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Gaunab posted:Arkangel seems to be bringing up a lot of romanticized teenage feelings in a lot of posters. you think killing your parents is romantic? this is the black mirror thread, not the 90s kevin spacey movie thread
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Dec 30, 2017 18:01
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Cnidario posted:Arkangel I’m a parent of a three-year-old daughter myself and I’ve been thinking about stuff like this. I’m definitely not in support of the filtering feature (since, as the episode presented, that level of control over what a child witnesses would likely have psychological issues), but when my daughter gets a cellphone, you can bet I’m turning Find Friends on for it. Not so I can watch where she is at all times, but for emergency situations—though the temptation to see if she’s REALLY where she says she is when she’s a teen will be present. That said, most of the issue with the mother and daughter comes from a lack of communication—what the mother should have done after finding out that she was having sex would be to immediately talk to her about it, make sure to remind her about contraceptives, plan b, etc. Sure, the daughter may have been initially upset, but not nearly as upset as she ended up being after she realized how much her mother knew about her life and how she was interfering. Also, the real-time visual feed of Archangel isn’t really the problem—I wonder, if that technology were to be available in real life, if the “best” way to use it would be to have an anonymous third party (or, even better, an AI) that could talk through troubling situations with the teen and offer advice based on what had been “seen”, with none of it reported to the parents. That way, there wouldn’t be the issues associated with getting lectured about bad behavior/feeling judged by the child’s parents. Of course, the third party being involved raises other ethical issues... Actually, that’s not a bad idea for a Black Mirror episode in and of itself—a child being essentially raised by an AI because the parents don’t care/can’t be bothered to do it themselves and what effect, if any, it has on the child. The Black Mirror twist could be that it wasn’t, in fact, an AI, but instead a real person remotely raising a child they’ll never know. And then, at the end, they get assigned a new one.
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Dec 30, 2017 18:06
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lelandjs posted:
Not really spoilers for Arkangel This is the premise behind A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer from Neal Stephenson’s ‘The Diamond Age’ - a book for rich families to buy to raise their children with an advanced AI, augmented by real people for where the AI can’t quite handle it. A really fun book, and like many of his books foreshadows later real world developments.
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Dec 30, 2017 18:25
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maskenfreiheit posted:Was she actually pregnant or did the mom just slip plan b to be safe? I assume the vitals monitoring let her know the kid was actually pregnant, which the nurse confirmed.
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Dec 30, 2017 18:35
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WampaLord posted:I assume the vitals monitoring let her know the kid was actually pregnant, which the nurse confirmed. I assumed the same, but the way the nurse was phrasing it I thought she was just kind of going "it's the side effects from your plan b, oh yeah sure you didn't take plan b" - she didn't seem to be confirming pregnancy just the plan b... maybe i missed something?
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Dec 30, 2017 18:47
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Hang the DJ impresses on me how loving badly they bungled the end of San Junipero, like holy poo poo does that final five minutes gently caress it all up for me. 413256. Overall season 4 is pretty much the platonic ideal of the "consistent" BM season. It has no episode that has highs as high as the previous seasons (I think Hang the DJ is really incredible but it's mostly San Junipero Done Right and sort of a similar idea as a result; I think if we hadn't seen an incredibly similar but much, much weaker episode the season prior it would've been more shocking or refreshing in the way that, say, Shut Up and Dance is. Points have to be given for an outright happy ending that feels completely earned. Outside of that USS Callister is really the only other standout for the season. Crocodile and Arkangel are incredibly solid but very baseline BM eps, and the bottom two - Metalhead and Black Museum - are good but flawed. Metalhead suffers from being quite literally 15 minutes too short - the black and white gimmick makes for an inherently visually interesting episode, but I feel like the central character is too much of an enigma to function as interesting and there's too much worldbuilding left on the table. There's a bunch of implications of a greater narrative but with no definitive answers nothing that really happens makes much sense and the requisite sobering/affecting ending doesn't really...do much for the ep. Black Museum suffers mostly because it tries for the same narrative framing as White Christmas in the sense of it being a triptych of two seemingly unrelated stories that get tied together via the framing narrative forming its own third story, but it's nowhere near as good on literally any level as WC. It certainly doesn't help that Letitia Wright's American accent is up there with the worst loving American accents I've ever heard, but yeah. The twist is obvious, the payoff undercooked and sort of nonsensical - easily the worst of the new bunch. But yeah overall I'd say this is the season you get when people's criticisms of BM reach the breaking point, because I would argue that it favors consistency above all else and totally, completely nails it. The sacrifice you have to make for that consistency is no episode as good as White Bear/White Christmas/Shut Up and Dance/15MM/etc, but the general quality is overall pretty high. NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Dec 30, 2017 |
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Dec 30, 2017 18:48
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Kinda sad that Black Museum has an ending. Not that this show has to be anything in particular, but I enjoyed the notion of them having a place to go to for "treehouse of horror" episodes. The proprietor while a creep was also a pretty decent emcee.
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Dec 30, 2017 18:49
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:The twist is obvious Oh come the gently caress on.
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Dec 30, 2017 18:49
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WampaLord posted:Oh come the gently caress on. It's extremely obvious dude, once they get into the final story it's immediately apparent what's about to happen.
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Dec 30, 2017 18:51
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:It's extremely obvious dude, once they get into the final story it's immediately apparent what's about to happen. Well congrats on being psychic or something, I saw nothing coming until the dude started choking
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Dec 30, 2017 18:59
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I think you can reasonably guess the Black Museum ending by observing: (A) Rolo is personally responsible for all the sad stories he's telling; he's created a "crime museum" of his own crimes, and narratively that calls for comeuppance (B) "The random stranger is actually an adversary bringing retribution" is a pretty well-worn trope, and BM itself used it before in White Christmas Speaking of twists, I actually thought it was really hackneyed in Hang the DJ when Amy pulls the "Wait, do you remember anything from before the episode started?" bit, like it's supposed to blow my mind and be a clue that (as in any other story) the audience does not see parts of the story from before it begins.
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Dec 30, 2017 19:13
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Just a heads up, some of you aren't indicating which episode you're spoiling. That's a good way to get your post ignored.
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Dec 30, 2017 19:14
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Desiderata posted:Sure. She literally got herself killed with a series of retarded decisions brought about by actions that were objectively stupid at the time she did them. She's an average middle-aged northern family woman who obviously lived through an apocalypse and has complete awareness of how dangerous the dog robots are and then did everything in her power to get herself killed over and over. The episode explained nothing, inferred nothing, and was created solely to show people giving up their lives over teddy bears to be the shock part. Metalhead is objectively bad writing/acting/directing. Edit: To put it this way, the episode felt like a 2008 era gritty movie like Children of Men spliced with every white girl running from a monster in a horror film movie like Scream. Doltos fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Dec 30, 2017 |
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Dec 30, 2017 19:25
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The World Inferno posted:Kinda sad that Black Museum has an ending. Not that this show has to be anything in particular, but I enjoyed the notion of them having a place to go to for "treehouse of horror" episodes. The proprietor while a creep was also a pretty decent emcee. It felt very Night Gallery esque. It also felt like it was a self parody of BM as a whole. Like, instead of useful sounding tech that exacerbates the ugly side of human nature, its like "Here's a bunch of HellWorld tech that no sane person would want, given to you free by a more obvious Mr. Needful" E: I actually loved it, but for very different reasons than I usually love Black Mirror.
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Dec 30, 2017 19:31
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Supercar Gautier posted:Speaking of twists, I actually thought it was really hackneyed in Hang the DJ when Amy pulls the "Wait, do you remember anything from before the episode started?" bit, like it's supposed to blow my mind and be a clue that (as in any other story) the audience does not see parts of the story from before it begins. I felt like once she brings up the four skips thing the episode sort of sets up its own spoiler in addition to Frank literally telling you it earlier than that. This didn't seem like an episode built around a twist over the "one thousand simulations" thing, which legitimately got me, but yeah. This definitely wasn't an episode that was made or built around its twist, especially in comparison to something like Black Museum, and the twist was more nested anyways. It being a simulation wasn't really the twist, the twist was it being the very dating app they're using, and I think that was extremely well implemented. Either way I found it more pleasant that they got a relatively happy ending that was earned over San Junipero's "And then they all lived happily ever after despite one character saying five minutes prior that she had no inclination to live in this world, The End." Also re: Black Museum twist: I'm not some mastermind, but it's clearly obvious the weather reporter murder was going to be a Big Reveal, since it's the only major running throughline of the two previous stories. That combined with, again, the White Christmas triptych setup meant I was expecting there to be a gigantic twist going into the final story, specifically involving the weather reporter murder they highlighted within the two previous stories. That compounds with Nish mentioning that she's coming to "surprise her father" alongside her mother and it just takes two and two. The episode specifically mentions what her overall planned route is and felt like oversharing motivation when the story had already narratively communicated a reason for her to be in the Black Museum, really simply - her car was out of juice, she needed to kill three hours, let's check out the weird roadside museum. I honestly think Black Museum works better if the guy actually killed the reporter, or we learn that he did, because as it currently stands it's not morally complicated enough. It also attempts to be an indictment of Trump voters/ runaway fascistic capitalism in a way that makes the antagonist really flat and easily hateable, and I think it's a much more challenging story in the way most BM eps are if the guy actually killed the reporter over how the episode presents it, which is him being essentially a haloed martyr. It would also help if the episode didn't end with Nish explaining everything in a really poorly written monologue, or her accent was better, or something, because just...yeah. NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Dec 30, 2017 |
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Dec 30, 2017 19:47
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namaste
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Dec 30, 2017 19:53
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I'm watching Black Museum now, early on. What if cumming, but too much? maskenfreiheit fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Dec 30, 2017 |
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Dec 30, 2017 20:08
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USS Fatt Damon More of a drama than a straight up high concept ep, but I really liked it as it's own little crime drama. The silly tech (Update wormhole, magic keyboard inside the NPC spaceship that can hack the game, only one invite per account ever?) was Trekky in a good way, and character details like the manbaby's mod being a PG fantasy, where he demands a chaste kiss for being the hero but edits out sexual organs were great touches.
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Dec 30, 2017 20:17
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cosmically_cosmic posted:USS Fatt Damon i suspect he wasn't actually repressed, he just was a specific type of sadist. it's not enough to terrorize, he needs to do it under the color of authority, to keep up the veneer that what he's doing is not just for his own benefit. that's the real kick for him. picture someone like dolores umbridge or, well, pretty much any terrible teacher you've had. the star trek stuff goes along with it, but it's more of generic white knight power fantasy. type of guy who wants to be a captain but washes out of navy boot camp
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Dec 30, 2017 20:21
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maskenfreiheit posted:i suspect he wasn't actually repressed, he just was a specific type of sadist. it's not enough to terrorize, he needs to do it under the color of authority, to keep up the veneer that what he's doing is not just for his own benefit. that's the real kick for him. picture someone like dolores umbridge or, well, pretty much any terrible teacher you've had. the star trek stuff goes along with it, but it's more of generic white knight power fantasy. type of guy who wants to be a captain but washes out of navy boot camp I disagree on some points, like He doesn't trike me as the military nerd type, Trek was kind of anti-military in the sense that it was specifically about diplomacy and working together than conquering an enemy, and I think that the choice kind of does point more to repression in that sense, especially the choice of 60s trek which IIRC was the one still helmed by the guy who thought characters shouldn't have inter-person conflict because the future was beyond that. Considering how confrontation averse he seems in real life, I can see why his character would fetishise that kind of show so much. He clearly has sexual desire for the main character, but that manifests as turning her into a chaste prop in a skimpy outfit with no actual vagina, like a little boys idea of a woman. The authority was definitely a factor, but to call him a sadist I think is both right and wrong, his 'fantasy' wasn't one of being an active torturer, it was being the worshipped Trek hero who is all sophistocated, diplomatic, tactical and in control, who everyone loves rather than fears. The fear and obedience were his way to make that fantasy happen, at least that's my idea from just one viewing.
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Dec 30, 2017 20:32
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cosmically_cosmic posted:I disagree on some points, like He doesn't trike me as the military nerd type, Trek was kind of anti-military in the sense that it was specifically about diplomacy and working together than conquering an enemy, and I think that the choice kind of does point more to repression in that sense, especially the choice of 60s trek which IIRC was the one still helmed by the guy who thought characters shouldn't have inter-person conflict because the future was beyond that. Considering how confrontation averse he seems in real life, I can see why his character would fetishise that kind of show so much. Yeah all of this makes me believe that Fatt Damon wasn't necessarily evil and was more playing out power fantasies in his program. He's obviously a very timid, conniving guy. But even in his limitless fantasy all he wants to be is respected and obeyed. Not like in a power hungry way either. He just wanted to play the role of the CEO for once and have everyone look up to him. When that didn't work over and over again he started taking his rage and frustration out on programs, not real people. I think most people in the Black Mirror world don't exactly respect digital versions of a person. We saw that in Black Museum when it took a massive protest by the non-killer's wife to get humanitarian laws passed for digital copies of consciousnesses. So it stands to reason that USS Callister happened earlier in this reality before all of Dr. Rolen's insane techs changing UN laws. Fatt Damon probably thought nothing of tossing a digital copy of a kid out an airlock to make a digital copy of the CEO obey him. He probably just rationalized it the same as changing a line of code or deleting a program. USS Callister was a real good episode in retrospect. Creates a lot of conversation and was actually pretty entertaining.
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Dec 30, 2017 20:45
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maskenfreiheit posted:you think killing your parents is romantic? this is the black mirror thread, not the 90s kevin spacey movie thread I don't but some posters wanted the daughter to kill her mother and run away with the boyfriend even though she's fifteen. It's honestly one of the sadder episodes when you think about it.
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Dec 30, 2017 20:46
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cosmically_cosmic posted:I disagree on some points, like He doesn't trike me as the military nerd type, Trek was kind of anti-military in the sense that it was specifically about diplomacy and working together than conquering an enemy, and I think that the choice kind of does point more to repression in that sense, especially the choice of 60s trek which IIRC was the one still helmed by the guy who thought characters shouldn't have inter-person conflict because the future was beyond that. Considering how confrontation averse he seems in real life, I can see why his character would fetishise that kind of show so much. mcallister Maybe military isn't the right word. The more I think about it, the more Starfleet reminds me of foreign service officers I've known. I agree with you on the authority point, but no one wants authority for authority's sake: the admiration etc are implied. Again, picture the strict teacher who is unhappy you don't hang on their every word and is secretly very insecure. He's a narcicist. I also think it's a distinct possibility that the idea of a black mirror where some MRA guy just rapes the poo poo out of his coworkers would be too extreme or maybe to titilating to the wrong sort of fan.
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Dec 30, 2017 20:47
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Gaunab posted:I don't but some posters wanted the daughter to kill her mother and run away with the boyfriend even though she's fifteen. It's honestly one of the sadder episodes when you think about it. how old is the boyfriend in Archangel? Is it just a sophmore dating a senior or is this some dude who should be off at college not giving coke to 15 y/o s?
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Dec 30, 2017 20:48
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Doltos posted:She literally got herself killed with a series of retarded decisions brought about by actions that were objectively stupid at the time she did them. She's an average middle-aged northern family woman who obviously lived through an apocalypse and has complete awareness of how dangerous the dog robots are and then did everything in her power to get herself killed over and over. The episode explained nothing, inferred nothing, and was created solely to show people giving up their lives over teddy bears to be the shock part. Metalhead was a bad, low budget 00s British sci-fi film compressed into a 40 minute TV episode. This entire season was mediocre as gently caress and i honestly don't care if there is another one because they have obviously run out of fresh ideas and are just sort of retreading stuff from previous series with some slight variations.
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Dec 30, 2017 21:00
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I liked Hang the DJ. The only reason I didn't see the ending coming is that they forecasted it so forcefully, I thought it was misdirection. I still think it was good, though, watching them come to the realization, and it's nice to have a couple of episodes that aren't cynical about human nature or the monstrous things they'll do with technology. It was a simulation! is definitely to Black Mirror as "It was Earth all along/it wasn't Earth the whole time!" is to The Twilight Zone, but that's fine. It's not like it's been mined for all of its material yet. Wasn't big into Metalhead, though. It might be my least favorite episode of Black Mirror. I don't, as other seem to have, think the protagonist was stupid, I just didn't see the point of it. It seemed kind of like generic post-apocalyptic survival horror. I guess it was just them playing with style, a little. I guess it just wasn't my thing.
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Dec 30, 2017 21:02
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When can we put a moritorium on spoilers in here? Like, a week from now or a month? How about today? What if spoilers, but too much?
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Dec 30, 2017 21:43
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Okay, full series ranking with the new episodes bolded. San Junipero Shut Up And Dance White Christmas Fifteen Million Merits Nosedive White Bear Arkangel Crocodile The Entire History Of You Be Right Back Hang The DJ The National Anthem Metalhead The Waldo Moment USS Callister Playtest Black Museum Men Against Fire Seriously Don't Watch Hated In The Nation It's Bad Hated In The Nation So, this season's highs weren't as high as any of the preceding seasons', but its lows weren't as low as season 3's. It was worthwhile overall, but I hope that if/when season five comes, it'll have some classics, even if it means we have to watch ninety more minutes of Don't Robot Bees. Arkangel was the season highlight for me; it felt like a straight-up improved spiritual sequel to The Entire History Of You. A futuristic technology that's very blatantly just a more visually-interesting way of conveying how internet social dynamics already influence our lives; the last short in White Christmas with the blocking was also like that, and Nosedive kind of was too although it was kind of more its own thing. Maybe it just hit harder for me because I have more experience with helicopter parents than controlling partners, but it really felt to me like it was using the basic story skeleton of The Entire History Of You, an already-great episode, to tell a more universally relatable story. I see a lot of people making GBS threads on Crocodile, but it was hilarious, and in a way that seemed very intentional to me. Furthermore, it wasn't hilarious in an immersion-breaking way; it was a classic "dumb, evil person does progressively dumber and more evil things to cover up their previous mistakes" story, which you see all the time in real life, and it was done very well here. It really feels to me like a companion piece to White Bear; the protagonist's crimes are the exact sort of thing that would provoke the White Bear treatment, and the technology in the episode is also memory-based, at approximately the same tech level. Hang The DJ was a lot of fun but the ending, while cool in the moment, really retroactively killed a lot of the episode's mystique. You could say the same thing about White Bear, a series classic, but in White Bear the twist comes with enough time left in the episode to really explore its implications, and consequently it feels a lot more interesting than the original setup. The ending was so telegraphed with the earlier "what if this is all a simulation" conversation that it would have been more of a twist if it had all been real. IMO, it should have ended either with the guy actually being tazed and punished for bucking the system, maybe with a reveal that it is all meaningless bullshit and the final match is selected based on eugenic concerns, or else with a reveal that they were selected for each other anyway so now they have to choose between each other and bucking the system. Or, hell, go full depressing Black Mirror, end it with the same twist as in the actual episode but have the match rejected in favor of a 100% match, so the whole thing was completely beautifully pointless for the simulated characters except for the love that they felt for each other in the moment. Metalhead was really good, it was just too short. I loving hate the kind of "horror movie buff" attitude that seems to be responsible for most of the hate the episode is getting. I guarantee you that the overwhelming majority of people complaining about the main character's actions would do worse in her place; the only really questionable thing she does is getting into the situation in the first place, but frankly, that's thematically perfect. Sentimentality is deeply human, and I'd sure rather be hunted by a robot than turn into one. Given the "oh poo poo" reaction the characters have to meeting the dog, I'm guessing that it was not a risk they took seriously going in - it probably wasn't a case of "run in and get a teddy bear for your dying child, likely get hunted and killed by dogs", it was more a case of "run in and get a teddy bear for your dying child, maybe there's a 1% chance that you meet a dog". Maybe people would have liked the episode better if it had been made clearer that they weren't expecting to encounter any dogs? Like, we're seeing a post-apocalyptic scenario, communications have clearly been knocked out, maybe specify that the dogs haven't been spotted in this region and have just wandered in recently. I also would have liked - not backstory, per se, on the dogs, but, like, some more tantalizing hints about them. Just slapping an American flag on the side would have done wonders for the episode - or better yet, a Thin Blue Line flag. Make the line the only colored thing in the episode. It'd be heavy-handed but I don't think the episode is really designed for subtlety. USS Kevin McCallister was a pretty weak episode and I'm surprised that it seems to be the most popular one of the season. The basic premise of the episode is pretty good, albeit derivative of the classic Twilight Zone episode It's A Good Life. It's well-implemented on that basic psychological "toys of a childlike narcissist god" level. The problems in the episode are all things you could derisively call nitpicks, things that the script seems to expect us to ignore because it doesn't care enough about them itself. Why is a genetic sample more important than a brain scan for cloning people into a video game world? (Seriously just rewrite this as he's scanning their brains; the genetic sample stuff is used for various jokes and imagery but it's maybe the most bafflingly technologically illiterate thing I've ever seen on Black Mirror.) Why does a "cloning people as video game NPCs" technology exist in a world that doesn't seem to know about it or have any familiarity with it? (This is a harder problem to solve, and a less glaring one, but the episode could probably really benefit from solving it. Maybe add a subplot where the company is considering adding human-clone NPCs to the game proper, and some of the employees do know about it, but they're still running it through legal and there's a lot of NDAs involved?) What kind of weird opposite world is this where modders take genitals out of games instead of adding them? (This one is actually pretty satisfactorily answered in the episode as-is, but at first it feels like the writers are awkwardly dodging the rape subtext, and until we learn more about Daly's weird psychological complexes, it really contributes to the feeling that this is a really dumb episode. Maybe have the characters explicate immediately that Daly is deeply sexually repressed so it doesn't come off so much as a cheap attempt to write yourself out of a corner.) Why is the political subtext so unsubtle? (Seriously, I agree that it's lovely how women are treated both in the workplace and online, but the episode goes beyond blunt into condescending.) It says a lot about how good Black Mirror is at baseline that I still like this episode despite all of the things that took me out of it. EDIT: Yeah, also, why did the guy die at the end in the way that he did? It seems kind of dumb to me that the tech would be designed that unsafely; it didn't shatter my suspension of disbelief but I've got to figure there's a better way to end the episode. Black Museum wasted a lot of potential, but it was still a lot of cheesy fun and I enjoyed it very much. I think what really kills the episode for me is that it's trying to be White Christmas Mk II but it barely even begins to live up to it. The first story is the best one, but it has basically no payoff in the ending at all. The second story is disturbing, but doesn't really take itself seriously enough, and the ending straddles the line between "holy poo poo that's terrible" and "okay, but no one would ever actually do this because it's too obviously viscerally terrible". The third story is basically What If White Bear, But Too Much, and I think it would take a lot of work to make it feel believable; it probably needed some more time to breathe. The villain of all three stories is very entertaining, but also maybe the least believable character in Black Mirror history; he's so transparently a devil analogue that the episode as a whole feels like a silly parody of Black Mirror, which I wouldn't really mind, I guess, if the episode were better-constructed. I wish there were more to him. The protagonist killing the villain is kind of cool but feels like a cheat given that we actually saw her accidentally stumbling on the Black Museum, and didn't have any reason at the time to doubt that it was happenstance. Maybe just straight-up cut the beginning of the episode, and instead characterize Rolo Haynes more and make the third story longer. You know what I think would be the simplest fix to the episode, though? Make the guy in the first story a serial killer instead of a one-off thing, and make the weather lady one of his victims. A lot of the appeal of the first story comes from the guy gradually turning into a slasher film antagonist, so that'd be enhanced by him killing more than one person. And it'd tie the stories together better. The convict was already pretty unambiguously framed for the murder, so it wouldn't really be telegraphing the story's moral simplicity any harder. Overall, I'm just sad that if the Black Mirror universe is going to be tied together like this, it's going to be done with such a weak episode. I don't know if the episode could be improved to White Christmas levels, but it could definitely be a lot better with relatively few changes. Overall I really enjoyed this season; it's not as good as least season but it was certainly good enough that I'm still looking forward to another season. Here's hoping that season five is an improvement! 21 Muns fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Dec 30, 2017 |
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Dec 30, 2017 21:43
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Bicyclops posted:
As I mentioned above, Metalhead suffers because it's a story that ends before its third act starts, and tries for depth with a BM-patented twist fakeout that doesn't really land because we have no real emotional resonance with either the character, the material, or the story. Also the story just leaves too much dangling - I usually prefer the subtle or contextual worldbuilding that BM engages in, but the story as written was just too vague. Why were the Dogs there? What's left of humanity? Why are they still there? Are they in a post-apocalypse, or did humanity leave earth and these are the scraps fighting over whatever resources they can scrounge? What's the lady's whole deal? What's her group like? And on and on and on. They just don't explain enough and considering the entirety of Metalhead is essentially one long scene, and it's way way shorter than the other eps, they could've added 15 minutes and put something in to ground the episode and explain why the viewer should care. As it stands the episode is beautiful but really disposable. It's not bad, but it's not especially great, and could've been a lot more than it was. Also it's a dumb as hell criticism that the lady is "stupid" for going to get the bear. That's the point. They acknowledge that like in the first five minutes. It's dumb as hell but they do it anyways out of some base level of human empathy for what is, assumingly, a dying kid. It's not presented as a smart or clever thing they're doing. NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Dec 30, 2017 |
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Dec 30, 2017 21:49
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No one cares about ranking episodes.
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Dec 30, 2017 21:49
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Waltzing Along posted:No one cares about ranking episodes. Dude, are you reading most of the posts in this thread? People are going into creepy depth about utterly silly theories and inferring way more stuff than the series is actually trying to portray. Rankings are the least dumb thing going on here.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:07
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I don't mind reading silly theories or whatever people come up with, sometimes they can be insightful. Ranking the episodes is one step above people posting their steam sale hauls. Review them if you like but save the rankings for your grocery lists. Arkangel I laughed at the smashcut of Trick showing Sara porn and violence as soon as they realize arkangel was off
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Dec 30, 2017 22:15
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:As I mentioned above, Metalhead suffers because it's a story that ends before its third act starts, and tries for depth with a BM-patented twist fakeout that doesn't really land because we have no real emotional resonance with either the character, the material, or the story. Yeah, it feels like they're more interested in showing off the dog and building an action sequence than in telling a story. It's well made, but why are we watching it? Subtlety with world-building is one thing, but there's not really enough to tie us emotionally to to the protagonist. I wasn't expecting much from Black Museum because of how many people said it was the worst in the series, but I actually really liked it. Some of it was definitely a victory lap in the same way that White Christmas was. I wasn't a huge fan of the first story, although I guess it serves to introduce us to the proprietor. The second story was more interesting, but the "Monkey loves you!" stuff was definitely way too over-the-top. I sort of wish the Mom as a toy concept had been its own episode. The idea of a more sophisticated toy that carries a parents' consciousness but is discarded by a child as unwanted as they grow up is something that has legs. I like the final story, though, as predictable as the twist is. Yes, it's cartoonish, but hell, so is the political landscape that it's slamming its flabby fists against. I feel like subtlety is almost wasted on talking about the kind of ugly, racist fascism we're experiencing right now, because every time you think "Well, this time, people will surely side with the victim - it's truly a cut and dry case," you're wrong. The white supremacists who are literally jacking off at his pain are one thing, but the guy who profits from them, at first through a crowd of followers, and then, through an ever dwindling crowd once the museum becomes political poison, it resonates, after watching the fall of someone like Milo Yiannopoulos. It's definitely bombastic and big, almost in "WHOOOOOOO'S READY FOR SOME BLACK MIRROOOOOOOOR?!" way, but hell, they're entitled to a little White Christmas every two years.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:18
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KoRMaK posted:When can we put a moritorium on spoilers in here? Like, a week from now or a month? How about today? I hope to someday live in a world where everyone understands that coming into a TV show forum or thread will have spoilers, and should probably be avoided until you watch the show yourself. That being said I think it said 72 hours or something a few pages back.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:27
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spudsbuckley posted:Dude, are you reading most of the posts in this thread? The guy whose comments are Simpsons Comic Book Guy level "Worst season ever, hope it gets cancelled" has some important criticism for people discussing the show, line up for your tickets. If I have a weird nitpick that I hope they apply to next season (I'm sure Charlie Brooker reads all of my insightful posts), it's that Irma Thomas's "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)" has officially worn out its welcome. I get that it's basically the Black Mirror theme song at this point, but you can hear a sort of leitmotif of it playing in Arkangel, and it's an actual maguffin of sorts in Crocodile. They're starting to get just a little too cute with it.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:29
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Bicyclops posted:The guy whose comments are Simpsons Comic Book Guy level "Worst season ever, hope it gets cancelled" has some important criticism for people discussing the show, line up for your tickets. I don't hope it gets cancelled i just don't care if it comes back if it is going to continue the trend of this, the worst season so far.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:36
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So in Black Museum, am I correct in understanding that the keychains aren't on a loop - they're conscious and basically experiencing all that pain forever?
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Dec 30, 2017 22:37
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i love seeing episode rankings (on websites) because they'll always toss some absolute poo poo episode near the top and an awesome episode low. i remember one that had shut up and dance as one of their lowest ranked episodes and i'm like you probably shouldn't have a job writing about tv.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:38
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ClumsyThief posted:I hope to someday live in a world where everyone understands that coming into a TV show forum or thread will have spoilers, and should probably be avoided until you watch the show yourself.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:38
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Esme posted:I agree, but the lollipop shows up as an exhibit in the Black Museum, so it's implied that the real world protagonist got the authorities involved at some point. Apparently not before he starves to death? spoilers for black museum and callister I mean, the coroner will come if you die outside a hospital. There might not be a criminal investigation but they'd want to know what happened, how he died. And judging from the comments in Black Museum, the "cookies" have right to not be tortured, so the offline rig was illegal, thus settling once and for all that is was bad.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:42
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