On January 07 2017 01:10 Scarecrow wrote:
Bad guess. The thing is I found both of those episodes you mention to be better than all of season 3 besides San Junipero and Shut Up and Dance. The pig episode was an indictment of how the public loves to watch successful/powerful people debased and humiliated (tabloid/celebrity news in a nutshell) and the kidnapper made them see that. In the end it was effectively the people, who condemned the prime minister to the ordeal because so many of them wanted to see it happen. I found the revelation that the princess was released prior to the pig filming to be really powerful, and one of the best twists of any Black Mirror episode.
I also don't know why you're so critical of s2 e3 when it basically predicted the rise of someone like Donald Trump as a mascot of populist anger by tapping into anti-political/establishment sentiment.
Several episodes in S3 seemed to have less depth and I felt the writing quality did dip somewhat as it moved to netflix. Now that I think about it I think it's probably more due to the fact they had to work out 6 episodes instead of culling their ideas to produce the 3 best as they did with previous seasons. If they'd done that this season it would've been very similar in quality with San Junipero, Shut Up and Nosedive. Men against fire was particularly poorly executed and 'Playtest' was basically, 'technology' can be scary/dangerous!
Bad guess. The thing is I found both of those episodes you mention to be better than all of season 3 besides San Junipero and Shut Up and Dance. The pig episode was an indictment of how the public loves to watch successful/powerful people debased and humiliated (tabloid/celebrity news in a nutshell) and the kidnapper made them see that. In the end it was effectively the people, who condemned the prime minister to the ordeal because so many of them wanted to see it happen. I found the revelation that the princess was released prior to the pig filming to be really powerful, and one of the best twists of any Black Mirror episode.
I also don't know why you're so critical of s2 e3 when it basically predicted the rise of someone like Donald Trump as a mascot of populist anger by tapping into anti-political/establishment sentiment.
Several episodes in S3 seemed to have less depth and I felt the writing quality did dip somewhat as it moved to netflix. Now that I think about it I think it's probably more due to the fact they had to work out 6 episodes instead of culling their ideas to produce the 3 best as they did with previous seasons. If they'd done that this season it would've been very similar in quality with San Junipero, Shut Up and Nosedive. Men against fire was particularly poorly executed and 'Playtest' was basically, 'technology' can be scary/dangerous!
I mean i really don't dislike any episode of black mirror, ofc some are weaker but in general the quality imo is always there on some lvl. So yeah i didn't miss what these two episodes were about, but the execution wasn't there imo. Especially s2e3 was just absurd. It's funny because i think you mentioned that season 3 isn't subtle enough (or was that somebody else?) but that episode had like no subtlety at all.
"Playtest" was about memory, what it means to be yourself, perception of reality while also executing a fairly good horror episode. There was no deep social commentary and if you think that is the only worthwhile topic then sure i can see why you were disappointed here. But imo that's not the only interesting aspect you can integrate in your episodes.
The only thing i didn't like about season three was that every episode could be cut by a bit and don't lose quality (even increase it that way), but i can live with that considering that the production value increased by a lot.