I read an interview where they admitted they struggled with that one because it was a really cool idea for a ten minute short.

I think it worked as a character study. He's a sympathetic character despite some major character flaws. The ending works better in theory than in practice, but he got brought down by his two worst aspects: greed & avoidance.

And what does a mirror do if not reflect the person using it? The show is about how technology will always reflect our darker nature. If you don't like what you see in the mirror, it's not the mirror's fault.

That's what I was talking about in terms of building up a reputation. When you're starting out, a handful of poor reviews can devastate your reputation… but the more reviews you get the less individual opinion matter. The currency automatically devalues as the base expands.

I'm also three episodes in. This is my favorite so far, largely because it's a comedy of errors with a happy(ish) ending, and the novelty of that elevates it in my mind.

Exactly.

I'm not entirely sure we'd fully get to a society where Likes are a form of social currency. More likely it's the kind of thing which will dominate the lives of certain personality types and people trying to establish a reputation, especially in business.

I can see that… although I think he probably ended up feeling a bit too real for her to do that and it did give her child a chance to kind of know her father.

I really don't see that as Black Mirror's bag. I think it enjoys extrapolating natural human tendencies to a near breaking point, it's usually about people who lose perspective. History Of You is about how easy it would be to obsess over every interaction if you had the technology that allowed you to do it. White…

A lot of folks like it, although I didn't.

That was a story about us creating an emotional Uncanny Valley… the more real he acted, the more wrong he felt. He would never have that certain spark that made him the man she loved. The tragedy is on paper it should have been a happy ending, but it could never deliver on that promise… and I think the episode's…

So far I think Black Mirror has stayed on the right side of poking fun at consumer tech uses. I can't really think of any time where they came across as a grumpy old man railing against a system they thought beyond stupid, but rather the ability to see the social trap our basic human nature invariably wanders into…

They're seriously flawed movies and the first one almost completely collapses once Zombie starts remaking the original film in earnest… and is completely ill-suited to that kind of suburban horror.

I didn't mean to suggest that you can't make really great movies about the mundanity of evil… that's most of the appeal of Fargo (movie and TV series). But it requires a whole lot of work to be really effective, because the big, dramatic beats are largely denied.

The problem with realistic serial killers is they're a bit too narrow in narrative scope. Their existence is what's unsettling, not so much what they actually do or why they did it. We don't know what creates them, we don't know why they act, we don't really know who they'll target. There's just this homicidally…

I'm always a bit amused at the umbrage directed at it, as if there aren't already a whole bunch of unnecessary sequels and attempts to provide an explanation for Michael Myers.

I'm not denying it's a really clever and well-written wink which ties in perfectly with story being told, but ultimately it's a wink.

I rankle a bit at the inclusion of Rob Zombie's Halloween, because it's the one time someone looked at the origin of a character like this and didn't provide a definite answer.

"It will challenge people to do something totally different.”
Before I actually read this whole thing, I'll throw down some thoughts of my own. The problem I have with Cabin In The Woods is that it may be a "challenge to do something totally different", but it does so in a way which is more a lecture than someone…

They have my favorite moment of the entire season. I think it's in episode 10 when someone doesn't learn from their mistake in the funniest way possible. I can say no more.