Summary: Cooper is travelling the world to avoid problems at home. His dad passed of Alzheimer's and he is afraid of talking to his mom. He meets Sonja and they hook up. Sonja recommends Cooper to go test a new game. He goes and experiences a horror game simulation in real life and goes through a nightmarish game. His phone wasn't turned off however and his mom calls him during the experience. This causes Cooper to die.
The Good: This was a very different episode of Black Mirror. Like "White Bear", I think this was more valuable as an experience than an episode of television, and it left me feeling really unsettled and horrified by its ending. Before the horror though, we are allowed to learn who our main character is. We learn a lot about Cooper, and we come to care about him as one of the better characters in the show. He has depth to his character, we like who he is and we can understand his problems and fears all too well. His relationship with Sonja is effective at letting us understand who he is and preparing us for the nightmare he will experience later in the episode. And now it's time to discuss the terrifying nightmare that Cooper was put through when testing the game. The idea of the game is hardly described to us and all we know is that it's going to be a new experience for Cooper. Of course we know that anything can happen, our minds have been trained to expect anything in a simulation and we have also been trained to expect twists in this show. But Cooper isn't aware in the way we are and he obviously believes that he is actually safe from any harm. Of course this is a signature set-up for any horror film, and leads to Cooper getting way more than he anticipated as he faces horror after horror which slowly breaks him down. So many horror films are fixated on jump scares but this is smarter than that and even makes fun of jump scares. Instead we are treated to the horror of having to face all of your worst fears one after the other, which has so much more entertainment and emotional value to it. It makes for some genuinely affecting television. The fears which are explored here are fantastic and have a lot of meaning because of what we know about Cooper. We see a casual fear like arachnophobia explored at first, but then things ratchet up as we see fears from Cooper's past explored like Josh Peters and memories of his dad's Alzheimer's, and then we climax as we see fears stemmed from anxiety and paranoia as we see Cooper's fears about how his mother is in a terrific scene which has a lot of power (see: Best Moment). The writing was sublime as usual. I was ready to complain about inconsistencies like Saito's English-speaking, but it turns out that the whole sequence was part of the game which essentially forgives every single inconsistency which just becomes foreshadowing. There were a couple things in this episode which I noticed which have been present in other episodes too but I haven't had a chance to explore them. For one, the show's transitions to sex are always hilarious. Every time it's a smooth transition which puts a smile on my face. Also, the show does a tremendous job with irony. The big example in this episode being the observations of Cooper's death being that he finally "called Mom". The Bad: This episode fell into the trap of too many twists which don't have much resonance to them. The twists were fairly predictable and unsurprising, and they didn't really offer any new depth to the story. The ending was too depressing. For this show to have a depressing and cruel ending, it needs to establish that the characters deserved their fates. This was done expertly in previous episodes like "White Bear" and "White Christmas" but it really wasn't done at all here. Cooper was a good guy and the only mistake he made was turning his cell phone on, and it led to his death. This show often makes me feel emotionally drained after an episode, but here I feel it was too far. At least give me a reason for putting me through this pain, but instead the only reasoning here is for shock value and the irony of "called mom". This also leads to my next point: the theme. This episode is missing a proper theme to examine. Other episodes have all focused on something in particular about technology and how it will impact our future, but this one is missing that. The examination is very weak in this episode and it's tough to center around an actual point being made. I suppose it's that we shouldn't get careless with testing technology. Or that we should turn our phones off. Either way it's unsatisfying and it doesn't do its job of neatly tying the episode together. Instead what we are left with is just a terrifying nightmare, and while that is still impactful to watch, it's nowhere near the level of quality that the show usually explores. The Unknown: Has this ever happened before where a playtest killed somebody? What consequences would be brought on by Cooper's death? Best Moment: Cooper finding his mother, only to see she has Alzheimer's was the perfect personification of how anxiety will create our worst fears. After all the scariest thing is always the unknown, and our greatest fears come from us imagining the worst possible outcome. This scene explored that in a tragic and heartbreaking way. I just wish the ending had perhaps gone in a more hopeful direction like the previous episode to make this scene even more powerful. Character of the Episode: Cooper. Conclusion: This was a terrific nightmarish episode that was well on its way to being one of the show's very best until the ending. Had we gotten a happier ending which had more thematic relevance, this would have been thought-provoking and cathartic in all the right ways. Instead the show opted for the edgier depressing ending and I feel that it diminished the quality of this episode by a lot. Hopefully the other episodes don't fall into a similar trap. Score: 68
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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