Black Mirror, Series 2, Episode 2

[poliphilo]

White Bear is hard to talk about because there's a big shock about three quarters of the way through and I don't want to diminish the effect of it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. All I'm going to say is that thinking about it afterwards kept me awake and that's not something that happens very often with a TV show. (Usually thinking about them afterwards puts me to sleep).

Comments

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I found it a little heavy-handed and over-done, to be honest. I mean yes, I'd prefer to live in a world without either exploitative reality TV or mob justice, but I felt Brooker was yelling at his audience that we are just as bad as the society depicted, and I didn't agree. Then again, I also saw people on Twitter complaining that they were seeing a lot of people saying they didn't get it or understand what was going on towards the end, so maybe I am wrong about how unsubtle the 'message' was.

This was only the second episode of Black Mirror I've seen, actually, and I felt much the same way about the previous one I saw - the one with the Prime Minister and the pig last year. I only watched this one, in fact, because so many people had said that last week's episode was really good. Do you think it's worth hunting down on iPlayer, or am I unlikely to enjoy it either if I wasn't particularly wowed by this one?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course - just realised it won't be on iPlayer because it is a Channel 4 programme! But I think there is 4oD, and I may also be able to get to it via my Sky catch-up service, so the question still stands. :-)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If you didn't like White Bear you probably won't like the first one either. Brooker is a very strong flavour. On the other hand the first one was subtler and less bludgeoning and probably the best thing he's done.

[mrwaggish.livejournal.com]

I agree, Be Right Back was remarkably good and affecting. I didn't think he was capable of that level of depth, and we both found White Bear very disappointing in comparison. The arbitrariness of the whole setup--it could have been *any* horrific situation, and the "signal" was pure contrivance--was pretty unsatisfying. I was certain from an early point that she was "bad" in some way (I figured she was an ex-hunter or had watched her kid be killed by hunters or something), so waiting for that reveal just got a bit tiresome. And then I thought, "They've been doing it over and over," and had 15 minutes of seeing that play out too....

In contrast, I thought Utopia was strong and surprising all the way through, immensely well done.

Re: Without

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Didn't she shoot him with the shot gun?

Only of course she didn't really because- as we found out- it was all play-acting.