Last night, I was binge-watching episodes of the latest season of “Black Mirror” to combat one of the worst insomnia spells I have had so far.

Episode 3 of season 7, “Hotel Reverie,” is hands-down the most beautiful-looking episode Black Mirror has ever made. An homage to classic black-and-white cinema, its aesthetic is first expertly reproduced, then enhanced by the imaginative bursts of director Haolu Wang and her team. It’s romantic, it’s funny, and thanks to a stellar performance from Emma Corrin channeling the buttoned-up passion of 1940s leading ladies, it’s also very moving.

The second-longest episode in season seven, “Hotel Reverie” takes 77 minutes to tell its story, which is really several stories fitted Matryoshka doll-style inside one another. On the outer edge is Brandy Friday (Issa Rae), a modern-day Hollywood actor frustrated at being relegated to roles as sexy sidekicks to “one of the Ryans” or, as she describes it, lead parts in “Sundance misery porn.” They both put her in the same box, says Brandy, and she wants more. Ironically, Brandy finds more inside a box—or more properly, inside the “redream” computer system.

I didn’t expect to tear up, but I did. It was so touching! Like meeting a first love at summer camp or on a cruise ship, and when it ends, you go back to wherever that place is and never speak again! When the “redream” team fixed the computer to reset the movie to the last saved version, I kind of felt sad. For a moment, I wondered: Would it be so bad if Clara and Brandy were stuck somewhere in that digital realm, living a life unspoiled by external elements, feeling romance in its purest form?

Have you ever seen a bird lay an egg? The bird protects the egg from the outside world until the egg hatches, turns into a bird, and flies away. A relationship is just like that—in the beginning, you protect it from the outside world; you meet in secret, you don’t tell anyone about it; when you meet, it’s always exclusive—just the two of you, and the world outside seems to fade. You put your phone on silent, you push all meetings away, no one else exists in the world but you and him or her. You feel connected, you feel love, you feel emotions untainted by society.

One day, you decide to step out of the bird’s nest. You tell your friends, your family, your colleagues. You start planning the future, dreaming of living in a house together, getting married, taking trips, having kids, and whatnot. After some time, you start second-guessing. You get nervous because your best friend has a much more passionate relationship than you. You become irritated because there is a new joinee in the office who is “hot,” and you start comparing him/her with your partner. You start working more because you would rather be in the office than go home—the home that you built together but which doesn’t feel like home anymore. You start talking to your other “special friend” more and more because conversation at home is becoming mundane and argumentative. And before you know it, that sweet dreamy world you wanted to make starts collapsing, and you are left hoping to go back to the starting point when it was just the two of you, and the world didn’t play its own games to break your happy bubble.

I personally feel that no relationship can survive in its true form due to so many external elements trying to sabotage the chemistry between two people. But if you could ever live in a space meant for only you two, wouldn’t it be brilliant?

If you were given the option to forgo the real world so that you could stay in the reverie forever with that one special person, what would you do? As for me, I would choose to stay in that realm to have a happy ending.