This upcoming week marks the release of the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt movie “Kimmy vs. The Reverend.” For fans of the Netflix show, I’m sure that it’s already essential viewing and you’re planning on pressing play the minute that it goes up. After all, the show is a delightful comedy from the minds behind 30 Rock, and to see where they take this madcap adventure is likely to produce a few laughs.
It’s also the latest in a new fad of Netflix series to focus around “interactive narratives.” The idea is simple: you’re presented with two options and from there you go down a winding path where each choice presents a different story to you. It’s almost an incentive to watch it multiple times, finding the different ways that things have been assembled. Other shows that have used this technique have tended to be geared more at kids. In 2019, that included Carmen Sandiego and Captain Underpants. Of course, it’s easier to achieve in short-form animation. "Kimmy vs. the Reverend" is presumed to be 80 minutes for a proper experience.
Though if you want to know why Netflix has made interactive narratives into crowd-drawing experiences while Amazon or Hulu hasn’t, you likely have to thank one series in particular. While it wasn’t the first to be released as such, Black Mirror broke down a barrier by creating a new technology that opened up the potential of the medium, reinventing binge-watching forever with the episode “Bandersnatch,” which is an exemplary look into what makes the show resonate to more than sci-fi geeks.
While it has become trendy to dislike the series for repeating itself or laying on the nihilism too thick, it has been a personal favorite of mine. There are few anthology series that has earned the right to feature-length episodes like Black Mirror, creating this epic narrative about society through the technology that unifies and divides us in these exciting ways. Sure, some episodes are better than others and Season 5 may have been a crapshoot (that Miley Cyrus episode is baffling), but I love how the show takes narrative risks. Every now and then they’ll have a story that is more than a twist and is just a deeply emotional look into our own broken lives.
So, of course, I was curious to see where “Bandersnatch” would go. I still remember when it came out having everyone unified on Twitter, asking what they discovered in their version of the story. For the first time in so long, it felt like there was something substantial to the shared experience that we could all consume differently and not have it be a bad thing. We could playfully tell people to pick the XTC song over Kajagoogoo to see a whole different perspective on what this story wanted to share.
The only downside to this experience for me was that the interactive nature of the story became overwhelming at a point. I am someone who is drawn to the comfort of knowing how long something is. Even something that I want to love and be lost in the moment, I want to manage my time accordingly. Considering that Black Mirror suggested that you needed to fit in 2.5 hours to get a full and satisfying version, getting overwhelmed 40 minutes into your version can take away from the experience. You want the comfort of an ending and while that also adds to the wonderful madness of uncertainty, it makes me tempted to shut it off since I doubt the pause option does much good.
Even then, the road that you go down has a typical Black Mirror feel to it. What starts as a story about working at a software manufacturing company for a new program called Bandersnatch slowly evolves into a story that involves some harrowing decisions. Its intention is to eventually numb you to the morality of decisions that could include murder or crime that ultimately informs your outcome.
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| Yes, this is a real decision |
I personally saw the darker choices as the more exciting. I wasn’t looking for plausibility. To me, plausibility was the boring route that you’d get from any other episode. I wanted to play into the worst of humanity to see what creator Charlie Brooker could come up with. What would happen if I ditched my therapy appointment or murdered a family member? When presented with two options the greater of two evils just makes for a more rewarding experience. You may get a more cohesive story if you follow the plausible, but it also comes at the expense of having something more exciting. As humans, we’re drawn to adrenaline and that makes the uncertainty of clicking on an option thrilling.
Why I ultimately think that “Bandersnatch” works as some pinnacle piece of Netflix entertainment is that it takes the subtext of the story and makes it work on a subliminal level. The whole story is about creating a “choose your own adventure” video game, and thus becomes a study in what it means to make decisions. What weight do they carry with them? As much as it’s fun to see how wild the options can get, it all forces you to think in 10-second increments how a story evolves, or how uncertain our decisions can be. They’re not always straightforward, as some are as simple as working on the software from home or in the office. There isn’t a wrong answer in this scenario, just that they realign what characters will be relevant to your story.
I get the complaints that some reviewers consider it too gimmicky. The whole project is an exercise in split decision making, and Netflix only has so much space to present options. For all that I know, a limitless version of this could see you release the game and move onto a story about which middle school your child will be attending before answering if you should pay your taxes. It’s goofy because everything in life has a yes or no decision, but Black Mirror does it creatively enough that you get quite an experience in the process. Most of all, you got a story that you can personally share with others and have it be special.
To backtrack a bit, I suppose that I should give some background on how Black Mirror came to this moment in December 2018. It was one of those moments where they captured the zeitgeist, also releasing the horror film Birdbox (2018) that launched “The Birdbox Challenge” (a.k.a.: walk around blind-folded), finding that brief time before a new year of entertainment would overwhelm us and we were bunkered down with endless time. It was decent timing because a show with an uncertain amount of time wouldn’t work at many other points throughout the year because even by Netflix standards, there are almost 20 hours of new content released weekly (sometimes more). Why would you dedicate 2.5 hours to this?
Of course, there’s the intrigue that came with the overall project. I personally remember growing up and reading Goosebumps books that followed the Choose Your Own Adventure™ format. What’s especially intriguing about this approach is that they don’t follow a conventional narrative and that within the span of 10 pages your story could be done. You just don’t know until you flip to that page. I personally regret losing those books because in a post-“Bandersnatch” mentality, I am eager to see how these stories are molded on a basic level.
My friends over at the Benview Network also created the first podcast version of this with Pick Your Path, if you wish to see their contribution to the genre.
But the promise by Brooker that you’d have a TRILLION permutations made the project seem far more exciting. This was the first interactive narrative geared at adults, and that opened up just how far things could get pushed. Things like drug-use, murder, sex, and mental health were all on the table. They could break the fourth wall and explore how Netflix users were controlling the story. It made the idea of finding every ending a fun scavenger hunt for those with enough time to find them. Then again, those who have the time and patience to find all nine endings deserve our deepest concern.
The project was created over a two-year period where they went from outlining every potential option to trying and making it a reality. The original software proved to be too difficult, as it often resulted in things crashing. They did use a flow chart and programs like Microsoft Notepad in order to make every path clear, though getting it to run smoothly remained an issue. Brooker claimed that one of the things he wanted “Bandersnatch” to do was run smoothly, meaning little to no buffering after choosing the option. They had to create a new form of software and upload it to Netflix, doing months of product tests, to make sure that this would go down smoothly.
“Bandersnatch” delayed a lot of Black Mirror’s upcoming plans. It pumped up the budget, managing to cost what multiple episodes cost. It also became their longest film shoot, done over seven weeks, and shot during 35 days. It was going to be one of their biggest gambles, but one that ultimately would pay off. Days before its release, Netflix released a 90-second trailer that didn’t allude to its interactive narrative. This was to keep people from having preconceived notions of the format. When they would open the episode (separately listed from other Black Mirror episodes), it would come with instructions on how to operate. While certain television services weren’t capable of using it properly, those who could were enthusiastic about it.
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| High art |
Was it a TV episode, a movie, or something else entirely? It took the Black Mirror ethos to a whole different level. While there had been interactive media before, it felt like the start of a new era. Every show that had the wherewithal to use the technology feels like it’s going to in the next five years. Everything ran smoothly, and the implicit nature of the project only made it essential. You could understand why it won an Emmy Award for Best TV Movie. This was the type of surreal experience that Black Mirror strived for. They arguably have outdone themselves so much that in the past week Brooker has announced that he’s not working on the next season because the world is too dark.
In a wonderful twist of fate, Black Mirror was once sued by R.A. Montgomery of the Choose Your Own Adventure book series. Chooseco wanted to sue for $25 million since they personally owned the right to everything CYOA-oriented. Even the fact that “Bandersnatch” used the phrase made Chooseco think that they stood a chance. However, there were a few loopholes that kept Montgomery from getting any traction. First off, the phrase had become so commonplace that it was impossible to copyright. Secondly, the scene where it’s revealed that Netflix users are controlling the story created an argument that this was a CYOA that hasn’t been seen before and thus was an original concept.
Unlike a lot of other Black Mirror episodes, I don’t know that I am keen to revisit “Bandersnatch” anytime soon. The time commitment and uncertainty is all too much for me. Still, I love what it created for the viewer and how it engages in such a way that the themes resonate subliminally. It does feel like one of those rare times when TV genuinely changed in a significant manner. I worry that it will become a gimmick in the wrong hands, though I imagine that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt will be a great comedic addition to this form.
Where does TV go from here? I really want to know. Next to controlling a live simulation, this feels as close as we’ll get to personalizing a narrative experience. Whether you see it as a gimmick or achievement, you can’t deny that it did something new. The fantasy has become a reality, and that alone may be the TV series’ greatest achievement in its entire run.
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