I just watched the first episode, “Joan is Awful” and I’m going to say: It is one of the best episodes in the entire show. I haven’t seen this high a quality Black Mirror episode in a long time.
Very funny, too, which not too many of them are.
I have only seen Beyond the Sea. I’m still processing this one.
BTW, how do we do the spoiler block in this new board?
It’s in the gear icon on top of the reply window.
I think that this one, as opposed to some of the others, was classic Black Mirror - i.e. the potential pitfalls of high tech.
Some of the others were fantasy or plain old murder mystery, a departure from previous seasons.
One interesting thing about this episode was the anachronistic nature of some things. The cars were 60s looking, as were the controls and black and white video displays in the spaceship. This in opposition to the very high tech FTL telepresence and robot avatars. As a guess I’d say that they were trying to evoke an atmosphere reminiscent of the early days of NASA, and of old Twilight Zone episodes which assumed the high tech of the times with some added on advances.
I also liked this episode and the twist actually caught me by surprise. I often see what’s coming in these kinds of things, but not this time.
A couple of things I should have added to my post regarding Beyond tbe Sea: Since obviously anyone can use anyone else’s avatar, why not simply clone an avatar from an Earthbound volunteer and let the first astronaut use that for his visits to Earth? Just place the new avatar someplace away from where the volunteer lives so as to avoid any troublesome emotional consequences. Or just avoid all of this by sending the avatars into space and keeping the humans on Earth.
Oooooo, the new season is out now?! I’m closing my tab at the bar and headed home forthwith!
I’ve watched the first two episodes. Joan is Awful was excellent as the first episode of a Black Mirror season usually is. Loch Henry was a little too predictable.I would have swore Janet was played by Tracy Ullman - but it was someone else. I suspect “Streamberry” will be a running gag through the rest of the season.
Salma Hayek was freaking hilarious in that episode.
“Let’s kill this quam-puta!”
Not her line, but I liked, “The show is called ‘Joan is Awful’, not ‘Salma Hayek Gets Everything Explained To Her But Still Doesn’t Understand’!”
Going to assume that was deliberate meta-casting to have Annie Murphy and Michael Cera share a scene, seeing as each of them became famous playing a spoiled child in a TV series about a rich family that goes broke.
I…guess George Michael was spoiled. He was pretty innocent, to be honest.
Watched the second one called Loch Henry.
More in line with the “depressing story” type of episode that Black Mirror sometimes does. It was interesting, but mostly just a grim story. I thought it was pretty good, but nothing all that new or interesting here.
Beyond tbe Sea didn’t make a lick of sense. If I hadn’t read them all, I’d swear the story was cribbed from a 1950s issue of Weird Science. One of those stories with a “shocking” ending that’s really actually kind of predictable.
I thought it made sense and I didn’t find it predictable, but there were definitely problems, which I posted earlier. Your Weird Science comparison is very apt.
The problems are what I was referring to.
The big one, like you mentioned, being why didn’t they just send the replicas into space? But also, some huge government agency or corporation spent billions on a project and are apparently completely hands-off when the shit hits the fan? Not so much as a psychologist to advise the astronauts or supervise the link sharing? I spent way too much time wondering about stuff like that and I rarely have a problem suspending disbelief.
I’ve finished the season. *Joan is Awful” was the best episode by a mile, although the last two are kind of fun in an over-the-top way.
I thought that Mazey Day becane very predictable towards the end and it ended up being a cliched B grade horror movie. And the hit and run incident didn’t seem to have any purpose for the story line.
Demon 79 was fun and it kept me guessing as to whether she was losing her mind or not.
Both were departures from Black Mirror’s usual genre.
I like that Joan referenced Loch Henry which turned out to be the next episode.
Loch Henry itself was sort of predictable. I like how no mentioned the fact that the filmmaker was the spitting image of the killer. That’s what clued me in to the mom. I was still surprised that the cop was part of it. I thought it was going to be that he discovered that the mom was banging the killer and the fatal confrontation was over that. But it was so much WORSE. And I liked when the girlfriend saw the mask on the wall.