‘Black Mirror’ Season 6: “Joan Is Awful,” explained
Explosive diarrhea, Netflix shade, and a fictional multiverse? What a way to start the new season of Black Mirror.
“Joan Is Awful,” the first episode of Season 6, is aptly all about Joan (Annie Murphy), an average gal with questionable taste like the rest of us. Except, unlike all of us able to keep our secrets, well, secret, Joan wakes up one day to find her entire life mirrored on a TV series. Streamberry, Black Mirror‘s satirized version of Netflix, is airing a new show, Joan Is Awful, starring none other than Salma Hayek Pinault as Joan. Cue Alexa Demie’s “Wait, is this fucking play about us?”.
Joan’s life isn’t just generally being adapted for TV, these are specific, private, and extremely recent moments. Naturally, she’s terrified, pissed off, and determined to pursue legal action against Streamberry, but the company’s likeness usage rights are airtight thanks to details wedged in the company’s terms and conditions (that of course, nobody reads).
There’s a lot more to “Joan Is Awful” than meets the eye, with the episode taking us through twists and turns as Joan tries to figure out what’s going on. Let’s dive in.
How and why is Streamberry making “Joan Is Awful?”
When Joan meets with her lawyer (Wunmi Mosaku) to plan legal moves against Streamberry, she learns the show is actually all CGI. Hayek has sold the streaming service the rights to her digital likeness to be used in the show, so Joan’s actually just watching a bunch of coded, realistic animations not real-life actors. Joan’s lawyer also explains that Streamberry knows the finer details of her day thanks to constant audio monitoring through devices including her phone. She likens the situation to talking about a certain product to a friend, then finding an advertisement for said product on one’s social media. Basically, they’re always listening.
But why is Streamberry actually making Joan Is Awful like this? As explained by CEO Mona Javadi (Leila Farzad), the company is using a unique quamputer (aka quantum computer) as “an infinite content creator capable of willing entire multiverses into existence.”
“The aim here is to launch unique, tailored content to each individual in our database, all 800 million of them, created on the fly by our system. The most relatable content imaginable.”
And why “awful” instead of “awesome”? Javadi says audiences are addicted to watching the worst versions of themselves on screen. “It confirm[s] their innermost fears and put[s] them in a state of mesmerized horror, which really drives engagement,” she says. “They literally can’t look away.” According to Streamberry’s research, if viewers had the option to hear the nicest things people have said about them vs. the worst, we’d all inevitably be itching to hear the worst, despite how painful it would be. Joan Is Awful appropriates this human tendency for self-deprecation and monetizes it as a show, with zero regard for Joan’s privacy.
After all, everyone, including Joan, will watch it.
What happens at the end of “Joan Is Awful”?
Realizing she has no legal case against Streamberry, Joan decides to teach the streaming company a lesson by doing something that would embarrass the hell out of the real Salma Hayek Pinault if it appeared on the show. So, Joan decides to shit all over a church during a wedding. Brilliant idea.
Hayek, naturally, is furious with her crappy onscreen representation and threatens to bring her own lawsuit against the show, but that airtight contract means she, like Joan, is out of luck there. So, she teams up with Joan to put an end to the show. The duo stealth their way into Streamberry’s headquarters where they find the quamputer responsible for generating the show — and Joan destroys it once and for all.
But there’s a major plot twist in this sequence. As Michael Cera’s producer character Beppe explains, the Joan and Hayek Pinault we’ve been watching the entire episode aren’t real. Joan is one version of many Joans existing in different fictional worlds built by Streamberry. And they’ve all been coded to behave on the pretense of what “source Joan,” aka the actual real Joan, has already done in her own universe. What? Let’s break it down.
“Joan is Awful” is basically a show within a show.
The easiest way to understand the episode’s plot twist, and Beppe’s convoluted explanation, is to think of it as levels.
There’s Ground Zero: This is the real world, our world dare I say. The actual Joan (played by Kayla Lorette) that inspired Joan Is Awful to begin with, lives here. In this level, Joan is watching the actor Annie Murphy play out her life. So basically, everything we were watching as an audience, is what source Joan was watching as well.
Then there’s Level One: In this world Joan is played by Annie Murphy, who thinks she’s real because she’s been coded to believe that. But Murphy’s Joan isn’t real at all. Instead, she’s a CGI version of the real Joan in Ground Zero (IRL). And in this level, Murphy’s Joan is watching Salma Hayek Pinault play Annie Murphy.
Then there’s Level Two: In this world Hayek Pinault’s Joan is watching Cate Blanchett play her on screen.
Then there’s Level Three: Blanchett’s Joan exists here, and she’s probably watching another A-list actor play her as well (let the theories run amok of who that might be, I’m hoping it’s Meryl Streep).
The levels continue to build off each other to create many worlds within worlds, and shows within shows, but none of them are actually real. Everything starting from Level One is a simulation, the only “real Joan” is the one existing in ground zero. This Joan is the one who shat in a church (check the episode’s post credits to see that scene). This Joan is the one who actually destroyed Streamberry’s quamputer. And this Joan is the one who triggered the events we see Murphy’s Joan doing throughout the episode.
In Ground Zero, the real Murphy teamed up with the real Joan to stop Streamberry. In Level One, Hayek Pinault (playing Hayek Pinault) teamed up with Murphy’s Joan to stop the show. And in Level Two, we can assume that Blanchett’s going to team up with Hayek Pinault’s Joan to stop the show as well. All levels are just a mirror of things that have already happened in Ground Zero.
While the many worlds of “Joan Is Awful” may be a brain teaser at first — is it even a Black Mirror episode without one? — the answer is simple when you break everything down. Season 6 of Black Mirror kicked things off with a great start, and I don’t know about you, but it might be time to start reading Netflix’s terms and conditions.
How to watch: All seasons of Black Mirror are now streaming on Netflix.