I just watched Plaything and I am honestly shocked by the low rating. So many people are calling it the worst episode of the season, while for me it was probably one of the most personally meaningful.

Maybe I am biased because I have struggled with mental health, work with people going through addiction and psychological distress, and have also taken psychedelics seriously. But this episode understood something that is almost impossible to explain to someone who has never experienced an altered state of consciousness. That feeling that you have seen something enormous, something more real than normal reality, but the moment you try explaining it you sound insane.

The part about the limits of language was probably my favourite. Language is not reality. It is just a rough system of symbols we use to point towards experiences. There are things you can experience through psychedelics, psychosis or deep meditation that simply do not fit into ordinary words. Once you translate them into language, most of the actual experience is already lost.

And I don’t think the episode was actually ambiguous about whether Colin was delusional. The ending makes it pretty clear that the beings really did enter everyone’s minds, exactly as he said they would. The interesting part is that everyone had already decided he was insane before giving any serious attention to what he was trying to communicate. Even the viewer is encouraged to dismiss him because his language, appearance and behaviour fit our idea of madness.

That is what I think many people missed. They watched it as a literal story about some silly video-game creatures. But it was really about consciousness, neurodivergence, isolation and how quickly we dismiss experiences that cannot be translated into normal language. If an intelligence completely outside ordinary human perception tried communicating with us, it probably would sound like psychosis until the moment everyone else experienced it too.

I probably shouldn’t say only neurodivergent people can understand it, but I do think people who have experienced mental illness, psychedelics or other altered states will feel this episode differently. Some things make complete sense before language gets involved.

I loved it.

altered state of consciousness. That feeling that you have seen something enormous, something more real than normal reality, but the moment you try explaining it you sound insane.

The part about the limits of language was probably my favourite. Language is not reality. It is just a rough system of symbols we use to point towards experiences. There are things you can experience through psychedelics, psychosis or deep meditation that simply do not fit into ordinary words. Once you translate them into language, most of the actual experience is already lost.

And I don’t think the episode was actually ambiguous about whether Colin was delusional. The ending makes it pretty clear that the beings really did enter everyone’s minds, exactly as he said they would. The interesting part is that everyone had already decided he was insane before giving any serious attention to what he was trying to communicate. Even the viewer is encouraged to dismiss him because his language, appearance and behaviour fit our idea of madness.

That is what I think many people missed. They watched it as a literal story about some silly video-game creatures. But it was really about consciousness, neurodivergence, isolation and how quickly we dismiss experiences that cannot be translated into normal language. If an intelligence completely outside ordinary human perception tried communicating with us, it probably would sound like psychosis until the moment everyone else experienced it too.

I probably shouldn’t say only neurodivergent people can understand it, but I do think people who have experienced mental illness, psychedelics or other altered states will feel this episode differently. Some things make complete sense before language gets involved.

I loved it.

This would be a cool concept