It’s been a few weeks now since Netflix dumped season 3 of Black Mirror in our laps. It takes some time to digest that much material, especially stuff as intense and heavy-handed as this show tends to be, but I think a lot of us have had time by now to watch and decide how we feel about this batch of episodes.
As such (and since it’s been awhile since I’ve been able to start a best-of-something poll thread), I thought I’d start one to see what the assembled masses think was the best episode of the season. IMO, there’s one episode which stands so far above the rest that it’s not even a fair contest, but I’m interested in seeing if my opinion matches the general consensus.
I chose ‘San Junipero’, although ‘Shut Up and Dance’ would be a close second, which is funny because the first is a wonderfully life-affirming story while the second is one of the bleakest things I’ve ever seen on TV. My preferences for the series in order, are:
San Junipero - 10/10
Shut Up and Dance - 9/10
Hated in the Nation - 8/10
Nosedive - 8/10
Men Against Fire - 7/10
Playtest - 7/10
Not a single bad episode in the bunch, and a couple of genuine classics. A great series, all round.
I found Hated in the Nation really stuck with me a while longer than most other episodes. It was maybe too long, I don’t think it needed to be 90 mins, but I think a shorter version would’ve stung faster and harder. I’ve been going through watching each of them again. Eps. 5 & 6 are next. I expect to like Hated in the Nation a bit more on the second viewing.
It was a tie between San Junipero and Nosedive for me. I went with Nosedive by just a hair. It just resonated with me a little more… I can truly envision a world like that.
It’s my pick as well, and IMO the fact that it’s so unlike the rest of the series is very important - the main theme of the show is how technology is changing or could change our lives for worse, so it’s refreshing to see the counterpoint, that there are also ways it can make things better.
I went with Hated in the Nation. It does a good job of merging several different ideas into one - computer security, social media norms, environmental issues. If there’s a weakness, it’s that they essentially skip the horror at the end by jumping to an inquest rather than showing more of it.
San Junipero waited too long to introduce the technology aspect, in my opinion. All kind of clues in the dialog do finally make sense after the fact, but I would have made some major changes.As portrayed, there is literally no downside to living in San Junipero and that just doesn’t feel authentic to me, and it certainly isn’t true to the spirit of Black Mirror. That’s two strikes against it. I’m not sure exactly where to rate this one, because some elements were very well done, though.
Shut up and Dance and Men Against Fire were both solid episodes. Classic Black Mirror, but not as memorable to me.
I wanted to like Nosedive more. It’s perhaps the most plausible/likely of all the episodes this season, but I was disappointed to see it carried to such an extreme. Having her socially snubbed was effective; having her turn into a mud-covered lunatic weakens the point by making the audience (well, me, anyway) less sympathetic to her.
I would have been happy to do without Playtest altogether. How much screaming and swearing can one guy do? And then the end really cheapened it.
*San Junipero *is the best of the series, by far. Nothing comes close in my book.
Nosedive was good but it needed an alternate ending; one in which the lead character follows the advice of the truck driver and ultimately finds contentedness outside the ratings system, rather than devolving into a caricature.
Playtest was okay until he saw the giant spider, then it fell off a cliff.
I voted Nosedive#1. Sure, it was kind of a simple and obvious story, but it was just fun all along, and I liked the ending.
I did like San Junipero, but I thought it was a bit needlessly coy and cute with the storytelling. I don’t think it was the home run that many seem to.
IMHO the worst, by a good margin, was Playtest. Maybe it’s because I work in the game industry, and not only was it not plausible, it didn’t even have a veneer of plausibility. It just didn’t make sense.
We only know the sins of four of the five victims. The only two pedophiles were the last two, in the fight to the death. The driver was cheating on his wife with a hooker. The woman who dropped off the car was a politician involved in a scandal I don’t recall the details of. The courier who dropped off the cake, all we know is whatever they revealed caused a big row with his family.
Ooops, I meant to click on Nosedive, not Playtest. It seemed the most plausible to me although why more people wouldn’t just anonymously troll others like they did when she was walking down the road wasn’t clear to me. Like most of the posts here I also really liked San Junipero, and the downside was addressed obliquely when they were talking about why people were going to the Quagmire just to feel something.
Men Against Fire seemed like a spin on an Outer Limits episode where opposing factions were taking drugs to make the opposition look like monsters.
I wish Season 1 was available on Canadian Netflix.
[QUOTE=swampspruce;19769605… the downside was addressed obliquely when they were talking about why people were going to the Quagmire just to feel something…[/QUOTE]
Good point, I’d forgotten about that reference when writing my comments.
Of course, that just highlights how non-Black-Mirror the episode was. In a typical Black Mirror episode, our character would have arrived for two weeks of meaningless sex and alcohol, tried harder drugs and bondage at the Quagmire by the end of the first month, trapped someone in an infinite-loop glitch within the computer for a minor offensive remark, then committed suicide out of sheer nihilism before the end of the year.
The whole Quagmire thing in “San Junipero” is more subtle than it seems: remember that Kelly had been visiting there regularly. And as we found out, she was basically intent on suicide herself. Once she fell in love with Yorkie, it all turned around for her.
Now, think about what that implies about all the many other people we saw at the Quagmire.
The technology to experience eternal youthful life isn’t going to fix them.
I’ll resurrect this thread, as we were late to the party watching Season 3.
“San Junipero” could have been a feature length movie. The show was wonderful, but a lot of the underlying story and themes could have been more fleshed out. Both Kelly and Yorkie’s backstory was essentially a quick here’s-the-exposition speech by someone. Kelly’s especially, could have been acted out; we could have seen scenes, set in the past, of her and her beloved husband and daughter. There’s an absolutely crushing emotional weight to the situation she is in, and it’s all blown up onto the screen with a slap to the fact and a 30-second speech. The existential despair that “living” in San Junipero can create is alluded to by The Quagmire (do you think they had Glenn Quagmire at least partially in mind there) but, again, that could have used a few more minutes, by maybe exploring a few other characters in San Junipero.
“Men Against Fire” was one of the more interesting Nazi analogies I’ve seen in film. 'Cause that’s totally what they were; Stripe was a member of an Einsatzgruppen, he just didn’t know it.
As a side note, it it worth stating that the claims of SLA Marshall in “Men Against Fire,” about how most soldiers in World War II and previous wars didn’t try to shoot the enemy, are quite widely doubted.
As opposed to “San Junipero,” I thought “Nosedive” was probably longer than it had to be.
Same with “Playtest,” which I was disappointed by, despite really liking it up to the last few minutes. The show seemed to about what true fear is, and then suddenly it’s about a glitch.
“Shut up and Dance” wasn’t even science fiction. That could totally happen now.
We’re watching “Hated in the Nation” this coming weekend.
