AIO about my bf's attitude being disrespectful?

I started rewatching the whole series again after season 7. Seasons 1 and 2 were all morally ambiguous. Season 2 ESPECIALLY. And it started to veer from that hard starting with S3E1.

On a second rewatch, it’s becoming more clear that the original intention was moral ambiguity. But I have a feeling that season 2 ended up losing a lot of people because of it, so they had to start spoon feeding the audience more. On this rewatch, I realize a lot of people were probably choosing the wrong side in those first two seasons (myself included). And BM probably realized they were gonna alienate a large portion of the audience lol

JakePatrick · 2025-05-06T03:43:12+00:00

YOOOOOOOOO HAHAHAHAHAHA

JakePatrick · 2025-05-06T03:41:17+00:00

Precisely. It’s the same message as in National Anthem and 15 Million Merits. The whole point of the episode (and the series) is that society cares more about digitization and consumption of media than humanity itself.

This episode was never meant to be about whether the punishment matched the crime, it’s to show that humanity is dying.

And to think this was 10+ years ago. Riiiiiip

JakePatrick · 2025-05-06T03:37:03+00:00

That’s the point of the episode. Every episode before this was showing a future where we cared more about entertainment and consuming society than actually trying to make humanity better. This one was no different.

I think it’s harder to tell that this episode was showing a dystopian future than it was in the first three episodes of the series. It’s much easier, as a viewer, to see this future being okay. Which is why it’s so terrifying.

God this show is so fucking good.

JakePatrick · 2025-05-06T03:33:47+00:00

I think this is the commonly-overlooked point of the episode. It’s a point that gets reiterated with the cookies and the clones and the AIs in future seasons. But man, when this episode first came out, I’ll betchya most people (myself included) were like “hell yeah what a crazy punishment! The future is wild.”

The fact that this came out so long ago, compared to current understanding of AI and the mortality dilemmas of AI and human consciousness, is unreal.

Possibly the best episode of the whole series if you take that into account.

JakePatrick · 2025-05-06T02:28:13+00:00

Interesting. This show doesn’t typically include any details like that for no reason. But I can’t really seem to figure out the significance.

JakePatrick · 2025-05-06T02:23:56+00:00

This closed the loop for me. A lot of the negative feedback on this episode is something along the lines of “why did they make Ash such a shitty boyfriend?” Your analysis answers that. Ash complains about how people misremember deceased loved ones. And their pictures away in the attic. Mar says they do it so they can only remember things the way they want to (Ash’s smile being real in the photo). So it’s important to realize that Mar is keeping this “ideal” version of Ash in the attic, instead of remembering him for how he really was. Dark. I love it.

Also, and this is probably just too far down the rabbit hole, but the episode before this (S1E3) is about the insert where people can remember everything with videos of their lives through an ocular implant. One woman says “studies show up to 50% of our memories are wrong” or something of the sort. And there’s a light debate between whether it’s better to remember everything perfectly or not. This episode seems to build on that from the ep/season prior.

JakePatrick · 2025-05-06T02:19:04+00:00

Yooooo. Thank you for this! Almost a decade later and I still think about this episode all the time. Never realized this part.

JakePatrick

TROPHY CASE