YO I JUST FINISHED THE SERIES (spoilers for each one):
U.S.S. Callister
Hey this was good! It was nice to have a Star Trek parody that actually worked, because it wasn't trying to do a direct take of the series but rather the general feel of the world (they nail the music). I liked how they made you sympathise with Daly initially (because he goes get shit on quite a lot) but rather than it being about any sort of revenge it just highlights how toxic that sort of behaviour actually is. I also liked how they kept the level of torture to a fucked up Star Trek video game thing when they could have easily gone "ALSO HE RAPES THE WOMEN TOO" which would have made the episode worse so I'm glad they didn't do it!
I also liked that the crew are now trapped in the ultimate hell of only being able to talk to MMORPG gamers.
Arkangel
I liked this one overall, it had a good central idea and the acting was good but I kind of feel like it retreads a lot of what The Entire History of You did back in season 1? As in, the idea that maybe being able to directly see what other people are doing and have done is too much information and will always end badly. But I guess this is the version of that story we get now that Charlie Brooker is a dad. It wasn't bad! I liked it! It is a bit weird that they would come up with a program that lets you directly spy on someone that is irreversible but then not think about what happens when that person becomes an adult but whatever.
Crocodile
I feel like this was the weakest one? Like, I liked the insurance lady reading people's memories to get details, and I liked that unlike the previous episode (and The Entire History of You) they were actual memories that were fuzzy and subjective, but I kind of feel like the whole murder plot was almost unnecessary? Like they could have probably worked up a plot based around the insurance lady without having Andrea Riseborough kill a bunch of people (including a child!) which kind of went too far for me. I don't think they really set up exactly what about her life, other than having a family and being kind of famous(????), was so vital to her that she would literally murder an entire family to protect it.
Hang the DJ
Oh hey look it's a story about a young couple falling in love! And the twist is it's a virtual environment all along! It was nice and all, and the two leads were great, but come on guys San Jupinero was only last year and it was basically the same set-up. Also San Jupinero was one of the best episodes of television made in the last decade so having something so similar to it so soon means it will never live up to it.
Yeah, okay, sure, the episodes explore different themes, but I feel like the themes this episode explores (something something you have to know what you don't like in a partner before you can be happy with who you do like?? Dating apps are good???) are much less interesting than everything San Jupinero tackles that it just kind of looks kind of blah. ON IT'S OWN this is a perfectly fine episode but IN THE CONTEXT OF THE PREVIOUS EPISODES it's pretty underwhelming.
Metalhead
I dug this one more for the aesthetic than the story. The story was fine, but I really liked the cool desolate wasteland with the cool robot dog all beautifully shot in black & white. This was just a good episode to watch. I liked this episode.
I like it did the thing that good anthology shows do where it just dumps you into a world where the context of how and why that world came to be isn't explained, and it doesn't actually matter because it's not relevant to the story. Why was the world like this? Where do the robot dogs come from? It's never explained, and the episode is better for it. It was really nice that they did that in this episode because then comes...
Black Museum
I... hmmm... Okay, so I hate the idea of a connected Black Mirror universe, pretty much exactly because of what I just said. It's so much better when you can just drop into a story without the need for any sort of set up of the world, but this episode goes out of it's way to connect itself to previous stories sort of destroys all that. We didn't need to know what links cookies and the virtual reality in San Jupinaro - we never needed to know! It works better if there is no connection at all! Why can't they just all be their own separate stand-alone stories instead of it being one dumb connected universe that only seems to exist so people can make "10 EASTER EGGS YOU MISSED IN BLACK MIRROR" videos.
As for the episode itself, it was OK. But again, it sort of retread some of the same ground that previous episodes did. The mum in the bear felt a lot like the cookies from White Christmas, the pain guy was pretty good (and gross in a good way), but I felt that people coming to shock a hologram of a murder who ~lives in pain forever~ was a bit much.
OVERALL it was pretty good but it didn't have the heights of the previous seasons IN MY OPINION.
