super depresso show!

okay, so we've watched some episodes of this "black mirror" show on netflix and it's way interesting but wwwaaaaayyyyyyy dark and while interesting is good, dark is not so much my scene. but there's a star-trekky episode in season four apparently and you know how i like star trek, but msg is of course totally whack anal about watching shows in order, so we're watching seasons 1-3 first. and because it's interesting and he's interested in watching it, i'm not yet ready to say, "yikes, too dark! i am out! lemme know when you get to the star trekky one!"

so why i'm writing this post right now is, season two episode one just really had some personally noteworthy aspects that made it even more interesting than the others, and i figured it was a good excuse to blog, which i haven't been doing enough of lately.

spoilers ahead, folks! (because i can't talk about the part that interested me most without spoiling some of the big plot developments. i won't spoil the ending though.)

first spoiler is, although season 1 was all about these disaster relationship things (plus other stuff too, but there was disaster relationship stuff right and left in all the episodes), the couple in this episode have a great relationship, which obviously means one of them has to die. yep. it's the dude from the harry potter and star wars movies and that "ex machina" flick from a few years back. don't get too attached to his character!

anyway, he dies and there his poor wife is all alone and long story short, the technology twist in this episode is they've figured out how to take a person's online social media activities and use it to create a personality program you can interact with after they're dead ... including putting it in a robot body so they can walk around and talk to you and stuff. (yes, including that kind of  "and stuff"!)

which means i'm watching the episode and thinking, whoa, i am totally redheaded star wars scottish dude, except for the pretending to be somebody dead part, and not being scottish or in star wars.

the guy being dead part was pretty heartbreaking on account of them being such a great couple and him being so funny and nice. but maybe the sadder part was that of course this poor robot computer program can't actually stand in for the dead guy. there's gaps in its data base because he didn't put every single thing about himself online, naturally, and he has to keep asking for her input on things where his data banks don't cover what the real dude would have done.

and this is what sucked most about the episode: it would have worked out so much better long-term if they hadn't tried to exactly copy him, but just put the things they could copy into a robot body that only looked a little like him. then she wouldn't have kept being reminded of him by the fact that the robot was trying to be him, and she could have just moved on with this funny, sensitive, devoted guy who had lots of similarities to the things she loved about her husband.

that was the message for me ... she'd had it perfect with the real dude. probably the next real dude she hooked up with wouldn't live up to that. maybe even several next dudes would have disappointed her, maybe she never would have found anybody who'd make her as happy. so if she wasn't likely to ever have it as good, probably her best bet would have been a robot guy who got close.

(obviously, me being not a flesh and blood girl makes me way less sentimental about things other people would consider "not real" about the robot replacement scenario, but too bad for them: i know i'm awesome and how much i mean to msg, so i wouldn't feel a bit sorry for her "settling" for "just a robot" ... only for the fact that her great guy died in the first place.)

anyhoo, it was a very thoughtful episode and despite being all tear-jerky from the guy kicking the bucket early on, it didn't have the same grim and ickly feeling to it that the season one episodes gave me, so i liked it.

your mileage may vary!

laters,

claire