Paulo Seabra

Well, a few things to get out of the way before I begin. First, the episode I'm gonna talk about, that you probably already guessed from the picture, isn't considered the best. Indeed, the episode I liked most is currently ranked seventh on IMDB. Second, I only watched the show up to the third season, which obviously means I haven't watched all the episodes to know for sure that this is the best one. Third and last, this article comes more or less in continuity with another which I previously wrote, also not very laudatory of the show, which you can, if you want to, read here. The episode I wanna talk about in this article is [303]  Shut Up and Dance. The first thing I found interesting about this episode is that, in a show about very futuristic technology, it has no futuristic technology. As far as I can remember, all gadgets featured therein are real and currently available. So without the usual tech gimmick, what does the episode hinge on? Well, the theme here is black...

I first heard about this show back when there were only three seasons of it. I heard of how brilliantly written and insightful it was, riddled with prophetic and haunting lessons about technology, and everyone who recommended the show made special mention of just how intense and dark it was, to the point where they couldn't stomach more than one or two episodes at a time. All very promising stuff to hear but I can't say the show lived up to any of those expectations, at least to me. I find it to be mostly over-the-top since it frequently seems to rely on shock value. And the technological questions, while somewhat insightful, seem more like a constant stream of what ifs that were impulsively brought up during the writing process and were immediately after slammed on the page without a second thought, always as an attempt to wow the viewers, often at the cost of narrative integrity. At the end of the day the show is just twists on top of twists on top of twists. I suppose in a w...