[ashark]

> The first episode is the very worst of the whole serious. "Fan-fiction" level of writing. Everything so obvious with tired tropes. A critique to social media that could be done by an imaginative high school kid.

It was as much as 10 minutes too long and something was wrong with the editing, like they didn't have enough good meaty shots to fill out some kind of required run time so the editor had to hold shots too long. Then there was the climactic scene where they kept repeating similar shots and beats over and over for what felt like forever, like the story's needle was dislodged and skipping. That was a mess and killed the remaining investment I had in the story. There were also several important but very flatly filmed scenes of dialog that made the acting come off as weak (I think it was the editing/shot choice and not the actors, though). My least favorite episode by far, replacing The Waldo Moment, which was then bumped one notch higher again by the soldiers/VR episode later, which had several (maybe too many) decent ideas and an interesting world but needed a couple more passes on the script.

Other four were really good. San Junipero might be my favorite episode of the series.

[EDIT] I've just checked Wikipedia and S3E1 is the only episode that Brooker didn't write or co-write, just a "story by" with the teleplay by two other people (from Parks & Rec). Maybe that's where the trouble started.

[soneca]

Well, maybe it is about some expectations alignement problem. If I had started to watch not as "food for thought" story with twists, but expecting a simple satire and enjoying more the humor, I would have appreciated it more.