Shoebarno

This episode seems to have strayed far from the traditional weird way in which Black Mirror shows the dark side of futuristic technology. While I can see the angle of critiquing people's obsession with true crime shows on streaming platforms, this episode does not really deliver on that. A big criticism of the true crime genre is the terrible effect the shows have on the victims, many of whom show runners never seek permission from to tell these stories. So, when the episode tries to sell the character who sold their very personal story for all to see as the victim, I can't buy it.

The story itself, while good, is not new at all. It felt like I was watching a remake of an old horror film I had seen before, down to the details. It did not produce the eerie, surreal vibe that makes Black Mirror.

Strangely enough, though it did not live up to my expectations, I enjoyed it.

The Good Doctor has put so much effort into putting social justice in the forefront of each episode in recent seasons, sometimes to cringy, ham-fisted levels, that it comes as a shock how it went ahead and used an awful yellow "this is how you know it's a 3rd world country" filter on the episode set in Guatemala. It looks and feels pretty awful.

Otherwise, I can get behind the drama of it all. There are emotional moments.

Then again, seeing the doctors who in previous episodes have managed to be stoic through the sufferings of their American patients breakdown because of being unable to help equally dire Guatemalan patients feels a bit off.

The show has an amazing premise: literal class struggle aboard a running train that is the last safe space in a frozen world. Some of the science of the train and the environment are pretty interesting and fun to think about. The class structure is rigid and brutal.

The show starts off with an almost identical plot to Netflix's Altered Carbon, a murder mystery. However, the (much smaller scale) Game of Thrones-like political intrigue keeps things thrilling... initially.

As the show goes on past season 2, unfortunately, the plot armors thicken. The lead characters keep switching sides over and over, sometimes just out of the blue on a whim, but are forgiven every time by the winning side for no real reason. They are hard to root for because of their garbage morality (even accounting for the circumstances) or because they are simply not interesting.

The side characters you could root for. Some of them have fun nick-names or interesting jobs. You'd hope they have some interesting storylines. Nope, they get killed off unceremoniously, and sometimes even offscreen. It's becoming a chore to try to watch.