Black Mirror (Channel 4, Netflix) TV Show • Page 46

So would you mind explaining what you meant by this post?

 

Well yeah since you asked.

I think its lazy criticism to belittle social media as hollow, performative, wasteful, fake, vapid, trivial, vain, etc. And I think Nosedive leans into this criticism and plays it up in BDH's portrayal of her social media obsessed character. Is that all the episode is? No and I don't find the episode lazy but the show in general isn't always the most brilliant with things like ''what if the mother of your child was a stuffed animal" or "the ethics of blackmailing a pedophile" so yeah I hope they don't lean into phone bashing.

 

Feel like they could all go either way. Excited to watch them, though.

 

I need ‘em

 

Never got around to finishing S4, so I’m working on that this week. Curious to see how these new episodes turn out.

 

I hope they're better than last season. That was probably the worst season so far.

 

I liked the Callister one a fair amount. Arkangel had huge potential but seemed to end fairly abruptly and without exploring the full scope. Loved Rosemarie in it of course.

 

Hang the DJ > USS Callister > Crocodile > Black Museum > Arkangel > Metalhead

 

Did Crocodile last night and I really disliked it. I would watch a retconned version solely about the investigator though.

 

I liked Crocodile, Hang the DJ, and Metalhead quite a bit.

Arkangel was just okay. Not good but not bad.

I really hated USS Callister and Black Museum.

 

I'll stan for Metalhead as a purely visceral horror experience, I can't recall breathing once through that whole episode and the lack of moralising/preaching was a refreshing change of pace

Arkangel and Black Museum made me want to quit the show tho

 

The cinematography in Metalhead alone makes it an awesome episode. It looks stunning, particularly the white paint scene.

 

I hope the new episodes aren’t all based on technology where you upload someone’s consciousness to whatever, I’m kind of over that tbh

 

Crocodile is up there with the biggest wastes of premises they’ve ever had. The universe in which that technology exists is so horrifying and interesting, but choosing to tell it through the lens of that completely flat monster is just bizarre. It’s not like Shut Up and Dance or White Bear where they try to humanize someone tremendously and get you on their side only to turn the tables at the end, and the ending is awful enough to automatically knock it down to a lower tier.

I really would love another episode just exploring how that program changed the world and how it is susceptible to lies and false memory on a more sinister level or how it deals with intrusive thoughts versus actual facts.

 

I guess I'm completely missing what you're saying, but can you clarify what was bad about it exactly? I think it looked beautiful, the story was at least passable (I'd say it was very interesting), and outside of the last 30 seconds with the stupid guinea pig I think it's one of the best of the series.

 

I really disliked Crocodile. That main character was completely irredeemable in my eyes. I felt like I understood what the episode was thematically about in five minutes, but I watched the whole thing and, murder after murder, my feelings toward the character or the moral of the story never changed. Felt like a slog. The world they created was cool though.

 

Yeah Crocodile pissed me off because I just didn’t understand the main character at all, she just jumped to murdering everyone so quickly

 

I don't want to sound like I'm challenging yours or anyone else's opinion, I'm really just curious, but do you have to like a character or think they're redeemable in order to enjoy a show or movie?

I think she was awful and irredeemable as well but enjoyed watching her downward spiral and eventual arrest.

 

It was sort of two stories shoved together where they both ended up suffering.

The “protagonist” was completely flat and there wasn’t any exploration of who she was or anything to make us truly relate to her and understand her spiral. She just becomes a killbot early on and never lets up, even twisting the knife so far as to kill a baby. But wait, the baby was blind! Because it wasn’t bleak enough already! The “good person does evil things to cover up one dark secret” is a story that’s been done a million times, and there was nothing about this particular version that adds anything new or powerful to the idea. She also could have gone down the same path with any number of other technologies, so there wasn’t anything that made it feel like it HAD to be involved with this one.

Then you have the other (much more interesting) story of this charming but manipulative investigator whose job is to use a mindbogglingly invasive technology and present it as the most simple and banal thing in the world. The people in the story obviously have dealt with this enough to the point that it’s no more than vaguely unsettling or annoying, but because it’s split between the other story we don’t get any time to explore how it really works or what society is like with it. There are also little interesting moments like where we see the memories change after outside influence, so how much of it really is the “truth” and how much is just as flawed as our current system for witnesses is a super interesting question that goes nowhere.

And yeah, the ending was bad enough that it took the whole thing down quite a bit on its own. If they can just pull complete and accurate memories from a guinea pig (can’t believe that’s a real sentence), then everything we had been told about the technology previously was a complete lie. And if it really is a machine that can look at everything you’ve ever done with complete control no matter what you are currently thinking of, THAT is something worth exploring at length and why I mention the wasted premise.

An episode about different privacy scandals coming from it could be really interesting. Maybe it turns out that the workers can influence the memories more than anyone thought (possibly to get that bonus more often), so someone has to try to find proof that is more airtight than a video of their own mind. Maybe someone gets arrested and it turns out the only proof was from the machine looking into parts of their memory that they didn’t consent to and they realize just how far the invasion goes. There are pretty much endless possibilities for interesting concepts there, but instead they chose to sideline it.

 

Damn, hell of a response, thanks a lot! I can see what you mean now, even if I disagree with some of the points. I appreciate you explaining it so well.

 

I also want to go back and watch that episode again now with that all in mind.

 

I don’t have to like a character or think they’re redeemable to enjoy a show at all. My favorite show is The Sopranos, so I understand the “downward spiral” effect you’re talking about, but I just didn’t think there was anything interesting about her character. I understood the point that she was constantly tormented by the fear of getting caught/the guilt. But there was nothing mysterious or enlightening about that story, just kinda felt empty. @EASheartsVinyl explains it better above.