Coach (Black Mirror)

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Evil-doer
Full Name	Coach
Alias	None
Origin	Black Mirror
Occupation	Artificial intelligence
Powers / Skills	Generative pairing
Goals	Continue pairing partners together regardless of consent (temporarily succeeded)
Crimes	Social tyranny
Type of Villain	Artificial Tyrant

Coach is the overarching antagonist of the Black Mirror episode "Hang the DJ."

She is voiced by Gina Bramhill, who also played Marianne Delacroix in Father Brown.

Background

Frank and Amy use a circular device called "Coach" that matches them with romantic partners for fixed periods of time. They are matched together for 12 hours. Despite initial nerves, they quickly get on and regret not having sex as they part. Coach tells them the system monitors each relationship to assign them a lifelong partner on "pairing day", with a success rate of 99.8%.

Frank's next match Nicola immediately disdains him, but they are paired for a year. Meanwhile, Amy finds her nine-month match Lenny attractive. Amy and Frank meet again, at an event where a couple talk about their successful pairing. Amy begins to find Lenny's mannerisms tiresome, particularly his heavy exhalations. After the relationship ends, she is repeatedly matched with people for 36 hours; having sex with each match, she begins to dissociate over the matches' pointlessness.

After Frank's match ends, he and Amy are matched again and they agree not to check the time length, to avoid preconceptions. They enjoy having sex for the first time and talk about how the system might work. One night, Frank checks the expiry date. It initially says five years but recalibrates, as Frank's betrayal of their agreement has destabilised it, until it reads 20 hours. Frank is distracted the next day as Amy notices every pebble she skips hits the water four times; he admits what has happened with an hour remaining. She is furious and he is heartbroken.

They continue matches to no avail. The evening before Amy's pairing day, she chooses Frank for her one permitted farewell session before skipping Coach across a swimming pool. At dinner with Frank, whose pairing day is also tomorrow, she encourages him to leave with her. Recognising that neither of them have memories prior to the system, she thinks the world is a test and they must rebel. A man with a taser approaches; Amy touches the taser and it stops working, and the people in the restaurant freeze. Frank and Amy run and scale a wall that separates the outside world. They are revealed to be in one of 1,000 simulated realities—in 998 of these worlds, the simulated Frank and Amy rebelled to be together. In the real world, a dating app assigns Frank to Amy as a 99.8% match. They make eye contact for the first time across a bar as "Panic" by the Smiths plays.

Trivia

TBA