Current Events > ITT: I review the episodes of Black Mirror, worst to first *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

joe40001 posted...

Blackstar110 posted...

I'm not necessarily saying it was "most perfect," I'm saying that I think the top ten episodes of Black Mirror are varying levels of 9/10-10/10 TV, so our mileage may vary in pure and simple preferences. I could see any of them moving up or down a little bit within that top ten.

But like "Shut Up And Dance", the horror game one, and "Entire History of You" are so clearly worse

Entire History is ranked top three on almost every list I've seen except yours, dude. Not saying mine is that high, but let's not pretend it's commonly held as bad. I'm 100% comfortable with it being in the top six and that's not even a little controversial.

Playtest I'm aware is higher than usual, but you'll have to wait for the review. :)
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Blackstar110 posted...

joe40001 posted...

Blackstar110 posted...

I'm not necessarily saying it was "most perfect," I'm saying that I think the top ten episodes of Black Mirror are varying levels of 9/10-10/10 TV, so our mileage may vary in pure and simple preferences. I could see any of them moving up or down a little bit within that top ten.

But like "Shut Up And Dance", the horror game one, and "Entire History of You" are so clearly worse

Entire History is ranked top three on almost every list I've seen except yours, dude. Not saying mine is that high, but let's not pretend it's commonly held as bad. I'm 100% comfortable with it being in the top six and that's not even a little controversial.

Playtest I'm aware is higher than usual, but you'll have to wait for the review. :)

Nah, there are plenty of people who aren't keen on EHOY. Not a majority, likely, but plenty.

For me, that episode is so much more about the lead character than the tech premise and since the lead character was responsible for all his problems I really can't stand that episode.

You should watch the Robin Williams movie "The Final Cut" it's like the EHOY but executed well.
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I love how different the rankings are for everyone. I'm overall agreeing with a lot of your points but yet my rankings would still be completely different.
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Darmik posted...

I love how different the rankings are for everyone. I'm overall agreeing with a lot of your points but yet my rankings would still be completely different.

Yeah there are some trends but overall most people have fairly different lists.
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FYI, I'm heading out of town for a long weekend. If I get the chance, I will post reviews in the interim, otherwise I'll wrap up the list when I get back...

13. The Waldo Moment
12. Hated in the Nation
11. Nosedive
10. Fifteen Million Merits
9. Men Against Fire
8. San Junipero
7. Shut Up and Dance

Still alive (in chronological order):
-The National Anthem
-The Entire History of You
-Be Right Back
-White Bear
-White Christmas
-Playtest
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White Bear, SU&D and Christmas are my favs. I've still yet to watch SJ, Men Against Fire and Hated in the Nation
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ArtVandelay posted...

White Bear, SU&D and Christmas are my favs. I've still yet to watch SJ, Men Against Fire and Hated in the Nation

San Junipero is a must watch IMO even with my issues with the ending.

MAF is pretty damn good and a bit underrated

HitN will depend on whether you want thriller/procedural tropes in a Black Mirror skin
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Saving from the purge
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Blackstar110 posted...

Saving from the purge

:)
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Blackstar110 posted...

Blackstar110 posted...

Saving from the purge

:)

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Can't abide by putting man against fire above 15 million merits.

And national anthem was probably one of the most boring ones.
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_Near_ posted...

Can't abide by putting man against fire above 15 million merits.

And national anthem was probably one of the most boring ones.

I think in hindsight I'd probably swap those two and have them 9/10 instead. 15MM might even beat San Junipero. I'd need to rewatch, those three were all tight for me.

Disagree about Anthem, obviously.
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In the same vein, I probably need to rewatch anthem lol.
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Review tomorrow morning, guys. Sorry for the delay!
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6. Playtest

At long last, the episode I've gotten the most heat for keeping alive this long reaches the end of the line. I almost ranked it a couple spots higher, but I can't name an episode left on this list that I think is actually worse than than this one, so this is where it falls. Part of me feels like I'm writing an article called "In Defense of Playtest" at this point, but the episode is not completely perfect either. The reason I enjoy this episode enough to place it just outside the top five comes down to a few factors, not the least of which is my own understanding of the episode, which I will get to in a bit.

What the episode does best is how it flirts with its own predictability. "Virtual reality is spooky" is ground that has been covered before, and Playtest leans heavily on horror tropes, but the viewer is consistently undermined for our cleverness. When he opens the cabinet door, for example, I had that instinct that there would absolutely be something hidden behind it; the catch is that Cooper is wise to it as well and predicts it along with us. I similarly liked how when he climbs up the stairs to the bedroom, he voices concern that it's going to revolve around his mom or dad, which was another thing I had predicted earlier on. By being predictable and then acknowledging that predictability, it destabilizes your confident footing and resupplies that feeling of unease that comes with uncertainty. I thought that was supremely clever.

I also would be remiss if, in a review of a horror episode, I failed to mention the successful horror elements of the episode. By relying so much on cliches early on in his stay in the manor, I was a bit afraid that it wouldn't ever truly unnerve me, but the episode does a good job of progressively upping the ante. The horror got more abstract as we went along, and I again enjoyed how my feelings ran parallel to Cooper's. The mutant henceforth referred to as Spiderbully™ was the first truly unnerving thing, but like Cooper, I found it more morbidly fascinating than anything. The scene where he ends up wrestling Sonja and ripping her face off did successfully unnerve me a bit, and the ultimate scene where he started suffering from Alzheimer's was truly disturbing, for my money. Unfortunately, due to having read a somewhat similar creepypasta ("NoEnd House"), I did not believe for a second that he was actually out when he flew back home at the end, so that did not particularly surprise me when it was revealed to still be fake. The final twist that the game never even began, however, did surprise me, and while I understand why some people regard that as cheap or a weak ending, it's actually what elevates the episode for me... with a little tinfoil-hat action.

After I finished the episode, I did a little reading online and found a theory that changed the way I perceived the episode fairly substantially. The theory goes that, given that we know that the game never even began and Cooper died as it was being turned on, the entirety of what we saw was simply his life flashing before his eyes through the lens of what was currently on his mind (the game). If you think about it, from the moment the phone buzzes, killing him, the events of the episode run oddly parallel to Cooper's life. I don't want to spend an entire review spouting conspiracy theories, but the gist is that the first thing he sees is Whack-a-Mole, which he even states he remembers playing as a kid. He ends up visiting a haunted house modeled after a game he says he played with his friend, then sequentially encounters a fear of spiders, bullies, and intimacy (as you would while growing older). He then faces his fear of his father's Alzheimer's, and ultimately his fear of failing his mother and her ending up just like his dad. The events of the episode are a direct parallel to his life.
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If Playtest is viewed through this lens, I believe it gains a significant amount of power and tragedy beyond just being a fun episode with a "gotcha" ending. We know from the ending that everything we saw took place in 0.04 seconds, and that "every part of his brain lit up simultaneously." To me, it makes a tremendous amount of sense that what we saw was not a game, was not technology, but was just a sad, frustrated young man seeing his life flash before his eyes as he tragically dies. Perhaps that theory doesn't work for you, but I found it both a very sound interpretation of the episode and profoundly chilling. Of course, the downside is that with the reveal that technology played no part in what we saw, it might amplify the human tragedy of it all, but it doesn't tick the box of dystopian technological dread that you've come to expect from Black Mirror, which is something that takes it a bit out of context when compared to the rest of the series.

Playtest is Black Mirror near both its scariest and funniest in alternating moments and tells the sad, unfulfilled life story of Cooper in a way that resonated with me well after the final credits rolled. It might not be the dystopian fiction we tend to look for from the show, and the twist that the technology was hardly even a factor might cheapen the experience to some, but I hold it as a very memorable, unnerving, and heartbreaking black sheep episode, placing just outside the top five. Oh, and would you kindly call your moms?
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13. The Waldo Moment
12. Hated in the Nation
11. Nosedive
10. Fifteen Million Merits
9. Men Against Fire
8. San Junipero
7. Shut Up and Dance
6. Playtest

Still alive (in chronological order):
-The National Anthem
-The Entire History of You
-Be Right Back
-White Bear
-White Christmas
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5. White Christmas

So begins our top five.

When I heard there was a Black Mirror Christmas special, I couldn't help but immediately laugh out loud at how hilariously twisted that was. I had a feeling I was in for something special, and by and large, White Christmas does not disappoint. Despite the lofty goal of tying three seemingly disparate plots together, there are only a couple nitpicks along the way, and the episode manages to solidify itself as one of the absolute best the series has to offer.

The unique interconnected short story structure that this episode goes for was indeed ambitious, but while it's a shame that I didn't totally love all three angles, if one had to be a bit weaker, the episode was well-served by it being the first. I found the story about Matt teaching Harry to be a darkly funny take on the pick-up artist lifestyle, but the ultimate reveal that Jennifer was completely insane and thought the voices he heard were the same as the voices inside her own head (including the "voices that tell you to do it") was simultaneously pretty clever yet also... a bit much. It almost felt less like a punch and more like a punchline, which is all well and good but didn't rank among my most memorable Black Mirror narratives. Still enjoyable overall.

However, my criticisms basically end there. From that point on, White Christmas descends on a downward spiral into increasingly hellish territory, ultimately tying all three narratives together with unrivaled finesse. The cookie technology is inherently warped beyond all reason; exploring the moral ambiguity of AIs is fairly old hat by dystopian sci-fi standards, but rarely have I seen it be so forthright with a concept like creating an artificial intelligence with the sole purpose of immediately submitting it to incomprehensible mental torture. If you'd told me beforehand that Black Mirror was going to take on Siri/Alex/etc., I'd have been intrigued but never have imagined what they came up with here. This show is so very good at coming up with terrifying technologies you wouldn't necessarily have thought up yourself, but yet seem completely plausible -- the cookie ranks very high on that list.
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Of course, the ultimate point of all this is the reveal that Matt and Joe are indeed in a cookie, which I pieced together a bit late but still before they pulled back the curtain. It's one of those twists that doesn't really ruin it if you figure it out a few minutes before you're "supposed to," as it puts everything in beautifully warped context. Joe's story itself is sad and compelling on its own, but isn't really the crux of the episode. Perhaps part of it was that the concept of "blocking," while creepy to think about, felt a bit reminiscent of The Entire History of You (especially given the repeated context of a cheating significant other with a baby that turns out not to be the main character's), but in any case, I was still interested in what Joe's deal was but far MORE interested in why it mattered so much. The truth of Joe's responsibility for the deaths of Beth's father and daughter was very tragic and more than a little creepy -- that whole scene in their house where he is teetering on the edge of a mental break, murmuring "I want to see my daughter," was fantastically done, helped out by a great callback to "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" from 15 Million Merits. If I'm nitpicking any further, I must say I was taken out of the scene a bit by the little girl's complete non-reaction to... well, anything. I'm not sure if the little actress just wasn't great or if they intentionally shied away from showing a little kid in too much distress, but I didn't buy it and it did distract me a little bit. However, as I've said, the real point here is the purpose of the entire episode, not the murder itself.

Needless to say, boy, does White Christmas reward your patience. The last 5-10 minutes are just so goddamn harrowing. Learning they've been in a cookie the whole time is a great moment, but even better is how it ties all the way back to that first story when we learn Matt is only there to try to lighten his sentence for the seduction coaching and failure to report Harry's death. His sentence of being blocked by everyone on the planet and being displayed in glowing red seems a bit disproportionate; it's a fate arguably worse than death for the crime of being a virtual Peeping Tom, but this IS Black Mirror, after all. It's not really a show known for portrayals of a particularly fair and forgiving society, and I very much liked the touch that Matt's fate of forever only seeing static where people used to be is perhaps the titular white Christmas. Of course, speaking of fates worse than death, the iconic final scene of the Joe AI doomed to sit in the kitchen from the worst day of his life, listening to "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" for millions and millions of years is just bizarrely dark in the best way. The dread mounting as that peppy song just gets louder and louder is perfect, and I can't give the episode enough credit for an ending that not only horrifies, but also ties back to the earlier question of "does it count as torture if it's not real?" from the second narrative. The real Joe will likely get a second-degree murder charge for the father and manslaughter for the daughter (that's a rhyme I never hope to make again), with a heavy but reasonable sentence in prison and possible hope for parole. His AI, however... yeesh.

All told, it was probably not possible for White Christmas to tell three equally amazing, flawless mini-stories and tie them all together with absolute perfection; the three mini-arcs inherently invite comparison between themselves while also building a necessary "cool, but where is this going?" mentality. That said, the episode does just about the best job possible. It's riveting, heartbreaking, and scary with fantastic acting throughout (I do love Jon Hamm's ability to play suave, charismatic, but ultimately cowardly men), and easily slides into my top five.
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13. The Waldo Moment
12. Hated in the Nation
11. Nosedive
10. Fifteen Million Merits
9. Men Against Fire
8. San Junipero
7. Shut Up and Dance
6. Playtest
5. White Christmas

Still alive (in chronological order):
-The National Anthem
-The Entire History of You
-Be Right Back
-White Bear
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^To clarify, I truly did not hate Waldo. I just thought it was a 7/10 episode in a show where the next worst is probably an 8.5. It's a victim of how good the series as a whole is.
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Mr Hangman posted...

Every episode is really good, but I like the darkest ones best, especially White Christmas, White Bear, Shut Up and Dance.

lol high five
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Shooting for another review tonight.
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tonight for sure >_>

or tomorrow
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Finally doing it. Incoming
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Tag

4. The National Anthem

When you ask me what comes to mind when I think "pilot episode," I typically would say it would feature an introduction of characters and themes in a careful way, walking the narrow line of making sure it's intriguing enough while also not alienating too many new potential viewers right off the bat. Black Mirror says "fuck that." While I thought other episodes of Black Mirror were more fun, when it comes down to it, this might be the boldest condemnation of society that the show has to offer. The National Anthem IS Black Mirror.

I actually think part of the effectiveness of this episode lies in the madness that they chose it as the pilot. They filmed Fifteen Million Merits first, which is dark, scary, and brilliant all its own, but walks a more traditional line of dystopia. It's frankly more what I expected, and it would've been a great way to kick things off. Choosing instead to open your sci-fi dystopian anthology series with an episode that might as well take place tomorrow, revolving around nothing more complex than a 21st century response to an outrageous terror demand that the Prime Minister fuck a pig on live television, is such a brazen and ballsy choice that I still marvel at it as I write. Those first five minutes are straight-up iconic. I may have had the initial reaction of "that's more what I was going for!" after finishing Merits, but in hindsight, it truly was Anthem that set the table for the unique blend of horror, sadness, and pitch-black humor that would go on to define my experience with the series.

The interesting thing about the episode is that it really only has one central device that guides the entire hour -- the question of if the Prime Minister is actually going to fuck this pig (another reason this episode sort of had to come first, really; any later in the series and it would've been "of course he's really gonna fuck the pig, this is Black Mirror"). Not too much else is going on in the episode. Sure, there's the through-line of the skanky journalist trying to get the inside scoop, or the swirling storm of politicians, friends, and family that surrounds the Prime Minister, but all of it centers around that one question. It's a concept that only works because the premise is so utterly insane; the episode would be a fairly rote episode of 24 if the demand was to let a terrorist go and they were debating the ethics of that while trying to greenscreen the terrorist's face onto an actor. It has to be pig-fucking. I've seen the episode dismissed as raw shock value, but the whole premise goes out the window if it's not something this obscene and outlandish. There's no weight to it if there isn't the scene where his wife is reading YouTube comments about "licking bacon juice off his cock" hours before the event even transpires, realizing that he's already ruined no matter what he does. It is a necessity that the threat be so laughably gross.

Because, in the end, that's just it. By being a "LOLWTFBBQ!!!!" moment, it causes people to forget their empathy. While some would, plenty would not watch a live-streamed decapitation or bombing or similar terror threat. You know damn well that everyone is going to tune in to see if the PM actually fucks a pig on TV, though. It causes a hashtag feeding frenzy and drives at our basest instinct to be the first to make a funny joke about it or write a clever headline. Besides, the Prime Minister fucking a pig causes no international danger, so how dare he be selfish enough to not do this to save the Kate Middleton of the Black Mirrorverse? It turns one man's ninth circle of hell into a circus sideshow in a way that is disturbingly believable.
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The twist about the criminal's identity is another punch to the gut. A failed artist, upset that people were too busy looking at their phones to come see his now-closed exhibit, stages all this to highlight society's complicity in watching whatever is on the screen in front of them. It's beyond edgy and narcissistic, but it's a believable motive for a disturbed and broken man outraged by the society around him. Eerier still is that you can see a headline earlier in the episode about his exhibit closing, so it's really been in front of you the whole time. The one part of the episode that does jump out as a bit of a stretch is that the killer released the princess fifteen minutes before the "incident" and no one noticed. No one? I do agree with the episode's premise that a disturbing number of people would check it out just to see if it was really going to happen (it unsettles me that I can't say for sure that I wouldn't), but I really don't believe for a second that she would be laying on a huge public bridge for fifteen minutes before the event and while Callow fucks a pig for what was established to be over an hour (*shudder*) without a single person noticing. She'd at least have been noticed at some point during that hour so they could spare Callow the remaining time. It didn't ultimately detract too much for me, but it'd be an oversight not to mention it.

On a final note, the credits scene showing Callow having higher approval than ever and continuing on in public life, while behind closed doors his life has been destroyed is devastating. I know many people are hard on his wife, which I understand to a degree, but a large part of her frustration has to stem from the fact that he ignored her calls repeatedly before and after the event on that fateful day. I sympathize greatly with Callow, but their marriage would've been hard-pressed to survive that even with them working as a unified front, so I do understand why him shutting her out in conjunction with the bestiality itself just tore too great a rift for them to work out. An an aside, the soundtrack to this episode is also among the best in the series, and the piece that plays at the end as his wife walks away from them really dug into my soul.

All told, I'm not sure that any other episode of the series takes aim at the state of the human race with the blistering ruthlessness of The National Anthem. It is an episode that I thought would end up ranking in the lower end as I was first watching, yet is an episode that has had perhaps the most perverse staying power, lingering in my head weeks and weeks after the credits first rolled. After all, the first scene of the entire series is a couple lying peacefully in bed before being disturbed by the glow and vibration of a cell phone... and that effectively says it all.
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Excellent reviews! Looking forward to the top 3.
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I liked white Christmas.
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Great summary of National Anthem, it is also high on my list.
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joe40001 posted...

Great summary of National Anthem, it is also high on my list.

(b'-')b
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Bump, hoping to wrap this up soon with three episodes left
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