Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too

"Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too" is the third and final episode of the fifth series of anthology series "Black Mirror". The episode was written by showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Anne Sewitsky; it was released on Netflix on 5 June 2019 along with the rest of series 5.
The episode follows Ashley O (Miley Cyrus), a pop singer who is creatively restricted by her management team, and Rachel (Angourie Rice) and Jack Goggins (Madison Davenport), teenage sisters who struggle with the recent loss of their mother. Brooker based "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too" on a sitcom script he'd written years prior. 
Nine Inch Nails's songs "Head Like a Hole" and "Right Where It Belongs" are used in the episode alongside Ashley O's respective remixes, "On a Roll" and "Right Where I Belong". The episode received mixed reviews from critics, who praised Cyrus' performance but criticised the plot and pacing.
Plot.
Rachel Goggins (Angourie Rice) and her older sister Jack (Madison Davenport) live with their father Kevin (Marc Menchaca) after the death of their mother. Kevin is working on a humane mousetrap alternative. For her fifteenth birthday, Rachel receives an artificial intelligence (AI) robot named "Ashley Too", whose personality is modelled on her favourite pop star, Ashley O (Miley Cyrus). To the annoyance of Jack, Rachel treats the doll like a friend—it encourages her to dance to Ashley O's song "On a Roll" at a school talent contest, but Rachel leaves the stage embarrassed after slipping off a stool. Jack hides Ashley Too and says that she threw it away.
Meanwhile, Ashley O is unsatisfied with the control her aunt and manager Catherine (Susan Pourfar) has over her. After discovering that Ashley O has been writing less upbeat music and not taking the medication given to subdue her, Catherine laces her dinner with the drugs to render her comatose. The news reports that the coma was caused by a shellfish allergy. Jack returns Ashley Too to Rachel and six months later, the doll overhears a news report on Ashley O's coma and malfunctions.
Rachel connects Ashley Too to the software Kevin uses for his mouse control inventions, and removes a limiter. Ashley Too—a clone of Ashley O's consciousness which now has full access to its mental faculties—convinces the girls to look for evidence of her aunt's crimes at her house. Jack inexpertly drives there and poses as a mouse pest control service while Rachel takes Ashley Too to where Ashley O lies comatose. The doll tries to pull the plug and kill Ashley O, but it actually removes a medication drip, and Ashley O awakens. Jack and Rachel deal with two staff members who are alerted to the drip's removal by stunning the first with Kevin's mouse stunner and subduing the second with a syringe of medication.
The now-conscious Ashley O directs the group to a venue where Catherine is debuting Ashley Eternal, a holographic replacement for Ashley O that will perform on music tours. As Jack runs a red light, a nearby police car begins pursuit. They drive through the back entrance of the venue and exit when the police order them to. The crowd are astonished to see Ashley O.
Later, Ashley performs the song "Head Like a Hole" with Jack under the name "Ashley Fuckn O", while Rachel and Ashley Too watch.
Production.
A fifth series of "Black Mirror" was commissioned by Netflix in March 2018, three months after the release of series four. Initially part of series five's production, the interactive work "" increased in scope to the point where it was separated from the series and released as a standalone film; it premiered on 28 December 2018. Although previous series of the programme produced under Netflix contained six episodes, series five comprises three episodes, as the series creator Charlie Brooker viewed this as preferable to making viewers wait longer for the next series. The three episodes—"Striking Vipers", "Smithereens" and "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too"—were released on Netflix simultaneously on 5 June 2019.
Conception and writing.
The episode was written by the series creator Charlie Brooker. It was based on a comedy sitcom script from years prior about a 1977 punk band whose members are hanged by a Conservative minister and return to life to see their manager exploiting their deaths for profit. It also took inspiration from real life holographic performances of dead artists such as Prince, Whitney Houston, and Amy Winehouse; Brooker found the holograms "ghoulish" and noted that the subjects "often pass away in extremely tragic circumstances". He also considered artificial intelligence as a means for creating a program which could imitate John Lennon's songwriting, or serve as a celebrity virtual assistant. Brooker said that the episode is not disparaging pop music, but criticising inauthenticity in music. According to Brooker, an unused idea saw Catherine revealed as non-human, either with her face being removed to display the machinery behind it, or with her disappearing "in a puff of smoke". In the final episode, after her Ashley Eternal plan fails, she looks at the camera and breaks the fourth wall.
Casting.
Brooker and Jones thought Miley Cyrus would be perfect for the part of Ashley O, but did not expect her to be interested, or that they would get a pop star for the role. However, she was a big fan of the programme, and within a couple of days of them reaching out, she accepted the offer. She found the script's portrayal of the music industry realistic, in terms of its "overt exploitation of artists" and the way in which decisions are driven by performance metrics rather than creativity. Madison Davenport played Jack. She auditioned without knowing the plot, outside of the scene where Jack distracts a bodyguard from investigating Ashley O's drip removal, or that the episode was part of "Black Mirror". She was only sent the script a few days prior to filming. Angourie Rice, who plays Rachel, auditioned later in the process and knew that it was for "Black Mirror".
The executive producer Annabel Jones said that the episode was about a musician trying to find her identity and "break out from the commercial machine". Jones said that Cyrus's personality matched how the episode gets more "heightened and sarcastic and satirical" as it progresses. She also said that Cyrus brought vulnerability to the role, despite her punk-like persona. Cyrus related to Ashley O's desire to explore other genres, which she did after starring in "Hannah Montana". Cyrus said that her parents took an active role in her career and had focused on getting a manager who would take care of her, rather than focusing on stardom, in stark contrast to Ashley O's manager Catherine. Cyrus contributed ideas about her character's clothing and appearance. She also spoke to Brooker about enjoying a recent performance to a mostly older audience who were not recording the experience on their phones. Some dialogue and ideas from this conversation informed Catherine's presentation of Ashley Eternal.
Filming and editing.
While the episode takes place in America, for financial reasons the filming took place in Cape Town, South Africa. Filming went ahead six days per week for five weeks. After Cyrus was spotted at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront during filming in November 2018, rumours began that she would appear in the fifth series of "Black Mirror". Cyrus said that she was able to "get into Ashley" as she was isolated from friends and family. Problems in her personal life informed her emotions when portraying Ashley O's life breaking down. On the day that she filmed the scene where Ashley O wakes up from the coma, Cyrus had lost her home to a California wildfire. She used the events to inform her acting, though she had to take some breaks during filming the scene.
The Ashley Too doll's movements were partly captured during the shoot, and partly computer-generated imagery. Two crew members controlled her movements—one for her head and arms, and the other for her wheels—and the doll spinned around and spoke in real life. Some parts, however, required the actors to film with a green-screen stick, and the doll was added in during editing. The driving scenes were filmed on a sound stage. The final scene was filmed in a Cape Town bar over the course of a few hours, on Cyrus's last day of filming, with Davenport saying that it "felt like... a small punk venue". Davenport knew how to play the guitar, but learned the bass guitar over the course of a fortnight for her part in "Head Like a Hole". Cyrus and Davenport recorded the audio in a music studio.
Music.
Songs performed by Ashley in the episode are adaptations of songs from Nine Inch Nails: "Head Like a Hole" was retitled "On a Roll", and "Right Where It Belongs" was changed to "Right Where I Belong". A rewrite of "Hurt" to "Flirt" was made but not included in the episode. "On a Roll" was released via YouTube on 13 June 2019 and added to various music streaming services on 14 June. Cyrus performed "On a Roll" at the 2019 Glastonbury Festival in late June. Additionally, Nine Inch Nails sold a tie-in T-shirt.
During the writing process, Brooker contacted Trent Reznor, the lead vocalist and songwriter for Nine Inch Nails, with a synopsis outline and an explanation that he wanted to adapt their music into pop songs. Reznor—whose songwriting partner Atticus Ross produced the soundtrack to the series four episode "Crocodile"—was a fan of the show and approved. Brooker said that the humour arises from the fact that the pop versions are "insanely positive" and "full of empty affirmations". As an example, "On a Roll" changes the original lyrics "Bow down before the one you serve" to "I'm stoked on ambition and verve". Reznor said that the songs were "wonderfully absurd" and "really funny" in context. He found it "strange to hear [his] music come through the blender and back".
Reception.
The episode holds a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 40 critics, indicating mixed reviews. It is the lowest-rated episode of the show to date along with "The Waldo Moment".
Alexandra Pollard of "The Independent" rated the episode four out of five stars. Criticising that the first half of the episode has poor pacing, Pollard notes that "there is a slight over-abundance of ideas", but praises the latter half of the episode as a "fun, high-concept heist film".
Adam White of "The Telegraph" gave the episode three out of five stars. Calling the plot "needlessly fragmented" but "thematically prescient", he observed the script relied on "vaguely banal statements on the vapidity of pop and the lack of care afforded to some of its most profitable stars". However, he praised the last third of the episode for its tonal shift and for Cyrus' "enjoyably potty-mouthed performance".
David Sims of "The Atlantic" praised the episode as a "bizarre and intermittently fascinating bit of pop-music melodrama", although he believed it required "tighter editing". Sims commented that the episode had several disparate themes: the effect of their mother's death on Rachel and Jack, the actions of music labels and their influence on artists, and the potential for a performing holographic musician. He praised Cyrus' performance, particularly as the voice of Ashley Too.
In her review of series 5, Jennifer Bisset of "CNET" said about the episode: "Brooker chooses to focus on wilder, more fantastical tech over the human connections... the result is more humorous than profound", adding that "the emotional setups see little pay-off".
Michael Love Michael of "Paper Magazine" and Christopher Rosa of "Glamour" noted parallels with the Free Britney movement. In the episode, Ashley O is held and drugged against her will by her aunt, who serves as her handler. In April 2019, a whistleblower alleged that Spears’ father, who serves as her conservator, institutionalized her against her will for refusing to take her medication.
Awards.
In 2020, "On a Roll" received a nomination for a Guild of Music Supervisors Award in the category Song Written and/or Recorded for Television, with Trent Reznor as the songwriter, Miley Cyrus as the artist and Amelia Hartley as music supervisor.