Hi Everyone, welcome to another instalment of my Black Mirror series analysis.
Today we’re going to be explaining and analysing the episode Playtest.
This story revolves around a young man who is running away from his problems.
We are introduced to our protagonist, Cooper, as he sneaks out of his home, carrying a backpack
and his American passport. On the way to the airport a jarring, vibrating ringtone alerts
him to his mum trying to call him and he ignores it.
In the next scene he’s in a rickety plane which is going through some turbulence.
The passengers around him appear nervous but Cooper is lost in a video game and unconcerned.
He’s multitasking with an inflight movie playing in the background and we glimpse a
scene in the film where a giant spider is crawling up a building.
An air hostess asks Cooper to switch his phone off - airlines request we do this to avoid
potentially dangerous interference between phone signals and sensitive onboard electronic
systems. Cooper readily complies with the request.
When he spots a little girl looking nervous he persuades her to pretend they are on a
rollercoaster and turns the experience into a game.
Cooper is a nice guy, a fun guy and someone we can easily imagine knowing.
We then see a montage of him traveling the world, he goes to Australia, Thailand, India,
the Middle East and then finally Europe. He documents his adventures on his phone, snapping
away - making and recording memories.
We finally catch up with him when he lands in London and he decides to go on a Tinder-like
date with a young woman called Sonja.
Sonja is a tech journalist - she tells Cooper about her job and he in turn tells her of
his travels.
The conversation starts off superficial and casual but their attraction builds and the
pair end up sleeping together.
The next day their connection is more established and Cooper reveals that his adventures around
the world are a result of him wanting to get away from his family home and his mother.
His father, who has passed away, had early onset Alzheimers and Cooper was his carer. He was
close to his dad but his relationship with his mother is more fraught and he isn’t
able to connect with her in the same way.
His desire to see the world and create as many memories as he can is explained by his
fear that he will someday end up like his father.
Sonja has seen Cooper ignore his mother’s calls and she urges him to call his mum.
Sometime later Cooper discovers he’s been the victim of identity fraud. His travels
have come to an end and he was looking to purchase a ticket back to the US. He briefly
considers calling his mother for help but opts to call Sonja instead.
Sonja allows Copper to stay with her and while the pair are having dinner Cooper is browsing
an odd jobs app which will allow him to pick up casual work
so he can get some much needed funds.
Sonja spots a job opportunity at SaitoGemu - a renowned video game
company that is known for their innovation. She’s heard rumours of a super secret new
game they are working on and she encourages Cooper to take the job which will involve
him playing and testing out the game.
She tells him that if he’s able to sneak a photo of anything the gaming company is
working on, he’ll be able to make a fortune by selling the image.
Cooper gets the gig and is introduced to the ultra slick operation that is SaitoGemu.
He meets the uber-professional, enigmatic Katie who leads him on a mini tour of the
SaitoGemu offices where a bunch of developers and designers are working
with state-of-the-art technology to create video games for the masses.
SaitoGemu is best known for their horror game Harlech Shadow and there
are several posters of the game dotted about the mansion where SaitoGemu is based.
Katie leads him to a clinical white room but before they enter she asks for Cooper’s
phone and switches it off.
Cooper had planned to sneak a photo with his phone but he can’t object to Katie's request
and gives her his phone.
Once inside the room Katie asks Cooper to sign a non-disclosure agreement and consent form.
She explains there will be a small surgical procedure involved and while Cooper is a little taken aback he’s
reassured by Katie’s description that it’s no more ‘invasive than having your ears pierced.’
He notices the signature page is missing from the form and when Katie exits the room to get
a complete form he seizes the opportunity to grab his phone, turn it on and take a picture
of the contents of a briefcase that’s in the room. He hurriedly sends a photo to Sonja
and returns to his position but forgets to switch his phone off.
When Katie returns she inserts a small circular device, called a mushroom, into the back of
his neck. She turns on the device and as it's initialising Cooper’s phone buzzes with
yet another, and this time, fatally ill-timed, phone call from his mum.
The phone signal interferes with the game being uploaded into his brain and this results
in every synapse in Cooper’s brain firing up at once which leads to his death.
This moment was foreshadowed on the plane when the air hostess asked Cooper to switch
his phone off. Cooper complied then but his non-compliance now, and his attempt at subterfuge
has led to his demise.
We find out at the end of the episode that Cooper died within 0.04 seconds of the game
being uploaded and the story that we see unfolds in his brain
during that brief moment in time.
In the 0.04 seconds that follows, Cooper imagines playing the game he’s there to test.
In his mind the game will be able to interact with his brain to create a hyper-realistic
audio visual experience.
His first game involves a 3D video game gopher with whom he plays whack-a-mole. Cooper loves
the game and when Katie asks him if he wants to test out a fuller, more complete experience
he eagerly agrees.
She then takes him to meet Saito - the mastermind behind SaitoGemu.
Cooper imagines Saito to be his stereotype of what a young Japanese inventor slash
multi-millionaire businessman would be like.
Instead of greeting Cooper with a handshake Saito bows and says
‘Konichiwa’ and when Cooper says the 3D gopher game was ‘super fun’ Saito has
trouble deciphering that simple phrasing and needs Katie to translate.
However within moments, Saito is speaking fluent English, explaining why and how horror
video games are able to thrill gamers.
Cooper’s imagination does not keep up the pretence of Saito’s limited fluency in English
as his mind is busy moving onto creating the next moments of his imagined game.
Katie and Saito explain how the game will read Cooper’s mind and create a bespoke
experience designed to explore, understand and finally materialise Cooper’s fears which
will result in the ultimate horror video game experience.
Katie hooks him up with a so-called ‘neural net package’, which uploads a new game into
his brain and once that’s done, he’s escorted to a creepy house on the grounds of the SaitoGemu estate.
Cooper recognizes the house as being the one he has seen in the Harlech Shadow games and
on all the posters he’s recently seen dotted about the SaitoGemu headquarters.
His mind has conveniently drawn on that location for his personal game experience to continue.
Katie gives him an earpiece which will allow him to stay in contact with her
and then she leaves him to it.
At first things start off slowly and Cooper is even somewhat bored, he pours himself a
glass of non-alcoholic red wine and attempts to read a book of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
Interestingly the poem Cooper’s book opens up on is The Raven.
Although the story is not discussed in the episode I’ll give a brief summary of the tale.
The story is about a talking raven who visits a young man who has lost the great love of
his life. The man reminisces about his life and relieves painful memories. He asks the
raven a series of questions and gets the same answer back, again and again and this causes
him to fall into madness.
This poem is a piece of foreshadowing created by Cooper’s brain hinting at how Cooper’s
own tale will end.
Cooper then spots a spider crawling into the room and he’s jumpy. A dislike of spiders
is quite common so Cooper’s brain has materialised quite a predictable fear.
Cooper has also seen a few spider images in the recent past and this might be why his
mind has decided to start the game with this.
After killing the spider - or attempting to kill it - Cooper turns his attention to a
painting he’d observed before. The painting is of the Harlech Shadow house but whereas
previously the house was in darkness, one of the windows has a light on and a man turns
up in the window.
Copper’s freaked out at first but very much in line with his personality he talks himself
out of his fear and when he hears banging upstairs he goes to take a look, reasoning
that it must be leaky pipes.
As he leaves the room he encounters a sinister figure.
Cooper has seen this figure before; one of the graphic designers at the SaitoGemu offices
was working on a character closely resembling this one and Cooper’s mind has conjured
up this apparition based on that memory.
In fact, Cooper’s mind has gone one step further and given this character the face
of Josh Peters, a high school bully that Cooper is afraid of and rightly so, given that Josh
Peters once stabbed Cooper in the shoulder and left a lasting mark.
When Cooper realises that the character can’t do anything and he can put his hands through
him with no trouble, Cooper’s fear abates and he goes into the kitchen.
He’s still uneasy however and that makes him particularly chatty with Katie who points
out what he’s doing.
Just as Cooper is done raiding the cupboards for food his brain creates yet another visitor
to freak him out - this time a giant hairless spider with Josh Peters' face.
The scares are escalating as the game starts to figure out what triggers Cooper and as
his mind delves deeper into Cooper’s innermost fears.
At this moment Cooper’s earpiece fails and he no longer has Katie’s reassuring presence
in his head.
There’s a banging on the door and Cooper reluctantly goes to open it, to find that Sonja has
tracked him down.
She warns him that he’s in danger - there’s something wrong with this game and people
who have volunteered to test it out have all disappeared.
Sonja’s manifestation and her suspicions regarding SaitoGemu is Cooper’s own mind
giving shape to his misgivings.
In the game Cooper doesn’t believe this Sonja is real, even though she feels real
and he can’t put his hands through her like he did Josh Peters.
He asks her how she managed to track him down and when she says through his phone he knows
she’s lying because Katie has taken his phone from him.
When confronted, Sonja then turns from the concerned romantic love interest into a lunatic
who attacks him with a knife.
She reveals she was the one who cloned his card and committed the identity fraud Cooper
fell victim to. She also points out that she was the one who directed Cooper’s attention
to the SaituGemu job advert and it’s because of her that Cooper is where he is.
Perhaps there’s something about Sonja that Cooper never really trusted in the first place
( how much can someone trust a one night stand?) and that’s why Sonja has been turned into
this evil assailant in his mind.
During her attack Sonja stabs Cooper in the exact same spot as Josh Peters did
back in high school. She also tells Cooper that he should have called his mother.
This is something Cooper knows he should have done but hasn’t.
Cooper then pulls off Sonja’s face and he’s horrified. Earlier in the
episode when he was in her apartment he noticed a DVD of the film Face/Off on her bookshelf
which might have helped sow the seeds for his mind to come up with this scenario.
There was also a poster in the Saito Gemu offices with the words Skinned Alive emblazoned across
it which might have helped his mind conjure up the idea of ripping Sojna’s face off.
After doing away with Sonja, Cooper wants out of the game and luckily for him Katie’s
voice has returned. She agrees to pull him out of the game as long as he makes his way
to the access point.
An annoyed and impatient Cooper is directed up flights of stairs, into a bedroom but
as soon as he is in the room he’s told by Katie that there is no access point.
She then asks him a series of basic questions about himself and he realises he can’t remember
things - this is when Cooper’s ultimate and deepest fear is manifested, that he too
will lose his memory like his father.
Unable to deal with what's happening Cooper tries to cut the mushroom out from his neck
and this is when Katie and security personnel rush into the room and come to save Cooper.
But our relief at Cooper’s rescue is short-lived. The game has managed to ruin Cooper’s mind
and he has lost all his memories.
Saito issues a sincere apology and asks security to take Cooper to where the others are - indicating
that there were indeed other volunteers who had suffered the same fate as Cooper and that
Sonja’s warning was valid.
However, this ending is one of a series of endings and moments later we are pulled back
into Saito’s office and Cooper has experienced everything in the Harlech Shadow house all
while sitting in a chair for a fraction of a second.
Again we breathe a sigh of relief and watch as Cooper heads home and back to his mother’s
house in America, finally ready to have a conversation with her.
But when he sees her, he faces the terrible realisation that she too seems to have lost
her memory to Alzheimers' like his father. When she doesn’t recognize Cooper and goes
to ring him yet again, Cooper realises something is terribly wrong and
yells out mum over and over again.
And then once again we are pulled out of this ending and into another, final ending.
We are back in that clinical white room, just as the game is initialising.
Cooper’s mum calls his mobile phone and this results in Cooper’s death.
Our experience of the triple endings echo Saito’s earlier assertion as to why horror
video gamers enjoy being frightened.
He theorises that once the gamers realise they are not dead the rush of relief is exhilarating,
and similarly, in our case, every time we are pulled out of one of Cooper’s brutal
endings we’re relieved that perhaps our likeable protagonist has gotten away with it,
perhaps he’s safe and then we discover, right at the end, that he’s not.
As the episode progresses it makes sense that only someone like Cooper would behave as he does.
He’s a young, American, white male who by virtue of who he is, is able to move with
ease in the world.
He doesn’t have to overly worry about his safety or think about how he might have
to navigate different prejudices. These things would make it easy for him to believe he’s
more invincible than he is.
In addition Cooper’s attempts to escape his problems and look for experiences make
him even more susceptible to acting impulsively with very little caution.
He takes odd jobs via an app and assumes that everything will be OK, he barely balks
at being told there will be a medical procedure to go through to play the game, he happily
signs the NDA with the briefest of glances and he trusts Katie to implant him with the
mushroom on a only few moments acquaintance.
Playtest is structured like a video game with different levels.
Level 1 is the reality where Cooper meets Sonja, then falls victim to identity theft
and then becomes a new tester for SaitoGemu.
Level 2 takes place as he is dying. At this level he plays his game of whack-a-mole.
He enters Level 3, after meeting Saito and this takes place at the Harlech Shadow house.
He loses his memory in level 3 and is then pulled back out to level 2, back in Saito’s office.
In level 2, he travels back home and discovers his mother has fallen prey to Alzheimers and
then he is pulled back out to level 1, the reality, where he dies.
One question we are left to ponder at the end of the episode is whether this all really
happened, not just everything during Cooper’s death in the clinical white room, but whether
everything from the very start has all been in Cooper’s mind.
There are several reasons to wonder this - the most glaring of which is why SaitoGemu, a
company with an international reputation didn’t just take Cooper’s phone completely away
from him if it was going to be so potentially dangerous.
At the end of the episode Saito and Katie discuss how the phone signals interfere with
the game, so they knew there was a risk.
And although Katie seems shaken by Cooper’s death, she quickly recovers and Saito doesn’t
appear moved at all. He just tells her to note down the fact Cooper called out ‘mum’
in his last moments.
Katie dutifully fills out the form and records details of this particular system failure
and we question whether this has happened before? Did other people reach their demise
in the same way? And if so, Cooper was right when Sonja turned up to tell him he was in
danger but if that was all in his imagination, supposedly in level 3 of his imagined game,
how could he have known what was really going on in the supposed real world of the clinical
white room?
How could Cooper have known that people were actually dying when trying to test out
SaitoGemu’s latest game?
And finally Katie’s note that Cooper ‘called mum’ is perhaps a little too conveniently
poetic. Why wouldn’t she write, he called out mum rather than ‘called mum,’ a phrasing
that reflects more what Cooper knows he should have done the entire episode.
When did Cooper really die? Was it in the clinical white room at the SaitoGemu offices
or earlier? Maybe even on the plane when it was going through turbulence? Or maybe he
was dead all along.
Whether or not all the episode or part of the episode takes place in Cooper’s mind,
we know that his biggest fear is losing himself or his mother to Alzheimers because of the
experience he had with the disease affecting his father.
Despite not being close to his mother he knows he should phone her back - both Sonja and
Katie tell him that he should ‘ring his mum.’
He put off confronting his issues with his mum in order to make memories traveling around
the world but he regrets that choice, because when he finally did call mum it was too late.
Cooper is a nice guy, a good guy, but his one moment of deception in the episode, when
he takes a secret photo of the contents of the SaituGemu briefcase, leads to his demise.
If he had only followed the rules he would have been OK.
In short, his mind is telling him, he should have followed the rules and also called his mum.
And that concludes my explanation and analysis of the episode Playtest in the Black Mirror series.
If you enjoyed this video then make sure to check out my Black Mirror playlist where I
explain and analyse further episodes.
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