Black Mirror – Season 6 Episode 4 “Mazey Day” Recap & Review

Mazey Day

Episode 4 of Black Mirror Season 6 introduces us to a journalist called Bo, who snaps photos of a washed up celeb called Justin Camley. Only, he’s found dead in his home a few days later, hanged in an apparent suicide that’s come about as a result of our protagonist’s revealing photos.

This time, as Bo heads out at night, she notices just how ravenous, disgusting and slimy these paparazzi actually are. The paps that she’s part of. The guys snap photos, stalk celebs and do everything they can for a good story. And finally she sees all of this in a new light.

We then jump to the Czech Republic, where a woman called Mazey Day is high on mushrooms, after a big shoot down by the dock on her new movie. She heads out in the middle of the night and, with the rain pouring and radio blaring, she takes her eyes off the road. Unfortunately, she also ends up hitting someone on the way.

This is not good news, and as she heads out in the morning, with police swarming the area trying to find out what happened, the police have closed off the area and chalked it up to a hit and run.

Mazey Day decides to up and leave her set weeks after filming and since flying home, no one has seen her. Nick, the guy in charge of the paparazzi is offering 30k to snap her and find Mazey, and as news of this reaches those journalists back in LA, our protagonist decides to jump back in the game again. After all, she’s behind on her rent and the allure of money is just too good to turn down.

As she ends up on the hunt, Mazey heads home, unaware that Bo is right on her trail. Noticing a black car leave her place, Bo decides to follow. As they head up to a diner way out in the middle of nowhere, a shady guy wearing sunglasses heads over, slashes her tyres, and leaves Bo stranded. That is, until her fellow journalist Hector rocks up on a motorcycle. Together, they head off in search of Mazey Day.

They end up at Cedarwood Retreat, an area that’s locked up tight. However, they’re not alone. Other journos show, having placed a tracker on Hector’s bike. He’s incredulous at their actions, but the pair are also quick to ironically point out that it’s no different to what they’ve been doing to various celebrities.

The four literally crawl in the dirt to make it under the fence and into the retreat. They believe they’ve found Mazey, but when they snap a picture of her with a chain around her neck, Bo is the only one who wants to try and help her. The others all constantly snap photos (RIP anyone with epilepsy here). A weakened Mazey tells them all to run away but they do no such thing. As the full moon comes out, it turns out Mazey is actually a werewolf. This explains her erratic behaviour.

As the journos run, they grab the cameras and race out of Cedarwood Retreat… and immediately tumble over when a car approaches. Fleeing on foot through the forest, they make it to the diner, but the werewolf makes it inside and kills everyone except Bo.

Bo hides under a table, and eventually shoots the wolf. Whether it’s with a silver bullet or not, is unclear. Anyway, Hector is dead, having been ripped to shreds, and he hands over the camera to her.

As for Mazey, she turns back into a human and urges Bo to kill her. Instead, Bo places the gun in Mazey’s hand and lets her do it herself. And naturally, Bo greedily snaps photos of her doing it.

The Episode Review

While the twist with Mazey Day being a werewolf is a nice touch, the episode itself ultimately drifts away from the dangers and implications of technology. Instead, we look at greed and the parasitic nature of journalists, including how they’ll do anything for a good story.

Those with epilepsy should absolutely steer clear of this one, while the unlikability of Bo, not to mention the weak characterization of Mazey, does very little to lift this episode. It feels like a missed opportunity not to show the advancing techniques of the paparazzi, with stuff like deep-fakes and harassment driving people to suicide, rather than just a few pictures. Instead, we get an absolutely go-nowhere subplot involving Nathan, a bunch of inconsequential side characters and a twist for the sake of it.

We don’t even see the aftermath of all this. It perhaps could have been salvaged had Bo gone to her editors at the newspaper and they shrug all of it off, claiming that it’s just fake news and staged. What we effectively have here is something that feels like a rejected script from Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone reboot. What a disappointment.