Bete Noire – The episode begins with Maria (Siena Kelly) giving her boyfriend a sneak peek at her latest snack creation.
Sometime later, Maria is showcasing her snack before a panel at work with Verity Greene (Rosy McEwen) shows up. Maria immediately recognizes her from school together. Verity is the only member of the panel to initially like Maria’s snack. When Verity says the snack grows on you and suggests the others give it another go, they fall in love with it.
Later that day, Maria runs into Verity in the bathroom. Verity tells her that she is going to apply for the R&D assistant position. This is the first Maria has heard of the position. After speaking with Verity, Maria goes online and learns that there is a position open. She also checks with Gabe (Ben Bailey Smith). He not only confirms that the position is open but he says that Mr. Ditta (Ravi Aujla) is into one of her snacks and will be stopping by the office on Thursday.
Later that evening, Maria tells her boyfriend about her day and running into Verity.
On Tuesday Verity is hired for the position. Maria goes back to Gabe and tells him that he should look into Verity’s resume because in school she was a bit odd. Maria goes home to complain to her boyfriend about the company hiring Verity. When asked she claims that she doesn’t have beef with it.
Wednesday at work Gabe tells Maria that he checked out Verity’s resume and everything checked out well. He also tells Maria that Verity will be working with her to learn the ropes. Sometime later, Maria shows Verity her new mallow concept, the Doubloon, and gives her the specs. Later that day at work, Maria gets into an argument with a coworker about a popular chicken fast food place. Maria claims that the chain’s name is Barnie’s because her boyfriend used to work there. The coworker claims that it is Bernie’s. Verity also eventually chimes in and says that the name was Bernie’s. The argument gets so intense that they end up looking it up online to discover that Maria was wrong. She still refuses to believe it and even goes home to confirm with her boyfriend. He claims that it was also Bernie’s.
Maria reaches out to one of her old friends from school. At first, she thinks about mentioning that she ran into Verity but changes her mind. Either way, it doesn’t matter because her friend doesn’t contact her back.
Thursday Ditta comes into the office. He tries some of Maria’s concoctions and loves them. Before he leaves, he invites Maria along for their trip to Berlin. Once he is gone, the team learns that they accidentally fed him beef because of a mistake Verity made with the ingredients. When Verity and Maria are called into the office, Verity claims that Maria made a mistake when she e-mailed her the ingredients. When they look at the e-mail, it turns out that Verity was right and Maria made a mistake. Maria apologizes to Verity but goes back into Gabe’s office and swears that Verity altered the e-mail somehow. Gabe asks Maria if she wants to take some time off and tells her that she is starting to look vindictive.
Maria later tells Kae (Michael Workeye) her story. He tells her that maybe Verity didn’t change the e-mail. The conversation doesn’t get much further because Maria receives a message from her friend’s husband, who tells her that Natalie passed away a few days ago. Maria calls Dan after receiving the text. Dan tells her that Natalie killed herself and in the days up to her death, she was being paranoid and accusing people of lying about stupid things.
Maria arrives at work Friday to learn that she’s someone missed a team meeting. After Verity tells her about the meeting she asks her if she has a problem with her. Maria tells her that she never had a problem with her and apologizes that she had such a hard time in school. After this, Maria watches Verity deliberately drink coworker’s Almond Milk.
After the meeting, Verity accuses Maria of drinking the Almond Milk. Gabe says that they can just check the security camera and see who really drank it. When they watch the footage back it shows Maria drinking the milk. She says that it’s not even possible for her to drink the milk because she has a nut allergy. When she mentions nut allergy everyone acts like they’ve never heard of the term before. Even when Maria looks the term up on Google, it’s as if it doesn’t exist. All the while this is going on, Maria notices Verity playing with a pendant around her neck. She begins to suspect this is how Verity is making all this happen. Maria flips out so bad that she gets fired.
Later that night, Maria follows Verity home from work and breaks into her huge house. When she breaks in, she finds what appears to be this huge computer server room downstairs. Maria finds Verity’s pendant while she takes a shower but can apparently access it. She ends up having to hide under Verity’s bed when she comes out of the shower. While under the bed, Maria does something to the pendent and causes it to make a noise. Verity immediately knows Maria is under her bed and tells her to come out.
Verity explains how the pendant is just a remote and is tied to a computer downstairs that changes reality. She also shows Maria how it works. Verity eventually tells her that she is doing this because Natalie told her that she started the rumor about her and Mr. Kendrick. Maria admits to starting the rumor but says she didn’t know why. Verity tells Maria that she has done just about anything, but all that teasing is still in the back of her mind. Verity tells her that it took her 5 weeks to break Natalie but it’s only been 5 days for her. When she asks Maria how she thinks she’ll kill herself, Maria attacks her. They struggle for a while but Verity eventually gains the upper hand and changes reality so that it makes it look like Maria broke into her house with a knife and is trying to kill her.
As Maria is being arrested, she steals one of the cop’s guns and shoots Verity in the head. She also starts a shootout with the cops. In the struggle, Maria eventually gets to the pendent and activates it with Verity’s finger. She then turns herself into the empress of the universe.
Dark Mirror Review
This was a very intriguing conceptual idea. I was wondering how Verity was controlling everything. I figured it had to be some huge sort of supercomputer, but I will admit that at one point I thought she might have been using black magic. Either way, this was another well-done Black Mirror episode. I don’t think it was as quite as good as the first episode, but I am not mad that I watched it. I’d have to give it a 5.9 out of 10.
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