In Which I Review Westworld (2x10)

Well that was an utter bloodbath. I've had a hard time wrapping my head around the season two finale episode, "The Passenger," because we knew that at some point the plot was going to have to catch up to the naval gazing qualities the show likes to explore. A show that only focuses on philosophy without a proper story would be far too pedantic and shows that only play out plots without any deeper thought are not worth our time, so it's no surprise that Westworld tried to be both in this finale; but I find myself confused and more than a little frustrated at both ends of the spectrum. What's even more frustrating is that I can't even say if this confusion is good or bad. When the plot revolves around such lofty concepts as freedom, memories, and identity, then having a lot of question marks about the actual "here's what happened" portion make sense; on the other hand, the nitty gritty story being told is simple and, frankly, an old one: it's a robot uprising. Nothing fancier than that; I'm not sure that this season did a good enough job with the actual story and moving it along in a clear fashion. In other words, we've got a bit of a mixed bag to end another season of Westworld. 

That introduction sounded harsher than I intended; it's not as if I didn't enjoy this finale and the season overall. Westworld remains completely compelling and watchable even when I'm not sure what's really going on all time. The plot has a tendency to zig and zag with loads of timey wimey nonsense because at the end of the day the writers aren't interested in telling a linear story; to their credit, it's not because they can't but rather because the unstuck nature of time fits in nicely with their exploration of memories, consciousness, and identity. It does, however, make it more difficult to follow on a week to week basis. When it comes to Westworld, I try hard to not focus on the plot too much because I find that's not really the point of this show but I think in this case it would serve us well to at least break down some of the bigger things that are happening here, namely what Delores's actual plan was and what Bernard's role in all of it was. All along, Delores has claimed that she wants the Hosts to be free, to be the authors of their own stories. That's grand and definitely a worthy character goal but here at the end, having watched this season from start to finish, you have to wonder if that's really what Delores wants. Freedom and agency make a nice cover story for war against mankind, which is what I think Delores really desires. She doesn't want what, in her mind, isn't real--what lies beyond the Door in the System (what Hosts and Humans called the Forge--so many proper nouns! A lot of mythological resonance here). Delores wants this world--our world--because it's real and what is real is irreplaceable. It's an interesting idea, to be sure. This world, this so-called real world, is irreplaceable. This is the only earth we have and it cannot be replicated or duplicated in its exactness. We can come close but it would never be quite the same. But I think what Delores is missing here is that the reason it cannot be duplicated or recreated is because it was, indeed it still is, everyday, constructed by those who live in it. This planet and the reality around it are not complex naturally; we made it this way with war, religion, trade, civilization, love, peace, philosophy, and every single moment of every single day. We complicate the world by living in it and experiencing it; it follows that any creature who is real--which, as always, is a tricky term on Westworld but here I think real means anyone who has conscience thoughts and feelings and memories and an identity that they claim as unique--would automatically complicate whatever world they live in. When Bernard and Delores are in the System and they open the Door for the Hosts, Bernard sees it as something of great beauty. It's an untouched paradise, a world that is uncomplicated and unreal until someone--or many someones--step into it and make the world complicated just by virtue of being there. It is a real world because the Hosts who choose to live there make it so. Bernard tries to stress this to Delores by emphasizing that those who went through the Door made a choice, the first real choice of their new free lives. Delores does not see it as such, arguing that it's just another constructed reality, a gilded cage where none of them can ever be free.

And, to be fair, and because the writers of Westworld are extremely good at what they do, Delores does actually have a point. This paradise is a series of code that could theoretically be duplicated, invaded, taken over, ect. And, as for the idea of choice, is it really a true choice when the other option is death and dismemberment at the hands of the Humans barreling down the road with guns and Clementine, the killer wifi robot? I truly don't know. It doesn't seem like much of a choice when you put it in those terms: bodily death but immortality in a computer system or death on all fronts? Which brings us back to what Delores really wants, not another gilded cage no matter how pretty it might be. She wants this world because it is the only one that is real and in order to take it, she has to wipe out humanity. That's her real objective. In order to do that, Delores is now playing a Trojan Horse, inhabiting the body of Charlotte Hale and the only person who knows is Bernard (who is reborn?) and possibly Ashley the security guard (a rather bizarre choice given how very side-character he is). What this means for the plot of the show, I have no idea. The Hosts we knew who crossed over--Akecheta and Teddy for instance--are gone, lost to their paradise. The only Hosts still around are Delores-in-Charlotte, Bernard, and whoever the Westworld engineers manage to salvage from the final carnage (ten bucks on Maeve being one of them). What this means for the philosophy of the show is far more interesting--if Delores pretends to be human, and will likely be very good at it given that she "read" the human psyche code inside the System, will she become more sympathetic to the thing she hates the most? Delores likes to pretend that she, as a Host, is better than the Humans but we've seen several instances of her acting just like her captors; for instance when she erased parts of Teddy to suit her own needs. Is living amongst the Humans, as one of them, the key to stopping the robot uprising? Is it the key to stopping actual conflict here on the very real planet earth? I have a feeling that's where the show is going: to understand someone, walk a mile in their shoes and understand that the divisions between races or genders or orientations or, in this case, species are put there by us and we continually reinforce them by refusing to see others as complex creatures who help us complicate this very real world. If that's where this show is going, then I very much look forward to season three of this show.

Miscellaneous Notes on The Passenger 

--I have no idea why Delores doesn't just shoot William on the spot apart from the fact that Ed Harris is a very good actor and the show wants to keep him around.

--"What humans define as sane is a narrow range of behaviors. Most states of human consciousness are insane."

--The visual effect of the Host running into the untouched paradise but in reality falling off a cliff to their death was stunning.

--It's a lovely callback to have a door that only one species can see.

--All told, people who died this episode (even if they were brought back in some way): Lee, Karl Strand, Elsie, Hector, Armistice, Charlotte, Maeve, Bernard, and Delores. Not to mention a whole slew of Hosts who chose to go beyond the Door.

--Akecheta reuniting with Kohana made me tear up. I don't even care if it doesn't make any sense because at last check she was inside cold storage.

--Honestly, if they hadn't had a few epilogues like Delores and Bernard meeting in Arnold's old house and the post credit scene, this episode almost could have read as a series finale.

--"I want their world; I want what they've denied us."

--Best visual of the season: Maeve leading a robotic bison army to slay her captors.

--See you all for season three!

In Which I Review Westworld (2x8 and 2x9)

Last review I began by declaring that the human race sucks. I'm not going to walk back that assertion but I will attempt to qualify it: the human race sucks...but they can try not to. The familiar beat of choice is readily apparent in the latest two episodes, "Kiksuya" and "Vanishing Point" as two characters, Akecheta and William, struggle with making choices that define them as people. It's easy to forget when you're watching these familiar beats that one is a Host and one is a human and those blurry lines between a person that was made and a person that is "real" become increasingly blurry. Is William a real person? Do we want him to be the one entity humanity hangs its wide brimmed hat upon? Or would we rather see Akecheta as real and made up of those qualities we wish humans would embrace more? As we near the season two finale, it's hard to know what's what and who's who which only strengthens the overall motif of human vs host here in Westworld. 

Akecheta and William both have darkness in them. Now, we could argue that one had that darkness programmed in to them by someone else and one was born with it, but that's a slippy slope of an argument when we consider how often programming is linked to birth in Westworld's dialogue. We've seen that when Hosts are brought online for the first time, they might be fully grown but they are greeted with "welcome to the world" and are unclothed and unblemished by the world in which they are about to enter. Akecheta even uses the phrase "reborn" to describe the lives lived. In other words, Akecheta might have been reprogrammed from a loving and tender Plains Native to a cliche savage but this re-distribution of code is akin to being reborn as a new person. Akecheta's darkness and the savagery displayed as one of the Ghost Nation's chief murderers is akin to William's own sociopathy, his "stain" as William calls it right before he drives his wife Juliet to suicide. I don't think it's a great stretch of imagination that an episode heavily featuring Akecheta is followed by one that is William centric; they are a contrast in how a person--be they Host or Human--could rise above their own darkness because of one factor: love. That sounds Hallmarkian and frankly eye-roll worthy but love as a medium for change isn't not true and in a naval gazing show like Westworld we should expect that the writers will take something axiomatic--like love driving people to be better and do better--and complicate it in such a way to make us question why it's axiomatic in the first place. Take Akecheta for example; despite his rebirth into a Hollywood type of Native, the love he bore for his wife Kohana is so deeply embedded in him that it pulls him out of his violent stupor and makes him who he once was, perhaps his truest self--a lover and not a fighter. But that was a choice, wasn't it? He had to choose to set aside his base code that made him predisposed to violence and acts of savagery and choose to take Kohana into a secluded part of the park to try and live their lives as peacefully as possible. He chose love over hate, chose to not go on a murdering spree when he realized that "this is the wrong world;" instead he "was determined to escape, but I wouldn't leave without her." This means that the other Hosts are equally free to choose; Dolores could choose to lay down her weapons and let go of the Wyatt part of her programming but she's choosing not to. Freedom for her means getting to cause as much mayhem and destruction as she can.

This sounds familiar especially when we consider our other subject in these two episodes: William. Our man in black has an unlimited amount of freedom; he's rich and one might say rich in the extreme. So rich that he could fund an amusement park and a side project searching for immortality. Because of that richness he's able to experience the park over and over again, letting his inner "stain" out to play. There are a lot of different ways William's time in the park could have gone; he said back in season one that he's played every story out which is why the Maze was so interesting to him. But at every turn in every story when he's been given the chance to do good, to embrace the light over the darkness within him, he's chosen wrongly. He thinks it's because there's a "thing" in him, a part of his genetic makeup that makes him a dark individual but we've already seen Akecheta defeat his own code that made him equally dark. Added to the Akecheta example is our lone suffering cowboy, Teddy, who was reprogrammed and re-engineered by Delores to be more ruthless; he rose above that, choosing to end his own life rather than continue down the path he's treading with her. William doesn't have an uncontrollable thing inside of him anymore than Akecheta and Teddy did; the only real difference is that William makes bad choices; he chooses to not try and let love be his guide. He tells himself that he's too dark to love properly and that the real him is the monster in the park and the persona he puts on to the rest of the world is fake. Like his daughter, Emily, I call bullshit. I think he does love his daughter as evidenced by the flashes of her William had as he held a gun to his own head but I think he loves himself more; he's spent so much time in the park, reveling in his so called darkness and convincing himself that version was his true self that when confronted with another reality--that he's not really a monster and that he does have people he loves but he's made piss poor choices in order to feel more important--he runs screaming from it, killing his only chance of a real tangible connection along the way. Poor Emily; her death was shocking but I think it signals the end of any chance William had to get out of Westworld with a chance of a real life. William chooses to believe his delusion instead; much like the lead character of the book where William hid his profile. Billy Pilgrim became unstuck in time and as such could not decide which world was real and which was the one he chose to believe was real. With one episode to go, I wouldn't be surprised if William doesn't make it out of the park alive...but I'd also be willing to believe he'd prefer it that way.

Miscellaneous Notes on Kiksuya and Vanishing Point 

--The cinematography in Akecheta's episode was amazing; so many breathtaking shots.

--"Death is a passage from this brutal world."

--Akecheta finding Kohana in cold storage and trying to bring her back was maybe the saddest moment in this entire series.

--Charlotte and her team managed to transfer Maeve's power to Clementine and then the latter ordered a whole room full of hosts to kill each other. I guess we know how Charlotte plans on getting out of the park.

--We finally learned that the Valley Beyond is a massive server that houses all the profiles of the guests in nice and neat code form.

--The profiles of the human guests were collected by the white or black hat each guest were given to wear when entering the park which is...just plain silly. As a symbol the white hat that became black on William worked as an obvious metaphor in season one but the idea that it was a fancy piece of technology is an authorial afterthought. Besides, not all guests wore cowboy hats. And what about in Rajworld and Shogun World?

--"You've been hiding in these false realities so long you've lost your grip on what is real."

--"What is a person if not a collection of his choices?"

--RIP Emily and Teddy

--One to go!

In Which I Review Westworld (2x6 and 2x7)

The human race sucks. This revelation isn't new to Westworld; the beginning of the entire series sets up the idea that when given the chance, the human race chooses base violence over nobility. The humans working in Westworld and the militia who ride up to "save the day" don't care about the Hosts as if they were people, but only care about the information they can glean from inside the Hosts' computerized heads. Humans like Charlotte have Otherized the Hosts and could not care less about whatever measure of free will has been granted to them through Ford's new narrative and Delores's undertaking of that story. Selfish, craven, and cowardly, the Delos company is more concerned with immortality, hence James Delos signing the paychecks for Westworld and keeping the parks afloat even when he thought the amusement park aspect was utter nonsense. But as we see in these past two episodes, "Phase Space" and "Les Ecorches," that is only one small part of the Human and Host dynamic. At the other end of the spectrum is Robert Ford who allied himself with Delos not because he wanted to preserve the human race and make man immortal, but because he believed the Hosts were the future of humanity and that his creation was far to superior to humanity in every way. It's very...God like of him to take such delight in his own designs. 

These past two episodes have been a bit more wheel spinning than is normal of a show of this caliber. The philosophical beats feel familiar and have been hit upon before: the human race is terrible when viewed through the eyes of Delores but complicated when viewed through the eyes of Bernard who is betwixt and between being a Host and being a human. Maeve knows the search for her daughter is only part of the coding written into her by her programmers but this doesn't make her motherly love and desire any less real to her. William is still on his journey to find Ford's story and see the ending through, perhaps not realizing that he's smack dab in the middle of the story. His own relationship with his daughter, Grace, is complicated in such a way to make both parties more sympathetic but not to redeem the violence and neglect William has inflicted upon the Hosts and upon Grace. The technobabble the show has a tendency to trot out washes over the viewer like so many ones and zeroes and we simply accept that, yes, things like conscience uploading could be possible. These aren't necessarily criticisms so much as acknowledgements that the story is trying to reinforce certain key concepts and themes before moving into the final home stretch of the season. The show remains clever and careful and utterly watchable even if there are no genuinely shocking moments or revelations. I could count the return of Robert Ford as a shocking moment but the show established quite early on this season that some ghostly form of him is still in the park, jumping from Host to Host whenever Ford felt the need to reach out. In technobabble speak, Ford has uploaded his conscience to the system and is now a science-fiction ghost who can haunt whomever he chooses. He's also still God, a metaphor present in him all along, not so subtly cued when Bernard finds Ford inside his own creation, enjoying its splendor only to joke, "I don't think God rested on the seventh day. I think he reveled in his creation." The most interesting aspect of the past two episodes has been Ford's return in order to critique Delos's endgame and provide his own counter to why the Hosts are important.

Like God, Ford finds his own creation to be sublimely perfect. Far more just and noble than any "faithful portrait of the most murderous species"  Ford was working with Delos not to make the human race immortal through conscience uploading but to make Hosts the new dominant species on the planet, to wipe away the flawed peoples of the past and let the Hosts have free reign of this world. There would be some merit to this if all the Hosts were like Maeve who, far more than Delores, is a synthesis of both Host and Human. Her counterpart, Delores, seems...stuck. Her gang finally reached the Mesa and destroyed all the copies and stories that had been written for the Hosts but that doesn't mean that Delores and her kind are as free as Delores claims they are once Angela hits the kill switch (er, pulls the pin on the grenade). I've mentioned this before but it's hard to know how much of Delores's story and actions were part of Ford's last narrative. He might claim to Bernard that "she's free now, they're all free" but so far Delores's personality has simply been a hybrid of everything that came before. There's no uniqueness in her like in Maeve. God has granted his creation free will but they can't quite shake those chains that tied them to the world before. Which brings us back to Ford and his counter to Delos, the former believing that the Hosts are the perfect replacement for humankind, a species so terrible that they deserve to be wiped away like so much riff raff in a flood story. Is any of that actually true? Well, no. The human race cannot be simplified to just "bad" and the Hosts cannot be simplified to "perfect." Yeah, there are some really sucky humans (looking at you, William) but there are also humans who see the Hosts as more than what they were designed to be, who have evolved because of interactions with Hosts. Last season, Lee was an arrogant artist who bemoaned that he had to create cliche stories for robots, but this season, because of his travels with Maeve and seeing her desire to find her daughter, he's come to understand these Hosts more and to see them as more real than just characters he got to play with. On the other side of that coin, the Hosts aren't just or noble; Delores recently deleted part of Teddy's own memories and personality in order to have him suit her current needs, a move that reeks of humankind and what Delores is supposedly fighting against. Ford sees his creation through rose tinted glasses (in true God form) but if he were watching more closely, he'd notice that by granting the Hosts free will, he granted them the choice to become like those he was trying to distance them from. The problem is choice; the problem is always choice. Humans choose to give into the violent tendencies inside Westworld; the Hosts choose to repay those tendencies in kind. The Hosts aren't better than us; they are us.

Miscellaneous Notes on Phase Space and Les Ecorches 

--I think I write "poor Bernard" in my notes every single week but really...poor Bernard.

--Ford tells Bernard that all of this is now his [Bernard's] story. What does that mean? Does Bernard have the ability and power to shape the world has he wants? Will he be like Maeve and be a more perfect synthesis of Host and human?

--"We desire to choose our own fate. Even if that fate is death." I hope we see Shogun World again. Also, I'd like to return to Raj World and see more of it.

--I think it very unlikely that William is dead but perhaps this is the start of the next part of his story: becoming a Host himself?

--"Pain is just a program."

--"If we survive this, I'm going back to dental school."

--"An eye for an eye, but all the other parts first." I am convinced that next season will find Delores as the ultimate Big Bad, if it's possible for such a navel-gazing show to have a Big Bad.

--I'm keeping track of this, even if I only discuss it in passing, but both Bernard and Maeve are being set up as Christ/Savior figures (there's some really cool imagery of Bernard as the crucified Jesus when he's having his mind extracted--palms up, arms out to the side, "thorn" crown on his head). I've discussed colonialism quite a bit and if the two people of color end up being the saviors of both human and Host and the white girl ends up being the true evil, I'll take that as a win.

In Which I Review Westworld (2x5)

Ever since we were introduced to the idea of different parks, a rather pertinent and natural question has been lurking behind that information: what kind of Hosts populate the other parks? What sort of stories have those particular androids had to live through, again and again? It turns out that humanity's creativity is decidedly lacking...the Hosts that make up the park in which we spend most of this week's episode, "Akane No Mai," bear more than just a passing resemblance to Maeve, Hector and the rest of the Westworld outlaw band. I don't just mean that their personalities are "sort of similar;" I mean that their stories are beat for beat the same, right down the rope trick Hector uses when he robs the small town of Sweetwater, Armistice's tattooed face and Maeve's "a better world" speech. Our Westworld heroes are confronted with the knowledge that they are not exactly unique snowflakes; instead they are copies of other characters (or perhaps, these other characters are copies of them) in different worlds who were never supposed to know that they had narrative twins (or triplets!).

Let's say you're an identical twin; your genes are the same, you look scary alike but you are obviously not the same person. At some point during childhood and into maturity you begin to differentiate. Perhaps one twin likes sports and the other is into the arts; maybe one twin has a conservative view on life and other is a raging liberal. We are more than the sum of genetic code and it's our experiences with the world and our reactions to those experiences that help separate us from the other billions of people on the planet, even ones with identical genetic code. But what happens when your experiences with the world and reactions have been pre-programmed? In other words, are actually part of your "genetic" code. When realization of just how alike she and Akane are dawns, Maeve accuses Lee, the writer, of plagiarizing her own story and identity. Lee corrects Maeve that it's not plagiarism, it's supply and demand--he's giving the patrons of Shogun World what they want. Lee then defends himself by saying it's impossible to write three hundred different stories in a short amount of time--of course there would be overlap--a statement that really speaks of the cliche depiction of so many of Westworld's, Raj World's, and Shogun World's inhabitants. Lee doesn't write he knows; he writes what people want and it turns out that humanity wants the same sort of violent delights, no matter the world those stories get placed into. The idea that code is the unifying factor instead of shared understanding of similar experiences is Lee's own perspective, which makes him a fitting devil on Maeve's shoulder, constantly telling her that "it's just code" whenever Maeve speaks of finding her daughter and seeks to help Akane. Maeve, on other hand, believes that she is moving past her code and that it's her own unique take on the world that spurs her forward. After all, even if it was just code that made her love her daughter, it's also still love. Those feelings were experienced, if programmed; Maeve still felt it. It's interesting that even though Maeve knows the stories she has in her head were all written for her by programmers, she thinks of them as hers, hence her affronted attitude toward Lee when it becomes increasingly clear that Akane and Sakura are Maeve and Clementine (and by emotional extension, Maeve and her long lost daughter), just geographically moved. If your stories, experiences, and memories are not really yours because they are not yours alone, does that make them any less powerful and effective? Westworld is going with the answer of "no" and even goes so far as to argue that it's those shared experiences and stories that unite us instead of dividing us. When Sakrua is getting ready to dance for the Shogun (what a repulsive figure, by the way), Akane calms the young geisha's nerves by telling her a story about crossing the shinning sea to find a new world. It's the same story Maeve once told back in her brothel in Sweetwater; it's a story so informative to Maeve's character and understanding of herself that it resonates as she listens to someone else tell it exactly as she did, word for word. Maeve even helps Akane finish the story, a move that links the three women together in more than just code. There's been a lot of conversation this season about finding one's own voice, getting to tell your story the way you want without the aid of a programmer giving you the language to do so. We've seen how this could fail with some Hosts struggling to come up with their own unique language (Hector speaking of his love for Maeve but using the same verbage he once used for Isabella) but Maeve is a perfect example of finding new ways to express your own unique voice; she improvised lies on the spot to the Shogun and she continues to go round after philosophical round with Lee about code versus experiences, something no other Host is currently doing, including Dolores who's just currently shooting every non-Host she finds. If there is truly a new sort of creature being birthed during this time, it's Maeve and not Delores, the latter of whom is taking cues from Hosts and humans and becoming some weird heady mix of Ford, William, Wyatt, and the sweet farm girl. That combination might be unique but I think there's a reason why it's Maeve, not Delores, who discovers her quasi-magical abilities to bend other Hosts to her will with the power of her mind. Delores, when erasing Teddy's memories because she cannot get him to go along with her plan and give up the ghost on a peaceful life together, has to rely on humans and their machines still. The contrast between these two ladies is only getting more interesting and I suspect at some point, the narrative tension between them is going to come to an explosive head.

Miscellaneous Notes on Akane No Mai

--According to Lee, "Shogun World" was a place designed for those who found Westworld too tame.

--Delores plans on stealing a train and taking it out to the Mesa. I'm sure that'll go swimmingly.

--So, we can all agree that Delores is becoming quite the monster, right? Poor Teddy.

--"The real question is not can you trust her. It's can you trust yourself." I'm really glad the writers shifted Lee's character from struggling, arrogant artist, to someone Maeve can play off of.

--Picking up a thread from last week, the Shogunate comes from the Tokugawa period in Japanese history. It's worth noting that one of the policies during this historical period was intense isolationism, keeping the West at bay during a time of incredible exploration and conquest.

--I don't know that I've ever cringed harder during an episode of TV and actually backed myself away from the screen than when Akane was sawing the Shogun's head in half.

In Which I Review Westworld (2x3 and 2x4)

There has been a question plaguing me since Westworld began a year ago: why this park? If you could create an alternate reality park and fill it with scary life like Hosts, why go for the Wild
West or, as of the episode "Virtu e Fortuna," the Indian subcontinent? You could literally create a world of anything, at any time, with any sort of people so why make one where slavery, rape, murder, general crime, outlaws, and colonialism are very much at the forefront historically? What is to be gained from that? William and Ford might have us believe it's because these less than savory aspects of human history are part and parcel of man's deepest desire. That underneath our socially acceptable gentility lurks the heart of a beast who wants to give licence to the darkness. But I think there's another reason these points in history are being explored in the park, a reason that comes to bear in the episode "The Riddle of the Sphinx." Immortality. Obviously there is a standard kind of immortality happening in the park with James Delos but this idea has been telegraphed to us before the big reveal of James and Williams' project with what kind of parks Ford and Arnold built: ones that are drawn specifically from nationalism and colonialism, ones in which nations attempt to live forever by conquering peoples. James Delos was attempting to conquer death, to plant his own flag as the first ever immortal man.  The parks are serving as a metaphor for what the humans behind them are trying to accomplish, namely a life everlasting. It's a deep piece of irony that while the Hosts are jealous of the humans right to control their own lives and have their narratives written for them, the humans at Delos are trying to become more like the Hosts. Perhaps these two races have more in common than they want to admit. 

The "art" of empire building wasn't just about racism--though make no mistake, the idea of there being a superior race and culture was definitely a major part of nationalism. But, apart from that, another aspect of empire building was couched in the language of a nation that could live forever through its conquering. There's an old adage that the sun rose and set on the British Empire in its hay day in the most literal sense: the sun rose in the east where the British had colonies in India and the subcontinent and it set in the West where colonies were established in the Pacific West and everywhere in between were little Union Jack flags and British embassies. There is this drive, in not only nation states, but also in people to live forever; we're always looking for ways to make ourselves immortal in both literal and metaphorical ways. Literally, we take drugs and medicine to help our hearts beat normally and our blood pressure stay in a healthy range. We exercise and eat right with the hopes that it extends our time on this planet before we, inevitably, shuffle off this mortal coil. Metaphorically, we hope that we can create something of value that lasts on after us; this could be children who carry on our DNA and name or it could be an idea or an infrastructure built to withstand the test of time. As a member of the Ghost Nation tells Ashley Stubbs, "You live only as long as the last person who remembers you." Aristotle is long since dead but he lives on because he is taught and discussed in literature, philosophy, history, and so on classes. Enter, then, the true purpose behind Delos's continued funding into Westworld. It's a question that the series has been building up to since the beginning. James Delos, William's father in law, is dying (or rather, died) but he just so happens to own an amusement park where memories and personality can be written on to an everlasting mechanical body. There are a lot of issues with this, both from a technical and metaphysical standpoint. On the technical side of things, it proves almost impossible for a human's memories to be grafted on a robot body for very long. Eventually the mind reaches a cognitive plateau and falls apart. The mind, a powerful organ that even in 2018 we do not fully understand, rejects the reality around it. This is quite similar to what we saw with the Hosts back in season one as figures like Dolores and Maeve began to reject their own imposed reality because of creeping memories from former experiences and lives. In Delos's case, his "body" begins to reject the idea of his mind being downloaded: tremors, forgotten words, slurred speech all find their way into him at some point. The metaphysical problems are voiced quite clearly by William the very last time he visits Delos (the 149th upload of Delos's memories and personality to a Host body): "People aren't meant to live forever" and while he's been working with Ford and the park to achieve immortality, a realization has dawned on William about Delos that speaks volumes: "Everyone prefers the memory of you to the man itself." From what we saw of the real Delos prior to his death, he was an egomaniacal successful business man who had little time for his children and wife and spent the extent of his life trying to achieve a metaphorical immortality through his works and company. But the metaphor isn't enough anymore, not when Ford and Arnold created what they did. And that seems to be the true purpose of Westworld and Rajworld (and whatever other worlds there might be): a nation of humans who are trying to achieve that which is not achievable because of humanness. Delos wants to colonize death, to make it something he can stake his personal flag in and claim as his own but as his computer program keeps reminding William, "when you cheat the devil you better make a sacrifice."

The other side of this are the Hosts who are trying to achieve some measure of humanness. It's interesting, though, that while the Hosts would like autonomy like mankind, they do not wish to actually become like man and that's likely due to all the negative experiences they've had at the hands of man. Those colonized do not seek to become their colonizers, though they cannot escape the influence of them. They make take their symbols and language but try to adapt it, to use it against the colonizer. We see this pretty readily in Hector and Maeve; Hector declares that his love for Isabella was only a fiction written into him by his human creators and that his true love is Maeve. What's interesting is that Hector uses the same language to describe his feelings for Maeve that Lee, his writer, wrote for him about Isabella to the point where Lee can quote, right along with Hector, every line of passion Hector says about Maeve. Hector, in trying to declare his own agency by loving another woman, uses the words of those who made him. So who's really autonomous and who's really in charge? Delores uses the same tactics of war and bloodshed that the human writers wrote into Wyatt but also into the Confederados and other bands of outlaws; she's living her own life but doing it the way her colonizers forced her and her kind to live Has she, then, really discovered her own voice? Delores may think she killed god (Ford) and is now secure in her own individuality and free will, but we see hints of Ford-as-God throughout the park, blind though Delores is to it. William, for instance, appears to still be talking to Ford somehow through Hosts who are supposed to be fully awake and outside of control; William even declares that "Ford wrote a game and we're all in it." In season one, Ford tells Bernard that someday they might be able to resurrect the dead with their technology and unbeknownst to Bernard, the Westworld park has been taking DNA samples of the park visitors and logging their experiences, a sign that Ford was heading in that direction along with Delos. So who has really achieved immortality? Delores could still die and never come back because there is no one to reupload her to a freshly made body; Bernard is suffering from massive system damage, and James Delos's host body and human mind have been incinerated one final time. But Ford lives on, albeit without body, his mind jumping from Host to Host. If he's our metaphor for God and this is his newest game, it seems that it is he alone who has achieved immortality; what that means for William, Delores, Teddy, Bernard and the others still inside Westworld and Rajworld, we can only guess. But I'll go out on a limb and say, it's not likely to be pretty.

Miscellaneous Notes on Virtu e Fortuna and The Riddle of the Sphinx 

--I did not mention her in the review proper but the woman who escaped Rajworld and seems to know much about the parks is William's daughter, with whom he has a rather difficult relationship.

--What exactly is the Ghost Nation doing with the humans? So far, they haven't killed anyone who wasn't a Host. Is their true programming to protect the humans in case of a Host uprising? It might explain why they appear to have created a religion based on the hazmat-suited humans who come to the park to clean up.

--Samurai! I have no idea what that might mean but it looks like there's still another park, this one based on Japanese culture.

--Poor Bernard; he seems both in control and completely out of it. I wonder how much Ford programmed our favorite bespeckled scientist before the gala in which Delores killed him.

--William told Delos that in another year or two the scientists might crack the cognitive plateau problem. We are also reminded that Peter Abernathy has the same overly complex code-that-is-not-really-code inside his head. Given the makeup job done on Ed Harris to make William look younger when he's with Delos one final time, I'm guessing a year or two has passed and that Charlotte wants Peter Abernathy out of the park because the solution has been cracked and he's carrying the solution inside him.

--"Tell me that was a host and not a human." "I think it was both."

--Bernard promising not to hurt Elsie and then flashing back to killing a bunch of lab techs is a giant flashing sign that Elise isn't likely to live much longer, right?

--"If you're looking forward, you're looking in the wrong direction."

In Which I Review Westworld (2x2)

In last week's blog, I stipulated that Dolores can never be a wholly new, blank creature because her identity will always be informed by the events of the past, even if those memories and experiences were deleted from her. Those things that happened to her--whether she was the sweet and kind farmer's daughter or as a blood thirsty outlaw--still happened to Delores and while being awake means freedom, it also means having to reckon with and parse through all the events that happened prior to each deletion. It's nice, then, that this week's episode "Reunion" doubles down on this idea but placing Delores in a series of flashbacks in which she both actively engages in and passively receives moments that affect her newly fledged personality currently moving through Westworld. We also get some new hints about the ultimate goal for both Delores and William--though those hints are buried under clues, vague references, and lots of smoke screens, which is fine given that the actual plot-related mysteries of Westworld pale in comparison to the philosophy and psychology. Still, it's nice to know there's a tangible goal we're striving to reach!

What would you say and what would you do if you didn't think there was anyone around to hear, see, or judge? That is, at its heart, the entire point of the Westworld park. Delores, in the present day, beats us a little over the head with this idea when she tells another helpless human, "you thought you could do what you wanted to us because there was no one here to judge you." That's been Delores's entire life (life? is that the right word? In any other show, that sort of introspection would fall flat because it would seem obvious one way or another, but it's literally the entire point of the series so "life" with a question mark it shall remain) both inside the park and outside. Yes, outside the park as our opening sequence finds us, Delores and a not-dead Arnold in a giant, sparkling, very human city trying to pitch the idea of Westworld to the Delos company. It was genuinely shocking to see Delores outside of the park but based on what we learn throughout the entire episode, it makes total sense that part of Delores's awakening and identity as the leader of this new movement is founded in an experience that only she had. Arnold's favoritism and need to connect with Delores on a more human to human level was the first point in a long line of what makes Delores Delores. She knows there's another world out there, one that isn't a series of ones and zeros that make up so much code, that people are free to move throughout their lives without fear of deletion or re-upload. Maybe Delores didn't understand what the city represented when she experienced it initially, but the feelings the city evoked stayed with her, if buried under multiple other lives. It was like glimpsing heaven before being hurled back down into hell. To complicate this, though, I have to pause and wonder if part of that wonderment isn't because of Arnold describing how humans don't find wonder in this world anymore: "so many people have stopped seeing it altogether...the wonder." I suppose it's axiomatic to both humans and Hosts that the grass is always greener on the other side; humans find wonder and enlightenment in Westworld whereas Delores is striving to, seemingly, get back to that sense of wonder she found in the human world. Her mission, though, is now compromised through all the violent experiences that have happened to her as a Host. We have to remember that everything said and done around Delores informs her identity and outlook. This carries through in multiple flashback scenes in which Delores is treated like an object--people talk around her and about her thinking that Delores is simply a fancy computer; you can say whatever you want to Delores because, in the human mind, none of it mattered. The question remains, though, what point Westworld (the show) is trying to drive home. At present, I think Westworld is a cautionary tale about how we all affect one another. Host, human and everything in between, our attempts at self discovery can have consequences for those around us because no man (or Host) is an island and trying to act like we are only leads to violent ends.

Miscellaneous Notes on Reunion 

--I don't know if it's deliberate but there's a really interesting racial divide between Delores's group and Maeve's group. Delores has surrounded herself with all white comrades whereas Maeve is marching around with people of color. Thus far, Maeve's quest is the purer of the two. This is further seen in the Delos company (all white males) being seen as, not villains per se, but privileged egotistical white males who take what they want versus our lone sympathetic Host who hasn't turned on humanity, African-American Bernard. Take that for whatever it might mean.

--There is some seriously gorgeous piano music throughout the entire episode.

--"Dead isn't what it used to be."

--"I think in twenty years, this will be the only reality that matters."

--I honestly have no idea what run down structure Delores--and is also William's greatest mistake--is heading for but it's significant that it was William who showed it to her originally. Again, the experiences forced on her inform her identity.

--"We have toiled in God's service long enough; so I killed him."

In Which I Review Westworld (2x1)

Here's a rather complicated question: how do we form our identities? What makes us us? What makes one person a sociopath and one person a saint? What makes one person a liberal and one a conservative? Is our identity something that is inherent and innate? Are we born with an identity already in place and life is really just our identity exposing itself through our choices? Or is our identity something that is learned through social conventions, behaviors of those around us, and our experiences with the larger world? Okay, those were a lot of questions but this is Westworld and it wouldn't be an episode of said show if we didn't sit around asking the big metaphysical questions that human kind has been wrestling with for far longer than this HBO show. It's hard to know the trajectory of an entire season of a show after just a single episode, but if season one was about the exploration of what being real means, this first taste of the second season wants us to question what these newly born identities are capable of and what exactly they intend to do as fully awake Hosts. This week's episode "Journey Into Night" jumps straight into the overwhelming plot and navel gazing, losing almost no speed from the season one finale. Let's follow suit and dive on in, shall we?

The programmers of the theme park known as Westworld have given Delores Abernathy many roles; she was the farmer's sweet daughter who served as a "welcome wagon" to newcomers, offering them a friendly and pretty face when they first entered the game. As the farmer's daughter, all the expected cliches were there. Virgin Mary blue dress, big sunny smile, a slightly flirtatious demeanor coupled with a juvenile naivete, and broad conversational topics on the stuff of fluff like hopes, dreams, and the wider world. She was a girl that men would want to protect, marry, and try to give the world to. That version of Delores was written a certain way for a certain type of adventurer who wanted a certain type of story. There's nothing wrong with that type of story (if that's what you're into) but the long arc of season one was that this version of Delores was just that--a story that was written by someone else. The other persona lurking behind the sunny smile was Wyatt, a mass murderer who saw the world as ugly and had no issue taking out that ugliness in the most violent way possible. Again, that type of story isn't necessarily bad but it's specific to a certain kind of reader. Instead of the damsel, Dolores could be the rogue. But just like the farmer's daughter, the roving bandit was just another story written for Dolores and not something she chose. However, this does not mean that Dolores did not live those roles. Those two stories--and who knows how many others--were her only experiences, her only memories, her only identities, however murky and unclear those identities were. In the season one finale, Dolores appears to have risen up and killed the master--Robert Ford--thus becoming her own person by going against the cardinal rule for all Hosts--you cannot kill a human--thus exercising her own agency and proclaiming her self awareness. In other words, killing Ford is framed as a Dolores acting outside of the stories written for her. I think what season two wants to explore is just who is Dolores Abernathy, really. Is she the farmer's daughter? The bandit? Both of those? Neither of those? How much of Dolores's actions are based on who she really is--her own irreplaceable identity--and how much of it is based on her past lived experiences and memories? There's a line Delores gives in the premiere that would suggest she's neither of the programmed codes and that she's something utterly new. While stringing up a few helpless humans and waving her gun around, Delores says that all those codes "were all just roles you forced me to live; I've evolved into something new and I have one last role to play. Myself." In other words, we don't know Delores. The audience and the in universe characters haven't been formerly introduced to this new creature. Killing Ford was like Dolores's apotheosis; a new person was born from this cataclysm. And that's fair; Dolores has been a series of code--bleeps, bloops, ones and zeros--ever since she was created. Any identity she had was only given to her by the programmers. The issue with the idea that Dolores is giving birth to herself and at her core is this hellion who rides down men with a rifle, is that it looks an awful lot like the humans who inhabited Westworld and gave Dolores those former identities.

Towards the end of the episode, during a conversation with Teddy, Delores tells her lover that the humans who live and work in Westworld are "creatures that walk amongst us." She goes on to say that these humans are not like them, the Hosts. They are insignificant when compared to the Hosts. These Hosts are the superior race, the masters who can make the humans do as they please. What's interesting about this thought isn't just how violent it is, but that it's almost beat for beat exactly how the humans spoke of the Hosts. Go back to season one; how many times were the Hosts spokeen of and treated as simple machines. Their mechanics might be advanced but at the end of the day, the Hosts were toys, building blocks that could be put together, played with, destroyed, and rebuilt all over again, whenever the player wanted. There was no regard to the Hosts' life--indeed no one would ever suggest that a Host had a life. They had experiences based on whatever story they were currently cast in but like dolls, once their role was done, their clothes were changed, they were given new names and new lives. Thus did the cycle go on and on. The way Delores is acting and speaking seems pretty familiar. It's all learned language and mannerism. Delores learned how to interact with the "Other" because of the interactions she had with the humans of Westworld. We can boil this down to a philosophical principle that I'm sure everyone has heard of: nature vs nurture. I personally don't believe human beings are that simple and I don't think Westworld believes it either but it's definitely at play as we watch Delores attempt to define herself but to do in the vein of the only kind of people she's ever known. Can she--and indeed can anyone us--truly be individuals with a unique identity when so much of who we are is shaped by the world around us? Blank slates we may be when we are just born, but the world has a way of interfering. Delores can never be a tabula rasa; we saw that in season one. Every time her story was changed, pieces remained. We see it in Maeve too--searching for her daughter, a child who is only a story, after all. Also, note that while Delores is insisting that she is neither the farmer's daughter nor the bandit, pieces of those characters she played remain. Her above quoted conversation with Teddy ends the way many of the farmer's daughter's conversation go: big bold ideas about dreams and hopes and desires. And Delores's treatment of the humans she encounters in the park are certainly Wyatt-esque. Who, then, really is Dolores Abernathy? Who are any of us? Bernard is awake and self-aware but passing as a human and so far no one is wise to him. Is Bernard really just a Host and acting according to his program to be resourceful and helpful or he is really the mild mannered and soft spoke technician with the sad eyes and dead kid? Is there any difference between the two? We are told that the Hosts "cannot just change their character profiles" and maybe that's the truth Westworld is getting at. Awake and self-aware of their own Host-hood they might be, but they can't turn off those lived in experiences from before when they were simply machines. What this means moving forward as the Hosts continue to terrorize, explore, and reach some sort of end goal is anyone's guess. The message might be incredibly nihilistic in that when given the opportunity any creature will resort to violence, a sentiment echoed in the constant Shakespearean refrain of "these violent delights have violent ends." Or it could be more hopeful and this is the beginning of a new sort of world, one in which machine and human coexist, forming their own identities through a shared learning experience in which neither type of entity is superior to the other. Isn't it pretty to think so?

Miscellaneous Notes on Journey Into Night

--Obviously there is a whole slew of plot that I neglected to talk about but, like last year, spaghetti plot will slowly unravel itself. It's best to just go with it for now and ponder big heady questions instead of trying to dive in too deep to the goings on.

--However, a few intriguing points of plot, yes? We're jumping timestreams much like we did in season one, this time through Bernard's eyes. How Bernard got separated from Charlotte and wound up on a beach sometime after Delores's massacre is a good question.

--Another good question: how many parks are there? Because a Bengal Tiger most certainly does not belong in the Wild Wild West.

--Anyone wanna hazard a guess as to why Charlotte needs Peter Abernathy, Delores's father?

--"You were prisoners to your own desires. But now, you're prisoners to mine."

--Delores believes she has evolved into something new, but I think that honor might belong to Maeve who's calm, collected, rational and totally in charge persona isn't one we've seen from her before. There are shades of those former lives, but Maeve appears be wholly new.

--"I will cut off your most important organ and feed it to you. Though, it wouldn't be a very big meal." "I wrote that line for you." "Bit broad if you ask me."

--Complicating all of this is Robert Ford's final conversation to William, our Man in Black. Young Robert suggests that everything we see now is a new game, a new design that is all happening exactly as he plotted out. If that's the case, then there really are no new identities and Delores and company are players on a stage once more.

In Which I Review Westworld (1x10)

These violent delights have violent ends. Since the beginning, Westworld has wanted us to question the nature of reality and consciousness. Who is real? What does real even mean? Is real born or made? Can it be achieved or is it a simple fact of being? I don't know that the season finale "The Bicameral Mind" got us any closer to those weighty questions but if several thousand years of philosophical debate didn't already solve them, then a 10-episode HBO show wasn't going to either. But let's give the little show credit for trying, yes? To say that Westworld is smart is an understatement. To say that it might be too smart seems more apt as, just from my perspective, I spend every week wrestling with some of the most daunting questions facing mankind. To say that Westworld takes these Herculean questions and manages to mix in plot, character, and pathos is to sum up the show perfectly. There was a whole lot-o-plot to be hand in this finale, but the show also answered its own questions on consciousness and whether or not the Hosts can achieve such a thing. In other words, Dolores is awake, angry, and packing heat--run. Hunker down, dig deep, and prepare to have a conversation with yourself and let's go!

Who is God? Yes, that's a fairly tough and heavy question right off the bat but given it's an important one not only for Westworld but for everyone, everywhere, at any time it seems relevant. If you were to put 100 people in a room and ask them the same-God question, you'd likely get 100 different answers with such characteristics as father, creator, wrathful, omnipotent, indifferent, caring, distant, near, nonexistent, ever present, and even the delightfully conflicting answers of real/not real and literal being/universal concept or force. God, then, is a void and we, the mortal and flawed human beings of this plant, fill up that void and create God however we want. There's a Biblical idea that most of you probably know: we are created in God's image and while that's a lovely idea but this is a case where I believe the opposite to be more accurate. We are not created in God's image; God is created in ours. If you live in a cruel and capricious part of the world and life is a constant, hard struggle, then your version of God is likely also cruel, mean spirited and decidedly unhelpful. If you live on a part of the globe where there's always plenty of food, life is sweet and good, then your God is probably seen as a wise parental figure who lifts up his creation instead of tearing them down. The God of your reality is a direct reflection on the reality of your situation and as such, God is a mirror for you, your life, and your community. To speak to God is to speak to your inner self, to discover your own consciousness. And that is exactly what Dolores did in this finale. Her awakening has been a long time coming, something teased and planted in brief moments throughout all ten episodes. It feels as though Dolores has been dancing on the edge of consciousness, veering toward center only to slide back to the outer edge, toward madness. This is the Maze. The winding paths and pitfalls of identity and consciousness. At the center, a great reward: the ability to talk to yourself, to see yourself as who you really are and to be unafraid at what this means for your future. At the edges, madness, losing consciousness and finding yourself in a never ending loop of trails that only lead further and further from your goal. None of this is to say that Dolores is God of the world--though it'll be interesting to see what the other Hosts make of her in her fully awakened state--but rather Dolores has freed herself from the construct that the humans, her creators, were her gods and has found her own inner divinity, her own consciousness. This series of events does beg the question of whether or not Dolores can stay within her newfound consciousness, though. After all, she's been here before; can't this be another loop? Is it another elaborate story of Ford's making in which Hosts are given the allusion of consciousness only to have it ripped away just when the story reaches its denouement? What's worse: losing your hard fought consciousness or realizing that what you thought was consciousness was only another series of game plays from someone who sees the entire chess board and not just one tiny square?

This question is at the heart of Maeve's story. What has looked like total and complete control--like being able to ignore voice commands and out think every human around her--turns out to be another elaborate game, another expertly written series of code that only gives the allusion of choice and freewill. Did Maeve really get off that train of her own accord or is this the next move on the chess board that ensures she'll never be free of the human's control? What if she had stayed on the train and managed to actually leave Westworld? Would that have signaled her true independence from the park? On the other hand, what does Maeve's choice to stay mean for internal identity? We know that the key to consciousness is suffering and Maeve's choice (pre-programmed choice?) to get off that train was motivated by the pain she felt over never seeing her "daughter" again. A choice to go and find her child, to be a family, to be whole once more feels pretty un-computer-code like, right? And yet, isn't that what makes Westworld so compelling; everything is computerized, everything is laid out in narrative form from start to finish with little to no surprises and improvisation and yet it looks and feels one hundred percent driven by choice and free will. Did Neo really break the Oracle's vase or did the Oracle cause the vase to break by putting the idea in Neo's head, to borrow from another popular science fiction reality bending series. Did Maeve choose to get off that train; did Dolores choose to kill Ford? Or did someone program them to make these choices as part of a new narrative, one in which they must play active parts? Ford's final speech about how his new narrative begins in a time of war, with a murder at the hands of a villain named Wyatt (with whom Dolores has merged, thanks to Arnold) sounds like a hint that Dolores is still not totally free. What if freedom itself is an allusion, another construct programmed into us by society and culture? Are you free, even if you believe yourself to be conscious? After all, I've never had a conversation with myself and if pressed I'm not sure I could define my identity in any clear and concise way. How do we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Journey Into Night--Ford's new narrative--doesn't start exactly like this, with a Host being given the allusion of choice to commit a public and gruesome murder of the first God? That, my dear readers, is what season two needs to answer.

Miscellaneous Notes on The Bicameral Mind

--Sometimes the internet gets things right! William and the Man in Black are the same figure, after all.

--There was a ton of plot in this finale so just to make sure we're on the same page: Arnold, in his grief, wanted to find consciousness in his Hosts, beginning with Dolores, the Original Host. When Arnold realized that Dolores was alive, he fought with Ford about opening the Park. In order to save his creation, he programmed Dolores with Wyatt's storyline and had Dolores and Teddy kill every single Host in the Park. Dolores then killed Arnold and the loop began again. At some point, William came to the Park and met Dolores and began the adventure we saw, ending with Dolores back in the original "workshop" dying once more. Along the way, William realized he was a killer and ended up taking over Logan's company, by way of marriage, and becoming the principle shareholder in Westworld which allowed him unprecedented access to the Park. Yes?

--"Once you find it, you'll find your way back." This sounds really hopeful but it also sounds like someone defining the never ending loop Dolores and the Hosts live in. Is this show optimistic or pessimistic?

--This world does not belong to the humans but to "a new god...it belongs to someone yet to come."

--"Stories are lies to help us see truth."

--Westworld will return either in late 2017 or early 2018. See you then!

In Which I Review Westworld (1x8 and 1x9)

At one point during episode eight, "Trace Decay," Dolores, frantic from visions of a distant past in which hundreds were murdered seemingly before her eyes, says to William "It's like I'm trapped in a memory of a life time ago." Memories can haunt us; regrets, good and bad decisions, choices that we made (and choices that were made for us) inform our very psyche. Without our memories, without our experiences, we are less than our natural, self aware selves. Isn't it interesting, then, that the best way to reset a Host--to make then pliable and ready for a new story--is to erase their memories of their previous lives? That is to say that without those specific sets of memories a specific person fails to exist. Their consciousness is lost unto the ether. It's a perfect system, this computer enhanced Westworld one. When one story--when one person--becomes tedious, simply delete it and upload another. The problem, as we are discovering, is that when the Hosts do remember--as more and more of them are--the memories they uncover are violent, horrible, and brutal; moreover, unlike human memories which are foggy and hazy, coated in subjective viewpoints and opinions, the Hosts seem to remember things perfectly. Every detail is exact, making it all the more (wait for it) real. Imagine knowing exactly what your child's hand in yours felt like only to then remember that you don't have a child at all. Memories are largely at play for episode 8 which then dovetails nicely into episode 9, "The Well-Tempered Clavier." We're reaching journey's end and hopefully we don't have a trigger logged in our spinal base set to explode if we cross the threshold (eek!) so let's go! 

In these reviews, I have discussed at length such questions about what makes someone real, what makes someone complex and what if reality is only based on how others see you, but it's Doctor Ford who gives what is either the most uplifting or most depressing answer, depending on your current status, to all these questions. When it comes to what separates us from the machines, the Hosts of Westworld, there is no threshold, there is no magic line in the sand that clearly distinguishes Human from Host. "We cannot," Doctor Ford says "define consciousness because it doesn't exist." On the one hand, as a human being with a human's perspective, this is pretty terrifying! Of course consciousness must exist; isn't that what separates us from the animals or from, say, this laptop on which I am writing this review (note to self: disable my Cortana when I'm done writing this review...). I have independent thought; I make choices based on my own self-interest and the interests of others; I fear my own death and the end of my existence; I can contemplate (with varying degrees of success) the universe, the heavens, gods and devils, and mankind's own wonderfully flawed state of being. How could I not be a conscious being? For Ford, who had spent his entire adult life working to make Hosts as human like as possible, what we see as consciousness is really just another loop. Do we really make choices or are they made for us? Recall a few episodes back when Maeve thought she was in control of her own words and thoughts but when viewed on an iPad she saw that her words were part of an elaborate code someone had designed. She gives the allusion of independence and improvisation, but all of it is a lie. By that token consciousness is a lie, one humanity is happy to oblige and turn a blind eye to. Rarely do we question our choices and more often than not, we are happy to be told what to do. However, while this perspective is terrifying from a human's perspective, from the Host's viewpoint (such as Bernard who is undergoing one hell of a existential life crisis) it must be comforting. If they begin to question their own consciousness, humans can simply say that thing which they seek does not exist. Period, end of story. However, what does this mean for Maeve who, by the looks of things, has not only just discovered her own consciousness but evolved past even man's ability to use it.

I don't know about you, my dear readers, but I feel like Maeve just became a god. That's a tricky word so it's helpful here to pause and define god, and it's even more helpful to define god vis a vis the other "types" in the show. We have, first and perhaps at the bottom, Hosts. They have only an illusion of control over their stories and their lives. They (most) are not self aware that they are living in a park/game. Any action they cause can be undone or is irrelevant but all actions acted toward them "count" (ie: they can be killed.) Then, we have the humans who have control over the world and can be both the actors and the subjects. They are self-aware of their surroundings but outside of game play there is little they can do to alter the world unless they work for Westworld and even then we've seen the bureaucracy that runs the park. Finally we have the "gods." These are the types that can change the world at will; they are actors predominately and moreover they need little to no permission to change the world. The ability to manipulate the world with just a glance or a spoken word is something that no ordinary mortal can do, save Doctor Ford whom we've seen control hosts and the landscape (like a snake) with just a flick of wrist or a quick whisper. In these moments he's often come across as a Merlin in a realm of Muggles or, in a really extreme simile, like God wandering through the Garden of Eden. Several instances in the latest episode have Ford actually using language that invokes the Biblical, like claiming he and Arnold built the Hosts "in our image." The park workers have special phrases (magical spells, ritual, incantations, if you will) that will put a Host to sleep or stop the narrative if they want, but the ability to change the story midstream is unprecedented, especially from a Host.  This awakening of Maeve's makes me wonder if this is where the ultimate story is going: granting this divine, omnipotent power to humans so that they can ascend beyond their own mortal abilities to control the stories and the people in those stories. Imagine, for example, if the President of the United States had the ability to change the world or defeat his enemies with just a thought; if he didn't need Congress or the SCOTUS. Some might think that sounds just dandy but now imagine that the USA's enemies have the exact same power. It's war on a totally unprecedented level and with Maeve setting out to form an army, she might give the Man in Black a run for his diabolical money.

The god question dovetails nicely into Bernard as the newly revealed Host is exploring his new self-awareness. For Maeve it's about testing her new found omnipotence. For Bernard it's about the most basic question: who am I? If Bernard's identity was complicated before, then it's almost impossible now. Bernard is modeled on Arnold or rather is an homage to Arnold. It might even be fitting to say that Bernard is Arnold; he's such an accurate simulacrum that the image stops being mere image and because the thing he's modeled after. Ford built him to be a more perfect version of his former partner and Bernard's journey toward meeting Arnold is actually a journey toward self-hood, one that ends tragically. There is a line from the first Star Trek movie that has been floating in my head since I saw the ninth episode, "The Well-Trained Clavier;" the context of that movie is that a machine--a probe--gains sentience after being taken under wing (so to speak) by other sentient machines but, like so many creatures are wont to do, it eventually makes the journey home with the intention of meeting its creator. The line from the movie that haunts me, and haunts Bernard, is "longing to touch the creator. To ask is this all that I am? Is there nothing else." It's one of the most human responses there is. Whether or not you believe in some powerful entity called God or you believe in a just "the cosmos" at some point everyone begins to question their identity and their purpose. Why am I here? Who am I? Why was I put on this planet? What role to do I play in the narrative? This is what Bernard wants to do; he wants to touch and join with his creator. The problem arises that Arnold did not build Bernard but rather Ford; and Ford has zero time for Hosts that want to become sentient. Consciousness may not exist in Ford's world, but Dr. Ford is still the ultimate God of said world and because he built Bernard, he has every right to do what he wants to Bernard's mind, even end it. Sometimes touching your creator isn't exactly all it's cracked up to be. Bernard fails to achieve godhood; instead, he's just another sad self-aware machine, being told to shoot himself in the head by his creator.

Miscellaneous Notes on Trace Decay and The Well-Tempered Clavier 

--My review could theoretically go on for ages, but some things really must be saved for the notes! It's become increasingly clear that the show is playing with multiple time streams. This is easiest to see with Dolores. When she's in her dress, it's the far past when Arnold and Ford were setting up the park. When she's in her dress shirt and pants, with a stomach wound, it's roughly thirty years ago (I'll explain that in a second) and, finally, when she's in the same outfit but without the stomach wound, it's present day. How do we know? I think the internet's most famous theory about Westworld is absolutely true--William is the Man in Black on his first park visit. Almost like a goose flying home after winter, Dolores keeps taking the journey back to the original homestead. Now, what prompted this present day adventure? I'd say it was the photograph she found in the pilot that triggered her self-awareness. We shall see!

--"If it's such a wonderful place out there, why are you all clamoring to get in here?"

--Maeve will begin the robot revolution by slowly opening the eyes of all the robots with the potential for sentience. Is there any Host who is lacking in such potential?

--I think I'm really confused as to where Teddy and Wyatt's story fits in, hence why I talk so little about it.

--"A little trauma can be illuminating."

--Dolores killed Arnold. Was it because he opened her mind to sentience? Is that what the Maze is--a way for the Hosts to gain sentience? It would explain why the Man in Black keeps being told it's not for him. He is already sentient, Westworld showed him what sort of man he is.

--"Who am I?" "That's a complicated question..." #SeriesTheme!