SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses major plot developments in the “Black Mirror” episode “Common People,” currently streaming on Netflix.
Rashida Jones is an acting pro. But there’s a line in her “Black Mirror” episode “Common People” that she struggled to say on camera without laughing: “Ride smooth with Thirst Trap Lube.” That was hard enough — but then try saying that while face-to-face with a semi-naked Chris O’Dowd.
That line is just one of several comical moments in “Common People.” Others involve Tracee Ellis Ross, who plays a perma-upbeat yet increasingly sinister sales agent — a character she describes as the “representation of corporate greed.”
Laughs aside, “Common People” is one of the most depressing episodes in the not-exactly-uplifting “Black Mirror” repertoire, and it ends on a note almost as bleak as they come.
The episode follows Jones as a teacher who suffers from what would normally be a fatal brain tumor. But in walks Ellis Ross, who’s a beaming rep for medical tech outfit Rivermind. The company has developed a life-saving experimental procedure that will back up the impacted part of Jones’ brain onto its server — and for a monthly fee, beam it back down and enable her to function as normal. Magic!
Of course, as this is “Black Mirror,” there’s a dark catch. Jones and her husband (O’Dowd) soon find that their already exorbitant subscription is actually the lowest rung of Rivermind’s “exciting” new tiered-pricing system. Much costlier upgrades are now required to keep up with what Ellis Ross’ rep cheeringly describes as the “evolution of our service.”
Among those new Rivermind additions, for those not forking out for the next band: Advertisements, which Jones’ character unknowingly starts spouting at random intervals throughout the day. She promotes cereal over breakfast, tells students at her school about the latest offers on Nike sneakers and, while mid-coitus with O’Dowd, extolls the virtues of the aforementioned Thirst Trap Lube (“Available in six flavors, none of them vanilla”). Things get much, much worse from there.
Ellis Ross’ character is confronted with an increasingly frustrated Jones and O’Dowd (who has resorted to humiliating himself online in exchange for much-needed finances to pay for the upgrades), and she responds with more corporate marketing jargon. While her character is best described as “comically awful…. disturbingly awful,” Ellis Ross says she played it straight.
“I certainly was not playing somebody sinister, but it comes across as that,” she says. “I was playing the honesty of it, which is somebody who was caught in the same system that I’m selling.”
Jones describes “Common People” as a “larger treatise on corporate greed,” and “corporation manipulation.” But also notes that it highlights the “compromise of living in the modern world,” where almost every element of our existence is open to profit-making exploitation.
“We do sort of slowly give away ourselves, whether it’s like signing away your life on a user agreement that you’re not looking at because you just can’t wait for the update, or spending just hours of your time facing the screen,” Jones adds. “I mean, that is the whole kind of premise of ‘Black Mirror.’”
For anyone who remembers the Season 6 episode “Joan is Awful,” that story followed a woman who discovers her life has been adapted into a TV show on a very Netflix-like platform. Given the tiered-pricing element of “Common People,” could this be creator Charlie Brooker having another go at his Netflix paymasters over their new subscription arrangement?
“I don’t think that was not not his intention,” says Jones. “There absolutely is this kind of back and forth with Charlie and his overlords. But listen, they allow it, and I have to give mad respect.”
Ellis Ross, however, says she didn’t even make the connection between the storyline and the streamer.
“It did not even dawn on me,” she says. “I was too busy being heart-wrenched and appalled by what was happening.”
