I’m shook!

when they just went back to the save mode. I can’t stop thinking about it. Poor Brandy. I know there’s theories that Clara/Dorothy was still somehow changed, but theoretically she had been restored back to her original version. So I’m not sure how true that can be, although I do hope it is

But yeah I can’t stop thinking about this episode and Brandy. If I was her I would have freaked out and shouted during the filming to bring back Clara

Hollywood A-list actor Brandy Friday is thrown into an unusually immersive high-tech remake of a vintage romantic movie. She’s got to stick to the script if she ever wants to make it home.

Directed by: Haolu Wang

Written by: Charlie Brooker

Previous episode: Bête Noire

Next episode: Plaything

Black Mirror

Season 7 Episode 3: Hotel Reverie

Directed by: Haolu Wang

Written by: Charlie Brooker

I know a lot of people are calling this episode unwatchable or skipping it entirely, but Hotel Reverie did something to me that I honestly can’t explain and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

It gave me a feeling I haven’t had since Hang the DJ or San Junipero… but maybe even more bittersweet. This wasn’t just another love story it felt like a dream I somehow stumbled into. One of those vivid dreams where, when you wake up, you lie there with your eyes closed, wishing you could go back… even though you know you can’t. The world moves on, but you remember. And the memory hurts, but in a beautiful way.

There’s this one line Kimmy said “Don’t worry, it’ll reset to the scorpion scene. She won’t remember a thing.” That shattered me. It made me think about how love, time, and memory can all exist in such fragile little bubbles and how sometimes, the person you loved doesn’t even know it ever happened.

I know people are saying the acting was off but honestly? That awkwardness is what made it work for me. It gave the episode this weird, uncomfortable realism, like a vintage romance trapped in a digital space. It was awkward, but still intimate like watching something that wasn’t supposed to be perfect, but wasn’t trying to be. It kept me hooked in that quiet, aching way.

I found comfort in this episode even in the sadness. I felt connected, in awe, melancholy, full of reverie… all at once. It gave me a kind of emotional ache that I almost want to hold onto, because feeling something that deeply even from fiction reminds me I’m alive.

Hotel Reverie wasn’t just an episode to me. It was a feeling. And I wish I could replay it in my heart like it was the first time over and over again.

I just truly wonder if anyone else felt this way as well with this episode.

When the company sends Brandy a way for her to communicate with Clara again, it's not even Clara she's talking to, it's Dorothy.

At the start of the episode, Brandy researches Dorothy Chambers before landing the role of Alex and watches a video. You can see the company recreated the footage (from the ending) of a video called Dorothy Chambers Screen Test, so it's not even a version of Clara she's talking to, but a version of Dorothy playing her role as Clara. It's not even a semblance of the character Brandy managed to fall in love with, but of the actress who hasn't even started playing the role in the movie. Same face, but totally different person. Makes the ep's ending more bleak in my opinion.

(realized this when I was writing it in a comment)

I’m 3 episodes in, & I just finished Hotel Reverie. This one was magnificent, I found myself smiling for the characters. As someone who has a love of the silver screen, this was such a pleasure to watch. What a unique twist on a love story!

Has anyone here ever Googled something along the lines of, “can people fall in love with Ai?” I have, lol. I felt devastated after watching Common People, though it was an amazing episode! Mortifying of course, but I love Black Mirror for that reason. This episode however left me with the complete opposite feeling. Perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly was mine. 🖤

So excited to have another season of Black Mirror! I was planning on binging it, but I had to stop after Hotel Reverie. A nice episode to take a break after, from the emotional ride from ep01 to ep03.

Frankly, I loved Hotel Reverie, and I actually came to the sub expecting similar reactions from others. I was genuinely surprised that this was one of the lowest rated episodes.

I actually wasn’t familiar to any of the actresses on the episode, so I would like to think that I wasn’t biased. I thought both of the leading actresses played their respective parts perfectly to the creator’s envisions. I loved the fact that the ‘real human’ Brandy’s acting seemed like a ‘bad acting’ compared to the ai generated Dorothy- I thought that was intentional for viewers to be more emotionally/ humanly attached to Dorothy. The seemingly out-of-touch vibe that Brandy had went so well with this episode, given that she was actually the only person who was ‘out of this world’. Some people say that this was how Issa Rae usually acts, then I’d like to give credits to the casting dept. for casting the right person.

When Dorothy dies I was bawling out, then I thought it so strange that I was crying for an ai character. That was the moment when I felt this was another superb episode, because it showed in a relatively short amount of time how Brandy was feeling, and more broadly how people tend to personify and be emotionally vested in non-living things.

There’s a lot more I want to say about this episode, but I wanted to give my two cents on the cast since that seems to be one of the major turn off for a lot of folks.

I just watched th3 episode and finished with tears. I love black mirrors disturbing episodes but this was a nice change. That moment when they got contact again and they just counted down to 5 to roll back with the main character not knowing what to do was so saddening.

I wish they send her a sort of portable system so she could go back in. But the telephone was nice.

This was a 10/10

I'm usually a bit apprehensive because bi characters in shows and movies tend to be very stereotypical and annoyingly written, but here I think the relationship between these characters was very engaging and well done. Also, Issa Rae and Emma Corrin are awesome in it. I was at first a bit wary from the "female remake" part of the plot, but it ended up becoming something quite a bit more interesting.

I’m unsure whether or not this opinion is popular, but I generally disliked this episode in season 7.

For starters, the story felt really unnatural - from the strange time limit that the crew had, to the main character’s confusing role as an actor - I mean was she famous or not?

I guess I might be overly complaining, but the whole episode felt very Netflixy and not much like a black mirror episode.

I personally loved the dynamic between the two main characters, their connection felt relatively organic and really emotional, but the whole ‘dystopian’ element that we see in this series felt lacking here.

I’m talking about the AI element of the story - they really could have further explored Dorothy’s understanding of herself once she is told who/what she really is.

I feel like the best black mirror episodes balance well the emotional story and the dystopian aspect of the narrative (I think San Junipero is a really good example of this)

Anyway just wanted to put this out there, this really felt like the least appealing episode of the season 🥲

I saw so many bad reviews pertaining to Issa’s acting and this is my take -

I feel like this went over too many peoples heads. Issa Rae is an actress PLAYING an actress. At the end of the episode Brandy Friday receives good reviews for her performance in the film because she wasn’t acting - she watches Dorothy die after having spent months in isolation with her, only to fall in love. Then to IMMEDIATELY lose her while having to ACT as if none of it happened? The reviews favored her character because it was real. Issa Rae sobbing, weeping over her saying “no” when she’s told to read her line. LIKE HELLO please don’t be dense because Issa knew the assignment! Seperate her from the character. She wasn’t playing Issa just like Miley wasn’t playing Miley.

~ side note ~ I did see reviews pertaining to the episode’s laziness and my other * take * is the storytelling could have absolutely gotten more in depth. it deserved the same layers as white christmas. would have loved to learn more about dorothy individually and saw more of her and brandy fall in love. hoping now that the uss callister sequel has proven to be a masterpiece maybe they will consider the idea of elaborating on this story - especially considering the slight cliff hanger.

So I just finished Hotel Reverie, and I had multiple moments of confusion, to the point that it was really distracting. That was surprising to me because I’ve seen many people who loved the episode and said the inconsistencies can be understood with a little thinking. Am I just dumb?

• if I got the time dilation thing right, it’s safe to say that Brandy was stuck there for many months. I missed seeing a moment—maybe a few days in?—where she would really freak out, thinking she’d be there forever. But most importantly, why did she react as if everything was normal when the crew made contact again? Shouldn’t this person be deeply changed after months in a confined space?”

• When time progression is back to normal, someone asks why is Brandy acting weird (she wasn’t, all things considered) and Awkwafina says something like “I don’t know”. Shouldn’t she be super concerned about Brandy’s mental state? Even the way she contacted her right after the time dilation sounded so inconsiderate to me.

• How did Dorothy’s AI access memories about her past life? Where does the data come from? Was it a poetic way of showing she gained knowledge about her life facts that were public? But then how did she remember the crew member she was into?

• Awkwafina said if Dorothy was arrested she would experience that forever. Why? Couldn’t they just turn the simulation off?

• Did they want to make a movie that was the same but with a replaced actress? Why? And then why use a technology that gives you so little control over the course of the narrative?

The fact that so many people loved this episode is making me rethink both my capacity for interpretation and what it takes to write a screenplay that works emotionally for the public in general.

Few shows are able to make me feel such strong emotions. Capture what it means to be alive.

When done well, black mirror can make you feel alive. The true escapism from our day to day lives we so dearly need.

Hotel reverie is soaked with depth, actresses and actors capable of transferring that profound emotion. How it keeps you on edge the whole time and yet pulls you deeper into the hopeless romance is much beyond me.

I wish I could rewatch, having forget the episode, and feel that emotional journey again.

Thank you to the writers of hotel reverie

I really did not like this episode I’m gonna be honest. One of the worst episodes of black mirror I’ve seen.

1. I felt like there were too many coincidences, firstly with the fact that the flashdrive explaining the AI thing coincidentally fell out of the package that Brandy got in the mail. Then later on, the coffee cup “accidentally” spilled on the computer powering the AI. Now, while you guys might think “2 coincidences isn’t a lot” it definitely felt like a lot for black mirror cause’ their episode plots are usually amazing and flow super well so I’m not sure what happened with this one.

2. I’m gonna be honest I really didn’t like the actress they chose to play Brandy, I don’t think she embodied the two roles at all. Basically as you know, in the episode the main actress is playing Brandy, and Brandy is playing Alex, so she’s basically playing two roles at once, and it didn’t feel like that at all. It felt like she was just playing Brandy the whole time and it genuinely bothers me because here’s the thing I understand that even for a seasoned actor it can be hard to switch between roles just like that, but in this specific case it was actually quite easy because all Brandy had to do was put on a transatlantic accent. I also feel like she could’ve delivered certain lines in a way more romantic-sounding way. Like I felt like not only did she not put effort into showcasing Alex as a character by changing her accent, but she also didn’t deliver her lines in a romantic way so it was very confusing when Dorothy fell in love with her. Like you wouldn’t really get feelings for someone who has this confused/“what’s going on” kind of undertone to everything they say. Also there is a point in the episode where she has a bit of a breakdown and ends up going off on Dorothy by saying “I’M NOT ALEX AND NONE OF THIS IS REAL” and I truly feel like this was a missed opportunity because had Brandy been portraying Alex with the accent/charm, then it would’ve made her breakdown so much more powerful and we would’ve gotten to actually see it in real time. But we didn’t. I will add, just to make this review not seem as negative, I felt like the the actress who played Brandy did a phenomenal job in that last scene where she was holding Dorothy in her arms as she was dying, like that was genuinely such a beautiful scene and she delivered there for sure. I also loved the actress who played Dorothy, she killed that role.

Feel free to let me know what you guys think about my critiques, but try to keep it respectful. If you saw the episode and really liked it then that’s fine. Me disliking it is not an attack on you, it’s just my opinion.

They set rules only to immediately break them. Each second in the real world is "6-7 hours" in the movie, yet in the very next scene we see characters in both worlds interacting in real time with each other. Then after establishing a long time has passed, the studio heads are confused and frustrated that after being frozen for months the actors would be disoriented?? It's more than a plot hole it's a plot cavern.

Issa Rae was a terrible casting choice that made this episode unwatchable. She was awful, not sure if it's because she can't act or because she didn't want to put any effort into it, but she wasn't even trying.

I liked the story, the rest of the cast was also good, but Rae just ruined it.

I am sitting here writing this through tears, that broke my heart in fucking two.

A new startup wants to cheaply remake movies by putting actors in a simulation. Okay, fine, pretty classic concept. We're putting a twist on an old classic romance movie by genderswapping the main character since a famous actress is the first one to volunteer. Okay, sounds interesting, and it makes me happy to see gay characters in mainstream places like this. Beside the new black female actress now in the main role we are changing nothing else about the movie and in fact the entire goal of the simulation is to be as close to the original movie as possible, and when inevitably things go differently from the original movie, everything breaks, the character AIs become sentient, and we trap an A-list actress inside a frozen black-and-white old movie world for multiple months and run the risk of killing her or leaving her there forever. What? Did we lose a thread here?

I just don't understand the point of the technology. I can understand the theming and the satire of bad remakes or whatever but in what world is this going to be something that somebody considers putting in the time and obscene amount of money into producing? Especially when it's so ridiculously prone to error--both the software itself and the things they probably should've thought through for more than two seconds? Did they at no point consider double-checking that Issa Rae could play piano, seeing as it's an important plot element and it screws up the entire movie when she can't? They didn't consider giving her a little direction or making sure she knew her lines before she entered the movie, seeing as the tiniest mistake butterfly effects into the entire plot breaking down? Why did they even bother to make AI characters that realistically react to everything and a world with internal logic that changes based on what happens, if they're just going to desperately try to stick to the plot of the original movie anyway? Who is going to go see a movie in theaters that is just the same exact old movie, black-and-white and everything, except now the main character is a different actress? What is the point of a bunch of nerd characters sitting outside going "exposition delivered", "romantic tension rising", are these metrics we're measuring? Are these statistics we're keeping track of? What is the point of saying "character backstory delivered" like it's some big operation when she's literally just reading the line off the script? Hello? Can anybody hear me? Why is my wife's boyfriend so much more attractive than me? It's just so full of plot holes and inconsistencies and it killed what I think could've been a very good love story otherwise. Like, I love the love story. It was genuinely heartbreaking, and I do think it was fairly well-acted, especially on Issa Rae's part considering the script she was given. But every time something sad happened all I could think about was that stupid nerd dude going "exposition delivered" and spilling his coffee and then I was too busy laughing to actually feel something. Just ridiculous all around

EDIT: unrelated but seeing balatro did make me jump out of my seat and point at the screen like a wojak so at least the episode had that going for it

EDIT 2: Lots of people are condescendingly telling me that this is a sci-fi show where ridiculous things happen which was something I didn't know when I was writing this post or watching this episode or the entire rest of the series, so thank you all for keeping me informed. ❤️

It's not the sci-fi that's the problem for me, guys. Almost every other episode in the series makes sense to me. This one specifically doesn't make sense because, in my opinion, it's poorly written and has no internal logic behind the central concept whatsoever. I would not have made it through the entire rest of the show multiple times if the sci-fi was the issue.

I love the concept. I love the story. I love the actress who played Clara, and even Awkwafina played her part well.

But Issa Rae as Brandy? Oh boy.

EASILY the worst acting I’ve seen in a long time, especially for Black Mirror. I genuinely think anybody could have played her role better. Her acting was horrible, line delivery (both as the doctor and as Brandy) was shit, and on top of this, ZERO chemistry with Emma (Clara).

I am so disappointed with this episode because it had so much potential. I was completely unable to get immersed in it as I do with other BM episodes SOLELY due to the lead actress’ lack of acting ability. I mean, seriously. I was waiting all episode for her to change her facial expression a single time.