He was already in the simulation when they had the safe word exchange. In reality, there never was a safe word. And even if there was, 0.4 seconds is a pretty quick reaction time on the part of the researchers.
You’re probably correct on your first point, it the whole safe word discussion may have been manufactured in his own head; but the 0.4 seconds thing would be completely irrelevant to the spirit of the safe word idea, which is to pull him out of the simulation immediately. Immediately certainly implies subjective immediacy, not some technicality about real world time.
I don’t think he let himself be bullied, he knew damn well what was on his computer the whole time. He said “I just looked at some pictures” both to Bronn and the guy at the end. He knew he was the way more fucked of the two, which explains his complete submission way past the point anyone would have gone “it’s just a video of me jerking off, big deal”.
I didn’t think it was about whether it was real or in VR. That was obvious. It was about how the poor guy got mind fucked in more ways than one, and did he really deserve it? And take care of what bothers you or you may take it to the grave and leave your loved ones with your unresolved crap, too. Plus a little horror thrown in for us.
Right, but as I said earlier, up to that point he had at least somewhat plausible deniability. The hackers couldn’t prove what was on his computer and he could always say that the hackers must have planted it.
Maybe so, but the repeated “gotcha, not real yet” took me right out of the story, and honestly I didn’t find any of the horror to be all that horrible. Maybe I’m just jaded from all of the movies and TV I’ve seen over the years.
Do you think that’s a risk someone who KNOWS they are guilty of owning child pornography would be willing to take?
Which, ultimately, is why I think it to be one of the weaker episodes, yet still a lot of fun if you can extend that disbelief that much more.
However, I think Brooker did a far, far, far better treatment on accelerated virtual time in his White Christmas special. Far better. Almost as haunting as Stephen King’s The Jaunt.
I agree about White Christmas. What was done to that virtual woman was horror. It was slavery to the nth degree, and the slave’s owner didn’t even realize that she had a slave; that she had in a way enslaved herself.
I’ve seen the second one, about augmented reality.
It was…OK. I do love that all of it was .04 seconds and all they wrote was, “Called out Mom” at the end, thus learning zero about how powerful their machine is.
I actually thought that we were going to learn that the dude has information they need and that this is actually the government(or some evil organization) trying to extract information by getting him to talk. I thought he would reveal, for example, that he killed his mother or did something really bad and they were going to convict him when he came out.
Wait, did I just give the plot of White Christmas? I haven’t seen that one since it aired. I dunno.
I was watching episode 4, the one that’s set in the eighties. At one point there’s a sort of montage of the blonde listening to cassettes and trying on outfits and hairstyles. I thought “How would that mousey girl have all these dresses around and have the expertise to do her hair and makeup like that?” It really kind of took me out of the story a bit.
Later on I was like…“Oh, I see now…”
I don’t actually think they even cared about the money. I think it was all a pathological trolling exercise for some sick entertainment. So the bank robbery was probably partially about just making him rob a bank and partially to setup the prize money for the fight to the death.
I’m not sure about that. I didn’t really get any foreshadowing out of that scene outside of it just being a way to set up that he’s a good, empathetic kid. I’m not sure there was any evidence about this other then the blackmailers maybe saying it in the leak, and it wouldn’t be out of character for that to be completely made up.
I might have missed something that settles this definitively. If not, I think my interpretation is better story telling. The ending is far more horrific if he just started out as a pretty regular teenager, doing what teenagers do.
If he’s just a regular teenager, being caught whacking off isn’t enough motivation to rob a bank and then murder someone. The other guy in the deathmatch immediately realized the kid was watching kiddie porn - because they got him for the same thing.
The whole setup with his job at the beginning only got across three points: 1) he didn’t fit in with the other guys his age talking about their sex lives, 2) although his boss seemed sympathetic towards him, he didn’t know how to relate to her, and 3) he instantly noticed a very obscure detail about the little girl leaving the restaurant.
He then had an extreme overreaction to his sister borrowing his laptop. And they very deliberately didn’t give a glimpse (or sound) of what he was whacking off to.
Every point of the buildup was reinforcing the fact that there was something more going on than just being a " pretty regular teenager, doing what teenagers do". It was all emphasizing that he wasn’t like any of the other teenagers.
Also, the other four all had something revealed that destroyed their lives. The only one we get details on, admits that it’s all true. Although we don’t know his secret, the courier is terrified. And the deathmatch guy is bitterly resigned because he knows he is guilty. The woman was outed by a scandal, with pictures, so she obviously did what they were blackmailing her for, too.
The setup demonstrates that their is something else about the kid, and the other victims have been deliberately blackmailed for something they were guilty about. It’s not horrific if the kid was targeted for no reason; it’s just random.
I thought the way they portrayed the kid was brilliant. When he first interacts with the little girl, I thought, hmm, “interested” in little kids? And then thought, bad gigi, why do you go to that, especially when he is then shown as nice to his Mom and then having the typical spats with his sister.
I wondered why he would be so frightened about being caught masturbating to porn, when everyone does it, but then thought, he’s a kid, things are the end of the world when you’re a kid. He would be thinking just what the cheating guy articulated – it will never go away, I will be bullied even more, etc., etc.
EVEN when the other guy says “what age?” I STILL expected him to look appalled and say, no just “normal” stuff like grown women. That twist is sticking with me days after and making me rerun everything before it in my head. Great stuff.
And on the one about rating each other and getting status from it, I LOVED the woman in the truck (was that Cherry Jones?). I realized she is who I would want to be in that society. And I liked the relief when she and her fellow inmate finally got to really say what they thought!
I thought his interaction with the little girl was just to show he was a nice kid, but I noticed everything Lightray pointed out in retrospect. There was no ambiguity, he was definitely jerking it to child porn. That twist ending is what made it great, if he was just a regular nice kid getting completely fucked over just for watching some porn it would be a terrible story.
I’m still not 100% convinced, although I see where you’re coming from. I may be suffering from wishful thinking.
I agree, as a 36 year old adult that being caught jerking off as a teenager is pretty mild compared to the bank robbery escalation and beyond, and my instincts now thinking about being in that position is to just have the video leaked and ride out the consequences and temporary humiliation. But he’s not an adult, he’s a teenager with a not yet fully formed teenager brain. I think it plausible that a kid in that position would consider the humiliation an “end of the world as we know it” scenario and not make reasonable decisions about avoiding it. I think they highlighted this with the conversation in the car, where the other guy says something like “Huh? Everyone does that … what’s the big deal?”, and his reaction is over the top in much the same way I’d expect from a kid. Nothing really struck me as odd about his behavior before the blackmail came to light: his overreaction to his sister having the laptop seemed like a typical childish overreaction to me. And his interactions with others just highlighted that he was an awkward and sensitive kid who might react badly to the potential humiliation.
I still think its plausible that he was being blackmailed for something he was guilty of: namely just jerking off, and that the blackmailers added the child pornography bit in the leak just for the lolz.
But I accept that I might be wrong on this. It is weird that the mother thought it might be child porn and nothing seemed fabricated for anyone else. I will say that I think less of this episode if I am wrong. At the end, when he is humiliated in front of everyone about the jerking off, and he’s killed a guy, and the cops are there to arrest him for killing a guy and robbing a bank, he is completely fucked and knows it. Everything has fallen apart and his life is ruined forever. I think the story is a lot more powerful if his only crime was just being a pretty normal teenager and having the reactions that go with that. The randomness and chaos of being destroyed by a stranger just for amusement because of that is an interesting consequence of modern technology, and I think an interesting comment on the trolling that does actually happen today. Its far less compelling as a “kiddy porn user gets what’s coming to him” story, which any hack action-drama screenwriter can come up with.
So I think I’ll stick with my interpretation, even in the face of mounting evidence that I’m wrong, just because I think its better. 
Shut Up and Dance didn’t seem to have a twist at all. I just assumed all along he had been doing something worse than just looking at porn. It didn’t occur to me otherwise and the fact that they released the info anyway was guaranteed from the start. That aside, it was really well done.
Nosedive was entertaining but I think a tad too long. You kind of got the point but it repeated itself over and over. I did like the end when she finally didn’t give a fig.
Hated in the Nation was also way too long. It felt like it was a good idea executed less well than it could have. It was probably my lest favorite of this batch.
I liked Playtest. I liked the main character and wanted to seem him come out okay and I even liked his hook up. She seemed like an interesting character in her own right. The Russian Nesting Dolls of endings also worked for me.
Men Against Fire was worked for me as well. I was horrified by the twist (which I sort of guessed) and the battle scenes were well done.
San Junipero was good but my take away was probably different from everyone else’s. I honestly found the ending and the concept horrifying at least for myself. I get that the characters were happy but what happens a year from now, ten years from now, a hundred years from now? There is no place you can go that could be entertaining for an eternity. Knowing I would be trapped in that world forever and ever is literally a waking nightmare.
I’m pretty sure that I recall it being stated that you could end it anytime you wish. Plus, if there are “worlds” other than San Junipero, maybe you can move to a different one if you like.
Also, it seems likely that technology will continue to advance to the point where you could reenter the real world in an immortal android body that’s indistinguishable from a real human body.
He seemed like a shy inexperienced kid who was nervous around girls and didn’t keep up with the jock/bully type guys at work. It’s not like he seemed old enough to have had all kinds of partners or experience. He looked like every other regular kid who keeps to himself. He was mad at his sister for taking his stuff (his computer, his sodas, etc.), just like almost every other teenager in the history of ever.
If he was portrayed as a deviant we wouldn’t identify with him and we’d know right away he deserved what he was being put through.