Current Events > ITT: I review every Black Mirror episode, worst to first **full spoilers**

(+) Yeah! (+)

A few things...
1) I'm fresh off my first viewing of all these episodes, so while they're very present in my brain, any episodes that may benefit from a rewatch have not yet gotten one
2) The beauty of Black Mirror is that different episodes are going to resonate with different people. I know from other rankings I've seen that some of my choices will be pretty typical and others will be pretty controversial, so BRACE YOURSELVES
3) I want to post these rankings with decently thought out reviews, so they'll come one post at a time as I have a moment to write them up. I'm looking forward to debating with other fans in the interim

First review soon!

13: ???
12: ???
11: ???
10: ???
9: ???
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1: ???
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13. The Waldo Moment

As I mentioned at the beginning of the topic, this show really does a great job talking about so many different messages and delivering on so many unique concepts that I could see a hundred different rankings being viable. I could also see the argument for any individual episode of Black Mirror to be someone's favorite.

Any episode, that is, except The Waldo Moment.

I do wonder what happened with this episode. I'm sympathetic to the notion that, in an anthology series, when you've got three shots to tell an amazing story per season, it feels weightier when one is a dud and it may be hard to identify when it's just not coming together until it's already too late. However, Waldo is, for me, the only objectively mediocre episode of the show's entire run. No other episode of the show left me feeling quite so immediately underwhelmed in virtually every capacity.

For starters, we should address the core concept of the whole story. I've heard lots of people compare Waldo to Trump, but let's be fair and objective in our analysis -- they are not very good parallels. Trump might be crass, he might have rallied the cynics and people who wanted to say "fuck the system," but Waldo is not Trump. Waldo is Cartman. Actually, worse, Waldo is Cartman if Cartman wasn't remotely funny. I don't think a single Waldo line actually made me laugh in the episode. The greatest issue with Waldo Moment stems from this -- it is already a tall task asking us to believe that Waldo was even popular, let alone that he could somehow ascend to some Big Brother-esque figurehead as we see by the end of the episode. Waldo running for election in real life would net a little attention, but in the end, he was an unfunny, uncharismatic comedian and a rebel-without-a-cause as a politician. I never once bought he could've made anywhere near the impact he made, and to me, that undercuts the whole thing. What makes Black Mirror so deadly and effective is that it always calls us to picture a terrifying scenario that unsettles us because we know it isn't THAT outlandish. Waldo Moment doesn't pass that test. In order to pull off the concept as something I could buy into, they'd have needed to make Waldo something less than completely obnoxious. I didn't even think his second place election finish was "earned" by the show, let alone the absolute asspull finale.

I could forgive the failure of execution in making Waldo a funny character in the first place if I found the rest of the characters surrounding him compelling, though. However, that really wasn't the case. Jamie is unlikable and miserable, and while some of my favorite Black Mirror stories feature those types of characters, in Jamie's case, less was not more -- we needed either a little more context for why he was so dejected, or he needed more of an arc. I can run with unsatisfied failed artist as an archetype, but he felt pretty 2D to me. His stereotypical greasy manager falls into the same trap of being a walking trope. The scene with the two of them and the guy from the oh-so-mysterious "Agency" just left me rolling my eyes. How many cliches can we jam into one scene?

Anyway, I've railed on the episode enough -- a couple positives were the charming (and unfortunately underused) Gwendolyn, and a particularly nice performance by Tobias Menzies as Liam Monroe. The best scene in the episode by far was that talk show debate where Monroe ripped into Waldo and Waldo ripped back. I thought that was excellent, and hoped the episode would go further in that direction with the Waldo character. Oh well.

Luckily, the worst episode of Black Mirror was still a decent watch. I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again, but I didn't hate it. It just falls sadly short of standards.
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Tag so I can disagree with you later
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Just yesterday I re-upped my Netflix account because I heard great things about Black Mirror, so I watched it yesterday and today.

Very good series, but the next episode I have is The Waldo Moment, so that kinda sucks.
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Cornmuffins posted...

Tag so I can disagree with you later

get hype

I think #12 is gonna rustle some jimmies, but I'm also not super aware of how well episodes are typically regarded so maybe not. Only really easy episode to rank for me was Waldo as last.
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markconigliaro posted...

Just yesterday I re-upped my Netflix account because I heard great things about Black Mirror, so I watched it yesterday and today.

Very good series, but the next episode I have is The Waldo Moment, so that kinda sucks.

It's not AWFUL, it's just easily the least compelling.

Man, I couldn't binge Black Mirror like that, though. Hard cap of one a day. I needed to give them room to breathe.
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Blackstar110 posted...

13. The Waldo Moment

Off to a good start already
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Blackstar110 posted...

markconigliaro posted...

Just yesterday I re-upped my Netflix account because I heard great things about Black Mirror, so I watched it yesterday and today.

Very good series, but the next episode I have is The Waldo Moment, so that kinda sucks.

It's not AWFUL, it's just easily the least compelling.

Man, I couldn't binge Black Mirror like that, though. Hard cap of one a day. I needed to give them room to breathe.

One episode a day is what was recommended to me, but I was dog sitting at someone's house for the weekend, so I needed something to watch. Now I won't have time for more than 1 per day.
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12. Hated in the Nation

I suspect this one is lower than most people would have it, but for me... well, the best way to put it is that it is the worst good episode of Black Mirror. It's far beyond Waldo, but Hated in the Nation felt like a mess of cliches that ultimately didn't really end up leaving any sort of impact with me.

The base concept behind the episode's tech is wonderfully twisted -- we've driven bees to the point of extinction, replaced them with robots, and now we're feeling the consequences in wholly unexpected ways. That's some vintage Black Mirror shit right there; right in that sweet spot of bizarre but a little close to home. I also think the ease with which we express vitriol and hatred online under the guise of anonymity was very ripe for the Black Mirror treatment. So, all that said, consider me disappointed that the execution was so wanting.

A big issue with the whole episode lies in the fact that, despite its unique technological premise, the episode still managed to be the only episode of the show I'd felt like I'd basically entirely seen before. An homage is one thing, but if you've seen Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, and, well, basically any variation of CSI/24/etc, you've seen Hated in the Nation. I really wanted to like this episode, but as it progressed, it fell more and more into cliche. Like... the jaded older cop teams up with the young and spunky new kid with a lot of drive, and together, they overcome a little initial animosity to become partners and sniff out a serial killer with a secret past and a manifesto... how many times in one episode can we get Blue staring at her computer, brow furrowed behind her glasses, when she makes a shocking discovery and lets out a breathless "fuck" before running in to tell everyone what she found? Had to have happened at least three or four times. Essentially, my issue is that Hated in the Nation takes a very cool and inventive concept, then confines it into the parameters of a series of paint-by-numbers cliches and oddly familiar scenes, right down to the ending scene which was almost directly lifted from Silence of the Lambs.

(cont)
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The greatest sin of the episode, though, lies in the unfortunate choice to ultimately put so much focus on the villain. By giving Scholes so much focus in the back part of the episode, and so heavily emphasizing his super-genius plan and the hunt to bring him down, I felt the episode lost its focus and betrayed the core principles of Black Mirror. When I sit down to watch this show, yes, I anticipate a story about technology that pushes something ethical boundaries, but more than anything, I expect a story that makes me do a little introspection on a part of society I see or even partake in that makes me uncomfortable. To be fair, they headed squarely that direction with the #DeathTo concept of the whole episode, but by making the ultimate punishment SO disproportionate to the crime, I felt the lesson was less "don't be a cyberbully because it's shitty" and more "don't be a cyberbully because a supergenius 'nice guy' might kill you and 380,000 others with robot bees." It ended up making the chase for a terrorist more important than the societal critique, right down to the "we got him" ending. I think the episode would've been better served if Scholes was never revealed/revealed after the events of the story, ala Shut up and Dance or The National Anthem, the latter of which more deftly incorporated a terrorist threat without overshadowing the societal critique.

All in all, it may sound like I hated the episode. I didn't. I found it enjoyable, and the house scene was one of the most tense setpieces in the entire run of Black Mirror. The problem isn't that it isn't good -- it's that so many fascinating and interesting pieces were in place, but the finished puzzle was ultimately unfocused and overly familiar. As a result, the relative waste of a great premise ended up disappointing me, but there was still plenty of fun to be a had and I'll certainly rewatch it at some point in the future.
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11 will be Men Against Fire because it's a trash episode

clearaflagrantj posted...

11 will be Men Against Fire because it's a trash episode

Yeah, I thought this was worse than Hated in the Nation.
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Tag
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I really like the setup for Hated in the Nation, and the buildup to the mystery was very engaging for me. Even though it has a detective procedural formula, it incorporates Black Mirror's cynical outlook on technology though its death polls.

But the final third definitely hurt it. The idea of a villain using his own system to gather all of the targets of his ideology simultaneously is nice, but it's all very sudden and overly reliant on dumb decisions by our protagonists. And the payoff doesn't really say anything other than "look at how a bad guy manipulated technology," which is a common theme in the lesser Black Mirror episodes. And then you have this disconnect between the robot bees and the twitter polling that the final act just kind of falls together without the tight writing that makes the final moments of the best episodes so powerful.

It doesn't help that the dangers of social media is a topic that's already been well-covered by the show prior to its 3rd season finale. Honestly it might have been better if, instead of making the villain the sudden focus of the final act, instead turn the poll into a Death Note kind of situation where the public actually accepts it as an acceptable means of vigilantism (which the episode teases at only briefly). Or, if you really like the villain's ultimate goal, you could push the poll's reveal earlier, have the public accept it, and then end with a more deserved sense of irony.
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Dragonblade01 posted...

Honestly it might have been better if, instead of making the villain the sudden focus of the final act, instead turn the poll into a Death Note kind of situation where the public actually accepts it as an acceptable means of vigilantism (which the episode teases at only briefly). Or, if you really like the villain's ultimate goal, you could push the poll's reveal earlier, have the public accept it, and then end with a more deserved sense of irony.

Agreed this would be 10x better.
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bump
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Sorry for the delay in reviews! I want to do them justice and I've been occupied. Maybe one tonight. Def two tomorrow.
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The only reason I like the Waldo Moment is because Paranoia Agent basically did the same thing.
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Tag for a casual read latter tonight. Thanks, TC
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