I saved it for last, because I had heard from pretty much everyone (on FB and Reddit) that that was the best one. If you go to the Reddit for the show, you’ll see scores of people all saying and agreeing that it’s the best one evah, apparently…and most of my FB friends told me the same, so I waited and waited and waited, going through all of the others…
…and I agree that other very, very great ones were White Bear, White Christmas, Nosedive, and Shut Up and Dance…
And while I agree with what a few others have said in that there is no episode of Black Mirror that is bad–that they all range from either “good” to “amazingly great”…the ones I was less moved by are Hated in the Nation, Playtest, and The Waldo Moment.
I also think that The National Anthem was a weird choice for a first episode. I think it would have been better as a later one. It sort of alienates people from the start by putting them off with such a gross-type of story. I think they should have set the tone with any of the other first season episodes and had that one be last.
It’s San Junipero because it is both sad and happy in very believable ways. Most [del]sad/happy[/del] stories are sappy and unbelievable and usually I feel like I’m being manipulated. But I didn’t feel that at all with San Junipero.
Also I should add, SJ was the best to me because, gender aside, I could identify with the lanky, socially awkward nerdy chick. Plus, at the time I first watched it, there was a really awesome old lesbian couple in my life who both died within a few months of each other, so a lot of that hit really creepily close to home for me. I admit I cried the first 2 or 3 times i watched it.
Went with Shut Up and Dance. All Black Mirror episodes were unsettling in their own way, but this one wins in sheer plausibility, which makes it far worse (and therefore better).
I don’t know why the “plot twist” of San Junipero loses points. Yeah, I figured it out quickly also. It was still pretty solid, though not the best.
I didn’t particularly care for White Bear. It was just too over the top, and didn’t have the “ring of truth” to me. Maybe I’m too much of an optimist.
Nosedive is the runner up, again due to the plausibility factor. Plus I wanted the lead to get everything that was coming to her.
I also thought White Bear was kind of silly and the twist didn’t particularly change my mind.
I voted for 15 Million Merits because I thought it was the most visually creative and I liked the story. I liked some of the segments of White Christmas even more, but at least one of the segments was pretty weak so it didn’t get my vote.
I would be bored by san junipero within a week, but that’s because it’s the typical holodeck-style VR. A small and very limited environment where a small number of people go and shut themselves off from the rest of humanity.
AKA the only kind that we can set traditional stories in, or affordably film.
But if the gilded cage is “the set of all hyper-realistic VR” there is no reason why the contents of the cage might not become more varied and interesting than what is outside.
You may well still get bored of it eventually, but “eventually” can be pushed out arbitrarily far.
Life in San Junipero wasn’t forever if you didn’t want it to be. They discussed leaving the VR after they were bored with it. No cage there.
Complete ranking:
White Christmas
Be Right Back
Fifteen Million Merits
San Junipero
The Entire History of You
White Bear
Shut Up and Dance
Playtest
Hated in the Nation
Nosedive
Men Against Fire
The National Anthem
The Waldo Moment
I actually didn’t figure it out, but knowing the twist or not makes no difference to me if it’s a compelling story. I’m one of those people who doesn’t care about spoilers. “White Christmas” I figured out/had my hunches what was going on pretty early in the episode, but it didn’t affect my enjoyment of it (although, for me, it’s somewhere around the 4th or 5th best episode.)
I love Black Mirror, but my issue is that it is sometimes just so bash-you-over-the-head with a concept, taken to its obvious extremes, so episodes like “15 Million Merits” and “Nosedive” end up in the middle-of-the-pack for me.
San Junipero is the most optimistic and character based story, IMO. It isn’t about the twist. Indeed, there’s no real attempt made to hide what’s really going on.
I’m firmly in the San Junipero was great (though maybe a smidge cheesy) TV but other episodes were much better camp. White Christmas and Shut Up and Dance in particular. I loved the endings for both, though my girlfriend hated the latter.
I too figured, having been floored by Shut Up and Dance. that one or both of them would be men or thirteen or a computer hacker preying on the senile…, may speak more to my cynical world view than anything. Any of those would have made for a far more interesting episode. It was nice however to have a “comfy” iteration of Black Mirror" to introduce it to people with.
Speaking of Non Twists, it didn’t even occur to me the end of Shut Up and Dance was supposed to be a twist. I just took it for granted he was doing something awful online or why go through all that?
I figured it was because he was a teenager and found the thought of a video of him selfservicing being released to the public motivation enough to commit felonies/murder.
I always thought the fatal flaw in Shut Up and Dance (while I still think it’s one of the best episodes) was that It was a recording of the kid jerking it…there was no way to tell, however (as far as I can tell) WHAT he was viewing as he was doing it, though. It didn’t show his computer screen, just what he was doing, so that part didn’t really make sense to me. As horrible as his crime was and as much as he deserved to be caught, he shoulda just went with the “Okay…and you can prove I was looking at something illegal while doing that HOW?” defense