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Charlie Brooker Black Mirror

Technology turned us into monsters who torture a girl every day and laugh about it.

Dehumanizing.

Was it a life sentence?
 
And lo, another story where you could remove the technology...

Seriously that wasn't bad, it was just...well not much of anything really. I just sat there thinking "What is Brooker's point?" I may have detested The History of us last year, but at least there was an idea behind it.

And, oh look it's another Brooker Mary Sue, the angry man who's successful and oh it's so horrible to be him. Seriously does Brooker want us to feel sorry for him? And the short hand for the candidates was frankly offensive, I'm surprised Monroe didn't wear a smoking jacket and the Labour woman wasn't on an old bike and wearing a flat cap.

One redeeming moment was Monroe's throw away line "It built these roads..." which almost made the rest worthwhile...almost.

Oh and then the CIA turned up...and then Waldo took over the world...er??

Seriously I think if there's a 3rd series Konnie Huq should write it given she was involved in writing the best episode of the six by far...
 
I just found Waldo to be obnoxious and unfunny, and I'm not sure if that was intentional or not. It's a timely story considering it aired on the same night that a populist anti-politics comedian won 25% of the vote in the Italian election, but like Starkers, I don't know what the episode was trying to say. I guess the message is that the world sucks and any attempt to change it will still suck. Which is kinda the underlying theme of Black Mirror, I suppose.
 
I echo the sentiments about Waldo, it didn't grab me at all and lacked pretty well everything the other five episodes have done so well. There was just so little point to it and the end was hopelessly exaggerated. CB also didn't avoid making one of the rants in this one sound like any other than his own voice which took me out of the story....well, that and 4oD's constant buffering.

Does anyone remember when 4oD was good?
 
The abrubt, leftfield Blade Runner-esque police state ending was a bit shite really. The other two Black Mirror episodes were farfetched but more creepy and thought provoking.

Count me in on the Waldo episode being one of the weakest instalments so-far, though it has some redeemable aspects to it like real life immitating Waldo and to me it partially comes across as a commentary on angry internet bitching 'n moaning.
 
Just got caught up. I'd say in White Bear the idea was mob rule and the fact people will watch some horrible things when detached from them by screens. And with The Waldo Moment I think it's more about how good ideas and messages can be hijacked when people are listening to those in power and the media.

Think about all the stuff the Murdoch press pushes that basically just benefits him and his rich and powerful friends, yet the average Joe laps it up because it's in the Sun.

As for Waldo being obnoxious and unfunny, well isn't that any and all of Leigh Francis' characters, including the bear character that pulled fake interviews on celebs? He is still popular though.
 
White bear was painfully obvious though. see, we're as bad as she is, do you see, in fact we're worse! But it was still loads better than Waldo...waldo wouldn't have been out of place in the 1st season of Torchwood...although it would have dragged the general quality down.

Hopefully if there's a 3rd series Brooker won't write them all...
 
15 Million Merits and White Bear are superlative and some of the best television from the past few years. Both Episode 3s are shit though.
 
Starkers said:
White bear was painfully obvious though. see, we're as bad as she is, do you see, in fact we're worse! But it was still loads better than Waldo...waldo wouldn't have been out of place in the 1st season of Torchwood...although it would have dragged the general quality down.

Hopefully if there's a 3rd series Brooker won't write them all...
Click to expand...

Waldo was apparently based on something they did back in Nathan Barley. I thought it was a fairly decent point though about how a good message can be hijacked by popularity then that popularity can be hijacked itself. And how voting for gimmicks and protest votes can do more harm than good (taken to stupid extremes of course) unless you're voting for someone who actually has decent policies.

White Bear left plenty of questions but that's the trouble with anthologies, you don't get to dig deeper in to the hows and whys.
 
Well I won't keep banging on about it, but the line about the system building these roads was the only bit of Waldo I liked. Maybe if Waldo had been subtler rather than just a really offensive cartoon character it might have worked.

White bear I had major problems with, oddly I think the first one was the one I liked best.
 
Surprised at this given the drop off in quality between series 1 and 2, and even then it wasn’t like the first series blew me away. Frankly of six episodes only one was brilliant (notably the one Konnie Huq co-wrote) still I will probably watch it, just because it’s nice to have an anthology series like that out there. I just hope they tinker with the format for these four, and maybe not have Brooker writing all of them. Also it’d be nice if the odd one wasn’t utterly depressing and nihilistic. Yes Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits had downer endings, but they also had episodes that were about hope and beauty.
 
He's certainly done very well for himself. I'm tempted to finally give Touching Cloth a go when it comes back...
 
You're just there for the Newblood. Touch of Cloth is actually pretty good, much sillier than his Black Mirror stuff.
 
It's interesting because this isn't the case of Netflix resurrecting something that's been canned. My understanding is that Channel 4 would have been quite happy to keep making it.
 
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