Talk:Fifteen Million Merits

Song name
What is the name of the song that's playing at the end of Episode 2, Season 1, please?
 * Irma Thomas' Anyone Who Knows What Love Is. --88.152.133.64 (talk) 23:19, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Bit of personal irony
I think it's fairly obvious that, toward the end, Bing's rise to fame reflects Charlie Brooker's own life. Started off as a ranting outsider complaining about what's wrong with the media, he finds that people like it, and him, for his honesty and insight.

Since people like him, TV producers notice, and he gets his own show, ranting to order and turning into a bit of a caricature of himself. The symbol of his desperation, the glass shard, is now his greatest possession (although that bit doesn't apply to Charlie I think). The fact that he nearly killed himself with a piece of TV screen is itself important and quite funny.

But anywayyeeah, Charlie's a smart enough bloke to know when he's been co-opted, and that his old fans are gonna spot this just as easily. So he flat out admits it! While also showing us it's kindof difficult not to, that it's the nature of the media, and the fault of the people who watch indentically-packaged garbage. Same thing Dead Set did in a different way.

Perhaps a little mention of the irony of Charlie as Bing is worth putting in for a sentence or two.

188.29.165.176 (talk) 21:35, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you're right, but that Wikipedia isn't quite the place for what you're saying. Wikipedia doesn't publish original thought; everything we write has to be attributed to a reliable source. Unless you can find a review of the episode (or possibly an interview somewhere) which says this explicitly, I'm afraid we can't include it in Wikipedia. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 23:31, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Real forest and window at the end?
Is the forest seen at the end real? I always thought it wasn't a window but a screen as well and the forest was just as fake as everything else previously. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.59.143.55 (talk) 22:36, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * As mentioned in the last paragraph of the Analysis section, this is ambiguous and can be interpreted as real or fake. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 11:13, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Bleeding Cool?
Why is Brendan Connolly of Bleeding Cool quoted in this, as though he were somehow a critic anyone pays attention to? He's a minor blogger on a poorly written website, nothing more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.89.103.45 (talk • contribs) 02:49, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * See Webcomic sources. It is a reliable source. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 11:13, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

“Placed poorly”
The statement "Fifteen Million Merits" placed poorly on many critics' rankings of the 23 instalments of Black Mirror, from best to worst” is not true.

The article currently states that many critics ranked the show poorly. That’s different from having a poor average score. A minority of critics ranked the episode poorly, which brought the average down. The statement “most critics ranked the episode is above average” is more accurate, yet misleading (due to the average score being below average). That’s why I removed any commentary and just presented the scores. Bpaluzzi (talk) 07:28, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for starting this discussion and I can see your reasoning a bit better now. The mean average rank is 14/23, which is below average but perhaps not significantly. The highest position it was rated was 9th. Nonetheless, I see your point that half of the rankings placed it in the top half. Perhaps "placed middlingly" would be the most accurate summary? Or we can default to "received various rankings" if no one summary is really accurate enough. The text in the lead, while on critics' lists of Black Mirror episodes by quality, it generally places middling or poorly., will also have to be updated if this text is changed. — Bilorv ( talk ) 07:45, 21 May 2020 (UTC)