Wednesday, January 31, 2018

The Review: Black Mirror Season Three


Black Mirror Season Three 7/10

I finally got around to finishing season three of Black Mirror. The first season (click here to check that review out) was incredible even though it is hard to get people to watch since the first one is the most extreme I have seen so far. Seriously, people. No other episode is like that one! Season two was also really good (click here to check that one out) so I was really looking forward to it. I was not aware that there were six episodes and that made me nervous it turns out for good reason. Out of the six two of them were stinkers and now I am not in a rush to check out the fourth season. There will be some spoilers.

Nosedive is the first episode in this season and it had me going nuts. For people that do not now, I do not use cell phones and have never owned one. Not for any social or rebellious reasons. I just never needed one (except maybe twice a year when the bus decides to not show up). This stars Bryce Dallas Howard as Lacie Pound. In this world she has a rating of 4.2. What this is is a rating system that everyone has. The higher your rating the more things you do like get invites, better jobs, and just a general better social standing in the community. You can rate anyone and they can rate you which leads to everyone being super polite and phony with one another. You know that fake customer service voice you hear on the phone or the greeting when shopping? Imagine that everywhere you go because no one wants a bad rating. If you are even seen talking to someone with a low rating yours can be affected.

Lacie gets invited to a wedding of an old “friend” after she consulted someone to figure out how to raise her points. Now that she is invited she has to get the right dress, lose weight, and get a higher score to stay a bridesmaid. Her brother wants none of that shit and after she shouts at him as she heads to the wedding he gives her a bad score. It is all downhill from there for her. Missing flights, spilling coffee on people lowering her score more, and losing her shit at the wedding. The ending to this episode was pretty cool and how I would've reacted in that situation. This was my third favorite episode.

Playtest starts off pretty slow and uninteresting. I told Cam how close I was to just skipping this episode altogether because I was not interested in Wyatt Russell who plays Cooper. He just leaves his house one day and travels to London. He refuses to answer his moms phone calls and ends up running out of money after his credit card is stolen. He learns he can earn some quick money testing a new video game system which is convenient because a chick he has slept with writes for a video game magazine. He heads there and gets this implant with this cute little gopher game. He treats it as all silly but knowing what show this is I know I am about to get my mind fucked. Hard.

No cameras are allowed but he snaps a picture and sends it to his lady friend and is then taken to a huge mansion. This is where the real game begins. Everything is based on his own fears and phobias so a bully from when he was in school shows up all creepy looking. And huge spiders. Like...huge spiders. He is in contact with the lady back at the lab but that stops working and the visions become more intense. The lady he slept with shows up to save him and he thinks she is fake and they get into a fight where she rips her own face off. Cooper wants out but he can't seem to escape this place. Things continue to just get worse and worse and when I thought the episode was over it was not and it got worse. Then I thought it was over again and it was not. Then again and it was way worse than I thought. This was a really well written episode that seriously jacked my head up by the end. Just had that slow ass start.

Shut Up And Dance was so hard for me to watch it took over a week to finish. I mean this in the very best ways which is hard to explain. This episode just had me feeling all kinds of anxious and I kept stopping it every few minutes. This kid named Kenny played by Alex Lawther works at a restaurant and seems pretty damned jolly. He gets home one day and his sister used his laptop and infected it with a virus. He cleans out the computer and one night heads to his room to masturbate after getting excited watching TV. He comes back after washing up and sees a new email saying they saw what he did and sends him video of himself jacking off and give him instructions that he has to follow of else they will release the video to everyone in his contacts.

The next day at work they have him leave to meet someone. This scared guy gives him a cake. He is then told to take the cake and deliver it somewhere. He takes it to a hotel and has to give it to a guy who then gets a message from these same people as well with pictures. The guy says he has cheated on his wife and did some weird, kinky shit and can not have this information get out. I don't wanna say anymore about this episode in case some of you weirdos that read reviews before watching shows but if you watch any episode out of this season then you should watch this one. This one reinforced the fact that just when I know what this show is gonna do it turns out that I am wrong.

San Junipero is the shittiest episode out of this entire series and the first time I wanted to completely stop an episode. God, it felt so long. Apparently this was the most “acclaimed” episode of this season. Pffft. Balderdash, I say! Pish tosh! In 1987 this dorky girl named Yorkie played by Mackenzie Davis meets up with another one named Kelly played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Kelly is a party girl who has a guy trying to hook up with her. Kelly gets Yorkie to open up and they have the sex even though Yorkie says she is engaged. Kelly ends up vanishing and every week Yorkie tries to find her but can not until she spots her a while later.

Kelly does not want a relationship really and Yorkie does and it turns out that this is a virtual reality and I don't even give a fuck anymore. I really don't. I struggled to finish this episode. Once I knew they were in a virtual world I wish it had ended but it showed the real versions of them and then they reconciled but not really but really doing so but not. I wish this episode had been cut because the more episodes a series has the more chances they have to make a bullshit one like this.

Men Against Fire is an episode that has preachy moments but they handled it well enough that it didn't bother me or shout “We are making a statement!” This guy nicknamed Stripe played by Malachi Kirby is in a super high tech squad where they hunt these things called Roaches. They find about some being hidden by a Roach sympathizer and head to his place to get their exterminate on. They find them and Stripe ends up having to shoot one and knife the other to death. One of his teammates who really wants to kill them is jealous. During the knife fight one of the Roaches flashes a green light into his eyes. Now he is having weird dreams about his girlfriend who is one most attractive women I have ever seen in my life (her name is Loreece Harrison and she is either bisexual or a lesbian in real life). She looks like a kitty cat and that is all kinds of my jam.

After his weird dreams continue and it affects his performance he sees a shrink and physician who tell him that he is fine. He goes on another mission to kill some Roaches with his teammate and he can't because they are people. His partner on the other hand is slaughtering the shit out of them and they end up fighting with him knocking her out and escaping with a mother and child. This is another one I don't wanna ruin the ending to because I was like “I kinda knew that was gonna happen but hoped I was wrong but still knew...I think.” Great episode. Second favorite of the season.

Hated In The Nation was the longest episode and one of the least interesting ones in the three seasons I have watched. I couldn't even care enough to straight up hate it because I knew what they were trying to go for too early. This was for sure a being beaten over the head episode in regards to how people can affect one another through social media in the worst ways. A journalist that people hate ends up dead. An asshole rapper ends up being killed as well. Detectives end up finding out that these robotic bees are being used to kill people that are being hashtagged #DeathTo. This lady who pretended to piss on a monument is sentenced and by then detectives are able to race to her aid...and watch her die. If this was half as short it would have been fine but it dragged on after it should have wrapped and even a little bit more afterward. Fucking robot bees, people.

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