Bandersnatch: Black Mirror's New Interactive Episode .

I wrote a post before about my love for the TV Series Black Mirror. If you want to read about it the link is here
black mirror

I think the series director Charlie Brooker is one of the best directors in the business. All his episodes stick with you for a couple of weeks after and leave you thinking. So around Christmas Black Mirror gave us the first of their new seasons contents Bandersnatch. As I said before all black mirror episodes are stand alone so you can start from anywhere.
Bandersnatch is unique. You decide the faith of the episode. Yep, that's right. You control the choices the character makes.

Story

So Stefan is a young computer programmer that still lives at home with his dad. He wants to bring out a videogame based on the book Bandersnatch in 1984 that he got from his now deceased mother. Videogames were just starting out back then. He contacts a videogame company called Tuckersoft and makes a pitch. The morning of the pitch is when you take control of the character. You first decide what he has for breakfast and then choose what music he should listen to on the way to the pitch.


All the decision you make have different consequences and if any of you know Black Mirror , I was half afraid to watch this one because I know outcomes do not end very well. The golden rule is never to watch Black Mirror hung over as you will descend into a world of fear and misery.

My Strategy

I made choices based on what I would do in the situations. I preferred Frosties cereal over Sugar Puffs and I picked my favourite music. From then on the choices get much harder. The ending for me did not end well however but I will not worry about what choices I made because I can stand by my reasoning. If you make some choices the episode will bring you back and ask you again the same question which gives you a sense that even you have no option but to go in one sinister direction. However there are at least 40 endings (that we know of). There is one choive where you ring a 5 digit number so you are talking about 99 possible directions we can go in. I do not think this is the end of Bandersnatch in the new season. I think there will be more to this.
As usual there are references to other episodes in the series which are kinda cool if you are into black mirror.

Reddit went into meltdown when Bandersnatch was released and there are still some endings that have not been picked yet according to the executives of Black Mirror. Now it beats me how they know this.

Overall this episode is very clever because the character finds out he is being controlled by you the viewer. But it messed with my head a bit that Bandersnatch was controlling me to make my decisions so it was all a bit of a mindfuck.
I was commenting on @gooddream's film review a couple of days ago and I agreed with one of his comments. The best films stay in your head and make you think about them for some time after watching them. I always found this with Black Mirror but this one will have me thinking for a month. I don't know how I feel about that!
Black Mirror is one of those TV Series that make you thank your lucky stars you are alive and it puts all your problems into perspective even if you are living in a shanty town boiling a rat for your dinner. But the bad part is that most of the stories are in the not too distant future where the technology is there to make these episodes become reality. That is the scary part. Bandersnatch is different because it is based in the 80's but it has used today's technology to do something entirely different.
I am looking forward for the missus to watch it and see what choices she makes. But knowing her the character will come out a millionaire sipping cocoa by a fire in a pair of furry slipper and a dressing gown. Mine was jail.

Thanks for reading peeps. Let me know your outcomes.
@Blanchy