The Premise
Marie is an overprotective mother who goes to extreme means to protect her child from any distress. This leads to severe consequences once the child grows up and starts experiencing things she should have developed defence mechanisms against.The Characters
Rosemarie DeWitt as Marie Sambrell, who works as a chiropractor. Her acting was top-notch here. The audience gets drawn into her parental panic, and actually roots for her when she does the sensible thing and disables Arkangel. But when when she starts it up again, we kind of get why. And there's a question lingering: would we have done the same thing?
Aniya Hodge as young Sara Sambrell. She's an adorable kid who doesn't need to do much other than be adorable.
Sarah Abbott as older Sara Sambrell. Now a bit more nuance is shown as Sara is perpetually confused over all the stuff she can't see that the others can. This is very well done.
Brenna Harding as teenage Sara Sambrell. She's beautiful and has an insatiable curiosity about her that ultimately proves to be her undoing.
Nicholas Campbell as grandfather Russ Sambrell. Wise old man with plenty of sensible advice and snark to go with it. I was sad when he died, but it was a necessary plot point.
Marie: You guys going to be all right?
Russ: I raised you all right, and you turned out OK. Took a while, but you did.
Russ: I raised you all right, and you turned out OK. Took a while, but you did.
Nicky Torchia as young Trick, a.k.a Ryan Trebecky. Came off as a brat, but it was kind of adorable how he so enthustiastically became a bad influence for young Sara.
Owen Teague as teenage Trick. Sure he's a drug-pusher and shit, but this was a sympathetic figure that actually seemed to care for Sara. The sheer expression of horror on his face when he asks Amy "You've still got that system?" even seems to convey less fear for himself than horror on behalf of Sara. I can't even bring myself to feel anything negative about how he dumped Sara, it's not like the guy had any good options there. Owen Teague has a gift for playing creeps - I last saw him in the movie IT.
Abby Quinn as Sara's best friend Meryl. It's a bit-part that requires her to be chummy with Sara and little else.
The Mood
Initially, everything looks like the typical suburban scenario, childbirth scene in hospital notwithstanding. Soon, however, we're given a peek into Marie's paranoia. So far so good, until Arkangel comes into the picture and we get a good look at how extreme surveillance and censorship, facilitated by tech, harms the psyche. The effects are long-term and deep-rooted, made all the scarier by the fact that they aren't immediate and brutal.Later on, there's an outburst of violence that marks the end of an excellent sequence of discovery of betrayal.
What I liked
The concept itself wasn't over-the-top, even though the specific technology isn't here yet. But with censorship and surveillance by governments, it's not too hard to point to modern-day parallels.Russ's scenes with both mother and daughter are great. Seriously. Ribbing, laughter, lots of love...
...and even this scene depicting Russ Sambrell's heart attack from the viewpoint of Sara, is cleverly done, wringing out the first moment of drama where we see how Arkangel can have potentially fatal consequences.
The sequence where pre-teen Sara grows into teenage Sara, is really well done. I especially like the part where the dog starts getting used to Sara and even befriends her. That was sweet.
The Face Seeker app is just a plot device, but it is cool, man.
The soundtrack that plays when Sara discovers that her mother has been spying on her, is so effective at maintaining the tension. In fact, the entire sequence leading up to the confrontation, as well as the confrontation itself, is so well done.
What I didn't
Wait, the contraceptives that Amy put into Sara's smoothies terminated her pegnancy? Granted I'm no expert, and this is supposed to be science fiction, but I'm pretty sure that's not how contraception works.The episode can be painfully slow at times, often out of neccessity. Still, I can't help but feel certain scenes could have been omitted. Like, what did the entire childbirth sequence really accomplish?
Also, when Arkangel is reactivated, we see that the censorship protocol has kicked in when Sara attacks Marie and her cortisol levels rise. So if Marie reactivated Arkangel a while back, how the hell did Sara not notice it? Are we expected to believe that no distressing events happened that would trigger the censorship protocol? How about Trick's breakup with Sara? FFS, Arkangel was active during that time. Marie was even watching Trick break up with her!
Conclusion
This episode was more about how human beings can always be counted on to use tech for questionable things, even with pure motives, than tech itself. There was nothing intrinsically sinister about the concept of Arkangel - it built to plant false images into someone's brain, for instance - but once its usage was taken to extreme levels, it damaged relationships beyond repair.One could argue that teenage Sara had not exactly covered herself in glory with her experimentation with sex and drugs, but what teenager doesn't do stupid and reckless shit? This episode showed us how far a paranoid parent could go, even with the best of intentions, with the advancement of tech. And for that, it gets an absolute thumbs up from me.
Despite glaring plot holes, Arkangel was a good premise to build on.
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