Black Mirror

kuwisdelu said:

San Junipero.

That's all I'm saying.

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I thought that was the worst one. My favorite was WHITE BEAR.

Anybody seen the new season yet?

Celia Cyanide said:

Anybody seen the new season yet?

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Just finished S4 here.

I'd rate the six episodes thusly: 6, 1, 4, 2, 5, 3 (I found 5 and 3 stylish but missable).

I expect almost everyone will disagree with me.

I'm midway through the new season. So far I think it's middle-of-the-road compared to the previous season where you had some great ones mixed with some stinkers.

My favorite of the entire series, btw, is 15 Million Merits.

I thought Metalhead was probably the worst this season. My least favorite has always been San Junipero, which I found boring and predictable and cheesy. But it seems to be well liked by most.

I really enjoyed Hang the DJ and USS Callister. White Bear is still my favorite. I wish it were a full length movie.

I binged it and was happy with all the episodes. It's like Bradbury-short-story TV.

The hubby and I recently watched the season over two-three days and enjoyed most of them. Metalhead was pretty meh but I found Archangel really haunting and intense.

Also chalk me up for not really like San Junipero as well.

Celia Cyanide said:

Anybody seen the new season yet?

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Just started watching this weekend and only seen "Metalhead" and "U.S.S. Callister."

Celia Cyanide said:

I thought Metalhead was probably the worst this season. My least favorite has always been San Junipero, which I found boring and predictable and cheesy. But it seems to be well liked by most.

I really enjoyed Hang the DJ and USS Callister. White Bear is still my favorite. I wish it were a full length movie.

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I really don't get the disdain for "Metalhead." I thought it was tense and it was too intense for my wife who has over-stuffed herself on NCIS, Criminal Minds and CSI junk food. You folks got a thing about shows shot in black-and-white?

"U.S.S. Callister" was crazy good and Jesse Plemmons (or Bizzaro Matt Damon as I call him) nailed his inner-William Shatner.

As for the rest of the episodes, I look forward to getting through them and forming my own opinion. Here's what somebody else thought about Season Four of Black Mirror (there are spoilers, so beware!). They dumped on "Metalhead" too, so maybe its just me.

I'm binging this in order (except for the Star Trek episode, which I watched first) and am only up to the start of the 3rd season. The episode with Bryce Dallas Howard was a highlight, but I also liked the Christmas episode, and the one with the dead husband.

I like all the little clues that link the stories together, indicating they all occur in the same timeline. I'm having fun trying to come up with a chronological order for them. So far it seems the X Factor episode is the farthest in the future, being a logical extension of developments in the one with BDH, but I haven't yet seen 'em all.

nighttimer said:

I really don't get the disdain for "Metalhead." I thought it was tense and it was too intense for my wife who has over-stuffed herself on NCIS, Criminal Minds and CSI junk food. You folks got a thing about shows shot in black-and-white?

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Here's the thing...a bad episode of Black Mirror is still good television. But what I look forward to with Black Mirror is all the suspense and plot twists, and the unexpected.

Spoilers follow.

















The thing they were after the whole time was a box of teddy bears???? Oh, but it was for a sick child...nah. Still don't buy it. Unless the kid already had some attachment to the thing, it wouldn't mean that much to him. And it was a box of identical teddy bears from a factory, not one owned and loved by him. And it was in black and white, so the teddy bears were actually yellow, so it was not even a clever call-back to my favorite episode White Bear, as I first thought.

I've watched up through the first three of season 4. Loved USS Callister. Really creeped out in a good way by Archangel, though if I'd written it, it probably would have gone even darker. Crocodile looked great but felt the emptiest for me. The central idea was cool, but I don't think the story did the best job of illustrating it.

Even when I get picky, I enjoy every episode because I just love the premise and the "Twilight Zone" feeling of it all. My favorites are probably 15 Million Merits, Nosedive (which I really really personally related to), and San Junipero. But there are some I need to watch again.

I knew it would be a teddy bear before they showed it, certainly a child's toy and the teddy bear is the most iconic example. All her calls on the radio made is clear she was getting something of emotional importance to a young child. I read it as being a story about what it is to be human, and how that may doom us when if we are ever at war with a purely logical enemy like AI. But that would be better than losing our identity as people who love and have other emotions and do irrational things for reasons of love and other emotions. Like suicide.

It could have had emotional importance if it were HIS Teddy Bear. But it wasn't. It was just a box of teddy bears from a factory.

It was to replace the beloved Teddy bear that he lost, and he was unwell.

I binged-watched this season -as I did the previous ones- and found it to be the less fresh or edgy, as if it'd been watered down on purpose. The plot lines are predictable, and the themes explored felt quite plain/uninspired(by Black Mirror standards). That said, I'd put 'Hang the DJ' in the league of 'The Entire History of You', 'Nosedive' and 'White Christmas'. 'White Bear' will always remain a standard on its own.

I dunno the thing that bugged me about Metalhead is that it just seemed to thrust you in the middle of something. All the other ones had a very particular beginning, middle and end. Metalhead seemed like the middle of a movie if you were just flipping through the channels and caught MoviePlex or something. It just went from middle to abrupt end, which, I agree with Celia, didn't have enough pull for me to believe it. Was just meh.

I'm also not one for black and white movies, so... hrm.

I didn't mind Metalhead. I didn't like it as much as some of the others, but it was still better than the episode with the cartoon bear from a previous season

What did people think of Archangel? I heard it got mixed reviews, but I really enjoyed it. It felt like a more realistic scenario than some episodes

Oooh, a Black Mirror thread!

USS Callister and Hang the DJ were my favourite of the new series. (San Junipero is my favourite overall, always.) Black Museum was also really well-done and I loved all the nods to past episodes.

Crocodile was my least favourite of the new series. Spoilers: gods, it was a miserable watch, with some really transparent attempts at manipulation with the death of the child and the 'THE CHILD WAS BLIND ALL ALOOOONG!' twist. Bleh, not my cuppa tea.

Archangel didn't hit the right note with me. It wasn't bad, just didn't stick with me.

I enjoyed Metalhead a ton. It was memorable and powerful, though I agree with you all that the ending was the weakest point and could easily have been fixed by using an actual personal item instead of a generic one.

Any Black Mirror fans here?

Yep.

We have another thread about it somewhere around here.

YES!

Four threads about this show. Wow!

White Bear is my favorite so far. I'm still watching the series.

Just watched the first 2 episodes on Netflix, and I'm loving it - Added it to my Xfinity "Favorites"