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Black Mirror S2 Special "White Christmas" discussion thread
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Black Mirror Season 2 Special - White Christmas
Three interconnected tales of technology run amok during the Christmas season are told by two men at a remote outpost in a frozen wilderness.
Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.
You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!
If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:
- How does the title relate to the episode itself?
- Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
- Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?
Please rate the episode here!
Sorry (again) for being a bit late with this thread!
This episode... I wrote on the White Bear thread that it was the one that got me to keep watching Black Mirror, well this one got me totally obsessed with the show and its concept.
The ups and downs of this episode were unreal, cookies are something about Black Mirror that really interest me, how they can benefit and how they can be abused, and the morals of cookie treatment, as they aren't 'human' literally but might as well be. I have a feeling cookie rights will take a part in a future episode.
John Hamm's story really interested me and I loved it, the other character who was the prisoner didn't interest me much but it was still crazy to see the treatment of his cookie and the introduction of the 'block' feature.
The ending... my god, when John Hamm's character is released, but is 'blocked' so he sees nothing but fuzz outlines of people and people see him as nothing but fuzz. Jesus, I don't know how anyone could live like that.
And the cops leaving the station for Christmas vacation, leaving the cookie in a time acceleration that would last thousands of lifetimes for the cookie, my god.
My favorite episode alongside San Junipero and an easy 5/5
This was the first episode of Black Mirror I watched, so I came in completely unprepared. It hurt particularly bad because I was going through a really messy breakup around that time, so this episode was something that made me sit and contemplate the way I was acting and how I felt. Powerful emotions get powerful responses, but the problem is that your expression of love can be seen as a threat to someone who's uninterested. The blocking technology is a perfect metaphor for that feeling. You think maybe, just maybe, if you do this one romantic gesture you'll be able to rekindle that love, but in reality, all you are is a chaotic blob of emotions, frantically inserting yourself into the life of someone who would rather not know you. If you ever find yourself in that situation follow the advice this episode gives you. It's better to live your life as a happy stranger than a desperate lunatic.
"I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day" playing for over a million years at least is an absolutely horrifying concept.
I think this is one of the best episodes of television ever - they were able to fit so much into ~1 hour.
I found it a bit ironic that, in the end, Jon Hamm's character, who "trained" cookies, faced the consequences of blocking, and the other guy, whose life went downhill due to blocking, "confessed" because of a cookie. I really appreciate the way that they took these different stories and connected all of them in the end. I loved how the clock slowly revealed more and more throughout them telling their stories to eachother.
The moment when Joe (?) starts looking at photographs, and his wife's face is blocked, then when his "daughter's" face is blocked was horrific. Then, when his wife appears on the TV, even though I thought it felt a bit predictable, was still a pretty stunning revelation, along with when he sees his daughter's face for the first time.
Likewise, the ending, when they leave the cookie running for 1000 years/minute, with the music playing, was when I really felt that dread inside. Leaving the cookie earlier running for 3 weeks with absolutely nothing to do was already cruel and terrifying enough, then this happens, and it's hard to even imagine what the cookie is going through.
I guess this is one of the bigger discussion questions for this episode, and one that I'd love to hear about: do cookies deserve rights? Should they be treated as real humans, even though they're just code? If this technology were real, is that what the general public's excuse would be?
I've pushed back the schedule by a day - partially because I forgot, partially because discussion has slowed down quite a bit on the past two episodes. This episode has quite a few votes, so I'm hoping that it's just because this episode has less to discuss about (everything is pretty open, I'd say not as much is left to interpretation), and the last episode generally isn't seen as one of the series' best.
Let me know if there's anything I could do to improve these threads!