I just binge-watched Black Mirror based on remembering that Lemon wrote a post about it once that I didn't understand. Now I've got opinions about the episodes.
S1E1 is a really good opener, because it leaves you kind of wondering what sort of show this is going to be until they finally say 'the demands are for you to fuck a pig on live TV'. And then after that, I kept wondering if it was going to swerve away and solve the problem, or if it was going to go more humorous with it, but it didn't. It's probably my favorite, because it's got the thriller-esque political realism aesthetic, but where your Toms Clancy or Clives Cussler would have a solution, in this, there just isn't one. I don't know if I was just paying poor attention or what though, but even after seeing the carpenter guy hanging himself at the end, I didn't put together that he was the artist they were talking about. I had to get that from Wikipedia.
S1E2 is also really good, but it takes a really different tact and goes full-on dystopia. But it felt a bit like it lingered a bit too much on the details, especially during the beginning. It was like they weren't sure if they were going for cinema pacing or short film pacing, and spent the first half establishing and re-establishing the world. The ending also left me wondering--does he not care about her any more? Has he given up on getting her out? The plot also sort of hinges on magic mind control juice, which seems a little silly given how relatively grounded the other episodes are. It feels like they focused on the emotional journey more than the tight plot of the first.
S1E3 is set in a world where everyone can record memories onto an implant behind their ear, and is about a couple having a fight about her old relationships. It's good, but I have trouble sympathizing with rich, successful people who have parties with all their friends and who are self-confident enough to show off their own memories. And stories about cheating. So, whatever, it's not quite for me. The way it builds is interesting, because I thought it was going in a much more dystopian direction with the interview at first, but then it just focused in on their relationship and kept magnifying the problem. And speaking of magnifying, it uses the CSI-style zoom/enhance more than I would expect a show this generally smart about technology to do so. (It still represented the future tech well, though.) It was my least favorite of the first season, but still good on its own. The best parts to me were the little hints of the greater culture surrounding this technology: airport security replaying your last week, reviewing your baby's memories of the babysitter, being able to sue your parents for negligence based on your recorded memories, et cetera.
S2E1, about the grieving girl who gets the simulate-your-deceased-loved-one service, is really good, especially knowing that it exists in real life. I wondered whether the real service came out before or after he wrote this? At any rate, I liked the intensity of the emotions and the way that it's both about grief, but also about virtual intelligence. Just aesthetically, I liked the pairing of the high-tech stuff like her drawing tablet and the old-fashioned cottage. The jump to 'oh, yeah, we've got special artificial humans that never need to eat' seemed like a weird move from the close-future technology level of the rest of the stuff. Thinking about it now, I still don't know if her mom knows by the end what's going on with her keeping him in his attic. Is she okay with it? Does she know? Is her daughter going to spill the beans on accident?
S2E2, about a woman waking up with no memories in a town where everyone's watching her with their phones, was an interesting journey. It started out pretty haunting, but as it went on, I got confused, because again, this one seemed to be doing magic tech mind control nonsense and horror movie cliches, and it was coming to its climax like fifteen minutes before the end. But then the turn came, and...does it make something that's not super good better that it was bad on purpose? I really like the concept of it, but it's two-thirds of a dumber story plus one-third of a much smarter story. It still seemed at the end a bit like, is everyone still so excited about torturing this murderer from so long ago? Is she a special instance, or do all sensational murderers get the starring-in-their-own-horror-movie torture? In the end, it's one of the neatest ideas, but kind of loses momentum after the reveal when she's just getting paraded around while sobbing.
S2E3, about the satirical cartoon character getting onto the ballot as an election candidate, was the weakest of the second season for me, even though I liked it. The one issue I had with it is that even at my most nihilist late-teen everything-is-bullshit self, I wouldn't support an actual cartoon. I get that's the conceit, but they don't really do enough to sell the fact that people like him. All the characters in the episode talk about how he's a nothing of a candidate, and he doesn't have enough of any sort of presence to seem like something people would actually follow on strength of character alone. The campaign relationship between the bear's actor and the Labor candidate hinges on a romcom-level miscommunication. I liked the American who was just from "the agency" talking about using the character worldwide, but the payoff for that in the end seemed like it was too over-the-top with its future society entirely based around bear worship. It would have been better ended, I think, with just seeing the bear used by some (presumably America-backed) dictatorial regime or something, instead of going the full sci-fi with it.
The White Christmas episode is eminently watchable because it has Jon Hamm making Christmas breakfast for you in it, but the troubles with it are a) it feels like three rejected ideas for episodes from the first two seasons; b) the three episodes don't function all that well wrapped into one narrative; and c) these episodes were rejected for a reason. The PUA part was a worse version of Amateur Night, the first segment from the horror-anthology V/H/S; the egg part was really just there to establish a reason for some bullshit in the frame narrative; and the blocking thing combines the romcom miscommunication with the Rich Handsome People Cheating plot and ends with non sequitur murder.
Here's to the new series, courtesy of Netflix!
