Black Mirror - Spoilers after the first post

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Loved white Christmas... Im hooked. Especially liked the portrayal of a realistic futuristic world... I can see see the blocking feature become a reality.... As horrible as it is. Gonna start watching the rest. 

[Raja]

Are you fiends watching this? 

I've finished the second episode and I'm pretty emotionally drained. I should not watch Black Mirror sober. 

[Spockydog]

Saw episode one tonight. Shit was razor sharp.

 

[AndyBaelish]

While watching episode one, Dennis from It's Always Sunny yelling "I'M A FIVE STAR MAN!" kept popping up in my head. 

 

It's not my favorite episode so far, but it is quite good. Just close enough to reality to feel positively creepy, but a little too far out to find believable. Great ending though. 

 

Episode two has upped the creep factor and Dan Trachtenberg was a fantastic choice as director. Great episode. 

Edited October 22, 2016 by AndyBaelish

[HelenaExMachina]

Just finished episode three...fuck.

[Martell Spy]

I'm kinda skipping around, but I've seen a couple so far. Shut up and dance was my favorite so far this season. Really disturbing.

[Raja]

4 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Just finished episode three...fuck.

That was fast! I don't have the mental fortitude to consume that much Black Mirror in such a short space of time. 

I've seen the first two so far - it's been pretty great so far. I've heard Shut up and dance, which is the next episode, is *pretty* disturbing ( aren't they all though). Neither of the first two episodes have hit me as hard as Be right back and Entire History of you. 

[Lord Bowie]

5 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Just finished episode three...fuck.

Yep. Fuck... After I watched ep three I couldn't think of anything else. Took me another day to get back to it. The fourth one is much lighter and heart warming (and surprising - didn't get many of those in this season). Didn't care much for the last two, if I made a list of my favourites of the season it would be probably 4, 3, 1, 2, 6 and the 5th in the last position. It was so predictable and bland. I've heard people liking the 2nd ep a lot. I thought it was just good. It could be a lot better IMO.

[HelenaExMachina]

Yeah thankfully the fourth is much lighter. I didn't fully understand it until the end. It was very moving though. The second episode didn't wow me, but that sort of thing doesn't really interest me 

[Sheep the Evicted]

Finished. For me it's

Playtest

Shut up and Dance

Men Against Fire

San Junipero

Nosedive

Hated in the Nation

in order of awesomeness. Su&D was probably  "better" but Playtest just effected me on a personal level. I would say Hated, despite its incredible production quality, was actually quite bad. There has to be a better way to show the consequences of social media hate storms then this ai bees's bullshit, and the government invasion of privacy angle was just so hamfisted.

[HelenaExMachina]

Heh, I'm going to come across as the contrarian posting directly after that  My ranking would be 6>1=4>3>2>5. I especially liked the total breakdown at the end of Nosedive, and I thought it was very well handled throughout. Hated in the Nation I was gripped throughout and found it super creepy. Also not-Katie-Hopkins-I-swear at the beginning and I still didn't sympathise with her.

San Junipero was absolutely lovely for me, and in time I might change my view and list it as my favourite. I don't know if I just missed something when watching it but it wasn't until Old Kelly showed up that I fully understood what was happening. Not sure if that was intended or I just didn't pay attention. But yes, loved it.

Men Against Fire I felt had a strong message about being taught to see people as "Other" and the power of dehumanisation but I don't feel it was pulled off very well, hence its position at the bottom for me.

It was a very good set of episodes all round though

Bingeing this over the weekend was possibly a mistake. I feel I need to go do something to cheer me up now because there was some depressing stuff in there.

[Kalbear]

San Junipero was amazingly moving and awesome. 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

San Junipero is an odd episode. By the end I thought it was very good and quite moving (that it has someone from Halt and Catch Fire in it made it extra special for me). But the first half I was checking my watch every 5 minutes. It took a very long time to get to the point or give you any hint of there being anything particularly interesting about the episode. 

I don't think the 'romance' between the two characters was especially fleshed out or well done. It was more the concept of the romance that was interesting rather than anything about the interplay of the characters. 

Good but not great. But certainly the best of the ones I've seen so far. 

[Kalbear]

Huh. I found it immediately compelling and moving, at first as a coming out story and then in a cool tech way. I was somewhat spoiled coming in and maybe that helped - because I paid more attention to the repeated mentions of the clock, the ways that people acted and why, the nods to nostalgia that people actually had. I knew it was a sim of some kind - but I didn't know why. 

It was incredibly optimistic and interesting to me. Black Mirror is at its best when it shows what technology can do and how that in turn shows what humanity is. And this was the cream of the crop - showing a woman who was unable to love for 40 years be able to fall in love with someone and live the life denied her is extraordinarily optimistic, beautiful and sad all at once. I thought the two actresses had great, realistic chemistry. I loved the nods to nostalgia. I loved the setup, too.

I also liked that it was one of the only sci-fi stories that actually incorporates both disabled and old people, which usually tech uses as either some kind of villain or some kind of prude (see Nosedive as an example). In this, it shows how tech can not only be good for the elderly, it can be transformative. It echoes some of the stories we've heard of VR being used in hospitals for extended stays to help with care and morale. It was really neat.

 

[Kalbear]

Also, the last episode has a neat little link to a prior episode. Blue - the shadow - stopped doing forensics after the Rannoch case. 

Rannoch is the name of the man who kidnapped and murdered the little girl in White Bear, the second-season ep.

ETA: I also loved the 'would you kindly' bit in Playtest. Nice shoutout, well done. 

Edited October 25, 2016 by Kalbear

[Tellus Explorer]

So I had never heard of this show until last week. A friend and I wanted to binge watch a show we both hadn't seen and this popped up. I loved it and can not wait for more! It's hard for me to watch television and actually enjoy it, but I was pleasantly surprised with Black Mirror!

Excited for season 4!!

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

20 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Huh. I found it immediately compelling and moving, at first as a coming out story and then in a cool tech way. I was somewhat spoiled coming in and maybe that helped - because I paid more attention to the repeated mentions of the clock, the ways that people acted and why, the nods to nostalgia that people actually had. I knew it was a sim of some kind - but I didn't know why. 

It was incredibly optimistic and interesting to me. Black Mirror is at its best when it shows what technology can do and how that in turn shows what humanity is. And this was the cream of the crop - showing a woman who was unable to love for 40 years be able to fall in love with someone and live the life denied her is extraordinarily optimistic, beautiful and sad all at once. I thought the two actresses had great, realistic chemistry. I loved the nods to nostalgia. I loved the setup, too.

I also liked that it was one of the only sci-fi stories that actually incorporates both disabled and old people, which usually tech uses as either some kind of villain or some kind of prude (see Nosedive as an example). In this, it shows how tech can not only be good for the elderly, it can be transformative. It echoes some of the stories we've heard of VR being used in hospitals for extended stays to help with care and morale. It was really neat.

 

I agree, but the first half hour is a pretty standard, quite uninteresting story of a geeky loner with a crush on a cool girl in a new town. It was purposely derivative I think and meant to hark back to cheesy 80's movies, but without seeing it in the context of them being inside a sort of simulation it wasn't especially interesting. 

So far I think every one of the series 3 episodes has had a bit of a problem moving its story forward quickly enough. Episode 2 was the weakest for me, and that didn't really need to spend so much of its time establishing its character.

[Raja]

Just finished 'Shut up and dance' and why am I even watching this show when it makes me feel like this? Sadness 

Probably because it's fuckin brilliant. 

[Dr. Pepper]

Omg San Junipero gave me nightmares.  Something about seeing these consciousnesses inserted on a tech wall to live forever creeped me the fuck out.  For two nights I woke up scared and out of breath thinking that I was experiencing my 500th year of 'life' or something.  

I didn't think a six episode season would be as good as the others, but it delivered.  The episodes smacked me right in the damn feels most of the time.  I want to watch all of them again, but I need a pretty lengthy recovery period.  

[DaveSumm]

I've seen 1 - 4, and so far it's very, very good but there hasn't been one that's completely knocked me for six like previous seasons. Or maybe it's just that they felt newer and exciting and I've kind of desensitised to the show now. I'm not sure. There's so many shows out there that will depict something unusual and say "oh look we're exploring this issue", and hope that that's enough. Black Mirror immediately raised its own bar by truly exploring issues and putting characters through the ringer with it, and really feeling like it had something to say about each issue.....whereas this season it feels it's slipped slightly back to simply depicting the issues as opposed to commenting on them as such (but only very slightly, and it's still incredible). Take Shut Up and Dance.......it made for horrific viewing, but does it really tell us much about internet blackmail? What's the take-home? Or Playtest; again an excellent hour of television, but other than perhaps 'call your Mum more often', do we come out the other side having enriched our opinions in anyway? And I'm really asking, I've watched them over two days so probably have more digesting to do.

White Bear remains my favourite, the way it looked like it was going to be a proto-typical Black Mirror episode (wouldn't it be weird if everyone filmed everything) and then managed to pack its twist and its message and a fairly controversial one at that into one brutal gut punch of an ending. There haven't been any real gut punches for me this season.

1. White Bear
2. The Entire History Of You
3. Be Right Back
4. Fifteen Million Merits
5. White Christmas
6. The National Anthem
7. San Junipero
8. Nosedive
9. Shut Up and Dance
10. Playtest
11. The Waldo Moment

But to be honest 1-5 are very close and would probably shuffle around if I rewatched them.