Are people liking the latest season of Black Mirror? I'm only three episodes in and haven't yet gotten to San Junipero, which everyone says is the really good one, but so far I've been a little disappointed. This might be regression to the mean, since I felt that the first six episodes were six home runs in a row and it must be tough to keep a streak like that going, but so far season 3 seems to have lost something.
I loved the first two seasons because they felt like intelligent, worrying criticisms of futurism, social media and technology, whereas usually when television tries to do that it's eye-rolling and cringe-worthy. But so far season 3 feels like the Sorkin-esque Boomer slop that I loved the first two seasons for not being. What do other people think?
To me, the third episode (Shut up and dance) is the outstanding episode, at the end I was mentally exhausted and incredibly saddened. San Junipero is different, without ruining things, it's the only episode where at the end, I wasn't considering the "where" that we're heading towards as a society (though on further thinking, it's a question of whether something good is also something moral.) – It's just very different in overall tone.
The first episode I found really difficult to watch because it felt too much like real-life (Uber, especially.) – there's one episode which I didn't finish as it just didn't interest me, it was the army-type episode, I got bored incredibly quickly. The last episode (which is set on Twitter, I suppose) is incredible.
I think there were maybe too many episodes, the VR episode, whilst good, just felt like filler to me, though it made me phone my mother. I'll watch the fourth season, it's still one of the better shows on television.
There was a trailer a few years back with a bunch of 20-something white gamer dudes in some kind of dystopian future gamer den playing a CoD style shooter, which was in reality --- well, the same plot twist as "Men Against Fire". I thought (a) the trailer was much more evocative than the Man Against Fire episode, and (b) that it was possible that "Man Against Fire" borrowed its idea from that trailer.
I think this is both more plausible and more disturbing than "Men Against Fire". Also: the twist is less apparent --- for most of "Uncanny Valley" (if I'm remembering it clearly), you're not entirely sure whether it's a comment about how games generate dissipation the same way drugs do. "Men Against Fire" is predictable from about minute 10 (after the farm house scene).
Another "Black Mirror" problem I have: the episodes are way too long. "San Junipero" is the only one --- of all the seasons, I think! --- that earned its running length.
Both UV and the BM episode strongly reminded me of an Outer Limits (I think?) episode about a perpetual war between humans and aliens in some underground cave. The reveal is pretty similar to that in Men Against Fire, except the justification is different.
Still haven't watched Black Mirror yet. The Uncanny Valley thing was really good. I think it's a plausible scenario at some point with it likely being UAV's first given they have less detail to begin with. Reminds me of a particular scene in Enders Game that ended up being my favorite since it was all around awesome. Wonder if that was the inspiration.
It got the dichotomy right - the solution for horrible things like PTSD also turned out to be justifying continuation of a horrific crime in its own right. The balance of how technology is amoral and how we use it as a society and for what agendas is illustrated in one of the better ways in this specific episode. The problem I had with the episode is similar to my complaint with all of season 3 - unnecessarily slow pacing and repetition. I'm not seeing the artistic reasons for repeating the same tired gestures in, say, the first episode unless they're more sentimental kind of episodes like San Junipero.
The morality lessons that the Twilight Zone oftentimes preached are manifested more as debates in Black Mirror with season 3, which I think is a lot tougher to write successfully. What is a bit of a letdown is that the debates are mostly contemporary (PTSD wasn't even a term when the Twilight Zone was airing) and will date this specific episode heavily. Meanwhile, most of what I watched in the Twilight Zone is still very relevant from even a thought experiment perspective.
I think I developed a lot more critical thinking watching Twilight Zone episodes as a child than anything I had to read in school.
Um, how would PTSD "date" an episode? The clinical term may be recent but it's not going to go away and it didn't just start - see reports of shellshock from WW1.
PTSD being such a big and publicized topic is the difference today than from past wars. The topic of ethnic cleansing actually happening wasn't even a thought until years following WW2. The politics of war were pervasive in media much more than the conditions and microscopic effects upon those that are on the frontlines (all those war movies didn't exactly paint as grim of a picture as it was though thanks to pro-war sentiment by US leadership for decades).
It's actually "genetic cleansing", if I understood the exposition right. Same like with "Shut up and dance", this twist a provides believable reason why some think what's going on is actually justifiable.
I might try it again, it got to the point where they were visiting the man that was a sympathiser and I switched off. It felt a bit like Starship Troopers (that isn't bad I suppose) but I just wasn't captivated at the time.
You most definitely missed the biggest thing about that episode. I agree it started slow/boring, but it goes to 100 in the blink of an eye.
Edit: I thought I'd add that that episode did take me two tries (I fell asleep during the boring part the first time, but watched it again 'cause I had faith inspired by every other black mirror episode).
That seen reminded me of inglorious bastards beginning scene. It even has the same end where the girl runs away from the house while someone is trying to shoot at her.
The Twitter-death-drone episode could have been a stand alone movie. Everything in that story and execution was polished and well put together. The pacing was fantastic compared to the others in the bunch.
Absolutely, I thought the same thing – it was the longest of the episodes, and although you see that text message at the end, it's still open-ended – it might be the first episode that could be revisited at some point?
The moral message was lost it seems - the viewer's gut reaction to persecute the supposed antagonist now is part of the critique. Wishing for his death despite his deeds is not necessarily justice and a failure to understand his motives. Is it any better we judge and execute in secret than in public?
I've been having difficulty rating my uber drivers lately, given that I feel like I'm being pushed into participating much like the characters in the show. Seeing the "I can't drive if my rating is below 4.7" signs doesn't help either.
"Shut up and dance" was definitely my favorite episode of the seasons for the emotions you listed.
I've just finished watching the "Men Against Fire" episode, due to feedback, to me; it's still the weakest of the bunch, but probably because it seems the most implausible, every episode of Black Mirror previously has made me question my own black mirror, and whether it's a good or bad decision to own one. This episode specifically is too detached from my own day to day choices to have had the impact it's meant to have, and I know about and have read in detail about eugenics (which is what I think this episode is alluding to) – but to me, it's the most unrealistic, and that's why I've made my decision.
Eugenics are not evil and would rid the world of many terrible, terrible hereditary diseases. However, the way to get it out of humanity should be done by the 'soft' way, not with violence.
I understood eugenics to be defined by a push to get desired people to reproduce more and undesirable ones to reproduce less? This seems quite different to things like gene testing and embryo selection which aren't as easily abused.
Those things are equivalent, only in the first case you do it retroactively instead of proactively. Hell, if gene modification becomes advanced enough you could even let people with hereditary diseases just reproduce and 'edit' the created embryo so it doesn't have said hereditary genes.
It's not quite like this but people with Huntingdon's can have embryos tested and healthy ones implanted so that their kids don't have Huntingdon's. This Nature article describes the process in 2002. www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v10/n10/full/5200865a.html
I don't know if it's US production influence, but seasons 1 and 2 plus the bonus holiday episode were, compared to season 3, raw and felt more real. If I had to explain it, I'd say it's because it was a pure British production. I really hoped after the bad 1st episode that it would get better, but it didn't achieve the same positive effect as the previous seasons.
That said, if the content of season 3 manages to push some of the concerns outlined into the general public's perception and highlights them, then it's a good thing and well achieved.
The thing that stuck and was funniest for me was from the worst episode (ep 1) about the adapter and planned obsolescence.
Since San Junipero is mentioned here positively, I should add that it didn't work for me and seemed like ep 1 just too long for the content, but that's a subjective thing I guess. I kinda found it uninteresting and boring and honestly the ideas brought forward not crazy or exciting. Maybe it's because having lived in the tech world, the concepts are just as old as the availability electricity or even anyone who watched the matrix or read the mangas it's based on would find it "old".
Playtest reminded of the No End House creepypasta.
My favorite episode, despite the plot flaws, was Hated in the Nation, and that one almost saved the season. In light of InternetOf*, it was the episode I enjoyed the most.
The first episode is the very worst of the whole serious. "Fan-fiction" level of writing. Everything so obvious with tired tropes. A critique to social media that could be done by an imaginative high school kid.
The other ones are good, interesting and worth watching. Although only San Junipero is great.
Really? I liked the first episode. What I think is the absolute worst (of all Black Mirror, I'd say!) is the second episode, Playtest. It's embarrassingly bad, completely amateurish, not really scary, too drawn out and with dodgy SFX and a weak premise.
I also didn't like Shut Up & Dance much. To me it felt like a weaker "White Rabbit", and much of the episode hinges on a single plot twist at the end (much like White Rabbit, but that one was better executed).
I liked San Junipero. I liked that it has a different, unexpected tone from the rest. I liked that it was kind-hearted, for a change. Haven't watched the rest of the season yet.
I have to say I felt the opposite. E1 felt incredibly hamfisted, really pushing the whole "everyone is constantly on their phones and obsespsed with Internet reputation", when in my own life I have observed the pendulum actually swinging the other direction away from that trend which, in my experiences, peaked towards the end of the 2000 decade.
E2 on the other hand was quite good. I did not find the SFX to be bad at all - and that itself far removed from what made the episode great.
Yes, I didn't say I loved it, I just liked it. Though in my experience the trend still goes on, with everyone around me on facebook and constantly checking their phones. That said, Black Mirror is about extremes, not necessarily about how things are now.
You think that was a worse episode than the first episode of the series? Or The Waldo Moment?
I really think Black Mirror is suffering from the Internet hype machine. If you never saw the show and only read the buzz online you'd think the first 2 seasons were masterclass and this one was a disaster..I thoroughly enjoyed all 3 seasons and thought some episodes were stronger than others but there was no large change in quality between seasons.
What's wrong with S1E1? It's structurally different enough from later episodes that I'd probably not make it the first episode I showed someone to introduce them to the series, but IMO it's solid.
> The first episode is the very worst of the whole serious. "Fan-fiction" level of writing. Everything so obvious with tired tropes. A critique to social media that could be done by an imaginative high school kid.
It was as much as 10 minutes too long and something was wrong with the editing, like they didn't have enough good meaty shots to fill out some kind of required run time so the editor had to hold shots too long. Then there was the climactic scene where they kept repeating similar shots and beats over and over for what felt like forever, like the story's needle was dislodged and skipping. That was a mess and killed the remaining investment I had in the story. There were also several important but very flatly filmed scenes of dialog that made the acting come off as weak (I think it was the editing/shot choice and not the actors, though). My least favorite episode by far, replacing The Waldo Moment, which was then bumped one notch higher again by the soldiers/VR episode later, which had several (maybe too many) decent ideas and an interesting world but needed a couple more passes on the script.
Other four were really good. San Junipero might be my favorite episode of the series.
[EDIT] I've just checked Wikipedia and S3E1 is the only episode that Brooker didn't write or co-write, just a "story by" with the teleplay by two other people (from Parks & Rec). Maybe that's where the trouble started.
Well, maybe it is about some expectations alignement problem. If I had started to watch not as "food for thought" story with twists, but expecting a simple satire and enjoying more the humor, I would have appreciated it more.
"Fan-fiction" level of writing. Everything so obvious with tired tropes. A critique to social media that could be done by an imaginative high school kid.
Funny: that's exactly what I think about the whole series. I have (guiltily) watched all three seasons with anticipation, and I still don't really see what the big deal is.
But then de gustibus non est disputandum, so that's just me.
If you're a seasoned scifi reader then you'll see most of the twists coming and be aware of most of the tropes. The show relies on slowly unveiling the various concepts over the course of the episodes.
I don't think this comment should be downvoted. While I did enjoy this episode, it does stand out in the series. While there is certainly some dark humor throughout the series, this one is straight out dark comedy, from beginning to end. AFAIK it is also the only one not written by Charlie Brooker, thus the fanfiction feel that soneca talks about.
Sorry to comment again, but you mentioned "six home runs in a row" – there's also a Christmas special called "White Christmas" – if you haven't seen it already, is also one of the better episodes, starring the main guy from Mad Men (Jo(h?)n Hamm?)
They can only reuse the same tropes so many times. Season 3 takes most of the "mind blowing" ideas from the first series and repackages them in a weaker presentation. The first episode was a weaker repackaging of Fifteen Million Merits (intrusion of social media rankings). I think there were two rehashes of White Christmas (protagonist being in an alternate universe where time moves slowly, which is always revealed a the end of the episode). White Chrismas did this much more effectively. Season 3 is just a thin shell around the same tropes.
Could it be that the first 2 seasons were British. And 3rd season is first time being British-American so that felt that revisiting popular ideas with a new spin the timing was good?
And really, Fifteen Million Merits wasn't all that great either --- it was kind of all over the place narratively, and once you get the intrusive ranking trope, there's really not much more interesting about it. It felt sort of like badly plotted Vonnegut.
Again: if you haven't seen the MeowMeowBeenz episode of Community: it's a pretty good chaser to either of those episodes.
I have to disagree. Fifteen Million Merits is still my favorite episode, and what's more, I don't think it's about the intrusive ranking at all (meta-point: one of the best things about Black Mirror, IMO, is that people will often disagree on not only the quality of an episode, but what the episode was even about. That's how you know it's good).
I think the moral of that story was the inherent futility of ever rebelling against the System. Most people don't try, most who try fail, and even for the one-in-a-million who succeed, the System just instantly reconfigures itself to absorb your rebellion as part of it. Other works have done the "revolutionaries always become the new dictators" shtick, but Fifteen Million Merits did it better because it shows that this process doesn't even require a villain (like in, say, Animal Farm). Everyone in that episode, even the Simon Cowell stand-in, was just punching a clock and doing their job; the suppression of revolt was purely an emergent property of the system... as it usually is in real life.
It was the bleakest, most nihilist bit of television I think I've ever seen, made better by the fact that it wasn't empty "dark for dark's sake" like Twilight Zone-esque twist endings tend to be. I had to go for a walk afterward. I don't see how you can't like it... but like I said, the fact that people can disagree so profoundly is one of the show's best qualities, so I'll upvote you anyway and not hold it against you :)
The real hook wasn't the lame virtual-points Zynga oppression, it was how the main character reacted to their situation and then how the system reacted to them.
It's all ground that was covered before (and arguably better) in Network 40 years ago, but it does it well.
I really enjoyed this season. Maybe the fact that is 6 episodes long (I spaced them out throughout a couple of weeks) made me spend more time thinking about it, than the first seasons.
I don't think that the quality has slipped. Maybe you are being too critical because it has lost its initial shock factor?
Agreed. The quality is just fine. I think because of the year-plus hiatus, we, the viewers, set way too high a bar for the return of the series. This takes into consideration that even though, in my opinion, the series was on par with the first 2 seasons (discounted for initial shock value and departure from conventional sitcoms and dramas), it was still engaging enough to enjoy despite not everything being perfect.
To me it feels like all the subtly is gone. What would have not been explained in the first two seasons is spelled out in the third season. It got a whole lot less interesting or engaging.
Completely agree. The first two seasons had more of an "unexpected consequences" vibe. I never got the feeling they were trying to lecture me, I just left wondering "Hmm, I wonder how I would react if this was the reality of the world?". I've only watched 3 episodes of S3 so far (1, 2 and 5), but I couldn't help but feel like they were all drawn out and beat the viewer over the head with the message. At one point in E1 a main character literally explains to the viewer what is going on. And E5 was particularly bad. There was a very interesting point to be made on the realities of genetic screening and they just barely touched on it.
I started watching S1E1 after having watched a couple of other episodes from season 2 and 3. I quit watching it halfway. Not sure what was subtle about it. Honestly if it was the first episode I'd watched, I'd probably have written off the whole show altogether.
S1E1 feels like an entirely different show. It doesnt really show near future tech it just shows something that could happen today. Try the rest of the first season. Very worth re approaching.
I found a few of the idea repetitive to season 1 and 2, I haven't finished all episodes but I like 6 the most so far, because it presented a novel threat. And similarly and more immediately you could imagine [SPOILERISH HINTS BEYOND] a self-driving car virus that would use facial recognition to create an assassination capable vehicle botnet. Episode #2 has implications of simulated torture which is interesting but has already been treated a few times.
The only episodes that even came close to making me feel like the older episodes did were "Playtest" and "Men against Fire," but even they're not up to par.
I think San Junipero is widely overrated, the pacing is awful and it isn't terribly thought provoking.
They've peaked, the high point was the Jon Hamm special episode and now it's over.
I feel the last season offers a different perspective than the others (excluding San Junipero - which is similar to the first two seasons).
The first two seasons are about a hypothetical future any person could experience (society).
The last season is from the perspective of an individual's very specific circumstances (except for San Junipero).
Society versus the individual?
I liked the ending of the first episode of Season 3 (freedom achieved), episode 2 was more horror than scifi (a la "Brainscan"), episode 3 could have been a subplot in a single episode of Mr. Robot, episode 4 was more like the first two seasons, episode 5 was some nazi-esque Verhoeven-wannabe hegemony meh, and episode 6, to me, was like episode 2, more horror scifi.
No, you're not the only one. More and more it seems the show is about people using technology in the cruelest possible way against each other. It's The Outer Limits with less range and more smartphones.
Honestly? Season 3 seemed the weakest of the bunch but I feel that the final episode made up for the rest. And even a weak Black Mirror episode is still pretty decent if you don't hold it up to the ridiculous standards that seasons 1 and 2 set for the show.
I've only watched episodes 2, 3, and 6, and I agree, not particularly compelling compared to even the 3 worst episodes of the previous seasons. It's still good, but not uniquely interesting or provoking in the way that past seasons have been.
I watched 2 or 3 episodes in this latest season, and they were solid, but a little predictable. Significantly better than the 1st season, which beyond the shock factor of the first episode, was pretty much blah.
Fully agreed! "The Entire History of You" is when I realized Black Mirror was great. Such an interesting episode -- more about human behavior than about tech, really.
For some reason I also liked the episode's title itself; to me it sounds like a name Neil Gaiman would come up with.
> Are people liking the latest season of Black Mirror?
Yes, it's a good one.
> San Junipero, which everyone says is the really good one
Average, by my standards. They had a great premise and all they did with it was tell a love story.
The really good episodes are S03E01 for taking the quantification of social status to an extreme, S03E05 for an interesting take on the banality of evil and S03E06 for managing to be annoyingly moralizing and very well done at the same time.
> I loved the first two seasons because they felt like intelligent, worrying criticisms of futurism, social media and technology
Same here, except S01E01 that had none of those qualities and nothing in common with the rest of the series. If that bland and silly social critique was the basis on which the network ordered an entire season, it was a small miracle.
I found no value in the first two seasons. It's been on the front page of HN at least 4 times in the past couple weeks. I tried watching the third season hoping it was better. It's still stupid. It's like they just take some very plain 1:1 observation about exactly how the world is right now, focus on one specific demographic, then create a skit around it that has no depth. They create imaginary worlds, but they're not very imaginative. They're basically exactly the world we're in, but they replace a few things with something slightly different. It's like science fiction for people who don't really like science fiction.
It's shallow intellectually, but it doesn't even have any depth emotionally. At least with most other popular TV shows there's depth in terms of personal relationships. There's drama that's more emotionally interesting. Black Mirror seems to be optimized for people who are blunted both in terms of intellect and social emotion. It's one of the most boring TV series on Netflix, which is a shame because there's not much else that even attempts to be interesting in a more sci-fi way.
I think the only reason why people find value in Black Mirror must be because of references. Like how they love jokes on Reddit when they refer to something they all know. People must be like, "Ahaha, they're referencing how people are always on their phones. So true. LOL look, it's trollface!! Dude, look, trollface is on TV. I know trollface. Haha this show is great." What else would people be getting out of it?
I'm not sure if we've been watching the same show. I finished watching the first season this week, and Black Mirror does an amazing job of building characters and forming relationships in a short amount of time.
It does this well because the science fiction elements of the show are not the focus. They are merely instruments for driving very human narratives.
When you say It's shallow intellectually, but it doesn't even have any depth emotionally. At least with most other popular TV shows there's depth in terms of personal relationships. There's drama that's more emotionally interesting. I wish you would use an example so I can understand where you're coming from since I find myself completely on the other side of your comment.
The consistent technology theme I see across almost all episodes is that Augmented Reality is ubiquitous, and regarded as either neutral (Nosedive) or bad (Playtest, Men Against Fire).
I think it's a storytelling crutch (I don't mean that disparagingly). Technology is super difficult to convey on screen and the most straightforward way is to just show it. AR makes that easy.
I really didn't like the 'bee' episode because it brushed a frightening ecological disaster under the table so it could have an episode about how mean people are on twitter. Really?
Even if we could construct something like those robot bees, what effect would that have on the surrounding eco-systems? What happens when a bird or a frog eats some little carbon-fiber robot? I feel like they squandered a more interesting premise in order to tell a sillier one.
It feels like everybody has pretty much forgotten about, or at least gotten over the emotional impact of the deepwater horizon oil spill despite it being one of the largest manmade ecological disasters in history. brushing it under the rug is probably closer to real life and appropriately uncomfortable when fed back to you as fiction.
I do not enjoy watching Black Mirror , yet I do watch it.To make me realize that all the technology boom/bubble right now can go bad too. One of the my favourite parts about the series is that it focuses on one technology at a time. Had they focussed on multiple advancements of tech,they would be as unbelievable and superficial like other sci-fi shows.
But the real world has multiple technologies intermingled with each other. The point I am trying to make here:
While we think Black Mirror is bad enough (I cannot watch watch more than one episode at a time),what will happen in reality could be much worse.
I wouldn't consider using people on bicycles to power society good science. It's probably one of the most inefficient methods of energy generation. That episode seemed a bit far fetched to me.
I agree that it would be terrible science, but since that seems so clear - the bicycles could barely power the screens in front of them at the speed the people were riding, let alone the greater world - I gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed that they're literally make-work. The (presumably uneducated) riders may believe they're doing something necessary, but this could be a picture of a dystopian post-scarcity future when both work and scarcity are imposed artificially simply to keep people in line.
Agreed. I didn't take from this that they were powering society for the 1%. I took that they were powering their own world and earning currency to keep them otherwise entertained. If you look at the small picture of what was going on, it is easy to see that perhaps they were cycling to power something to just to earn said currency in order to enjoy futuristic creature comforts like not having to watch commercials, eating healthier food, dressing up their avatar, etc. However, I took the idea of cycling as a way to occupy people's time and found that it could easily be a way to reduce or eliminate crime. If people are always riding in order to earn money to buy trivial things then they really have no time to be doing anything nefarious. I noticed nobody was watching a news channel or reading a newspaper which leads me to believe the trivial things (skipping commercials, food that is healthier and thus more expensive thus requiring more riding, and dressing up your avatar) are just enough to keep them satiated but not enough to invoke any feelings of unrest that could foster rebellion within the system (for the most part).
I see this as part of the point of the episode. It's about control: the cycling is supposed to be pointless, many of the riders may even be aware of this, but speaking out against it just gets you... well... [spoilers]
other than being post-scarcity, I'd say recycling is literally almost this. it's not actually all that valuable as an activity and functions more as penance for the sin of consumerism.
Do you have references for that? There are many challenges involved in recycling, and it's certainly far more valuable to reduce consumption and increase re-use, but any review I've seen still shows recycling having a significant net environmental benefit.
No that's basically exactly what I mean. If you really care about the environment you'll reduce consumption. If you sort of feel bad about the environment, you'll sort your trash but keep buying mountains of throwaway products that can be nominally reclaimed. It's still a massive waste of time, effort and material even if somebody can reclaim the material for other worthless products like direct-mail flyers or whatever later. There is no path to sustainability that does not entail consuming less.
Only certain materials are truly valuable - they're the ones people pay to recycle. Metal-based recycling is incredibly valuable to the population and environment.
And on top of that, it's valuable enough that you don't need to worry about it, because eventually someone will mine the trash for the metals they need.
I think the point of that episode was not to present a practical way of creating energy but to symbolize mundane, insignificant and boring 9-5 jobs of the modern life.
"Black Mirror" is dark sci-fi. I do most of my video watching before bed, but that doesn't work for Black Mirror. There is so little quality in television series that I'll take whatever quality I can get. I don't like gratuitous violence, sex, or comic relief - and that rules out 3/4 of all programming. I find Black Mirror to be worth the investment of my time.
I love how Black Mirror is like a series of existential thought experiments. Most of them involve people living meaningless lives and how people find a way to make it bearable.
I loved the first two seasons because they felt like intelligent, worrying criticisms of futurism, social media and technology, whereas usually when television tries to do that it's eye-rolling and cringe-worthy. But so far season 3 feels like the Sorkin-esque Boomer slop that I loved the first two seasons for not being. What do other people think?