Mick M It has it's redeeming qualities, like excellent cinematography, a great atmosphere (with the Icelandic setting), and great music (my favourite of any episode in series 4), but it has a ton of problems in my opinion. I felt this episode didn't explore potential thematic avenues as much as past episodes and for that reason it was probably my least favourite of series 4
Me too, the thing that i didn't like is that her character felt all over the place. She felt so bad about the first to murders but then she went all serial killer and it felt just weird
Cameron Gordon that is the biggest problem of this episode because sometimes I was like “let her doing what she want she old enough” then I remember she only 15 or 14
It was kind of hard to suspend imagination. Unless I missed something, it's a while before you find out she's meant to be 15, I assumed she was about 18, which is quite difference. If she was a young looking 15 year old, I think people would have reacted very differently.
@@KO-nb5zv it's not the fish but the feeds. They also use those to chicken feeds. Eating too much chicken wings, legs and fish belly could influence your hormones. But if you eat organic foods then you're alright
@@EatYourVegs what the fuck are you talking about? The nurse at the school said the words "your preganancy is no longer viable" meaning she was pregnant but not anymore because of the pill. Chances are, since the Arkangel can detect drugs entering the system, it can also detect pregnancy. You're a dumbass.
To be honest I thought at that bit the twist was gonna be that the kid wasn’t actually real and that it die in the birth but the trauma was too much for the mother to bear and so everyone pretends like she’s real and that the couple who find her were jus figments of her imagination too which I was sure about by the time that the camera focused on only her head perhaps implying that everyone going on was just in her head. Robot cats sound cool too though haha
I love the beautiful irony of how Marie got Arkangel so that she would never lose Sara again, and ultimately it was the very thing that made her lose her daughter forever. Excellent analysis as always! Crocodile's gonna be an absolute shitstorm 😂
The irony is that she used Arkangel to be a good parent, but she never actually parent her child. Had she communicated with Sarah, talked to her about sex, drugs, peer pressure, etc. and explained to her what "responsibilities" meant, Sarah would have still been there.
With how twisted Black Mirror is, I was expecting her to trigger the filtering with the final strike and have it break on the repeated impact, leaving Sarah (?) in that state of censorship for the rest of her life.
Marie: Censors everything uncomfrotable/distressing, does not confront Sara about anything Trick: Attempts to describe blood, shows her porn, horror movies, and helps her experiment with drugs, is her first love, No wonder Sara likes Trick, he taught her more about the world than her mother did.
+Nick Schulaner That's because no one shouldn't be showing their kids porn. If you think kids should she that at the age Sara did then you should be arrested.
creativevision Are you stupid? That's not what their point was at all. It was just that her mother, I assume, never talked about that stuff so being able to talk and learn about it with Trick is how they bonded. Had her mother taught her daughter about such things she never would have had an interest in doing drugs. (until at least 18)
The experiment of drugs, shouldn’t happen. Drugs isn’t a good thing especially when your at school, it’s illegal for a reason. And showing another child porn shouldn’t happen, because that could lead to underage sex, which is what happened. Being her first love was also illegal, She’s underage and he’s over.
He taught her about things that can all lead to addiction, porn: obvious, drugs: obvious, horror movies and blood: desire to seek out gratuitous gore and possibly cutting herself, don't forget she started stabbing herself to figure out what blood was.
That's why before Sara grew up in the film, you'll hear them talking about how Arkangel is being pulled out from operation. Obviously, it's because it's flawed. I bet there are more people suffering through technology that Arkangel has brought, basically people who bought into the Ark's tablet tracking system.
she just seemed like the "I'm too cool" teen hipster she was terrible. From her fashion sense to her life choices. I'd enjoyed that episode more and probably rooted for her if she wasn't a dumbass (doing drugs, running away with probably no education and money, her and her idiotic boyfriend not knowing what a fucking condom is) I don't defend the mom in the slightest but Sarah at the end irritated me more
I think the scene where Trick shows Sara porn and violent videos is really important and wasn't talked about enough. That scene shows that when Sara's implant is deactivated she is shown the extremes of reality. That's why during the sex scene she imitates a pornstar and how when she sees what her mom had been doing she acted out so much.
I'd argue viewing extremities are not to blame for her actions, rather her mother's lack of conversation about the things Sara had been exposed to. It's extremely easy to explain sex or violence and it's even easier to help a child differentiate real situations from glamorized or overdone ones. However, Sara's mother did not want to deal with a conversation like that. Sara's mom believed wholeheartedly that disabling her daughter's ability to see bad things was the equivalent of good parenting. "If she cant see it, she's safe." When the reality is, Sara could have always been exposed to it, but if her mother never talked about or dealt with the things sara was exposed to, Sara would never mature. Sara would go through life never knowing how to live because the people who loved her refused to actually talk about the bad or mature parts of REAL life. Those scenes represent the mom's failure to be a good parent. They show how the mom's neglect ended up warping the perspective of her daughter. They show how a simple conversation about how drugs or sex or violence work, would have prevented all this.
And that her mom should have taught her about sex and to be safe when having sex and about pregnancy and etc including dangerous things in the world and not pretend everything was rainbow and flowers in the world when it’s not
This episode really hit me hard when I watched it cause I grew up with lots of parental control despite being told otherwise. It ruins trust between child and parent and causes the kid to rebel. Maybe that's why it was hard to sympathise with Marie.
tbh my parents were pretty relaxed and laid back but i hated marie from the get go. i honestly could not sympathise with any of her actions at all. she was horrible imo
Marie was an awful parent. She should have thrown the tablet away as soon as she was aware of how much harm it was causing her child. I got illogically angry at her throughout the episode.
I agree. I didn't sympathize with Marie one bit. Even at 23 my parents still try to control me and its fucked me up in ways they don't even realize. If this technology was available they would be Marie.
Me too. From my experience living with a toxic parent, and emotionally manipulating me with Guilt Trips. I can't sympathise with the mother because I think she needs to learn the lesson, the hard way.
One thing that really bothered me about this episode, and it might be by personal choice, but I almost broke out laughing when they tried to portray that women as a 15 year old. It really takes me out of episodes when they have people try to play a younger person when they don't look like it. I thought she was in her late twenties and I was stunned to find out she's really only 21.
Although that's the entire point, isn't it? Sarah was a lot more mature than the mother realised, and the fact that she looks much older than 15 proves that point.
durk diggler yeah I know that but there becomes a point we’re the actress/actors look way to old for the role that they are playing, which is the case here for me
one point i think is interesting to consider is how sara’s only exposure to certain subjects shaped later scenes. specifically, i saw a parallel between her being overly pornographic while having sex with trick (likely influenced by having only seen porn) and her overly violent and brutal attack on her mother (possibly influenced by her only exposure to violence being in videos of terrorism). thoughts?
Trick ultimately made more of an effort to teach her about stuff than her mom did. The reason Sarah has such a distorted version of reality is that all she had to go off of is the stuff trick showed her. They never showed Marie confronting her about any of this stuff. The trick at least did something.
Nick Schulaner oh i completely agree! i wasn’t trying to blame trick at all, only saying that the fact that her first exposure to these subjects was so extreme may be a reason her eventual actions were also so extreme
bea stewart I think the episode may have been trying to hint at that. However, in real life I doubt she’d have that much of a strange relationship to sex and violence because her filter was turned off in her preteens, which gave her enough years to be exposed to it like a normal person.
Was I the only one that noticed a For Sale sign on the house where the dog used to live when the daughter became older? I thought it signified the loss of the girls innocence maybe...
I think it represents Sarah leaving. The dog was chained and acted put against everyone except Sarah. The dog isn't gone until the same Time when Sarah is leaving her home. Just my thoughts
@@Bachingchung Nah, they're referring to the "romantic" innocence. She didn't lose anything until she found out her mom was spying on her instead of teaching her how to survive the real world.
I love the fact that this episode shows that keeping a child/teen away from any type of violence could make them emotionless towards violence or even violent themselves, whereas today we often blame exposure to violence (internet, video games...) for such behaviors.
Oooh great point! Being desensitized to the shock factor can make you not be able to see violence as a bad thing you shouldn't do, therefore encouraging it, making it less of a big deal.
Kinda reminds me of Fushi from To Your Eternity when he first saw someone crying out in pain and he started repeating what the guy said while he was in pain.
To the people who are trying to justify spying on your children by saying that she saw her doing cocaine and having sex in the back of a van. I would say you are missing the entire point of the episode. What does spying accomplish? Does it keep your child safe? In that moment, yes. Does it stop them from doing anything like that in the future? No, not in the slightest. If anything it creates a sense of curiosity, and given the knee-jerk reaction you had in the past makes your child more likely to lie to you about things like that in the future. What she should have done is explain to her what cocaine is, how it affects you, explain the pros and cons of doing it. She could also have explained to her what sex is, how to have sex safely, how sex is different with someone you love compared to just sex. She failed her daughter as a parent, an educator, and a mentor. You cannot have a healthy relationship unless you have absolute trust, and there was almost no trust between the two of them. Kinda like the dog behind the fence. Initially it was perceived as a bad thing that should be avoided at all costs. Until the girl actually explored the "bad thing" she realized that it wasn't so bad, it was just her perception of it. I think the "dangerous dog" can symbolize the world we live in. Sure it seems like a scary place, but you will never understand how it works unless you experience BOTH the good and the bad parts.
Exactly, most parants want to keep their child safe and will go great lengths to do so. What some fail to see is how much. How long do they hide their child from sex or violence? When should they tell them? At 21, 18, 16, 11? The point that i'm trying to make. Thinking that young kids can't handle it is wrong. Of course i'm not saying tell your 5 year old about sex. NO, what we do need to realize that our children can handle stuff like that. Lets not alienate them from that If you think your child can handle it. Then let them know.
Alex Smith Disagreeing with the idea that constant monitoring of a child without their knowledge or consent can damage the trust they have with their parent? If I learnt my parents were monitoring my every move I probably would have run away a long time ago. And that's not me being dramatic, I just couldn't possibly find a way to trust them again. Edit: And by me running away, I'd be putting myself in the dangerous situations they were trying to avoid.
Okay, I loved this episode, but can we talk about the fact that this "15 year old" looks like a grown ass woman? I couldn't stop laughing when the mom said "she's only 15". Thought it was a joke. Other than that, great episode, though.
If they had got an actual 15 year old, the mothers horror of her having sex, doing drugs and getting pregnant would have been so much more understandable. As is, her daughter looks 19-21 years old and just seems like she's living her own life and her mom disapproves of her choices. The kids in Stranger Things are 15, this girl looks like a female Jesse Pinkman.
i feel like some of the ppl who find this ep to be boring or predictable r only watching black mirror for the *plot twists* . im surprised at how underrated arkangel is despite it dealing with one of the most prevalent and relevant issues rn this show offers _so_ much more than just *shock factor* u kno
IsabelaCreates it made me cry how she beat up her mom but she couldn’t see the damage she caused her because of the chip and left running away soo frickin sad 🤧😢😩
I thought this episode was boring and predictable, but i don't *only* watch Black Mirror for the plot twists. USS Callister didn't have any riveting plot twists, but it's still one of my all time fave episodes. Same for 15 Million Merits. I enjoy Black Mirror because of the philosophical issues it raises and how it deals with the dark psychology of humans. That's why I didn't particularly enjoy this episode, or episodes like Metalhead and Crocodile. The topic of helicopter parenting has been done so many times before. Hell, some people live through it so they already know exactly what the episode was going to be like. To me, there weren't any philosophical challenges to ponder or analysis to do. It was just a story about a strict parent but with more technology. I've had firsthand experience with extreme helicopter parenting, and watching the episode made me recoil internally the entire time. I didn't like the mom because although her intentions were good, she's stupid for not considering the damage she would do to her daughter in the long run. I didn't like the daughter because she was also stupid for doing dumb things like unprotected sex and drugs. I get that she grew up in a very sheltered life, but you'd think that at least somewhere along the way, especially in those years without the Arkangel, she would learn some responsibility and self-control. If she hadn't, then her mom is an even worse parent than I thought. The plot was also rather mediocre and predictable: parent gets spying tool, shelters child from harm, child grows up with very limited freedom, spying tool gets disabled and child suddenly has a lot of freedom, child goes crazy with said freedom and does bad things, conflict between parent and child, child leaves. I mean, what did you think was going to happen? that's my rant. have a nice day.
I know a lot of people dislike this episode, but one thing Black Mirror does well is show how technology has made it harder for us to interact, as demonstrated in this episode. Marie's whole dependence on the Arkangel device has eliminated her ability to properly interact with her child. When she was actively using the device, she spent more time observing Sara and her surroundings through her eyes. Even when playing hide and seek, she had to be watching the tablet. Always watching the tablet - even when in the same room. This disconnect, to a point, seems to have only continued when she put the device away. Some say that if their 15-year-old daughter were having sex and doing drugs, they would also intervene. The problem is, Marie never really intervenes. She never confronted Sara for lying when she went to the lake. Never spoke to her about sex after seeing her with Trick. Never spoke to her about drugs after seeing her do cocaine. Instead, she confronts and blames Trick, essentially 'blocking him out' of Sara's life. And when she finds out Sarah is pregnant, her course of action is the extreme of sneaking an abortion pill into her smoothie instead of talking to her. Sara didn't even know she was pregnant; that was a complete violation and betrayal. Marie will go to any length to avoid confrontation with her own daughter. It's not unlike the filter option of the device. Gloss over the bad things and it's like they don't exist. Unfortunately, they still do. What Sara learns and her mother does not, is that we can't just mask them, because they are still there. We can confront them and learn from them (like Sarah does with the dog; being scared at first, but then becoming its friend), or we can hide from them. But in the end, the mask/filter will be removed, and you will have to deal with the bad things one way or another (like when Sara is attacking her mother with the tablet, and only stops when the filter is turned off and she finally sees her mother's bloody face, not the blurred out version). Technology can't replace good parenting or simple conversation. If she had talked to Sarah more and monitored her less, all of it could have been prevented.
Ava Johnson Interesting. So in the same way that the technology messed up the girl's childhood, it also ruined the mother's ability to parent effectively.
Troy Bakeman I would say it’s more her reliance on the technology, not the technology itself. Almost anything can be good or bad depending on how you use it.
The reason Marie never intervened was because she felt guilty for not respecting her daughter's privacy. She made a decision to not use the intrusive arkangel device but she broke that agreement and she wants to make herself look good in front of her daughter. She was a sneaky, obsessive, control freak.
I think Arkangel is the scariest and probably most realistic in my opinion. We already have tons of fitness, health trackers that can rate your heart, etc. We have monitors like Ring (a doorbell i personal have which is awesome but constantly reminds me of this episode), i don't see it being too far in the future where we could implant such an item and I know far too many people that would be too tempted to either block everything or monitor their children 24/7
At first when she was confused about being pregnant I was confused on how she didn’t know if she had intercourse but earlier in the show, when trip(or trick) was showing Sara porn, he said that they couldn’t get pregnant unless they did a certain position. So it connects to why she was so confused when the nurse told her she was pregnant.
Malcolm Davis I agree with you there,buddy-I actually saw the episode in the past week or so,and I immediately thought of her older self as being a bit older/old for somebody roughly 15 years old by saying that she looks/looked more like a girl of 17 years old instead.. I would've also thought recently that Trick might've been old enough to be a high-school dropout (either due to suspension or expulsion and/or just dropped out just because,or drugs..making/selling and/or using drugs would also be an indicator of age,apparently of course..eh..?) and/or-if he's still in high-school then,then that young man had probably skipped a grade or two in the past,y'know..right,eh..? Still,i would've gone with somebody at LEAST 18-19 (-especially 19,since there is a mention of supposed "underage sex" in the said episode per se,of course-) for older Sara,other than I had the impression that either she had a growth spurt/was an early bloomer as a young adolescent and/or there was something..pretty off about her,minus the whole Arkangel/helicopter parenting thing/things,y'know eh..?!?!?!
I thought towards the end when the mom sees herself standing in the room on the screen, she was going to turn around & discover Sara dead, hanging from the ceiling looking straight at her....
@@EatYourVegs for black mirror? Any plot twist is expected. Also she already showed tendency towards self harm with the pencil scene, I also thought of that
I thought it would have been great if Sara had been 18 or older and still living with her mother instead of 15. I mean, if I was a mom and my 15-year old daughter was having sex and doing drugs, I’d intervene too. But if the child were legally an adult, the mother would technically have no say in what her daughter can do with her life. I feel like that could have strengthened the impact of the episode, but just my thoughts.
I think that the fact that she was only 15 makes you realize how bad the technology of this episode was. Because, being sheltered so much by her mother scarred her so badly that now, just 15, she does all of that without realizing how dangerous it all is
When did I say that? Where? Whom? Where did I imply that I was trying to assert dominance over you? In my opinion, 15-year olds are way too young to have sex. Think about it. Teenagers are very naive and more susceptible to commit acts such as drug consumption and underaged sex, don't you agree? Trick was an 18-year old while Sara was only 15. That's the first problem, I mean, the fact that it's kinda illegal. Next, don't you think a 15-year old being impregnated is also problem? Girls that age still have a lot to get through in their lives before they're ready to settle down and start a family. She still has school to get through, classes to major in, careers to consider, jobs to get. A baby is too much of a burden on those kinds of freedoms. And if the father doesn't want to deal with it? He can just bounce. Then you'll have a single mom who still has education to complete, but needs the money and resources to provide for herself and now a baby. That's why I believe that it isn't ideal to have sex at 15.
Canal do Sora possibly but I think they would have shown that in a flashback or conversation with her father. There were 2 instances, 1. The birth which waiting for the cry is heart wrenching but also not that big of a deal. If Sarah was born prematurely and was in neonatal intensive care then I could understand. 2. When Sarah ran after the cat, I wish there was a little more to this too, I wish we had more of an indication of how long Sarah was missing. If she had been missing till morning for example but had been taken in by a good Samaritan close by then I could understand how the ark angel would have been so useful in that situation. 3. Sarah's age, she looked in her early 20s and when I eventually found out she was 15 it was really odd. If Tripp had been older and not known how old Sarah was then it would make sense but they're near enough the same age. 4. I wish we saw more of how ark angel effected her, maybe Sarah didn't learn about sex education and about getting periods so was distraught when she got hers. Maybe she was too naive but when did she watch porn? Or know so much about coke? And how long past her curfew was she before her mum panicked? It's a great concept for sure. Sorry for the essay.
Ani Screams Loudly don't be sorry, man! I loved your answers :-) I got a little bit throw off too when we learn she's 15, but my guess is that they wanted us, as viewers, to go like "she's kinda grownup" just by her looks, but actualy being a younger person in her mother's eyes. Sorry if I didn't make so much sense. It's a little bit hard to discuss complex Black mirror-ish stuff when I have to translate it in my head hahahahaha
Ani Screams Loudly like Harry said the mother got addicted to the control the device offered. Her parental instinct to control her child was amplified by the device and she couldn't let go of that feeling of a watchful angel.
Another thing interesting about Marie's over protection of her daughter is she only sees Trick (no idea how to spell his name) in a bad light, only seeing them having sex while Sarah says porn type lines (because that's all she knows) or her doing the coke, not her begging for the drugs beforehand and him trying to deny her, or the build up to Trick and Sarah's relationship. I didn't really understand the age difference between the two, I assumed he was just 18 and she was 17, and when it came to light she was 15, I thought he was 16/17. Would of liked that clarified in the episode.
Megan Simmons I guess Trick is suppose to be 20 but because they mentioned him just getting the truck I had it in my head that he was like 16-18 years old.
The age thing was bugging me as well, so I looked it up. Sara is 15, Trick is 18. So there is a gap, but they did kind of grow up together, so it doesn't bother me as much. He's not a sexual predator or anything. And Sara initiated both encounters. So it bothers me as well that Marie puts all the blame on Trick and none on Sara.
Yes, absolutely! Sorry, when I said the age thing was bothering me, I meant not knowing how old they both were, not the age gap itself. It was hard to gauge her mother's reaction when we didn't know how old they both were in the show. If he were 16, then not so bad. But 18 makes a difference. And we also understand why he is so quick to abandon Sara.
This epiode was heartbreakng for me.I know that my mother would've done this to me, if the technology was possible.The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The mother was first concerned but became obsessed in controlling her daughter, not allowing her to experience emotional pain, empathy, violence,disgust and recognize dangerous situations and stranger danger. It was the mother's fault not to be able to loosen the tight hold she had on her daughter's life and teenager's hate nothing more than finding out their privacy is hurtfully disrespected. Really interesting episode on how loving your child can become and obsession to control, manipulate, mistrust and being able let go, which led to the unsettling, horrific ending of this episode -the exact same thing the mother wanted to prevent.
Well yeh, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Parents that are strict, think they are protecting you by being so. A tragic episode, but I had no sympathy for the daughter in the episode either tbh.
Did anyone else think the brief mention of Oedipus Rex in the daughter's class would also lead to the mom/daughter gouging their eyes out after shit hits the fan in the end?
This episode triggers me so much. Everyone that thinks lowly of it clearly hasn't had an over protective parent (like myself). I completely sympathised with Sarah and felt no remorse for the mother. Many others I know who've grown up in a similar over protective environment has agreed with me about loving the episode. Being the same age as the character I was almost in tears by the end just from how alike it was to me and my mother, first episode that's genuinely scared and stuck with me
Well it makes sense to sympathise with what you can relate to. Both characters behaved badly to me, but for Sarah it's not her fault since she grew up in a pretty messed up way. The mom is definitely in the wrong, but since I'm pretty close to my parents and saw how worried they can be sometimes, I do sympathise with her a bit.
@@riceseasoning6748 lmao the mom is a psychopath tbh. jesus christ, throws a fit overseeing her daughter taking drugs despite the mom never talking it out with her/educating her. i have no remorse or pity for her, good riddance.
one of the best episodes. it brings you in with raw quality and flow rather than a unique concept and mind bending twist. its predictable but thrilling to watch
I honestly think the best ending should have been if the parental control unit stayed on forever after beating her mother. Then sara afterwards would walk to the train tracks seen in the start of the show. She would then stand on the tracks and as a train starts approaching the train is blurred from the parental control being stuck on ultimately leading to her being hit by a train that has been blurred. Shortly after Marie should have woken up and went looking for her daughter only to find a police investigation scene at the tracks were she would be told her daughter appeared to have commuted suicide by being hit by a train.
woah man that's too dark i love it also, now that u've said it. i wonder if young sara actually ever saw a car running fast and beeping loudly, would it be blurred out? itsn't that dangerous for the kid? to not know that there is danger around them?
While that certainly would have been dark and twisted enough for Black Mirror standards, it wouldn't have made much sense. Sarah had lived a good deal of her life with the parental control off, enough to at least have learned about the concept of danger and threat to life, and in any case she would have to be a genuine idiot to not know that standing on a train track with something coming towards her, even if that something was blurred, would be an indicator that she should get the hell out of the way (plus, you can feel vibrations on tracks when a train is approaching; it's not like they silently sneak up on you). Now, not being able to see a speeding car and running out into the street and dying *that* way...I'd have no problem with that (though I don't think it would be necessary to show Marie finding out about it).
You missed the whole point of the episode looking for the plot twist. It's hits so close for most people is bc we're not long before that Technology actually existing and shows how the very device that her mom bought to protect her has done the opposite. Where she'll now throw herself into dangerous situations just to taste freedom for once
This one was good. It had its moments but still lacked in overall message. Still a good ol "shut up mom" scene is always good,oh wait, that's not how it went
Long ass paragraph of why Arkangel sucks Actually, in my opinion this episode shouldn’t get any praise. The pacing was bad, the director tried to fit as much as he could with the storyline and the timeline but the result was just sloppy and incomplete. The characters story and characteristics had no depth, why yes I SHOULD feel sympathy for the mother when she loses the child, but there isn’t a reason why. We don’t get to much time with the mom, her main personality was that she is a paranoid mother who put a chip in her daughters head. That’s not much of a character. The daughter is just something else, from what we can tell she was a imaginative child, then she was acting out when they gave her the chip, after that she was now going to go do it all once the filter was off, then we get this coke having, sex in a van hungry, it’s not a phase mom runaway gothic bitch by the end of the episode. WHAT KIND OF HALF ASSED CHARACTERS ARE THESE!! For gods sake the boyfriend, even the best friend who got less than 5 minutes of screen time had more depth and personality than the MAIN CHARACTERS. The actors well, they just don’t fit, they don’t convince me or draw me into the story. They actors seemed wooden at times, but maybe they weren’t the actors maybe they were the lack of characteristics in person they were portraying. And the technology was also half assed, they could have had so much more if they had explored just a little more of Arkangel, they leave so much out like: what happens if the mom were to get the tablet stolen, what if the filter was always on, what if the daughter or mother went to get the chip removed, could you specifically censor certain things ( like people aka censor the boyfriend aka better story)etc. Oh and the biggest peeve that I had was WHATS THE FUCKING TWIST. It has no twist, no message, by the end of the episode I was left with this feeling of confusion and anger and it wasn’t because the story made had captivated me and that was the emotions they were supposed to make me feel, which by the way most of those episodes should have that intentional emotion that they leave for you at the end of the episode, but in fact I was angry at the writing of the episode. There was no message, no twist it was just this cliche daughter who is just like my mom spied on me and now I’m running away, instead of this girl who could have feared being exposed to the world but would always be protected by her mother has just found out that the one person who was supposed to protect her has just seen her when she was most vulnerable. THATS JUST A FEW REASONS OF WHY ARKANGEL HAS DISAPPOINTED ME, I’d write more but I’ve gone on this tangent for quite some time now.
It must be really hard enjoying things, when you pick apart everything. When the screening moves from an observation to an investigation, you lose all sense of joy, because you turn it into a job to find flaws.
babyboijeremy Actually I looked forward to this very episode when they showcased in it the trailers it’s just that when I was watching the episode I had really high hopes, that and bar being exponentially high with the quality of previous episodes, and the end result left me displeased and I these notes are the major things that bothered me in the episode
0:50 to be honest unknown thing hidden by this cells is probably more fucking terrifying than a dog itself, so there is a good amount of irony in whole concept of this tech.
I honestly, as a teenager myself, found this to be a very thought provoking episode, and as such, spent much time discussing & debating the topics it portrays in detail with my peers, my parents, and others alike. This analysis is one I was certainly was looking forward to (as well as the others in this season) and I gave the link to those I talked about it with. Thank you @Hary's Moving Castle.
it's great that you could discuss it with your parents. I think this episode wanted to do this very thing, start a discussion between parents and their children.
HotShot 351 yes. I understand why people would be annoyed by Marie, not saying her actions were wrong (they were), but Marie meant well. If she was taught better she would do better, like a child. It broke my heart seeing both of them walk on to difficult paths. It ached to see Marie like that after all she did for her daughter.
@@animalfinatic9366 she did mean well but she shouldn’t have gotten that tablet and basically stake her to me Marie she should have let her daughter experience things for herself and been got rid of the tablet
@@alllittlethingzz Just to be clear, I don't blame her daughter at all for wanting to be independent though it did hurt to see her beat up her mom like that. It's just sad knowing this would all have been solved with a proper form of communication instead of the mom being invasive. She really did love her
i’d love an arkangel part two, seeing sara on the run and wherever she is after the ending, and seeing how marie is living after being beaten to near death by her own daughter and left alone
Gotta be honest, later on in the episode when the mother says shes only "15" I had to take a break, thats one tall ass 15 year old. Anyway Id love to say how great this episode was (of which it was) but being honest, the whole of season 4 was actually amazing, Keep up these great analysis's of these episodes Harry
SmugCow to be fair,I also had to look/glacé twice.. Man,I thought-Personally-either that _"Sara's 17/a 17 year old(?!?)..or puberty hit her like a truck,HARD."_
This is the first time aside from "San Jupitero" that a Black Mirror episode made me feel good. Marie saw that coming, she was obsessed and ended up ruining the relationship Sara built with Trick, as well as the trust she finally obtained throughout the years. It was utterly satisfing seeing Sara finally free from her mother's watch.
I saw this in my recommendations and i screamed, i was waiting for another one of these analysis. Thanks to your analyses i have a better understanding of each episode, so i really appreciate your videos. Greetings from Chile💫
I really wish they had explored how the filter screwing with her as a child continued to effect her as a teen. Not, okay switched it off, you're all normal now.
You do see it explicitly referenced, twice. Once during the sex scene where she starts moaning like a porn star would, thinking that that's normal. Number two when she bashes her mom's head in because her only experience with violence as a child was fucking Al Qaeda videos, and she (presumably) never had that big of a tantrum/fallout before.
Yeah, but those felt like awkwardly tossed in afterthoughts by someone who dropped the very intriguing concept of following the future of this deeply weird child and switched more to the helicopter mom story. The former concept was just way more interesting to me.
I really enjoyed this episode, but the fact that Sara was meant to be 15 completely destroyed my immersion. Considering that the actress that played her is in her early 20s, it would have made much more sense for Sara to be around 17, as she would have still been a minor, and the age gap between character and actress would have been a much more tolerable 4 years instead of 6(!) As I said, I enjoyed the episode, but this minor fact really pulled me out of the story, and I'm unsure why it was included.
Gabrielle Maria hmmm idk. I don’t have a child but I could still relate to the mom a lot (which is maybe why I shouldn’t have kids lol). Although I wish it would have explored its impact on the daughter’s psyche more, I still think it was decent and definitely not “hot garbage”. 6.5/10
Wait, we were supposed to have 'conflicted sympathies'? Maybe it's because my parents have always restricted my internet access (even at age 17, I still have parental controls on my laptop and can only use it 3 hrs a day, being logged out at exactly 9:30), but I felt only the slimmest bit of sympathy for the mother. I understand the need to protect one's child, but everyone should understand the stupidity of literally not letting a child feel, see, or hear danger. Furthermore, even as an independent teenager, the mother does not see her daughter as worthy of respect or privacy, she doesn't see her own child as a full human being deserving of basic human rights. To me, that's disgusting. Even minor forms of parental restrictions have made me feel resentment and left me behind my peers, as well as making me feel constantly paranoid (to the point where when I was young, I imagined my parents could read my thoughts so I'd restrict my thoughts to 'parent friendly' only). I can't imagine the kind of paranoia and trauma this woman has so 'lovingly' bestowed upon her daughter.
I agree, I felt angry during the entire episode. I thoughtm good for you, during the sex and drugs scene. Which wasn't good of course. Parental controls at 17 though, that's bad.
I also love the irony of how she was trying to turn the device off and accidentally turned the filter on and didn’t see how much damage she was causing her mom. The device used to protect her daughter from harm was not only being used as a blunt object against her, but she wasn’t able to stop her daughter because she agreed to have that filter software.
its a cool episode.. a good look at why privacy is so important no matter what age you are.. This device actually reminds me of a baby-monitor for older kids. This could be the perfect device for an undercover agent..
If your parents are in IT, this kind of monitoring is very real. I grew up with helicopter parents just like in this episode, and I literally cheer every time I see the ending of this episode. What well-deserved justice! No parent should ever commit such atrocities against their own children.
When my child is young I wouldn't mind having parental blocking but after about 8/9 there free to find whatever on the Internet seeing fucked up things and making mistakes and a kid is part of what made me sensible in bad situations and I would not take away that
I loved this episode. The ending had a powerful emotional punch imo. Also, to the people complaining about how they didn't believe the girl was 15: I didn't either and that was part of the point of the episode, lmao. You are supposed to initially believe that Sara is older. That's part of the moral dilemma: Sara looks and acts more like a 20 year old but is still legally underage. Whats crazy about this episode is that I empathized with both the mother and Sara. The mother seems like a genuinely nice person and loves Sara deeply. However, she let her fear for her daughter cause her to cross some pretty unforgivable lines. Honestly, the mother should have just confessed to what she saw, apologized, but then tried to talk to her daughter about sex and drugs. She should have even considered destroying the monitoring tablet to serve as an olive branch to Sara. And I understand why Sara inevitably snapped. Sara experienced humiliation, betrayal, and heart break all at the same time. The mother violated her privacy and then forced the boyfriend to break her heart. Sara experienced betrayal from the only two people she really loved in the world all in like a 24 hour period. And then add in whatever feelings have been brewing for years over having this permanent implant in the first place. Its easy to say that Sara is 15 and therefore the mother was justified. The problem is that Sara has the mind of an adult. If you violated an adult in the ways that the mother did to Sara, there would be no forgiveness (at least for me).
There was a part in the classroom where they were talking about Oedipus. It’s a subtle nod to how just as Oedipus caused his fate while trying to avoid it, the mother in this episode caused her daughter to run away while trying to prevent that.
JessyAnderson I was 100% sure she was gonna kill her mom tbh. Would have been interesting to see her gone full psycho in a We Need to Talk About Kevin way 😈
Someone suggested that a better ending would be that while she was beating her mom and the tablet breaks, the parental control stays on forever and the daughter has no way of turning it off. I thought that'd be a bit more interesting.
Predictable doesn't always mean bad. I predict that Black Panther is going to stop the villain like heroes do in all Marvel films...I'm still going to see it though.
I actually really hated the mother in this episode. I mean, would a sane mother say 'I'm sorry' when a thinking, capable of human speech, child, comes back after FOLLOWING A CAT?! Like, my mom would scream at me for at least 5 minutes before giving me an actual hug lol XD
I have had such a shitty day today. As I watched this season of Black Mirror I was very much looking forward to hearing your analysis of them, then I never got around to it. Now I'll just watch all of your videos to brighten my shitty day. Thanks.
I just like how you can kind of track the evolution of the brain implant/interface technology throughout black mirror. Also, I don't think E.C. pills are futuristic.
Helicopter parents always think that by shielding their kids from the reality of the world, they're protecting them. It only delays the inevitable of the kid wanting to experience things on their own, except without the tools to problem-solve their way out of danger.
This episode felt like a melodrama and that really turned me off of it. None of the characters are likeable and every action of every character is ratcheted up to ten.
...the mum being closer to the angels... Sure, the fallen angels. She started off wanting to protect the child and it turned the child into an apathetic monster, while the mum grew more and more megalomaniacal. If she really wanted to keep the child safe she would have taught her the differences between right and wrong and why, as well as how to react to the common situations and taught her how to critically think in case of unforseen situations arising, then trusting that she did a good job and letting the child go. The helicoptering without instruction and confirmation of receipt of instruction is useless/obsessive/harmful to both parties. This is not my opinion, this is the collective position of people who really do study behaviour and understand the patterns and the roots of the patterns in order to try and break vicious cycles. Münchhausen by proxy with a dash of abandonment issues in this scenario of arkangel.
I agree about the parental controls. My parents (who are fantastic) tried to restrict my screen time despite me not suffering any substantial negative consequences from it, and I always lied about how much time I was on. This built distrust, as you said. My parents realized that the restriction served no purpose, and since then haven’t imposed any censorship. Shows how people can change.
I don't like this episode. It was structurally sound and the message was fine but they never fully went anywhere with the concept. They could've done the same story without the 'filtering out bad stuff' and the message wouldn't be hurt. From the way I saw it they were setting up a different kind of Trauma, how would a human react to stress, pain and horror after gaving grown up without it? The pencil-finger-pricking felt as a prelude to that. The third act they gave it felt slightly disappointing in the way it was set up. But that's how I feel about this season as a whole; very interesting concepts that ultimately lead to unsatisfying conclusions. (with exceptions to 'black museum', 'metal head' and 'hang the DJ')
Astral Cosmos Celestial the Third yeah and that was by far one of the most thrilling episodes but I srand by it that Robert should've gotten his commuppance in the real world, facing real consequences and the people frim the mod should've died as they said they would. The ending was way too sappy for my taste.
I wouldn't call Metalhead's concept all that interesting. It was basically just a post-apocalyptic chase/cat&mouse movie. However, the execution was excellent as it was very well acted and directed.
I remember when my parents used to put a timer on the internet, shutting it down using my MAC adress at 11PM. This caused me to start learning about how the tech behind it worked until I was be able to turn it off. People tend to want what they can't have.
You have to admit though, the Medical part of Arkangel would be immensely useful. For those who want to remain in good health, and for emergencies. Just need monitor if their 'health' reaches critical levels, and ping an ambulance their location to get them medical attention ASAP. Would save lots of lives, If only it was that way...
I actually cried when she smacked her so hard with the tablet. It made me cry so much bcs I love my mum so much that it hurts when someone hurts their parents, physically and mentally. It just makes me so angry that children do that!
Great analysis! I love that, as you point out, Marie is never more than arm's length from her daughter thanks to Arkangel, but at the same time, is clearly not close to her at all since she has no idea about Trick or anything like that. It's reminiscent of us using social media as a proxy for closeness and intimacy with others while simultaneously being more alienated and estranged *because* of the tech we have access to. Without Arkangel, Marie might actually have had to talk to Sara about things like sex and drugs to help her make good decisions and deal with the fallout of bad ones. With it, she feels a false sense of control and closeness that ultimately ends up driving a permanent wedge between her and Sara. It's sad because her intentions were completely understandable given how innocuous-seeming things can get out of control quickly (e.g., drug experimentation to addiction, sex to pregnancy and/or STDs, the fun, drug dealing bf to trouble, etc.). I really liked the warped sense of difficult parenting decisions the episode showed, and so, while I can understand why folks didn't like it as much, I really enjoyed it. Marie and Sara themselves were almost beside the point... It was really about the situation and the choices to be made within it.
The ending of the episode left me wondering wither or not the tablet could simply be repaired. But i'm thankful Blackmusuem showed that the tablet was still broken
Everyone's discussing these theories and here I am, massively excited about the Buffy soundtrack from "Hush" playing in the background. You're a sneaky one
I was instantly appalled by the premise of this episode, mainly the spying through eyes and blocking of vision content. This lead me to wonder as a European (Dutch), is the story easier to swallow for Americans? Since in the story the technology was banned in Europe, there might be a cultural difference there. This is my "your idea" anyway.
nivolord haha no it's appalling to us Americans as well. I mean I accept the concept because it's dystopian, but yeah there are cultural and political differences that allow us Americans to be taken advantage of like political nihilism. I guess there is a "think of the children!" Aspect of America that doesn't seem as crazy as it was 10 or 20 years ago, but it seems like teens in Europe are taught to be independent quicker than the average American. It's appalling but perhaps a chunk of Americans would be willing to do this to their children it's just unlikely anything like this would be passed, but who knows how the social climate would be all it takes is some fear mongering.
I think it's a good critique of current American trends in parenting. The mother definitely comes off as an Xer who had a hard scrabble life. Jodie Foster (according to Strauss & Howe's generational model for the US) was one of the first people to emerge as "different" from the Boomers and helped define Generation X in the early days before it had acquired its name. So here to see her critiquing her fellow generation members is rather nice. By the Strauss & Howe system, parenting trends are on a cycle that lasts about 80 years (aka the average lifespan of a human being), and are based on the concept that as a generation dies off and takes with it the collective memory of how X worked or failed because of Y, mistakes or ideas re-emerge and are repeated in a different form once again. Generation X has indeed taken the helicopter parenting trend towards more over protection, just as S&H predicted they would in the 1990s (when they first came out with their theory and Gen Xers were just edgy X-treme coming of age young adults and late teens) as a response to how their childhood and their typically Silent parents under protected them or allowed for too much freedom. They of course unaware that their Silent parents did so because their Silent parents had been over protected during their childhood during the era of Lost generation parents freaking out over the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, parents dragging their frightened and crying children from movie theatres showing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the forest scene), and child labor having been eradicated in its final holdouts. The Losts did such a good job of protecting their children and providing a safe atmosphere for their Silent children, that when those same Silents began to hit their mid-life crisis, they suddenly realized they'd spent half their lives "being good" and "thinking of others before themselves" without ever having known anything else, and then proceeding to make up for lost time by rebelling later in life while they were parenting their Gen X children. If the Gen X children didn't have to suffer the divorce epidemic of their Silent generation parents, or the key parties that Silents attended (everyone puts their car keys in a bowl at the beginning of the party, and at the end of the night the women pick out a car key to go home and sleep with a different man than their husband for that night) that generally distracted the Silents leaving their Gen X children to have to essentially raise themselves. And of course the Losts only did what they did after a childhood of being child laborers in sweat shops, running around industrialized and unsafe machines as guttersnipes, newsies hawking newspapers on street corners, and Progressive generation parents who were more concerned about American Imperialism and healing the wounds left by the Civil War, also in preserving every last bit of evidence of the disappearance of the "Wild West" as it was being tamed--and that's if they were wealthy enough to afford private tutors or governesses to raise their children for them. I think you get the picture. In between these extreme parts of the pendulum swings, you have generations like Boomers, Millennials, Greatest, Missionaries, and the Gilded who were raised as the pendulum was in the process of swinging between the extreme points and therefore got a more "balanced" and evenhanded parenting rather than the extreme variations of the other generations. Boomers one of increasing freedom for "kids to be kids", Millennials one of increasing protection like implementing mandatory bicycle helmets or beginning to crackdown on school bullying. The Greatests with the beginning of implementing the outlawing and regulating of child labor practices, the Missionaries with a more indulged childhood which saw the formalization of the idea of Santa Claus nationally and other indulging parenting practices of Civil War-weary Gilded parents. So as you can see the flip flopping from extreme ends of the pendulum swings is why I went off on this tangent, but also what I primarily see in this episode. It's showing that it's the extreme versions of over protection and under protection which lead to these problems, and what is needed is a fair and balanced form which has open lines of communication to talk about the bigger challenges children will face as they grow up. As for the difference between America and Europe, I would put it down to Europe having more Socially Liberal views of society. It's been your 20th Century wild fling as a reaction to the 19th Century's crackdown and forced Socially Conservative stagnation that came in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars with the Congress of Vienna, Biedermeier, etc. So I'd say you're just on a more socially liberal frame of mind because at one time your ancestors were at a more socially conservative frame of mind, and they rebelled against that and this past century was all about doing so. That said, be careful like this episode that you don't end up inspiring even worse Social Conservatives to pop up and swing back in the direction of a hard turn towards Social Conservatism--even more so than the US. Because if this episode has done anything, it's to prove Newton right in this: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In all seriousness, though, you guys (especially the Dutch) are far more socially liberal than most in the US are. Even those who call themselves Social liberals here (in America) I would frame as being equivalent in views and in terms of policy to your average European Social Conservatives (aka Christian Democrats).
" it seems like teens in Europe are taught to be independent quicker than the average American" Lol! No. I mean, I guess it depends on the country and family, but...no. American teenagers are the ones who grow up faster. They get their own cars, work part time to sustain their college education, move out of their house (and state!) at the age of 18 to study and sleep in a college dorm room... European kids generally just start driving at 18 and many stay at their parents' house until they get a full time job. In southern european countries, that is the rule: everybody stays living with their families until they're able to get out.
IM NOT FUCKING KIDDING YOU RIGHT! As soon as this video ended I got two ads, one for restricting content on youtube and one for general restriction on apps wtf
Something that made me sad was the obvious pain it cause Trick to push Sara away. And then the pain it caused Sara. It goes to show that sometimes "protecting" your children isn't taking everything away because you're afraid of your child becoming their own person & experiencing the world for themselves. That reaction often causes more harm than good. I understand she's only 15 but the honest truth is that teenagers have sex and experiment with things. She wasn't a coke addict, she was just curious and even then Trick didn't want her to do it in the first place and even when he gave in didn't let her do a lot. Her mom didn't look at the bigger picture, like when Trick told Sara she didn't have to act like a pornstar with him because he liked her for her or the concern he had when she wanted to try cocaine. Instead, her mom was picking and choosing what to see which happens a lot with people in real life & is what ultimately damages a lot of relationships between parents and their children.
The scary thing for me is the fact that I can actually connect with this episode. My parents wasn’t overprotective and was cool with letting me watch things like Adult Swim at 5 when it first came out even though I told them the crazy things I saw and was laid back on most things. Though the idea of allowing someone to look at the world through your eyes had disturbed me a bit because there was several times I came home from school upset and my parents would demand to know what happened even though I didn’t feel like talking or wanted to keep it to myself to the point they would threaten to whip me or straight up go through with it. That only made me more focus on keeping my feelings and emotions to myself which they knew they messed on when I got older. There was also when my dad had looked through my phone history and internet history to check up on something that was extremely private to me. When he told me what he did I was so upset that I actually grew paranoid for almost a year on using any electronic thing that he had brought for me or that he owned cause I didn’t want him invading my privacy again even though I knew what he could and couldn’t do. Hell I can see anyone snapping at having a camera like that implanted in their brains. That means giving someone free reign to watch your private matters, never knowing when you can be yourself, or use you to spy on others.
Parents aren't meant to see everything their child does.... It's sad to think that after she gets in that truck she's going down a bad path probably with sex, drugs, self hate and many other things
But it proves how ignorant Sara really is because of the device. At 15 she is still a child, her decision making skills are still very poor and she is not at all mature enough at all to function as an adult. She still needs the right kind of guidance in her life.
I also liked the beginning where it showed all the ways she lost her daughter and the screen was put in place in order to stop her getting lost. But do course in the end she lost her daughter to that very screen that was supposed to keep her safe.
At the end of the episode I was fricking mad you can’t just just f*** up your mom’s face and leave without doubting it. What made me even more mad is the mom still cared for her after she nearly “killed” her.
The Weirder Vlogger I think maybe she was worried she had killed her, or inflicted enough damage that she would die, so she ran. And, well, that's the thing... when love is unconditional, you can hate what someone does and love them immensely anyway. It's part of that parent-child bond some parents and children form. And I think Marie realized she was partially to blame for her daughter going over the edge. And of course she realized how much pain she had inflicted while trying to protect her, so the response is more, "I'm sorry I ended up hurting you, I was trying to keep you safe. I'm so sorry I failed," instead of, "Hey, you are going to pay for this because this is NOT okay!" That kind of bond is interesting to explore.
Chronically Curious that’s the thing, since she never learned how to react appropriately to situations like these, because of the monitoring, she didnt know what to do or how to control herself in that situation. Honestly, marie deserved that beatdownz
This episode was a great commentary on mass surviellance and privacy. As well as censorship and over-protective parenting. One of my favourite episodes. Marie got what she deserved.
I'm pretty hyped to talk about Crocodile now ngl
Harry's Moving Castle is that one worth watching? I read somewhere it isnt
Mick M It has it's redeeming qualities, like excellent cinematography, a great atmosphere (with the Icelandic setting), and great music (my favourite of any episode in series 4), but it has a ton of problems in my opinion. I felt this episode didn't explore potential thematic avenues as much as past episodes and for that reason it was probably my least favourite of series 4
Mick M it's my least favourite of the show (along with The Bee Episode) but it's a pretty interesting concept I guess, so yeah give it a go
Out of all the episodes, Crocodile is what I’m most hyped about to hear your review for!
Me too, the thing that i didn't like is that her character felt all over the place. She felt so bad about the first to murders but then she went all serial killer and it felt just weird
And then she runs away to become a truck driver herself, and meets the girl from nose dive
Chloe Froning holy shit😂
Or what if she is the girl herself
the girl from nosedive has a brother
or she BECOMES the girl from nosedive
Sara became Susan HAHAHAHAHAHA
This episode's biggest problem is expecting us to believe that this 22year old actress is actually 15. I lol'd
Cameron Gordon that is the biggest problem of this episode because sometimes I was like “let her doing what she want she old enough” then I remember she only 15 or 14
I thought she was +18 atleast. The episode is more powerful for me now
It was kind of hard to suspend imagination. Unless I missed something, it's a while before you find out she's meant to be 15, I assumed she was about 18, which is quite difference. If she was a young looking 15 year old, I think people would have reacted very differently.
It's because not a lot of 15 year olds are very good actors.
Jackson Begley they could take a girl who is little bit older like 18 or 20 I think that will make a difference
There are a lot of things I’m willing to believe in this world, but Sarah being 15 is not one of them.
I guess if she was looking more of her age we would be inclined to be more on mother's side
18 19 at the youngest.
Yeah,I totally could see that as well-How the hell was THAT supposed to be 15? I frigging thought that she could've been at least 17 at best..
This is so true. The doctor at the beginning looks younger and she's more masculine than Trick. XD
@@KO-nb5zv it's not the fish but the feeds. They also use those to chicken feeds. Eating too much chicken wings, legs and fish belly could influence your hormones. But if you eat organic foods then you're alright
I found myself screaming throughout this episode "TALK TO YOUR DAUGHTER!!!!"
Right?? Like you know she’s lying about where she went, and you didn’t say anything?????
Nkiruka J exactly!!
I doubt she was pregnant. She just gave her the pill anyway.
@@EatYourVegs No, the nurse assured her that the abortion went through.
@@EatYourVegs what the fuck are you talking about? The nurse at the school said the words "your preganancy is no longer viable" meaning she was pregnant but not anymore because of the pill. Chances are, since the Arkangel can detect drugs entering the system, it can also detect pregnancy. You're a dumbass.
My wife is so screwed up by Black Mirror she thought someone was using robotic cats to lure away children at the beginning of the episode lol.
She's not the only one...
That is season 7
Lolololol I love her 😂
dying laughing here :DD
To be honest I thought at that bit the twist was gonna be that the kid wasn’t actually real and that it die in the birth but the trauma was too much for the mother to bear and so everyone pretends like she’s real and that the couple who find her were jus figments of her imagination too which I was sure about by the time that the camera focused on only her head perhaps implying that everyone going on was just in her head. Robot cats sound cool too though haha
I love the beautiful irony of how Marie got Arkangel so that she would never lose Sara again, and ultimately it was the very thing that made her lose her daughter forever. Excellent analysis as always! Crocodile's gonna be an absolute shitstorm 😂
not really it was the facts that stupid humans don’t know how to use technology the right way
More of her daughter somehow turning into a spoiled little bitch but meh.
The irony is that she used Arkangel to be a good parent, but she never actually parent her child. Had she communicated with Sarah, talked to her about sex, drugs, peer pressure, etc. and explained to her what "responsibilities" meant, Sarah would have still been there.
P
A spoiled bitch? Sarah did nothing wrong, her mother was the bitch.
With how twisted Black Mirror is, I was expecting her to trigger the filtering with the final strike and have it break on the repeated impact, leaving Sarah (?) in that state of censorship for the rest of her life.
Thorson Wong me too!
THAT WOULDVE BEEN AMAZING
I thought that happened? While hitting her mothers face it gets blurred and after that we don’t see through Sara’s eyes anymore
Bacon8 but the device said 'filter off'
Ooooh that would have been SO dark
Marie: Censors everything uncomfrotable/distressing, does not confront Sara about anything
Trick: Attempts to describe blood, shows her porn, horror movies, and helps her experiment with drugs, is her first love,
No wonder Sara likes Trick, he taught her more about the world than her mother did.
Nick Schulaner yep basically
+Nick Schulaner That's because no one shouldn't be showing their kids porn. If you think kids should she that at the age Sara did then you should be arrested.
creativevision Are you stupid? That's not what their point was at all. It was just that her mother, I assume, never talked about that stuff so being able to talk and learn about it with Trick is how they bonded. Had her mother taught her daughter about such things she never would have had an interest in doing drugs. (until at least 18)
The experiment of drugs, shouldn’t happen. Drugs isn’t a good thing especially when your at school, it’s illegal for a reason. And showing another child porn shouldn’t happen, because that could lead to underage sex, which is what happened.
Being her first love was also illegal, She’s underage and he’s over.
He taught her about things that can all lead to addiction, porn: obvious, drugs: obvious, horror movies and blood: desire to seek out gratuitous gore and possibly cutting herself, don't forget she started stabbing herself to figure out what blood was.
The fact that the chip can never be removed was a really big flaw on Arkangel's part. Did they not consider children turn into adults?
That's why before Sara grew up in the film, you'll hear them talking about how Arkangel is being pulled out from operation. Obviously, it's because it's flawed. I bet there are more people suffering through technology that Arkangel has brought, basically people who bought into the Ark's tablet tracking system.
I think they were mostly interested in collecting engravings of dead presidents.
But sara was still a child not an adult
I think the Archangel blurred and blocked out style too because this girl dressed like a Boho homeless woman.
She was poor
Yeah, her sense of style sucks
PaseoDeLaEstrella Right? I couldn’t enjoy the episode as much as I wanted to because I wanted to burn all of Sarah’s skirts 🔥
Boho Hobo
she just seemed like the "I'm too cool" teen hipster she was terrible. From her fashion sense to her life choices. I'd enjoyed that episode more and probably rooted for her if she wasn't a dumbass (doing drugs, running away with probably no education and money, her and her idiotic boyfriend not knowing what a fucking condom is)
I don't defend the mom in the slightest but Sarah at the end irritated me more
I think the scene where Trick shows Sara porn and violent videos is really important and wasn't talked about enough. That scene shows that when Sara's implant is deactivated she is shown the extremes of reality. That's why during the sex scene she imitates a pornstar and how when she sees what her mom had been doing she acted out so much.
I'd argue viewing extremities are not to blame for her actions, rather her mother's lack of conversation about the things Sara had been exposed to.
It's extremely easy to explain sex or violence and it's even easier to help a child differentiate real situations from glamorized or overdone ones.
However, Sara's mother did not want to deal with a conversation like that. Sara's mom believed wholeheartedly that disabling her daughter's ability to see bad things was the equivalent of good parenting. "If she cant see it, she's safe."
When the reality is, Sara could have always been exposed to it, but if her mother never talked about or dealt with the things sara was exposed to, Sara would never mature. Sara would go through life never knowing how to live because the people who loved her refused to actually talk about the bad or mature parts of REAL life.
Those scenes represent the mom's failure to be a good parent. They show how the mom's neglect ended up warping the perspective of her daughter. They show how a simple conversation about how drugs or sex or violence work, would have prevented all this.
Exactly! I agree with you guys 100%. These are the things understood of the show as well.
You fucking genius!
And that her mom should have taught her about sex and to be safe when having sex and about pregnancy and etc including dangerous things in the world and not pretend everything was rainbow and flowers in the world when it’s not
Yeahhh exactly
This episode really hit me hard when I watched it cause I grew up with lots of parental control despite being told otherwise. It ruins trust between child and parent and causes the kid to rebel. Maybe that's why it was hard to sympathise with Marie.
tbh my parents were pretty relaxed and laid back but i hated marie from the get go. i honestly could not sympathise with any of her actions at all. she was horrible imo
Marie was an awful parent. She should have thrown the tablet away as soon as she was aware of how much harm it was causing her child. I got illogically angry at her throughout the episode.
little miss voice of a generation same... until she got beat up by her own daughter. That made me feel a little bad
I agree. I didn't sympathize with Marie one bit. Even at 23 my parents still try to control me and its fucked me up in ways they don't even realize. If this technology was available they would be Marie.
Me too. From my experience living with a toxic parent, and emotionally manipulating me with Guilt Trips. I can't sympathise with the mother because I think she needs to learn the lesson, the hard way.
One thing that really bothered me about this episode, and it might be by personal choice, but I almost broke out laughing when they tried to portray that women as a 15 year old. It really takes me out of episodes when they have people try to play a younger person when they don't look like it. I thought she was in her late twenties and I was stunned to find out she's really only 21.
Although that's the entire point, isn't it? Sarah was a lot more mature than the mother realised, and the fact that she looks much older than 15 proves that point.
she looked 30 something
Yames actors/actresses are typically older than the character that they are playing
durk diggler yeah I know that but there becomes a point we’re the actress/actors look way to old for the role that they are playing, which is the case here for me
She looked way too old, dressed way too old, acted way too old to be fucking 15. Especially one who's been sheltered her entire life.
one point i think is interesting to consider is how sara’s only exposure to certain subjects shaped later scenes. specifically, i saw a parallel between her being overly pornographic while having sex with trick (likely influenced by having only seen porn) and her overly violent and brutal attack on her mother (possibly influenced by her only exposure to violence being in videos of terrorism). thoughts?
Trick ultimately made more of an effort to teach her about stuff than her mom did. The reason Sarah has such a distorted version of reality is that all she had to go off of is the stuff trick showed her. They never showed Marie confronting her about any of this stuff. The trick at least did something.
Nick Schulaner oh i completely agree! i wasn’t trying to blame trick at all, only saying that the fact that her first exposure to these subjects was so extreme may be a reason her eventual actions were also so extreme
that's right
bea stewart I think the episode may have been trying to hint at that. However, in real life I doubt she’d have that much of a strange relationship to sex and violence because her filter was turned off in her preteens, which gave her enough years to be exposed to it like a normal person.
Also something to consider, there wasn't a father in the picture. Sarah had no strong male figure growing up.
This show has made me believe a lot of things.
Sara being 15 is not one of them.
GegeMaree exactly she looked at least 5 years older
My wife I said literally the exact same thing!
You copied that comment
Stolen text
Was I the only one that noticed a For Sale sign on the house where the dog used to live when the daughter became older? I thought it signified the loss of the girls innocence maybe...
I think it represents Sarah leaving. The dog was chained and acted put against everyone except Sarah. The dog isn't gone until the same Time when Sarah is leaving her home. Just my thoughts
Or the dog isn't there anymore
She lost her innocence way back the beheadig videos spree. XD
@@Bachingchung Nah, they're referring to the "romantic" innocence. She didn't lose anything until she found out her mom was spying on her instead of teaching her how to survive the real world.
@@sunnydargonnel yeah but that was pretty obvious. The original comment was about the for sale sign.
I love the fact that this episode shows that keeping a child/teen away from any type of violence could make them emotionless towards violence or even violent themselves, whereas today we often blame exposure to violence (internet, video games...) for such behaviors.
Brilliant
Oooh great point! Being desensitized to the shock factor can make you not be able to see violence as a bad thing you shouldn't do, therefore encouraging it, making it less of a big deal.
Kinda reminds me of Fushi from To Your Eternity when he first saw someone crying out in pain and he started repeating what the guy said while he was in pain.
To the people who are trying to justify spying on your children by saying that she saw her doing cocaine and having sex in the back of a van. I would say you are missing the entire point of the episode. What does spying accomplish? Does it keep your child safe? In that moment, yes. Does it stop them from doing anything like that in the future? No, not in the slightest. If anything it creates a sense of curiosity, and given the knee-jerk reaction you had in the past makes your child more likely to lie to you about things like that in the future. What she should have done is explain to her what cocaine is, how it affects you, explain the pros and cons of doing it. She could also have explained to her what sex is, how to have sex safely, how sex is different with someone you love compared to just sex. She failed her daughter as a parent, an educator, and a mentor. You cannot have a healthy relationship unless you have absolute trust, and there was almost no trust between the two of them.
Kinda like the dog behind the fence. Initially it was perceived as a bad thing that should be avoided at all costs. Until the girl actually explored the "bad thing" she realized that it wasn't so bad, it was just her perception of it. I think the "dangerous dog" can symbolize the world we live in. Sure it seems like a scary place, but you will never understand how it works unless you experience BOTH the good and the bad parts.
Exactly, most parants want to keep their child safe and will go great lengths to do so. What some fail to see is how much.
How long do they hide their child from sex or violence? When should they tell them? At 21, 18, 16, 11? The point that i'm trying to make. Thinking that young kids can't handle it is wrong.
Of course i'm not saying tell your 5 year old about sex. NO, what we do need to realize that our children can handle stuff like that. Lets not alienate them from that
If you think your child can handle it. Then let them know.
There not missing the entire point they are disagreeing with it.
Alex Smith Disagreeing with the idea that constant monitoring of a child without their knowledge or consent can damage the trust they have with their parent? If I learnt my parents were monitoring my every move I probably would have run away a long time ago. And that's not me being dramatic, I just couldn't possibly find a way to trust them again.
Edit: And by me running away, I'd be putting myself in the dangerous situations they were trying to avoid.
Alex Smith
Shut the fuck up and let this person be right jeez. Always gotta be that “one guy”
Perfectly said!
Okay, I loved this episode, but can we talk about the fact that this "15 year old" looks like a grown ass woman? I couldn't stop laughing when the mom said "she's only 15". Thought it was a joke. Other than that, great episode, though.
Jay Fowler Productions The actress is 2 older than the boy.
Maybe this shows the increase in hormones, making people look a lot older?
It’s like that today as well lol
I thought the mom was lying
If they had got an actual 15 year old, the mothers horror of her having sex, doing drugs and getting pregnant would have been so much more understandable. As is, her daughter looks 19-21 years old and just seems like she's living her own life and her mom disapproves of her choices. The kids in Stranger Things are 15, this girl looks like a female Jesse Pinkman.
I don't know why they didn't say that she was 17 or something. I mean, she still looks too old for 17, but it's a little more pallatable
i feel like some of the ppl who find this ep to be boring or predictable r only watching black mirror for the *plot twists* . im surprised at how underrated arkangel is despite it dealing with one of the most prevalent and relevant issues rn
this show offers _so_ much more than just *shock factor* u kno
IsabelaCreates it made me cry how she beat up her mom but she couldn’t see the damage she caused her because of the chip and left running away soo frickin sad 🤧😢😩
I also believe this episode is underrated.. Its a great topic and story. Not all of them can be White Christmas or Shut up and Dance 👍
I thought this episode was boring and predictable, but i don't *only* watch Black Mirror for the plot twists. USS Callister didn't have any riveting plot twists, but it's still one of my all time fave episodes. Same for 15 Million Merits. I enjoy Black Mirror because of the philosophical issues it raises and how it deals with the dark psychology of humans. That's why I didn't particularly enjoy this episode, or episodes like Metalhead and Crocodile. The topic of helicopter parenting has been done so many times before. Hell, some people live through it so they already know exactly what the episode was going to be like. To me, there weren't any philosophical challenges to ponder or analysis to do. It was just a story about a strict parent but with more technology. I've had firsthand experience with extreme helicopter parenting, and watching the episode made me recoil internally the entire time. I didn't like the mom because although her intentions were good, she's stupid for not considering the damage she would do to her daughter in the long run. I didn't like the daughter because she was also stupid for doing dumb things like unprotected sex and drugs. I get that she grew up in a very sheltered life, but you'd think that at least somewhere along the way, especially in those years without the Arkangel, she would learn some responsibility and self-control. If she hadn't, then her mom is an even worse parent than I thought. The plot was also rather mediocre and predictable: parent gets spying tool, shelters child from harm, child grows up with very limited freedom, spying tool gets disabled and child suddenly has a lot of freedom, child goes crazy with said freedom and does bad things, conflict between parent and child, child leaves. I mean, what did you think was going to happen?
that's my rant. have a nice day.
I was thoroughly entertained. Some people (men) are just adrenaline junkies.
I wish I liked this episode more than I do. It is very hard to feel empathy for the characters, specifically Sarah, when I think she was mis-casted.
I know a lot of people dislike this episode, but one thing Black Mirror does well is show how technology has made it harder for us to interact, as demonstrated in this episode.
Marie's whole dependence on the Arkangel device has eliminated her ability to properly interact with her child. When she was actively using the device, she spent more time observing Sara and her surroundings through her eyes. Even when playing hide and seek, she had to be watching the tablet. Always watching the tablet - even when in the same room. This disconnect, to a point, seems to have only continued when she put the device away.
Some say that if their 15-year-old daughter were having sex and doing drugs, they would also intervene. The problem is, Marie never really intervenes. She never confronted Sara for lying when she went to the lake. Never spoke to her about sex after seeing her with Trick. Never spoke to her about drugs after seeing her do cocaine. Instead, she confronts and blames Trick, essentially 'blocking him out' of Sara's life. And when she finds out Sarah is pregnant, her course of action is the extreme of sneaking an abortion pill into her smoothie instead of talking to her. Sara didn't even know she was pregnant; that was a complete violation and betrayal. Marie will go to any length to avoid confrontation with her own daughter.
It's not unlike the filter option of the device. Gloss over the bad things and it's like they don't exist. Unfortunately, they still do. What Sara learns and her mother does not, is that we can't just mask them, because they are still there. We can confront them and learn from them (like Sarah does with the dog; being scared at first, but then becoming its friend), or we can hide from them. But in the end, the mask/filter will be removed, and you will have to deal with the bad things one way or another (like when Sara is attacking her mother with the tablet, and only stops when the filter is turned off and she finally sees her mother's bloody face, not the blurred out version).
Technology can't replace good parenting or simple conversation. If she had talked to Sarah more and monitored her less, all of it could have been prevented.
Ava Johnson Interesting. So in the same way that the technology messed up the girl's childhood, it also ruined the mother's ability to parent effectively.
Troy Bakeman I would say it’s more her reliance on the technology, not the technology itself. Almost anything can be good or bad depending on how you use it.
Brilliant. As someone that has a super controlling mother this episode hit me hard
The reason Marie never intervened was because she felt guilty for not respecting her daughter's privacy. She made a decision to not use the intrusive arkangel device but she broke that agreement and she wants to make herself look good in front of her daughter. She was a sneaky, obsessive, control freak.
Ava Johnson You summed it up perfectly.
I think Arkangel is the scariest and probably most realistic in my opinion. We already have tons of fitness, health trackers that can rate your heart, etc. We have monitors like Ring (a doorbell i personal have which is awesome but constantly reminds me of this episode), i don't see it being too far in the future where we could implant such an item and I know far too many people that would be too tempted to either block everything or monitor their children 24/7
dena81 yeah, isn’t putting tracking implants in kids a thing now? I feel like I’ve heard of parents these days wanting it
@@hollywoodshopaholic I'm not suprised, but that kind of tech will be abused too though.
Shut up and dance is the most realistic
@@johnmayor5759 my favorite episode
Or spouses
At first when she was confused about being pregnant I was confused on how she didn’t know if she had intercourse but earlier in the show, when trip(or trick) was showing Sara porn, he said that they couldn’t get pregnant unless they did a certain position. So it connects to why she was so confused when the nurse told her she was pregnant.
I think they should have gotten a younger actress for sara, up until her mother said she was 15, I thought they were all high school seniors.
Malcolm Davis I agree with you there,buddy-I actually saw the episode in the past week or so,and I immediately thought of her older self as being a bit older/old for somebody roughly 15 years old by saying that she looks/looked more like a girl of 17 years old instead..
I would've also thought recently that Trick might've been old enough to be a high-school dropout (either due to suspension or expulsion and/or just dropped out just because,or drugs..making/selling and/or using drugs would also be an indicator of age,apparently of course..eh..?) and/or-if he's still in high-school then,then that young man had probably skipped a grade or two in the past,y'know..right,eh..?
Still,i would've gone with somebody at LEAST 18-19 (-especially 19,since there is a mention of supposed "underage sex" in the said episode per se,of course-) for older Sara,other than I had the impression that either she had a growth spurt/was an early bloomer as a young adolescent and/or there was something..pretty off about her,minus the whole Arkangel/helicopter parenting thing/things,y'know eh..?!?!?!
Malcolm Davis Yeah I thought they were seniors too.
0:13 unprecedented memes
I know the kid holding the iPad
I thought towards the end when the mom sees herself standing in the room on the screen, she was going to turn around & discover Sara dead, hanging from the ceiling looking straight at her....
Brittany M YESSS
Maebhy Howell please tell me you're enthusiased by sharing the same idea with someone instead of the idea of suicide itself
I think that would be way over the top. Suicide as vengeance to your mother is a big no-no.
@@EatYourVegs for black mirror? Any plot twist is expected. Also she already showed tendency towards self harm with the pencil scene, I also thought of that
I have tried watching other analysis' but I just can't do it!! Yours are the best - please don't stop with this insight!!
Ok so no one is gonna mention Man Against Fire is being shown in this episode as a movie????????
I thought it would have been great if Sara had been 18 or older and still living with her mother instead of 15. I mean, if I was a mom and my 15-year old daughter was having sex and doing drugs, I’d intervene too. But if the child were legally an adult, the mother would technically have no say in what her daughter can do with her life. I feel like that could have strengthened the impact of the episode, but just my thoughts.
Yeah it doesn't really work with sarah being 15
I think that the fact that she was only 15 makes you realize how bad the technology of this episode was. Because, being sheltered so much by her mother scarred her so badly that now, just 15, she does all of that without realizing how dangerous it all is
Oh honey.
LOL sure, if you want to believe you're better than others for not having sex, have at it. But don't "Oh honey" me, it's way too obvious.
When did I say that? Where? Whom? Where did I imply that I was trying to assert dominance over you? In my opinion, 15-year olds are way too young to have sex. Think about it. Teenagers are very naive and more susceptible to commit acts such as drug consumption and underaged sex, don't you agree? Trick was an 18-year old while Sara was only 15. That's the first problem, I mean, the fact that it's kinda illegal. Next, don't you think a 15-year old being impregnated is also problem? Girls that age still have a lot to get through in their lives before they're ready to settle down and start a family. She still has school to get through, classes to major in, careers to consider, jobs to get. A baby is too much of a burden on those kinds of freedoms. And if the father doesn't want to deal with it? He can just bounce. Then you'll have a single mom who still has education to complete, but needs the money and resources to provide for herself and now a baby. That's why I believe that it isn't ideal to have sex at 15.
I didn't feel like enough happened for the mother to be that paranoid.
Ani Screams Loudly maybe it happened to her mother when she was younger.
Canal do Sora possibly but I think they would have shown that in a flashback or conversation with her father. There were 2 instances, 1. The birth which waiting for the cry is heart wrenching but also not that big of a deal. If Sarah was born prematurely and was in neonatal intensive care then I could understand.
2. When Sarah ran after the cat, I wish there was a little more to this too, I wish we had more of an indication of how long Sarah was missing. If she had been missing till morning for example but had been taken in by a good Samaritan close by then I could understand how the ark angel would have been so useful in that situation.
3. Sarah's age, she looked in her early 20s and when I eventually found out she was 15 it was really odd. If Tripp had been older and not known how old Sarah was then it would make sense but they're near enough the same age.
4. I wish we saw more of how ark angel effected her, maybe Sarah didn't learn about sex education and about getting periods so was distraught when she got hers. Maybe she was too naive but when did she watch porn? Or know so much about coke? And how long past her curfew was she before her mum panicked?
It's a great concept for sure. Sorry for the essay.
Ani Screams Loudly don't be sorry, man! I loved your answers :-)
I got a little bit throw off too when we learn she's 15, but my guess is that they wanted us, as viewers, to go like "she's kinda grownup" just by her looks, but actualy being a younger person in her mother's eyes.
Sorry if I didn't make so much sense. It's a little bit hard to discuss complex Black mirror-ish stuff when I have to translate it in my head hahahahaha
Ani Screams Loudly like Harry said the mother got addicted to the control the device offered. Her parental instinct to control her child was amplified by the device and she couldn't let go of that feeling of a watchful angel.
rincewind_7 I totally agree with that point but I'm also talking about how she gets the ark angel in the first place.
Another thing interesting about Marie's over protection of her daughter is she only sees Trick (no idea how to spell his name) in a bad light, only seeing them having sex while Sarah says porn type lines (because that's all she knows) or her doing the coke, not her begging for the drugs beforehand and him trying to deny her, or the build up to Trick and Sarah's relationship. I didn't really understand the age difference between the two, I assumed he was just 18 and she was 17, and when it came to light she was 15, I thought he was 16/17. Would of liked that clarified in the episode.
Megan Simmons I guess Trick is suppose to be 20 but because they mentioned him just getting the truck I had it in my head that he was like 16-18 years old.
Carina Kriessman totally the same idea, especially as they were in school together at least twice.
The age thing was bugging me as well, so I looked it up. Sara is 15, Trick is 18. So there is a gap, but they did kind of grow up together, so it doesn't bother me as much. He's not a sexual predator or anything. And Sara initiated both encounters. So it bothers me as well that Marie puts all the blame on Trick and none on Sara.
Ava Johnson he counts as an adult and she still counts as a child even if it's a 3 year difference
Yes, absolutely! Sorry, when I said the age thing was bothering me, I meant not knowing how old they both were, not the age gap itself. It was hard to gauge her mother's reaction when we didn't know how old they both were in the show. If he were 16, then not so bad. But 18 makes a difference. And we also understand why he is so quick to abandon Sara.
This epiode was heartbreakng for me.I know that my mother would've done this to me, if the technology was possible.The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The mother was first concerned but became obsessed in controlling her daughter, not allowing her to experience emotional pain, empathy, violence,disgust and recognize dangerous situations and stranger danger. It was the mother's fault not to be able to loosen the tight hold she had on her daughter's life and teenager's hate nothing more than finding out their privacy is hurtfully disrespected. Really interesting episode on how loving your child can become and obsession to control, manipulate, mistrust and being able let go, which led to the unsettling, horrific ending of this episode -the exact same thing the mother wanted to prevent.
Well yeh, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Parents that are strict, think they are protecting you by being so. A tragic episode, but I had no sympathy for the daughter in the episode either tbh.
Did anyone else think the brief mention of Oedipus Rex in the daughter's class would also lead to the mom/daughter gouging their eyes out after shit hits the fan in the end?
Well, if you think of arkangel as the 'eyes', then yes.
This episode triggers me so much. Everyone that thinks lowly of it clearly hasn't had an over protective parent (like myself). I completely sympathised with Sarah and felt no remorse for the mother. Many others I know who've grown up in a similar over protective environment has agreed with me about loving the episode. Being the same age as the character I was almost in tears by the end just from how alike it was to me and my mother, first episode that's genuinely scared and stuck with me
Along with all of the communication of the characters which was (from my point of view) extremely realistic.
Well it makes sense to sympathise with what you can relate to. Both characters behaved badly to me, but for Sarah it's not her fault since she grew up in a pretty messed up way. The mom is definitely in the wrong, but since I'm pretty close to my parents and saw how worried they can be sometimes, I do sympathise with her a bit.
I too have an overly controlling mother and this is easily one of my favorite Black Mirror episodes
"being the same age as the character"
You're 63?
@@riceseasoning6748 lmao the mom is a psychopath tbh. jesus christ, throws a fit overseeing her daughter taking drugs despite the mom never talking it out with her/educating her. i have no remorse or pity for her, good riddance.
one of the best episodes. it brings you in with raw quality and flow rather than a unique concept and mind bending twist. its predictable but thrilling to watch
I honestly think the best ending should have been if the parental control unit stayed on forever after beating her mother. Then sara afterwards would walk to the train tracks seen in the start of the show. She would then stand on the tracks and as a train starts approaching the train is blurred from the parental control being stuck on ultimately leading to her being hit by a train that has been blurred.
Shortly after Marie should have woken up and went looking for her daughter only to find a police investigation scene at the tracks were she would be told her daughter appeared to have commuted suicide by being hit by a train.
i wish the parental control stayed on tbh
woah man that's too dark i love it
also, now that u've said it. i wonder if young sara actually ever saw a car running fast and beeping loudly, would it be blurred out? itsn't that dangerous for the kid? to not know that there is danger around them?
While that certainly would have been dark and twisted enough for Black Mirror standards, it wouldn't have made much sense. Sarah had lived a good deal of her life with the parental control off, enough to at least have learned about the concept of danger and threat to life, and in any case she would have to be a genuine idiot to not know that standing on a train track with something coming towards her, even if that something was blurred, would be an indicator that she should get the hell out of the way (plus, you can feel vibrations on tracks when a train is approaching; it's not like they silently sneak up on you).
Now, not being able to see a speeding car and running out into the street and dying *that* way...I'd have no problem with that (though I don't think it would be necessary to show Marie finding out about it).
You missed the whole point of the episode looking for the plot twist. It's hits so close for most people is bc we're not long before that Technology actually existing and shows how the very device that her mom bought to protect her has done the opposite. Where she'll now throw herself into dangerous situations just to taste freedom for once
This one was good. It had its moments but still lacked in overall message. Still a good ol "shut up mom" scene is always good,oh wait, that's not how it went
Long ass paragraph of why Arkangel sucks
Actually, in my opinion this episode shouldn’t get any praise. The pacing was bad, the director tried to fit as much as he could with the storyline and the timeline but the result was just sloppy and incomplete. The characters story and characteristics had no depth, why yes I SHOULD feel sympathy for the mother when she loses the child, but there isn’t a reason why. We don’t get to much time with the mom, her main personality was that she is a paranoid mother who put a chip in her daughters head. That’s not much of a character. The daughter is just something else, from what we can tell she was a imaginative child, then she was acting out when they gave her the chip, after that she was now going to go do it all once the filter was off, then we get this coke having, sex in a van hungry, it’s not a phase mom runaway gothic bitch by the end of the episode. WHAT KIND OF HALF ASSED CHARACTERS ARE THESE!! For gods sake the boyfriend, even the best friend who got less than 5 minutes of screen time had more depth and personality than the MAIN CHARACTERS. The actors well, they just don’t fit, they don’t convince me or draw me into the story. They actors seemed wooden at times, but maybe they weren’t the actors maybe they were the lack of characteristics in person they were portraying. And the technology was also half assed, they could have had so much more if they had explored just a little more of Arkangel, they leave so much out like: what happens if the mom were to get the tablet stolen, what if the filter was always on, what if the daughter or mother went to get the chip removed, could you specifically censor certain things ( like people aka censor the boyfriend aka better story)etc. Oh and the biggest peeve that I had was WHATS THE FUCKING TWIST. It has no twist, no message, by the end of the episode I was left with this feeling of confusion and anger and it wasn’t because the story made had captivated me and that was the emotions they were supposed to make me feel, which by the way most of those episodes should have that intentional emotion that they leave for you at the end of the episode, but in fact I was angry at the writing of the episode. There was no message, no twist it was just this cliche daughter who is just like my mom spied on me and now I’m running away, instead of this girl who could have feared being exposed to the world but would always be protected by her mother has just found out that the one person who was supposed to protect her has just seen her when she was most vulnerable. THATS JUST A FEW REASONS OF WHY ARKANGEL HAS DISAPPOINTED ME, I’d write more but I’ve gone on this tangent for quite some time now.
It must be really hard enjoying things, when you pick apart everything. When the screening moves from an observation to an investigation, you lose all sense of joy, because you turn it into a job to find flaws.
babyboijeremy
Actually I looked forward to this very episode when they showcased in it the trailers it’s just that when I was watching the episode I had really high hopes, that and bar being exponentially high with the quality of previous episodes, and the end result left me displeased and I these notes are the major things that bothered me in the episode
I agree with everything above. However, the gasp-out-loud "twist" for me was the pregnancy and the mother playing God- or "angel" with the EC pill.
Your profile picture reminds me of that chilling episode "Shut up & Dance" it gives me goosebumps.
I think its interesting how the mom kept catching her at the absolute worst times: Screwing, snorting coke.
Keri Lynnae because of the alert system
0:50 to be honest unknown thing hidden by this cells is probably more fucking terrifying than a dog itself, so there is a good amount of irony in whole concept of this tech.
Especially when most horror movies take advantage of the most common fear, the fear of the unknown.
Bohdan Lvov if that happened, I would probably think it was a ghost dog or something.
Bohdan Lvov that’s a really good point as one of the strongest most common fears people have is the fear of the unknown
@@catsdogsandlego10000 yeah but at that age, what is the unknown? If you have no motive for being scared of it, then why be scared of it?
I honestly, as a teenager myself, found this to be a very thought provoking episode, and as such, spent much time discussing & debating the topics it portrays in detail with my peers, my parents, and others alike. This analysis is one I was certainly was looking forward to (as well as the others in this season) and I gave the link to those I talked about it with. Thank you @Hary's Moving Castle.
it's great that you could discuss it with your parents. I think this episode wanted to do this very thing, start a discussion between parents and their children.
No this episode was terrible and you shouldn’t give them credit for exploring the many problem between communication between parents and their kids
Socrates Perez the fuck is wrong with your face? Are you an obese version of me?
I have seen things
Socrates Perez 🤣🤣🤣🤣
The ending of this episode where she smashes the tablet in her mother's face was very hard to watch.
HotShot 351 yes. I understand why people would be annoyed by Marie, not saying her actions were wrong (they were), but Marie meant well. If she was taught better she would do better, like a child. It broke my heart seeing both of them walk on to difficult paths. It ached to see Marie like that after all she did for her daughter.
@@animalfinatic9366 Yeah... I thought Marie was gonna die and that she was dead until she got up. Her screaming at the end was depressing as hell too.
@@animalfinatic9366 she did mean well but she shouldn’t have gotten that tablet and basically stake her to me Marie she should have let her daughter experience things for herself and been got rid of the tablet
@@alllittlethingzz I completely agree. She needs privacy to grow
@@alllittlethingzz Just to be clear, I don't blame her daughter at all for wanting to be independent though it did hurt to see her beat up her mom like that. It's just sad knowing this would all have been solved with a proper form of communication instead of the mom being invasive. She really did love her
i’d love an arkangel part two, seeing sara on the run and wherever she is after the ending, and seeing how marie is living after being beaten to near death by her own daughter and left alone
I can’t be the only person who thought the wall of the Arkangel office looked like a uterus.
jazzduck I saw that too!!!
Oh, I didn't even notice that.
It's blatantly obvious isn't it? :O
Gotta be honest, later on in the episode when the mother says shes only "15" I had to take a break, thats one tall ass 15 year old.
Anyway Id love to say how great this episode was (of which it was) but being honest, the whole of season 4 was actually amazing, Keep up these great analysis's of these episodes Harry
um are 15 year olds midgets where u live... because i was 6 ft when i was 15
SmugCow to be fair,I also had to look/glacé twice..
Man,I thought-Personally-either that _"Sara's 17/a 17 year old(?!?)..or puberty hit her like a truck,HARD."_
All the actresses for the daughter were too old, not just the last one. She's supposed to be 3 and then 7, watching I thought she was 5 and 10.
Katie Oldham the last one seemed to have the biggest age difference between the actress and the character. I literally thought she was 25ish
This is the first time aside from "San Jupitero" that a Black Mirror episode made me feel good.
Marie saw that coming, she was obsessed and ended up ruining the relationship Sara built with Trick, as well as the trust she finally obtained throughout the years.
It was utterly satisfing seeing Sara finally free from her mother's watch.
It could be argued that Sarah couldn't make it in the outside world as she is so desensitized to everything
I love your Black Mirror videos.
Would've been better if the filter was left on after she destroyed the tablet
That honestly would've been a lot better for an ending.
Hell no Sara didn’t deserve that
Marcus Gandy Rarely does anyone in Black Mirror “deserve” the endings they get...But it would’ve been more entertaining for the viewers~
I saw this in my recommendations and i screamed, i was waiting for another one of these analysis. Thanks to your analyses i have a better understanding of each episode, so i really appreciate your videos. Greetings from Chile💫
I really wish they had explored how the filter screwing with her as a child continued to effect her as a teen. Not, okay switched it off, you're all normal now.
You do see it explicitly referenced, twice.
Once during the sex scene where she starts moaning like a porn star would, thinking that that's normal.
Number two when she bashes her mom's head in because her only experience with violence as a child was fucking Al Qaeda videos, and she (presumably) never had that big of a tantrum/fallout before.
Yeah, but those felt like awkwardly tossed in afterthoughts by someone who dropped the very intriguing concept of following the future of this deeply weird child and switched more to the helicopter mom story. The former concept was just way more interesting to me.
I really enjoyed this episode, but the fact that Sara was meant to be 15 completely destroyed my immersion. Considering that the actress that played her is in her early 20s, it would have made much more sense for Sara to be around 17, as she would have still been a minor, and the age gap between character and actress would have been a much more tolerable 4 years instead of 6(!)
As I said, I enjoyed the episode, but this minor fact really pulled me out of the story, and I'm unsure why it was included.
I think this episode was the most "uhhh.... ok?"
Toki Wo Tomato nahhhh that goes to metalhead by a long shot imo
Toki Wo Tomato
THANK YOU SOMEONE FINALLY UNDERSTANDS this episode had no meaning
Toki Wo Tomato what a daft insight
Oh shit she said daft I just got pwned
Gabrielle Maria hmmm idk. I don’t have a child but I could still relate to the mom a lot (which is maybe why I shouldn’t have kids lol). Although I wish it would have explored its impact on the daughter’s psyche more, I still think it was decent and definitely not “hot garbage”. 6.5/10
Wait, we were supposed to have 'conflicted sympathies'? Maybe it's because my parents have always restricted my internet access (even at age 17, I still have parental controls on my laptop and can only use it 3 hrs a day, being logged out at exactly 9:30), but I felt only the slimmest bit of sympathy for the mother. I understand the need to protect one's child, but everyone should understand the stupidity of literally not letting a child feel, see, or hear danger. Furthermore, even as an independent teenager, the mother does not see her daughter as worthy of respect or privacy, she doesn't see her own child as a full human being deserving of basic human rights. To me, that's disgusting. Even minor forms of parental restrictions have made me feel resentment and left me behind my peers, as well as making me feel constantly paranoid (to the point where when I was young, I imagined my parents could read my thoughts so I'd restrict my thoughts to 'parent friendly' only). I can't imagine the kind of paranoia and trauma this woman has so 'lovingly' bestowed upon her daughter.
Yeah I only felt sorry for the mom when she got beat. Otherwise that technology is totalitarian af.
I agree, I felt angry during the entire episode. I thoughtm good for you, during the sex and drugs scene. Which wasn't good of course. Parental controls at 17 though, that's bad.
I also love the irony of how she was trying to turn the device off and accidentally turned the filter on and didn’t see how much damage she was causing her mom. The device used to protect her daughter from harm was not only being used as a blunt object against her, but she wasn’t able to stop her daughter because she agreed to have that filter software.
its a cool episode.. a good look at why privacy is so important no matter what age you are..
This device actually reminds me of a baby-monitor for older kids.
This could be the perfect device for an undercover agent..
If your parents are in IT, this kind of monitoring is very real. I grew up with helicopter parents just like in this episode, and I literally cheer every time I see the ending of this episode. What well-deserved justice! No parent should ever commit such atrocities against their own children.
agree
When my child is young I wouldn't mind having parental blocking but after about 8/9 there free to find whatever on the Internet seeing fucked up things and making mistakes and a kid is part of what made me sensible in bad situations and I would not take away that
It's also worth noting that Trick was very against the idea of her trying out cocaine.
so he's not all that bad.
I loved this episode. The ending had a powerful emotional punch imo. Also, to the people complaining about how they didn't believe the girl was 15: I didn't either and that was part of the point of the episode, lmao. You are supposed to initially believe that Sara is older. That's part of the moral dilemma: Sara looks and acts more like a 20 year old but is still legally underage.
Whats crazy about this episode is that I empathized with both the mother and Sara. The mother seems like a genuinely nice person and loves Sara deeply. However, she let her fear for her daughter cause her to cross some pretty unforgivable lines. Honestly, the mother should have just confessed to what she saw, apologized, but then tried to talk to her daughter about sex and drugs. She should have even considered destroying the monitoring tablet to serve as an olive branch to Sara.
And I understand why Sara inevitably snapped. Sara experienced humiliation, betrayal, and heart break all at the same time. The mother violated her privacy and then forced the boyfriend to break her heart. Sara experienced betrayal from the only two people she really loved in the world all in like a 24 hour period. And then add in whatever feelings have been brewing for years over having this permanent implant in the first place.
Its easy to say that Sara is 15 and therefore the mother was justified. The problem is that Sara has the mind of an adult. If you violated an adult in the ways that the mother did to Sara, there would be no forgiveness (at least for me).
There was a part in the classroom where they were talking about Oedipus. It’s a subtle nod to how just as Oedipus caused his fate while trying to avoid it, the mother in this episode caused her daughter to run away while trying to prevent that.
The ending (after the beatdown) was the worse out of all the episodes of BM. SO anticlimatic
JessyAnderson I was 100% sure she was gonna kill her mom tbh. Would have been interesting to see her gone full psycho in a We Need to Talk About Kevin way 😈
Someone suggested that a better ending would be that while she was beating her mom and the tablet breaks, the parental control stays on forever and the daughter has no way of turning it off. I thought that'd be a bit more interesting.
Genesis A I was pretty sure that was going to happen too, I felt the ending was pretty disappointing but still a good episode overall
What would be the point though? it would just feel cheap and predictable.
Predictable doesn't always mean bad. I predict that Black Panther is going to stop the villain like heroes do in all Marvel films...I'm still going to see it though.
The one thing I loved about this episode is that it ends how it started, her losing her daughter not knowing where she is.
I actually really hated the mother in this episode. I mean, would a sane mother say 'I'm sorry' when a thinking, capable of human speech, child, comes back after FOLLOWING A CAT?! Like, my mom would scream at me for at least 5 minutes before giving me an actual hug lol XD
Stinky Norsk she was sorry for leaving her because the child didn't know any better
@@animalfinatic9366 she was a stupid child and scolding can help with that
any sane parents would be just 'ugh,, don't get too far away next time ok?'
I have had such a shitty day today. As I watched this season of Black Mirror I was very much looking forward to hearing your analysis of them, then I never got around to it. Now I'll just watch all of your videos to brighten my shitty day. Thanks.
I just like how you can kind of track the evolution of the brain implant/interface technology throughout black mirror. Also, I don't think E.C. pills are futuristic.
Ofc, because the body can't be futuristic. Only the things around it can be.
Helicopter parents always think that by shielding their kids from the reality of the world, they're protecting them. It only delays the inevitable of the kid wanting to experience things on their own, except without the tools to problem-solve their way out of danger.
This episode felt like a melodrama and that really turned me off of it. None of the characters are likeable and every action of every character is ratcheted up to ten.
Will Houston That's every episode of Black Mirror. I agree though.
CIA 4U Now see, I disagree with that, though. There's usually a gradual escalation.
Will Houston even the grandfather?
theMcWOPPER You're right. I was using hyperbole.
I thought the characters were realistic, tv feeds us bland lovable people who can’t possibly exist.
I've been looking for a channel that breaks down Black Mirror episodes just like this. Praise the gods.
...the mum being closer to the angels... Sure, the fallen angels. She started off wanting to protect the child and it turned the child into an apathetic monster, while the mum grew more and more megalomaniacal. If she really wanted to keep the child safe she would have taught her the differences between right and wrong and why, as well as how to react to the common situations and taught her how to critically think in case of unforseen situations arising, then trusting that she did a good job and letting the child go. The helicoptering without instruction and confirmation of receipt of instruction is useless/obsessive/harmful to both parties. This is not my opinion, this is the collective position of people who really do study behaviour and understand the patterns and the roots of the patterns in order to try and break vicious cycles. Münchhausen by proxy with a dash of abandonment issues in this scenario of arkangel.
I agree about the parental controls. My parents (who are fantastic) tried to restrict my screen time despite me not suffering any substantial negative consequences from it, and I always lied about how much time I was on. This built distrust, as you said. My parents realized that the restriction served no purpose, and since then haven’t imposed any censorship. Shows how people can change.
I don't like this episode. It was structurally sound and the message was fine but they never fully went anywhere with the concept.
They could've done the same story without the 'filtering out bad stuff' and the message wouldn't be hurt. From the way I saw it they were setting up a different kind of Trauma, how would a human react to stress, pain and horror after gaving grown up without it? The pencil-finger-pricking felt as a prelude to that. The third act they gave it felt slightly disappointing in the way it was set up.
But that's how I feel about this season as a whole; very interesting concepts that ultimately lead to unsatisfying conclusions. (with exceptions to 'black museum', 'metal head' and 'hang the DJ')
What about uss callister? That episode went all out with the concept of one's ego depending on their digital self
lol metalhead
Astral Cosmos Celestial the Third yeah and that was by far one of the most thrilling episodes but I srand by it that Robert should've gotten his commuppance in the real world, facing real consequences and the people frim the mod should've died as they said they would. The ending was way too sappy for my taste.
I wouldn't call Metalhead's concept all that interesting. It was basically just a post-apocalyptic chase/cat&mouse movie. However, the execution was excellent as it was very well acted and directed.
I look forward to your analysis on each episodes. I can't wait to hear what you have to say about the rest of the season!
As always I’m sure this analysis will be incredible. Thank you.
I remember when my parents used to put a timer on the internet, shutting it down using my MAC adress at 11PM. This caused me to start learning about how the tech behind it worked until I was be able to turn it off.
People tend to want what they can't have.
You have to admit though, the Medical part of Arkangel would be immensely useful.
For those who want to remain in good health, and for emergencies.
Just need monitor if their 'health' reaches critical levels, and ping an ambulance their location to get them medical attention ASAP. Would save lots of lives, If only it was that way...
My god, i can't stop watching your black mirror videos. Awesome work man!
I actually cried when she smacked her so hard with the tablet. It made me cry so much bcs I love my mum so much that it hurts when someone hurts their parents, physically and mentally. It just makes me so angry that children do that!
The mom was a paranoid control freak. She had it coming
poontang3zizo it's true but I think one hit would have been enough, now the daughter is worse
poontang3zizo she was misguided
poontang3zizo right??? i'm seeing all these comments about how the daughter is awful but if my mom had been that much of a manipulative psychopath,,,
Karma Is A Burden um it depends on what their parents are like, not all parents are great
Great analysis! I love that, as you point out, Marie is never more than arm's length from her daughter thanks to Arkangel, but at the same time, is clearly not close to her at all since she has no idea about Trick or anything like that. It's reminiscent of us using social media as a proxy for closeness and intimacy with others while simultaneously being more alienated and estranged *because* of the tech we have access to. Without Arkangel, Marie might actually have had to talk to Sara about things like sex and drugs to help her make good decisions and deal with the fallout of bad ones. With it, she feels a false sense of control and closeness that ultimately ends up driving a permanent wedge between her and Sara. It's sad because her intentions were completely understandable given how innocuous-seeming things can get out of control quickly (e.g., drug experimentation to addiction, sex to pregnancy and/or STDs, the fun, drug dealing bf to trouble, etc.).
I really liked the warped sense of difficult parenting decisions the episode showed, and so, while I can understand why folks didn't like it as much, I really enjoyed it. Marie and Sara themselves were almost beside the point... It was really about the situation and the choices to be made within it.
I be more afraid of getting my ass kicked with a tablet then my kid getting into cars with strangers
thank you for bringing new meaning to an episode that actually disappointed me at first. i’m excited to rewatch again with fresh eyes.
couldn't concentrate on the analysis with Danse Macabre in the back. shit is A BOP
The ending of the episode left me wondering wither or not the tablet could simply be repaired. But i'm thankful Blackmusuem showed that the tablet was still broken
Am i really the only one who noticed the Tusk poster in the girls room???
Moses da big baller I noticed it, but I have no idea what 'Tusk' is
Animal finatic Tusk is a character from another episode of Black Mirror, “Hated in The Nation”
Everyone's discussing these theories and here I am, massively excited about the Buffy soundtrack from "Hush" playing in the background. You're a sneaky one
I was instantly appalled by the premise of this episode, mainly the spying through eyes and blocking of vision content. This lead me to wonder as a European (Dutch), is the story easier to swallow for Americans? Since in the story the technology was banned in Europe, there might be a cultural difference there. This is my "your idea" anyway.
nivolord haha no it's appalling to us Americans as well. I mean I accept the concept because it's dystopian, but yeah there are cultural and political differences that allow us Americans to be taken advantage of like political nihilism. I guess there is a "think of the children!" Aspect of America that doesn't seem as crazy as it was 10 or 20 years ago, but it seems like teens in Europe are taught to be independent quicker than the average American. It's appalling but perhaps a chunk of Americans would be willing to do this to their children it's just unlikely anything like this would be passed, but who knows how the social climate would be all it takes is some fear mongering.
I think it's a good critique of current American trends in parenting. The mother definitely comes off as an Xer who had a hard scrabble life. Jodie Foster (according to Strauss & Howe's generational model for the US) was one of the first people to emerge as "different" from the Boomers and helped define Generation X in the early days before it had acquired its name. So here to see her critiquing her fellow generation members is rather nice.
By the Strauss & Howe system, parenting trends are on a cycle that lasts about 80 years (aka the average lifespan of a human being), and are based on the concept that as a generation dies off and takes with it the collective memory of how X worked or failed because of Y, mistakes or ideas re-emerge and are repeated in a different form once again.
Generation X has indeed taken the helicopter parenting trend towards more over protection, just as S&H predicted they would in the 1990s (when they first came out with their theory and Gen Xers were just edgy X-treme coming of age young adults and late teens) as a response to how their childhood and their typically Silent parents under protected them or allowed for too much freedom. They of course unaware that their Silent parents did so because their Silent parents had been over protected during their childhood during the era of Lost generation parents freaking out over the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, parents dragging their frightened and crying children from movie theatres showing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the forest scene), and child labor having been eradicated in its final holdouts. The Losts did such a good job of protecting their children and providing a safe atmosphere for their Silent children, that when those same Silents began to hit their mid-life crisis, they suddenly realized they'd spent half their lives "being good" and "thinking of others before themselves" without ever having known anything else, and then proceeding to make up for lost time by rebelling later in life while they were parenting their Gen X children. If the Gen X children didn't have to suffer the divorce epidemic of their Silent generation parents, or the key parties that Silents attended (everyone puts their car keys in a bowl at the beginning of the party, and at the end of the night the women pick out a car key to go home and sleep with a different man than their husband for that night) that generally distracted the Silents leaving their Gen X children to have to essentially raise themselves. And of course the Losts only did what they did after a childhood of being child laborers in sweat shops, running around industrialized and unsafe machines as guttersnipes, newsies hawking newspapers on street corners, and Progressive generation parents who were more concerned about American Imperialism and healing the wounds left by the Civil War, also in preserving every last bit of evidence of the disappearance of the "Wild West" as it was being tamed--and that's if they were wealthy enough to afford private tutors or governesses to raise their children for them.
I think you get the picture. In between these extreme parts of the pendulum swings, you have generations like Boomers, Millennials, Greatest, Missionaries, and the Gilded who were raised as the pendulum was in the process of swinging between the extreme points and therefore got a more "balanced" and evenhanded parenting rather than the extreme variations of the other generations. Boomers one of increasing freedom for "kids to be kids", Millennials one of increasing protection like implementing mandatory bicycle helmets or beginning to crackdown on school bullying. The Greatests with the beginning of implementing the outlawing and regulating of child labor practices, the Missionaries with a more indulged childhood which saw the formalization of the idea of Santa Claus nationally and other indulging parenting practices of Civil War-weary Gilded parents.
So as you can see the flip flopping from extreme ends of the pendulum swings is why I went off on this tangent, but also what I primarily see in this episode. It's showing that it's the extreme versions of over protection and under protection which lead to these problems, and what is needed is a fair and balanced form which has open lines of communication to talk about the bigger challenges children will face as they grow up.
As for the difference between America and Europe, I would put it down to Europe having more Socially Liberal views of society. It's been your 20th Century wild fling as a reaction to the 19th Century's crackdown and forced Socially Conservative stagnation that came in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars with the Congress of Vienna, Biedermeier, etc. So I'd say you're just on a more socially liberal frame of mind because at one time your ancestors were at a more socially conservative frame of mind, and they rebelled against that and this past century was all about doing so. That said, be careful like this episode that you don't end up inspiring even worse Social Conservatives to pop up and swing back in the direction of a hard turn towards Social Conservatism--even more so than the US. Because if this episode has done anything, it's to prove Newton right in this: every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
In all seriousness, though, you guys (especially the Dutch) are far more socially liberal than most in the US are. Even those who call themselves Social liberals here (in America) I would frame as being equivalent in views and in terms of policy to your average European Social Conservatives (aka Christian Democrats).
" it seems like teens in Europe are taught to be independent quicker than the average American"
Lol! No. I mean, I guess it depends on the country and family, but...no.
American teenagers are the ones who grow up faster. They get their own cars, work part time to sustain their college education, move out of their house (and state!) at the age of 18 to study and sleep in a college dorm room...
European kids generally just start driving at 18 and many stay at their parents' house until they get a full time job. In southern european countries, that is the rule: everybody stays living with their families until they're able to get out.
IM NOT FUCKING KIDDING YOU RIGHT! As soon as this video ended I got two ads, one for restricting content on youtube and one for general restriction on apps wtf
9:48 doing coke at 15 is normal? As far as I've seen in my life, that's college+ kind of drugs
Fr, doing coke at any age is wild to me
4:27 this is fine. i'm okay with the events that are unfolding currently
Something that made me sad was the obvious pain it cause Trick to push Sara away. And then the pain it caused Sara. It goes to show that sometimes "protecting" your children isn't taking everything away because you're afraid of your child becoming their own person & experiencing the world for themselves. That reaction often causes more harm than good. I understand she's only 15 but the honest truth is that teenagers have sex and experiment with things. She wasn't a coke addict, she was just curious and even then Trick didn't want her to do it in the first place and even when he gave in didn't let her do a lot. Her mom didn't look at the bigger picture, like when Trick told Sara she didn't have to act like a pornstar with him because he liked her for her or the concern he had when she wanted to try cocaine. Instead, her mom was picking and choosing what to see which happens a lot with people in real life & is what ultimately damages a lot of relationships between parents and their children.
The scary thing for me is the fact that I can actually connect with this episode. My parents wasn’t overprotective and was cool with letting me watch things like Adult Swim at 5 when it first came out even though I told them the crazy things I saw and was laid back on most things.
Though the idea of allowing someone to look at the world through your eyes had disturbed me a bit because there was several times I came home from school upset and my parents would demand to know what happened even though I didn’t feel like talking or wanted to keep it to myself to the point they would threaten to whip me or straight up go through with it. That only made me more focus on keeping my feelings and emotions to myself which they knew they messed on when I got older.
There was also when my dad had looked through my phone history and internet history to check up on something that was extremely private to me. When he told me what he did I was so upset that I actually grew paranoid for almost a year on using any electronic thing that he had brought for me or that he owned cause I didn’t want him invading my privacy again even though I knew what he could and couldn’t do.
Hell I can see anyone snapping at having a camera like that implanted in their brains. That means giving someone free reign to watch your private matters, never knowing when you can be yourself, or use you to spy on others.
Parents aren't meant to see everything their child does.... It's sad to think that after she gets in that truck she's going down a bad path probably with sex, drugs, self hate and many other things
Love this! And your accent! You could say “Billy Bob” forever and I’d smile from cheek to cheek.
But it proves how ignorant Sara really is because of the device. At 15 she is still a child, her decision making skills are still very poor and she is not at all mature enough at all to function as an adult. She still needs the right kind of guidance in her life.
I also liked the beginning where it showed all the ways she lost her daughter and the screen was put in place in order to stop her getting lost. But do course in the end she lost her daughter to that very screen that was supposed to keep her safe.
At the end of the episode I was fricking mad you can’t just just f*** up your mom’s face and leave without doubting it. What made me even more mad is the mom still cared for her after she nearly “killed” her.
The Weirder Vlogger I think maybe she was worried she had killed her, or inflicted enough damage that she would die, so she ran. And, well, that's the thing... when love is unconditional, you can hate what someone does and love them immensely anyway. It's part of that parent-child bond some parents and children form. And I think Marie realized she was partially to blame for her daughter going over the edge. And of course she realized how much pain she had inflicted while trying to protect her, so the response is more, "I'm sorry I ended up hurting you, I was trying to keep you safe. I'm so sorry I failed," instead of, "Hey, you are going to pay for this because this is NOT okay!" That kind of bond is interesting to explore.
100% agree with you, I was like "I know she did wrong but she is still your damn mother"
If I was the mother I would have said "fuck it"
The least she could've done was call an ambulance.
Made me lose all sympathy for the daughter when she did that, honestly.
Chronically Curious that’s the thing, since she never learned how to react appropriately to situations like these, because of the monitoring, she didnt know what to do or how to control herself in that situation. Honestly, marie deserved that beatdownz
The Danse Macabre fits just perfectly with the analysis, great job, as always.
This episode was a great commentary on mass surviellance and privacy. As well as censorship and over-protective parenting. One of my favourite episodes. Marie got what she deserved.
I started crying out of stress when she hit her fave non stop with the screen. It was too much to handle