S07.E05: Eulogy

[QQQQ]

The sentimental story, penned by series creator Charlie Brooker and screenwriter and playwright Ella Road (Doctor Who, Ten Percent), centers on Phillip (Paul Giamatti), who’s pretty closed-off and isolated. He receives a call from a representative on behalf of a woman named Kelly Royce (Patsy Ferran), informing him that Kelly’s mother, Carol, his ex-girlfriend, has died, and that her family would like his help with the memorial. 

[Amarsir]

I think this is my favorite episode of the season. Not an exploration of fictional tech, not a social commentary with tech as metaphor. Just a human story made possible.

Giamatti was of course superb. Big thumbs up to the writing, which foreshadowed just enough to be anxious for what's coming but not enough to be bored waiting for it.

[CarpeFelis]

Interesting character study of a man who so hates the one woman who’d once been the love of his life that he’s destroyed her face in all the pictures he has of her. I expected to find out it was really his own fault and was not disappointed.

He had a bad temper, a drinking problem, a victim mentality, and a double standard. He gets irate at her merely talking to another guy in the bar—who we’re shown she was leaning away from—while his coworker hangs all over him but he dismisses it as “she’s just a friend”. And when the friend deliberately sabotages his relationship by answering the phone in his hotel room, he still thinks she was just playing a joke on him. In his mind, everything his girlfriend does is shady and everything he does is perfectly innocent.

The one thing that didn’t ring true to me was this: he claims to have loved this woman so much, yet when he discovers that his temper tantrum in the hotel room caused him to overlook the note she left him and thus miss out on a possible lifetime together, he appears nowhere near as devastated as he should be. All in all, I’d say he richly deserved the outcome he got. And he probably would’ve made her miserable anyway.