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I think the Manson family thing is fine. It's entirely realistic, because it's just almost exactly a historical event down to the date on which it occurs. It's just a "truth is stranger is fiction" thing where you're like "a gang of kooky hippies would never invade a celebrity's California mansion with murder in their hearts!" but yeah, that did happen in real life, and it was just as bizarre and traumatic.
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Jul 6, 2023 18:57
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Der Kyhe posted:It was a badly malformed and forced Charles Manson reference that actually made the episode worse. Had the family died in a car crash (caused by connection blacking out at the wrong moment so he blames himself and replica is destroyed in crash and fire) or boat capsizing (so he blames himself and the replica being in the bottom of the pacific ocean) the episode would have worked much better, and caused fewer question about mission security, and the cost of those replicas. I think feeling like he is the victim of a great cosmic injustice is kinda important to the story. His sense of entitlement partly stems from that. And a senseless murder by some psychotic idiots for absolutely no reason feels much more unfair than a car accident or an illness. Like, he looks like the kind of guy that has always gotten everything in life he wanted and views himself superior to Aaron Paul. Why should HE experience something so unfair? If at all, it should happen to his lessers.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:02
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Android Blues posted:I think the Manson family thing is fine. It's entirely realistic, because it's just almost exactly a historical event down to the date on which it occurs. It's just a "truth is stranger is fiction" thing where you're like "a gang of kooky hippies would never invade a celebrity's California mansion with murder in their hearts!" but yeah, that did happen in real life, and it was just as bizarre and traumatic. I don't think the problem is that it's "unrealistic". Like yes that happened and they could've built an episode around it. Instead it's entirely just about the grief of his family dying and the method it happened ends up not factoring into the plot at all. It ends up being distracting and muddying the themes of the story instead of contributing to the whole. You can argue that Manson is another case of "patriarchal figure controlling the people around him" (maybe the episode's biggest theme), but that isn't really on display in the scene, per se. If they didn't want to explore the dark cult side of the sixties any further than "means to fridge his family", don't introduce it.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:03
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GABA ghoul posted:I think feeling like he is the victim of a great cosmic injustice is kinda important to the story. His sense of entitlement partly stems from that. And a senseless murder by some psychotic idiots for absolutely no reason feels much more unfair than a car accident or an illness. Yeah absolutely. It helps the episode that David went through something unspeakably traumatic that also wasn't in any way his fault - that he couldn't have foreseen or avoided. Like you say, it builds his sense of entitled rage, and it also gives Lana and Cliff a way into sympathising with him, even though Cliff never seems to have liked him much at all.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:05
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MokBa posted:I don't think the problem is that it's "unrealistic". Like yes that happened and they could've built an episode around it. Instead it's entirely just about the grief of his family dying and the method it happened ends up not factoring into the plot at all. It ends up being distracting and muddying the themes of the story instead of contributing to the whole. You can argue that Manson is another case of "patriarchal figure controlling the people around him" (maybe the episode's biggest theme), but that isn't really on display in the scene, per se. I can see this though, yeah. You could go for more tonal clarity - I think how it works serves the episode, but I can see that argument. I think you're right that there might have been a way to heighten or pre-introduce the theme of a patriarchal figure who feels entitled to the world in that scene, which could have been interesting.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:08
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Android Blues posted:Yeah absolutely. It helps the episode that David went through something unspeakably traumatic that also wasn't in any way his fault - that he couldn't have foreseen or avoided. Like you say, it builds his sense of entitled rage, and it also gives Lana and Cliff a way into sympathising with him, even though Cliff never seems to have liked him much at all. The same could be said if a glitch happens while he's driving and the family goes off a bridge like Beetlejuice or something. That's not his fault and it can moved past much easier than spending the rest of the episode wondering what the hell the killers were about.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:09
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I dunno, out of all my problems with the episode, the crazy unfairness of having your family murdered by cult crazies just isn't one of them.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:12
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Cojawfee posted:The same could be said if a glitch happens while he's driving and the family goes off a bridge like Beetlejuice or something. That's not his fault and it can moved past much easier than spending the rest of the episode wondering what the hell the killers were about. I think then there is a "blames himself" aspect in the theming, though. Or blames NASA - at least blames something comprehensible. I think it's actually good for the emotional movement of the episode that the thing which ruined his life was a sudden nightmarish catastrophe that could not possibly have been foreseen or prevented.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:12
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It should also be remembered that its supposed to be alternative 1969 or so; the cold war and space race being huge aspects of the society. So you have NASA in a multi-year mission to somewhere on the outskirts of the solar system, and your security for your astronauts and their families basically is "no security". The loss of the replica and family in a freak accident caused by the replica malfunctioning or connection blacking out would have worked with the theme much better. At least better than some random people just walking into the home of the astronaut's family and butchering everyone inside, without having to evade even a token guard at the front door as we saw that there is absolutely nothing between the street and the front door. EDIT: The astronauts are still at least local celebrities, so the space travel isn't trivial either. Or short travel might be, but not the replicas for multi-year mission crews. Der Kyhe fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 19:21
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A comm glitch and a car crash would also allow for a more believable reason why they couldn't just spin up a new one besides "They made them when we were on Earth, they can't make a new one" even though they could apparently just use each others. If it was a glitch that caused the incident, then they could say that Congress is upset about it and the massive cost wasted and doing an inquiry. They aren't allowed to make a new replica until the investigation is done and they get the go ahead. Otherwise they could just use the guy's brother or literally anyone to make a new replica and let him use it and just be in a different body and go to therapy for however longer they are on that mission.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:38
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Der Kyhe posted:It should also be remembered that its supposed to be alternative 1969 or so; the cold war and space race being huge aspects of the society. So you have NASA in a multi-year mission to somewhere on the outskirts of the solar system, and your security for your astronauts and their families basically is "no security". The episode is intentionally trying to have a very surreal feeling, so I don't think complaining about a lack of realism is fair. It's just not what they were going for. I think the total lack of any external authorities is supposed to evoke a feeling of loneliness, isolation and uncertainty. The episode really made me flash back to the totally surreal feeling at the beginning of the pandemic and the lockdown and the WFH experience. If that's what they were going for, they really did a good job.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:48
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Der Kyhe posted:It should also be remembered that its supposed to be alternative 1969 or so; the cold war and space race being huge aspects of the society. So you have NASA in a multi-year mission to somewhere on the outskirts of the solar system, and your security for your astronauts and their families basically is "no security". I don't think "the families of astronauts have a round-the-clock government security detail" was ever a thing - that definitely isn't more realistic. It isn't a reasonable precaution to be like, "what if the Kremlin tries to assassinate Buzz Aldrin's family?".
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Jul 6, 2023 20:10
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Beyond the Sea: I don’t think he murders Aaron Paul’s family without having had to watch his family get murdered to begin with. Dying in a car accident is one thing, but being able to take a knife to another human AND a child takes a whole other level of traumatic experience.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:21
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Android Blues posted:I don't think "the families of astronauts have a round-the-clock government security detail" was ever a thing - that definitely isn't more realistic. It isn't a reasonable precaution to be like, "what if the Kremlin tries to assassinate Buzz Aldrin's family?". But what about the security for the billion dollar android? Can I just stroll to an F-22 and bash it with a baseball bat?
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Jul 6, 2023 20:21
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latinotwink1997 posted:Beyond the Sea: I don’t think he murders Aaron Paul’s family without having had to watch his family get murdered to begin with. Dying in a car accident is one thing, but being able to take a knife to another human AND a child takes a whole other level of traumatic experience. Yep, that too. David's ultimate decision is to assert dominance over Cliff by re-enacting his trauma on Cliff's family. I'm not a huge fan of the ending, but the fact that it's a parallel is important for David's character. His reaction to something terrible and unfair happening to him is to pay it forward to deal with his own rage and shame. That doesn't work if it's a car accident. And, as mentioned, neither do a bunch of other things - either David blames himself for causing the accident, or he blames NASA for manufacturing a replica that glitches, but either way you lose the "senseless act of random violence" element of it, which would allow David to focus his anger on a coherent target and make some kind of sense of what happened to him. It's important to the thrust of the episode that there's no way for him to make sense of his tragedy, and nowhere for him to put that anger other than on the people he can directly interact with, Lana and Cliff.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:31
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I'm pretty sure we can drop the spoiler tags at this point
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Jul 7, 2023 08:18
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Android Blues posted:I don't think "the families of astronauts have a round-the-clock government security detail" was ever a thing - that definitely isn't more realistic. It isn't a reasonable precaution to be like, "what if the Kremlin tries to assassinate Buzz Aldrin's family?". IIRC during the cold war some guy broke into Buckingham palace multiple times. Just started exploring the place, hanging out in the cool rooms, made himself some food in the kitchen, etc. On his last break in he even went to the Queen's bedroom and started chatting with her. I mean, I dunno what my point is. I guess that a lot of security is just theater to deter low-effort attacks? Unless you go all out with it like the protection that the US president has, a determined attacker will probably find a way to hurt you. Luckily there aren't that many of those around so it doesn't matter that much.
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Jul 7, 2023 08:43
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Android Blues posted:I don't think "the families of astronauts have a round-the-clock government security detail" was ever a thing - that definitely isn't more realistic. It isn't a reasonable precaution to be like, "what if the Kremlin tries to assassinate Buzz Aldrin's family?". No they didn't, but they also didn't have a perfect robot replica of buzz Aldrin, that buzz Aldrin can remote into for the express purpose of keeping buzz Aldrin sane when he was in space. But it's not surprising that they didn't have that, when they also seemingly didn't have the astronauts using that tech to keep in touch with mission control or have any backup plans.
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Jul 7, 2023 11:20
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I assumed the problem with making another had to do with the key they used. They couldn’t make a replica that used the same key that David had and they didn’t have a way to get him a new key. Granted, they could have explicitly stated that in the episode.
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Jul 7, 2023 16:26
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I just assumed they had to model it after them or it wouldn't work and he wasn't available to model. I guess that doesn't take into account they could have made a drat r2d2 for him to use and it would have been better than nothing.
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Jul 7, 2023 17:03
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I assumed it can be waved away by saying "it takes 4 years for us to build a new replica, so we can't have it until the time you guys finish the mission anyway." That said, redundancy... If they were willing to have two replicas walking around willy-nilly and it takes forever to make one then maybe they should have had a couple stashed away...
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Jul 7, 2023 17:06
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Stories that I’m more invested in can very easily pull me into pedantic spirals trying to rationalize “how the tech works.” Here, so much of it feels like necessary contrivance for the narrative, I don’t see the point. I’m definitely one of those people who bounced off at the Manson family part, though. The literal logistics are silly (it doesn’t make sense that these astronauts so famous strangers know them, using robots so rare nobody’s seen one before, have no security detail at all), but also the thematic implications of it all didn’t seem to matter afterwards. I’ve read people’s attempts to reconcile how/why it actually does and I’m not convinced. There’s something really rich in the potential of this story of two men sharing the same body, and by extension the same life and family and marriage. But it never gels for me. David killing Cliff’s family to make them even feels like an ending, and it makes sense I suppose, but so what?
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Jul 9, 2023 00:52
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Just saw Mazey Day after finishing the Aaron Paul one last night. This season seems really big on slow meandering episodes with pretty whatever conclusions. The only one that really felt like it clicked so far this season was the one about the murder town in Scotland cause at least it was decent commentary on the commoditization of people's misery for the entertainment of others. The one about the Netflix show based on the persons life was kind of funny because of how insane it got with the focus characters reaction to things, but still felt a bit meandering. I don't know, I feel like Aaron Paul and Josh Harnett's performances kind of outshined the somewhat basic script on their almost 90 minute episode and that it started much stronger than it ended up. I still have one episode to go, but so far would give this season maybe a 6/10. Just again a little too meandering in some of the episodes. SweetMercifulCrap! posted:It's been over a week so I'm assuming we're out of spoiler period. Yeah I was feeling that way about Salma Hayek's character, but then when that turned out to be a simulation too it kind of made sense why she just felt like a completely ridiculous parody that happens all too often when people play themselves in something cause that's exactly what it was. The actual Joan being a completely plain looking average person at the very end also made things a little clearer at the end. Like it's gradually scaling back of the absurdity of the scenario. I'm not even sure the real REAL Joan had any dialogue even which was probably a good choice. Kale fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jul 9, 2023 |
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Jul 9, 2023 18:31
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Kale posted:Yeah I was feeling that way about Salma Hayek's character, but then when that turned out to be a simulation too it kind of made sense why she just felt like a completely ridiculous parody that happens all too often when people play themselves in something cause that's exactly what it was. The actual Joan being a completely plain looking average person at the very end also made things a little clearer at the end. Like it's gradually scaling back of the absurdity of the scenario. I'm not even sure the real REAL Joan had any dialogue even which was probably a good choice. Real Joan had the scene with the therapist at the end and I think she greeted Annie at the coffee shop. But very minimal dialogue and screen time. I’d be interested to watch it again knowing the twist and imagining how all these scenes played out in the “real” world. It was my favorite episode of the season but I prefer the more comedic episodes in general. It was also the most existentially terrifying episode of the season for me, which is what the show does best. Having the worst parts of my life exposed and exaggerated for everyone to see would be a complete nightmare. The rest of the season was more “classic” horror/thriller which doesn’t do much for me.
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Jul 9, 2023 20:10
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MokBa posted:Real Joan had the scene with the therapist at the end and I think she greeted Annie at the coffee shop. But very minimal dialogue and screen time. Yeah I think surprisingly I liked the big set piece episode that clearly cost the most in terms of SFX and acting talent with Aaron Paul, Rory Culkin and Josh Hartnett the least, but not by much compared to Mazey Day. Just very meandering, overly long, and pretty predictable script past the pretty intense scene with Rory Culkin's cult. A lot of people disliked Mazey Day the most it seems, but similarly put Loch Henry as their best episode (which was the only one I fully understood the point and commentary of so far), but I can definitely say I didn't see any of what happened in the episode coming nor did it overstay it's welcome quite like Beyond the Sea. Again still have the last one to watch so things could change depending. e: Upon thinking of it some more, it kind of feels like Joan is Awful and Loch Henry had the same essentially theme of streaming services being loving terrible lately and devaluing the artist and the concept of creative arts by chasing algorithms and trying to tailor content to the individual end user who they are also exploiting in various ways at the same time. I hadn't really thought of that sort of thing before I started to see some instances of comedians like John Oliver and shows like South Park and now Black Mirror take jabs at it, but I completely see their point right now. I find that happened with the MCU movies kind of either after the Disney buyout. Not that they were ever my favorite so much as the Netflix shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones, but in general it feels like they eschewed having more challenging rewatch worthy material that focused on characters and relatable personal flaws or value conflicts for mass appeal easily understood (and IMO plodding) meme comedy material that just doesn't do it for me at all. Like it was far more palatable stuff before the Disney buyout and in the Mature Audiences Netflix series just flat out good television. I hard heard they are considering bringing the Charlie Cox/Vincent D'Onofrio Daredevil series back for Disney+, but I feel like they're going to screw it up somehow by going for mass appeal and watering down the scripts compared to the first 3 seasons. Like if it comes back and it's just another quriky meme comedy it's not worth it frankly. Anyway that was a bit of a tangent sorry. Kale fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Jul 9, 2023 |
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Jul 9, 2023 21:37
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The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Loch Henry is the "best" episode of the season, even though it isn't very Black Mirrory. I wasn't a big fan of the "girlfriend finds out the mom was the killer all along and is stuck in the house with her" part. I groaned very loudly at that. But they ended up tying it together very well in the end. I still prefer Joan, but it's a good second to me. The only total dud was Mazie Day. But it's just a bummer because even the good episodes this season were just like, pretty good. They'll just never reach the highs of 1–3 again.Kale posted:I hard heard they are considering bringing the Charlie Cox/Vincent D'Onofrio Daredevil series back for Disney+, but I feel like they're going to screw it up somehow by going for mass appeal and watering down the scripts compared to the first 3 seasons. Like if it comes back and it's just another quriky meme comedy it's not worth it frankly. They aren't just considering it — it's currently in production. But it's a "new" show at season one so they don't have to pay anyone like it's season four. No idea if it'll be good though. I'm pretty upset that they aren't bringing Foggy and Karen back, who were extremely important to the original show.
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Jul 10, 2023 00:03
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Hello, I don't really post in here but couldn't think of anywhere else to put this: Joan is Awful: By design each fictive layer contains a more awful Joan than the last, and the layers go on for infinity. There's fictive layers where some variation of the pen drop has Joanx killing Sandy in cold blood and then getting angry about Joanx+1 laughing just a little bit too hard about it. And some later iteration of Joan Actress is still mad about the church scene but presumably OK with portraying someone committing what are, to her, slightly fictionalised variants of ongoing real-life genocides. e: Also on each layer everyone else is about equally bad because Joan being unremarkable is the entire point. Splicer fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jul 16, 2023 |
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Jul 16, 2023 21:05
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Guys. You don’t need spoiler tags. It’s been a month.
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Jul 16, 2023 21:27
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SweetMercifulCrap! posted:Guys. You don’t need spoiler tags. It’s been a month.
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Jul 16, 2023 21:39
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Splicer posted:I do not know the ways of your people and did not wish to offend your gods.
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Jul 16, 2023 21:42
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After weeks of reflection, Loch Henry is definitely the best episode of the season and the only one that really stuck with me. And it is actually Black Mirrory! It's about screens and technology, it's just not future technology
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Jul 18, 2023 05:59
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SweetMercifulCrap! posted:Guys. You don’t need spoiler tags. It’s been a month. I don't know about this season. On the one hand there are some cool tv movies. On the other hand, I was really hoping they would evolve the show by utilising other sci fi horror tropes instead of bouncing off sci fi almost entirely. There is so much weird sci fi they could have cribbed from! Greg Egan, others! I remember reading a short story recently which was cyberpunk but bio because the giant building house they lived in was a grown living organism. Guys.
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Jul 18, 2023 06:56
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:And it is actually Black Mirrory! It's about screens and technology, it's just not future technology Yeah, I’ve come around on it, too. They’re not all sci-fi; the pig fucker episode even veers into similar themes, how media distances people from terrible poo poo it depicts and exploits people’s trauma for more eyeballs.
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Jul 18, 2023 07:48
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Lampsacus posted:In your layer. I think the showrunner is deliberately trying to steer away from "what if <technology>, but too much" as it makes the show predictable and one-note joke. However I am a bit skeptical if going for supernatural is the correct answer.
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Jul 18, 2023 08:43
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I get the feeling that in Demon 79 the original deal was that Nida had to do the killings or she would die. It makes more sense, the demons surely don't want to gently caress up the whole world and loose those lovely souls just because because some noob demon can't get some rando to kill ppl.
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Jul 18, 2023 10:15
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Der Kyhe posted:I think the showrunner is deliberately trying to steer away from "what if <technology>, but too much" as it makes the show predictable and one-note joke. However I am a bit skeptical if going for supernatural is the correct answer. -what if [technology] but too little -what if [technology] but too small oh no our phones have all become super miniscule boom there are two free ideas for the writers : p
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Jul 18, 2023 10:25
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Tehdas posted:I get the feeling that in Demon 79 the original deal was that Nida had to do the killings or she would die. It makes more sense, the demons surely don't want to gently caress up the whole world and loose those lovely souls just because because some noob demon can't get some rando to kill ppl. The domino chips destroying the world make sense if they're made by human occultists and not demons. Like a contract demons begrudgingly uphold.
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Jul 18, 2023 10:54
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The real miss was not having the demon's original form being that of Kissinger, with Nadia's reaction remaining exactly the same.
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Jul 18, 2023 11:06
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Donnerberg posted:The domino chips destroying the world make sense if they're made by human occultists and not demons. Like a contract demons begrudgingly uphold. Also giggling at the idea of Demon '23. Demon that looks like a sexy slenderman: "The end of the world! Fire and brimstone!" *sends hallucinations* Unphased very online Zoomer: "lol good"
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Jul 18, 2023 11:09
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Der Kyhe posted:I think the showrunner is deliberately trying to steer away from "what if <technology>, but too much" as it makes the show predictable and one-note joke. However I am a bit skeptical if going for supernatural is the correct answer. "What if <technology>, but not enough"?
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Jul 18, 2023 18:02
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