Crocodile is easily the most underrated episode in all of Black Mirror's five seasons. Why it has a lower viewer rating than most of Black Mirror is a mystery to me. Rather than focusing mostly on the horror of its technology, like many episodes like White Christmas, Crocodile instead plays out more like a traditional thriller/murder drama, as its protagonist desperately tries to cover up a series of disturbing secrets which spiral completely out of control towards the end, and it just happens to feature the invention of memory-harvesting technology, although this isn't the central theme. I've seen some viewers slate this episode because it has an unlikeable main character, but isn't that the whole point? If anyone tries to suggest that Crocodile is a bad episode because Mia is a horrible person, then they've missed the point completely. What makes Crocodile so disturbing is how it portrays an otherwise fairly normal person going to such lengths to cover up her tracks from 15 years ago that in the end she becomes a heartless monster, murdering four people including a baby to try to preserve her own life. It makes the viewer question how far they would go to do the same, and makes you wonder what terrible things people are capable of deep down when they get desperate. The last shot is of Mia crying at the end, which are likely crocodile tears for herself rather than the lives she's destroyed, because she's ultimately failed to protect herself and will now be humiliated in front of her own family, and also because she would surely never be able to return to a normal life after this even if she did evade justice. The setting is so spectacular that's surely worth a mention too, with the frozen, sprawling landscape reflecting the general bleakness of this story. Yes, there are some arguably dubious plot holes, such as whether Mia would really be able to kill a man much larger and stronger than her so easily or whether a guinea pig's sight is good enough to identify someone's face, but those are fairly insignificant and don't ruin my enjoyment of Crocodile at all, so I'll overlook that and say it deserves an outstanding rating, contrary to some people's reviews that I've seen on here.
Review of Crocodile
