Charlie Brooker's BLACK MIRROR

(Could look it up myself but am spoiler phobic)

So spoilers-wise, should i watch all six episodes before reading this thread? i've only watched ep 1 so far, the typical BM criticism of one-idea-stretched-too-long and taking it in the obvious places, but i did LOL at the end when they [SPOILERS] hit rock bottom and become the comments section

only ep 1 has a teleplay not attributed to Brooker (iirc), and even then he gets a story credit

i watched the first two eps of season 3 of this show. god it was stupid. really really badly written, confused sci fi with needless twists and leaden social commentary. well made, i suppose. but definitely a show that thinks it is far smarter than it is. "Nosedive" is an accurate description of that episode, starting off with an interesting premise before running it into the ground. that ending may be one of the worst, dumbest things i have ever seen.

Adam is totally OTM. These two episodes feel very nihilistic too, there's zero empathy for the main characters. It's like an Eli Roth (Hostel) take on techno paranoia. Yeah I get Brooker is cynical but christ.

"San Junipero" is really good though.

The last one is a lot of fun!

i may give it another shot in the future cos the show does have a Outer Limits-style goofiness to it.

re: Nosedive. there was a point when they were showing her marveling at dust particles in the sunlight, now free of her always-on AR social media stuff, it felt like they were about to make a really cool point. then she just starts insulting that guy and they yell at each other. yeah i guess it's supposed to be years of pent-up aggression she never got to let out and is now half purging half exuberantly reclaiming linguistic freedom. but it felt a bit gratuitous, her character was always kind of a huge jerk in her treatment of others anyways, it didn't seem to me like she was really being held back or censored by her social media AR lifestyle, she embraced it. everything she does is for her own self image, which i guess makes sense, narcissism, the black mirror of the reflective phone screen, etc. past that surface allusion they aren't saying much interesting. it's 1-dimensional fake sci fi coasting on near futurist renditions of trendy tech stuff.

what other point were you looking for them to make, Adam? I thought the dust particles moment said enough, that she was starting to appreciate stuff outside of her AR. I agree with you that this show can be very leaden with its commentary. I tend to like it more when it's entertaining enough for me to overlook the "message", or when the message is not clear. Episode 5 with the soldiers kind of mixed everything I don't like about this show into one package - too serious, too drawn-out, overly reliant on twists, and a super-long exposition about the message at the end

I watched Playtest and was inordinately upset by it. Kudos to Brooker and his team for making something so extreme but I really don't want a TV show to affect me that badly.

sometimes u just want to honk off at things and people without it being performative, just kind of feeling yourself

sad people were so obsessed with positivity that they had no negativity. they kind of did the negative performance biz with the election Waldo dude in another season, though

I had to stop the Playtest episode a couple of times to steady my nerves. Overall I thought it was very good.

Nosedive started well but was drawn out far too long, and deteriorated from the hire car scene onwards.

> only ep 1 has a teleplay not attributed to Brooker (iirc), and even then he gets a story credit

ha, ok, he said on the telly the other day that "a couple" had had other writers and i guess that's true given that there's that one and another that's a co-write. i'd envisaged something like the recent doctor whos where the main writer would be completely hands-off for a couple.

also, rashida jones?

i wonder if i will ever see these...

And a while ago, when we were doing the show, somebody sent me a link to a funny article that Mallory Ortberg had written that was taking the piss out of Black Mirror in an amusing way, and so we've hidden the phrase, "what if phones, but too much" in there as well, if you look closely.
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/black-mirror-netflix-season-3-charlie-brooker-interview

:)

watched the blackmail episode last night. scary!

(troll face)

it's horrifying and bad, but they went over the top enough that when the command to
FIGHT
TO THE DEATH

came through I cracked up

haha yeah, saw that one coming but thought they would make the other dude kill him after having bonded w/ him

the ending was really dumb and /SAW/ but the terror and plausibility of it was great

also, are we meant to believe the kid somehow murdered that dude?

that's the whole Charlie Brooker thing that people either dislike or don't get -- the framing is usually very matter-of-fact and sketches out a future or alternative world pretty well, and then his punchline is something bouncing off the fourth wall with a thud

it's not always in there, but it's kind of a trademark

surely the true punchline of that episode was brooker having the balls to actually needle-drop "exit music."

the spoiler for the whole show is kind of in the first episode of the first series: an artist is trying to make a grand statement about society and how it's distracted from real issues because people are too busy watching youtube or w/e so he sets up this ridiculous project with a kidnapping and the pig video demand

at the end, it's a real "death of the artist (author)" situation and the prime minister is still in office and everyone moved on without anything really changing

charlie brooker is the artist, black mirror is the pigfucker plot, and people keep complaining about how he is trying to make big statements with the series that fall flat, even if they were transfixed for a moment

xp the moment with the radiohead song was the musical equivalent of trollface for sure

i only half thought through my point about the first episode but death of the post author, etc, please come up with a better explanation

i only ask you respect my original use of "pigfucker plot" and somehow work it into that guy fawkes rhyme

so "made you think?" the show?

that's what people treat it as! I think Brooker thinks that angle is kind of the surface take and it's meant to be a lot pulpier than that

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lhAr_UeroCk/hqdefault.jpg

i'm not a preacher man!

feels like it's meant to seam to be a lot pulpier than that but the ideas just aren't there.

When people complain about specific episodes of this show - and I mean people who are fans - I feel like it's...kind of a wasted effort. Not begrudging anyone an opinion on concept, acting, sets, etc but half or more than half the fun of this show is thinking about it later and trying to color in the parts of specific worlds that you didn't get to see.

Like, on it's face, "San Junipero" is incredibly optimistic and pop... but then when you really think about it and what it would ultimately mean for the world, how the matrix could be corrupted, etc., it's super dark.

(Meanwhile, something like "Playtest" is basically a horror movie. But maybe I'm just not judgmental enough about things I enjoy.)

an attempt to get people to keep saying "whoa, this is just like that episode of black mirror!" in the same way college freshmen will perpetually write the "2016 is just like Orwell's 1984!" paper

like no it's not like Orwell's 1984, come on, everything is mostly ok

Haven't watched "Men Against Fire" yet. Had skimmed a summary, then got 10 minutes in and realized that I don't have the stomach for that particular plot at the moment.

Too dark.

Raymond otm

"playtest" was great because everything in the episode exists as something we, as viewers, saw

but none of that actually happened! zero video games were played. it was all a nightmare hallucination by a guy who got his brain zapped because he turned his phone back on

an attempt to get people to keep saying "whoa, this is just like that episode of black mirror!" in the same way college freshmen will perpetually write the "2016 is just like Orwell's 1984!" paper

like no it's not like Orwell's 1984, come on, everything is mostly ok

― mh 😏, Monday, October 24, 2016 4:42 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It'd be interesting to see an episode of this show that punks you for 40 minutes in not even teasing any conflict, only to HINT at the conflict in the last 3-5 minutes.

the very end of "playtest" has the most intentionally bad punchline in the ironic Twilight Zone style

playtest was a mess. did the guy also hallucinate those CRT security cam images showing us it was all fake?

He never even played whack-a-mole

watched Nosedive and Playtest last night, really don't think I can continue with this series. Nosedive was horrifying enough, but the ending of Playtest really fucked me up. .004 seconds. Fuck me running

Thoroughly enjoyed all of the new series, to the extent that I'm almost a bit embarrassed about it.

Like I couldn't really argue with anyone saying that a lot of this is just trench-thread fodder spun out via predictable plot beats, but something about the basic format, with each episode its own self-contained little world, just works really well for me.

imo more tv shows should be one-shot or season-long things

Probably agree with the consensus that Hated In the Nation was the highlight. Nosedive was probably the most trench-y, but still funny, and the bit near the start where the main character is photographing & uploading her coffee and biscuit might be the most perfectly observed little moment of the whole series.

Would be great if each episode was bookended with a cackling robot warning us about the dangers of technology via a stream of bad puns.

some kind of...mirror master.

Watched Nosedive, Playtest, and Shut Up And Dance one each evening this week. Nosedive felt like someone attempting to write the most Black Mirror episode of Black Mirror ever, and was entertaining enough. Playtest was kind of scary but didn't get me the way some people on this thread seem to have been affected.

But Shut Up And Dance. Holy fuck. I spent 55 minutes thinking it was the most mundane episode ever (technologically everything in it seemed pretty possible right now) and wondering why a certain character was reacting in a certain way, thought the final fight to-the-death scenario seemed implausible and ill-balanced, and then the last five seconds going "holy shit". I went to bed and woke up thinking about it; best thing Brooker's ever done.

Usually I feel like most episodes would almost be better treated in half the length, as they're basically just a conceptual riff on a certain aspect of technology and society, and not actually about character or plot really. I'm not sure Shut Up... was about either of those things any more or less than other episodes, but it just suckered me.

This is one of those thing where, I don't actually like the show, but the Twitter backlash against it has been so smug, I kinda wish I liked it

Not read the full thread yet. Watched Nosedive which was really slight - well-acted though - and Playtest. That was a bit better but was expecting a bit different than literally all other VR type plots (also it reminded me of this: http://business.panasonic.co.uk/visual-system/le-petit-chef-brings-visual-mapping-to-the-restaurant-table) I guess the 2nd end bit was ok. Again, it was stretched out so long I thought they'd do something more edgy or twisty. I dunno. I guess I got scared imagining what my own mind would come up with in that situation rather than the obvious. My friend made the 'creature' on it btw.

A lot of these are decent ideas stretched past sense.

Playtest was probably the most enjoyable, San Junipero best concept.

Shut Up and Dance made basically no sense (what was the point of the robbery or the fight to the death???!?!?) Hated By The Nation was just too long and not well put sequenced and frankly too obvious even by BM standards. Men Against Fire just too on the nose (too bad I did like the concept initially). Nosedive I just could not get into.

Music was generally excellent throughout though (beginning to think this might be Netflix series greatest contribution to popular culture between this, Stranger Things, and Luke Cage.)

Yeah I thought Hated By The Nation was boring and stupid. Firing off into too many ideas and failing to bring them together. I'm amazed that people rate it highly. Kelly MacDonald is a fucking terrible actress too. She's bad in everything I've seen her in.

what was the point of the robbery or the fight to the death???!?!?

uh...