I think endless isolation is the most tortuous thing. White Christmas gave me chills.
It’s sadistic when she tells him at the end to set the timer for 1000 years for Christmas Day.
Thanks for the episode recommendations, people! Also, no worries about telling what happens at the end of episodes, folks. Sure, there’s a newbie in the thread asking for recommendations, but it’s not like this is the sort of show with twists in it that can be ruined by knowing the ending in advance. No need for spoiler tags!
I thought this was labeled an open spoiler thread
No, not when it says “open spoilers” in the thread title.
Yes, definitely liquor – they showed her swigging from it out on the highway.
A quick glance at the subject (open spoilers) should be ample warning. Yet even in the scope of that disclaimer, people have shown remarkable restraint. I hope this isn’t the gripe that it sounds like.
To be fair, the open spoilers are warned for season 3 (which is why I am only skimming quickly and trying to avert my eyes from what looks like possible posts about eps I have not yet seen.
Spoiling eps not of season 3 as they are being recommended to someone who has clearly not seen them yet is not cool and not covered by the title warning.
I’m not sure the slaughter of ~300k people plus catching the guy is that much more optimistic then the slaughter of ~300k people. 
Perhaps a case for optimism can be made. Despite the horrific end game this episode didn’t give me the feeling that we were witnessing just one horrible part of permanent despair, or even a slide into a future that was even worse. The end game really did feel like an end game and there seemed some acknowledgement by society about just how messed up the situation was. This seemed different to most other episodes, which strongly imply that whatever messed up situation we were watching was inevitable and permanent.
Still, I think San Junipero is the only episode that I would classify as optimistic, and even then its a melancholy sort of optimism.
Yeah. Honestly, most of the technical parts of this story were pretty stupid. The “hacking is magic” that I mentioned earlier was particularly irritating. He’s essentially hacked everything, not just the bee stuff from where he worked. He apparently could work back from twitter posts and internal cellular provider details about IMEI numbers and registered users (who may not be the actual users of the phone) and GPS locations and ISP data and probably some other stuff that I’ve forgotten … and then of course link all these systems up to the bees so that they could have a real time view of your whereabouts! Holy shit. Just give this guy two billion dollars and tell him to resolve electronic medical records across hospital, insurance companies and the government’s systems once and for all. I’m sure he could knock it out in a weekend.
And lets not even get into the bees and their hardiness and capabilities, despite the teeny tiny solar panels.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Oh, the stupid, it hurt so bad. And yet … I liked this episode. I really like the cast, especially Kelly Macdonald, who did a great job selling this. I liked the premise of the hashtag “popularity” contest and the end game. I get the impression that these ideas came first, and then they grabbed something out of the headlines (the bees dying out) to try fit something in that could make that work. The idea of robot bees is kind of fun, but just too implausible in this context.
So a fun central premise worthy of Black Mirror. But the technology dreamed up for the, er, execution just didn’t work. Also, they really ought to have dropped relying on ridiculously stupid actions from the national security agency guy to move the plot along. That was an unnecessary and counter productive attempt to “add tension”.
:smack: It was, and you’re right, and my apologies for the gripe. I’ve been skimming to try to avoid spoilers, and apparently I skimmed right over that title, too.
I haven’t gotten around to finishing the season out yet.
On my drive home from work tonight, though, one of the local classic rock stations was doing an '80s marathon, and they played “Heaven Is A Place On Earth”, and my immediate thought was of San Junipero.
I never really cared for that song before, but think I can say that that episode has completely and totally recontextualized it.
I’d say a portion of them are Twilight Zone style moralizing. Or if not moralizing, at least making fairly straightforward social commentary.
Moralizing:
S1E1
S1E2
S2E2
S2E3
S3E1
Arguably Moralizing:
S1E3
S3E5
S3E3
Black Mirror is pretty good about letting stories unfold, though. I liked the episode you watched, but I can see how you could get a “lol these kids and their phones amirite” vibe from it.
I think S1E2 is a better version of a similar idea, it’s definitely a heavy handed, moralizing critique of media and reality TV culture, but the way they build the world and ultimately shape the character motivations that lead to the events is really good. Same with S2E2 which is “White Bear”, the one other people mention liking a lot.
At least watch S3E4 “San Juniperno” though, there’s effectively no moralizing and is absolutely beautiful.
I can’t second this enough. It’s one of the most moving, profound, and astonishingly humane stories I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, its great. Also, it was clearly mostly shot in Cape Town, my home town, which did a good job standing in for an imaginary California town.
Having now finished the season, I can say that San Junipero is my favorite of the season, and probably one of the best episodes of any sci-fi anthology series.
It deserves the Hugo for this year.
I didn’t think Be Right Back was heavy handed, and it’s probably one of the best episodes.
Well I’ve only one more to go.
San Junipero was great. I am imagining that it was conceived as another riffing off of The Matrix and creating yet another scenario of people choosing to live in a simulated false reality but dang, they created something that is so much more.
Men Against Fire though? Heavy handed does not begin to cover it. The psychologist making so absolutely sure that the audience got it was painful but his lecture illustrated exactly why such technology would be superfluous. The villagers needed no technology to dehumanize the others in their minds. And real soldiers and real people don’t either, never have. End of story the same issue of making a choice to live in a false reality, just not so well done as either San Junipero or Be Right Back.
…its been a week: and that song is still playing in my head. 
The way the end credits were spliced together, the beats were perfect…I’m tearing up now.
For me this episode rivals “To See the Invisible Man” (from the 1985 run of Twilight Zone episodes) that rejoice in the sheer joy of humanity, and was my former favourite sci-fi anthology episode.
Just finished the last one and it was pretty dang good too. Those are characters I could stand to see more of and story concept that kicked butt.
I have established a poll thread for the purpose of selecting the best episode of this season.
shut up and dance was my favorate. felt sorry for the lad no matter what he did