San junipero

The action begins on a beach similar to California in the town of San Junipero in 1987. A shy girl Yorkie ( Mackenzie Davis ) visits San Junipero for the first time and enters a local bar. Suddenly, Kelly ( Gugu Mbatha Rowe ) sits down to her and pretends to be old friends to send off her ex-boyfriend Wes. Kelly tells Wes that she wants to spend time with Yorkie. As a result, Wes leaves, and Kelly and Yorkie really spend time together. Between them there is a sexual attraction, Yorkie claims to be engaged to a guy named Greg, but this does not stop Kelly. Despite the interest, Yorkie leaves.

Next week, Yorkie again at the bar notices Kelly, who is flirting with another man. Yorkie says she’s ready now, they kiss and go to Kelly’s bungalow, where they have sex. Yorkie admits that this is her first sex, and Kelly - that she was previously married. The scene ends at exactly midnight.

Next week, Yorkie searches for Kelly, but cannot find. She spots Wes and asks him where Kelly is. Wes encourages her to “try another time” and reports that “I saw her in the 80s, 90s, and even once in 2002.” Yorkie spends several weeks searching for Kelly and finds her in 2002. They quarrel, Kelly says that in the real world she dies and just wants to relax, not having a strong relationship in San Junipero. They sleep together again and Kelly tells Yorkie that she wants to meet her in real life.

In the real world, the 2040s continue and the latest technology allows you to download the consciousness of people who are dying or have already died to a system of simulating reality, where they can live forever young in the city of San Junipero. Living people can get to San Junipero only "on a visit," the time of visits is limited to five hours a week. Old Kelly (Denise Burns) dies of cancer. She comes to visit old Yorkie, a completely paralyzed woman connected to a life support device. Yorkie was paralyzed as a result of a suicide attempt after her parents abandoned her because of her homosexuality.

San Junipero’s technology is relatively new, so now Yorkie has a chance to live a full life. She plans to transfer her consciousness to the cloud storage after death - this process is called the "transition". Since her family is very religious, none of them wants to sign documents that would allow Yorkie to make the transition, so she decides to marry Greg, a nurse, so that he can officially represent her interests. Upon learning of this, Kelly spontaneously asks for an additional few minutes in San Junipero, where he invites Yorkie to marry her, and Yorkie agrees. They get married, and Kelly signs documents regarding Yorkie's euthanasia, which takes place a few hours after the wedding.

Yorkie is moving to San Junipero, but is disappointed that she can see Kelly only a few hours a week. She asks Kelly also to make the transition, but she refuses. She plans to die without moving to San Junipero, as her husband, with whom she lived for 49 years, did. Kelly and her husband had a daughter who died at the age of 39. And when Kelly's husband was offered a move to San Junipero, he refused, because their daughter did not have such an opportunity. Yorkie and Kelly quarrel, and Kelly leaves.

As time passes, Kelly’s condition in the real world is getting worse. In the end, she changes her mind and decides to make the transition, so she and Yorkie can live happily forever. Her real body is buried with her husband and daughter. In the scene during the credits you can see how the computer operates with an array of data from people who transferred their consciousness to San Junipero.

Brooker wrote the script for San Junipero because he wanted to create a historical drama within the framework of the Black Mirror, and he was inspired by nostalgic therapy for the elderly ^[2] . In the first version of the script, the love line was between a heterosexual couple, but Brooker changed it. In his opinion, this gave the episode an additional resonance, since in 1987 same-sex marriages were illegal.

• Brooker admitted that he decided to use the song “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” performed by Belinda Carlyle (which sounds at the beginning and in the end credits of the episode) after hearing her in the Spotify podcast in the 1987 music playlist - this time he just started writing a script.
• At 28:31, there is an inclusion of a fragment from the clip “ Ironic ” - the third single Alanis Morissette from the 1995 album Jagged Little Pill . To the right of the screen in the frame at this moment the “1996” sign is displayed.

The episode received positive reviews from critics and was called ^{[by whom? ]} one of the best in the series.

• Benjamin Lee of The Guardian noted that “the episode leads the viewer to amazing, but certainly painful places” ^[3] .
• Tim Goodman from The Hollywood Reporter praised "emotionality that only the most bastard person will not make a tear" ^[4] .
• Adam Chitwood with Collider and Matt Fowler with IGN described the episode as "the best episode of the season" ^{[5] [6]} .

• " San Junipero " on the Internet Movie Database