I agree with you in the general sense in that there are plenty of shows that have scenes that suffer from this. I may be misremembering, but here in particular it looked like she was crossing off guesses from a notebook that had a huge number of entries. I actually assumed at the time that it had a lot of permutations of things, but didn’t get to actually read them. It’s also mitigated in my opinion by the fact that it’s an unsuccessful strategy, as you’d expect. It comes across as a grieving ritual rather than something that has any real chance of success.
But yes, shows where they guess three times and it actually works are silly for the reasons you articulate.
I’m finally catching up on the new season. I…kind of liked this one? I felt like the inevitability of the ending was a good thing, I would have been disappointed by some random twist.
I didn’t find the ending at all ambiguous - Topher’s expression at the end was not “oh no, the hostage was killed,” and the sniper’s satisfied look clearly meant she was successful.
I do think there was a lot of wish fulfillment for us in seeing Topher disgusted by what his invention had become. We all wish Mark Zuckerburg felt the same, but sadly I see nothing to make me believe that.
I guess we were also supposed to think the social media companies were in the wrong for not letting a grieving mother into her daughters account, but holy shit would i not want my parents to get access to my account if i died. If i wanted them to have my password they would have it.
Commenting a bit late since this bubbled to the top, but I liked this episode. For some reason we watched the episodes in reverse order starting with Ashley O, followed by this one the same night. Striking Vipers we didn’t get back to for a week or so. Perhaps my enjoyment of this one was bolstered by how lame and bright Ashley O was in comparison.
The subject matter was…not trite, but certainly not very “Black Mirrory” since this subject is pretty much a daily discussion these days. In that way, I could see someone getting a Lifetime movie of the week vibe from this, but it was really well made and some of the locations they filmed at were striking. Having the tech billionaire be moderately weird but not a total sociapath was a nice change from the usual trope.
The acting was terrific and the drama of the hostage situation was pretty gripping in parts. It felt much more like a run of the mill procedural at first than a Black Mirror episode I grant, but I was enjoying the dram enough that I didn’t care that much. It didn’t say anything “important” I suppose, but good TV is good TV.
Don’t worry–if the security at the site is set up correctly, then nobody in the company from the technicians up to the CEO know your password or have any way to read it–it is encrypted even to them. That was one of the most eye-rolling aspects of that particular episode.