YMMV / Black Mirror: The Waldo Moment

Black Mirror YMMVSeries TwoBe Right Back — White Bear — The Waldo Moment

• Jerkass Woobie: Liam Monroe. Sure, he's not likable, but he is tricked and humiliated several times in front of large crowds and on national television, and near the end of the episode he has a shoe lobbed at him.
• Older Than They Think: The episode's plot is strikingly similiar to a French short film made in 2000 entitled A Cute Candidate, which also deals with a motion-captured cartoon character who ends up becoming a political candidate when his actor goes off-script.
• Strawman Has a Point: Probably intentional, and overlaps with Jerkass Has a Point; Liam Monroe is presented as every inch the stereotypical young Tory professional politician — ruthless, humourless, and a bit of a dick. He's also entirely correct that Waldo standing for office and becoming the main competition makes a mockery of the British democratic process and is potentially quite dangerous.
  Monroe: If that thing's the main competition, the whole system looks absurd. And that may be the case. But it built these roads.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Monroe, full stop. We're supposed to hate him for being conservative and an extremely British killjoy. But it's hard not to feel sorry for him when he's harassed and bullied throughout his campaign, and still refusing to fall to catcalling and defamation, up until he's provoked into a surprisingly believable "The Reason You Suck" Speech. Especially compared to our protagonist, who's a bitter, jerkass alcoholic who, often out of spite, does little more than harass people who are trying to make a difference, including his not-girlfriend, who was too busy with her campaign to date him. It's arguably intentional as well. Despite being an unlikable conservative, Monroe is the only character who makes it clear that he believes in and defends British democracy in a speech that makes him appear to be an Author Avatar.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Gwendolyn is played up as the most sympathetic of the three candidates and Jamie's denouncement of her as a self-serving careerist on public television is treated as him crossing the Moral Event Horizon, except...that's exactly what she is. Gwendolyn is essentially promoting herself as an advocate for change, taking advantage of the people's hope for a better future, just as a way to get her political career off the ground, all while operating with full knowledge (even drunkenly boasting about it at one point) that the whole affair is a means to an end for her. It doesn't help that she's a complete hypocrite who is amused by Waldo insulting her political rivals, but not so much when those insults are directed at her. And while it was understandable of her to dump Jamie due to being busy with her campaign, the way she did so was rather harsh.
  • Jaime is this if you take a moment to note that his reaction to being told by a woman that she doesn't want to date him after a one night stand (and even then potentially holding the door open later) is to humiliate her on national television. Many viewers considered his sense of entitlement to be incredibly overblown and vindictive to a woman who only did him a favor.
• The Woobie: Several, actually.
  • Jamie, of course, is an obvious example. A failed comedian, Jamie is sidelined by his more famous friends to only play roles on the show he's on behind the face of a blue bear. He is pressured into turning Waldo into a political protest, more a joke than anything, and then watches it go out of hand before his eyes, ruining his chances with his crush and being blackmailed into carrying it on afterwards. When he finally takes a stand against it he is beaten up and gets stabbed as commanded by his so-called friends, who betray him and steal his character, leaving him no money to his name. He later ends up homeless when the Waldo movement goes worldwide and when throwing a beer bottle at a Waldo poster in defiance he ends up being tasered and beaten up by police.
  • Gwendolyn Harris also qualifies. All she did was hold off dating Jamie until the elections were over (less than a week, basically), but loses her chance of winning the election and is humiliated on live TV by the man she confided in, who blabbed her secret to everyone. She comes next to last in the elections, despite seeming to be the least immoral candidate.

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