The Chilling Nonchalance of Tracee Ellis Ross Is the Highlight of 'Black Mirror' Season 7

The seventh season of Netflix’s Black Mirror has been out for a minute, and I’ve been slowly digesting what might be the show’s strongest season in years. There have been standout performances — Paul Giamatti in Eulogy, for one — but none as chillingly effective as Tracee Ellis Ross’s unnervingly calm turn in the season premiere, “Common People.”

The episode follows Amanda (Rashida Jones), a schoolteacher who suffers a brain injury that should’ve been fatal, until a high-tech system called Rivermind saves her. A chip is implanted in her brain that preserves her memories and keeps her alive. The catch, as explained with casual charm by a customer service rep named Gaynor (Tracee Ellis Ross), is that it works on a subscription model. For just $300 a month, Amanda’s husband, Mike (Chris O’Dowd), can keep his wife functioning. He’ll have to pick up a few extra shifts at his blue-collar job, but what’s a little hustle compared to keeping the love of your life alive?

Gaynor is warm, reassuring, and why wouldn’t she be? She’s a client, too! Mike signs up.

From the jump, it’s obvious where this is going, but that doesn’t make the journey any less unsettling. Amanda returns to her life and job, and aside from needing a little extra sleep, everything feels … normal. Until their anniversary trip. When they leave town, Amanda’s implant stops working outside the service area. No worries! For a few hundred dollars more per month, they can upgrade and unlock travel.

Actually, there’s a Rivermind+ plan, just $800 a month, that includes a host of “perks.” Or rather, it eliminates the increasingly cruel limitations of the basic plan. Amanda starts sleeping most of the day (her mental energy is being siphoned to support higher-tier users), and she begins promoting products against her will, triggered by casual conversation. She can’t teach anymore. So Mike caves and upgrades.

From there, it’s a slow-motion collapse. The fees climb. The desperation mounts. Mike is eventually forced to humiliate himself online to scrape together enough money to allow Amanda to feel alive for a couple hours here and there. Eventually, even that becomes unsustainable, and Amanda, out of options, has to let the service lapse. She dies.

O’Dowd is solid. Jones is great. But it’s Tracee Ellis Ross who makes “Common People” work so brilliantly. Every time Mike and Amanda return, more desperate, more broken, Gaynor greets them like she’s offering a deluxe spa package, not orchestrating a life-or-death extortion scheme. Her relentlessly cheerful upselling is skin-crawling. She treats $800 a month like a rounding error, and her smile never wavers.

That’s the genius of the performance. Gaynor never once breaks character. Never a flicker of empathy. She’s the human face of algorithmic capitalism, relentlessly chipper, completely indifferent, and always angling for the next tier. If you’ve ever been condescended to by a chipper CSR while trying to cancel a subscription you can’t afford, you’ll recognize her immediately.

Ross plays it with such precision that even the most brutal turns in the story feel like she’s doing Amanda and Mike a favor. It’s like Ryan Reynolds pitching Mint Mobile, except the product is literal survival. It’s an outstanding, unforgettable performance.