BLACK MIRROR EP 2: PLAYTEST

What are some of your grievances with this episode, Sup Forums? Just wondering. I thought it was great but had an ending that didn't make much sense if u think about it for more than 2 seconds. Just want to hear other opinions.

who is this cum drum

Are we supposed to believe that he dreamed that entire scenario of the haunted house + flying back to America and then the ending with his mom in a matter of 4 seconds? Look, I understand time compression with dreams, but that's fucking stupid.

it was .04 seconds i think, and yeah I don't know, reminded me of the Matrix, did u have a problem with Neo downloading all of kung fu in 3 seconds?

I found the main character annoying, a couple of lines were really cringy(ie that Harry Potter line), like all episodes from this season the ending was bad, the dreams within dreams thing was hackneyed, how the company handled his death made me question how the experiment would be legal in the first place, the underlying message about the episode(SHOULD HAVE CALLED YOUR MOM, BRO) was simplistic and the consequence for the character's actions were disproportionate.

Time is relative cucklord.

It was the only episode with white male as a main character so obviously it had to be shit.

I don't know but they got a really charismatic guy for the role. They could've easily picked a fully fledged numale """gamer""" but he fit the role just fine.

How do you know him dying is real though? What if his biggest fear is not being able to talk to his mom again? What if his biggest fear is the scenarios never ending and him just being doomed to 'get pulled out' over and over?

There was no clear indication that that was the case. The final scene had him in a body bad and being logged as dead, with no ambiguous element to suggest he could still be in the simulation.

The hostess told him to turn his phone off on the plane because phone interference. He dies to phone interference.

it had some good bits but was one of the worst general episodes

the good bits:
> + I liked the 3DS style cards and whack-a-mole game
> + good foreshadowing of the spider motif early on
> + 'the mushroom' like super mario. And the nip producer-- a basic knowledge of video games is rare enough among writers

the shit:
> - the American accent was fucking unbearably bad.
> - The phony "total recall" style endings. very lazy
> - the guy's international travel at the start had no relation to the story whatsoever. Would have made more sense if he were a videogame playing shutin
> - WHAAAAAAA TURN IT OOFFFFF WHAAAAAA. That shit is just screaming, not horror.

>made me question how the experiment would be legal in the first place

It obviously wasn't.

>the underlying message about the episode(SHOULD HAVE CALLED YOUR MOM, BRO) was simplistic

I wouldn't call that the message, it's just dark humor/irony that the show uses a lot.

>I found the main character annoying,

This.

I thought it was great up until the triple reveal which is just bad writing
right before that where he's potatoing out on the floor with alzeimer's was a solid episode even if it ended with the "learning tech got out of control" trope

Alright so since there's been a shitload of Black Mirror threads I decided to give season 3 a go (since I watched the first two ages ago and after a great first season, it looked like it was only going downhill).

I just finished the first episode and it was terrible. I absolutely hate plots that can be summed up in one sentence, especially when you can predict what's gonna happen in the first 5 minutes (of an 1-hour episode, mind you). Do the next episodes get better or should I not even bother?

Main character was supposed to be mentally retarded, I think, so the intended message is that a retard could possibly write a Black Mirror episode.

I've only seen 3, but I liked 2 and 3 more than 1

Should have ended with him finding his mom having Alzheimer's and then seeing a spider again, never having any fucking clue if he's still in the simulation and not ever being able to trust reality.

>the American accent was fucking unbearably bad.

You mean Cooper? Cause the actor is from the US

>the guy's international travel at the start had no relation to the story whatsoever. Would have made more sense if he were a videogame playing shutin

His entire trip was just him running away from his fear of confronting his mother, which tied in with the whole "facing your fears and coming out stronger" idea of the second half of the episode (until the end, where they fucked everything up just for the sake of having ANOTHER twist) And really? You wanted his character to just be "HAHA I LOVE VIDEOGAMES"? That would have been horrible.

this. would have come across like a rip off of Enemy, though

1 is the worst episode from this season. 6 and 3 are the best, skip to those and if you don't like them, you can safely drop the show.

Alright cheers, good thing I have the whole season downloaded already

i would give san junipero a shot though. its among the top tier

>3 is the best
the fuck? dont listen to this guy,

>the American accent was fucking unbearably bad
He sounds like your average East Coast Reddit user, his personality felt like that too
>the guy's international travel at the start had no relation to the story whatsoever. Would have made more sense if he were a videogame playing shutin
We not only got to know the character, we also saw some events (like him being asked to turn off his phone) being referenced in the horror game.
>> - WHAAAAAAA TURN IT OOFFFFF WHAAAAAA. That shit is just screaming, not horror.
What the fuck? He literally died facing fucked up shit mixed with personal fears, what the fuck would you expect other than screaming? The protagonist isn't supposed to be the one who scares you, you know? Also,
>Black Mirror
>Horror

the ending fucking ruined this episode, literally the "it was all a dream" cliche

like he imagined everything, even the gopher was fake, he never even met the japanese guy

the device could have been camera for all we fucking know, we never got to see it actually used

worst episode of the entire show

Check the clock in the interview toom. From the time he enters that room to the time the Thiqq black lady levels and ten comes back it doesn't change.

I can't remember if it's visible when he's getting bagged up.

Hey as long as I won't get something as terrible as the first episode again I'll probably end up watching everything

>the protagonist isn't supposed to be the one who scares you
lol this. can't believe it needed to be said.

All the beginning stuff was necessary, it needed character development so the horror game made sense.

Nothing wrong with being an east coast reddit user, i think the 'everyman' character worked in spades in this episode.

>literally the "it was all a dream" cliche
wow i never thought about it like that

just because he imagined it, doesn't make it any less real. Didnt you read Harry Potter?

the last time he woke up should have been in the japanese guy's office. Don't know why they went all the way back besides having the 'call your mom' dark irony moment

>I found the main character annoying, a couple of lines were really cringy
yeah, he was a total faggot
but i guess he had to be so all of the rambling exposition when he is in the house alone makes sense

so, this means it was still the simulation? his greatest fear became dying from the test, mixed with the guilt of never calling his mom before he potentially died made it come back to the last time she called him. So, if the simulation did only take a couple seconds, then the real people just haven't reacted yet, and his brain will just think he's dead until they pull him out?

Question is, if you die in the game world, do you die here?

>Cause the actor is from the US
he must have lived in Englande, EU for years because he sounds like a total douche

>he was a total faggot
>a total faggot who was able to sleep with a 8/10 after having an adult conversation in a public place

Your envy is showing.

>why isn't the main character a mumbling introvert like me

10 minutes left in this episode. this guy isnt a good actor, hes overdoing it like crazy.

>Your envy is showing.
heh, funny you should say this, when actually it is your envy, that is showing

No, they do a pretty obvious audio cue that everything goes fucked pretty much as soon as he puts the device on the first time. IIRC his voice slows for a fraction of a second and the sound stutters.

Uhh, you realize that this is a tv show right?

It was a good episode.

My only grievance is that as an autist that plays video games regularly, Cooper's reactions to things seemed really fake and in genuine.

Not to mention VR is a flop and whatever the game dev in this episode was making would flop even harder, which really ruined my immersion.

The main character was terribly obnoxious.

One time I had a terrible acid trip and boy was it like this. Being confused as fuck for about 10 minutes but seemed like hours, to them realise what was actually going on for about 20 seconds and then fall back into confusion and hallucination. I just wanteed it to end but i went on for about 7 hours in total.
Had to have a long shower after that night.

>Are we supposed to believe that he dreamed that entire scenario of the haunted house + flying back to America and then the ending with his mom in a matter of 4 seconds?

It was in 0.04 seconds, actually, and his brain was being overclocked to fuck by the mushroom thing. She said that every area of his brain lit up simultaneously, which is something that normally can't happen, so yeah he was experiencing an unnaturally large shitload of things all at once.

It's not the most original idea ever, but it works better than just having it all be a test.

>the mushroom thing
Maybe it's just that made me think about it, but I wonder if that was intentional. I had a shroom trip once where I was travelling through the synapses of my brain and seeing them firing all at once, convinced I was going to fry my brain and basically end up like the guy did.

i hate bad trips man.

i had this one where i felt like i was falling backwards through time sorta into this pit, i kept having to redo shit i already did, like my childhood, and every time when i got JUUUUST old enough to realize what was happening, it started all over again, stuck in a loop, fuck man. i dont remember it too clearly but it felt miserable.

He's Kurt Russell's son dipshit

how fast your neurons fire isn't relative

nah its probably unrealistic, but its pretty freaky, and its sci fi after all, just accept it.

oh, i missed that, hm...maybe your illegal torrent stuttered.

You guys should look up "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge".

There's no real cautionary tale to it. It's not any sort of extrapolation of where the world is going based on current treads. It's not a good "what if" story. There's no moral quandary to this. It's just some guy's dying dream as his phone somehow interferes with AR tech.

It feels like they had a fun idea of "what if a horror game could tailor itself to you? Surely our personal fears are greater than any monster", but then they couldn't think of any good way to frame it. So in the end they just said fuck it and didn't frame it at all. They just threw out "I dunno, technology is scary. It can all fuck with each other and then you see some spooky shit and die or something".

It's a fun idea wrapped up lazily.

I don't think the VR caused all those hallucinations. It was just his brain processing death as best it could, maybe it released DMT or something. You know, a riff on a much more famous story

Honestly, that consideration makes it all even worse for me. If that's the case, why is this even an episode of Black Mirror at all? What relevance does the near future stuff have on it at all?

Guy was fucking obnoxious. Not even sure it was intentional, he just seems like a superficial actor. The episode was not very interesting either.

I wouldn't say it was "the message" of the episode, but yeah it was corny and weird. Would have been much better to keep the amnesia thing going, could make for bitter irony.

>the underlying message about the episode(SHOULD HAVE CALLED YOUR MOM, BRO)
Actually the underlying message was DON'T BREAK NDAs

Actually it was "turn off your god damn phone every once in a while you insufferable faggot".

Just a framing device. I don't think it was meant to be anything more than a horror episode set in the Black Mirror universe and it worked as that. You initially brought up that it wasn't a cautionary tale but not every Black Mirror episode is. The National Anthem isn't. It's a straightforward thriller.

I liked a lot of it, the lead was annoying and the "mental" scenarios that he goes through are more interesting than the "real" plot. Also what is everyone's thoughts on the girl, was she in on it???

so that hallucination of Sonja was telling him the truth then about everyone having died who took part in the experiment?

Just realized that was OP's Pic, my bad...

>that was only less than a second mr.changamoto
>oh dear gawd baby buddha this technorogy is too powarfu

this season was disappointing for the most part

this episode was dumb

Where did this meme about BM episodes having messages come from anyway? I can only think of one or two that actually have any kind of moral. Was the moral of Shut Up and Dance "don't be a pedo"?

time is relative to consciousness you underage nigger

Black Mirror is garbage for the millennial crowd who have never been exposed to philosophy or real literature.

Eps 3 and 4 were very strong though.

cover your webcam

the lesson was dont trust a bunch of hackers on the web
ie trollface

He's Kurt Russell's son, of course he's charismatic.

I'm a philosophy PhD and I enjoy the show.

It's not morals as much as a warning about what we could do with technology and how fucked up it could be. Shut Up and Dance is looking at the current state of technology and saying that someone could effectively hold dozens of people hostage and make them do all this crazy shit without ever being present. It's a situation not possible before smartphones and webcams.

It had 3 endings and each one was worse than the last

>millennial crowd who have never been exposed to philosophy or real literature.

Not really, considering every episode has the layout of a short story. (Early foreshadowing of future events, bare-bones backstory, gimmick plot with clear moral)

Maybe you're the one who hasn't been exposed to any real literature.

It's just the modern day Twilight Zone with decent production values.

I think they just wanted to get across that once you've been in VR you'll always question the reality you're in.

Not an argument.

Cyber bullying

That's some junior high school bullshit.

i forget

which ones where which?

i liked the ones with mckenzie davis and the one with the roaches, those i liked

the one with the texts was dumb

i kind of like the first one with pawg BDH because it reminded me of the kind of future in the movie zero theorem

the last one i kinda liked but i guessed what the cause of the death was in the first five minutes (i actually did with all the episodes and was right every time, they were pretty obvious) and i thought the it was kind of silly but idk maybe somewhat plausible and it had that babe from trainspotting all grown up with i thought was cool

the gamer one was just not my favorite

the gamer one and the text one are tied up for lamest and least enjoyable for me

HEAVEN IS A PLACE ON EARTH

>the text one
You mean Shut up and Dance? Or Hated in the Nation?

All you said was a baseless statement and resulted to ad homenim to do so.

I didn't expect much of a reply though.

did i say tweets?

no i said texts

texts not tweets

so yea "shup up and nigger"

Stefan Molymeme pls go

I kinda expected them to do something about SJW and language policing and all that. Maybe next season?

They had the opportunity to look at that in ep 1 and ep 6, but the didn't. Kind of disappointing.

Maybe they considered it, but backed off because you can't tell a speculative fiction story about things currently happening. s2e3 wouldn't have worked today because everyone would have just said it was lazily mocking the Trump campaign.

Hated in the nation, it was a critique of twitter callout culture and online mob mentality

You guys have realised that he never went to the spooky house? He never left the office they used to install the mushroom.

He gets chipped, he sends a text to the britslut switching his phone on in the process, the blick admin woman starts uploading the thing whilst that happens he gets a call from his mum scrambling the whole thing frying his brain.

From the perspective of the Black Woman she implanted him, started the upload the phone call comes in and he just starts screaming and then dies, the rest was just what his brain made up.

On top of that the time between him arriving at his mothers realising hes like a ghost is the same time point that they cut back to the real world, hes in that chair screaming mum over and over for a good few seconds, everything that led up to that point, the manner too the flight all of it up to being in his mothers bedroom took a fraction of one second, he would of been stuck in that state after he starts screaming at his mother for years.

>You guys have realised that he never went to the spooky house? He never left the office they used to install the mushroom.
yea no fucking shit, i stopped reading there

thanks for your unneeded analysis, autismo

Did the guy act in any films or shows?

They made England 100% diverse.

Americans do this to us too. I've seen too many black women with English accents on American shows. It's annoying, desu.

How come he knew what the Jap looked and sounded like without ever meeting him?

Really? It came off as a very cheesy overly happy clichéd type thing too me. I half expected the black character to drive that car of the cliff dragging the white one with her into the next life thelma and louise style, the whole choosing to upload to the cloud type deal ruined it for me, I mean she had all these convictions for not going on and just said fuck em.

I felt that it appealed to heavily to the SJW's with gay marriage eternal same sex love shit, interracial relationship etc, there was no tragedy.

Legit plot hole

Moral of the story: Don't break your ndas

How did he understand Japanese in one layer of his dreams?

Japanese language confirmed for neurolanguage.

the girl he was with literally showed him a magazine with the guys face taking up the entire front cover. and someone said the guy had a terrible, ridiculous japanese accent when he was talking. someone who actually speaks japanese needs to tell us if he was actually saying japanese words that made sense or was just saying random japanese sounding sounds.

So many of you faggots seem to have missed that entirely from reading this thread.