#that’s not the fault of the production team that’s the fault of Netflix for splitting seasons up like this

[nonbinarykai]

Guys… guys.. the whole reason we don’t see Cole and Zane’s reaction is because their going to parallel what happen to kai to the aftermath of Zane’s death in s4 and the tournament GUYS… GUYS WERE GOING TO SEE MORE OF THE NINJAS REACTION TO KAI BEING GONE GUYS PLEASE…

[threewaysdivided]

Frustrations with Young Justice:  Structure, Scope Management & Engagement

So, the long-awaited Season 3 of Young Justice has finished up and by all accounts it… certainly was something.

I’d originally considered writing this to address Season 2 pre-revival-announcement, but at the time I figured there wasn’t much point.  The series was over, and overall it was good.  We had two seasons (plus tie-ins) - one very strong and one that was enjoyable but struggled with clear and concerning structural issues on examination - with no way to be certain what was an intentional creative strategy and what was the result of studio meddling or troubled production.

But now we have Season 3. Now we have a pattern.  And so, I think it’s time we talk.

Some Disclaimers Before We Begin

I haven’t actually watched Outsiders yet, and at this point I don’t have any plans to (I had it pretty significantly spoiled for me while waiting for the official international released).  Unlike my Frustrations With My Hero Academia, the issues I’m seeing in Young Justice speak to larger flaws in the overall structure of its narrative.  I’ll be going off the wiki, as well as a few reviews and a handful of video clips, focusing on the wider trends in Season 2 and beyond over specific details.

This is not intended as a personal attack on Young Justice, or to cast aspersions on any of its creative team.

This is also not an attempt to convince anyone that they were wrong to enjoy Outsiders, the revival or Young Justice as a series.  I enjoy the original seasons, and Outsiders looks to have plenty of entertaining moments, especially for people deeper in the DC Comics fandom.  These structural issues exist below the surface and are not immediately noticeable - and even if they were, a work having flaws doesn’t prevent it from being genuinely enjoyable.

Warning: We’re going to look at the series as a whole so spoilers are in effect for all three seasons.  If you’re spoiler-dodging for a blind watch this one will not be good for your health.  Proceed below the cut at your own risk.

Revival-Specific Issues

Before we get into the full-dive I do want to touch on some potential problems specific to the new revival series.

Meta-issues:  Service Delivery & Fan expectations Beyond just internal writing issues, the Outsiders revival also faced external issues in delivery and fan-interactions which, though not the fault of the creators, do create extra barriers and complications that had the potential to negatively influence first impressions.

Firstly, while the DC Universe streaming service is arguably what allowed the series to come back, I feel it was a poor decision to lock the revival series there as an exclusive before the site went international (at the time of this post’s release, DCU remains geo-blocked to anyone without a US VPN and bank card).  

Not only did this make the show officially inaccessible to a good chunk of overseas fans, it’s also a particularly egregious snub to the co-ordinated Netflix watchers who formed a substantial part of the pro-revival campaigning.  I feel bad for fans who took the time to participate in the Netflix mass-watchings, only to learn that their show would be coming back exclusively on a different paid service.

It also created a split in the fanbase for those fans who weren’t in a position to access, or afford, the service; either pirate the show to keep up, not supporting the creators in the process, or wait for the official release and have to withdraw from all fanbase engagement to avoid spoilers (functionally impossible considering the rapid spread of untagged posts, gifs and fanfiction across social media and fansites, and how quickly spoiler-dense clips made into youtube’s recommendation feeds).   Instead of unifying the fanbase, these delivery decisions fractured it; diluting and spreading out engagement, and lowering hype, while allowing spoilers and negative reactions from early responders to potentially put off fans who might have been on the fence about whether the revival was worth the service/blu-ray price.

Secondly, Outsiders was always going to face a lot of pressure purely by virtue of being a revival.  Young Justice was off the air for five years; five years for fans to campaign, talk up the best aspects of past seasons and put them on pedestals, re-watch, analyse, ask questions and think about the kind of things they would want to see in a revival.  Even if they didn’t believe one was coming, on at least a subconscious level most fans probably had some idea of what a new season ‘should’ be. This puts any revival in a difficult position; many of these would have been contradictory and you simply can’t please everyone.  Expectation, as they say, is the root of all heartbreak.  Still, if it was to please the most fans, the revival would have needed a strong landing that recaptured the spirit of the original; encapsulating the best (or at least, most memorable) elements of the writing, characters and plot from the first two seasons.

Unfortunately, this isn’t what happened; Young Justice: Outsiders instead highlighting and exacerbating some of the series’ weakest scope management, writing and structural issues, while tonal and directorial shifts potentially introduced new problems and points of disconnect from the original.

Tone & Maturity One of the early things that came out about changes to the revival was the shift in rating; jumping from PG to something closer to M.  This was apparently done to “progress into more adult themes and storylines”, which would be perfectly reasonable.  Young Justice has always operated with a level of underlying maturity and, with Invasion ending on a major death and Outsiders pitched to address human trafficking, shaking off TV-broadcast restrictions could have allowed stronger atmosphere and a more direct discussion.

In execution, however, this seems to have manifested as a push to make Outsiders Darker and Edgier; with increased and explicit violence, gun use and more direct references to sex.  Halo is subjected to multiple brutal Woobie moments (having their neck snapped, throat slit and face melted off on separate occasions, among others), Nightwing ambushes recruits with a rifle, and another character’s dismemberment is graphically portrayed with several frames dedicated to their exposed beating heart. It also seems to be taking a more cynical tone, with the heroes increasingly willing to go against their principles and manipulate others, the general populace being more volatile and easily manipulated, and one the new protagonists undergoing a Heel Turn to murder a relative for power in the finale. While some of these elements are in service of the narrative, others look to be less so - their main point seeming to be to present the audience with shocking, disturbing or titillating scenes in order to prove that the show is “not for kids anymore”.

What this does is create a potentially jarring shift in the tonal baseline from the past 2 seasons, specifically an issue because the revival is intended as a direct continuation of those stories.  While there’s nothing wrong with large tonal shifts, it must be asked what purpose this serves in the narrative, as they usually indicate some major change within the story.   It’s possible that Outsiders may be intended as a third-act Darkest Hour, but considering that both this season and the preceding one ended on bittersweet but ultimately victorious notes for the heroes, it seems unlikely.  The risk here is that, in needlessly pursuing a darker tone for the sake of “maturity”, Young Justice may have landed itself in a worst of both worlds situation; people who would appreciate the new approach having to sit through two seasons of sanitised PG to reach it, while potentially alienating those who enjoyed the original’s ability to be emotionally mature without graphic content.  It also runs the risk of disengaging the audience if the world and/or characters become too depressing or unsympathetic for them to care whether anyone gets saved.

Representation & Resonances I’m going to preface this part by acknowledging that it is neither my place nor intent to lead, commandeer or speak with any authority on the topic of representation in media. However, considering that increased representation was brought up as a selling point of the new series, and the discussion that has since risen around it, it is at least worth mentioning.  So, with minimal questions, commentary or asides:

After two seasons, a videogame and a companion comic that focussed on or refenced Kaldur’s unresolved romantic feelings towards a female friend, it’s disappointing that his bisexuality is then revealed by placing him already in an established relationship with a heretofore unnamed and undeveloped character who was barely a footnote in that same comic, rather than showing the development and conclusion of that romantic arc on screen.

What little characterisation Kaldur’s future boyfriend gets in the companion comic is as an active member of a racial supremacist group that carved a slur into the chest of Kaldur’s schoolmate and pushed for the ethnic cleansing of all Atlanteans with outwardly aquatic features (including Kaldur’s own gills).  Neither this history, nor the significant amount of character growth needed for this history to not be a deal-breaker in them ending up together is ever addressed or even acknowledged within the show.

Two other characters are revealed as bisexual by having them acknowledge that they’re currently in heterosexual relationships, engage in unfaithful behaviour with each other anyway, and then having it come back to cause relationship issues with one of said heterosexual partners, which is unfortunate.

Some potentially uncomfortable resonances may arise from writing an Outwardly-Female-Presenting, LGBT+, Hijabi, Character of Colour, and then demonstrating their resurrect-on-death superpower by brutally killing them multiple times on screen, having them self-describe as “broken” on several occasions, depicting their bisexuality through the aforementioned infidelity scene (after which they also self-describe a “bad partner”), and revealing that their non-binary-ness is the result of being an explicitly inhuman computer-soul fused with a human body.  

There’s also a degree of dissonance in the non-binary Hijabi character’s superhero costume still being functionally skin-tight from the neck down; closely adhering to the contours of their breasts, waist, hips, backside and thighs despite the hood and hair-covering.

Again, I do not intend to render final judgement on how valid/invalid or appropriate/inappropriate this is.  However, it does indicate an odd contradiction; the creators seemingly more aware of the diversity of the audience they’re writing for, but paradoxically lacking awareness of how tone-deaf, tactless, or tokenistic their depictions may be coming across as.  While their willingness to defy conservative/exclusionist fan demands is admirable, it seems strange to then do so in a way that also risks alienating the progressive fanbase they appear to want.  Which leads to the question of whether, for some team members, the superficial increase in diversity may have been intentionally used as a way of masking or diverting attention away from deeper problems with the show’s structure (Similar to how the valid feminist messages in the MCU’s Captain Marvel made it harder for fans to critique genuine issues with the writing and military depictions).  

I very much hope and want to believe that this is a sincere case of good intentions being poorly handled as a facet of bigger scope management problems, but these issues being seemingly across the board enough to make the former a possibility leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  Suffice to say that, if they genuinely wanted to make the show more inclusive and respectful for a modern audience, a sensitivity reader/editor/test group would probably have helped.

However, even if these elements had been handled well, the show still would have struggled due to ongoing issues with its long-term narrative structure, which have been present and ever-growing since the credits rolled on the end of the Season 1 finale.

Scope Management: Opportunity Cost

One of the major problems affecting Young Justice from the end of Season 1 is poor scope management in its storytelling.  

On the production side, scope management is about controlling size and complexity to ensure that a quality project can be delivered within the budget, timeframe, team size and resources available.  On the storytelling side, this refers to what TV Tropes calls The First law of Metafictional Thermodyamics; balancing the number of story elements (plot points, characters, themes, settings etc.) against the available time/ space needed to satisfyingly handle them. It’s a game of opportunity cost; the more story elements you have, the less time any one can be given, with each new element coming at the cost of nuance and development for the others.

While the show has so far managed the production side, its long-term story has been a scope-management snowball that increasingly undermines the power of the narrative.

Outsiders in particular shows noticeable symptoms across the board; the sheer number of threads, twists and substories combined with limited time to explain them comprehensibly pushing the plot into on-the-nose Kudzu territory, and fans pointing out scenes where certain characters go noticeably unvoiced - possibly out of unwillingness to have actors do additional line-reads - indicating that it may also be starting to impact the production.

However, a more persistent and enduring issue has been the way cast-scope issues weaken the character writing, something that was clearly apparent even back in Invasion.

In Season 1 the slow build of cast and plot scope allowed remarkably detailed characterisation for just 26 episodes.  The team came together gradually, with several episodes exploring their dynamic in different contexts between each new addition, and spotlight episodes highlighting the personalities of smaller subsets and individuals, as well as how their personal motivations pushed and pulled them towards the unit.   This created an inherently entertaining and strong status quo, with clear hierarchies and relationships between members, and each individual providing an obvious functional/emotional contribution. Even less-well-developed secondary characters could be easily understood through their opinions of and relationship to this dynamic and/or individual members.

Invasion loses this advantage, with the timeskip front-loading a large number of new characters into a 20-episode season with a plot already in motion.  This makes it difficult to bring the whole group together, while the competition for screentime gives less space for subsets and individuals to demonstrate their dynamic.  This is further hurt by the inflexibility of the ongoing plot structure, allowing less opportunities to see the groups and individuals in contexts outside of “heroes on a mission”.  The status quo of Invasion is much weaker, with an unclear dynamic of ambiguous relationships and hierarchies.  A large number of the new characters are also underdeveloped - their personalities archetypical, gimmicky or re-treads of previous.  As a result, many feel redundant or interchangeable; like they could be swapped out for another team member or DC character with similar abilities without significantly altering the plot or personality of the episodes.

This then leads to bigger problems with a lack of internal drive.   Many of the new characters get very little explanation for who they are, their personal goals or what would motivate them to specifically join a stealth-ops squad.  Where the original team were internally motivated, engaged and proactive in their behaviours, many of the Invasion members feel more passive and reactive - seeming to go on missions simply “because they’re heroes”.  This also effects the existing characters, as the lack of timeskip coverage creates a sense that everyone put their plans on the backburner between instalments instead of continuing forward with the expected level of urgency.  Not only does this make it harder to get invested in the Invasion characters, it also makes the characters themselves feel less invested in the story; neither of which is good for engagement.

In Outsiders this reaches critical mass, with another timeskip and even bigger cast expansion forcing the show into a no-win situation. Existing writing issues become exacerbated and obvious; the heroes fragmenting into different factions, many new characters existing in personality-less background roles or getting only sporadic or single-meaningful-appearances, characters from past seasons having their ongoing arcs watered down, truncated or dropped entirely as they are Demoted to Extra, and new character arcs often being inconsistent or irregular as they fight for space around the plot and other elements - complaints of “too many!” echoing vocally across the fandom.

While this sheer volume of characters present by Outsiders would likely pose a scope problem in any scenario, it is made infinitely worse by Young Justice’s use and execution of timeskips.

The Trouble with Timeskips

A defining feature of Young Justice is its habit of timeskipping between seasons, with Invasion jumping ahead 5 years from January 2011 to January 2016 and Outsiders skipping from July 2016 to July 2018 (2 years).  Of the 8.5 in-universe years spanned by the current seasons, only 1.6 years (less than 20% of the timeline) are directly covered by the main entries.  Not only this but, rather than serving to cut unimportant slow periods, Young Justice’s inter-seasonal jumps come as Nothing Is the Same Anymore Timeskips; introducing large numbers of new characters, significant changes to the world and major development for existing cast members during the unseen periods.

This creates and compounds problems with scope management as not only must the new characters and plot be developed going forward, the story now needs to dedicate adequate space to filling the audience in on the changes if the skips are to be satisfying, forcing even more competition for screen time.  

The argument against skips is obvious.  Progressing with no (or smaller) jumps would have made the cast-scope more manageable; a gradual addition of characters allowing better understanding of the dynamic and personalities comprising the status quo, while characters who were to become less relevant could have their arcs concluded before being written out. There is, however, a production counterargument; reaching the point of Outsiders without timeskips would take massive number of extra episodes, requiring much more plot as well as time, resources and labour from the creative team. Personally, I think this is a weak argument as there was no narrative requirement for the scope to escalate to this level, and the decision to do so sacrificed a significant level of storytelling quality for the sake of including a large quantity of material.  It’s possible that executive mandates by DC, Warner Bros. or Cartoon Network forced these elements onto the production; although, considering how deep the problems run, this seems unlikely to be the major cause.

The biggest issue here is how the lack of backfill impacts long-term engagement.  At its core most storytelling is about understanding, with unconscious engagement often deriving from curiosity - good stories raising unspoken questions within the audience that are satisfyingly answered by the information provided as it progresses (subverted in Shaggy Dog stories, where unsatisfying conclusions are the point). This is especially true in mysteries - a genre that Young Justice borrows from - which tend to encourage questions more directly.

Engagement issues arise because Nothing is the Same Anymore timeskips inherently raise these kind of unspoken questions for the audience.  Why did we timeskip?  What have the heroes and villains been doing in that time?  Why did Artemis and Wally leave the life?  Why did Conner and M’gann break up?  Who are these new heroes, where did they come from and why?  Who was the second Robin, what was his relationship to the others and how did his death impact them?  What happened to Tula and how did it affect Kaldur?

This creates a curiosity-anticipation engagement, the audience waiting for information that will satisfy these questions.  Unfortunately, many of these questions are instead left hanging by the end of Invasion, either being dropped or answered in an unsatisfying manner.  

On first watch Invasion does a decent job of masking this issue. For an invested viewer the moment-to-moment writing is entertaining, and the season raises enough new questions that you don’t initially notice how many of the early ones are going unanswered.  Several members of Young Justice’s creative team have expressed the opinion that the show was a perfect candidate for streaming distribution and, though somewhat cynically, I agree; it’s possible to maintain a high level of investment provided you don’t stop long enough to realise how much is falling by the wayside - something easier to manage in a delivery format that encourages back-to-back bingeing.

Unfortunately, this strategy makes later seasons a bit one-use-only.  Where a Season 1 re-watch offers the satisfaction of seeing how all the information comes together, Invasion replaces the curiosity-anticipation with an unconscious knowledge that the answers aren’t coming, making it easier to become disengaged. (This was actually what prompted this analysis; after thoroughly enjoying a re-watch of S1, I realised halfway through Invasion that I was only continuing because missing too many episodes would make it hard to pick back up later.)

And again, this poses a particular problem for Outsiders, not only because Invasion ends with a larger number of unresolved plot threads around the mole arc, the runaways and Wally’s death, but because fans have had up to 5 years to consciously express their curiosity and be actively looking for answers, making people more likely to notice and be frustrated by the issue.

Show vs Tell vs Imply: Earning Your Narrative

Another frustrating element of Young Justice’s timeskips is the way the series attempts to use events from these periods to set up future payoffs without conveying that information in a satisfying manner.  The show largely eschews the use of flashbacks, preferring to occasionally tell but mostly imply timeskipped events through indirect dialogue and background details.  Neither of these make effective main tools; overuse of Telling without Showing can produce Informed Attributes, while Implying places both the information and emotional content a step removed from the narrative - making it easier to miss, and forcing the audience to stop and think if they want to understand the impact, which can pull people out of the story.  As a result, payoffs whose set-ups and development are delivered in this way can feel unsupported and unearned.

This can be seen in characters like Batgirl and Bumblebee, who make background appearances as civilians in Season 1 before joining the team during the timeskip.  Nothing in the framing of these appearances suggests that the characters will become important later, or that their presence is anything more than an easter-egg for comic fans, and no backfill is provided once they join.  Of the new characters who appear at the start of Invasion, only Beast Boy and Blue Beetle are earned (Garfield through his Season 1 story and Jaime retroactively through one of Invasion’s few flashbacks), with this lack of earned-ness contributing to the season’s weaker character writing.

A more obvious instance is the show’s implementation of Jason Todd, who is both introduced and killed in the first timeskip with no screentime given to his interactions with other cast members; his presence only indicated by the hologram in the grotto and a few indirect lines of dialogue.  Not only is this frustrating for any Invasion characters whose arcs are meant to be affected by his character, it also causes his implied revival in Outsiders to fall flat.  Nothing hints at his return and, due to an absence of unique characterisation (and Dick’s name being widely known by Season 3) there is no reason to make the connection outside of external prior knowledge.

The problem also impacts the development of the original team, with most of their growth into adulthood being Informed rather than demonstrated due to the lack of timeskip coverage.  Furthermore, this growth sometimes contradicts what was shown about the characters in past seasons; e.g. Artemis and Wally, whose departure from the life by the start of Invasion feels particularly jarring and unsatisfying given the strong drive towards heroism that they demonstrated at the end of Season 1.

The worst example of this is how the series has handled Dick Grayson.  Of the original cast, Dick’s character had the most direct set-up for an ongoing thread, with his fear of becoming too much like Batman - a sentiment echoed by Bruce in a later episode:

By Season 2, though, Dick is acting exactly like this, willing to lie to his peers and keep secrets despite the high risks and the damage it causes to their relationships.  This could have been an effective tragedy set-up; a person becoming what they feared to be.  However, nothing in the framing or writing suggests that either the characters or narrative realise the true significance of this conflict, and very little is done to explain the shift in character trajectory.  Through a bit of analysis, it can be inferred that losses implied in the timeskip have changed Dick’s priorities, but as this is neither shown nor told it is not earned.

This then reaches exasperating levels in Outsiders where a similar clash appears in 4 characters; M’gann, Kaldur, Bruce and Dick being revealed among the masterminds of the secret Anti-Light plot to manipulate other heroes, with Bruce going so far as to leverage his unconscious influence as a former mentor to recruit younger heroes for ‘Batman Incorporated’.  Not only does this fly in the face of the lessons Dick, Kaldur and M’gann learned from Invasion’s mole subplot, it also contradicts what we’ve been shown of Bruce’s character - Season 1 demonstrating concern for the protégés emotions and awareness of the unhealthiness of his personal approach, with Invasion offering little to suggest a significant change in this mindset.

Again, this could have been an effective moment of character tragedy if properly developed; if the narrative had shown their increasing desperation and frustration as the situation grew more dire, with the characters trying to find alternative solutions before accepting that the only way to proceed was to make a choice they knew from experience to be wrong.   If they had demonstrated Bruce’s relationship with Jason and Barbara, and how their respective death and disability impacted him and his ideals.  Instead this development goes almost entirely implied, resulting in behaviour that feels unearned, unsatisfying, out of character and that completely ignores the lessons learned from past seasons.  Made even worse is that Barbara and Conner call Bruce and M’gann out for it, indicating that the writers were aware of this contradiction but decided to go ahead anyway instead of finding a more satisfying and character-faithful solution.

The problems with this approach are threefold.  Firstly, it disrupts emotional continuity, causing the seasons to feel discontiguous; entries not properly flowing on from or fitting with the ones that precede or follow them.  Secondly, it undermines the importance of events shown in past seasons; onscreen development being rendered insignificant compared to the massive off-screen changes, with some of these changes going so far as to roll back what development was shown. Thirdly it hurts investment; if the story can change rapidly between entries, with no explanation and in directions that cannot be anticipated based on the available material, then there is little value in speculating.

Side Content: Not A Substitute

Outside of the seasonal entries, Young Justice provides some additional story information through side material.  The Legacy game covers Tula’s death, the revelation that Black Manta is Kaldur’s father, and Kaldur stepping down as Team leader, as well as some dialogue hinting at Jason’s death and Artemis and Wally’s decision to later leave the life.  Wynnde, Talia al Ghul and the Lazarus Pit all make appearances in the Season 1 comics.  The Season 2 comics introduce and flesh out some characters, relationships and additional stories from both pre-revival TV seasons, while the Torch Songs comics focus on Conner and M’gann’s relationship reconciliation pre-Outsiders.

The issue here is that, while excellent for exploring and developing non-essential stories and character details, side material is not a good medium for setting up or progressing key information and plotlines.  By its nature, supplementary content is secondary; usually engaged with after the main story as before this, fans may not know or care that it exists. People also tend to consume all available main content first - especially in a binge-streaming format - so if something feels jarring, ill supported or contrived without the side-information, it will probably feel that way to the majority of viewers on first exposure.

Furthermore, it is fundamentally backwards-thinking to expect fans to spend additional money and time on secondary content in order to have a satisfying experience with the core entries.  If the main seasons alone are not sufficiently comprehensible and engaging enough to encourage further time investment, then the fault lies with the creators for developing a flawed product - it is not the job of fans to seek additional content to correct for weak storytelling, nor to pay the creators extra to fix basic narrative problems that should have been caught in the edit.

Even if this were not the case, the companion material would still suffer from a lack of coverage.  Jason’s death and the fallout from Legacy are not covered in any material, and Torch Songs places the focus on Conner and M’gann’s need to forgive each other rather than the circumstances that caused their breakup.  Due to the timeskip the Season 1 comics are also ineffective as foreshadowing for Outsiders; though Batman and Talia are romantically involved, their story closes on Bruce ending the relationship with nothing to indicate that it will be rekindled and result in Damian.  Wyynde meanwhile makes his sole appearance as a background antagonist with no signs of future significance.

The Author is Dead (and so are the comics)

Looking through the Young Justice Fan Wiki as the seasons go on, you’ll increasingly find instances of entries written in green text:

These indicate additional information provided by the creators through avenues outside of the series itself; at interviews, convention panels or through Greg Weisman’s ask blog. TV Tropes calls it Word of God.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with creators engaging with their fans and sharing trivia through avenues other than the work itself, the specific approach seen here represents a concerning barrier to Young Justice’s viability as a stand-alone story.  As they do not exist within the text, audience members cannot arrive at these set-ups, conclusions or pieces of information by engaging with the series, causing elements introduced this way to feel poorly supported, out of place or contrived.  

This becomes particularly apparent in Outsiders, where the story begins attempting to pay off this non-existent setup, running them afoul of Death of the Author theory.

Death of the Author This theory posits that, because commercial art is created to be consumed, not just created, the audience’s interpretations of a work should be considered as just valid as the creator’s.  The work must stand on its own and creators cannot micro-manage their audience’s response to it.

1.  A creator's intentions and biographical facts (political stances, religion, etc) should hold no special weight in determining the validity of an interpretation. 2.  Save for re-releases/reboots or direct continuations, the creator cannot and should not attempt to retroactively insert information or interpretations that were not present in the original text.

The problem here should be obvious:  If the creator wants to include something, they need to take steps to do so within the story.  If they are unable to, then they need to drop it and devise an alternative.  To not include elements while still insisting that they’re there (and worse, trying to use them) is not only dishonesty of purpose, it’s disrespectful to the intelligence of the audience.

It also further hurts the willing suspension of disbelief; if the creators are going to write whatever suits them as it suits them, using information that the audience is not able to access or infer, then there is little point in actively engaging with the narrative.

The non-daptation

“One is Arrowette who we introduced in Season 1 as Cissie King-Jones. We didn’t name her but we named her dad Burnell Jones, so if you were comic book savvy… you could look up ‘Who was that guy that nearly got assassinated? Oh, look who his daughter [is], that’s who the daughter was.’ The idea was even back in Season 1, you see her expression as she sees Artemis save the life of her father. So she was clearly inspired by Artemis and is now Arrowette, a hero in her own right.”  - Greg Weisman at San Diego Comic-Con, Reported by JK Schmidt for Comicbook.com, August 4, 2018 (Emphasis mine)

[It’s worth noting that the father character being discussed here is only referred to as ‘Mr Jones’ outside of the episode credits.]

There also seems to be an assumption by the creators that Young Justice fans should be willing to apply or research broader DC comics information in lieu of proper set-up or development within the series itself.

This pattern can be most clearly seen in the handling of the Bat-family;  Barbara becoming Batgirl and later Oracle, Jason’s personality, death circumstances and later revival, Tim’s appearance as the third Robin, Stephanie becoming Spoiler, and the appearance of Orphan as well as Talia Al Ghul with an infant Damian Wayne - all of which are given little to no foreshadowing or context within either the main or spin-off entries.  It may also explain the noticeable under-characterisation of the secondary cast from Invasion onwards; characters that would no doubt feel more realised to fans who were already attached to stronger, more detailed characterisations from other stories, and could project those personalities and motivations onto the show’s largely blank archetypes.

The issue here is that Young Justice becomes increasingly unable to work in its own context - there being little way to understand or anticipate these characters and subplots without external fan-knowledge.

In this regard Young Justice runs into a similar problem as the fourth Harry Potter Movie.  The cinematic release of Goblet of Fire cut multiple key plot points, setups and payoffs for time - creating a story that doesn’t make much sense when viewed in isolation - but was able to get away with it due to the saturation of Harry Potter book knowledge at the time of release; the audience’s prior awareness allowing them to unconsciously fill in the missing pieces of story so long as the film simply referenced them.

However, where the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie has a direct source material that fans can refer back to, Young Justice’s further complicates things by being an original property.  While the series uses and references DC comics characters and storylines it also synthesises them into its own take, something clearly apparently from the line-up of the Season 1 team.  Even if fans wanted to find them, few to no stories about this combination of characters exist, meaning that - while we can extrapolate broad strokes information from other versions - any nuanced conclusion is going to be conjecture. Especially considering the variance in different comics’ depictions, and that Young Justice is willing to break from comics canon in changing the backstories and identities of several characters.

I want to highlight the Season 3 reveal of Ma’alefa’ak.  This character has no set-up within the series - only foreshadowed in a blog-response from Weisman about M’gann having a White brother - and even for fans familiar with the comics it’s unlikely to make sense as Comics!Ma’alefa’ak is typically J’onn’s evil twin.  Accepting this Word of God also severely hurts M’gann’s character as further creator statements claim that she left Mars without saying goodbye; meaning that she abandoned her younger brother to Martian racism with no explanation, then proceeded to not think or talk about him for upwards of seven years, while adopting a new little brother who she seems weirdly comfortable directly manipulating in the present season.

Arguably one of the core appeals of telling stories based on existing material is an exploration of specifics and nuance; seeing the details of how scenarios, dynamics and plot beats would arise and play out with the creators’ particular versions of the characters, settings or premise.  After Season 1, however, Young Justice seems to take the exact opposite approach, treating the DC Multiverse as a shortcut to jump between plots without adequately building them in-story.  

In this regard it’s almost closer to fanfiction - which intentionally uses existing investment and knowledge of a specific source material to springboard to ‘the good stuff’ with minimal set up.  (In fact it may be in a worse position, as fanfic on the whole tends to place high emphasis on character context and emotional continuity.)  The problem is that this approach isn’t backwards-compatible with original storytelling; new audiences are not pre-engaged or informed (in which case the lack of context becomes a barrier to entry), and existing DC-fans may be disappointed at being given an underdeveloped reference instead of a new take on the character(s) they already like.

Which leads to the question: If the best way to understand and enjoy Young Justice’s long-term story is to consume other, better-constructed shows/comics/movies/games and do the work yourself, then… why bother coming back to this series at all?

What Good Amidst These?

With all of this, it’s hard to determine where the core focus or appeal lies for Young Justice as a stand-alone series.

The Characters While strong in Season 1, scope and timeskip management issues have been weakening the character writing, with new additions frequently feeling underdeveloped in both personality and group dynamic.  Even characters who are well-developed in their introductory seasons rarely have their character arcs satisfyingly continued beyond them; ongoing threads often being handwaved, dropped, or simply limited by lack of available time.  Making this worse, the timeskips also contain points of significant development that are not shown or sufficiently explained, sometimes pulling characters away from the characterisation that was provided - feeling more like a betrayal of character than natural growth. It is difficult to draw an emotionally satisfying through-line from the people they were to the strangers they become.

This also contributes to a lack of motivation; underdeveloped new characters not having clear motives through which to understand their actions, and developed existing characters often outgrowing their motivations between seasons without the series stopping to re-establish a new internal drive.  As a result, it is difficult both to remain connected to the characters, and to feel like the characters are personally invested in the plot.

The Plot Since Season 1, Young Justice has had an increasingly complex plot.  While this has been weakened by cast-scope and timeskip issues reducing the context and available screen time, it may be facing a deeper issue with repetition of the mystery formula and withheld information.

Season 1’s use of mystery-intrigue-suspense worked well because the heroes spent most of the story unaware of the Light and their plans, while the audience were given glimpses behind the curtain; culminating in a reveal at the finale.  From here you might reasonably expect a focus shift, with the now-aware Team attempting to uncover The Light’s long-term goals and counter them.  Instead, however, Invasion jumps forward 5 years to the Team dealing with another short-term plan, having made no progress on the sixteen hours and with little to nothing shown about off-screen attempts.  By the end of Outsiders (now 8 in-universe years after the Season 1 reveal) the Light’s specific end goal and major objectives remain unclear to both the heroes and the audience.  Not only does this make the heroes feel artificially passive, it also weakens the narrative stakes, as without this information it’s hard to understand the importance a given victory/loss has to the balance of power and progress on either side.  Where Season 1 compensated by having an equally strong character-focused B-plot providing personal stakes, Invasion and Outsiders’ weaker characterisation does not offer this advantage.

It also indicates something potentially concerning for the series’ future.  By keeping the end goal vague and the heroes reactive, the creators could theoretically draw things out in perpetuity; extending the series until they run out of plots, characters or funding, regardless of the effect on long-term structure or pacing.

The World In fairness, the world of Young Justice (like most superhero cartoons) was never a major drawcard; largely being our reality with some fictional cities/countries and superpowered/alien/supernatural/technological elements layered over the top.  Unlike fantasy, sci-fi, space-operas etc., the world and worldbuilding itself isn’t a particular point of engagement - mostly coming instead from the stories and characters within it.  That said, the tendency for the world and society to shift rapidly between seasons without showing those developments contributes to the feeling that seasons are less grounded and contiguous with each other than they should be.  And, as mentioned at the beginning, Outsider’s decision to call greater attention to the world’s violence, injustice and discrimination with limited comment in pursuit of a “darker” tone poses a particular issue; if the status-quo is cynical and unfair then the audience has less reason to care about the world or the characters defending it.

The Team While never the direct focus of the series, the Team had a lot of symbolic importance in Season 1, representing a solution to the personal motivations and/or emotional needs of the core cast, and providing the season’s strong B-plot.  In Invasion, this is weakened; many original members having outgrown this connection, and the new members having little to no clear personal motivation or emotional tie toward the unit itself.  By Outsiders the Team breaks entirely, spending most of the season dispersed across other groups and at the end being decommissioned in all but name as Jefferson retains it only as a training space for younger heroes - exactly what the original members fought hard not to become.

Secrets and Lies A stated theme of the show, this was strongest in Season 1 thanks to the character writing.  Even when characters kept secrets against the interest of the Team, time was taken to explore and explain their reasons.  This theme became weaker in Invasion due to the lack of screen-time and timeskip context.  It’s not clear how the mole plot was conceived, the strategic goal it was meant to accomplish, or why Dick would keep the rest of the original team in the dark after bringing Artemis and Wally on board - especially considering that Conner and M’gann’s position and powers make them not only more likely to uncover the scheme independently, but also more driven and able to do serious harm to Kaldur in ‘retribution’. This is then undercut in Outsiders by the creators having the same characters repeat the same behaviours to even greater negative impact, indicating that they either did not learn or chose to ignore the lessons from Invasion.  It also makes the characters less relatable, with them seeming unsettlingly callous and comfortable with betraying their friends’ trust as a strategy.

Generations Another creator-stated theme, this one is notably weaker.  Like most things it was strongest in Season 1, with the mentor-protégé interactions and coming-of-age overtones to the B-plot.  From Invasion on, however, it’s undercut by the same timeskip and scope-screentime problems, with the series missing obvious opportunities to explore the concept.  Many of the new Invasion additions are the same age as the original group and suffer from underdevelopment, while the mentors spend much of the season off-world.  Little to no time is spent exploring the direct Flash and Bat-lineages, M’gann’s relationship with Beast Boy, or Superman and Superboy’s developing connection.  Red Tornado is increasingly underutilised despite working with heroes as far back as the Justice Society.  Black Lightning’s mentorship of Static and Artemis’ inspiration of Arrowette go timeskipped and unaddressed.  Kaldur’s transition to Aquaman ahead of Outsiders is likewise timeskipped and barely discussed, despite its importance to both his character and this theme.  Outsiders does have the original Team directly mentoring new heroes but this lacks impact as so much of the Team’s growth to adulthood has happened offscreen, informed and unearned.  

While Young Justice certainly has generations, the series has not done enough work to be about generations; this honestly feeling more like a post-hoc attempt to justify a poor scope-management choice.

An aside: Strong Female Characters Fertile Child-rearers The revival’s specific focus on ‘generations’ through ideas of children and mothering also creates some issues with the writing of female characters, several of who have part or all of their arcs consumed by nurturing, acting as mother-figures or maternity.  M’gann is suddenly and inexplicably a youth counsellor; Lois Lane, Talia al Ghul and Iris Allen largely exist to be the mothers of Jon, Damian, Don and Dawn respectively; and Karen Beecher has a substantial side-plot dedicated to her pregnancy with Mal Duncan’s child, despite the two of them having barely resolved their relationship conflict by the end of Invasion.   Outsiders also seems to have a fascination with female characters being heavily pregnant; exemplified in the scene where Raquel’s young son points at Karen’s distended stomach and declares “there’s a baby in there!”. 

All of this can be most clearly seen in the writing of Artemis; who spends most of Outsiders acting as a nurturing figure to Violet and Tara, being pressured to settle down with Red Arrow and co-parent her niece in Jade’s absence, and whose grief scene focuses less on her and Wally’s existing characterisation/conflicts and more on her supposed regret at not giving up heroism for a life of domesticity as Wally’s wife and child-mother (the scene also featuring a shot in which she is heavily pregnant).

While a lack of internal motivations is common across Outsiders’ characters, very little is done to develop these women as autonomous individuals, or give them agency in establishing whether they like/want children, desire a family or if they and their partners are ready to be parents.  The show also lacks any strong overarching “family” themes that would allow viewers to reasonably assume that this is common desire of most characters.  

Instead, Outsiders appears to presume that these characters would want these things and assume these roles simply because they’re female; an oddly regressive attitude that conflicts with the revival’s attempts at progressivism.

Morality This had potential to become a theme in Outsiders, with the heroes willing to go against their principles and Vandal Savage stepping up to defend the earth in Evolution.  However, it’s hampered by a lack of development.  While the Light are presented as having their own agenda beyond simple villainy-in-opposition, and claim to be pushing back against a “calcified status quo”, the personal goals and ideologies motivating individual members, as well as any ultimate strategy or vision of the group is unclear (assuming that they have grander ideals at all and this isn’t just an empty platitude to rationalise purely selfish pursuits).  

This lands the series in an awkward middle-ground; the villains being too underdeveloped in their motives and cruel in their actions to support a meaningful debate about who’s in the right, while the heroes and the world they defend are now too callous and ethically compromised for the story to easily split down simple moral lines.  And while Grey-on-Gray or Black-on-Gray conflicts can make for excellent stories, they require a level of creator awareness and attention to plot and character motivation that Young Justice’s scope, cohesion, and consistency issues simply do not allow.

The Swansong

"That's the ‘young’ part of Young Justice is there’s always a new generation coming.” -Brandon Vietti, at San Diego Comic-Con, Reported by JK Schmidt for Comicbook.com, August 4, 2018

“the promise of new heroes is something that we can always offer. That's, I think, the one thing that we can promise for season four.” -Brandon Vietti, interviewed by Gabe Bergado of Teen Vogue, August 28, 2019

When I look at Young Justice as it now exists, I can’t help but wonder what reasons there are to continue following the canon:

Why care about the existing characters when they’re increasingly becoming strangers; pushed further into the background, their arcs watered down, truncated or dropped, their on-screen development rendered insignificant compared to massive, unexplained off-screen changes that sometimes pull them against their established trajectories?

Why bother getting invested in the current season’s additions when everything about the show’s pattern and paramount focus on “new heroes” indicates that they will likely suffer the same fate?

Why care about a plot that’s become increasingly convoluted and incoherent, undercut by the disconnect between seasons, the lack of clear end-goals and motives from both the heroes and villains, and the creators’ desire to needlessly obfuscate information for the sake of intrigue?

Why care about themes when they’re not explored in enough detail to be resonant, or are just going to end up as repackaged versions of the same characters learning the same lessons they should have learned in past seasons?

Why care about new entries in a story whose structure shows a complete disinterest in satisfying long-term storytelling?

Why care?

The worst part is that none of this was necessary.  Young Justice’s ideas aren’t inherently bad, they’re just being let down by poor execution, weak structure and terrible scope management.  Nothing at any point of the narrative forced the need for time-skips or massive cast-escalation; the creators simply chose to, and for no apparent reason.

The new season could have been an opportunity to address some of the writing flaws that crept in during Invasion.  Wally’s death would have offered an ideal focal point and premise for a more reflective and introspective story; characters of different ages coming together in subplots around working through and looking back on the journey so far.  A perfect opportunity to back-fill timeskip content, wrap up hanging threads and rebuild a strong status quo, while a main plot laid the foundations for the espionage and interstellar conflicts to come.  (The suggestion of this possibility being why I got my hopes up at the initial trailer.)

But that’s not what we got. What we got was Season 3.  Outsiders.  With this, the series has landed itself in an uncomfortable position; enough time having passed in-universe that future attempts to stop and backfill will likely feel awkward and out of place, while the lack information threatens to make the series increasingly unsatisfying and incoherent if they attempt to push forward without it.

And so we have ‘Young’ Justice, a show “about generations”…  or at least that has and will probably continue to force in new generations with each season, no matter how much it undercuts and overburdens the story they’re trying to tell.

Which, to borrow a phrase from Stephen King:

I don't know what you think, but for me, that version's a loser. It's like the Cadillac with the chrome stripped off and the paint sanded down to dull metal. It goes somewhere, but it ain't, you know, boss.

[aion-rsa]

TV’s Most Confusing Episodes From Doctor Who to Westworld

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There has to be some confusion in a TV drama, a procession of things not-yet-understood. That’s the deal: accept temporary bafflement in the expectation that at some point, all will be revealed. Or even if it won’t be, at least there’s a reason it’s been left unsolved, like a Sudoku you’ve got jam on. 

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TV

Enough, Scrappy-Doo! The TV Dogs Who Need to Chill the F Out

By Alec Bojalad and 3 others

TV

TV’s Most Stressful Episodes From Battlestar Galactica to The Handmaid’s Tale

By Alec Bojalad and 2 others

What doesn’t work is when a TV show that’s supposed to be taking you along with it, leaves you behind. That could be your fault (Did you stay awake? Skip an episode? Were you checking your phone? Was your dog doing that weird thing with the curtains so you had to get up and miss a bit?). Or it could be the fault of a TV show either too ambitious or inaccessible or illogical for comfort. We’ve chosen the episodes that left us scratching our heads; you can judge who’s to blame. 

Doctor Who ‘Twice Upon a Time’ (2017)

So named because twice is the minimum number of times you have to watch the 2017 Doctor Who Christmas special before you have the weakest grasp of what’s going on. Considering that most will have only watched it once, and that, from inside a boozy, gravy-based fug, it’s staggering how esoteric this one is – impressively so. As showrunner Steven Moffat’s farewell episode, it’s a distillation of the sort of clever, complicated, ambitious, self-referential writing he’s known for.

There are two Doctors (three if you count the post-Regeneration glimpse of Thirteen), two overlapping Doctor Who stories, a Dalek, an ancestor of The Brigadier, a ship’s pilot made of glass, a moving historical WWI moment and three companions who aren’t really there. (Or are they?) It’s about regret, or reminiscence, or saying goodbye. It’s definitely about something and is doubtless very meaningful and poignant once you crack its shell, but there’s the sense that, unless you’re one of the Who hardcore, it doesn’t really care for you to try. Why be so aloof? It’s Christmas. Let the rest of us play too. LM  

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 4 Episode 8 ‘I’m Not the Person I Used to Be’

This was a bold move from a bold show. When Santino Fontana chose to leave Crazy Ex-Girlfriend after his one year contract ended, the character of Greg – assumed by many to be lead Rebecca’s romantic endgame – was written out in early season two. Then in the fourth and final season, Greg returned but this time played by Skylar Astin. Instead of glossing over the casting change and pretending as though nothing had happened (like when, say, Ross’ ex-wife Carol on Friends or mercenary warrior Daario Naharis on Game of Thrones changed faces), Crazy Ex-Girlfriend hit it straight on.

This smart, innovative series had always been filtered through the unreliable perspective of lead Rebecca Bunch (hence the extravagant musical numbers that take place in her head). So when Greg’s character was recast, the show used it to comment on our impressions of other people. ‘I’m Not the Person I Used to Be’ lampshaded New Greg with a psychoanalytical reflection on changing perceptions and personal growth. It was brave. It was innovative. It was admirable. It was… really confusing and distancing. However great Astin was in the role, and however clever the idea was, New Greg was the point at which some Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fans began to peel away from a show clearly unafraid to leave viewers behind. LM

Westworld Season 3 Episode 8 ‘Crisis Theory’

The Westworld season one finale was confusing in a delicious, grinning ‘Oh, you clever devil’ kind of way. The Westworld season two finale was confusing in an exhilarating ‘Blimey. All right then!’ kind of way. The Westworld season three finale was confusing in a way that made you feel like you’d watched the entire Terminator trilogy on fast-forward while downing a 12-pack of Red Bull and trying to rewire the electrics in your house. It wasn’t a good feeling.

I still don’t know which world-dominating AI was which, who was fighting who, what the evil French guy wanted, how many people were secretly Dolores, whether Maeve still only existed in the Matrix, and why Jesse from Breaking Bad was the new Jesus. If free will still exists by the time season four comes, I’m using mine to either get a valium prescription or change channels. LM

Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 6 ‘Never Ricking Morty’

“Never Ricking Morty” is a particularly divisive episode of Rick and Morty – even at this very website! Some of us loved it, while others weren’t big fans. One thing that’s undeniable, however, is that this midseason 4 episode is the show’s most complicated narrative endeavor yet. “Never Ricking Morty” takes place on a “Story Train,” meaning that the plot initially goes through your typical three-act storytelling structure.

Once Rick and Morty realize where they are, however, Rick understands that the only way out of the Story Train is to reject the conventions of storytelling altogether. This means that any natural storytelling inclination must be resisted. It also means that the show burns through about nine series finales worth of epic nonsense right at the end as Rick and Morty’s “canon” is sucked right out of them. It’s tremendously challenging to watch, much less understand, and the episode wants it that way. – AB

Russian Doll Episode 7 ‘The Way Out’

Like many other Groundhog Day-style “time loop” stories, Netflix’s Russian Doll goes out of its way to establish the “rules” of its sci-fi premise. Every time Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne) dies (which happens with disturbing frequency), she returns to the night of her 36th birthday party, washing her face in the bathroom as Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up” plays. That much is easy to understand, and Russian Doll has fun seeing how far it can make Nadia last before perishing and returning to the night in question.

Once she meets another person stuck in a time loop, however, things start to get wacky. Russian Doll’s seventh episode, “The Way Out,” is about as off-the-wall an experience as you’ll find on television. Nadia’s loved ones start to disappear. Then she flashes back to memories of her mother. Before you know it, teeth are bloodily falling out. Russian Doll settles in for a relatively logical ending in its eighth episode, but this penultimate installment is pleasantly incomprehensible. – AB

The Nevers Episode 6 ‘True’

The Nevers’ premise is bold enough to begin with. The HBO series is set in a fictional Victorian era where a select portion of the population (most of them women) have been “Touched” or blessed with supernatural abilities. Apparently, however, bold wasn’t nearly bold enough. The Nevers’ sixth episode, which serves as a de facto season finale due to a COVID production delay, upends everything.

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TV

Sky Atlantic’s The Nevers Proves That Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

By Lacy Baugher

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The Nevers Part 1 Finale Is The Most Surprising Hour of TV in a Long Time

By Alec Bojalad

This episode begins not in 19th century London like every other installment thus far, but in a far flung dystopian sci-fi future. Earth is barely habitable and humanity is on the ropes. The only possible hope that the human race has left is in the form of a powerful alien species known as the Galanthi. If this all sounds complicated, you don’t even know the half of it. “True” is notable for not holding the audience’s hand through this disorienting experience at all. The episode makes no attempt to tone down its futuristic jargon and it’s not entirely clear what’s even happening until halfway through. By episode’s end, it’s apparent how “True” connects to The Nevers’ original concept, but no one would be blamed for needing multiple rewatches to really get it. – AB

Farscape Season 4 Episode 7 ‘John Quixote’

Let it never be said that Farscape was a TV show afraid to take a big creative swing. In season 4, we get this trippy and confusing episode (written by series star Ben Browder), which sees Crichton and Chiana trapped in a virtual reality game based on the memories of Black-T Crichton (because, yes, this was after the storyline that saw the show’s main character split into two, equally valid humans) and a neural template from Stark. The game is designed to keep C & C trapped in the gameworld until they die so their consciousnesses will be trapped in the virtual reality—wait for it—forever.

This hour of TV actually holds up quite well upon rewatch, probably because it is packed to the brim with clever pop culture references, but an initial watch of this series installment is absolutely bonkers, featuring Aeryn as a southern belle, Rygel as a version of Monty Python’s Black Knight who can shoot fire out of his ass, and D’Argo as a lederhosen-wearing Hansel who, at one point, eats baked beans out of Jool’s intestines. I can only imagine what someone watching this episode out of context would imagine this show is actually about. – KB

Fringe Season 2 Episode 11 ‘Unearthed’

Some episodes of television intentionally challenge the viewer’s ability to interpret what the hell is going on, and some episodes of television are broadcast wildly out of order, seemingly bringing back a character killed off in the previous season for a humdrum monster-of-the-week installment. You may have guessed that I have a specific example in mind for that second category and, if so, you would be right. Written and filmed to be the 21st episode of Fringe’s first season, “Unearthed” was instead recycled to be a mid-season installment in the second season of Fox’s usually pretty great sci-fi drama.

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This might have worked—it’s a basic episode that sees the Fringe team exploring the mystery of a teen girl who is pronounced dead, only to wake up screaming an alphanumeric code while doctors are working to remove her organs—save for the fact that it features a Fringe team member who was killed at the end of the previous season. Honestly, I can laugh about this now, but, at the time, it was jarring and confusing, with the network (Fox, if you were wondering) offering no pre-episode or in-episode explanation offered for why the aforementioned deceased character might be up and walking. For this to happen in an episode that also features a guest character thought dead revealed to be alive is icing on the cake. – KB

The OA Episode 8 ‘Invisible Self’

The OA is one of the most aggressively bizarre shows in Netflix history. Created by and starring Brit Marling, this two-season sci-fi series is fit to bursting with strange, at times difficult-to-comprehend concepts. The storyfollows Marling as Prairie Johnson, a young woman who resurfaces after disappearing – only now she refers to herself as “The OA (or original angel)”. Prairie/The OA recruits several disciples who she promises to take to another dimension. In “Invisible Self”, the final episode of the show’s first season, it all somehow culminates into…well, into this:

Yes, what you’re seeing there is a group full of cult weirdos engaging in an interpretive dance to stop a school shooter. And mostly succeeding! The OA‘s second season gets even stranger in many respects but it’s hard to top the confusing majesty of this first season finale.

Twin Peaks: The Return ‘Part 8’

Legendary filmmaker David Lynch has absolutely no concerns about being dubbed “confusing.” In fact, when it comes to Lynch’s filmography, that’s kind of a feature, not a bug. In-between crafting mind-bending classic films like The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive, however, Lynch took some time to stamp his name into TV history with the surprisingly straight-forward Twin Peaks. Sure, Twin Peaks was frequently abstract and strange throughout its two-season run but it had a coherent plot, which is more than many Lynch movies can claim.

That sense of narrative coherence all ends during a particular episode of the 2017 revival Twin Peaks: The Return. “Part 8” is absolutely bonkers. Episode co-writer Mark Frost described it as “what you might describe as a Twin Peaks origin story, [showing] where this pervasive sense of darkness and evil had come from.” In Frost and Lynch’s world, that sense of darkness comes in forms including but not limited to: the detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945, oodles of primordial ectoplasmic fluid, a frog/cockroach creature, woodsmen manifesting out of mid-air, and of course: a performance by “The” Nine Inch Nails. It’s one of the most confusing episodes of television in history…and one of the best.

Dark – Every. Single. Episode.

When trying to pinpoint one episode to highlight for this article, Dark fought back and I came to the conclusion that every single episode of German multigenerational sci-fi series Dark is borderline impenetrable. Just when you think you have finally wrapped your head around what’s happening in the small town of Winden, Dark will throw in another layer to this timey-wimey, multiversal story that assures that you, in fact, have no idea what the hell is going on.

That being said, unlike some of the shows on this list, the confusing nature of Dark’s narrative isn’t a bug; it’s an intentional feature. This is a show that asks a lot from its viewers, but gives us satisfying answers in return. And it’s OK if you only ever have half an idea of what’s going on—if that’s the case, you’re doing better than most of Dark’s characters. – KB

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[polandspringz]

I Started Trying To Replicate “What’s In A PV?” and I Ended With An Essay Comparing “Neo Yokio” and “Children of Ether”

I wish I could post this on /r/ anime but I’ve never posted on their before and after a brief rundown of the rules it seems like this would most likely be removed for not fitting their definition of anime. Still, I’d like to make everyone aware that when I call this property an “anime” I am referring to the fact that it is a part of the anime-inspired movement as defined by Mother’s Basement. (See his video titled “Avatar is an Anime: Fuck You, Fight Me)

So, “Neo Yokio”, a very obvious and not so clever allusion to Neo Tokyo. Where to begin? Well, within two days, this trailer has not received much attention, and those who have been talking about it are split on not whether it will be terrible, but whether it will be terrible in a good way, or terrible in a bad way, and by that they are referring to being nonredeemable, even through memes. After jumping into this two days late, I was only able to scan the comments underneath the trailer on Youtube, and I saw this split very prominent. However, I was surprised to find a few people who saw some worth in this series, that it may in fact be good- in a trashy but comedic way.

I think the main thing many people are missing from this show is that it’s a parody. If you do any few seconds of research, hell- even simply typing the show title into Google- you’ll instantly be shown several articles that all include the word “parody” in the title. So, we should already be aware the show won’t be taking itself seriously, which I think is good. The last time Netflix tried to make an anime inspired thing, which was less than a month ago, it turned out badly, almost as bad as everyone fears this series will be, un-memeable (I tried to avoid typing that, I really did) However, with what the trailer shows, I think this series will offer plenty in terms of comedy, as I don’t think the lines of dialogue we heard in the trailer in context will be as similar to Jaden Smith tweets as we are being led to believe. At the very least, there is hope that when put into context, they won’t intentionally sound cringey and forced as if to replicate the hilarity of his most famous tweets.

So, now I’d like to jump into the trailer, stealing a bit of Mother’s Basement’s “What in A PV?” format, although I am not as eloquent as him, and I’m not being sponsored by the network this series is being hosted/licensed on. Now, if I’ve learned anything from the Anime Youtube community, it’s that sometimes one shot can encapsulate a whole show. In Made in Abyss, the opening scene that drags the camera vertically up from the bottom of the abyss has been analyzed by many this season as a key example of this. The shot right before the title drops, I believe is this show’s rather crude version of that. When we are shown the two girls playing tennis, the reaction of the girl breaking her racket is supposed to be seen as strange and over dramatic to the extent that our curiosity is awakened. We are immediately supposed to be led to believe that the rest of the trailer will show us a rather over the top reactions made by characters, and the entire show will be similar in nature. But, when the shot freezes and starts playing Studio Ghibli like music over top the brush stroke stylized title drop, the contrast is supposed to leave us with more questions than answers.

This show is a parody, so it’s going to be packed with references. These two contrasting shots that follow one another are very much that, references. The mecha robot seen throughout the trailer does not imply that the show will be attempting to invoke the mecha genre in anyway, but it exists for purpose of being an allusion to that genre, as well as a spin on the robot butler trope. When I found people stating that they thought this show had no direction and was plain cringey, I was a little surprised. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this was a passion project, as I am not familiar with Ezra Koenig’s works or interests, but another Google search has revealed to me the show’s intent is to be “a postmodern collage of homages to classic anime, English literature, and modern New York fashion and culture”, as stated by Netflix themselves. This explains how we got from Neo Tokyo to Yokio (New York + Neo Tokyo, although some of the narration about the city reminds me more of New Orleans, but I digress)  But, I feel as though people are fearing this is going to end up being like this season’s “THE REFLECTION” in nature rather than something like a comedic “Children of Ether”.

For those of you who went to Anime Expo this year or attended one of the Anime Movie Night screenings or encore screenings during the summer, I can hear some of you finding disgust with my comparison there. For those who are unaware, “Children of Ether” is a Crunchyroll original series created by LeSean Thomas and animated alongside the help of Japanese studio Satelight. An ONA is available on Crunchyroll and was premiered at the aforementioned events, and it too pays tribute to classic animes, but ones close to Thomas’s heart in terms of their animation, storytelling, and representation. The most notable and prominent influence on the work being Michiko & Hatchin, a series I thoroughly enjoyed and found to be a beautiful action and crime road trip story. Now, I would like to make it clear I am in no way saying that I think “Neo Yokio” is going to be an equivalent to “Children of Ether”, but I am saying it is possible to pay tribute to anime in your story in a multitude of ways. (Once again, see Avatar is an Anime, Fuck You, Fight Me). When I watched “Children of Ether”’s ONA short in theaters, I found it to be a rather interesting story that I looked forward to seeing more of. It had an art style similar to the works it had been influenced by, as the character designer was the same one from Michiko & Hatchin, and it’s voice acting for the main cast was well done and the world was fleshed out enough that it distanced itself from every other post-apocalyptic story we had seen in both eastern and western media. The only fault I had with the real short was the way the character’s mouths and bodies moved in accordance with their voices was always slightly off, both in mouth flaps and general motion. It ended up making some scenes very awkward to watch. Now, that can be explained away by problems with mixing Japanese animation and English voices, but the strange thing is, “Neo Yokio” doesn’t have that issue.

To be more precise, I understand that’s not enough to give Neo Yokio a leg to stand on or to place it above or on par with “Children of Ether” in any way. (I just figured it would be a good way to break paragraphs) “Neo Yokio” might have a better production team than “Children of Ether”, or at best one that has more experienced animating for another language, and as it would seem, that is Production I.G. But if you’re confused on why “Neo Yokio”’s art style has turned so many people off at the same time, it is being co-produced with Studio Deen. (So…) Yet, I feel it is unfair for people to treat “Children of Ether” so well when one can hold hope for “Neo Yokio” in the same way. The art style certainly does not have the same realistic edge as “Children of Ether” does, nor does it have KyoAni or A-1 Picture’s eye candy animation or anything like you would expect to see in “Ping-Pong: The Animation”, “Mob Psycho 100”, or “Tatami Galaxy”. In many ways, I think many people are forgetting what a lot of children’s anime or even mediocre anime looks like- it looks like “Neo Yokio”. It’s not trying to be anything special in that regard, and the typical art style one might see in a Pokemon episode is expanded upon by its western edge, which makes it into its own little mish-mosh creation. I understand it may not be pleasing to some, but it’s not trying to do what “Children of Ether” did where the production company literally was able to snag the exact designer of the work it was influenced by to create something equal. If anything, I think if “Neo Yokio” was given any sort of mainstream style (yes, at this point, I’d say even the oddballs with mixed media styles have enough to be grouped as a collective mainstream style decision) it would be worse off, because then it would be seen as trying too hard to be an actual anime. It would come off as obnoxious and be insulting.

“Children of Ether”’s purpose is to be its own work that visibly shows off the works that preceded it and influenced it in hopes of creating a compelling action and adventure story in a fresh post apocalyptic world. It also hopes to inspire more works to help increase the number of stories in anime that include diversity and representation amongst its cast. The tone of the serious is going to be serious but not melancholy, being able to build exciting suspense in fight scenes without ever falling too far away from the ability to turn a sad moment into a hopeful, but not heartfelt scene. “Avatar: the Last Airbender” and “The Legend of Korra” both are established in Mother’s Basement’s video essay as being a part of the anime community for their obvious art style and storytelling. While western media is meant to make people laugh first, Japanese media is always meant to make you feel for characters before you laugh at them, and although these two series often are known for their comedic scenes, they never break their emotional moments for comedy, they let them set in and simply be emotional and heart wrenching. Even shows like “Steven Universe” can be seen as not a direct western-anime equivalent, but have its moments where it allows itself to replicate Avatar and Korra it’s emotional scenes, but it plays more to the western cartoon art style. Yet, the idea of the story itself is not far from what would be found in Japanese media. And then there’s “Neo Yokio”.

Even though it is true that Japanese animation aims for emotion over comedy, there are countless animes that exist for the pure purpose of making you laugh. “Neo Yokio” is going to be much different than any other western anime purely because all of the aforementioned ones ended up following two main things: art style and storytelling. “Neo Yokio” is a parody though, so both of these are actually secondary. If it were to try to follow the storytelling style, it would end up being “edgy” with all its references being seen as though it was trying too hard to replicate anime that it would be cringey- as many proclaim it will be. The lines hashed out by Jaden Smith should be enough to explain away that, but the main point is that because this series is trying to include a variety of anime references (mechas, demon hunters, etc.) the story is going to be certainly original but not original enough that it can survive in a serious tone and not been called out as a blatant copy. By taking the parody route, the series will most likely be able to be consumed as a sort of an anime abridged video, but not to improvisation level and chaoticness of “Ghost Stories”. I deeply believe that by deciding to make this series a parody instead of your typical western anime, it will be much more successful and much less cringey than it is being expected to be.

(Here are two of the articles I referenced for some of LeSean Thomas’s comments about “Children of Ether”, besides my own viewing of the ONA:

https://goo.gl/NDeUub

https://goo.gl/UZRk7P

Thank you for reading this! Let me know if you want me to ramble/review about any series in particular!)

[hireindianpvtltd]

Fwd: Urgent requirements of below positions

New Post has been published on https://www.hireindian.in/fwd-urgent-requirements-of-below-positions-21/

Fwd: Urgent requirements of below positions

Please find the Job description below, if you are available and interested, please send us your word copy of your resume with following detail to vendor@vinsysinfo.com or please call me on 703-594-5490 to discuss more about this position.

  BODS ETL Dev——->San Francisco, CA Dynamics 365 – CRM TPM——>REDMOND, WA Archer Developer——->Arlington, VA Axiom SL——->Arlington, VA Project Manager——->Media, PA Enterprise Architect——–>Media, PA Senior Java Support Engineer with Linux (Qlikview BA)——San Antonio, TX

    Job Description Apply

Position: Senior Java Support Engineer with Linux (Qlikview BA)

Location: San Antonio, TX

Duration: 6-12 MONTHS

Experience: 8-10 Years

    Job Description: 

Knowledge: App/Web server administration/troubleshooting is must

Nginx administration/troubleshooting is must

Glassfish administration/troubleshooting is a plus

Rest commands knowledge: curl is must

Bash scripting knowledge is must

Python knowledge is a plus

Networking knowledge is a plus

Monitoring tools: new relic etc. knowledge is plus

General troubleshooting knowledge with database related issues is plus

Jvm utility knowledge openssl, gc, jstack, jstat, jmap, jconsole is plus

Technical skills in: RDBMS, SQL, PL SQL, XML, Java, J2EE, SOA and Web Services

Understanding of structured SQL statements and how they are executed in the RDBMS (sql/Plsql)

Ability to read and decipher software Log and Trace files, Web Server Optimization, Server configuration as well as the ability to act upon the finding to determine a problem resolution.  

Knowledge on Any Billing application is added advantage.

Apply Job

Position: Enterprise Architect

Location: Media, PA

Duration: Long Term

Experience: 15+ Years

    Skills: Agile, Project Management, Technology background

Job Description: 

Activities:

Participate in planning, definition, and high-level design of the solution and explore solution alternatives.

Design & lead strategies that identify common processes & practices used (e.g. wrt to security, open source, monitoring) across products and applications and get them automated or expedited.

Actively participate in the Continuous Exploration process as part of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline, especially with enabler Epics

Define subsystems and their interfaces, allocate responsibilities to subsystems, understand solution deployment, and communicate requirements for interactions with solution context

Work with customers, stakeholders, and suppliers to establish high-level Solution Intent, and the solution intent information models and documentation requirements

Establish critical NFRs like performance, API throttling, usability, reliability, High availability at the solution level, participate in the definition of others

Work with portfolio stakeholders, notably the Enterprise Architect, to develop, analyze, split, and realize the implementation of enabler epics

Plan and develop the Architectural Runway in support of new business Features and Capabilities

Work with Product and Solution Management to determine capacity allocation for enablement work.

Provide oversight and foster Built-In Quality

Mandatory Skills:

Strong IT experience in Retail domain with Supply chain management, Sales & CRM, Campaign management, Enterprise content management, Order management, Inventory solutions, logistics management, payment processing, Data & Analytics, Reporting & Dash boarding, Governance & policy management.

Extensive experience in tactical and strategic product roll-out including Technology recommendations, architecture, domain driven solutions, API led connectivity, Risk Management, Fault Tolerance, NFR, Resilient architectures.

Strong Experience in popular CRM platforms like Salesforce, MS Dynamics, CRM integrations, implementation & enabling.

Experience in Quality Management, Payment processing, Integration with payment gateways like PayPal, bill desk etc.

Should have good experience in DevOps tooling with JIRA, ALM, Continuous Integration / Delivery / Testing.

Strong experience in Architecting and designing IT solutions with Enterprise Integrations, API management, DevOps, SOA & middleware practices, Workflow & BPM, Inventory implementation & data migrations, data streaming, ETL, Analytics etc.

Strong experience in Eventing and messaging patterns, streaming data.

Strong experience in API first approaches and API led connectivity, Policy management, throttling, security, monetization, Developer Portal, API publishing with Mulesoft Any point platform, RAML 1.0, and OAuth 2.0.

Strong experience in Workflow management with BPMN 2.0, Pega systems, Appian.

Good to have skills:

Experience in other CRM platforms like Sugar CRM, Oracle, Siebel, CRM integrations, implementation & enabling.

Experience in Logistics management with Brings Logistics, Uber Eats APIs.

Experience in Kitchen Management, POS, Campaign Management.

Experience in other API management platforms like WSO2, APIGEE edge gateway etc.

Experience in microservices using Springboot, spring data, spring security, cloud config, Netflix OSS, Swagger Specifications.

Experience in SOA services and Middleware with solutions like Oracle SOA, Tibco SOA, ESB, Oracle OSB, IBM Websphere ESB, Fuse Integration 6.X/7.X, Dell Boomi and iPAAS platforms.

Experience in IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, and iPAAS platforms like Redhat OpenShift, Google GKE, Amazon EKS, PCF, cloud integrations, cloud migration strategies.

Apply Job

Position: Project Manager

Location: Media, PA

Duration: Long Term

Experience: 9+ Years

    Skills: Agile, Project Management, Technology background

Job Description: 

Leads and directs teams to deliver a unique, high quality product, service or product support result within a defined schedule, budget, quality and scope.

Key responsibilities

Responsible for all Project Management Office domains: Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Change, HR, Communication, Risk, Procurement and Integration

Delivers defined project outcomes on time, within budget and with a high level of quality.

Develops the project's Scope of Work, and is accountable for building and maintaining an ongoing Project Management Plan.

Expert in Agile project delivery management. Must have experience as an Agile Coach/Practitioner

Builds and manages an effective and engaged multi-disciplinary project team to ensure efficient project delivery, usually in a matrix manner.

Responsible for the management of project resources (Customer, clients, sub-contractors), ensuring that budget and scheduling constraints are adhered to.

Aligns project with overall program policies, roadmap, constraints and plans. Prioritizes tasks and resolves issues/conflicts.

Leads and facilitates the project risk management process and is responsible for on-going status and progress reporting.

Responsible for the overall project communication plan and manages relationships with project stakeholders

Oversees the project's closure, integrating all relevant components (e.g., lesson learned, KPIs…).

Governs and resolves risks and issues that impact project delivery across different content disciplines (SW development, SW Testing, Infrastructure…).

Critical Experiences

At least 7-8 years of experience in project management domain, with at least 4 years hands of experience in leading at least one of the project management aspects, such as: schedule, budget, resources, risks, etc

Must have implemented /executed an Agile project in Agile transitioning organization

Very strong experience in Agile project management/practitioner/coaching using project management tools like JIRA, Rally (JIRA is preferred)

Managerial experience (direct or matrix)

In-depth applied knowledge of standard program/project management concepts, practices and procedures.

MUST HAVES:

Strong verbal and written communication skills, including jeopardy, risks and executive status reporting

Build and manage work plans, experienced Agile practitioner/coach

Data migration or Testing PMO experience preferred

Solid customer facing experience

Proven track record of meeting aggressive deadlines and driving deliverables

Willingness to take up technical skills, must be a self-starter in this area to lead a team of high quality developers

Ability to give direction to technical team, should be able to groom technically

Good to have, Preferred

Technical hands on experience in SOA/ API management and/or DevOps.

Apply Job

Position: Axiom SL

Location: Arlington, VA

Duration: Contract

    Job Description: 

Experience working on Regulatory Reporting domain in capital markets/financial services sector

Must have experience on building FR 2052a, FRY 9C reports.

Experience on Axiom SL Controller View

Knowledge of CCAR process.

Strong data experience – experience with metadata/semantic layer for data intensive solutions

Experience working on Hadoop solutions

Experience working on creating scripts/procedures in java or similar language to be executed on Hadoop

  Apply Job

Position: Archer Developer

Location: Arlington, VA

Duration: Contract

    Job Description: 

Support Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) program.

Development of new platform solutions, maintain and enhance existing solutions,

Delivery of core projects.

Create requirements definition and design

Provide development / configuration support based on technical requirements

  Apply Job

Position: Dynamics 365 – CRM TPM

Location: REDMOND, WA

Duration: 6 MONTHS

  Skills: Microsoft Dynamics (APPS)-Package Solution (MD-Functional)-Dynamics 365 – CRM Consulting

  Job Description: 

Experience managing Enterprise scale projects

Experience with CRM customization, configurations, plugins development, JavaScript, Workflow, CRM Portals, PBI, PowerApps, LogicApps, and Flow etc.

Excellent Dynamics CRM functional understanding

Good communication skills, ability to handle business personnel and architects independently.  

Experience working in onshore and offshore model

End to End implementation experience (Design, Build, QA, Release/deployment)

Good experience with agile methodology and using VSO/TFS.

Advantage having PMP or Scrum Master certification

Experience managing data migration and integration projects.

Experience managing testing (Performance, Accessibility, SIT, UAT)

Good Education qualification (Engineering Degree or equal)

Apply Job

Job title:  BODS ETL Dev

Location: San Francisco, CA

Duration: 6 Months+

Mandatory Skills: Business Object Data Service

Description:  

Should be easy ETL Knowledge + Healthcare + knowledge on BODS (  Business Object Data Service )

Apply Job

  Thanks, Steve Hunt Talent Acquisition Team – North America Vinsys Information Technology Inc SBA 8(a) Certified, MBE/DBE/EDGE Certified Virginia Department of Minority Business Enterprise(SWAM) 703-594-5490 www.vinsysinfo.com

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[jeepcrs]

ABRIDGED HISTORY OF DANIEL TAUPO.

                               childhood. scraped knees and lost causes.

1996. he was born three weeks premature to a single mother that loved him to the ends of the earth. she was the widow of a soldier who had passed mere months before the birth of their son and she loved daniel to the ends of the earth, determined to give him everything she possibly could. she could see his father everywhere --- in the bubbling giggle that tumbled from his lips, the roguish glimmer in his brown eyes, in his head of dark hair, in his name. natia taupo, still fresh in her grief, proceeded to name her son after her late fiance. for years, daniel never knew what he was missing growing up without a father, as his mother was more than he ever could have asked for.

2001. as an only child often left to his own devices, daniel had to learn quickly how to occupy himself. that, or learn how to make friends. and for a boy who could talk for hours to anyone with a warm smile, it wasn’t hard for him to befriend most of his kindergarten class or the neighborhood kids. the lonely boy with a mop of red hair? not quite so lonely anymore.

2003. he grew up an intrepid child, one with a curiosity of the world around him and a tendency to come back inside with scraped knees and dirt under his fingernails. he was imaginative, fun, excited about the things surrounding him. a bright child who radiated happiness.

2007. he started middle school. his mother grew busier working late nights at the hospital and he often found himself spending evenings at the college campus his mother’s brother worked on, finding ways to occupy himself in his uncle’s office. this was where found his fascination with history (too bad some college professors couldn’t help him with math). 

2010. daniel’s grandmother was moved to a nursing home.

2010-2014. high school was where he found his real family. consider it the origin story of the mysterybusters team and the most influential years of daniel’s life up to that point. it was still only tia and daniel, the dynamic duo, trying to truck along. but daniel, regardless of his bright outlook and the ease with how he could make friends, was still a lonely guy. he didn’t feel like people really understood him until they formed --- based on their equal fascination with the paranormal and his tendency to drag his closest friends on overnight ghost tours in the fall, they found a home with each other. he found people who cared about him as much as he did them. and what started as a senior project diving into psychology and history surrounding the paranormal, eventually grew into something much much bigger.

2014. the hardest year of his life. senior year was rough. his mother was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, they had to worry about paying for college and her hospital bills, he lost his grandmother . . . it wasn’t easy. but, as always, he and his mother made it out alive. they always do. he didn’t know what he would have done were he to have lost his mom to something as preventable and removable as thyroid cancer. she got the tumor removed and he managed to pass senior calc. all was well.

                              adulthood. dark corners of the american dream.

2015-2016. the first two years of college were . . . something, to say the least. with a major in the media field, diving deep into learning the ins and outs of the journalism field, daniel found himself a home at university of washington. he was minoring in history, doing investigations with the gang, in a happy relationship with blair --- everything seemed to be going well for him. but the mccallisters have blood laced with the arsenic of tragedy, so his contentedness wasn’t bound to last. 

2017. the silverwood era. arguably the biggest mistake daniel had made in his 21 years (  which was saying something, as he made a lot of mistakes )  was insisting they go stay in that damn cabin and investigate that place. it was hell on earth for all of them, and it was all his fault. his fault they split up, his fault they were there at all; everything that went down at silverwood that #patientsproject was comprised of, was all on him. to say the eight of them came out unscathed would be a bold faced lie --- and though they continue what they had set out to do in silverwood and have made a name for themselves, it still raises the question: was that time there worth the fame it garnered them? was the footage worth the awful things they experienced? risking their lives, not to forget naomi’s pregnancy . . . more than occasionally does daniel question it all.

2018. he was right in thinking the happiness wouldn’t last long. he still had his family, friends, and sanity (  actually, that’s debatable ), but he lost himself. his girlfriend. the trust he used to be so deserving of. well, at least they reached the internet fame he had initially (  selfishly )  been aiming for. and the mysterybusters brand and channel has reached heights they hadn’t though possible --- hell, they have a fanbase. they’re the face of their own productions, even getting as far as grabbing the attention of netflix. daniel isn’t the same person he was. sure, he maintains his sunnier personality, continues trying to be the rock he was, but he’s aware that he’s not viewed the same by his friends. or even himself. for fuck’s sake, he killed two people. regardless of his reasoning, it’s absurd to think he hasn’t changed. it doesn’t help that something has seemed to follow them further beyond the treeline. and as he’s slowly learning, justice is always served in the forest.

[mavwrekmarketing]

Virtually Dating" is a five-episode series produced by Cond Nast Entertainment.

Image: conde nast entertainment

For all of Facebook’s big talk about video, it was still just part of the almighty News Feed.

Publishers hoping to capture a moment of a user’s attention looked for thumb-stopping moments, which gave rise to a new and not-terribly compelling format of video that remains endemic to Facebook.

Watch is something different. Facebook’s new original video program features TV-like shows made by media companies. Perhaps most importantly, the shows are showcased in a brand new section of the social network.

That’s enough to convince publishers, who have spent years contorting to fit into Facebook’s plans, that Watch could be big.

SEE ALSO: Facebook is finally ready for its next big move: Taking on TV

“We are really excited,” said Dawn Ostroff, president of Cond Nast Entertainment, which is producing a dating show with a virtual reality twist for Watch. “This is a new opportunity, a new type of content. [Facebook’s] trying to open up a whole new area for content makers.”

Oren Katzeff, Tastemade‘s head of programming, offered similar excitement. The food-focused media company has created six shows for Facebook Watch.

“Were able to be a part of appointment viewing, and thats huge,” Katzeff said

That enthusiasm is quite unlike how publishers have previously behaved when asked about their work with and on Facebook. Typically, there’s a roll of the eyes, a sigh, and a list of grievances.

“The problem with Facebook’s entire ‘news team’ is that they’re glorified client services people,” the head of digital operations at a major news outlet told Mashable at F8, the company’s annual developer conference in April.

Now, there’s a new sense of hope among the media industry. Facebook’s massive scale has always tempted publishers, but revenue has been elusive. Facebook’s new program, with its emphasis on quality content and less on thumb-bait, seems ready-made for high-end ads. These original shows, in concept, also compete with what’s available live on TV and bingeable on Netflix and Huluplatforms that most publishers haven’t cracked.

“I think it is where people will go to watch on-demand programming and live news, and I intend Cheddar to be the leading live news player on Watch,” Jon Steinberg, CEO of business news show Cheddar, wrote in a private Twitter message.

Facebook’s Watch platform

Image: facebook

Simultaneously, there’s little stress for publishers about potential revenuefor now. Facebook has guaranteed minimum earnings for each episode, according to an executive at a participating publisher who could not be named since financial discussions are private. Facebook not only pays a licensing fee to publishers but also will split revenue from mid-roll ads.

It’s not the first time Facebook has cut checks for publishers to support video efforts. Last year, Facebook paid publishers, including Mashable, to produce live videos, requiring a minimum number of minutes streamed per month. (Mashable is also a Watch partner.)

But Facebook’s live video effort was slow to start, and publishers didn’t reap in rewardsespecially when it came to the return of their investments, several participants told Mashable.

It wasn’t all their fault or Facebook’s. For one, Facebook users weren’t really used to going to the site or the app for live video. Since then, Facebook has released several products, including a redesigned version of the current video tab and a TV app, both of which better support the new ecosystem. Publishers’ series will be spotlighted on the Facebook’s new tab for shows, for example. The experience is slowly being rolled out to users over the next month.

Participating publishers are going all in.

Tastemade produced six shows over the last few months and is still wrapping up a couple. Three are food focused: Kitchen Little, Struggle Meals, and Food To Die For. Two are more home and lifestyle: Move-In Day and Safe Deposit. The sixth is a late-night comedy show with celebrity interviews, hosted by an animated taco, called Let’s Taco Bout It.

“Tomas grew up as a Taco, and he had adopted parents, and his life goal has been to discover who his true parents are. He tries to relate with his guests,” Katzeff said.

Tomas Taco

Image: tastemade

What’s exciting here is not just an animated taco, but the fact that these publishers are well positioned to scale these tacos… err video series.

Maybe an animated taco won’t appeal to all 2 billion of Facebook’s users, but it doesn’t necessarily need to. Unlike TV, these shows aren’t locked into specific networks with a specific time-slot. Rather, they can be directed to actual people, based on their interests (Facebook likes) and demographic information.

“With Facebook Watch, the era of audience parting has truly arrived,” wrote Nick Cicero of Delmondo, a Facebook media solutions partner for video analytics.

Unlike TV, Facebook has a built-in platform for conversation. Ostroff of Cond Nast Entertainment said she believed Facebook greenlighted Virtually Dating, a show where blind dates take place in a virtual reality world, for the Watch platform because of the potential for online conversation.

“If it works, it was something that could go viral or a show that everyone could weigh in on,” Ostroff said. “Were excited about learning, learning how the viewer and the consumer is going to use [Watch]. Whats going to succeed and whats not.”

No one is saying it’s been easy. Several publishers told Mashable they have been careful to make sure they are staying in budget. They also noted that it is still a testone that they will be closely monitoring. Now that the shows are near launch, publishers said they will need to focus on promotion.

Watch “is really great for those who were actually able to get into the program,” said Jarrett Moreno, cofounder of ATTN, which has created Health Hacks starring Jessica Alba and We Need to Talk with Nev Schulman and Laura Perlongo.”It’s a priority for Facebook. They’ve emphasized that.”

A priority, for now.

WATCH: Here’s how HBO filmed its most epic ‘Game of Thrones’ battle scene

Read more: http://ift.tt/2hTkBYV

The post Facebook’s original video is something publishers are actually excited for appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason

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[trentteti]

The Logical Rose-ning Section: Your Recap of The Bachelorette, Episode 5

Rachel Lindsay is a practicing attorney who once took the LSAT. And you, dear reader, are an aspiring attorney who will soon take the LSAT. Rachel Lindsay is also an aspiring married person, serving as the Bachelorette on this season of The Bachelorette, the love story these depraved times deserve. And you, dear reader, may also be an aspiring married person? Either way, you definitely have at least a few things in common with Rachel. So every Tuesday (edit: and/or Wednesday), we’re going to be tracking Rachel’s romantic journey on The Bachelorette, and see what we can learn about love, loss, and the LSAT. Welcome back to the Logical Rose-ning Section.

Last time: We got a lot of racially charged bickering between Lee and like every contestant who didn’t share his complexion, making for a particularly uncomfortable two hours of television that overshadowed the, say, blimp-bound one-on-one with Dean where he pretended to be afraid of heights (a claim that we at Most Strongly Supported believe was full of hot air) (sorry). Anyway, the most important part was the “Next time on,” when they told us that we’d be getting two episodes—4 hours (!)—of The Bachelorette. Look, ABC and Warner Bros. Production, I don’t want to tell you how to run your television show (though perhaps someone should). But I’ve written like 10,000 words on this season already and even I think this is too much Bachelorette. Let’s scale back.

So this week, we got an amount of content that would make even Fyodor Dostoyevsky blush, so we’re just gonna do a quick hit on every section of this week’s four hour bonanza of The Bachelorette.

Spelling Bee Group Date

We’re somehow start this episode still on the spelling bee group date from last year, where Kenny and Lee are really getting into it. While those guys are getting into a racially-charged debate, Bryan is offering Rachel bon mots like, “I feel like … If you think I’m too good to be true for you, and if I think you’re too good to be true for me … and I thought about it and you know, I think it’s a very simple solution. We’re the perfect match.” Rachel digs that Bryan uses his time in the house to make equivocal arguments and not fixate on the other cases, and awards Bryan with the group date rose.

Kenny, in ostensibly congratulating Bryan, gives Lee the least sub-by subtweet of all time when he commends Bryan for doing it the “right way” and not “snaking any dudes.” “It’s very important, not being a bitch-ass dude,” Kenny concludes. Even Lee’s lizardy brain can figure out Kenny’s intent and the two cuss a lot. This only gets us like 15 minutes into the episode.

One-on-One Date with Jack Stone

After the drama with Kenny and Lee in the group date, Rachel settles into a one-on-one date with Jack Stone who, as we learn during this date, is the most boring dude in the world. “Jack and I have a lot in common. We’re both attorneys. We’re both around the same age. We both live in Dallas,” Rachel says with all the conviction of a prospect-less 37 year-old psyching herself up for a Tinder date with guy whose profile prominently features a MAGA hat. Rachel, though, is very much not a prospect-less woman. She’s got nothing but prospects right now. Like 15 prospects at this point.

We’ll never know why the producers insisted on calling Jack Stone “Jack Stone,” when they didn’t give anyone else the full name treatment and when there aren’t any other Jacks here. But we will be able to figure out why Jack got the boot on this date. The date could not have gone worse for Jack Stone, who has a manic, crazy-eyed vibe and delusional ideas about how well the date is going.

I don’t know what Jack Stone did to piss off the producers, but their wrath is on display throughout this date. Over the course of this date, the producers keep juxtaposing his confidence in the date against Rachel’s obvious disinterest. Their complete lack of chemistry even bores the camera guy, who seems to get like drunk on the job, winding up with perfect shots like this.

The producers then show Jack Stone awkwardly kissing Rachel. Like really awkwardly. Like enough to make you never want to try to kiss anyone ever again. In his confessional, he admits to “falling for Rachel,” and his look of absolute obliviousness is held for forty beats too long.

But most of this is Jack’s fault, turning this into a 10-minute televisual face palm emoji. Rachel admits to wanting to see his passion. He starts talking about her dad’s sense of humor … dude.

Rachel asks where Jack would take her if they were back in Dallas. Jack’s first thought is to take her back to his apartment, “lock the door,” and lay in bed and talk. That, somehow, did not appeal to Rachel, who finally decides to put Jack and all of us out of our misery by sending Jack home. Jack walks directly into the Harbor River, sinking to the bottom to live with the stingrays and loggerhead turtles of the island.

Rose Ceremony

Rachel displays an absolute ruthlessness in the cutting guys this week, starting with the first of three rose ceremonies this episode. Despite half these guys being palpably thirsty for more time with Rachel, Rachel decides to forgo the cocktail party, and go straight to the ceremonial beheading of the contestants unworthy of her time or affection.

Eric, Peter, Adam, Will (who gets a catchphrase going, saying “I Will [accept this rose]”), Matt (who is a guy that’s been on this show, apparently), Josiah, Anthony, Kenny, and Lee get roses, joining Dean and Bryan, who were already sitting pretty with the date roses.

This means that Iggy and Jonathan are sent packing. Jonathan assaults Rachel one last time by tickling her on his way out. I guess making tickling your brand isn’t the best way to find a wife. Iggy realizes he should have spent less time with guy drama and more time with Rachel. Iggy and Jonathan are then sent to the nearby set of Gullah Gullah Island, where they will be forced to satisfy the sensual proclivities of Binyah Binyah Polliwog for the rest of their days.

After the ceremony, Rachel announces they’re heading to Oslo. Who of these guys could tell us offhand that Oslo is in Norway? I think Will, Anthony, Josiah, and maybe Dean would actually know that without the aid of Wikipedia. Anyway, the guys get excited for Norway, the land of the Lillehammer Olympics (and forgotten Netflix series of the same name), smoked salmon, and the good wood that inspired a Beatles song about a disturbed arsonist who gets so angry at a woman for going to bed early that he sets her house on fire.

Which of these guys are Oslo in Rachel’s estimation, and which of these guys are Norway in danger of going home? Onto the land of cured fish, cross-country skiing, and democratic socialism to find out.

One-on-One Date with Bryan

Upon meeting the guys in Scandanavia, Rachel gives the boys the most adorable Young M.A. “OOOOUUUU” shout out, and then gives Bryan the first one-on-one date card.

Dean, feeling himself way too much despite wearing a ripped pink sweater, declares that he wouldn’t be surprised if Bryan didn’t return.

Bryan and Rachel have the romantic date of repelling down the Holmenkollbakken Olympic ski jump. Rachel, experienced attorney and/or apparent Snoop fan, notes the coincidence that it’s 187 feet high—the California Penal Code statute for murder. Is she saying that that she feels like the producers are trying to murder her? Is she planning on murdering Bryan? The whole affair seemed pretty safe, the closest thing to murder being pretty unflattering angle the producers use to film Rachel and Bryan’s descent.

Rachel opens up to Bryan about insecurities about not feeling pretty growing up next to her sister. Bryan does the same, referencing his awkward high school days. Bryan becomes the first guy to drop the “falling in love with you” bomb. Rachel seems taken aback, but gives him the rose nonetheless.

Handball Group Date

Adam, Dean, Anthony, Piggo, Matt, Will, Alex, Eric, and Josiah get invited to a group date, leaving Kenny and Lee for their inevitable two-on-one.

The dudes play the Olympic-version handball, which is a bit different than the handball game the cool kids in the third grade wouldn’t let me play. Rachel calls handball a combination of football, basketball, and water polo, despite the fact that there’s no contact or water. Handball is basically swaggerless basketball, but it’s kind of cool because it involves jumping and throwing things very hard.

The guys split up in the red team and blue team to play. Rachel joins the red team. Piggo clearly a fouls Rachel when he tries to sneak in a little grab-action during the course of play. The referees, clearly not as familiar Rule 8.2 (b) of the International Handball Federations Rules of the Game as some astute viewers, let this clear foul (and potential display of sexual harassment) slide.

Will is apparently a bona fide handball savage, and gets a not-totally-undeserved comparison to Jordan in the ‘97 Finals from Rachel. The U.S. has never medaled in handball in the Olympics, but this might change once Will joins the national team.

Afterwards, at the polet portion of the date, Will further confides in Rachel about past loves lost, and gets some kysee time with Rachel. Alex macks on Rachel with a handwritten letter and Matt sews lyrics on a purple sheet, which Rachel seems to dig. Josiah, however, gets a little intense, discussing how Rachel’s beauty “emanates from [her] core” and talks about how she is the woman of his dreams. Rachel is taken aback about how disingenuous this all seems. We’re taken aback by extreme Josiah face.

Piggo the Perceptive impresses her by reading her eye contact. He gets some exclusive one-on-one hot tub action with Rachel, despite the aforementioned handball foul.

Will gets the group date rose. He again says “I absolutely Will” accept the offered rose. Cool catchphrase, dude.

Two-on-One Date with Kenny and Lee

The nadir of this four-hour marathon is this two-on-one date with Kenny and Lee. We’re reminded of the rules: Two guys, one rose, loser goes home. Look, Kenny and Lee argue a bunch. Lee appears to lie a whole bunch. He lies about Kenny dragging him out of a van (something the producers never showed us, even though they probably would have spent 17 hours on it if it actually happened), about Kenny admitting to having a “dark side” when he drinks, about Kenny threatening him during the date (which may have happened—most of what Kenny said was censored in his discussions with Lee), about telling Rachel that Kenny threatened him. Lee, look into how cameras work, man.

Kenny “wins” this date and Lee is thankfully sent packing. Who are these two-on-one dates for though? They’re never as “explosive” as the promos promise, so the audience doesn’t win. The Bachelor or Bachelorette never seem to have any fun on it. The winner of the two-on-one never actually wins the whole thing. Kenny at this point is basically the Utah Jazz upsetting the LA Clippers. Moral victory and he lives to see the next day, but he’s still facing an inevitable drubbing by the Golden State Warriors in the next round.

Rose Ceremony

In our second of three rose ceremonies, Rachel gives Dean, Eric, Piggo, Alex, Adam, and Matt roses, who join the aforementioned Will. Anthony (whom I had pegged as a real contender) and Josiah are sent packing home.

Anthony handles it with class, and Josiah … does not. “Something wrong with her brain,” noted neurologist Josiah notes. Josiah proceeds to calls out Alex for being a KGB agent (Alex is Russian) and Adam (who brought a doll named Adam Jr.) for bringing a “Michael Myers” doll (which, to be fair, is the only trait we’ve learned about Adam thus far).

Rachel announces they’re then taking a jaunt south to Copenhagen, Denmark, where the producers decide to let their pun game really fly.

One-on-One Date with Eric

The first date card in Copenhagen read “I’m cOPEN to love.” Eric, whose constant need of attention and affirmation is more or less his defining personality trait, is given this attention and affirmation via this one-on-one date.

Rachel pulls up in a boat on the Nyhavn canal, a body of water large enough to quench the immense thirst Eric feels at all times. They cruise down the canal and recite interesting facts about the waterfront houses like “sailors used to live in the houses here.” They then go to like a hot tub bar where a guy exposes his little Hamlet, and then to an amusement park, which we’re told is the second-most visited amusement park in the world. Honestly, it looks a little basic to my American eyes. Denmark, your citizens may be happier and more educated than ours, you may have one of the best restaurants in the world, but you’re still not on our level, theme park-wise. At dinner, where two enormous burgers sit untouched and uneaten, Eric opens up about not receiving a love from his mother, which affected his ability to accept love in romantic relationships. He gets a rose, which he seems more than willing to accept.

Viking Group Date

Dean, Kenny, Matt, Adam, and Piggo are the contestants on the next group date. “I’ve taken a Viking to you,” the date card reads. The producers are just on fire with the date card puns this episode.

The dudes go to a big field where they act like Vikings. Upon arrival, the Danish Viking reenactor says, “They don’t really look like Vikings,” problematically. They do some Viking stuff to find out who is the best Viking, I guess. They row a big boat and sword fight. Kenny, whose eye gash has been teased for like five weeks now and was suggested to be a product of Lee, gets a cut when battling with Adam in the finals of the Vikings games. Kenny nonetheless wins the match, and become the Viking Champion, an oxymoron to anyone in the greater Minneapolis area.

At the cocktail party, Bryan and Piggo have a handsome-off. Rachel is positively smitten with both. Matt appears to be drinking a spritzer while wearing a shabby brown polo. He spends all the time with Rachel talking about Kenny. How is this guy still on? Speaking of Kenny, the dude deteriorates on this date—he doesn’t think the relationship has grown at the rate the other guys’ have, he is missing his daughter, and he is sporting a Nelly band-aid on his face 15 years after its expiration date. Rachel strongly suggests that he should good home to be with his daughter, and he obliges. Kenny, you may have been embroiled in the dumb Lee stuff for weeks now, but I’ll nonetheless miss you. Shouts to you and doting dads everywhere.

Piggo gets the group date rose. Bryan takes this news really well.

One-on-One with Will

Finally, we have a one-on-one date with Will. “Will you be my Swedey,” the card reads. Double pun! The two take a quick day trip to Helsingborg, Sweden, where Will’s lack of physical intimacy leaves Rachel colder than a winter’s night in Gothenburg. During the date, Will slowly transforms back into Urkel. It’s rough. Rachel drops the “I think you’re so great, so amazing, but …” Will does not get the rose. He absolutely Will not be seeing Rachel anymore.

Rose Ceremony

Finally, after what was four hours of The Bachelorette (but felt like at least fifteen), we get to the third of three rose ceremonies. Rachel has been tossing guys out like uneaten lutefisk this week, but she claims this will be the hardest goodbye she had to say.

Bryan, Matt, Dean, and Adam get the roses, joining Eric. Alex, wearing the inexcusable high-school-sophomore-at-the-homecoming-dance look with a black suit, black shirt and solid pink tie, is sent packing.

Are you exhausted? I’m exhausted. Four hours is a long time. But guess what, that’s how long the LSAT is. If you could make it through this absolute grind of an episode, the LSAT will be no prob for you.

The Logical Rose-ning Section: Your Recap of The Bachelorette, Episode 5 was originally published on LSAT Blog

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How Black Mirror Embraced Its Horror Potential with Playtest

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Monster specialist Grant Walker of award-winning VFX studio Framestore was excited when he received an offer to work on an episode of sci-fi anthology Black Mirror’s third season. But the nature of the job, for an episode called “Playtest”, proved to be an unexpected one.

“I thought: ‘they want to make monsters for Black Mirror? I don’t get it,’” Walker says.

Through two seasons and six episodes on Channel 4, the monsters of Black Mirror were largely metaphorical and unseen, signals and dispatches from mobile devices in a dubiously fictional world. Then the show was picked up by Netflix, which quickly commissioned a six-episode third season. Among those six episodes was “Playtest,” an hour starring Wyatt Russell (Lodge 49), Wunmi Mosaku (Lovecraft Country), and Hannah John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp). When that episode premiered on Oct. 21, 2016 it looked quite different from any other Black Mirror installment before it.  

In “Playtest,” the monsters of Black Mirror became literal with a grotesque human-spider hybrid and a shrieking flayed-faced zombie terrorizing Russell’s character Cooper Redfield as he playests the latest virtual reality videogame from a legendary game studio SaitoGemu. Though it all may be happening in Cooper’s head, the monsters created by Framestore are no less real to the viewer. That makes “Playtest” something truly unique in the Black Mirror canon. This is the one installment of the show’s 22’s entries that is undeniably, unapologetically horror. And four years to the day after its premiere, it still stands tall in the Black Mirror canon among the creative individuals who crafted it.

“I wasn’t expecting to do it. Then it just kind of just snuck in there, and it ended up being the highlight of my year,” Walker says of his BAFTA-nominated work on the episode.

“Playtest” director Dan Trachtenberg came to the project directly after the release of his film debut, thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane. Like Walker, he was pleasantly surprised that Black Mirror was set to expand its genre influences. 

“I remember that was the big draw for Charlie (Brooker). He was really excited about making essentially Evil Dead 2. And I was excited to continue to do that kind of work and I felt like I was sharpening a tool that I hadn’t yet fully sharpened,” Trachtenberg says. 

Trachtenberg and creator Charlie Brooker bonded over a shared love of both horror and videogames and quickly got to work fine-tuning Brooker’s concept into a lean horror machine. 

“What evolved the most was probably Wyatt Russell’s character,” Trachtenberg says. “Initially, the character was much more of an ugly American. There’s still that quality to him, but there’s a lovability and a naivete to Wyatt’s performance that informs the gravity of some of the things that he’s dealing with. In initial drafts, it was more like one of the horror movie terms of the unlikable person who is put through a gauntlet to learn to have values.”

The first third of “Playtest” serves to set up the improbable circumstances that would lead a young American man to a creepy manor in the British countryside to playtest a VR horror videogame from a Japanese gaming giant. It all starts with Cooper out on a sprawling world tour, traveling to India, Dubai, Spain, and more before arriving in London at the tail end of his journey. When it’s time to finally return home, Cooper discovers that his bank account has been hacked and he’s unable to buy a return plane ticket. Thankfully SaitoGemu is in London working on its latest horror game and it’s willing to pay for some willing playtesters. That’s how Cooper makes his way to the opulent and spooky Harlech House where lead designer Shou (Ken Yamamura) and the team are hard at work creating the next great VR horror adventure.

If this seems like a lot of exposition before Cooper engages with the horrors of the haunted mansion, there’s a method to Black Mirror’s madness. Much of what Cooper experiences prior to entering Harlech House informs the horrors that he sees. One prominent example includes Cooper watching a movie on his flight about a monstrous spider and then encountering a terrifying spider of his own later on. There’s also a poster for Red Sonja, which foreshadows the moment that a specter of Cooper’s sex buddy Sonja (Hannah John-Kamen) enters the simulation and has her face torn off, revealing the crimson skull beneath. 

“When (Cooper) kills that evil Sonja and slams her head onto the knife and through his shoulder that is (the position that) they woke up that morning. It’s kind of like in dreams, the way things are affecting you while you’re sleeping and then they show up later inside what you’re imagining,” Trachtenberg says.

The rest of “Playtest’s” dream sequences are positively bursting with similar dream imagery and Easter eggs that fans have done an excellent job of documenting over the years. Trachtenberg is fond of some of the subtler ones.  

“There’s a typical, classic creepy girl in the painting in a creepy house, and the girl in the painting is the girl that he’s sitting next to in the airplane in the beginning. Everything you see in act one populates in act two and three,” the director says.

Once the horrors of “Playtest” get going, however, there is nothing subtle about them. And that’s where Framestore’s work comes in. Walker and his team were charged not only with creating a small, realistic spider that sets off the hallucination, but also a monstrous version with the human visage of his childhood bully Josh Peters.

“I played around with quite a lot of different iterations of where to put the face, and how to change the anatomy of the spider and the body,” Walker says. “The mandible things, they were coming out of his mouth at one point, and then they returned into part of his mouth opened up in the way that it does. I don’t know if people notice it or not, but those legs are hands with long nails. They’re like fingers. It’s got a belly button underneath it and other weird stuff that you might not ever get to see.”

The undead version of Sonja was a combination of practical and visual effects, with Walker’s team serving to make the terrifying red skull “gooier” for the most part. 

“That was a tricky one. It was one of those ones when you spend a lot of time actually just massaging the integration so it feels tangible as opposed to kind of making this standalone thing and investing time in an amazing asset. She wasn’t quite so shiny, so we built our own CG version, and some shots were CG and layered on the top.”

The effects for Spider-Peters and Red Sonja had to be particularly on point as they are a product of Cooper’s brain and not merely SaitoGemu’s VR technology. As attentive viewers of Black Mirror know, “Playtest” actually “ends” roughly 20 minutes in when Cooper receives a phone call from his mom in the secure playtest area. The signal from his phone, which was supposed to be off and secured in a suitcase, fries the “mushroom’s” connection to Cooper’s brain and kills him almost instantly. Everything that follows is the product of his dying brain and not the work of SaitoGemu’s machine. This information, of course, isn’t revealed until episode’s end and as such Brooker maintains that it’s one of the most misunderstood endings in Black Mirror history. 

“If there’s misunderstandings of it, I’m probably to blame, which may be why Charlie is cleaning it up,” Trachtenberg jokes. “But frankly, every reaction video that I’ve watched I feel like people usually do get it. There’s even a clip where someone put what actually happened, where they cut out the entire second that they just show that scene as if that’s all that happened, which is fun to watch.”

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Black Mirror: Ranking Every Episode

By Alec Bojalad

The best episodes of Black Mirror are never about how technology will torment humanity. They’re about how humanity will use new technology to continue to torment ourselves. And nowhere is that more apparent than in “Playtest.” The episode sets up a scenario in which a VR experience will go haywire, but then in reality it is Cooper’s brain that betrays him, not the machine. It’s Cooper’s conscience that takes him on this terrifying freak show of monsters and murderers and then dies before the game even begins. It’s the proverbial “flashes before your eyes” moment in which that flash is a literal horror movie.

“I do find it interesting how devastating that notion is for so many – that it could all happen in a split second,” Trachtenberg says. “We definitely went back and forth so much on the ending. And I certainly don’t love too many twists as well, I just felt the initial twist was the expected one and I wanted there to be something more. I really wanted to drive home that it’s his fault in the end and tie in the fear of inheriting what his father had.”

Though the monsters of “Playtest” offer up the biggest scares, it’s approach to horror is deeper, more existential. Cooper’s real biggest fear is forgetting who he is, just like his father did before his end. And the mechanism that ultimately kills him isn’t any malevolent entity within the game or SaitoGemu, it’s simply his inability to connect with his mother during a difficult time in their lives. 

Cooper is quite the keen observer of his surroundings in Harlech House, despite being dead.  During one moment in particular, Cooper opens up a cupboard door to find a bottle of (non-alcoholic) wine and before he closes the cabinet he says aloud to his handler Katie (Mosaku) “He’s going to be right behind this door when I close it, isn’t he?” referring to the shade of Josh Peters. And of course, Cooper is right – just a little delayed, as the spider version of Peters that launches itself across the kitchen shortly after he closes the cabinet.

Characters in horror movies being self-aware about the “rules” of horror is nothing new in our highly metatextual pop culture landscape. But identifying the “cupboard” rule is still quite impressive. According to Trachtenberg, acknowledging the legacy and tactics of horror is an important part of any horror enterprise.

“There’s a scene in I Know What You Did Last Summer with these two characters talking in a car. The frame they’re on is the extreme side, and the entire other two-thirds of the frame of negative space is the window; and you just know that someone or something is going to jump inside that part of the frame. It’s about riding the wave of tension then releasing it. (With the cupboard scare) the audience has the sensation of, ‘Uh-oh, it’s going to happen here?’ Then Cooper calls it out and the audience thinks, “Oh there. That’s what it is.’ Now that they’re not expecting it, we can actually still surprise.”

“Playtest” could have been a lot more meta than just as a mere horror critique. At one point, Brooker planned to have a “Nightmare Mode” version of the episode available on Netflix’s streams, in which viewers could revisit it and get a new horror experience. If that sounds like the choose-your-own adventure nature of the eventual special Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, it’s because it is … right down to the focus on videogames. 

Trachtenberg says Netflix wasn’t ready to take on the technological burden of such a concept in 2016. 

“Charlie is a huge gamer, as am I. We talked a lot about, ‘wouldn’t it be awesome if we could pull off alternate endings or an alternate beat, or could there be connections to other episodes that you only see if you clicked on this button or whatever. I think he really tried with Netflix at that moment and there just was no technology for it.”

Being on the bleeding edge was something of a trend for “Playtest.” Many Black Mirror episodes are known for their uncanny predictive abilities (right down to the truly insane real life rumor of a British Prime Minister allegedly sexually defiling a pig). “Playtest,” meanwhile, preceded a run of truly excellent horror games (including one literally called “P.T.” for “Playtest”) and a modest increase in the popularity of VR technology. But four years on from the episode, Trachtenberg doesn’t feel as though culture is fully embracing the tech’s potential.

“VR was around when we were shooting. And it’s gotten much better since but I think we all felt like AR was definitely going to take over. I still feel that eventually. You just have to try it to know how amazing it is. But still … I would have thought that would have taken over sooner.”

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Perhaps that’s the real legacy of “Playtest.” It’s the one episode of Black Mirror that wasn’t cynical enough about our reliance on technology…despite killing its lead character with a phone 20 minutes in. 

The post How Black Mirror Embraced Its Horror Potential with Playtest appeared first on Den of Geek.

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