Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched Black Mirror Season 7’s installment “Bête Noire” with a Netflix subscription.
For longtime fans, it should probably come as no surprise that Black Mirror Season 7’s take on the Mandela Effect was crafted in such a way that it would incite the same feeling within viewers both while and after watching the episode. Yet despite being just such a fan of the show since its first season was available, the second installment “Bête Noire” still managed to upend my lofty expectations, and had me legitimately questioning what was real.
Whether “Bête Noire” goes on to become on of Black Mirror’s best episodes so far is up for debate, but I think it is perhaps the most cleverly designed of any installment that isn’t the choose-your-own-adventure standalone Bandersnatch and its myriad endings. However, I might not have even realized HOW clever if I had not talked to a coworker about it soon after we’d both watched.
Netflix Turned Me Into Maria After My Coworker Brought Up The Bernie's / Barnie's Scene
One of the more maddening scenes in the episode came when Maria and one of her colleagues got into an increasingly angsty debate about whether a local chicken joint was called Bernie's or Barnie's. I just knew Maria was going to be wrong in the moment, given the discomforting tone, and sure enough, her strong arguments for the restaurant's name being Barnie's imploded after she Googled it and found her colleagues were correct.
The episode featured an earlier moment where viewers could clearly see a cap from the restaurant that Maria's boyfriend still had from when he worked there. Anyone watching the ep could "cheat" and go back right then to see what it said, and that person would discover that it was indeed the way that Maria said it was.
That's precisely what my coworker did, and I spent the next few minutes of this conversation wondering if she was jokingly gaslighting me as a reference to everything Verity does to Maria in the ep. I eventually asked her directly if she was trying to make me question my sanity, which led to both of our minds being blown open, because WE WATCHED TWO DIFFERENT CUTS OF THE SAME EPISODE!
Sure enough, we both watched essentially the same episode, but featuring two different versions of those scenes and reveals. So it wasn't just a case of different website graphics and a single shot of a different hat. Both the early scene with the hat and the entire in-office argument about which name was right were filmed in two different ways. And those are just the two we know of!
Who's to say there aren't another two versions of "Bête Noire" out there where the chicken restaurants are named Bornie's and Burnie's? Probably not likely, but not impossible, clearly.
We didn't come across other major differences between the episodes, but we also didn't talk out every single detail, either. So there may indeed be more to discover. Just be careful to choose your viewing snacks carefully when watching Cristin Milioti in the "U.S.S. Callister" sequel and other episodes , since you may or may not now have a nut allergy (not allegory) that you may or may not have had previously.
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