The episode of Black Mirror called “San Junipero” has been one of the most well-loved episodes of the depressing-yet-awesome series. It even won an Emmy this year. If you’ve never seen the episode (first, go watch, it’s on Netflix), it’s based in a world where you can upload your consciousness into a machine and then your consciousness lives forever in a computer-generated world. We follow the love story of twentysomethings (who are actually two elderly women in real life) who fall in love and decide to spend the rest of their days together in this projected, ’80s reality.
It’s a sweet story and a welcome break in a show that doesn’t usually like to include happy endings. And while we want to tip our hat to the show’s brilliant creator Charlie Brooker for the delightful romance through a synthetic ’80s universe, it seems we really owe our thanks to Ross Geller. Watch this video to see what we mean:
Netflix recently released this video that showed Ross explaining the idea behind “San Junipero” to a very skeptical Chandler Bing and an even more skeptical studio audience back in the sixth season of Friends. To be fair to Chandler and the studio audience, the sixth season was filmed in 1999 and 2000, which was before even the first iPod (yes, I said iPod, not iPhone) released to the public. So, Ross was definitely way ahead of the curve on this one. I guess true genius is rarely recognized in its time.
We don’t yet know when Black Mirror season four will hit Netflix, but we do know it will be in 2017. Until then, we’ll be re-watching Friends for more pop culture predictions.
What do you think of Ross’ before-his-time thinking? What are some of your other, favorite instances of TV shows seeming to predict the future? Tell us in the comments!
Image: Warner Bros.
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