Well, watched the newest season of Black Mirror today, and it was... eh. Fairly shit, honestly. Now, the first episode was pretty good. I loved Jimmi Simpson and Jesse Plemons. Now, this was a really interesting kind of cross-over between video games and I have no mouth and I must scream, where the dude creates AI versions of his co-workers in a video game world based around his favorite Star Trek-type TV show. At the first it seems fun and cool, but then it's revealed he's pretty sociopathic and takes out all his anger at the real life people at their AI versions. It's really cool, because everyone has given up hopes of like escaping and just want to die to end it all, but they're not allowed to. It's actually really interesting, up until they start planning their escape.
Basically, their plan is to contact the real world version of the main girl and blackmail her into destroying Evil Guy's stockpile of DNA which he uses to make the copies of everyone in the virtual world, and then the virtual guys will kill themselves through a wormhole connecting them to the main game rather than Evil Guy's personal place. Now, this is ridiculous, because at no point in the plan will the Evil Guy ever get caught and no one will learn of his deeds. All he'll need to do is nab everyone's coffee cups again and he can start right back over with a vengeance.
However, when the wormhole closes and the good guys escape, the Evil Guy seems to be left in the game as he's stuck inside. It seems to be like he's dead or stuck there or whatever. However, this makes even less sense. The wormhole closing was always going to happen, and Evil Guy was in the world out of choice. He's a genius coder, he would've known that there would be a warmhole closing that would trap him in cyber space, and he was planning to be in there for when the wormhole closed. It just seemed like a weak attempt to tack on an ending that worked.
Jimmi Simpson sacrifices himself, which also doesn't make sense, as they can't die, he's not seen in the old world stuck with Evil Guy, where he'd be tortured ad infinitum, and he doesn't reappear in the new world. It doesn't make sense. Anyhow, the guys don't die, but make it out to a free universe in the online multiplayer game, which is... I don't know. A badly tacked on happy ending? I don't know why they needed this. Everyone dying seems far more fitting. Hell, how is there a universe where you can basically create an online copy of yourself, but the only application is a genius' MMO game? Fuck it, this was a great watch, but it's nonsense looking back.
The next episode was the first Black Mirror episode directed by a woman, which was a shame, because it was boring as fuck. Just, super boring. It was all about a chip that let you see what someone else saw, yet it was only used for helicopter parenting. The mum used it to filter out stressful things, so the daughter saw pixels, which seems far more horrifying. Oh no, my grandad just fell off the ladder, and now I can't see him anymore, just hear garbled pleading for help while not being able to do anything! Much better!" or "Oh look, a dog's attacking me! Can't see it, I'll be grand!" We're introduced to this kid named Trick, who for some reason starts showing violence and porn to the seven year old girl. The device is turned off for her mental health, and we skip forward eight years. However, suddenly, it seems like Trick is now a pretty cool dude, rather than just some psycho showing porn to seven year olds and getting off to violence. I mean, he's a bad influence, but in a "Let's have teenage sex and do drugs" kind of way, which come on, is grand. There's some boring shit where the mum watches her daughter get fucked and do drugs, and they the daughter finds out. She beats her severely with the device tablet, braeking it, and running away. The end. What a boring story.
The next one is about a woman whose boyfriend kills someone in a hit and run, and they dump the body. Years later, he wants to send an anonymous letter to the dead guy's spouse, She's worried about getting caught, so she... murders him? Awful plan, but whatever. Then, there's something about a machine that reads memories, but that's not really important for almost the entire episode. I mean, she has to start killing a few people to make sure their memories can't incriminate her, but this could be done without having to make up a memory reading machine and never discuss the interesting bits of this. She kills a bunch of people, but in doing so a baby sees her, so she kills the baby to prevent it's mind being read. Now, I don't know what's the story here. It's not really sci-fi, it's mainly just crime, and not particularly good, because she goes from crying and wondering what she'll do with a woman who saw her to baby murder in a few hours, and that's never examined. Nevermind.
Plot twist time! The baby was blind, so it didn't even need to die! Then, they read the memories of the hamster the girl got at the start of the episode! Because apparently, we can now read animal memories and use them as furry cameras, and that's a casual thing no one minds. So really, the baby being blind didn't matter, but whatever.
The fourth episode is about online, where there's a world ran by an AI that calculates everyone's romantic partner. You meet your partner, and it tells you how long you'll be in a relationship with them. During that time, they try to ascertain what you're like so that next time they can get better and better until they can find your ideal match. This system is enforced by law, for reasons, but never matter. Anyhow, a bunch of romance shit happens, and it's actually pretty interesting, until in the end after being told they can't be together
I mean, never mind that there's an online app that can run two full AIs in a simulation for over a thousand years in a matter of seconds. More importantly, it just didn't feel very Black Mirror-esque. I don't feel nervous about the future, or see a new application on a phone. Black Mirror kind of points out the dark side of future sci-fi things, but this new thing has literally no downsides. This seems perfect, really. It pits these two people who'd love each other. So... yeah, alright episode.
The fifth was just fucking awful. It was shot in black and white, which people seem to think makes something artistic or adds merit to it, but just usually seems like a way to trick people into thinking that while not having to take into account use of color in a scene. It featured no exposition, no social commentary, nothing that makes Black Mirror any good. Instead, it was just about a group of scavengers in a post-apocalyptic(?) world. They raid a factory, where there's the most retarded creation in human history. It's this robot dog, which looks a lot like the real life one they have in Boston, but there's not really much added to it. It just doesn't look particularly nice. It's apparently like security, or something? I don't know what else it could be, there's literally no backstory or anything here. But apparently, it shoots to kill for some reason, has an incredibly advanced tracking system and can recharge in the sunlight, but is turned off and hiding rather than tracking for anything in the sunlight for... reasons. I don't know why. If it's a killbot, it does a fairly bad job at that, given how it's hiding rather than hunting, or at least standing guard. If it's security, it's ridiculous, because it tracks people an insane degree once they've left and shoots to kill. This thing is somehow both a genius, being able to use knives, drive a car with considerable skill and a shit ton of other stuff, yet clumsily falls over without realizing it can't climb a tree, or that no, music players aren't people, you don't have to stab them.
But wait, there's a plot twist! What they were trying to scavenge, which I assumed was pain killers to help a supposedly dying ally, was just a teddy bear! You know, a normal one, like you could make out of clothes, or something. Which is even more ridiculous, because why would a kill bot be stalking out among toys, and why would a security bot be necessary to defend those?
This episode doesn't say anything, the action isn't particularly good, and it was just kind of a waste of my time.
Anyhow, final episode. They go to a museum, with really obvious Easter eggs for all the other episodes that feels too obvious. The girl can't act for shit is my first problem. I'm usually not good at picking out bad acting, but she was noticeably bad. Anyhow, there's a museum, and it's used to tell a backstory of the guy running it. First, he was in charge pf a device that can help share pain. Now, this is actually pretty hilarious, because if any of you listened to those Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Karl Pilkington radio TV shows, you'd know Karl is taken the piss out of for suggesting such a device. Fascinating, anyhow, it was pretty cool. Anyhow, the guy uses it to feel patients pain so he can diagnose their symptoms. Then, the patient he's connected to dies on him, and shit gets crazy, and the dude becomes a masochist. It's actually really, really cool. He ends up super into it, and he begins mutilating himself, and then killing people, and it's fucking amazing. I loved it. Oh, and fun fact, it was thought up by Penn Gilette from Penn and Teller.
Next story, girl goes into a coma, gets her head swapped into her husband so they share a body. This one's slightly more predictable, but it's still pretty good. Anyhow, girl ends up being put in a teddy bear to deal with the son, and remains trapped their in permanent hell. Pretty good stuff, really. Finally, it turns out the murderer mentioned earlier in the episode has an AI version here, that's just being constantly tortured by a simulated electronic chair. Then, some shit goes down where his backstory is revealed, then the evil guy behind everyone's torture begins to choke, as black girl reveals she's his daughter. She then uses the pain device to kill her father and torture the evil guy while she watches with the girl stuck in the monkey, and everything comes together, and it's pretty satisfying. Really cool episode, honestly, great finale.
