Charlie Brooker's BLACK MIRROR

International Emmy winner Black Mirror, written by Charlie Brooker, returns with three brand new films. Each story is in turn, disarming, suspenseful and darkly satirical, and all explore our modern reality.

Premiered tonight with the heavy; haunting "Be Right Back"...

More fucking Brooker crap.

has this run in the US? why because it sound interesting

first series was incredible

internet lets me down on s01 torr3nts

i take that back

it was on youtube for awhile (officially?)

Yeah, Brooker regularly Tweets YouTube links to his stuff on official YouTube channels.
I thought this first new film was pretty intense. The concept resonated for me - I wonder how much a viewer's investment in this story depends on whether someone close to them has... wait, has no one else seen this?

really crap episode. I do not know where to begin. the premise was brilliant but it was executed stupidly, it was taken wayyyyy too far to be sensible or reasonable (even in the story's own constructed reality), and 20 minutes of story was padded to 48. shithouse.

I didn't watch it, saw the preview, it looked like a 'good' episode of "Tales of the Unexpected".

Those eps were 30 mins.

first ep i've ever seen of this show.

yes it could have been better - it should have been far more difficult for her to reject the clone, for instance, in the flesh he actually wasn't compelling or even realistic - but i have a looooooooot of time for modern twilight zone episodes shot with moody lighting

i loved all the little tech bits as well, c'mon that's how you do it

where did her nosy friend end up? why weren't those things deployed en masse as aids for the elderly/disabled, sex toys, butlers &c.? too many dumb holes.

why weren't those things deployed en masse as aids for the elderly/disabled, sex toys, butlers &c.

they probably were! this was a story about one (presumably loaded) woman living in a big ol' country house.

first 20 minutes definitely the strongest - i loved how basically everything spoke to the sorts of knowledge we have that's surprising, or unpublic, how hard it is to really know someone. and yet... honestly if they'd just stuck to the chat format i bet she would have kept talking to "it" for years

http://liveson.org/

genuinely surprised at how short this thread is! this ep seems like it's right in ilx's wheelhouse

I liked the first series with reservations, but I loved this. Very much a modern-day Monkey's Paw or similar. I think keeping it low-key and emotions-based worked really well.

AA - seriously, do you actually care about those things? They're not even plot-holes: if you tried to answer them then your film would be incredibly dull.

all of those things (and more—I didn't get to all the other wtf moments) completely got in the way for me

I dunno, I guess we just have completely different psychology. I mean, I didn't need them explaining because they seemed fairly self-explanatory. But let's have a go:

"Nosy friend" - if she's turning the phone off to her sister, why would she be chatting on the reg to someone who it is made fairly obvious she isn't that close to? The scene at the funeral was fairly obviously between people who weren't close. And she has her dead husband bot to talk to.

"why weren't they deployed en masse?" - Tracer's OTM that these things obviously are around... she's affluent and tech-savvy enough to be an early adopter, so it's still a bit embarrassing, especially because of the emotional aspect (hence why she doesn't tell her sister or the moving men), but that doesn't mean that she's the only special snowflake who has one. The story doesn't involve other people aside from her immediate social circle, WHY ON EARTH would it suddenly break into a story about everyone else's android husband? And as for the implication that they could be used for good: a) at the very start there is a bit on the news about the technology being used for good, and b) since when do private corporations even care about doing good?

I liked at the end it was basically Pop-pop gets a treat?

Agree with AA to an extent, it was a massive jump to reveal at the end that they live in a world where extreme tech exists that would have altered society completely. You don't invent something that advanced overnight. It made the point it was trying to make though, I guess.

http://www.recordsale.de/cdpix/s/steve_winwood-roll_with_it(3).jpg

seems like brooker's been reading some kurzweil

Hadn't seen any of these before, wasn't expecting it to be quite so low-key and melancholic. Thought it was a good way of talking/thinking about loss, what constitutes a person, the way we love and remember others - reminded me a bit of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The ending was pretty close to perfect - very creepy, very sad - and i liked the slow pacing throughout.

it was a massive jump to reveal at the end that they live in a world where extreme tech exists that would have altered society completely. You don't invent something that advanced overnight.

Wut? How are you reading this as a 'big reveal' at the end? What are you talking about?

Is this series better than the last one? I thought S1 had some nice ideas, and I applaud the intent, but it was really clunky and 6th form in its implementation.

It wasn't played as a big reveal or anything, that's not what I meant. It's just setting the scene very late that it was set in a world that would have adapted to having clones to some extent so it's hard to gauge her reaction or concept of him compared to if something like that was parachuted in to our world

dude, they established that there were science-fictional medical type advances in literally the first minute of the episode (on the tv playing in the car)! it didn't set the scene very late at all

Submitted post too early but i'm trying to type on my phone and it's hard to get my point across so I'll stop now

Xp right but a world with actual clones, rules about them, attitudes would be a lot more different than just havingfancy coffee cups and thinner phones

It did remind me of Never let me go too, where the social reaction to such thing was a big part of the world he wrote

attitudes would be a lot more different than just havingfancy coffee cups and thinner phones

This is a massive part of the whole 'Black Mirror' concept, though. That actually things aren't so very different, that human beings carry on being human beings through all sorts of radical change. Hell, it's a large part of a lot of science fiction.

emil.y:

re nosy friend: there's no consequence for her. she's the one who lays the groundwork for the plot, and once that's underway she just vanishes, despite the fact that she fucked up this woman's life to an enormous degree. but in modern day storytelling she needs to be around to react, or to be affected in some way. she's the most obvious kind of loose end.

re world of clones: kinder's point is otm—it's a stretch (although not entirely unlikely) that robot clones suddenly exist because facebook invented them, and that the first round off the line is virtually indistinguishable from humans. the leap from a robotic voice on the phone to a self-healing robotic person requires an enormous suspension of disbelief.

also, when robot man is still just a phone voice and he tells her how to prepare the realdoll, but he disappears into static. what the hell? they couldn't have staged that better? there are people watching who have never experienced phone voices disappearing into static on the phone (it's an analogue cell thing), and because he's being deleted or migrated or whatever, it's even less plausible. also, why did that happen at all? why couldn't robot man have just finished his sentence? also (and this is my biggest problem here), he was warning her that she must do something to prepare the realdoll, but she never heard what it was, and again (just like nosy friend) there was no consequence. so why do it? this episode was littered with bombs that never went off.

Charlie Brooker's FUCK OFF

despite the fact that she fucked up this woman's life to an enormous degree

Well, actually, she didn't. And that too is the point. It's not like (spoilers) this is the technology misbehaving, or rebelling, or taking over the world. It's about grief. The central character's life ISN'T fucked up by the android, it's fucked up by her husband dying. And actually, the nosy friend's advice was helpful for a while, it was the main character's decision to push further that was the wrong decision.

in modern day storytelling she needs to be around to react, or to be affected in some way

Uh, why? This would be completely pointless and irrelevant to the story that's being told.

robot clones suddenly exist because facebook invented them

What?

the first round off the line is virtually indistinguishable from humans

I will give you that it's a relatively quick transition, but it's not meant to be set in the present day and then they suddenly appear magically. It's already the future when it starts. I actually thought the news report at the beginning was fairly heavy-handed foreshadowing, but clearly you and kinder both completely missed the set-ups here.

when robot man is still just a phone voice and he tells her how to prepare the realdoll, but he disappears into static

Okay, I'll give you this: there is no _practical_ reason for this to happen. Even though we're told it's still in beta, you'd think that they'd set up the data migration in a way that instructions could be given at the correct time. However, it fits the arc - the husband disappears suddenly, the first ripple also disappears suddenly, and gives way to a hollower echo. It's the narrative of grief, again.

this episode was littered with bombs that never went off.

It wasn't meant to be about bombs going off. It was a quiet reflection on grief and desire and 'you should be careful what you wish for', it wasn't a dystopian futureworld of killer robots.

Seriously, I have no problem with you guys not liking it or it not resonating with you or whatever, but a lot of your 'holes' simply aren't holes.

the leap from a robotic voice on the phone to a self-healing robotic person requires an enormous suspension of disbelief.

It's science fiction! Stories about spaceships require an enormous suspension of disbelief! And it was almost all borderline semi-plausible not too distant future tech. Main problem I had was that although the point of the story is that it wasn't an actual artificial intelligence, I don't think you could get even that level of interaction without genuine AI, but I was willing to give that a pass. Yeah I found this pretty moving, extremely well done in terms of the human details, and seriously when can I get one of those giant L shaped touch screen desktops?

Also anyone complaining this was over stretched and implausible has clearly never seen spielberg's AI.

Well, actually, she didn't.

debatable imo. rather than allow her friend to go through the normal grieving process, she actively harassed her into avoiding it. nosy friend changed her whole life for the worse.

Uh, why? This would be completely pointless and irrelevant to the story that's being told.

so why is she there at all? the widow could have reached that point all by herself (i.e. discovering the zombie social network), but brooker chose to drop in a character to enforce that plot device; that character, then, needs to factor into a later part of the story, especially when her influence leads directly to the devastating final scene. i can't imagine what 2001 would have been like if the monolith had just stopped being in it from the halfway mark.

What?

that's what we're asked to accept. i had already suspended a fair whack of disbelief by that point, but that leap was so enormous that i was really struggling to stay with the core theme from then on.

I actually thought the news report at the beginning was fairly heavy-handed foreshadowing, but clearly you and kinder both completely missed the set-ups here.

i did miss/forget that, yeah, but to be fair that's the sort of thing a storyteller might throw in at the last minute to check a box. by the time the realdoll stuff kicked in, i doubt many viewers remembered that five-second news grab.

It wasn't meant to be about bombs going off. It was a quiet reflection on grief and desire and 'you should be careful what you wish for', it wasn't a dystopian futureworld of killer robots.

i understand your point completely, so it's with extra emphasis that i make the point that those deviations shouldn't have been there in the first place. the only reason i can come up with is that brooker had 48 minutes to fill. this was a twilight zone-length story at best.

It's science fiction! Stories about spaceships require an enormous suspension of disbelief!

this wasn't on a spaceship, it was set on earth in the near future. i myself have made excuses for plenty of science fiction because it's set in a crazy anything-could-happen speculative universe, but this wasn't.

Why wasn't it? If you don't buy my "this is all semi-plausible tech" line (fair enough tbh) it still works as an alternate universe "what if" story. What if we did have Facebook robot clones?

a lot of 16 year-old boys wd be getting laid on the reg?

Why wasn't it? If you don't buy my "this is all semi-plausible tech" line (fair enough tbh) it still works as an alternate universe "what if" story.

self-healing robots? really? i mean maybe there was a roadside billboard that said 'HAPPY NEW NANOMILLENNIUM CITIZENS OF JUPITER' at some point

last year's story about the bloke earning credits on the bike could well have been set so distantly in space/time that pretty much anything is excusable, but we're talking about people dressing like they do now, being in buildings that look like they do now, driving cars that look like they do now &c. no way was this the great chinese kingdom of wales in 2168 or whatever.

Ok there are plenty of details that make this seem like a plausible near future world (slightly sexier phones and desktops) but that doesn't mean it's an actual possible world. It's an SF fairy story. SF can be good without being 100% technologically plausible.

also i don't understand why they have the technology to build near-perfect humanoid robots that self-heal, and yet they post her a dormant android covered in vaseline and she has to tip powder into the bath like it's a sea monkey

Ok there are plenty of details that make this seem like a plausible near future world (slightly sexier phones and desktops) but that doesn't mean it's an actual possible world. It's an SF fairy story. SF can be good without being 100% technologically plausible.

when the plausibility is unprecedented by anything else in the story, it gets in the way. emil.y mentioned that news clip right at the start, which was fairly obviously chucked in during post production, and which i and (presumably) kinder didn't even notice. that's not enough. maybe, i dunno, the protagonists could have had a chat about 'those creepy robots', or a proto-humanoid could have served vol-au-vents at the funeral or something.

I guess my problem is that I don't see why your suggestions make *anything* more plausible. They just clutter up a story with rubbish to hammer home a point. I mean, it is far more plausible to me that the nosy friend is never heard of again, because they weren't close in the first place and that's what happens when you're grieving, but you would relinquish plausibility in this case for plot device to make sure that everything is tied up neatly. Guess what? Life isn't tied up neatly. It's not plausible for all the loose ends to be tied.

And, you know, *why* is it more plausible to have a robot butler be the first instantiation rather than medical uses followed by a weirdo start-up company that preys on grief? I'm not at all sure that it is.

(Also, I assume you were eliding/joking with your interpretation that 'facebook invented it', right? It utilises data from all digital interactions and records in a future where even more interactions are online than they are now, it isn't just 'I have made you out of facebook'.)

It's an SF fairy story. SF can be good without being 100% technologically plausible.

yeah, you basically have to give them this and then judge everything else on its own merits. It's not like it's particularly likely that someone would survive a nuclear apocalypse by being trapped in a a bank vault etc. etc.

S7

E1 - every single plot beat was telegraphed. And yes, hugely do u see.

E2 - fun in its own way, I flagged the necklace as being important from the outset and worked out what was happening in broad terms right from the focus group. Liked that Maria's first choice was something she'd already been told was a bad idea.

E3 - feels like 'lesbians in an artificial world' has become a BM trope by this point and although it's well done it never felt like there was any jeopardy for Grace and, again, end was pretty predictable.

E4 - the best acted and the best written, but it was a bit too in love with bringing Colin from Bandersnatch back. But yes, what if Animal Crossing was not what it seemed? Capaldi is played out as a sinister police interviewee these days imo, coming so close after The Devil's Hour. About halfway through there was only one way it was ending.

E5 - I didn't care for it, but it was easily the best of the series. Giamatti was excellent, even if he was just playing Paul Giamatti, and although the identity of The Guide was pretty obvious it felt real in a way the other episodes didn't. The most upbeat ending, and one where technology was the mechanism and not the plot itself.

E6 - felt like bad fan service, made little sense. Should have been left alone.

I think it's run its course to be honest, just from the amount of episodes I said were completely predictable. Tentpole casting could give it a chance but it has to take more risks if there's another series.

I think the Capaldi ep was the most memorable one, yet somehow I can still barely remember it.

The Callister ep was so pointless a sequel I turned it off midway

on the list of episodes that was the one I was looking forward to most

just been watching the daft AI themed sci-fi movie Companion, tonight. Which so far, has been far more enjoyable than any of this shite was.

There do seem to be a lot of things like severance that is like:
what if black mirror but a whole season?

or like:
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/04/regrets-actors-who-sold-ai-avatars-stuck-in-black-mirror-esque-dystopia/
what if black mirror but we're in black mirror?

Started watching Common People today and... I'm not sure I can do this one. It's a perfect storm of brain deterioration and couples struggling with money that triggers me. Plus, as above, you know what's going to happen and it's not the most original plotline. So I might just skip it

The most upsetting episodes of all time for me were the one where the mum gets put inside a toy monkey - that really really depressed me for some reason.
And strangely, the one where the two friends have cybersex behind their partners' backs. I don't know why, as it was kind of a silly episode and not all that good, but it upset me for a good few days

This show is the definition of "hit and miss". When it's good it's fantastic. But there are always a good few lousy episodes in each season

That said, I'm tired of the tropey "What if phones but too much?" critique people lazily dish out towards it. Yes, that was a funny observation at first but also: Yes that is also pretty much the basis of the show in a similar way that Eastenders is "What if Londoners but too much?"

I accidentally saw s1e1 thinking it was a new episode for about 5 minutes before realizing, and it really struck me as very different tonally from modern black mirror, a lot closer to adolescence.

Interesting to see ppl say they didnt like the Callister followup, I loved it!

The one I disliked was the AI lets remake a movie one because... why? The whole premise made no sense to me. Why woul you redo a film only to replace one actor in the first place?

As I couldn't get beyond that, the rest irritated me and I found it dreadfully slow.

That actually bothered me too, Trayce. Especially since in this world, presumably their AI could have done this without having to set foot in a machine.

Like it's cinema karaoke?

Yes it almost felt like it'd be a fun thing for someone to *do* - you get to walk into a film and be part of it, woo! - but as an actor to remake when none of the rest changes?
...but yet, the AI can actually change if fed diffferent stuff?
But somehow they can predict the outcome depending on what happens?

It just felt like a hot mess. Oh and Issa is a terrible actor. way too comedy-aligned and no nuance.

Rest of the season was great though! Callister was fan-service but who cares, thats what I wanted. The Mandela Effect-esque one I found hard because it really pressed some buttons from bullying in my teenage years.

Yeah people out there are in the tank for Hotel Reverie but I didn’t really like it much at all. I get the premise, holograms/AI of dead actors is inherently ghoulish, but it didn’t really land for me. Didn’t feel like an Issa Rae problem besides her being probably miscast, felt like a concept problem. Like nobody is watching this show and like saying it’s tightly plotted that all checks out. You just don’t want to think about it too much for the illusion to be sustained most of the time. It felt like they were chasing a San Junipero vibe but it didn’t work at all. Emma Corrin was great though.

Actually kinda liked Issa in that role because the whole episode was pretty silly and gave a "don't think about this too hard" vibe. Even her character's name was ridiculous. Pretty good episode overall imo. I thought at the end the final film would be a bomb though!

At some point they show Issa's address on either her package or street sign (can't remember which) and the street name was Junipero, as if the connection wasn't obvious enough to us already.

I just couldn't get past the absurd setup, like the stakes were so forced.

Thought they were insinuating that the producer killed Corrin's character decades ago because she was jealous of the chemistry with her husband, which is clearly visible in the flashbacks but then they abandoned that angle entirely

Well I can't say I enjoyed Common People at all. But then Black Mirror has a lot of episodes I didn't "enjoy" watching that linger. And while I don't think it was anywhere close to the best one, it's going to stick around and make me feel like shit for a good while. So... mission achieved?

I went into the first episode of the new series hoping for a continuation of the lighter tone set by previous openers like Joan Is Awful, USS Callister and (to an extent) Striking Vipers*. A critique that's often leveled at Black Mirror is "We're living a techno-dystopia right now, so what's the point?" and I've enjoyed these more creatively-skewed attempts to throw off the show's pessimistic "What if phones but too much?" enshacklements.

But save for a few witty quips from O'Dowd's character and the odd, bleakly humorous note, this was entirely free of light relief.
What a way to start the series, with a victory lap of the most pessimistic aspects of the show, and a storyline that felt quaintly like it belonged to a much earlier series.

Is it a bit late to be satirising established themes of subscription-based enshittification and the gig economy in 2025? Even the "Dum Dummies" subplot was lifted wholesale from Nathan Barley's online Tramp Racing. Perhaps the fact the 2005 version was depicted as extreme post-Soviet absurdity while Dum Dummies is shown as something that could very well exist in the Western mainstream today was the most shocking factor.

Just purely miserable and upsetting from start to finish. I kept having to pause it and come back to it. I remember now why I had to give up on The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists more than once; along with stories about people with impairing brain defects, themes of couples struggling with money to the point of destitution have a habit of triggering me quite severely. And the extremely bleak ending, which like much of the beats in the episode I could see coming far off, really did depress me. That said, I was half expecting the characters to become account managers for Rivermind - that would have been a possibility perhaps.

*although for some reason Striking Vipers was another one that fully icked me out and upset me for days, for reasons I'm still figuring out

We just finished the season yesterday and I quite liked the USS Callister sequel. I don't think conceptually it had anything new but it was fun and the story drew me in.

Dog latin: that's the bleakest episode this season and did feel like an earlier season episode. the rest aren't quite as dark, or at least they balance the darkness better

Well I can't say I enjoyed Common People at all. But then Black Mirror has a lot of episodes I didn't "enjoy" watching that linger. And while I don't think it was anywhere close to the best one, it's going to stick around and make me feel like shit for a good while. So... mission achieved?

Yeah, we watched it and I just felt angry at how bleak it was, and how unlikely it felt to me that either of those people would fall for that. Apart from when she's in the classroom, she spends her whole time paying bills at their kitchen table. She's not a stupid person. Especially when she starts feeling miserable and oversleeping all the time, I just don't think she would stick with it. And do they not have predatory service providers in this bleak world? Is this really the first time these people have experienced upselling? Anyway, decided I am probably no longer the target market for this programme.

Well the fees are pretty high for two people working low-to-medium paid jobs who seem to be struggling as it is. It's not because she's miserable that she's sleeping, it's because it's the implant or whatever that is enshittifying and only giving her part-time service. Also, it seemed that O'Dowd was left with little choice on signing her up to Rivermind in the first place - he was in a place of desperation and he was forced to choose between what was sold to him as a fairly new medical procedure (with a living, breathing "proof" of success selling it to him), and a comatose wife - no contest really. And once on it, they had no choice but to stick with it and pay the ever-increasing bils.

That said, I'd have got angry with the rep a lot sooner than O'Dowd did in the show. But the BM world doesn't operate on a basis of fairness really. There are few legal breakfalls in this universe: You sign the documents, you're fucked. This episode was much like Nosedive - these situations have become so normalised and commonplace (like the ADI bees) that there's little empathy towards those who are forced to sign up to it (Parallels with cewrtain attitudes towards healthcare in the US - "Oh you don't have insurance? Too bad, it's your stupid fault if you get sick!")

Bete Noir was much more along the lines of what I want from this show these days. I don't care how farfetched it was, it was a fun idea and a fun plot. I liked the Happy Eater t shirt - somehow knew they'd do something with that

It didn't seem as much a criticism of healthcare than say of Netflix's own price hikes and ad-tiers.

Imagine if Netflix could kill you

Only watched the first two. Hated common people. Felt like themes they’ve done a million times and needlessly bleak. Loved Bete Noir. Before the end had decided if she didn’t survive I’d find that also sensibly bleak and predictable so found it fun and satisfying.

The only problem with Bete Noir was a slightly abrupt ending which, while amusing, felt chucked in and not terribly satisfying. Still, one of the more fun episodes. I enjoyed the supporting cast too, especially the corny office guy who allegedly keeps stealing all the milk

The bit where he's mansplaining the team whatsapp group off-camera and you can hear him talking about "These hilarious memes" made me laugh

I'm halfway through Hotel Reverie and this has to be the goofiest episode of this show in a long long time, lol.

I love how they haven't accounted for anything to go wrong in this extraordinarily convoluted endeavour. I also like how they're treating it like the Apollo mission with scientific metres all over the place labeled things like "Narrative Stress" and "Romantic Likelihood". Silly stuff!

"Dead dog confirmed" lmao

Hotel Reverie could have been something it it had been played straight with a movie that actually felt like a classic.

Yeah, it didn't quite land for me. Felt it went on a bit too long, and I'd have liked a few minutes of its runtime to have been donated to Bete Noir, which by comparison felt a bit rushed

Plus it’s hard not to compare the emotional story to “San Junipero” which is the best episode of the ones I’ve seen.

Reverie felt like there were some fun ideas in there but something sloppy and forced about how it was put together. I didn't quite understand the some of the disbelief needing suspension. Like i'm 100% fine with the accepting in the world of Black Mirror that she could put a chip on her temple and be within an AI construct...what I didn't buy is her dropping the USB stick and showing up not knowing anything about the process and being rushed into it...when even if she knew and understood the process it really wouldn't have changed the plot much? And with that forced "we only have 2 hours to do this and then we don't have the studio time" or whatever. Both of those things didn't seem to actually add much to the essential plot?

It suffered from being tonally all over the place. On one hand it was going for this charming San Junipero love story, but almost everything else was just a bit too goofy and tongue-in-cheek to make it carry. I didn't credibly believe the love story I guess

I also like how they're treating it like the Apollo mission with scientific metres all over the place labeled things like "Narrative Stress" and "Romantic Likelihood". Silly stuff!

and yet the plot/course correcting is done on sticky notes! one thing that bugged me about reverie is how shitty the "old" movie was. just awful, charmless.

wasn't that sort of the idea..? that the film is considered corny and outdated, and that's why no one is interested in their films any more, and why Clara/Dorothy feels stuck in this rather one-dimensional world despite being a 3-dimensional, or 2.5 dimensional at least, person?

The film was supposed to be on the level of Casablanca or Brief Encounter but no one cares about those classics unless an A-list hunk is starring.

That was my biggest problem with that episode too, that everybody was talking about this movie like it was a stone cold classic, and then you see it and it's a terrible, sub-Animaniacs-level pastiche. Felt weirdly dismissive of movies from that era.

yeah, seemed like a stand-in for old movies in general. but maybe ramping up the silliness kept the whole episode moving along better.

I mean I feel like the other issue with this one is we already have the technology to do what they did today, without the person having to even be on sight or possibly killed via invasive procedure

Site

Rae wasn't just being Gumped in, felt like they wanted to get deeper into the AI models having sentience and free will (even aside from the Duck Amuck love story bit) but it was such a mess things continually reverted to comedy.

But they seemed flustered with every deviation because they all had Butterfly effect level impacts on the story!

If every time a mistake happened, it requires a script analyst to rewrite the ending in real time to prevent a catastrophic meltdown that might kill your lead actor, it doesn't feel to me like you'd be hoping for much more than them doing what is expected.

Capaldi episode - the '90s scenes were like a crap direct to video cash-in on Trainspotting

My main problem with Reverie was the fact that Issa's character was meant to be someone who loved "old films" as she put it. If she was genuinely a fan of that film she'dve given her acting a bit more gravitas instead of barging in like a SNL character, which was jarring af.

Imagine if they told Johnny Depp he could remake an old Chaplin film while playing Chaplin's character and then just killed him in the VR machine seconds after arrival.

Actually maybe we should look into this

My main problem with Reverie was the fact that Issa's character was meant to be someone who loved "old films" as she put it. If she was genuinely a fan of that film she'dve given her acting a bit more gravitas instead of barging in like a SNL character, which was jarring af.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Thursday, 1 May 2025 06:30 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not sure, but I took it that she was overstating her love for these films somewhat and really just wanted a starring role in a romantic film, which she wasn't getting after having been typecast. When she went in on the day of broadcast she seemed to be acting like she'd only watched the film a handful of times.

As people upthread mentioned, the whole premise is shaky as anything, but the ep asks you not to think about it too hard. That being the case though, I'd have liked a stronger story to bolster the fantasy