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Black Mirror (the Netflix years)

Can't wait! Bigger budgets, bigger stars (not sure that's necessary but still...) and twice as many episodes.
 
I'LL WATCH THEM OVER THE WEEKEND.

One's directed by Dan Trachtenberg (of 10 Cloverfield Lane) with music by Bear McCreary so that's something I guess.
 
Just going to post without spoiler tags because really why would you read what I thought of the episodes if you don't want spoilers?

Nosedive - I liked it. Even though it was a similar idea to the mewmeowbeanz episode of Community (and I doubt they ripped off Community, it's pretty believable that the world will end up that way!) it was done really well. Not Jessica Chastain was good. I wanted something bad to happen to Alice Eve at the end.

Playtest - This episode was well directed, well acted, had some great CGI, and was genuinely scary and freaky in places.

And...I'm not sure what the point of it was?

Like I know I watch more genre tv than some other people so maybe I'm more likely to spot "he was still in the holodeck!" type twists. But even if I was genuinely shocked by I don't know that I would have found it satisfying. If you look at previous episodes like "White Bear" the big twist was there for story reasons and the episode had something to say about crime and punishment. This one...it just seemed to be there to say "haha, fooled you!" to the audience. The part where he wakes up the first time (and sorry I totally called that he hadn't really woken up because again I've seen like fifty tv episodes like this) and they say "he was only in the game for one second!" then when he dies for real at the end they say "he was only in the game for 0.0004 seconds!" or something ridiculous like that...that was stupid? Why would his brain have created a "false waking up moment!" narrative anyway?

What was the episode about? Was the message "maybe video games will kill people in the future"? LOOK, I'm not saying everything has to have a deep meaning to it or anything but this just felt bleak for the sake of being bleak and left me feeling empty.

(EDIT: And just so I get all my complaints in one post, I have no idea why the first half of the episode had to be so slow. It's not like his character was so complex that we needed a super long introduction to him. It was like 35 minutes before he put on the VR thing.)
 
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Shut Up And Dance - Very good episode. Tense throughout and the twist ending here made you look at everything that had happened in a new light (and I was thinking "is a wanking video being released really worse than robbing a bank?" until the truth was revealed.) Having Bronn in it was a lot of fun and I kind of felt bad for him even though he was a bit of a dick.

San Junipero - This one was great! A compelling love story told using a science fiction concept. Great performance from the two leads, great use of music and an actual happy ending (well, happy as far as Black Mirror goes.) Up there with the best episodes from previous years.
 
Men Against Fire - I like how different each story is. Nothing like this (a war story) has been done in any previous episode. It was a good one, not one of my favourites but definitely good.

Hated In The Nation - And this again felt like an episode from a completely different show. Which is good! It felt like a parody of those American crime shows where the cop has some weird quirky skill. Twitter Cop. With quirky name (Blue.) But it was all played so straight that I kind of wanted Jack Clotth to show up and show them his bum or something? But no, I did like it. Kelly McDonald was a bit annoying but I like Faye Marsay. The ending was Silence of The Lambs? The Twitter stuff was like The National Anthem from series 1 a bit but going more towards online shaming. I liked it.

So there we go, I liked five out of the six episodes. Anyone else watched it?
 
I've watched 5 out of the 6 so far:

Nosedive: This was okay? It felt like kind of a by-the-numbers Black Mirror episode, if such a thing exists? "What if an existing social media concept was applied to the world at large? It would be bad".

But Bryce Dallas Howard was good, as was Alive Eve... but yeah, MeowMeowBeanz did it better.

Playtest: I liked this one better, and it was really well directed, but still felt a bit empty? I guess the message was something about how his avoiding the confrontation with his mother was the thing that eventually killed him but I don't get how SUPER SCARY VIDEO GAMES works into that. I mean, I've seen eXistenZ, I could just watch eXistenZ - that has Ian Holm!

Shut Up and Dance: Now this is Black Mirror! Very well written, I did kind of see the twist coming but it literally didn't matter, and what I liked about this episode was that it's not really actually science fiction? As in, there is nothing in this episode that could not, and probably has, happen today. Which is pretty chilling, really.

ALSO I liked how with the first episode being all-Ameican, and the second having an American lead, this one was 100% British. It's not that I don't like the American stuff, it's just I appreciate that they kept this episode more British, as I think that's a big part of the Black Mirror 'feel'.

San Junipero: I LOVED THIS EPISODE. Like, everything about this episode. I loved how well they sold the 80's time period, to the point where it looked like this could have been something that was actually shot in the 80's. Compare that with something like, say, Stranger Things which trades on a lot of the 80's nostalgia but 100% looks like a modern TV show. Plus I loved how it made it look like a totally different show than Shut Up and Dance, which is exactly the type of thing you want in an anthology show.

The actual plot was amazing, with the reveal of the true nature of San Junipero being revealed just slow enough that you had a chance to work it out, so that it didn't feel totally out of left field when you found out what it was. BUT, when the "twist" happened the emotional story had already developed to a point where that was the main focus, and allowed the episode to expand beyond just something that had a twist, and into an actual story.

They managed to do a "happy" episode of Black Mirror while still making it feel like an episode of Black Mirror, which is impressive.

Men Against Fire: This wasn't as good as San Junipero, which set a high bar, but this was still pretty good. It's a nice commentary on the othering of certain groups of people that happen during war, as a way to make them easier to slaughter - the obvious comparison being the way the Nazi's treated Jewish people. This episode even goes as far as basically making the what the soldiers were doing another form of eugenics. Pretty good overall!


ONE MORE TO GO.
 
Hated in the Nation - I liked how this was a police procedural, but I agree with Wacky that the tone was a bit odd. I think if maybe the concept was a bit straighter or darker it would have worked, but as it involved literally robot bees, it maybe seemed a bit silly.

But the performances were good, and the moral (although a bit unsubtle) of "people don't understand the consequences of their actions online" is a good one. It was good, but I think sometimes this show tries to be a bit too series for it's own good, while still trying to play concepts like "robot bees" super straight, whereas it's something that would feel more at home in an episode of Doctor Who.
 
I wonder what the twist will be with the spacey one that means it's set in the not too distant future, rather than the definitely distant future. I guess it's game where everyone gets to live out their fantasies but then the captain is a necrophiliac and humps all the crew who get blown up by exploding consoles and his wife's a paedophile priest.
 
Should be good so long as it’s a careful balance between what we’ve come to expect (everyone dies/goes insane at the end) and mixing things up a bit (everyone’s happy somehow?).
 
I've seen them all and will now post my thoughts, so stop reading when I get to an episode you haven't seen yet!

USS Callister - Yes, I liked it too. It was a bit like 'Hollow Persuits' but if Barclay was evil and able to make sentient digital people using DNA (somehow!) It was probably the funniest episode of the season but still had plenty of creepiness. I liked how it turned into a full on Star Trek style space adventure by the end. For a moment I was thinking "wait, this makes no sense" when they flew through the wormhole and the guy from Westworld came back to life and everyone was happy, but it's the kind of ending they would do in Star Trek and I think that's what they were going for. Good Aaron Paul cameo too. So yeah, one of the best of the season.

Arkangel - This was one where you could see where it was going from the start. Really there was only one logical ending when a mother is monitoring her teenage daughter through her eyes. It worked because the acting and direction was compelling. The mother didn't seem like a total monster. Not my favourite or anything but solid.

Crocodile - This...was hard to get through. I liked the parts with the insurance lady using the memory machine on people. That was intersting. But so much of the episode is spent on an unysmpathetic, kind of unbelievable (she was tiny but an unstoppable killing machine?) murderer. Then she killed a blind baby which just felt like too much, all to set up the "ah-h-h, she forgot about the guinea pig!" ending. Okay, but we saw how the memory machine worked earlier, so how exactly did the cops manage to question a guinea pig? They probably don't have very good memories either! It looked nice with the Iceland setting but was probably my least favourite of the season.

Hang the DJ - Much better! Two likable leads with great chemistry who we actually want to see end up together! That works a lot better than focusing on some prick or murderer. I didn't guess it was a simulation but I did wonder what was actually going on. A good happy ending (well, unless you took it as thousands of sentient versions of them dying when the simulation ended, which is sad I guess?) Not up to 'San Junipero' level or anything in terms of feel good episodes, but probably the best of the season.

Metalhead - Bleak. But still good to watch. The killer robot dog was a very convincing special effect. I guess it helped that it was in black and white. Good tense survival horror, but yeah very bleak with that ending.

Black Museum - Followed a similar format to the Jon Hamm Christmas episode but not quite as good as that. The problem was that the first story (about the doctor who enjoyed pain) went on way too long and wasn't really connected to the rest of the epsidoe. The other stories were better. The girl being out for revenge was a twist I saw coming (because why else would she be there) and the villain was maybe a bit too over the top but it's an episode that was boring me for a while then got better in the end.
 
I’ve only seen the first two.

Kirsten Dunst is in USS Callister, apparently. She’s in a scene close to the beginning in th3 office.

I thought they did a good job of initially making Daley come across as very relatable with the various slights that people unintentionally made throughout his day, only for him of course to turn out to be a monster. Interestingly for me the tension ended up coming from speculating how monstrous the writers would treat these characters - would they be allowed a happy ending or not. Do we think Daley got deleted, or does he live on forever (or until his body dies) surrounded by nothingness?

The pussy stealing remark was the best line. Close second was “weird alien blue skin. It’s fucked up... and actually kind of racist”.

Arkangel was good but I agree it was clear how it would go from early on so it was just a matter of watching it play out. But it was very well done. They did a good job of making all the characters sympathetic.
 
Didn't notice Dunst. She's in a relationship with Jesse Plemons so maybe she was just visiting him and they decided to film a cameo because why not.
 
Didn’t know they were together in real life. That’s nice.

Crocodile - Yep, bleak as fook. My mind wandered a bit trying to figure out where in the world it was set that had loads of British people but didn’t look like Britain. The insurance lady was very well acted. Very natural. I liked her scenes and the exploration of how memories can differ from reality. It was kind of a shame that the sci-fi element played second fiddle to a lot of murdering. The idea of a chain of murders is a good one, but I would’ve liked to see more memory stuff. And I think they should’ve ended it at the murderer finding the baby. I thought that was what they were doing, but disappointingly we went back and had the silly guinea pig twist and the on the nose blind baby comment. Would’ve been better to leave us guessing what she did, and what we’d do.

Metalhead - Fuck ok it can get bleaker. Black guy dies first, cute guys head gets destroyed, all other characters kill themselves. Great. Was very well acted and it wouldn’t be Black Mirror if there wasn’t some misery. I felt like they were going for a Hitchcock feel with quite a few scenes. Might’ve been one reason for the black and white too.
 
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