Black Mirror

So to those who saw Bandersnatch the ‘proper’ way (my Apple TV wasn’t compatible, or something), was it a straight-up branching-path video Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, or something else?

Well, it was a meta-textual, self-referencing story. Which I liked on the one hand, because I’m into that shit, but really wished they’d just fine more of a ‘straight’ branching narrative for the first outing, leaving the meta- for further explorations.

I saw a headline the other day that due to the success of Bandersnatch, Netflix announced they will be doing more interactive movies. I didn’t look at the details, though.

Yeah, I agree. There’s a specific ‘gotcha’ early on that is very clearly designed to wink at the audience and establish the premise. I would have preferred something that slowly went off the rails, or didn’t have very obvious ‘this will end the story’ choices. That said, I can’t imagine how difficult that thing was to write, and it worked very well for what it was.

Season 5 is up on Netflix now.

It looks like only 3 episodes are available. Is that it for the season?

Time? Quality? Most felt the more recent 2 seasons with more episodes were of mixed quality vs the first couple which only had a few also. Must have decided to focus on a smaller number again. I’m ok if it means better stories.

About an hour each. The first episode is really good IMO(thought not quite great). The second one is really on-the-nose. I’m watching the third right now, but I’ve heard it’s the weakest.

Liked all three episodes. Probably like the third episode the best… because halfway thru it takes a detour tonally and actually ends up being better… instead of super serious its ‘an adeventure’… with homage to Trent Reznor!

Also the acting in all three episodes this season is up to par, very good. All of them spot on, even Miley Cyrus and Topher Grace interesting… Miley was hilarious as an AI Frankenstein doll.

We watched the first episode last night. My wife and I both described it as “cute,” which is honestly kind of nice. I’d be happy if there was never a bleak episode again.

The dystopic and horror elements were exactly what I missed from Season 5. First season that I didn’t like any of the episodes, maybe I should watch Bandersnatch though.

when I was young a season was like 20+ episodes of something, imagine, even Lost had 20 episodes per season. If Lost would have been done today it would had at most 10 ep. and it is not like 20 episodes of something were bad…

I thought this season was just plain bad. Maybe not Waldo-bad, but pretty bad nonetheless. Couldn’t force myself to finish the caricature that was the M. Cyrus episode. Besides the scarcity of dystopic insights, it all felt strangely familiar and ordinary.

Yes, it was a real let down. I made my friend watch episode 2, which was decent but hardly earth shattering. He gave up after 20 minutes of Miley Cryus and honestly I wish I had turned it off then too.
The NPR TV critic liked episode one the best, but nether of them were as good as almost all of the episodes of the first three seasons.

I think this show has curved into self parody somewhat. It kind of started happening last season, I mean,
I feel like

Is pretty spot on.

what if phones, but too much

Made me laugh so hard.

Looking forward to this one:

The Men Who Left
It’s Christmas, but everybody’s dead because nobody just reads anymore, you know? Nobody lifts their heads up for a second from those infernal pocket jailers we call phones to even cross the street before being merrily struck by a car. And everyone’s on Twitter, and that’s just terrible, and you’ve murdered everyone, and now it’s Christmas half the time, and murder the other half, and phones all of the time, and it’s all television’s fault.

This has been a weak season. The first two episodes were probably the worst two in the whole run. I did like the Miley Cyrus one more than most seemed to, but the work as a whole makes me wonder if they’ve run out of ideas or enthusiasm for the show.

I blame Brooker becoming a dad.

I liked the little pissed off Miley Cyrus robot.

“Could you open the door, please.”

I thought the first one was pretty interesting and has (I believe) started the term ‘brosexual’ which I think is funny. Second and third ones were alright.

I can’t really understand anyone over 30 being disappointed by the latest black mirror. We’ve seen this so many times during our lives it’s pretty much the universal law of artistic creation: An artist of any medium has only so much to say on a particular subject, and accordingly the quality of their output will peak at some point before a gradual decline.

With the showrunners being unwilling to bring on other writers or radically change the formula, I doubt it has a chance to go back to former greatness.