Breaking Bad is one continuous story. Black Mirror is an anthology of stories which may not even take place in the same universe.
Every episode of Twilight Zone wasn’t about some passenger trying to convince the flight crew there was a gremlin tearing apart the wing.
I haven’t watched many of this season yet, and am positive I won’t watch them all, but that seems to be as much the recent repeated theme as VR.
Just watched it. Yes excellent. Really very good. Thanks for the recommendation.
I’ll also watch Bete Noire on your recommendation. And then stop. 
If I had read the premise of each episode going in I would have expected to hate Hotel Reverie but it was my favorite except for Callister. It had a Junipero reference too. It was the street name of Brandy’s address on the envelope.
Also there was a fun reference on Callister. The screens in the background had animation that looked like The Matrix. Later Nanette is given a choice between a red and blue disk (pill).
Wasn’t there a subtle dig too, like one of the other characters asking “what’s that?” (as in the Matrix is too old for kids these days to know about)?
And now I have to believe that the 13th floor was a deliberate reference too. It came out the same year as the Matrix (and was eclipsed by it) but directly dealt with AI people trapped in VR worlds, just like the episode.
A possible example of SF-focused SF might be TomorrowLand - the movie did have a plot of sorts, but mostly it seemed to be about the cool widgets.
The best SF just tells stories in a world where the widgets are there in the background, being used in everyday fashion and need little to no exposition (or are deliberately deprived of exposition, because in reality, nobody spends much time explaining how a thing works, if it’s a thing everybody commonly uses).
He should have tried turning it off, then back on again.
But yeah, I think part of the reason it was so effective is that it was written so that we realised what upgrade/upsell was coming next before the characters learned it.
I think that’s an inevitable consequence of the intentional theme of the series - the interface between technology and humans, or the relentless intrusion of technology into the lives of humans powerless to choose otherwise.
I suppose they have to do it for the audience so we know what’s what, but I also feel like in a lot of episodes, the characters in the episode are often surprised by the technology. Particularly how ubiquitous and mundane it seems in their world.
Quite a few episodes seem to be about people who are fine with some technology being ubiquitous, until they suddenly find themselves on the ‘product’ rather than ‘consumer’ side of it.
Never mind, ignore
This reminds me of a story someone wrote once. " If all stories were written like science fiction stories."
My reviews:
Normal People
[spoiler] Emotionally crushing, of course, and well acted; that said, I felt the added side story of buddy trying to earn money on a humiliating website was one “dystopian tech” too many for one episode. There would have been better ways of getting across the idea of fiscal desperation, or just stick with him driving himself to exhaustion at work.
What I liked was that it didn’t go in the direction I thought it would from the episode summary; I got the impression the husband would be engaging in some new tech that kept Rashida Jones alive in a way that was a horrible hell for her and it would be him being greedy and torturing her in his desperation to keep her around. It wasn’t like that at all; they kept the love story intact.[/spoiler]
Bete Noire
Okay, I suppose. A decent little story, though with a surprisingly dumb ending. I liked the day intro title cards, and the lady who plays Verify was very effectively creepy.
Hotel Reverie
The weakest episode by far. Issa Rae and Emma Corrin do their best and they’re great, but it’s way too long, way too many moving parts, everything involving Awkwafina is irritating, the tone isn’t consistent, and they never really explain WHY you would remake a movie this way. You could remake an old movie with one famous modern star in it now with CGI. It’s just too little story in too much runtime - it’s damn near movie length - and the ending made no sense.
Plaything
A good episode but predictable. I knew what was coming a mile away.
Eulogy
One of the best episodes in the show’s history. This is what sci fi is supposed to be - not about the science, but about the PEOPLE. Brilliantly acted by Paul Giamatti; it’s just a way to get us to watch the story of a man dealing with regret over a lost love. Who among us doesn’t have a story like that lurking deep in their heart? This was not a eulogy for a woman, but for a cancerous tumor that was in a man’s soul. I carry a few of them myself. His pain, his regret, his longing and guilt and sadness were palpable. It’s human truth brought to life. That’s what ART is, folks.
.
USS Callister Part 2
Fun as hell. Not as scary and tense as the first one but a shockingly good sequel. I am deeply in love with Cristin Milioti, whom I last saw in “the Penguin” and loved her in that too, and Jimmi Simpson was chewing the scenery magnificently.
My rankings:
Common People.
I pretty much agree with all of your comments (e.g. Hotel Reverie definitely could have used a trim and Bete Noire had a silly ending), although I would personally still put Common People at #1 on my list.
I edited this out because I thought I’d been misled but apparently it’s correct. In Bete Noire they filmed 2 different versions. In one it had always been Barnies and got changed to Bernies, in the other it happened the other way around, which one you get is random. Just a little gaslight for the viewers discussing the show afterwards.
That’s pretty amazing.
Absolute genius
The store in ‘Playthings’ is an actual UK store. Originally called the Computer Exchange, now it’s known as CeX (pronounced sex!) it’s basically a pawn shop that specialises in tech.
That isn’t interesting until you realise that one of the founders and original investors of CeX was none other than Charlie Brooker.
I haven’t read your detailed reviews yet as I am going to write my own so I’ll read after that, but my ranking would be pretty much spot on with yours.