Summary: Phoebe spends a weekend with Frank Jr, but it doesn't go as well as she hoped since they are completely different. Joey builds an entertainment center in the apartment to Chandler's chagrin. Ross makes a list of 5 celebrities he is allowed to sleep with.
The Good: Joey and Chandler are really funny here. Though their storyline really doesn't equate to much, it's really good humour and provides the most consistent laughs throughout. Things get particularly funny when Joey starts using his new skills to help Monica retile her bathroom floor, which felt completely in line with Joey's simplistic character. Ross' celebrity story is fine comedy to fill out the C-story of an episode and led to a really good final moment where we see Ross get lightly humiliated for some good laughs. The Bad: I thought Phoebe's story was really weak sadly. Frank Jr's weirdness can be funny at times but it felt like there was too much focus on that instead of on the actual story which in this case should be more important. The ending wasn't very good either and it was hard to really buy into their final moment as some kind of bond. Best Moment: Joey breaking Monica's floor and trying to get out of the job was hilarious. Character of the Episode: It's tough between Joey and Chandler who were equally hilarious, but I'll go with Joey. Conclusion: A weaker main story, a hilarious B-story and a solid C-story makes this one of the show's most uneven episodes. It's a weaker episode for sure, but I can't say it's bad. Score: 65
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Summary: Lacie lives in a community where your social status is judged by a rating from 1 to 5 which is given by other people based off of how much they like you. Lacie is a 4.2 but needs to be a 4.5 to get a house she wants and she needs approval from high 4s. She goes to attend a wedding which will have a bunch of other high 4s, but things go wrong and her rating steadily falls as everything goes to hell. She begins to realize that the ratings won't make her happy. She arrives at the wedding as a 1.1 and gives her speech solely to embarrass her friend. She is taken to jail where she feels more free than ever before and properly connects with a guy in another cell.
The Good: This community is a very frightening concept, and is a great social commentary on social media taking over our lives and us becoming a slave to our devices. Everything is this community is so fake, from the pastel look, to the interactions of the people living in it. There are some really great scenes which really highlight the fake nature of this episode, like the conversation Lacie has with Beth in the elevator which is all about what they post on social media and as no real heart to it. It's a horribly uncomfortable atmosphere which got me emotionally engaged just from the concept. Furthermore, the idea that the higher ranked you are, the better you are, is insane and often it seems to be completely inaccurate as Susan (1.4) comes off as a much better person than Naomi (4.8). Additionally I love how it's implied that when talking with a high 4, it doesn't matter what you do, because they can rank you low and nobody bats an eye, but it's an awful thing to rank them low because it will lower your popularity. Essentially you are being judged for the conversation and they just aren't at all. A great example is Lacie's conversation with a high 4 in the elevator, where this high 4 makes absolutely no attempt for conversation. While most episodes of Black Mirror tend to disturb or leave you extremely tense, this episode instead lets you feel how it would be like to live in this world. In doing so, the episode causes you to feel intense anxiety throughout, while you hope for Lacie to not have too hard of a fall in the episode. The episode is called "Nosedive", and by now we have been accustomed to the horrors of this show, so there is a huge anxiety created in the first half hour as we know that Lacie's fall is coming but we really don't want so many terrible things to happen to her. Of course it has to happen though, and I think that Lacie's fall was handled pretty well and offered some really horrific encounters, like the man listening to porn at the charging station and the terrifying security guard who just smiled through everything as Lacie went through a pretty rough moment. It was uncomfortable to watch of course, and it all led wonderfully to a climax when Lacie arrives at the wedding to finally give the speech she prepared so hard for and ends up doing it to embarrass Naomi and provide some subtle insight to the high 4s on how life is so fake that nothing is real anymore and nothing really matters. The story was really good, but it wouldn't have worked without good motives for Lacie. I thought the motives given were excellent, as we see Lacie wanting to buy a really expensive house. Why? Not because she wanted it, but because the house seemed to promise something real for her. Living in this world without any real human interaction has created a loneliness inside Lacie who longs for something real, and her entire trip to increase her fake social rank is all to get her to something real. It's a great motive because it's relatable and understandable, and it makes sense why her motives led to her downfall. I think that the title "Nosedive" isn't entirely accurate for this episode. Sure Lacie had her rating fall pretty hard, but was it really a fall for her character? I don't think so, and I'm very happy to say that for once it actually feels like a happy ending on this show. Lacie was looking for something real, that was what she wanted, and by falling so hard, it actually led her to exactly what she wanted as she sat in her prison cell, free from the rating system. In the end, she finally found something real as she got to talk to a guy without the crutches of the world she lives in, allowing for the most organic conversation we have seen in the entire episode. The Bad: This episode was notably longer and I think it really does feel its length. The episode tends to drag on more than others, and is hurt by the fact that it doesn't have as many cathartic scenes or devastating twists as every other episode. The episode gives a great message and tells a nice story of character transformation, but it's missing that level of emotion that Black Mirror usually hits in every episode. The episode does feel anticlimactic. There was so much anxiety built up in the first half hour, and honestly there is never really any pay-off for that. Compared to every other character's story, Lacie's suffering is extremely tame and as such I feel unsatisfied when the episode built to such a foreboding ending, only for there to really not be anything that bad at all. I wasn't a fan of Susan's character who was used to spark a change in Lacie. The wise old sage cliché has been done to death and I wasn't a fan of seeing it here. Furthermore, it's implied that you can still have a successful life with a lower rating, so why aren't there more people who just don't care about the ratings system who live their own life. For a system like this to work, everyone needs to comply and that's really hard to buy into, especially when it seems like there aren't any people around who just ignore the system. The Unknown: Prison seems to have more freedom than the actual world. I wonder if people actually go to prison to free themselves from the ratings system? Best Moment: The airport scene was really great. The staff was about as unhelpful as they get and their fake happiness was just annoying. And when Lacie lets out some emotion instead of her fake cheer, she is immediately downvoted by everyone. If that's not a metaphor for how society judges people, I don't know what is. It's really painful to see that success in this world is based off of how other people judge you, and I think this scene best demonstrated the horrors of that. Character of the Episode: Lacie. Conclusion: This was a really good episode with a solid story. I don't think it reached the heights of the best Black Mirror episodes, as this felt very safe and by the numbers, but it was still a really great episode to watch. Score: 70 Summary: Matt and Joe are in a house of sorts where they have worked for 5 years. Joe has hardly talked and Matt wants him to talk. Matt reveals his past and how he provided a service to a boy named Harry to help coach him to be more romantic. Matt guides Harry but witnesses the girl harry going after murdering him and committing suicide. He tells another story about his day job where he creates copies of people called cookies which do work for them using technology. Joe opens up and reveals that he had a girlfriend who he loved. She got pregnant and they had a fight which resulted in Joe being "blocked". Beth eventually dies but her child survives. Joe goes to visit and discovers Beth had an affair. He kills Beth's dad and causes the death of the child. It's revealed that Matt was sent to get a confession from Joe's cookie, and that he was arrested for not reporting a murder. Both men are given cruel fates.
The Good: This was a busy episode, but like almost all Black Mirror episodes, it had phenomenal writing and extremely powerful moments which left me awestruck by the end of the episode. This episode was essentially divided into three stories, so I'll start with the first (Matt and Harry). Matt's job of offering Harry romantic advice was very creative and led to a lot of funny moments which kept things light early on. I enjoyed the portrayal of Harry and the creepiness of the idea of Matt watching his every move. Of course things got weird really suddenly which led to the shock of Harry's death. The scenes leading up to that were written very well, getting the most out of the brutal twist that Jennifer was suicidal, hence her silence. I love the way that the scenes were written to have Harry's conversation accidentally convince Jennifer to commit suicide and also kill him with her. There was a really uncomfortable tension through these scenes and I think it paid off very well. The second part of the episode was focused on introducing us to cookies. I thought this part didn't have much of a story to get us interested in, but essentially just served to bring us up to speed on a complex piece of technology which would become important later on. The scenes weren't great but they were definitely passable and necessary, considering the twist later on. I love the concept of cookies and I think it was a creative take on how far people would be willing to go with technology to make their lives easier. While the first 2 parts were fine, it was the third part, the longest part, which had the main climax and impact of the episode. Joe's tragic story is really painful to watch, made worse because he seems like such a good person who was thrust into an awful situation and made mistakes. Pretty similar to some of the other main characters on this show. The story of Joe and Beth was tragic at first glance as Beth seemingly ditched Joe for no real reason and was completely indecent to him. I was ready to put Beth's huge overreaction into The Bad, but the twist later on made Beth's decision to cut out Joe more understandable, though it does make her character much more detestable. The sad part of this episode wasn't so much what happened, but it was how Joe reacted. He couldn't let go of Beth, he had nothing to move on to and was just stuck trying to get some of the happiness he lost and also see his daughter. It's easy to empathize with somebody who just holds on to their past life, and this episode uses this fact brilliantly, ensuring that we relate with Joe in every step of his story. Then of course there is the episode's big twist that Joe's daughter isn't actually his. That twist was so powerful and I'm glad to say that I didn't predict it since I had expected the show to go a different route. The impactful realization that Joe essentially spent the past 6 years of his life longing for something which didn't exist hits hard, and it's easy to understand how Joe's entire world completely fell apart around him. Then in typical Black Mirror fashion, Joe flies off the rails and that results in the death of two innocent people, which is revealed in painful fashion and leads to Joe suffering even more as he feels absurd amounts of guilt over what he just did. While Joe's story is easily the most cathartic bit in the episode, it isn't really the primary focus of the episode. Instead, the primary focus is once more about technology and how it destroys people. This time the piece of technology which is used in this case is "blocking". Of course we all know what blocking is in terms of social media and texting, but in this episode we get to see what blocking is like in real life and how it actually worsens problems instead of fixing them. Had Beth just told Joe what happened, it seems likely that this awful chain of events wouldn't have happened, and furthermore Joe's life wouldn't have been spent chasing after a shadow in total pain. The fate of both the main characters is pretty brutal too, creating the message that when technology can be used to do anything, we will lose every ounce of mercy and understanding. Matt and Joe committed crimes, but they weren't exactly the worst crimes in the world. Compared to what Victoria did in "White Bear", these were pretty tame, and yet both men suffered a fate worse than what happened to Victoria. Joe is forced to spend an eternity doing absolutely nothing and Matt is forced to live out the rest of his days without interacting to anybody else ever. Cruel and painful stuff. The Bad: The "legal block" seemed ridiculous to me. Surely there would be a trial about that and it would be treated like a restraining order. Instead it seems that a block can just be legalized immediately which is really poor and I can't imagine that happening to this world. Cookie Joe not remembering his life in the snow globe was inconsistent. How did they make Joe forget that he was a cookie and how did they transfer the cookie without raising any questions? Furthermore, how did they seemingly control his memories? These things need to be explained. The fates of Matt and Joe both feel way too cruel. I understand that it's the point of the episode, but I had great difficulty buying into the idea that they would just be allowed to have such a terrible fate. This show does a really poor job portraying women. Once more the women character is utterly detestable and is cheating. I would like to see some more likeable women on this show, as this is the second example in just 7 episodes where a women has cheated. I found this episode to be very similar to "The Entire History of You" with Joe's story. Joe not being able to let go mirrored Liam's paranoia, the child twist was very similar, and of course both characters' fates being away from their loved ones was also similar. I would have liked some more creativity to make this episode feel more original. The Unknown: What was the sound Joe heard in the snow globe? There is likely an answer to this which was written in expertly, but I couldn't figure it out. How did Greta's cookie not remember that Greta wanted to buy it? The memory thing is really inconsistent. I noticed a lot of references to previous episodes of the show (The Hot Shots program, the song from "Fifteen Million Merits", the White Bear symbol, etc.) so could that mean this is meant to be a sort of connected universe? That could be exciting to explore. Best Moment: Joe's confession was the most powerful bit of the episode. It's so hard to not feel bad for him. Character of the Episode: Joe. Conclusion: This was yet another expertly written and brutally affecting episode of Black Mirror. This show continues to impress, though there were some holes in this one which lowered its score. Still, season 2 ended with another masterpiece. I think season 2 (minus "The Waldo Moment") was actually better than season 1. The writing was improved by a lot and the episodes affected me even more than the ones from season 1. The only flaw was "The Waldo Moment". If you remove that episode, this season's score would be so much higher. Either way, I'm excited to watch the next season because this episode made one thing clear: "The Waldo Moment" was just a fluke. Score: 74 Summary: Jamie is a depressed comedian who plays a fictional animated character named Waldo. TO promote an upcoming TV show, Jamie is ordered to enter politics and make fun of candidate Liam Monroe. Waldo completely blows up and becomes an official candidate who gets votes, while Jamie isn't happy with it. Jamie eventually leaves the Waldo boat but it's continued by his boss and Waldo eventually takes over the world.
The Good: There were some funny moments here. Tobias Menzies was great as the stoic politician and his responses to the idiocy of Waldo were usually quite fun. The panel scene was really well done. It was the only scene in the episode which felt like it had legit power and meaning to it, as the idea of politicians being fake and Waldo being more real was explored nicely. I also liked Jamie's attack on Gwendolyn, as it felt like the perfect way for him to end up garnering more support than her. The Bad: This was terribly disappointing and not good at all. This episode hurts so much more because the last 4 episodes have been amazing, so expectations were pretty high. This not only failed to meet expectations, but also managed to be an overall poor episode. The biggest flaw for me was Jamie's character. He was just so boring and had nothing interesting about him. He didn't go through anything, and he didn't learn anything. He started the episode hating his Waldo character, not being interested in politics and depressed. He ended up in the exact same place, so I must question what the whole point was. Besides, what were his motives here? Why does he keep playing Waldo when it's clearly getting out of control? This is a critical question which we need an answer to, but we get nothing. I don't understand why he makes his decision and that's really sloppy. Jamie's depression was the worst handling of depression I've seen in a long time. Why is he depressed? I couldn't tell you. All we get is Jamie making sad faces sometimes and saying he isn't happy. We need to know why he isn't happy so that maybe we can at least sympathize with him a little bit and understand why he makes some of his decisions. Instead we get nothing, and the whole depression just seems like it was shoehorned into the episode. Jamie allowing Waldo to shine at the conference was really stupid. If Jamie is supposed to be bad with politics, it's hard to buy that he would just come up with an amazing speech on the spot and completely destroy his opposition. That moment felt severely out of character and dumb. Not only that, but it also enforced the stupidity of the whole Waldo campaign. The reason he is loved is because he is real, but apparently anybody can be more real than a politician if Jamie can make a powerful speech like that. We could just have some random guy show up and make that exact speech, so how is Waldo special? Why do people rally behind him and not anyone else? No idea. But seriously, how did Waldo gain such a huge following? Literally everybody acknowledges that Waldo isn't even funny, and I would agree! He has no charm and is immature, so how the hell do people actually like him and support him? I understand that it's supposed to be the point that people are supporting this creature, but it's just so incredibly hard to find even a single reason that people would support Waldo. At least when Trump was elected, we could understand why people may have voted for him. With Waldo it just makes no sense why anyone would support him. Jamie and Gwendolyn's relationship was the other main part of this episode, and it's just as hard to buy into. They are nowhere near as good as other couples have been in this show (Bing and Abi, and Martha and Ash were far more compelling), and there relationship feels really dumb. If Gwendolyn was going to just call Jamie after the campaign, why not tell him? Instead she made it seem like she didn't care about him at all, which in turn caused him to completely destroy her. It's impossible to sympathize with Gwendolyn because she brought everything on herself in an illogical way. There were small plot points which were bad as well. It's ridiculous to me that Jamie's identity was kept secret. With the internet working the way it does, I would give the world like 1 day to figure out who the voice behind Waldo is. Surely there will be some guy who records Jamie walking out of the van, and reveals his identity online. This also makes Monroe revealing Jamie's identity all the more stupid, since it didn't feel at all surprising. Furthermore, the plot point of Jamie coming back to Waldo and not quitting was dumb too. I have no idea why he didn't leave Waldo; he never liked the character and he doesn't like politics. So what reason could he possibly have had for continuing? The biggest offense of the episode though was the ending. Apparently Waldo has taken over the world. No. That makes so little sense and is completely at odds with the rest of the episode. Every indicator suggested that Waldo was just a temporary fad, but now he's somehow gone from joke candidate to leader of the world? That is so stupid, and is a ridiculous idea to end the episode. The Unknown: How did Waldo take over the world? What is the new world like with Waldo being treated as a sort of god? Best Moment: The panel was entertaining and Waldo's rant was really good. Character of the Episode: Monroe. Conclusion: This was very bad. The episode made no sense in terms of story and characters and had fewer impactful moments than most other episodes of the show. A total dud of an episode. Score: 46 |
Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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