Black Mirror

They didn’t really lump them in the same group though; the paedos were going to end up either dead or in jail for murder as well as their other crimes.

I assumed the vehicles were stolen or belonged to people they were messing with. And the surveillance was basically Find my Friends which is on iphones.

Ok, it wasn’t expensive, but a massive effort really.

The affair guy was made an accomplice to the crime, all for arranging to have sex with a prostitute. And why should the child-porn viewers be entrapped into committing extra crimes? Just thought the motives of the organising people were dubious or unclear, plus criminals themselves if they stole cars/ got guns etc.

I dunno, hackers have lots of time on their hands I guess. That’s why stuff like IS’ twitter accounts getting hacked and websites getting DDOS attacked for no apparent reason happens. I think the motives of the hackers were secondary to the lengths people would go through to cover up their shame anyway, don’t think the reasons behind their actions were that important. Also, have you heard of the Deep/Dark Web? Lots of criminal activity happens on there and is hard to track.

But yeah Bron probably got treated way too harshly being made to be an accomplice to the robbery.

I get your points but I’m going to have a bit of a ramble here. I don’t think it was so much for a lol at all. The messages appeared to come from people devoted to their form of online justice. This worked as a metaphor for online public shaming (e.g. doxx attacks, hactivists, the Ashley Madison stuff, the woman who put the cat in the wheelie bin etc) which stops being a metaphor when Radiohead plays and the montage kicks off, when it becomes actual public shaming. The episode is trying to make the audience ask, should public shaming be tolerated? Encouraged? Do some people deserve it? Though he’s a pathetic kid, you’re rooting for Kenny to get out of the mess he’s in until you realise he’s not what you thought. So after rooting for him, do you now change your mind and want him to suffer? What do you gain from watching the suffering? Is this an acceptable form of punishment?

In your other post you say that lumping in those having an affair and watching child porn shouldn’t be in the same group, but when you look at it, that group is tiered in the severity of actions they’re asked to take. Only the paedophiles are forced to fight to the death, and the racist email woman gets off the lightest in that all she has to do is sort out the car. There is a logic to that. The episode does also have the slightly wanky Brooker moment where you expect there to be this big cathartic payoff/reveal, but at the climax you receive the troll face. He literally trolls the viewer, with troll face.

You’re right in that the time/money thing is a bit of a stretch, but all of Black Mirror is a bit of a stretch and it’s the kind of thing where if you’re looking for the wires it all falls apart. That’s my opinion anyway!

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Have you heard of 4chan?

I’m not overly familiar with it

I can see your points. Just because I don’t understand or sympathise with the people’s motives/ methods of getting justice, it doesn’t mean that it was just a lol, in that they achieved their aim of ruining criminals (or people having an affair) lives.

However, I still think there were a lot of unnecessary/ pointless plot devices, such as the bank robbery, which served no purpose (why not use that money for something else?), and it took a such long time to get the point across. Maybe I’m overanalysing it, but I preferred the White Bear episode, in that it was a bit more succinct in getting a pretty similar point across.

Aye I get what you mean. (Spoilers for third episode):and agree the bank robbery is a bit superfluous to everything else. Certainly seems like they added it to have some escalation, if it went straight from meeting Bronn to the fight to the death, probably would have happened too quickly. I did like the part where Bronn has a massive go at Kenny and pressures him into robbing the bank. But there probably wasn’t enough other good stuff around it and the same as mentioned upthread, there was no need for the money! The money was a bit of a red herring because you’re expecting it to be robbers who’ve organised it all, but it wasn’t a strong enough red herring to be a satisfying plot point on it’s own. Could maybe have trimmed this part of the episode down. Not sure if that makes sense I’m still in rambling mode.

You’re right in that White Bear was a more concise episode. I’ve only seen episodes two and three of this season, I enjoyed both quite a bit but they did both feel a little overlong.

White Bear may have been more concise but I thought SUAD was a much, much stronger episode over all.

@Sketches as executive producer

San Junipero was fucking superb, best thing I’ve watched on telly for ages

Episode 3;

Feel like I missed a big bit, but at the end with the video being leaked, how was it revealed what he was looking at?

I assume it was a video where the frame was split in two, with one half of the screen showing the pc screen as kenny loaded up the porn, while the other half of it showed him tossing off

I think that makes sense?

not seen much on Episode 6 here. thoughts?

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Episode 6: The moral was pretty heavy-handed, and it was very similar to The National Anthem. Enjoyed it nevertheless, was tense as fuck and the bees gave it an extra creepy factor.

Am I alone in not finding anything of merit in Ep 4 San Junipero?

I’m soft as shite and can cry at anything but I was profoundly unmoved by this.

Didn’t care about any of it at any point and it featured some of the clunkiest dialogue I’ve ever heard, especially when the exposition kicked in.

Really disappointed with it. Not because I expect every BM to be great (I really don’t, it’s a very hit and miss show) but you can’t move online for positive reviews of this one.

You’ve all let me down.

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the bank robbery was to make them think the people just wanted money so they would rob the bank and then that would be it, no? That gave them more of a reason to do it as they assumed it would be over after that

Finally finished them all last night after watching an episode every other day to digest them properly. All in all it was good season and I’m glad Netflix chucked money at it. Though I wouldn’t have said that if the whole season had had the sheen and gloss of Nosedive / San Junipero - I liked that most of the episodes retained their Channel 4 vibe.

Nosedive 7/10 - The premise was great but once the story set course for the wedding, my interest waned. Bryce Dallas Howard was fantastic though.

Playtest 6.5/10 - Probably my least favourite of the season. I couldn’t stand the lead character and the ending felt a bit rushed with whole double double fake out thing

Shut Up and Dance 7/10 -I thought Alex Lawther and Jerome Flynn’s performances were great in this (even if Flynn’s performance was essentially a modern day Bronn). Although it had a similar take on the ideas presented in White Bear and the final reveal wasn’t as good; it still made for an incredibly tense hour of television.

San Junipero 9/10 - It wasn’t perfect (The dialogue was definitely quite clunky in places) but it was so beautifully shot and both actors shone, that I was won over quite easily! It was also great to have a moderately upbeat tale too. I now have a massive crush on Mackenzie Davis! I definitely need to watch Halt and Catch Fire.

Men against Fire 8/10 -Man that last shot of Malachi Kirby crying outside of that house killed me!

Hated In The Nation 8/10 - Liked that they managed to tie in a story about the extinction of bees and a social media vigilante. I would also kill for a spin off detective series with Kelly MacDonald and Faye Marsay. Someone make it happen!

Agree with these ratings/10. I thought the first three were okay but the last three episodes are up their with the best of it. It’s a strange show because each episode has it’s own specific pros and cons, making it quite easy to rank them against eachother. Nothing as flawed as The Waldo Moment (which I want to retry after this) and with a couple you could argue are the best episodes of the whole lot.

Definitely agree that in Nosedive the story has a real sense of just going through the motions, once she gets in the truck anyway. Stuff before that was solid though and I really liked the design/production of it all.

I think as wacky as the waldo moment was in 2013, in 2016 it seems fucking prophetic

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