What I’ve been watching on Netflix recently
Watching the new Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch was certainly an interesting experience! I thought it was a very cool concept with all of the different paths you could choose, although admittedly I don’t have the patience that some people had when it comes to spend apparently four hours or more on all of the different options. I think I spend about an hour and 30 minutes on it max lol.
I got the ending where Stefan chops his dad up (well originally I went with just burying him, but then I was given the option to reverse that after the dog digs the body up and he ends up in prison without ever releasing the game), and it ends with his dad’s severed head in the corner as he’s completing the game. Lovely!
I do want to go back and see some of the other versions now, I’m just not sure I have the patience to sit through so many of the same scenes again, and urgh my Internet is a pain for freezing when I try and skip ahead too many times.
Another show I’ve been watching on Netflix is You. I’m not surprised that viewings apparently leapt up so much after Netflix acquired it. I’ve seen some skepticism over the 40 million number of views, but it makes sense when you consider that this is world wide, so just think of the extra views they can get from the U.K., from Canada, from Australia, from Germany alone, and that’s just four countries we’re talking about! I don’t get why more US networks like say HBO aren’t willing to consider a worldwide streaming service for their shows, it’s what makes sense in this day and age IMHO
And You was a fun binge watch, but tbh I was planning on just watching the one season to see what all the fuss is about, and then dropping it. It’s hard for me to get really into shows when I don’t connect with the characters, and neither Joe or Beck were really doing it for me.(My favourite character was actually Peach, and well we all know what happened to her! Not that she wasn't an awful person too, but Shay Michell was just really magnetic in the role, lol at Peach’s comments to Joe on runners high lasting longer than sex for some people!) The cliffhanger got me though, so yeah I am going to be back next year after all to find out more on what happened to Candice XD
I did like how it parodies the romantic comedy cliches, the disaster when Joe tries to get Beck’s attention and just ends up breaking her window instead, drunk Beck throwing up on him after their ~meet cute~ at the train station, even Joe’s utter confusion when Karen doesn’t slap him and act more dramatic at their breakup. And of course Joe’s voiceovers are usually pretty hilarious, especially with how totally self-aware he’s not , i.e his outrage at Peach being a stalker. There was a lot of fun black comedy there, and it feels like the show’s using Joe’s character to critique just how creepy and borderline stalking some of those popular romantic comedy cliches can actually be in reality when you get someone like Joe who is completely obsessed and unable to let go, convinced that he’s the ‘nice guy’ hero of the story
One nitpick though is that I don’t really get why they made Becks as ridiculously naive as she was. Like who doesn’t password protect their phone in this day and age? Who doesn’t close the door when they’re taking a bath in someone else’s house? Who openly has sex and masturbates in a ground floor apartment with all of the curtains open and the windows looking out onto the street :scratches head:
Also I really don’t get how some people are apparently shipping Joe and Becks, I’ve certainly had my fair share of shipping ‘problematic’ ships, but I don’t know how to get my head around shipping a couple where he locks her in a glass cage and kills her in the end?! If anything I liked that the writing went out of its way to show that Joe completely builds up his own version in his head of whoever he’s crushing on, and in fact Becks actually isn’t like he pictured at all. I.e in the beginning when he’s thinking that Becks is different from her friends in how she would *never* treat sex casually, only then she’s joking right along with them, or when he realises that she’s having casual hookups on tinder. Or the audiences shock along with Joe later on when we realise that Becks has been cheating. He just puts any random girl on a pedestal in his own mind, it was never about Becks as a person at all, as we’re shown at the end when he’s ready to go right back to obsessing over his next ~dream girl~ So yeah I really don’t get what is meant to be appealing about the Joe and Becks relationship, if anything it felt like the show was going out of its way to deconstruct that kind of obsessive ship and show what it really all boils down too. I loved the story that Becks came up with in the cage about that in the last episode
I got the ending where Stefan chops his dad up (well originally I went with just burying him, but then I was given the option to reverse that after the dog digs the body up and he ends up in prison without ever releasing the game), and it ends with his dad’s severed head in the corner as he’s completing the game. Lovely!
I do want to go back and see some of the other versions now, I’m just not sure I have the patience to sit through so many of the same scenes again, and urgh my Internet is a pain for freezing when I try and skip ahead too many times.
Another show I’ve been watching on Netflix is You. I’m not surprised that viewings apparently leapt up so much after Netflix acquired it. I’ve seen some skepticism over the 40 million number of views, but it makes sense when you consider that this is world wide, so just think of the extra views they can get from the U.K., from Canada, from Australia, from Germany alone, and that’s just four countries we’re talking about! I don’t get why more US networks like say HBO aren’t willing to consider a worldwide streaming service for their shows, it’s what makes sense in this day and age IMHO
And You was a fun binge watch, but tbh I was planning on just watching the one season to see what all the fuss is about, and then dropping it. It’s hard for me to get really into shows when I don’t connect with the characters, and neither Joe or Beck were really doing it for me.(My favourite character was actually Peach, and well we all know what happened to her! Not that she wasn't an awful person too, but Shay Michell was just really magnetic in the role, lol at Peach’s comments to Joe on runners high lasting longer than sex for some people!) The cliffhanger got me though, so yeah I am going to be back next year after all to find out more on what happened to Candice XD
I did like how it parodies the romantic comedy cliches, the disaster when Joe tries to get Beck’s attention and just ends up breaking her window instead, drunk Beck throwing up on him after their ~meet cute~ at the train station, even Joe’s utter confusion when Karen doesn’t slap him and act more dramatic at their breakup. And of course Joe’s voiceovers are usually pretty hilarious, especially with how totally self-aware he’s not , i.e his outrage at Peach being a stalker. There was a lot of fun black comedy there, and it feels like the show’s using Joe’s character to critique just how creepy and borderline stalking some of those popular romantic comedy cliches can actually be in reality when you get someone like Joe who is completely obsessed and unable to let go, convinced that he’s the ‘nice guy’ hero of the story
One nitpick though is that I don’t really get why they made Becks as ridiculously naive as she was. Like who doesn’t password protect their phone in this day and age? Who doesn’t close the door when they’re taking a bath in someone else’s house? Who openly has sex and masturbates in a ground floor apartment with all of the curtains open and the windows looking out onto the street :scratches head:
Also I really don’t get how some people are apparently shipping Joe and Becks, I’ve certainly had my fair share of shipping ‘problematic’ ships, but I don’t know how to get my head around shipping a couple where he locks her in a glass cage and kills her in the end?! If anything I liked that the writing went out of its way to show that Joe completely builds up his own version in his head of whoever he’s crushing on, and in fact Becks actually isn’t like he pictured at all. I.e in the beginning when he’s thinking that Becks is different from her friends in how she would *never* treat sex casually, only then she’s joking right along with them, or when he realises that she’s having casual hookups on tinder. Or the audiences shock along with Joe later on when we realise that Becks has been cheating. He just puts any random girl on a pedestal in his own mind, it was never about Becks as a person at all, as we’re shown at the end when he’s ready to go right back to obsessing over his next ~dream girl~ So yeah I really don’t get what is meant to be appealing about the Joe and Becks relationship, if anything it felt like the show was going out of its way to deconstruct that kind of obsessive ship and show what it really all boils down too. I loved the story that Becks came up with in the cage about that in the last episode