Television shows "predict" a lot of things, from The Simpsons forecasting Donald Trump's presidency to Parks and Recreation and the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series in 2016. Turns out Friends had a prediction too, this one about Black Mirror's Emmy-winning episode "San Junipero." It's not quite real life—although maybe it will be soon?!
In the sixth season of Friends, David Schwimmer's Ross Geller correctly predicted the entire plot of "San Junipero," the episode written by Charlie Brooker and starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mackenzie Davis. The installment won two Emmys at the 2017 award show. Warning, Black Mirror spoilers are in the video above. If you haven't watched the stellar episode, might we suggest you do that today?
The episode follows a love story between two women who keep encountering each other in the town of San Junipero in what appears to be the 1980s. And then appears to be the 1990s. And then the 2000s. San Junipero isn't real, it's a computer-verse. Let Ross explain it:"By the year 2030, there'll be computers that can carry out the same amount of functions as the actual human brain. So, theoretically you could download your thoughts and memories into this computer and live forever as a machine," he told Chandler.
That is Black Mirror's "San Junipero," people living forever in a computer.
Mind. Blown.
Brooker told E! News he wrote the third season episode as a response to what people generally assumed Black Mirror was about: the perils of technology. It was the first episode he wrote for season three.
"I was trying to reinvent what I thought the show was," he told us. "Hence the American setting, which is completely different, and it was to annoy some people who said, ‘I was worried the show was going to get all American now that's going to Netflix.'"
For Mbatha-Raw, she was struck by the concept.
"When I first read ‘San Junipero'…I read it on my phone, which is very Black Mirror-esque I suppose, and I just sort of couldn't' stop reading it. It was so beautifully written…and such a unique concept. The characters were so vibrant and it really affected me actually. I thought, ‘Wow, this is really making me think, but it's also emotional.' That's a tricky balance to pull off," Mbatha-Raw said.
Black Mirror returns for a fourth season of six new episodes starring the likes of Jesse Plemons, Cristin Milioti, Rosemarie Dewitt and Jimmi Simpson.