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Android Blues posted:Common People: It's excellent drama and a perfectly accurate social critique, it's just also like drinking a cauldron full of Makes You Sad juice. A deeply demoralising episode in a lot of ways, but I think it's less hopeless than people are saying: it's a vision of right now and the message is, we absolutely cannot allow this to keep happening. It doesn't really glory in the awfulness it shows you at all - it doesn't feel gratuitous or like it's enjoying its own bleakness. Instead it feels like an urgent cry for the things it's talking about to stop. In USS Callister one of the news items is that the ceo of Rivermind steps down.
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Apr 16, 2025 14:49
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Tehdas posted:Eulogy: Nah, he is definitely some kind of rear end in a top hat and a part of why he doesn't see what's in front of him is because he is an rear end in a top hat. He is very self-centered and quick to focus on faults of others to ignore his own, which he tries to worm his way out of if confronted with. Like at the party where he's flirting with his coworker and acting like it's nothing and when it's pointed out to him he gets angry and defensive, at both his wife and the person facilitating the photo memory dives. He's so mad at her for this guy talking to her that he doesn't notice he's made her uncomfortable, instead choosing to stay away from her and leer and stew all night and explodes at her after the party. He's more concerned with her going out of reach than he is for her cool opportunity playing Cello, a talent of hers he had previously dismissed out of disinterest. He cheats on her with a person he claims to have denied knowing was interested in him and that he had been encouraging, and laments that he got caught, angry that she found out, not angry at himself for being lovely. He decides after that to spring a proposal on her without discussing it to even know if she wants to get married. He goes into the proposal ignoring her, focused solely on pulling off his ambush proposal and not actually communicating with her, and gets angrier and angrier, gets angry she's not drinking the expensive champagne she didn't ask for and gets drunk, slams the table and makes a scene. Then he goes to his hotel and throws an angry fit and tears up his room, leaving it for someone else to clean up.
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Apr 16, 2025 16:19
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Yeah if anything I think a lot of that episode is just about him being visited by the ghost of rear end in a top hat past.
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Apr 16, 2025 18:22
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I think the episode is making more of a point about the narratives we make in our head to make ourself the hero and things usually weren’t that black and white, I don’t think he’s supposed to be a massive rear end in a top hat, just a person like most of us who made a lot of mistakes when they were young and inexperienced in the world.
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Apr 16, 2025 19:37
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I would have been like "no thank you I'll just write a ten second speech real quick"
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Apr 17, 2025 01:27
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Are we supposed to go to all our exes funerals?
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Apr 17, 2025 01:28
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Khanstant posted:Nah, he is definitely some kind of rear end in a top hat and a part of why he doesn't see what's in front of him is because he is an rear end in a top hat. Annabel Pee posted:I think the episode is making more of a point about the narratives we make in our head to make ourself the hero and things usually weren’t that black and white, I don’t think he’s supposed to be a massive rear end in a top hat, just a person like most of us who made a lot of mistakes when they were young and inexperienced in the world. In some ways, I think Eulogy is a companion piece to Bete Noire even though they're radically different episodes. Both include themes about scar permanence, narrative ghosts in our lives, even some gaslighting, and many versions of our lives in What If?; however, even if there was magical tech that would let Paul go back, some things are simply permanent and won't be able to change the past, least of all for ourselves. All we can do is eulogize for what we've lost. Eulogies aren't for the ghosts, they're for the living. e: I also think Eulogy is supposed to be the canonical or spiritual sequel to Sideways (2004) with some names changed. Very little doubt about it in my mind that Charlie recently watched Sideways when making that episode, which actually made the episode better to me. I love Sideways Xaris fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Apr 17, 2025 |
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Apr 17, 2025 01:33
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Oh, my girlfriend did care about me, as this new information indicates I left her alone and broken-hearted.
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Apr 17, 2025 01:44
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You gotta communicate with your partners or you'll spend your life being bitter about poo poo you remembered wrong.
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Apr 17, 2025 02:46
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How tf do they call her cell phone from inside her own brain waves though?
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Apr 17, 2025 15:57
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UZR IS BULLSHIT posted:How tf do they call her cell phone from inside her own brain waves though? If there’s one thing I know from black mirror its that if you stick a little dongle on your head anything is possible, and even if you don’t stick a little dongle on your head, anything is still possible
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Apr 17, 2025 18:16
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Eulogy I thought ended horrible. That dude was abusive and did not deserve anything close to a happy ending.
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Apr 17, 2025 18:19
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Plaything: A lot of fun but on reflection, what I really didn't enjoy here was the extremely lazy Autism Tropes writing for Cameron. There's really nothing at all to him beyond being a perfectly generic cliché of an autistic man, plus the thing about abhorring violence because his dad was violent. Very straight up-and-down storytelling throughout, but generally it's straight, fun storytelling. Loved seeing Colin again and especially loved "they're not some obscene puppet, like Sonic the Hedgehog!". Disagree that Thronglets looks anachronistic: it looks almost exactly like an Amiga game. As other people have said I'd love to see Colin keep coming back, episode after episode, to irrevocably change weird nerds through the power of retro gaming.
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Apr 17, 2025 20:15
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Or maybe he was a weird shut in that fried his brain with acid. I've met quite a few of those people.
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Apr 17, 2025 20:47
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I loved Bete Noir until the ending. It was an amazing allegory of gaslighting via technology and then took a huge misstep with "Make me empress of the universe," although I didn't mind seeing Verity's smug rear end get headshotted. Haven't watched USS Callister yet, but I'd so far rank them Common People (extremely tragic and the parts where she starts spouting Christian family counseling to a kid was hosed up) - Hotel Reverie (very well done, and Awkwafina wasn't even as remotely annoying as she usually is) - Bete Noir - Plaything (okay, but borrowed too much from The Lawnmower Man at the end) - Eulogy (dude was a poo poo boyfriend).
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Apr 17, 2025 23:02
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IT BURNS posted:I loved Bete Noir until the ending. It was an amazing allegory of gaslighting via technology and then took a huge misstep with "Make me empress of the universe," although I didn't mind seeing Verity's smug rear end get headshotted. I disagree. The ending was foreshadowed in the way Maria's boyfriend and coworkers criticized her desire to always be right. She's not as evil as Verity became, but clearly headed in that direction. Eulogy - that guy was also an rear end in a top hat. The show has always been cynical about technology and corporations, but this season seemed more cynical than usual when it comes to ordinary people.
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Apr 18, 2025 01:00
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Grem posted:Eulogy I thought ended horrible. That dude was abusive and did not deserve anything close to a happy ending. I'm not sure how one could term having a final clarity into a wasted/misinterpreted life as anything close to a happy ending. I think it was the best episode of the season.
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Apr 18, 2025 02:01
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Rarity posted:No in my version it was called Burnie's I distinctly remember it My version was about the personal and family life of Jax Teller and on SAMCRO (Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original), the "Mother Charter" of the organization based in fictional Charming, California.
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Apr 18, 2025 02:06
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Grem posted:Eulogy I thought ended horrible. That dude was abusive and did not deserve anything close to a happy ending. absolutely bizzare take to say that it was a happy ending
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Apr 18, 2025 02:47
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Chamale posted:I disagree. The ending was foreshadowed in the way Maria's boyfriend and coworkers criticized her desire to always be right. She's not as evil as Verity became, but clearly headed in that direction. My interpretation when watching was that it's heading to an eternal spiral of sorts, with empresses getting de-throned via execution over and over as absolute power corrupts absolutely etc., but admittedly this isn't exactly spelled out by the writing and could be a me thing
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Apr 18, 2025 03:35
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Orange Devil posted:
 Verity was so broken that even being Empress of the Universe wasn't enough for her. She could do everything and yet she focused on killing her schoolyard bullies and chances are that even that wouldn't satisfy her. Meanwhile, Maria was also messed up but in a different way that she might enjoy being Empress of the Universe for the rest of her life.
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Apr 18, 2025 11:36
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USS Callister - fun! I’m not sure if I’d call it Black Mirror, but rather mildly dark sci-fi/comedy. It leaned heavier into this aspect than the original episode, for better or worse. A few things: Obvious dig at AI generated content at the heart of the episode. Daly creating infinite universes, the DNA cloner being outlawed for generating people/porn. I thought this worked really well as social commentary. Perhaps the least believable thing was that the tech CEO actually faced a consequence, lol. Turns out that Daly was a creep all along and was beyond redemption. Good twist. The party gathering at the opening was hilarious, and the girl with the pink hair was a fun gamer/streamer stereotype. I thought in the original episode, the tech CEO clone was being burned up for eternity after activating the hyperdrive? Here they said that he just respawned, but I thought there was a bit about him volunteering for an eternity of incineration because Daly killed his son. I’m not sure how I felt about the ending that basically becomes Inside Out 3 for Nanette, but again it worked in terms of the dark sci-fi/comedy vibe they went for. What I liked about this season is that we basically got two full-length movies as episodes, the acting and casting were overall good, and there were no hard clunkers. For a final ranking, I’d say: Common People - A+, real Black Mirror, poignant and sad USS Callister - A, fun and with good commentary on AI Hotel Reverie - A-, very good acting that brought out the period vibe Bete Noir - B, great study on gaslighting Plaything - B-, good concept, but slightly derivative Eulogy - B-, great acting by PG but the concept and story was less convincing than the others
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Apr 18, 2025 12:27
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I was really hoping that USS Callister episode, in the Trekkian tradition, involved the originals meeting the clones and coming together in peace somehow. It almost seemed like it was going that way but then it was just more sci fi movie fluff. If there ever were a third episode it should be in the classic space opera format, revolving around the crew fighting for their rights and for a way to coexist with humanity.
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Apr 18, 2025 13:43
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Xaris posted:e: I also think Eulogy is supposed to be the canonical or spiritual sequel to Sideways (2004) with some names changed. Very little doubt about it in my mind that Charlie recently watched Sideways when making that episode, which actually made the episode better to me. I love Sideways Paul Giamatti posted:Charlie is great. He is open to so many ideas and changes. It was funny — the script was [originally] written for British characters, and then they got me to do it. I had to go through and make sure it sounded American, because it didn't, and Charlie was completely open to whatever. He was like, "Whatever, just have fun. Make it fit for you and your character.
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Apr 18, 2025 14:34
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