Previously: A stray was tracked and Dolores strayed from her loop.
—
Dissonance Theory
Marines: 3D PRINTED ROBOTS! (It’s weird to yell at you about the credits when it’s always at the beginning. I guess Game of Thrones is also like that, but there are some many previouslies that we recap those, too.)
Jessica: Thinking about 3D printing robots makes me cringe as to life imitating art TOO CLOSELY RIGHT NOW
Mari: Bernie brings Dolores online in a private room. He asks her where she is, and she replies that she’s in a dream. Bernie asks her what happened before this. She remembers that her parents were killed and starts gasping. Bernie orders her to limit her emotional affect.
Jess: I want to put Bernie in my pocket so he can limit my emotional affect.
Mari: Yes.
She woodenly says that her parents were killed and then she ran. Everyone she cares about is gone and it hurts so much. Bernie offers to take the pain away, but she wonders why she would want that.
“The pain, their loss… It’s all I have left of them. You think the grief will make you smaller inside, like your heart will collapse in on itself, but it doesn’t. I feel spaces opening up inside of me like a building with rooms I’ve never explored.”
Jess: Dolores is the driving foreshadowing force of the show.
Mari: These words echo what Bernie himself said to his most excellent wife Gina Torres. It also brings so many of the things this show is trying to explore together. The way memory makes up who we are, but also the way that memory ties with emotion. The people in charge give the hosts emotion in order to give the experience a measure of authenticity, but have said on multiple occasions that they wipe memories, and their tied emotions, because it’s the least they can do.
Bernie tells Dolores that her words are very pretty and wonders if they were written for her. She says in part. She adapted it from a scripted dialogue about love. If you go back and read it and take the basic ideas about the overwhelming feelings, like your heart could collapse, new spaces inside of you, you can see the stirrings of romance. And yet, that yawning feeling, that never ending expanse? That is so much of grief like I have known.
Dolores asks again if there is something wrong with her, with these thoughts that she’s having. Bernie says no, but he’s not the only one making these decisions. Dolores asks for his help. Bernie asks what she wants. She admits that she doesn’t know, but “this world? I think there may be something wrong with this world. Something hiding underneath.”
That’s a few miles away from seeing the beauty in the disarray, dearest.
Dolores wakes up, but she’s outside and looking up at a tree. She’s still holding her revolver. She turns to see William watching her. You know who around these parts watch women sleep, William? Yeah, abusive boyfriends is who.
Jess: This was really poetic and beautiful until freaking William.
Mari: Player piano. Maeve is kind of zoned out by the bar. Clementine joins her and offers a penny for her thoughts.
Jess: PLEASE WEAR THIS COSTUME AND TAKE OLD TIMEY PHOTOS. WITH THE CAT.
Mari: No promises but wink.
Clementine fondly remembers one certain non-paying customer who she actually enjoyed. Things start to get all distorted for Maeve. She’s hearing things through static. Clementine can tell something is up. Maeve looks at Clementine with concern and tells her there is something in her eye. In a closeup of Clementine’s eye, we see blood dripping from her temple into the corner of her eye. The camera twists and now we see that Clementine is on the floor, shot through the head. Maeve is on the floor next to her, staring. One of the guests in the saloon is just being trigger happy because vacation woo. He makes his way to a still alive Maeve and shoots her.
Jess: This scene was so abrupt I was trying to figure out what was happening and then bam.
Mari: McDonald’s Rubber Suited Men enter the saloon to grab all the dead hosts. From Maeve’s hazy, semi-offline perspective, we get pieces of a conversation. One of the surgeons rushes the other, telling him to sew Maeve back up and send her back, even though there is still a bullet fragment in her belly.
Maeve snaps out of this flashback and she’s still at the saloon. We’re joining Clementine rewound a few beats, still talking about that one non-paying customer who she actually enjoyed. Maeve seemed to see or predict a bit of the future much in the same way Dolores did when she anticipated being shot last episode. It’s slightly Karnak-esque, but without being in a horrible show.
Maeve freaks out and we see her leave the saloon. In her room, she strips down to her underwear and examines her abdomen. There is nothing there, but there is a spot of blood on her undershirt. She tries to draw the McDonald’s Rubber Suited Men from her memories. She moves a floor board in her room to hide the drawing and finds a bunch of the same drawings hidden in there. She freaks out even more.
As they walk-and-talk, Elsie expresses her disbelief at Bernie just caving. He says that QA clearly thinks Behavior is hiding something. Elsie says they are. There is clearly a pattern of behavior here, from Abernathy to the stray, hearing voices and climbing mountains and carving stars into things. Elsie claims everyone around here has some kind of agenda except her. (J: Elsie coming in with what everyone’s feeling, you’re my hero!) Bernie interrupts her and tells her that the hosts don’t imagine things. She does. That stray didn’t carve Orion in that rock. There are 3 stars in Orions belt, not 4. Seems like a technicality, Bernie.
Jess: This is why I can’t take Bernie seriously.
Mari: William offers Dolores his jacket. She takes it but walks away from him. William wants to take Dolores back to Sweetwater. Ben Barnes doesn’t want to go and we finally get his name: Logan! The host leading them says that if they don’t leave now, they will definitely lose the outlaw they are chasing. Logan says that since William is the one who dragged him on the stupid adventure, they are going to finish it. William doesn’t think they can take Dolores on a bounty hunt. Logan offers to blow her brains out so the park will just come pick her up. (J: Logan is just the efficient person you need on an adventure?) (M: Jess, no.) William stops him. Logan assumes the park must’ve sent Dolores their way to inspire William, putting the only girl in the park he even smiled at directly in his path. “This is why the company needs to bump our stake in this place,” Logan finishes. “They can even give you a sense of purpose.” William thought this trip was about welcoming him into the family, not business. Logan says that with their family, everything is business. William smiles but he don’t look happy.
Man in Black kills a snake but doesn’t find what he’s looking for. They are at the Blood Aroyo and there are plenty of snakes, but none of the egg-laying variety. Lawrence asks about the maze again. MiB is like, “wow, I’m glad you asked. Let me tell you more about my mission and purpose in this story.” He actually says, “This whole world is a story. I’ve read every page except the last one. I need to find out how it ends. I need to find out what this all means.” Lawrence suggests that they stop killing snakes and head to Pariah, where his friends can help. MiB says his friends have nothing useful. Thankfully, something useful appears. Ingrid Bolsø Berdal is bathing in a nearby lake and, if you’ll recall, she has that body and face snake tattoo.
MiB is so busy looking at Ingrid Bolsø Berdal that he doesn’t realize that they are surrounded by men with guns. Ingrid Bolsø Berdal walks up as one of her men says that they’ve found more food for the horses. MiB is immediately taken with her sassiness, and asks where she’s headed. She exchanges looks with her Man with the Lines and says simply that they are headed to retrieve something of great value. MiB says she looks a little shorthanded. Man with the Lines says they have enough men, actually, so MiB promptly shoots two men without lines. Two positions open! (J: Another efficient asset!)
A QA tech tells Stubbs that Dolores is making a big deviation from her loop. He asks if she’s accompanying a guests, but the QA tech can’t tell since Ford is messing everything up with his new story. Stubbs tells her to flag Dolores with behavior so they can pull her today and check her out.
Some town. Dolores sees Lawrence’s daughter sitting by a fountain. She greets her and asks where she’s from. “Same as you,” the little girl says.
Mari: Dolores flashes back to a white church and this same girl, wearing different clothes, drawing in the dirt with a stick. Dolores snaps out of it and looks down in the dirt in front of her. There is a picture of the maze. Dolores snaps out of this when someone calls her, “ma’am?” She looks up to see this a gentleman. He got a report of a girl missing from Abernathy Ranch. Is that where she’s from? Dolores closes her eyes and hears voices and flashes to that church and is generally not okay. She tells the gentleman that her father is dead and she isn’t going back. He grabs her arm forcefully but Dolores just grabs him back and stares him down.
William interrupts and asks what’s going on. The gentleman says he just got a report of a lost traveler. William says Dolores isn’t lost. She’s with him. The gentleman excuses himself and leaves. William tells Dolores that they have a lead on Slim. She can stay in this town, if she wants. Dolores says she feels like she needs to keep going.
Ingrid Bolsø Berdal meets with two other cowboys while her gang watches. Lawrence explains that she’ll signal if the information they provide is good. And then she promptly kills the two cowboys so MiB assumes that was the signal.
Nighttime. Camp. Dolores apologizes for any trouble she’s caused between William and Logan. William says it’s no biggie. He’s happy Dolores is there. He asks where she’s headed, but Dolores doesn’t quite know. (J: Dolores, go wherever Logan takes you!) William figured they kept the hosts in zones or paths. Dolores doesn’t fully understand that, but she does reply that she used to think there was a path for everyone. She never asked where that path was taking her. She launches into a story about losing one of her herd and worrying about it. Her father would tell her that the steer would find its own way home. It never occurred to her that they were bringing them back for the slaughter. William asks if she wants to go back home, and she gives more feelsy lines about feeling like something out there is calling her. She stares at the moon and all of a sudden things go black. Instead of the moon, Dolores is looking at a flood light. She’s outside of her home after her nightly slaughter. One of the McDonald’s Rubber Suited Men kneels down beside her.
Outside of the memory, Dolores almost faints again, but William is there to catch her.
Ingrid Bolsø Berdal’s men are at camp. One of the guests hypes himself up to go talk to Man in Black. Grateful Guest thanks MiB for the work he does. His foundation saved his sister’s life. MiB cuts him off and says one more word and he’ll slit Grateful Guest’s throat. “This is my fucking vacation.” Listen, I’m not going to pretend that I don’t feel similarly when people talk to me on airplanes, but I don’t say it out loud. Also, real cool that MiB runs a life-saving foundation. Not that men in positions of power being douches is a ~*reveal*~.
MiB takes a seat next to Lawrence who shares that what they are looking for is deep in the Ojal prison. These men plan to blast their way in with a stolen cannon. MiB says that ain’t nobody got time for that super #basic, sloppy plan. He stands and announces that he’ll go by himself and grab the prison goods. Ingrid Bolsø Berdal asks his price. All he wants is the story of her tattoo. Why the interest? Well, I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear that MiB has a speech/story prepared for that. Ever hear of Arnold? Guess you could say he was the original settler of these parts. He created a world where you can do whatever you want except die, which means that no matter how real the world seems, it’s still just a game. Except Arnold broke the rules, though, and died in the park. Except MiB believes that he had one story left to tell. There were a lot of exceptions in that story.
MiB takes out his scalp maze map (J: UGH), and tells Ingrid Bolsø Berdal that her tattoo might be the next piece to his puzzle. Ingrid Bolsø Berdal isn’t overly impressed with MiB’s plan to take the prison with just one match, one pistol and one idiot (Lawrence), so she takes him up on a wager.
The next morning, MiB and Lawrence are riding in a wagon to the prison. They are in handcuffs. MiB calls Lawrence out on the silent treatment. Lawrence is like YEAH because I could’ve been dead in peace and not having to LISTEN TO YOU. MiB reaches into his pocket and we see that there is a law man sitting in front of them. MiB shows that all he was reaching for was cigars. He calls them the super best cigars ever, pulling one out of the pack to emphasize. (J: This is very Miami of him, and I appreciate it.) The lawman snatches all his cigars except the one MiB is holding. He puts that one back away in his jacket. And then he gives another few rousing lines about choices and how Lawrences has always been a prisoner, never making a choice of his own. “What if I told you, I’m here to set you free?””
They arrive at the prison. The lawman tells the apparent Sheriff or guy in charge that he’s brought in some horse thieves. The Sheriff says that’s actually the most wanted man in these parts: Lawrence Pedro Maria Gonzalez. With a smile, MiB says that Lawrence would prefer a firing squad, and the Sheriff is happy to oblige. Lawrence tells MiB that he’s going to kill him. MiB shrugs and then gets locked away in the prison.
Conveniently, MiB is locked in the exact cell as Hector Escaton. Hector asks who tf MiB even is. “Your salvation.”
Lawrence is marched out to a post for his execution.
Hector notes that he’s never met MiB. MiB says no, because Hector always seemed like a “market-tested” kind of thing: big gun, tasteful scar, stuck in his loop. Hector thinks he sounds like a man who is tired of wearing his guts on the inside. (J: Who wants to keep their guts on their inside. Really.) MiB tells him there is no need to get testy. He was just wondering about Hector’s world-view. Hector says he believes that the whole world will end badly and no one will be saved. MiB thinks they have more in common than he initially thought. Hector wants to hear MiB’s story, but there’s no time. In the normal loop, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal would be arriving for him in 3 days, but MiB is speeding that along. He strikes his single match.
Hunger Games Room. A tech gets a request for a pyrotechnic effect. Low-yield. Two charges. Stubbs looks at the request on his own handheld device and approves it. That’s a neat look into the inner-workings of the park. I mean, I still have lots of questions about ROCKS and KNIVES and LIABILITY INSURANCE, but this was neat.
Lawrence is being tied very slowly, thankfully.
In the cell, MiB lights his cigar, and puts it in the cell keyhole. After a few seconds, the thing blows up. I like that he called the other people’s cannon plan #basic because, despite the CONVENIENCE of all that working out well for MiB, I’m pretty sure his cigar was sold by ACME.
Jess: I’m hoping it’s actually by a guy in Miami.
Mari: MiB and Hector walk out of their cell. They are immediately confronted by the lawman who brought them in, but CONVENIENTLY, he lit up his cigar like one hot second ago and it explodes in his mouth, giving us not the first face KABOOM we’ve seen. (J: What’s an HBO show without Kabooms.) MiB spots a gun and grabs it.
Outside, the Sheriff asks for any last words. Lawrences tells him to get it over with. In a mirror of the first scene we saw with Lawrence, we focus on his face as we hear a bunch of gunshots. He flinches, but at the end, he’s still alive. MiB removes his blindfold.
Back with Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, she’s super impressed. Hector invites MiB to join them on further adventures, but he declines. All he wants is his tattoo story. Ingrid Bolsø Berdal pulls him aside and tells him that when she was 7, masked men in devils horns rode into her town and killed everything. They gutted her mother from her jaw to her sex. 7 year old Ingrid Bolsø Berdal had to paint herself in her mother’s blood so the men would think she was dead. She’s tracked down nearly every one of those men and used their blood to paint her skin again. The snake’s head remains uncolored on her face, above her eye. MiB asks what the head of the snake’s name is. Despite his many names, most know him as Wyatt. MiB smiles. Creepily.
Jess: Is there any other way to smile?
Mari: Yeah, not creepily for starters.
Sweetwater. Townspeople are watching as a bunch of Natives are walking through town. One of the Native children drops a doll and Maeve picks it up. It looks like a McDonald’s Rubber Suited Man. Maeve runs after the child who dropped it and asks for an explanation. Unsurprisingly, the child grabs its doll and keeps walking. A soldier tells Maeve not to waste her time. The doll has something to do with their religion, and she won’t get any information from them about it.
Saloon. Maeve is at the bar, drinking. Clementine is negotiating with clients. (J: doing what they do best.) When she’s done, Clementine joins Maeve at the bar. Maeve recognizes one of those men from a WANTED poster. She thinks he rolls with Hector. Clementine asks if Hector is the guy who lives with the “savages.” Maeve flashes back to the McDonald’s doll and confirms that that is indeed Hector.
Bernie is in bed watching Theresa get dressed, and they have a little post-coital banter. Bernie stands to help Theresa zip her dress. She tells him that she’s going to talk to Ford tomorrow. He’s creating chaos in the park and the board will be descending soon. Bernie tells her not show Ford a defensive side and explains that an easy tell is crossing her arms over her belly. She adjusts her stance and puts her hand on her hips. Theresa tells Bernie that sometimes, despite his best efforts, he can actually be quite charming. They kiss.
Jess: WAS NO ONE ELSE SHOOK BY THIS. I WAS SHOOK.
Mari: Topside. Theresa finds Ford at his maybe-steeple site where they are blasting rocks. Theresa tells him that this seems like a massive endeavor. If he needs more time, she’s sure the board will be happy to oblige. Ford is sure they’d be happier if he delayed his endeavor indefinitely.
Ford leads Theresa to some kind of villa restaurant and they have tea.
Mari: Ford asks if she is afraid that he’s lost his way. Theresa says that they are simply concerned about the extent of the changes he’s making. They want to protect his legacy. Ford notes that Theresa doesn’t like this place. Theresa says that she admires the place. She came here once as a child and maybe even ate at this restaurant and sat at this table or maybe the one behind them. When she started working there, though, she realized that this place wasn’t something she would enjoy. Ford admits that in the beginning, he imagined that things would be perfectly balanced. Even had a bet with Arnold about it when they created 100 hopeful storylines and no one took those up. Ford lost the bet. Arnold always held a dim view of people and preferred the hosts. He didn’t want to let in guests or business people. Ford thought people would understand that they created not a theme park, but an entire world, in which every inch and every blade of grass was designed.
The waiter pouring their drink is overfilling the cup and it’s spilling onto the table. Theresa looks up and realizes that every host in the restaurant is frozen. Every worker out in the field is frozen. Ford continues that in here, they were gods. Theresa nervously lights a cigarette. She asks how that worked out for Arnold, and Ford says he went mad. Ford hasn’t. He has always seen things very clearly. Theresa realizes that this is indeed the very table she sat at with her parents. The very chair. Ford creeps that they know everything about their guests like they know everything about their employees. “I do hope you will be careful with Bernard. He has a sensitive disposition.” All the hosts come back online. (J: Theresa did not need to spill her tea. HER TEA HAS BEEN SPILT.) Ford asks Theresa “nicely” not to get in his way. She stands and tells him that the board will agree with her. They will be sending a representative. Ford says they already have. Doesn’t she know? Ford dismisses the server and everything starts shaking. Theresa peers over the balcony and sees a big ass bulldozer. He tells her to tell the board that his project will be done on time, and it won’t be a retrospective like they probably fear. He’s not the sentimental type.
William and co. have found Slim, but he tells Dolores to Stay Put. Logan, William, and the host leading them head into the little bar and there is a shoot out. Logan enjoys it a lot.
Jess: Logan enjoying things is the only joy on this show.
Mari: I’m upset it comes via Logan so there goes my joy.
MiB and Lawrence find Teddy strung up to a tree by Wyatt. I hate to hit you with questions outside of my questions list at the end, but how much time has passed? I’m almost sure we’ve experienced at least one day. Why didn’t Teddy get wiped? What the heck time is it? Teddy asks to be put out of his misery. MiB is like “nope” and cuts him down instead. (J: Poor Teddy!)
William and co. are riding back to Sweetwater with their bandit to collect their reward. He won’t stop yapping, though, and tries to convince the men to let him go because he works for El Lazo, who will pay them handsomely. Logan shoots the host leading them, and William asks what I was going to say applies to Logan all the time, but really is the bonus thesis statement of this show:
It’s time for Hector’s heist, this time set to Habanera. The deputy steps out, like before, and he gets killed like before. Hector and Ingrid Bolsø Berdal do their dance and shoot lots of people. When Hector gets inside, though, Maeve is ready and she holds him at gunpoint.
HQ. A QA tech says that there is a family heading back to town early and it’s a bloodbath. Stubbs gives her the go-ahead to jam the guns of the bandits and wrap the storyline up.
Saloon. Hector explains to Maeve that the drawing is of a Shade, belonging to sacred Native lore. Maeve gives him the first number: 60. Maeve asks what the Shade does. They are the men that walk between worlds, sent from hell to oversee their world. The next number is 47. Maeve’s final request is that Hector cut her in the stomach where she was shot. She remembers being shot and then the Shade was standing over her and then it was like it never happened. Hector chickens out, saying that lore has it that some people could see the Shade and it was a blessing from god to see the people who pulled the strings. Maeve thinks that sounds like bullshit and takes a swig of alcohol.
Jess: AFTER SUGGESTING TO LOOK FOR A GHOST BULLET BY CUTTING OPEN HER STOMACH, THE SHADY PEOPLE IS WHERE SHE DRAWS THE LINE?!
Mari: We all have to draw our line somewhere.
Outside, the men of the town kill Ingrid Bolsø Berdal.
Inside, Hector cuts into Maeve and then digs into her. She screams, which the men hear when they enter the saloon. Hector finds the bullet in her gut and asks what it means. Maeve means that she’s not crazy after all and that none of this matters. So they kiss instead of trying to escape and the tonwsmen shoot at them.
Mari: Listen, I’m not here to kink-shame impromptu surgery, but I am concerned.
Lots of talk of gods and hell and devils here. It’s clear that being around robots who have to obey him has given Ford a god-complex, just like being invulnerable (sort of?) has given the Man in Black one. This ties to the idea of the bicameral mind, the voices of gods speaking to the host creations, and yet some of them seeing the Shade and the people pulling the strings as devils. It makes sense because the show really wants to keep us on our toes when it comes to who is good here and who is “evil.” Logan, our resident bro-y asshole, reminds us that this isn’t real… right? They are robots and this is a game. MiB is on the path of the only thing he thinks matters. Maeve ends with the realization that nothing matters, and yet I’m sure that it will set her on a path toward some truth that does indeed matter to her greatly.
Jess: I definitely think the show is trying to paint the picture of dual natures; Is anyone fully good or fully evil?
Mari: More layers of MYSTERY here, more than there is payoff. We get tiny things, like a bullet in the gut, or a joining of storylines (MiB and Teddy, Dolores and the bros, Hector and Maeve), but we’ve got a whiles, I think, before things truly start to make sense.
Jess: The mysteries are only piling up her, and I have more questions than answers at this point. Will they get answered? I wish Dolores could spit some foreshadowing right here.
Mari: Alas. All we have is:
A List of Questions
Are we seeing things out of order or across multiple timelines? I mean, yes, because of the flashbacks but also more than that?
Have none of the employees thought that maybe this super tech-y job is spying on them all the time always?
If Ford put Wyatt in Teddy’s backstory and Wyatt is part of the maze, what active part is Ford playing in directing MiB to the maze?
But okay, is this William’s villain origin story or do I hate him for no reason?
Freakin’ William.
Next time on Westworld: Dolores and co. reach Pariah in S01 E05 – Contrapasso.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Jessica Moro’s voracious appetite for books is matched only by her love for cake and reality tv. She’s always looking for new reads, especially books that have surprising twists and happily-ever-afters that are good for the soul. You can find her letting her reading freak flag fly at www.bookcrack.com, covering New Adult reads on USA Today's Happy Ever After, on Twitter and Facebook.