Okay... so after attempting and failing to re-watch The Waldo Movement- I did successfully re-watch White Christmas... and that's a kind of hard one to watch... BUT it is an amazing episode and it's just a great Black Mirror episode as a whole.
I would compare this episode to Black Museum. Both episodes have the same format where they have 3 different stories in one episode... and I would say the two of these episodes combined really highlight the moral grey areas of the show. White Bear is another one... and White and black make grey... so that's my theory on that. The episodes with White and Black in the titles highlight the moral grey areas of the show.
This episode also features technology that we've seen on other episodes of black mirror. There's a chip or something similar to The Grain in "The Entire History Of You" but in this version you can block people- which prevents you from seeing or hearing them and them from seeing or hearing you. It also has the "digital copy or Cookie" type of technology that we see in Black Museum and USS Callister... so I believe this is the first use of this technology.
And when I say "Moral Grey Areas" I mean that the main characters that these episodes focus on are not good people and they're all being punished for bad things... but does the punishment really fit the crime? ... let's see.
So Jon Hamm plays Matt... who is a consultant and kind of a sales person. In the first story he has a group webchat and helps this group of men talk to women... which is illegal and ends up leading to the death of one member of the group... sorry for the spoiler. The second story shows him controlling a digital copy of a woman. And in the third story we see he's really pretty great at that- and the police even recognized this and had him help get a confession out of the main character in the 3rd and final story.
I don't really want to get into the third story... but it's similar-ish to the first story. Things happen to this guy- he ends up killing one person and that causes another death... and at the end of the episode... the digital copy of this man is forced to live his life on a schedule of 1,000 years a minute in the same house that the crimes he committed were in.
Jon Hamm's character gets sentenced to a lifetime of being blocked from everyone. So... he can never see or hear anyone again... for illegally helping a man get a girl and failing to report a murder.
So... these punishments are incredibly harsh... and inhumane. I find it kind of interesting that there's no real question of innocence in the case of these 2 men... or with Victoria from White Bear even- but in Black Museum there's a big question as to the innocence of Clayton. And I think its interesting because these punishments are terrible even if someone is guilty. I don't know... I have little sympathy for anyone that does anything bad... and the first time I saw this I thought "well,okay." And when we get to Shut Up and Dance... I have even less sympathy...and I might not even be fully reviewing that episode because that one is difficult to talk about... so I might just talk about the tone of that episode...
Anyway... it's 3:21 in the morning right now... I had 3 venti lattes today... I don't know if I make any sense at this point... but I hope you liked this recap... and I'm proud to say that I have blog posts coming up at least till Wednesday next week... so there's a lot of stuff... there's even a story post... so yeah! Hope you like it!
Byeee!
-Shannon
I would compare this episode to Black Museum. Both episodes have the same format where they have 3 different stories in one episode... and I would say the two of these episodes combined really highlight the moral grey areas of the show. White Bear is another one... and White and black make grey... so that's my theory on that. The episodes with White and Black in the titles highlight the moral grey areas of the show.
This episode also features technology that we've seen on other episodes of black mirror. There's a chip or something similar to The Grain in "The Entire History Of You" but in this version you can block people- which prevents you from seeing or hearing them and them from seeing or hearing you. It also has the "digital copy or Cookie" type of technology that we see in Black Museum and USS Callister... so I believe this is the first use of this technology.
And when I say "Moral Grey Areas" I mean that the main characters that these episodes focus on are not good people and they're all being punished for bad things... but does the punishment really fit the crime? ... let's see.
So Jon Hamm plays Matt... who is a consultant and kind of a sales person. In the first story he has a group webchat and helps this group of men talk to women... which is illegal and ends up leading to the death of one member of the group... sorry for the spoiler. The second story shows him controlling a digital copy of a woman. And in the third story we see he's really pretty great at that- and the police even recognized this and had him help get a confession out of the main character in the 3rd and final story.
I don't really want to get into the third story... but it's similar-ish to the first story. Things happen to this guy- he ends up killing one person and that causes another death... and at the end of the episode... the digital copy of this man is forced to live his life on a schedule of 1,000 years a minute in the same house that the crimes he committed were in.
Jon Hamm's character gets sentenced to a lifetime of being blocked from everyone. So... he can never see or hear anyone again... for illegally helping a man get a girl and failing to report a murder.
So... these punishments are incredibly harsh... and inhumane. I find it kind of interesting that there's no real question of innocence in the case of these 2 men... or with Victoria from White Bear even- but in Black Museum there's a big question as to the innocence of Clayton. And I think its interesting because these punishments are terrible even if someone is guilty. I don't know... I have little sympathy for anyone that does anything bad... and the first time I saw this I thought "well,okay." And when we get to Shut Up and Dance... I have even less sympathy...and I might not even be fully reviewing that episode because that one is difficult to talk about... so I might just talk about the tone of that episode...
Anyway... it's 3:21 in the morning right now... I had 3 venti lattes today... I don't know if I make any sense at this point... but I hope you liked this recap... and I'm proud to say that I have blog posts coming up at least till Wednesday next week... so there's a lot of stuff... there's even a story post... so yeah! Hope you like it!
Byeee!
-Shannon
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