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I think the biggest indication that Kenny wasn't an unfixable monster was that he tried to kill himself. It seemed like that was intended to tell us that he knew he had something wrong with him.
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Oct 24, 2016 19:56
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precision posted:I think the biggest indication that Kenny wasn't an unfixable monster was that he tried to kill himself. It seemed like that was intended to tell us that he knew he had something wrong with him. Agreed. I also find the hackers to be totally disgusting people who think taking the law into their own hands to torture bad people was acceptable; they are in a way as bad as the people they were e-vigilanting. Anonymously tipping off the cops on the pedos would be one thing, but playing games and having them fight each other to death. Like in the bees episode I felt like the lens was on the internet culture of bandwagoning on people we dislike and people essentially ignoring decency or for that matter why we have a loving criminal justice system. Basically we have brought back the mob with pitchforks but instead of physically being there, it is an anonymous group chattering behind their keyboards with their perceived moral superiority. That's why Shut Up and Dance is so brilliant. No one likes the people who were being toyed with, but the people pulling the strings somehow managed to reach a level of awfulness of the people they hated. It is also scary because like other people said this isn't a fictional scenario, this for the most part can be done right now. unlawfulsoup fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 20:09
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Desiderata posted:It's about a western man who despite an obvious life of privilege and comfort where nothing has ever really threatened him, has finally faced watching his dad die of alzheimer's, feels disconnected from his mother and then fled around the world. It's a clear simple episode about how while you may want to run and distract yourself with fun, or games, there is no escape from our family or mortality. That while we in the west toy with horror to give us the adrenaline rush we no longer get in real life: no creepy spider, no old bully, no spooky house, nothing is actually scarier than the real, grown-up, true, fleshy, human horror of the knowledge that you will probably live to see your parents die. That you will get old and that you will probably spend your last moments in a delirium as your mind slips away from you. That we all, much like Coopers mind, can't actually deal with that level of horror; so we flee from it and block it out, but it will catch up with us someday. So maybe put down that control pad and talk to your family more. I just wanted to say, this was a really good writeup of "Playtest" and I found it very insightful. 
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Oct 24, 2016 20:30
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Nosedive was enjoyable, but nothing special for me. Same with Playtest. I do agree that Playtest seemed to have one too many twists at the end. Shut Up and Dance felt a lot like the story of the pizza delivery man who was forced to rob a bank with a bomb strapped to him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Douglas_Wells In Brian's case he was later revealed to be involved in some of the planning, but still. The entire "you need to do these tasks or else" thing has happened before. Not quite to the level of Shut Up though. San Junipero was a great feel good episode. I don't really care that they might have skipped a scene where Kelly changes her mind. I was crying past the point where she proposed. I can see myself watching it again with a box of tissues nearby for the entire episode. Haven't seen the last two episodes. Can only manage about 2 per day.
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Oct 24, 2016 20:46
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precision posted:I think the biggest indication that Kenny wasn't an unfixable monster was that he tried to kill himself. It seemed like that was intended to tell us that he knew he had something wrong with him. I thought he was just trying to quickly end the torment (and avoid having to kill someone/face a more grueling death). If anything, the fact that he kept saying "he was just looking at pictures" suggests he tries rationalizing. I honestly think it makes for a stronger episode too. Like that one poster said earlier, watching it was kind of like watching someone you liked and respected get helldumped only to learn they had some horrible secret that completely kills any positive feelings you had towards them. You want to chastise the people who did the helldump, but you feel like doing so would mean you're condoning what the person did.
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Oct 24, 2016 20:47
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How can you call the dude from playtest insufferable? Like, he's pretty much just a friendly easy going guy. If he's insufferable I'd be interested to know what sufferable looks like.
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Oct 24, 2016 20:52
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MizPiz posted:I honestly think it makes for a stronger episode too. Like that one poster said earlier, watching it was kind of like watching someone you liked and respected get helldumped only to learn they had some horrible secret that completely kills any positive feelings you had towards them. You want to chastise the people who did the helldump, but you feel like doing so would mean you're condoning what the person did. Yeah, even as I wrote my post I felt kind of awful. No one, well almost no one wants to be in the corner of pedos in any way.
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Oct 24, 2016 20:54
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Bicyclops posted:
I thought the bees were fine too, not only for the reasons you mentioned but because it touched on an interesting and unexplained phenomenon, the unintended consequences of tinkering with nature, and the arrogance of dismissing the gravity of climate change by thinking that we'll just tech our way out of it.
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Oct 24, 2016 20:57
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Yikes double post.
socketwrencher fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 20:57
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f1av0r posted:How can you call the dude from playtest insufferable? Like, he's pretty much just a friendly easy going guy. If he's insufferable I'd be interested to know what sufferable looks like. he doesn't have a encyclopaedic knowledge of the harry potter boy wizard series therefore he's an irredeemable shitlord
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Oct 24, 2016 20:59
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f1av0r posted:How can you call the dude from playtest insufferable? Like, he's pretty much just a friendly easy going guy. If he's insufferable I'd be interested to know what sufferable looks like. I thought he was fine too, for what it's worth. Maybe a little too earnest but I think that works to make you feel something for him when he eats it in a relatively trivial way. As someone who thought Still Alice was the scariest movie from the past few years I liked Playtest quite a bit. flashy_mcflash fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 21:01
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San Junipero was an odd one. Mainly because nothing horrible ever seemed to happen. I liked it sort of slowly dropping hints about things as time went by but the whole time I was just expecting some terrible reveal. Knowing Black Mirror those robots are totally up to no good though. Oh, I quite like that the technology is a lot like the sort in Playtest, only used for therapy rather than videogames. And I guess those are both similar to the Cookies in White Christmas. It's nice that sometimes somebody in Black Mirror Land comes up with a good idea and then doesn't use it to torture people. And I take what I said before back, this would be fine for binge-watching. You get the dystopia one, and the evil shady organization one, and the one that could maybe happen today and they're pretty heavy, but then this was just nice really and relieves the tension. Of course, the last two could be massively horrendous but what the hell, I'm just gonna finish them tonight.
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Oct 24, 2016 21:27
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I think The Quagmire suggests it's not all roses over there either. I mean you're going to feel nothing after an eternity And how long was the project even been running? 20 or 25 years? People got bored that fast?
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Oct 24, 2016 21:57
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Yeah, the fact there were already people going to those depths just to feel anything doesn't bode well for the future of the world.
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Oct 24, 2016 22:03
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That was my feel as well. They are are happy for now which is what matters, but the little playground seems like it gets hollow after a while. The show mentions you can essentially delete yourself at any point, so I guess that's a thing.
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Oct 24, 2016 22:08
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I mean there's no reason you can't be consuming new media there right. They did say something about pain levels, so that could indicate a sort of falseness of experience to the digital afterlife. They also said it's like 80% full time residents, so presumably the quagmire conundrum doesn't affect everyone or even or a majority.
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Oct 24, 2016 22:14
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Playtest was also less enjoyable because it was a really blatant rip off of Cronenberg's eXistenZ, even ripping off very specific things in it.
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Oct 24, 2016 22:15
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unlawfulsoup posted:That was my feel as well. They are are happy for now which is what matters, but the little playground seems like it gets hollow after a while. I was thinking about this last night and came to the conclusion that it's feasible to believe that the company that created SJ would be patching and updating it. It's kind of in everyone's best interest if they can constantly improve upon it, like adding new worlds and creating space for unlimited people. But then I started going down the rabbit hole of "at what point would that be better than living in the real world?" and it started messing with my head 
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Oct 24, 2016 22:19
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Playtest bugged me because, thus far at least, Black Mirror had never really strayed into "man go too far" territory. A lot of profoundly lovely things happen because of technology, but not because of unexpected side effects or evil genie style twists. What made earlier stories in Black Mirror potent for me wasn't that technology could create hosed up scenarios, it was that technology working as designed could create hosed up scenarios. Playtest, at its most basic, was just an accident. Nosedive was not.
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Oct 24, 2016 22:24
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Playtest was just a chance for the nerd director to show off his skills of building tension and stuff. I don't think it's an episode anyone is going to watch more than once.
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Oct 24, 2016 22:36
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Murmur Twin posted:I was thinking about this last night and came to the conclusion that it's feasible to believe that the company that created SJ would be patching and updating it. It's kind of in everyone's best interest if they can constantly improve upon it, like adding new worlds and creating space for unlimited people. The episode mentions putting limits on the time people were allowed in for that very reason. The show obviously didn't really delve into strict limitations, but I don't see why it couldn't expand either.
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Oct 24, 2016 22:36
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Pac-Manioc Root posted:My rankings: you're loving insane.
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Oct 24, 2016 22:58
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Murmur Twin posted:I was thinking about this last night and came to the conclusion that it's feasible to believe that the company that created SJ would be patching and updating it. It's kind of in everyone's best interest if they can constantly improve upon it, like adding new worlds and creating space for unlimited people. I noticed the servers had something like SJ136-08 or something on them, It could be there are multiple instances. That would also explain the different timeframes, you could make a different instance for every few years just to help seperate out people. People would travel between them as they pleased, but would generally live in whatever instance was their ideal time. Daedalus1134 fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 23:14
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I adored San Junipero, and cried for the last 20m. Having said that: I couldn't help but think of Surface Detail by Iain M Banks. The book is largely about the inverse of the episode - some civilisations creating artificial hells with infinite torture and abuse to put the consciousness of criminals and other people judged to be morally unfit at the time of death. Much like in religion itself, heaven implies hell - if the tech to create San Junipero exists, so does the technology to create a literal and unending hell. There were similar themes around Cookies of course. I just kept on thinking that maybe if the woman's parents had had their way, they could have uploaded her to hell for homosexuality... brrrrrrr
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Oct 24, 2016 23:17
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Stumiester posted:I adored San Junipero, and cried for the last 20m. have you seen the White Christmas episode?
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Oct 24, 2016 23:20
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Lovechop posted:have you seen the White Christmas episode? Yeah - I guess the Cookies covered alot of the ground. I suppose I was thinking of a full on endless torture, rape and abuse Hell of the book, but the endless repetition and nothingness of the Cookies might actually be as bad in the final analysis.
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Oct 24, 2016 23:30
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San Junipero is like if Nosedive were told from the point of view of the best man. Living the same night in 1987 for the rest of eternity would be a hellacious nightmare, but instead the protagonist just ends up with everything she ever wanted. It's like an inverse Black Mirror. It's well done and I can see why people like it as a short sci-fi story, but it dangles so many threads I want to see pulled and I find it super unrewarding because of that.
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Oct 24, 2016 23:46
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Men Against Fire was interesting. Seen things that do most of those concepts before, but not all together like that. Very well done though I thought. The military and such are a bit cartoonishly evil in the way they go about things, but it doesn't really work if they were more reasonable about it. It'd still be hosed up but maybe just make the sick people not have kids rather than make the world see them as monsters and gun them all down. Hell, use the system to make them all look like jerks so nobody wants to start a family with them. I guess it's a sort of "why do they split up in the horror film" or "why don't they make sure the killer is actually dead" thing where you don't have a story if everybody is completely logical at all times. Which is how most Black Mirror episodes go I suppose.
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Oct 25, 2016 00:02
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McDragon posted:Men Against Fire was interesting. Seen things that do most of those concepts before, but not all together like that. Very well done though I thought. Thing was that it wasn't just sick people, it was people with a genetic predisposition towards things like crime and deviance. That's why "they don't care about life." Though frankly, you did stumble onto good potential episode. It could definitely be worked into something about the global decline in mental healthcare being driven by economic austerity measures.
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Oct 25, 2016 00:46
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Oh, yeah, I forgot that bit. Anyway last episode was pretty good. Silent Witness + Cyberbees. Nothing groundbreaking, just a story that got way more interesting as it went on.Also that car was amazing. poo poo, I watched it all. That sounds like a bad Black Mirror idea, people finish a show on Netflix and then they are a bit sad it's all finished and then they go on the internet to tell people. Or, Future Netflix anyway All in all, interesting collection of episodes in this season. I guess it's seasons now it's streaming also holy poo poo this is amazing Actually, the series is pretty good at little details. Especially when the news is on, you get to see that there's something about Cookies having human rights, and the game dev guy from Playtest is bringing out a super immersive VR thingamabob. But I like that there's also little jokes as well e2: also SJ having Heaven is a Place on Earth a bunch and then literally having an afterlife that is a place on earth was a good one McDragon fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 01:45
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oops, double post
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Oct 25, 2016 01:54
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I thought this was a great season of a fantastic series. I absolutely love anthologies even when they're trashy (ABCs of Death, VHS series, etc.) and this series continues to knock it out of the park. My one question is when is Charlie Brooker going to tell us how he really feels about politicians?
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Oct 25, 2016 02:11
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Just finished the season. Feel kinda similar to how I felt about the previous six episodes: one incredible one, one terrible one, and a bunch in varying quality in between. Nosedive - I thought this one was really fun, even though it's literally just the "what if phones but too much" joke writ large. I thought the ending was pretty cute and weirdly uplifting, even though I thought they could have done more with the wedding speech scene. Playtest - This one started slow but got pretty fun once the simulation finally started to kick in. Not sure why most people hated the protagonist, I didn't think he was particularly unlikable. My only big issue with the episode is that the ending was a twist too far. I thought the whole simulation-within-a-simulation twist really cheapened the rest of the episode so they could make a dumb callback joke ("lol he forgot to turn off his phone!"). I think Black Mirror's biggest weakness is that they almost always try to go for the edgiest, most cynical possible route for a story to go, regardless of whether it works or not. This instance felt especially forced, like they realized that the ending was too happy so they tacked on a death scene at the end because Black Mirror. Shut Up and Dance - I don't know what planet you guys are on; this episode was total garbage and tied with White Bear for personal least favorite of the series. Just empty shock value masquerading as deep social commentary. I don't think it works as social commentary because it fundamentally misunderstands how 4chan hatemobs work, who they target, and why people participate in them. I don't think it works as shock value either, because I found myself laughing my rear end off all the way through, especially the "serious" ending with the melodramatic Radiohead song playing. It's a similar problem I had with "The National Anthem" where the situation being depicted is so elaborately stupid and absurd that any attempt to wring pathos and horror out of it just comes off as this weird tonal dissonance to me. I think this episode could have been better had they just gone straight dark comedy with it. As it is, it just felt like a pointless exercise in edginess that admits its own pointlessness at the end of the episode. San Junipero - Loved this one, the clear standout of the season and one of the best episodes in the series period. I wish they would make more episodes like this and "Be Right Back", where they take an interesting idea and carefully explore both the positives and the negatives of it without immediately defaulting to "this is Black Mirror, let's take everything to the darkest conclusion possible". Men Against Fire - This one was pretty cool, even though I saw a recent movie do this exact same twist a few months ago. I wasn't really crazy about the episode's ending, though. The full reveal could have been handled in a more interesting way than "villain gives endless exposition in a featureless white room", and I agree with whoever said that making the twist about eugenics instead of the refugee crisis was a big missed opportunity. I felt like the whole episode was leading to that conclusion but then the scientist goes full cartoon Nazi, which was disappointing. Hated in the Nation - Meh. I didn't dislike this one, but it just felt like an overlong episode of Torchwood or the pilot to some Syfy procedural show. I'm not sure why they added an extra 30 minutes to this one, it's not like the story really needed any of that padding. Overall ranking: 4 > 1 > 5 > 2 >> 6 >>> 3
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Oct 25, 2016 03:35
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but shut up and dance IS a dark comedy episode, still, despite being bleak
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Oct 25, 2016 03:35
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Escobarbarian posted:but shut up and dance IS a dark comedy episode, still, despite being bleak Oh I know, I just don't think it earns the "serious" ending. That episode spends an hour of putting these characters through situations that are increasingly absurd and hard to take seriously, and then it turns around to the audience and says "wow, can't you believe how hosed up that was??? I bet you were really disturbed, right?!" and honestly I wasn't. I felt the same way about The National Anthem and it's attempts to wag its finger at the audience for thinking that the PM loving a pig on national TV is funny. You can't have it both ways.
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Oct 25, 2016 03:42
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Total Meatlove posted:It's definitely not well put across if you're outside the UK, but he's at least 18 and out of school. Also the actors next role is in a Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne biopic
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Oct 25, 2016 03:59
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Man, first 20 minutes of San Junipero is a SNOOOOOOZEFEST! When do things become not as they seem? Edit to add: Oh, 20 more minutes and they're jumping decades! ...oh poo poo there's the reveal. That's pretty intense. Stinky_Pete fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 04:15
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Not really full reviews since a lot has already been said, but here are my thoughts on the episodes: Nosedive I want to buy the main character's brother a beer, he seems like a cool dude. I like the dystopia-disguised-as-a-utopia feel of the world in this one. People callously voting the main character down over losing their cool temporarily, affecting her greatly. One thing I didn't like was the wedding speech, it seemed like she would have gotten kicked out way earlier. They kind of addressed this with the groom saying "They'll rate us down for kicking her out" but I thought that excuse was a bit flimsy. Playtest My least favorite of the bunch. Thought the guy was a bit douchy, but not really a bad guy. I did think the actor did a pretty good job of evoking the main character convincing everyone that he wasn't scared so hard that he almost started believing it himself. It's about VR so some fuckery with him seeming to have gotten out and actually still being in there was to be expected and I don't mind, but they did do it at least one time too much at the end. Shut Up and Dance I guess I'm one of the few people who felt empathy for the kid even after the end of the episode. The vibe I got was not "Ha-ha, you empathized with a terrible person" but more "Mob justice is bad even against the people who seem most deserving of it". And even though 19 is legally adult he very much seemed like a confused kid who realized what he did was bad but wasn't fully aware of how and why, yet. And I don't subscribe to the belief that if someone passes some threshold of wrongdoing/crimes that they are suddenly deserving of every horrible thing that could possibly ever happen to anyone. San Junipero Wow, a happy ending. Anyone who was missing the bit between the fight and the end can watch the final half hour of any romcom of the past 20 years to get the basic idea of what happened. I like that they omitted it because it's super obvious what happened anyway. Men Against Fire I like that they went the eugenics route because it puts a strong link between this and the nazis, and thereby compares the events of nazi Germany to the refugee crisis of today. Maybe the things that were bad in nazi Germany are still bad when we do them today? Hated in the Nation My favorite one! Even though it was obvious from the first hate tweet that the theme was going to be about hate tweets being bad, this episode kept me guessing the whole time. First I expected the toxicology lab to all die from the cake, then I thought the bees were acting by themselves ala I Robot or Terminator, and then I thought Garret Scholes would pull a Se7en and be purposely killed himself. I really liked the idea of a serial killer acting out "the will of the people" by going after the people most hated on social media. Not a huge fan of the ending though. Episodes from best to worst: 6 - 1 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 2. Though they're pretty close to one another for me this season.
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Oct 25, 2016 12:22
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HorseRenoir posted:I felt the same way about The National Anthem and it's attempts to wag its finger at the audience for thinking that the PM loving a pig on national TV is funny. You can't have it both ways. It does that? I never got the feeling that the show was wagging its finger at the audience, in any episode. There were people watching the PM go at it but I didn't interpret that as a blanket statement about every single person viewing the episode.
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Oct 25, 2016 12:25
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Good Soldier Svejk posted:My one question is when is Charlie Brooker going to tell us how he really feels about politicians? the same way jimmy feels about hamlin in better call saul
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