Rachel, Jack and Ashley Two

Teenage sisters Rachel and Jack Goggins, along with their father Kevin, recently moved to a new area. Their mother died two years ago. Kevin Goggins at home unsuccessfully tries to develop a humane mousetrap in which the rodent remains alive. To do this, he uses high-tech neurophysiological equipment of his own design and computer technology. Rachel and Jack are almost the same age, but their musical tastes are different: Jack prefers hard rock , and Rachel is a fan of the famous pop singer Ashley O.

Ashley O at the pinnacle of success, her aunt Katherine is also the manager and ideological inspirer of the singer. They even launched an Ashley Two interactive robot doll, which is almost an electronic copy of Ashley O, because, thanks to modern technology, it has become a full-fledged interlocutor. However, the real Ashley had a creative crisis, she likes a completely different direction in music - rock in particular. Under the influence of pharmaceutical preparations , which Ashley takes under the direction of her aunt, according to the contract, which is the guardian until the 25th anniversary of the singer, she is actually in creative slavery.

For her fifteenth birthday, Rachel receives a gift from her relatives - the Ashley Two robot. Rachel is thrilled, but Jack doesn't like it. She believes that the doll is bad for her sister. By chance it turns out that the cause of the Ashley O crisis is that she has not been taking the drugs recommended for her for a long time and is going to get rid of her aunt's guardianship. Catherine Ortiz, mixing tablets into Ashley’s food, brought her into a state of artificial coma and decided to use Ashley’s biocurrents to benefit from processing the information received from her. When Ashley Two found out that Ashley O was in a coma, she had a memory failure. Upset Rachel and her sister tried to restore the robot by connecting their father to the equipment. And then it turned out that the robot’s memory contains a full copy of Ashley O’s mind, and Rachel and Jack accidentally released the lock, which allowed the robot to use only a small part of the memory. As a result, Ashley Two became a full-fledged copy of Ashley O. Ashley Two asked Rachel and Jack to help her get into Ashley O's house and pick up evidence against Aunt Katherine, who she collected before a coma to break her contract that was not wanting.

Having made their way to Ashley Two's house, she tried to kill Ashley O, who was in a coma, explaining to Rachel and Jack that the real Ashley would never want to live that way. Instead, Ashley O regained consciousness, and the four of them ran away from the singer’s house and came to the presentation of Aunt Katherine, who gathered using the memory of her niece, extracted for the production of Ashley Two and her holographic copy under the name Ashley Eternal to continue concert tours. In the final credits, Ashley O in a new image, along with Jack, performs at a rock concert in the nightclub that Ashley O had long dreamed of

Rachel, Jack and Ashley Two was released by Netflix, an entertainment company that specializes in movies and TV shows based on streaming multimedia , along with the entire fifth season of Black Mirror on June 5, 2019. Also, the interactive film “ Black Mirror: Brandashmyg ” was supposed to enter the fifth season, but it was decided to separate it into a separate full-length film. Unlike the other seasons of the series, in the fifth season, according to the creators, it was decided to release only three episodes so that the audience did not have to wait long ^[1] .

Although the story takes place in the USA , in fact, the shooting was made in South Africa in Cape Town . Charlie Brucker explained that basically the “Black Mirror” is filmed in South Africa , Great Britain , Canada or Spain . Filming was never done in the USA. It is too expensive, and also dangerous - in America they shoot a lot. And the necessary places and landscapes for filming can be found outside the United States. In Cape Town, many places are like Los Angeles and the whole crew was sent there. In November 2018, Miley Cyrus was also noticed there, in connection with which they began to connect her appearance with the series “Black Mirror” ^[2] .

The script for the episode was written by Charlie Brucker, based on his script written several years ago about a rock band whose members tragically cut short at one point, and then they were resurrected and marveled at how their former manager made a profit from their holographic copies at performances . Brucker also stated that he hates modern holographic concerts of such former famous artists as Prince , Whitney Houston and others. Executive producer of the episode Annabelle Jones noted the positive influence of the singer Miley Cyrus on the overall mood of the work. Her personal experience as a pop singer helped, in addition, she introduced a feeling of some vulnerability to Ashley, behind whom there is a “terrible trend of a pop star”. Miley showed a great artist who wants to be individual, who wants to break out of a commercial car ^[3] .

In June 2019, the song “ On a Roll ” performed by Miley Cyrus was released as a separate single ^[4] .

The episode received rather mixed reviews from critics who praised the game of Miley Cyrus, but at the same time criticized the plot. The episode has a 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes , based on 38 reviews and is the lowest rating for the episode at the time of release ^[5] .

In addition, in Russia there is an opinion that in fact the main episodes are the humane mousetraps of Kevin Goggins, and the main character is not Rachel, but Jack. It was she who was preoccupied with memories, listens to songs that her mother loved, plays the guitar all day, but never performs. Keeps a distance with others, but, nevertheless, Jack performs decisive actions: hides the doll, drives a car, sneaks into Ashley’s house and attacks the doctor. It is not surprising that it was she who ended up singing on stage together with her changed image and name Ashley ^[6] .

• " Rachel, Jack and Ashley Two on the Internet Movie Database
• "On a Roll" song on Netflix
• References to other episodes of the Black Mirror
• Easter eggs all season 5