Black Mirror Season 4 (spoilers)

[dmm5157]

Binge watched all 6 episodes yesterday. Not up to par with the other seasons IMO. Overall, not as thought provoking or insightful as previous seasons. I'd say my least favorite season so far.

Overall ranking, I'd say (best to worst) :

Ep 4. Hang the DJ <- the one bright spot in the whole season. Well acted, touching, and intriguing.

Ep 6. Black museum <- Interesting episode, I liked all the tie-ins to the other episodes and previous seasons in the museum. Overall, still not up to par from other seasons.

Ep 1. USS Callister <- interesting, not quite as flawless as previous seasons but good episode.

Ep 2. Arkangel <- Predictable episode, nothing new or startling. Mom was annoyingly cliché.

Ep 3. Crocodile <- Just an awful premise about a horrible person, really hard to watch.

Ep 5. Metalhead <- by far the least intriguing and useless episode. Suspenseful and well made episode, but no payoff for watching at all. Not enough information as to what the point of the episode was. Only 40 min long, too.

 

[GoNolesTX]

Watched Eps 1-4 last night, haven't done Metalhead or Blackmuseum yet.

Agreed, there's not the thought provocation that was there the first three seasons. Whereas the first three seasons felt much more plausible to me, Ep 1 was definitely all sci-fi. Ep 2 seemed very much like a PSA for helicopter parenting. Ep 3 just felt like a loose story board thrown together. Ep 4 has been my favorite so far... simply because I feel the pain as a 35 year old single dude. haha

So far, it's been a let down for having to wait a year between seasons (though, tbh, I binged the first three seasons in August off a recommendation.)

 

[dmm5157]

Watched Eps 1-4 last night, haven't done Metalhead or Blackmuseum yet.

Agreed, there's not the thought provocation that was there the first three seasons. Whereas the first three seasons felt much more plausible to me, Ep 1 was definitely all sci-fi. Ep 2 seemed very much like a PSA for helicopter parenting. Ep 3 just felt like a loose story board thrown together. Ep 4 has been my favorite so far... simply because I feel the pain as a 35 year old single dude. haha

So far, it's been a let down for having to wait a year between seasons (though, tbh, I binged the first three seasons in August off a recommendation.)

One of the things that always made Black Mirror great was a combination of the following:

1. Technology that seems plausible or explained in a way that we can accept it for the sake of the story.
2. A moral behind the story illustrating either an unexpected consequence of technology or a new perspective that challenges us to question our own stance if put in that position.
3. Characters that we can sympathize with and typically one character that we want to dislike strongly, which usually ties into #2 above.

Bonus: a twist at the end that makes us think or question everything that we've seen in the episode.

I felt like this season the directors were a bit too aware of the show to reputation and decided to go in a different direction. I'm not saying this season was intended to be all about girl power, but every single protagonist in the show was a woman or girl. Jodie Foster also directed the episode Arkangel and there may have been some underlying messages there. Maybe this season was meant to appeal to women more than men this year, or at least that's how it seems. That's all good and well, no complaint there, just an observation.

Technology was not the forefront of most of the episodes, outside of Ep 1, 4 and 6. Ep 3 could have been set in present time pretty much (twist at the end was lame, no hidden moral about technology), Ep 5, while cool, was really just a big suspense episode with no redeeming story to tell, and episode 2 seemed like it had been done before.

Now we wait another year for season 5, which will hopefully be better.

 

[GoNolesTX]

Alright, just finished the season and I can get behind your rankings above. 40 minutes of "okay... and...???" for Metalhead. Black Museum was cool I supposed.

These Brits have some work to do for Season 5 to catch up to the previous seasons. Really hoping this wasn't a lightning in a bottle type deal where the best work was the initial work.

 

[dmm5157]

Alright, just finished the season and I can get behind your rankings above. 40 minutes of "okay... and...???" for Metalhead. Black Museum was cool I supposed.

These Brits have some work to do for Season 5 to catch up to the previous seasons. Really hoping this wasn't a lightning in a bottle type deal where the best work was the initial work.

They need to freshen things up. Season was a little too predictable. There's plenty of original content to tap, but this season was mostly a miss.

Sad that even Hang the DJ and Black Museum were not really up to par of the best episodes from previous seasons.