more buddy/heist-like comedy further lightened by Hayek's vulgar remarks and fiery temperament.
• Mugshot Montage: The church scene cuts to Joan at the police station having mug shots taken from different angles.
• Noodle Incident: When Mac admits to Joan when they're in bed together that he can't get hard, Joan asks if he wants her to do "that horrible thing you love" to help. He changes the conversation topic to how what they're doing in that moment will end up in the next episode, and the "horrible thing" is never mentioned again.
• Paranoia Fuel: Streamberry can access any nearby device to spy on whoever agrees to their Terms of Service to mine data for content depicting their daily lives where they behave far worse than they actually do. This skews the perception of the audience that the subjects really are terrible as depicted, causing them to be shunned and disdained in their public lives. Joan naturally has a panic attack at how uncannily accurate "Joan is Awful" is to her life while still making her look...awful.
• Portmanteau: "Quantum" and "computer" come together to make Streamberry's "quamputer." Salma Hayek even doubles the portmanteau bilingually as "quam-puta."
• Race Lift: In-universe:
  • The real Joan is white and played by the white actress Annie Murphy. In the Streamberry show, she is played by Mexican actress Salma Hayek, and then happens to Salma Hayek in the other Streamberry show when she learns that the white Cate Blanchett is playing her.
  • Eric is white and played by Jared Goldstein while in the Streamberry show he is played by Jaboukie Young-White.
• Read the Fine Print: It turns out that Streamberry hid the watertight right to freely depict its users' lives in the terms and conditions, which no one reads. It also hid a watertight right to use CGI likenesses of actors in their contracts that even Hayek's lawyer missed, which subsequently gets him fired by Hayek and facing a potential lawsuit of his own for malpractice. The clause he mentions is something he should've caught during the contract negotiation, considering it was his job to catch exactly those sorts of clauses.
• Reboot Snark: As an example of how absurd some of Streamberry's ideas are, according to Salma Hayek, a future show the streamer has planned is a Thomas the Tank Engine reboot...starring George Clooney as Thomas.
• Recursive Reality: The show has multiple "fictive levels" — the characters are the first level of reality in Joan is Awful simulation (Joan one), and the Joan is Awful show Joan watches starring Salma Hayek as Joan is fictive level two, the show Hayek-Joan watches starring Cate Blanchett is fictive level three and so on. The quamputer hosts infinite depictions of reality. When the other people on fictive level one try to stop Annie Murphy-Joan from taking an axe to the quamputer, she figures that the real Joan is already trying to destroy it and does. In doing so she stops the plan to have every Netf—er, Streamberry subscriber have a show all about themselves.
• The Reveal: A simulation of Michael Cera as a "source" Streamberry technician tells Joan that she is in fact not real, but rather a generated version of the real Joan with the likeness of Annie Murphy. We've been watching the show the whole time, we're just as confused as you are.
• Self-Serving Memory: To a degree, Sandy. When Sandy is watching the scene of Joan Is Awful where show!Sandy is being fired, Sandy comments to her friend "You see what she is like?", ignoring that Joan didn't actually talk to her that way, and that show!Joan is being much colder and meaner than the real Joan. Justified, however, by the fact that Sandy had just been fired and that she was still mad about it.
• Sex with the Ex: Joan hooks up with her ex for solace after the loss of her current partner.
• Shout-Out:
  • In explaining how she got shafted by Streamberry, Salma Hayek mentions an old movie of hers.
    "First, they told me this was gonna be a prestige show, right? Look, I didn't think it was gonna be like my movie Frida, but I couldn't imagine that it was gonna be this."
  • Shortly after, Hayek states that Streamberry paid her a tenth of what they paid George Clooney, and the streamer is planning to "[stick] his head on a Thomas the Tank Engine reboot."
  • When brainstorming how to break into Mona Javadi's office, Hayek notes that her office is at the very top of Streamberry's headquarters and says, "We can't crawl on the side of the building like Spider-Mans."
• Sinister Surveillance: Streamberry is capable of gathering data for its eerily accurate portrayals of people in their shows through scraping data from every device around them capable of seeing and listening in on their actions.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: Joan crashes the wedding as the priest utters the "Let them speak now" line.
• The Stinger: A post-credits scene shows Source Joan's version of the pooping-in-the-church stunt.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: Surprisingly, judging by how bleak the first half of the episode is and this being Black Mirror. The real Joan destroys the computer and is finally free of having her show on Streamberry; while she is under house arrest and she has to get a new job, the episode implies she is happier managing a coffee shop than she was before in her corporate job with much healthier relationships all around, and she's doing really well in her therapy sessions. She even befriends Annie Murphy.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: After Salma gets past the lobby security at the Streamberry headquarters via a Bathroom Search Excuse, she is able to let Joan in through a backdoor and both reach the CEO's office without anyone in their way.
• Take That!:
  • The episode shows that studios having access to actors' likenesses and essentially using them to make deepfakes, as done in e.g. Rogue One, at their discretion can be used for abhorrent ends.
    Lawyer: They could depict Salma Hayek blowing an orangutan if they wanted to.
  • The episode also takes a stance against streamer algorithms and AI-generated art as shown by Joan and Salma/Annie's disgust at the Streamberry "quamputer", which automatically generates content ad infinitum.
• Think of the Children!: Joan is concerned when she sees kids cry while she's taking a dump at the church.
• Toilet Humor: After Joan realizes that the show will depict her life no matter what, she becomes determined to humiliate other people and starts with interrupting a wedding wearing a cheerleader outfit with a dick drawn on her forehead with lipstick and shitting in the aisle, courtesy of her having eaten multiple hamburgers followed by drinking a bottle of liquid laxative beforehand. The stunt is so disgusting that it gets the attention of the real Salma Hayek, who is upset that her likeness was used in such a way.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In the climax, the Joan we've been following (played by Annie Murphy) and her celebrity sidekick Salma Hayek are told that they're not the real Joan and Salma Hayek, nor is their world real: it is the first level of the Joan is Awful simulation. Protagonist Joan and Salma Hayek destroy the quantum computer making it all possible, and in the end we see the real Joan and Annie Murphy (whom Salma Hayek was simulating in the program) becoming friends.
• "Truman Show" Plot: Black Mirror already had used this trope in "White Bear", but while this episode is considerably more comedic on the surface, the twist is pretty scary on its own: what if EVERYBODY in the world was about to have their private life made into a TV show casting them as the villain?
• What Happened to the Mouse? : While parts of the first half of the episode focus on Joan's social circle like Krish, Sandy and Mac, they are completely dropped off by the second half (though it is likely due to the show they probably never want to speak to Joan ever again).
• What the Hell, Hero?: Even the rare positive portrayals in Joan is Awful are treated negatively, as Eric's boyfriend gets flack for comforting someone as awful as Joan when she was both not as mean as depicted and needed genuine comfort after the situation of having to fire someone.

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