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TV: Black Mirror (Channel4(UK)/Netflix)

SoulPatch

SoulPatch

Registered User
Sep 29, 2006
3,933
1
Just stream it online.

Great episode, I'd rank it above anything in season 2.

[spoil] As usual, black mirror leaves me with this pit in my stomach feeling. That girlfriend was such a *****. At least tell him that it's not your baby before blocking him.[/spoil]
 
JMcLeaf

JMcLeaf

__________
Mar 21, 2010
18,601
19
White Christmas had so much going on. I enjoyed it, but I feel mentally exhausted after watching it :laugh:

Pretty disturbing episode.
 
silverfish

silverfish

got perma'd
Jun 24, 2008
34,644
4,353
under the bridge
Ek het lief Woef said:
White Christmas was creepy, chilling, twisted and ****ed up all in one. Enjoyed the last two stories more than the first but man, Jon Hamm's character's fate... :scared:
Click to expand...

Found a stream and just finished.

Oh. My. God.

Might be my favorite episode yet. How everything was isolated then came back around.

[spoil] It's amazing how being blocked by everyone is the least terrible fate on the show. 1000 years a minute with the same song running over and over again. The first girl we saw. 6 months of nothing and a forever "slave"? That... Oh man. [/spoil]

You summed it up well. Creepy, chilling, twisted, and ****ed up all in one.

I love this show.

EDIT - Another thought...

[spoil] The police are punishing the cookie. I get that the cookie is him, and would've done the same thing (did do the same thing), but only the cookie is feeling this 1000 years a minute punishment. The real guy just sits in the cell overnight and awaits the actual punishment.

Why do I feel remorse for the cookies? :laugh: [/spoil]
 
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Ceremony

Ceremony

blahem
Jun 8, 2012
113,278
15,608
The more I've thought about the special the less I've liked it. It really is three distinct stories crammed into too short a time. The live dating advice, the cookies, blocking, they're three separate episodes right there. You can do three episodes like normal on each of those and maybe link them and do a better job of fleshing out each story and even a better job of moulding the three together. For me, over the whole thing, there wasn't any flow. And because there's less time devoted to each different technology, none of them make any sense. Blocking especially, how on earth would this be allowed? If you'd been blocked by somebody you made pregnant, surely you could go to court and say "hey, this isn't right." Is that sort of thing supposed to be believable, presented as it is in such a short space of time? I definitely feel as if the natural sort of storytelling and world building you could expect as in the other episodes was missing, and it let down the impact/delivery of the different technologies in White Christmas. Quite disappointing overall, to me.
 
Soliloquy of a Dogge

Soliloquy of a Dogge

I love you, Boots
Aug 8, 2012
40,873
5,512
San Diego, CA
silverfish said:
Found a stream and just finished.

Oh. My. God.

Might be my favorite episode yet. How everything was isolated then came back around.

[spoil] It's amazing how being blocked by everyone is the least terrible fate on the show. 1000 years a minute with the same song running over and over again. The first girl we saw. 6 months of nothing and a forever "slave"? That... Oh man. [/spoil]

You summed it up well. Creepy, chilling, twisted, and ****ed up all in one.

I love this show.

EDIT - Another thought...

[spoil] The police are punishing the cookie. I get that the cookie is him, and would've done the same thing (did do the same thing), but only the cookie is feeling this 1000 years a minute punishment. The real guy just sits in the cell overnight and awaits the actual punishment.

Why do I feel remorse for the cookies? :laugh: [/spoil]
Click to expand...

I do as well. I think you should, to be honest :laugh:

The whole morality, and not being able to decide which side of the fence I'm on, of these situations is what really throws me for a loop. Even more-so because this sort of reality could likely and probably one day be what we are living; in that way, it is almost a hyper reality but one that is more ubiquitous then I'd ever cared to imagine. I love the way everything is integrated in the fashion it is; the biometrics, the social media-esque blocking of individuals, the augmented realities etc

As for the cookies, the whole aspect of them being indentured servitude replicas of oneself is so off-putting. Besides the fact that they can effectively be exploited in countless ways, that they're doomed to an unsophisticated existence or one of complete boredom makes the whole idea seem even more barbaric.

But like you, and good point by the way, I have to wonder how it is justifiable or admissible to present a confession as evidence from a cookie when that confession is extracted under, for all intents and purposes, coercion.
 
Soliloquy of a Dogge

Soliloquy of a Dogge

I love you, Boots
Aug 8, 2012
40,873
5,512
San Diego, CA
Ceremony said:
The more I've thought about the special the less I've liked it. It really is three distinct stories crammed into too short a time. The live dating advice, the cookies, blocking, they're three separate episodes right there. You can do three episodes like normal on each of those and maybe link them and do a better job of fleshing out each story and even a better job of moulding the three together. For me, over the whole thing, there wasn't any flow. And because there's less time devoted to each different technology, none of them make any sense. Blocking especially, how on earth would this be allowed? If you'd been blocked by somebody you made pregnant, surely you could go to court and say "hey, this isn't right." Is that sort of thing supposed to be believable, presented as it is in such a short space of time? I definitely feel as if the natural sort of storytelling and world building you could expect as in the other episodes was missing, and it let down the impact/delivery of the different technologies in White Christmas. Quite disappointing overall, to me.
Click to expand...

I think that the feature length time gave them the necessary wiggle room to effectively flesh out each "separate" story satisfyingly enough, IMO.

I can understand your complaints however and do agree that each one of the three could have been made its own episode. That said, I enjoyed the interconnectivity of them and found the entire premise of the episode (and subsequent consequences) were made far more enjoyable played out like they were rather than if they had all been their own self contained episodes. As for the ambiguity of the legality of the actions like blocking; I look at it like this, if society has already made bionic tech like that a norm I'd assume that the specifics of actions like blocking etc. are defined. This is where an entire episode dedicated to each story would have been able to further expound on the more minute details.
 
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Ceremony

Ceremony

blahem
Jun 8, 2012
113,278
15,608
Since you mentioned it in the quote above, the Cookies (I assume it would be capitalised). There's a load of ways you could explore that as far as the ethics go. The girl that got one, do you think she was told that a slice of her consciousness that would fully recognise itself as a real person would be contained in a blank white space indefinitely so it could open her blinds and turn on the toaster in the morning? I doubt it. Plus if a facility like this exists it could do wonders for things like work, if you, or a version of you, can exist without ever having to sleep, what's to stop people creating hundreds of them and making them work? For one example, take an author. What sort of output are they going to get if they can have ten miniature versions of themselves writing constantly? Hey this sounds like a good idea, actually.

But in any case, it still felt weird to me. And while in the previous episodes things like the big facebook-powered doll or the magic contact lenses, they were additions to peoples' lives rather than something that could truly irrevocably alter it. One button and you can completely destroy a person, and it's just thrown at you with less time to sink in than usual because there's other stories and technically less time. I just feel like it could have been better.
 
Kane One

Kane One

Moderator
Feb 6, 2010
43,341
11,001
Brooklyn, New NY
Ceremony said:
The more I've thought about the special the less I've liked it. It really is three distinct stories crammed into too short a time. The live dating advice, the cookies, blocking, they're three separate episodes right there. You can do three episodes like normal on each of those and maybe link them and do a better job of fleshing out each story and even a better job of moulding the three together. For me, over the whole thing, there wasn't any flow. And because there's less time devoted to each different technology, none of them make any sense. Blocking especially, how on earth would this be allowed? If you'd been blocked by somebody you made pregnant, surely you could go to court and say "hey, this isn't right." Is that sort of thing supposed to be believable, presented as it is in such a short space of time? I definitely feel as if the natural sort of storytelling and world building you could expect as in the other episodes was missing, and it let down the impact/delivery of the different technologies in White Christmas. Quite disappointing overall, to me.
Click to expand...

[spoil]The girl wasn't his daughter.[/spoil]
 
Ceremony

Ceremony

blahem
Jun 8, 2012
113,278
15,608
Kane One said:
[spoil]The girl wasn't his daughter.[/spoil]
Click to expand...

I did pick up on that when I saw her.

When she was pregnant, he didn't know that. There's no reason for him to not be involved. There's no reason for him to not be involved when the kid's born either. Is it going to be a case of him going to the police o something and saying "hey, I've been blocked by the mother of my child and I can't see either of them, this isn't right!" then they get the woman and the kid in and take one look and go "trust me mate, it's better off this way?" The result of the pregnancy doesn't justify the strange and unexplained laws and etiquettes that go along with blocking, and it being shoehorned into thirty minutes worth of television doesn't help.
 
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