I miss "meh"

January 1, 2017 9:35 AM

Charlie Brooker Newswipes 2016 Black Mirror's creator takes a whack at a shitmungous year, accompanied by Philomena Cunk and Alt-Git Barry Shitpeas. The 2016 wipe features Pokemon Gove, an epic if brief puddle, horse pleasuring, Brexit breakfast, Yorkshire-bashing, the pocalypse, and an epic Trump mashup. Don't miss the Wendy Carlos soundtrack and a new fake news channel. (SLYT)

Previously on this here blue place on the Web thing.

posted by doctornemo (29 comments total)

We really, really tried to watch it but switched off after fifteen minutes. Somehow seeing Cunk, Barry et al rip into 2016 wasn't .. it wasn't funny. Maybe I'm losing my sense of humour but I just couldn't see the fun side of all the terrible things that happened.
posted by kariebookish at 9:39 AM on January 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

I miss "Meh." as well.
posted by Ickster at 9:47 AM on January 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

There were definitely a few laugh-out-loud moments this year, particularly thanks to BoJo, Michael Gove and David Cameron.
posted by My Dad at 9:47 AM on January 1, 2017

I'm glad you posted this, because I really wanted to ask the community about this scene:

Charlie turns on the tv, sees that that person won the election, and walks away. He goes to a cafe, takes a sip of coffee, and turns to the camera with a look of utter despair.

I feel like it's a reference to some movie. Anyone know about that?
posted by adept256 at 9:50 AM on January 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

FanFare thread.
posted by effbot at 10:01 AM on January 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

I never thought I could laugh about Bowie's death, but I was so very, very wrong.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:06 AM on January 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

The café in that scene is the one the losing team in the UK Apprentice are sent to. I don't know if there's a deeper reference than that.
posted by grahamparks at 10:10 AM on January 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

Newswipe has never been about comedy, so if you were looking for laughs you were misled. Newswipe is about poking about in despair, prodding about in the carcass of life trying to find humour in something that isn't or shouldn't be funny. It's anti-comedy which is why it works so well.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 10:54 AM on January 1, 2017 [15 favorites]

Somehow in all the sadness of this year, I'd forgotten about Gove and BoJo yelling at proles to Clean for the Queen.

This could easily have been three times longer, but then it would need a prescription of bourbon to go with it.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:23 AM on January 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

I've been consoling myself by watching a lot of Have I Got News For You on Youtube. Charlie Booker hosted the day after the US election, and I like his reaction best.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:27 AM on January 1, 2017 [10 favorites]

Cunk on Christmas Is also pretty good.
posted by dagosto at 12:42 PM on January 1, 2017 [14 favorites]

I usually enjoy these because it is a refreshing dose of curmudgeonly analysis of the silliness around the edges of things when life actually not being so bad. Somebody clever actually has collect and point out the things that suck.

This year? There was nothing that I was not already terrifyingly aware of other than that body reveal show.
posted by srboisvert at 12:50 PM on January 1, 2017

I was not aware of Naked Attraction and found it terrifying!
posted by armacy at 1:16 PM on January 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

I mean, did I miss the FanFare thread on it???
posted by armacy at 1:17 PM on January 1, 2017

I checked, and there are full episodes of Naked Attraction on YouTube. As far as I can tell, it does what it says on the tin, and just as horribly as you'd expect it to.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 3:16 PM on January 1, 2017

I mean, did I miss the FanFare thread on it???

No, you need to look in IRL.
posted by metaBugs at 3:17 PM on January 1, 2017

I just like how Brooker can't even joke about Trump winning the election. He just walks off the set (the camera changing to black and white between shots) and he has to sit in some empty coffee shop staring into the pit of his soul. There are no jokes to be found in an event so absolutely dire.

Or maybe it is just a jokey reference to The Apprentice, as suggested above. Hell, what do I know?
posted by spoobnooble II: electric bugaboo at 5:59 PM on January 1, 2017

I just like how Brooker can't even joke about Trump winning the election.

"2016 Wipe increasingly resembling a vertical cliff face with no footholds." — Charlie Brooker (@charltonbrooker) November 9, 2016

(via)
posted by effbot at 6:41 PM on January 1, 2017 [7 favorites]

I didn't know the apprentice reference. I assumed he was thinking about jumping off a bridge. Hence the name of the coffee shop "The Bridge"
posted by Megafly at 10:17 PM on January 1, 2017

He did try really hard and props for that given the material.
There were moments where it seemed to run aground though. Where ... well, you just give up and go drink a coffee in some empty diner.
It was right in that he kept holding up magazines variously themed 'the bubble' and 'elitist' because 2016 really feels like the year the screen ripped and the world as common sense mostly implied it should be twisted friskily away from the world as it is.
Faced with this disparity... wait all my assumptions about everything I thought I could reliably rely on are not, in fact, true? Then where's the ground, the basis point viewed from which, the world and current events can be put into perspective?
posted by From Bklyn at 10:27 PM on January 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Then where's the ground, the basis point viewed from which, the world and current events can be put into perspective?

There's no foundation, no hope. We're all just imprisoned here together, with sad coffee from a bad cafe.
posted by detachd at 12:34 AM on January 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm afraid I'll be using this choice quote for the foreseeable future: "Hello, cable company? There's a problem with my television. It's showing images from a universe that I do not recognize.".
posted by dr_dank at 4:23 AM on January 2, 2017 [11 favorites]

I still maintain that the Large Hadron Collider flipped us all into that alternate universe when it was first activated on September 10, 2008. Lehman Brothers collapsed just five days later, sending the world into an economic tailspin which eventually accumulated enough victims to sweep Trump and the Brexeteers to power. It all fits!
posted by Paul Slade at 5:47 AM on January 2, 2017 [8 favorites]

I would subscribe to The Elitist.
posted by Devonian at 6:02 AM on January 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

I just wish the Pocalypse would get here and suck us all off through a hole already.
posted by briank at 7:12 AM on January 2, 2017 [10 favorites]

I watched the events of 2016 first agog, then agape, then finally aghast. It was the year I had to accept that there is a very large number of people for whom behaving decently to others is just too much effort. Thatcher was right: there is no such thing as society, at least not when so many hold the public sphere in contempt.
posted by um at 6:19 PM on January 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is also up at Fanfare, btw.
posted by Pronoiac at 8:51 PM on January 2, 2017

I'm glad to have been reminded of David Cameron's Lament by this.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 12:17 PM on January 3, 2017

The alt left are apparently rather upset over Brooker/BBC/corporate media's character assassination of Corbyn in this episode. The media mole provides some background, and a list of Corbyn-friendly jokes.
posted by effbot at 1:44 PM on January 4, 2017