Scattering the Ash(es)

            Episode 2 of Black Mirror Season 2, “Be Right Back”, was a complete emotional disaster. Well, at least for Martha, whose lover, Ash Starmer, met his tragic end near the beginning of the episode. At his funeral, a friend attempts to console Martha, offering to enroll her in a program that she claims can help soothe the pain of loss. Martha adamantly denies this, repeatedly telling her friend to “shut up, shut up, shut up!” She struggles to cope over the next few weeks, and as her recovery is lengthened by only to find out her friend signed her up for the program anyway. Martha finds out that the program was designed to allow anyone to “speak” to their lost loved ones, and the system would mimic their personality based on any public media posted by or about them. The system eventually mimics Ash’s voice, and informs Martha that there is another experimental, expensive step to the system: the actual creation of a humanoid robot, complete with Ash’s voice and mannerisms. Martha opts for this, and initially is shocked by its similarities to the original Ash. Eventually, Ash 2’s lack of memories start to cause internal conflict within Martha. At times when Ash 2 forgets to perform minuscule actions, such as close his eyes when sleeping, or even simpler things like breathing.

Eventually, she scolds Ash 2 for not “performing” well enough. In one scene, when she tells him to get out, he complies. When he starts walking out of the bedroom door, she exclaims, “Ash would argue against that! He wouldn’t just walk out when he was told!” Near the end of the episode, she takes Ash 2 to a cliff, and tells him to jump, stating that he’s not Ash, he’s just an incomplete copy of the lover she once had. He once again complies, and she argues with him, saying the real Ash would be scared, and wouldn’t want to jump. Ash then begins to cry, and begs for his life. Martha then exclaims that it’s not fair for Ash 2 not to want to jump.

This highlights the drawbacks of not achieving real closure, but instead relying on remnants of a lost loved one. In that way, a person cannot truly move on with their life, and like Martha, will be conflicted with themselves. The end of the episode flashes forward approximately a decade, to whether her daughter is nearing her teens, and finds an excuse to bring cake upstairs to Ash 2, who implicitly has been kept secret since the cliff incident.

            In a way, Martha’s friend who introduced her to this system could be blamed for all this internal conflict and suffering that she went through, since otherwise she would have had a relatively normal and less lengthy grieving process. However, Martha is also at fault, for denying every advance and effort made by her family to console her. She had a large support system, as many people attended Ash’s funeral. Although she lived in a very rural area, which made having Ash 2 around a lot more feasible, her sister went to her house in the show to try and help. Martha’s dependence was a detriment to her health, emotional well-being, and later, her child’s rationality. The decision to have Ash 2 activated was one made under extreme stress and desperation, but Martha never truly realized the error of her ways, instead becoming attached to Ash 2. This dependence is the root of more problems that will come for her daughter in the future. In my personal opinion, Martha’s decision making was extremely haphazard and dangerous, but also somewhat understandable due to the amount of strain her mind had taken from her life’s circumstances.