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I watched all of the episodes of this on Netflix and the Christmas special this weekend.  The National Anthem is a really good first episode - it's really masterful how it goes from "what am I watching what is going on" to "okay, that's funny. is this a funny show?" to "OH GOD THEY ARE PLAYING THIS PREMISE COMPLETELY STRAIGHT" to "ugh, now I feel horrible because the reason I kept watching this is essentially the same reason the people in the show watched it". Fifteen Million Merits was excellent in every sense. I thought the rest of the episodes weren't as good. The Entire History of You was my least favorite - when the main conflict was introduced I thought it was a trivial problem to solve with the memory implants; if dude's wife was innocent since she could just redo all of her memories for him. When that didn't come up, there wasn't much of a sense of mystery to me. The last shot was nice, though. Of the second series, I was the most disturbed by The Waldo Moment, actually. Something about the raw sleaziness of it at the end, the way the premise morphed from "amusing ratings stunt" to "heartfelt outsider's critique of government" to "buy our stuff" to "five hundred quid for anyone who starts violence" was really affecting and sad. The first half of White Christmas was more interesting than the latter bit - I kind of wish they had stuck with "sleazy remote PUA witnesses a murder" as the plot rather than the way they ultimately took it. But I didn't think it was bad, probably in the middle tier for me.
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Jan 12, 2015 05:40
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 21:18 |
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Microcline posted:The episode isn't supposed to have a simple, easy to digest moral message. We don't get a clean answer as to whether he made the "right" decision to end his marriage, and it's ultimately moot. The protagonist seeks the truth (which is held to be virtuous and liberating), but uncovers two truths that he is unable to reconcile--he loves his wife, but she may not love him. "The Fox and the Grapes" has the moral that cognitive dissonance is bad, but "The Entire History of You" is about how much of human happiness and functionality may be unattainable without it. I agree with you that Black Mirror works best when it explores human themes, but that's why Entire History of You fell flat for me. He had the intuition that his wife was cheating on him when he saw her at the party, and the rest of the story felt like a standard detective tale. The premise, though, that we all have magic boxes that can show other people the past, undermines the detective aspect -- I felt like anyone in that world who was wrongly accused would lose their temper and angrily replay their history with the person they were accused of cheating with to show their innocence. The opening sequence with the job interview suggests that these kind of "ethical reviews" are common enough, at least that a business and airport security can ask for them and not be objected to, so I don't think privacy concerns were much of a thing in this world. So it was an interesting bit of world-building, but as a human drama it didn't work for me. e: Thinking about it, I feel a bit the same about White Bear. It was a good horror story, but the voyeuristic aspect of it doesn't seem like something real people would do. fantastic in plastic fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 08:12
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Sri.Theo posted:That's the point, if you could prove things all the time wouldn't you feel that you had too? Imagine what that would do to relationships. And as for Whit Bear are you from the UK? If you are you need to read the tabloids more. I'm American. We have plenty of people who think that prisoners are scum who don't deserve any rights or empathy, but when we hear about scandals of prisoners being mistreated, those kinds of people are more likely to say "eh, gently caress 'em anyway" and just tacitly approve of it rather than say they wish they could participate in it. The hypocrisy here is more that there are many people who are certain that guns and religion are protected in the Constitution but never speak up when it comes to the part where it forbids cruel and unusual punishment. If there was something specific to the UK being satirized in White Bear other than the obvious things about technology enabling sadistic voyeurism, it was over my head.
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Jan 25, 2015 19:12
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Zorglorfian posted:I just wrapped up the series. It's amazing and I crave more long-form British television (Yes, I'm an American) like this. The acting and writing are top-notch. It depends. I've shown it to a few people adopting the strategy that was used to expose me to it ("It's from the UK, it's called Black Mirror, don't watch it if there are children around, I won't tell you anything else about it"). The first two episodes, more than the rest, really rub your face in poo poo and I think they lose some of their effectiveness if you're prepped for how Black Mirror tells stories. But because they rub your face in poo poo, some people have a negative reaction to it and don't watch the whole series. (I wonder what the experience of watching The National Anthem out of order is. I think it would be only an OK episode if you went into it with some idea of how Black Mirror plays with your expectations.)
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Feb 4, 2015 17:23
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Murmur Twin posted:I watched National Anthem + 15 Million Merits in one sitting when I first discovered Black Mirror and really liked them, so I told a close friend (who I forgot doesn't like scary movies/TV shows) to check them out. The next night, I got a text: Yeah, my experience was roughly similar to this, though my friend made it through 15 Million Merits before telling me she felt like she needed a bath and wasn't going to watch the rest of the episodes. So I'm a little circumspect about recommending it to friends. I think it's a testament to how effective the show is that people have that reaction -- I doubt that any celebrated show from recent years could literally reduce people to tears -- but I totally understand where it comes from. I wouldn't describe the show to someone else as a "satire" since in the US I think that word tends to imply "funny" or "making fun of powerful people" whereas Black Mirror is absolutely vicious toward everyday society. The "safe" approach to the show is probably to show someone The Entire History of You or White Christmas. I think they're the most non-threatening episodes in that I think they're most about the consequences of the technology in them rather than pointing out that humanity is awful. (I feel like Be Right Back is like this too, in that it's not about how people are awful. But grief is such a personal theme that I think recommending it to someone who I didn't know extremely well would not be a wise decision.)
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Feb 5, 2015 03:00
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I agree in principle, but part of what was hard for me about that episode was how it pointed out that there wasn't any understanding of wrongdoing. The Prime Minister is a total abstraction to the people watching (and even most of the people involved), both before and after the event.
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Feb 18, 2015 04:07
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Doltos posted:I dunno, National Anthem just doesn't 'fit' to me with the rest of the series. Just seems totally different, probably because it doesn't extensively involve electronics outside of them trying to fool the kidnapper. I hadn't quite thought about it in that way. I think it and Waldo are different from the other five episodes in that they don't involve "magical" technology. There's nothing extraordinary in the premises for them, it's all stuff that could at least in theory happen tomorrow. That said, though, I don't think National Anthem could have happened without TV, the internet, the ability to follow a developing story with up-to-the-minute information, the lack of institutional control over social media, etc.
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Mar 15, 2015 05:45
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I hope that it maintains the unconnected episodes format and doesn't try to stretch one weird tale on for all 12.
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Sep 25, 2015 16:52
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I watched Season 3 over the past few days. Hated in the Nation and San Junipero were huge hits for me. Nosedive was middling to fair. What rang true about it to me is that the high 4 elites all have uniform tastes and stuck together, which allowed them to maintain their social perks, while the world of the 1s and 2s is a crab pot ruled by pettiness and caprice. The cinematography was quite good, there was nice world building, and it was enjoyable -- the story never really took any chances, though, which is what held it back, I think. Playtest was a miss for me, but just barely. I liked how it ran the gamut of horror types, offering creepy environments, jump scares, monsters, psychological horror, existential horror, even playing tricks with the "obvious" twist that Sonja set it up, feelings of insanity and that the world isn't really what it seems -- I think it does all of that really well. But the premise is extremely thin, it's hard to sympathize with the protagonist, and the comic note at the end turned the whole episode into a shaggy dog story. Shut Up And Dance didn't work for me at all. My feeling is that the writer had all of this great material but then realized that the action parts would already fill an hour, so rather than explore the blackmailers much at all, they just tacked on a "he was a bad guy all along!" ending. This was weak enough that I didn't feel disgusted for having sympathized with him for the last 45 minutes, but it was strong enough that it made me stop caring about his fate. The protagonist fought was twice his size and a tough looking dude - an ending where that dude kills the protagonist in the deathmatch and then he's the guy who gets busted by the police would have been more satisfying for me. Men Against Fire made me double check to make sure I was still watching Black Mirror. I didn't like it or dislike it, but it didn't feel like the same show at all.
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Nov 1, 2016 08:56
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Bicyclops posted:Do you guys think people had these kind of arguments about the obvious twists in The Twilight Zone? "Sure, it says To Serve Man, but there's no way their language had the same idioms, so it couldn't possibly be a cookbook - she was just trying to get him scared before his long space flight, and there's nothing in the narrative to suggest otherwise." I don't know about the Twilight Zone in particular, but these kinds of discussions are quite old.
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Nov 2, 2016 04:36
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A company has a fully immersive VR game called San Junipero, which you can only play for five hours a week. They offer a proposition that "when you die, we'll make a program out of your consciousness and put you in San Junipero forever." Two women are so entranced with their experience in the VR game that they commit suicide.
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Nov 15, 2016 05:49
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Boris Galerkin posted:I just got into this show after watching S1E1 and finding it great along with the rest of S1. Now I'm on S3 and i watched episodes 1 and 2, thought they were meh, and started 3, and turned it off about 15 minutes in because it was just really bad. S3E4 is a good episode by almost any measure. Goon Thought is divided on S3E3 and S3E6. They both take some suspension of disbelief to enjoy, which seems to really work for some people and really fail for others. (I think S3E6 is one of the best episodes of the show and S3E3 one of the worst, but there's plenty of people in this thread who have the opposite opinion.)
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Nov 25, 2016 17:37
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Bicyclops posted:I have a pretty important job interview and am incapable of relaxing. Which episode from the Netflix series should I watch (I already watched the entire old series during the Trump election). Playtest involves a job interview, in a sense. Maybe that would help you relax.
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Dec 7, 2016 05:10
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Suppose you write a song. You have the copyright to the song, which means that if somebody else uses it for commercial purposes without your permission, you can sue them because they're profiting off of your work. The price of your permission is whatever you set it at, because capitalism. Now, suppose you write a song and you have a band to perform it. You go to a record company to get it recorded and published. Part of the terms of your contract with the record company says that you assign the rights to the song to them, since they've got capital in the form of recording studios, CD presses, distribution networks, etc, that you as an indie songwriter don't have. This means, basically, that you've sold the ability to grant permission to use the song to the company as part of your deal. Now, suppose you do all of the above crap but the recording studio you work with only has distribution networks in place in one relatively small market -- say, the UK. You're a savvy businessman, so you only sell the UK rights to that production company, because they can't do anything to help you in foreign markets. You're then free to sell the EU, US, Japan, etc, rights to publishers in those countries. Since now there's a British company with the UK rights and an American company with the US rights, if someone wants to use the song in a production which is sold in both the UK and the US, they have to negotiate with two different companies, the British one and the American one. If one of those won't grant permission or sets the price too high, the production can't use it there without risking a lawsuit.
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Dec 27, 2016 10:11
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Exceptionally motivated man works hard, achieves success. A Horatio Alger episode.
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Mar 17, 2017 08:07
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Punkin Spunkin posted:Finally watched the new season. Pleasantly surprised. I was afraid of American Office syndrome but it was pretty comparable to earlier seasons. My main thoughts other than "JUST SHUT TWITTER DOWN DUDE" is surprise at how many people seem to just unambiguously positively accept the ending of San Junipero? Even the avclub review is on some "and then they lived happily ever after" poo poo. Sure I'd take the deal too, but did anybody else not find this poo poo one of the most sublimely horrifying episodes? That entire credits scene for me was like a brutal hosed up sequence, not beautiful. I was just like Nooooo don't put me in the wall forever I don't wanna be a drive in a wall. I thought it was deliciously morbid and a nice contrast but it feels like a lot of people just took it as a yaaaay situation? That was my reading of San Junipero as well. I gave up on trying to persuade others or even discuss the episode, since people I tried to discuss it with were almost violently non-receptive to reading it as horror.
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Jun 17, 2017 22:03
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WampaLord posted:The process is entirely voluntary and you can disconnect at any time. If you don't wanna be a drive, no one was forcing you to be one. I completely understand why members of the Something Awful Forums would think that someone committing suicide so that they can play a video game with their online waifu is a happy ending.
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Jun 18, 2017 02:19
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 21:18 |
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Of all the things it could be, I don't see how it could be "spin". It's a literal description of the story. Spin is something like "no, see, it's actually an explicitly good ending with no ambiguity because she was dying anyway and choosing to accept euthanasia means that two computer simulations are happy".
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Jun 18, 2017 05:35
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