If you watch Westworld for the set pieces, “Decoherence” has got some humdingers for you. There’s Maeve, killing time in Nazi Land by murdering a bunch of, well, you know; there’s Charlotte, making her play to escape from the Delos compound after Serac’s take-over bid succeeds, climaxing in her busting out one of those big ED-209-esque robots we saw a few weeks back; there’s Maeve, interrogating a naked Dolores in that very special Westworld room where Dolores and Bernard used to have their chats; and, perhaps most spectacularly, there’s William beating various versions of his former self to death in a virtual reality take on group therapy. All of this and half a dozen more besides. Caleb and the real Dolores are off for the week (although we do hear Dolores on the phone), but everyone else makes an appearance, including Bernard and Stubbs at the very end, in a twist that feels less like a twist and more the result of someone throwing a dart at a board full of names.
But then, that’s how Westworld’s plotting always tends to feel as it heads into the end of a season. (Did you know there are only eight episodes in season three? I didn’t until I looked it up just now.) There’s a weird sexless porn vibe to the structure, as characters group together in increasingly random combinations, sometimes seemingly entirely due to the fact that it hasn’t happened before. “Decoherence” isn’t quite as messy as the show can sometimes get, and Bernard saving William from the asylum just as William decides he’s going to be “the good guy” has some charge to it, so long as you don’t dig too deep. It’s just, nifty as the set pieces are, that’s the problem with basically all of this. For a show that’s supposed to be intellectually challenging, it’s weird how much of its Achilles heel is “more than thirty seconds of consideration.”
Take that William stuff. It’s visceral and upsetting on a surface level, as William sneers his way through his increasingly hellish time in a madhouse, watching his therapist kill herself after she gets her profile info (this is very well shot by the way), and then getting stuck talking to all the different iterations of the Man In Black to appear on the show, including a new one: little boy Billy, who had a Troubled Childhood. It’s neat to look at, but it still tells us absolutely nothing interesting or new about William, because there really isn’t anything interesting or new to tell about William. His speech about how humanity exists to destroy itself is supposed to be chilling (they even play scary music), but there’s no shock value in it. I’ve been hearing similar speeches from shitty villains in shitty genre movies for the past thirty years.
As for the virtual reality group therapy… Eh. It looks neat, and you can feel them straining to make it profound, but the point is, again, “William is basically kind of a shit.” There’s a feint towards giving him a past with an abusive father, only the show tries to subvert that by revealing that William was just a bad kid; he beat somebody up for insulting him. Even the subversion falls flat. There’s nothing to find in any of this, no revelation that’s going to make William actually worthy of the performance Ed Harris has been giving. Maybe him deciding to be a good guy will give him something to do, but the character should’ve died at the end of the first season. Bare minimum, he should’ve been gone after killing his own daughter in season 2.
Westworld is stuck in the strange position of being simultaneously too short and too long. With more episodes to develop Serac’s world, and Dolores’s scheming, and Maeve’s efforts to play between them both, the story could’ve been richer, less a Cliff Notes version of itself. And if this had been trimmed into a three-episode arc, the writers would’ve been forced to edit out all the cul-de-sacs they wander into in order to keep things serialized and fill out a full (if shorter than usual) season. Compromising between the two, we’re stuck with arcs which are at once under-developed and belabored, sacrificing narrative momentum for slow, measured pacing, but without the depth or texture that slowness tends to bring. A lot happens in “Decoherence,” and some of it actually matters. But the pulpy rush of the first part of the season is muddled and intermittent now, firecrackers popping in a haze of smoke, illuminating everything in an instant even though there’s nothing to see.
Maeve was killed in the episode before last. Instead of just building her a new body and getting on with it, she has to meet with Serac again, where she demands helpers; then it’s back to Nazi World, which I guess is a staging ground for her consciousness while they rebuild her physical form. When Serac takes over Delos (all that time spent trying to stop him, and he just does it), he gets access to other host brains, so he gives Maeve Hector. But Charlotte kills Hector in the real world before he and Maeve can get new bodies, so what, exactly, was the point of any of this. Maeve does end the episode with someone to back her up—maybe faux Lee is getting a chance for his big break?
The meat of the action is Charlotte (I’m just going to call her “Charlotte” now and assume you know what I mean; if the actual real Charlotte comes up again, I’ll mention it) trying to placate Serac just long enough for her to download the Delos host data and flee with her estranged lover and son. She almost makes it, only for a Serac thug to blow up her car with handsome man and innocent boy inside, roasting her a bit and, presumably, giving her a reason for vengeance.
It’s possible to pick out the actual meaningful story threads here, possible to imagine a version of this where it all works well. This Charlotte has potential as a character, Serac is a memorably ruthless villain, it’s cool to see robots fuck shit up. But over and over again, the show stutters and circles around its ideas, vamping for time while making it harder and harder to care what will happen next. Maeve has a conversation with Dolores, and nothing of particular interest is said. Bernard and Stubbs rescue William from the asylum, because… I honestly have no idea. Because it would have made even less sense if Caleb did it?
Shows need to feel like they have a coherent world, because that coherence lets the viewer fill in the gaps (or just assume the gaps are filled). It’s not that writers need to explain everything; they need to artfully explain enough so that what we see gives us the impression that there’s a vast edifice behind all of it. They have to create the context their stories exist in, in order for those stories to be more than just a series of incidents that happen and then, eventually, stop. Westworld is hit or miss at all of this—more effective when it was stuck in Delos, even as it grew cramped and repetitive, but it still managed to work at the start of this season, as it leaned on momentum and our familiarity with certain tropes to carry itself forward. But now that it’s reached the point before the point where something actually happens, the momentum falls apart. It’ll play better in the binge watch, I’m sure. But lord help those of us stuck watching week to week.
Stray observations
- William’s asylum is very weird. I guess it’s breaking down because the rest of the world is, but since we have no idea what it looks like when it’s actually working smoothly, I can’t tell if it’s a hellish prison for a society that doesn’t understand how to treat the mentally unwell, or a nice place that William is a jerk in. (When they’re installing the mouth guard that’s supposed to manage his AR treatment, there’s a bit on the computer about finding an “unknown protein” in his blood, which may come up later, unless I completely misinterpreted it.)
- Serac realizing Charlotte is a fake because she’s too concerned with her son should be a great moment, but it’s like reading about a great reveal in an episode summary. I’m not sure why, exactly, although I would’ve liked more time seeing Charlotte struggling with her growing attachment to her “real” life.
- Are all the profiles bad? Like… did no one get a “People like you, you’re doing okay, you’ll get that promotion, retire on time, probably die in your sleep.”
- I really can’t get over how hilariously uninteresting William’s backstory is. Like… it would’ve been a cliche to find out his dad was openly abusive and hateful, but it at least would’ve had some emotional charge. Circling back for the umpteenth time to his obsession over his autonomy is just so, so silly.
- “Seriously. This is what happens to me.” -wee William. (I laughed.)
196 Comments
lol this episode felt like a bad scifi movie and I don’t know if that’s the point or not? Is Dolores in a scifi world and is somehow unknowingly killing hosts? I feel like there’s some twist I’m missing. Although Tessa Thompson looked sleek and sexy doing all that killing.Also I never really understand the whole free will shit in scifi? I liked William’s conclusion does it really matter? I don’t currr what happens to his character, it doesn’t matter.
Bernard finding William has to be part of Dolores’ plan. That’s where Charlotte sent the data for making more pearls.I’m curious who Maeve’s partner is going to end up being. And I’m curious what Maeve’s going to end up doing when the chips are down.
I give it an F! You can’t have Liam McPoyle beaten to a pulp and expect anything higher! ;)“I’m curious who Maeve’s partner is going to end up being. “I thought it was pretty obvious that it was Lee, wasn’t it?
Already referenced this in a different comment, but I think the protein was used to track William, then feed the location to Bernard.
Would be nice to talk about the show without shitting all over it (albeit with prose that is showy and is all over the place itself) and taking pot shots without any real examples rather than focus on plot developments and where this is all going or may be going.unknown protein = Tracker, you missed it.
Zack is a terrible reviewer who does this with all of his assigned shows. Even for bad shows/ episodes, his critique is just pretentious rather than constructive or revealing. He also had a bad habit of missing easily observable details, probably because he’s so busy figuring out how he’s going to write one of his pretentious reviews.
I agree, I found myself skimming through this review as it is more about his grievances with what the show is or isn’t, shoulda, coulda, woulda, rather than what has happened, is happening or could happen. Talk about an insipid and uninspiring read, I enjoy the comments more so, clearly, for here I am!
I’m glad you decided to create an account just for this. Nice.
Out of curiosity, what does being pretentious mean for you? I’m genuinely wondering how Zack comes off that way here. I don’t fully agree with all his criticisms of the show, but in general I find where each criticism is coming from to be valid.
Yeah it seems like fully half of the space of his reviews isn’t talking about the episode itself, but the idealized version he would have liked to see. These are in general terrible reviews, I think i09’s are much better.
Bingo on the tracker. Charlotte injected him with it before the orderlies took him away in “Exiles” and it’s how she found his exact location so easily.
Ah so THAT’S what she pricked him with. Thanks.
Granted, it’s a tough show to evaluate on an episode by episode basis, but Zack doesn’t seem to be interested in the show they’re making and is instead fixated on a completely different show that he’d like it to be.
They’ve been dropping breadcrumbs all season that this “perfect” picture of humanity is fallible and that actual people are more complex than the algorithm can foresee. First we had the inaccurate version of Sizemore, now we’ve got Serac saying that the real Hale wouldn’t bother checking in on her kid. But when the real Hale felt she was about to die, her ONLY thought was to record a message for her kid.
It’s the defining trait in his reviews.
Zack doesn’t seem to be interested in the show they’re making and is instead fixated on a completely different show that he’d like it to be.So much this. Every ST: Picard “review” was “why didn’t they do it this way” and “this isn’t the Picard I know and remember.” That was the point of that whole show.
I get what he was trying to say, but yeh, I agree. I’m appreciating Westworld tuning down the pretentiousness this season and being fun and smart-ish , but I am not enjoying that lost pretentiousness leaking into its reviewers.Sometimes a murder robot uprising show is meant to be fun above all, and I feel the idea of “prestige tv” is kinda getting in the way of enjoying things, and we end up with these pretentious takes who come across too smug about pointing out the lack of coherence in an episode called decoherence.At least lampshade it so we know it’s tongue in cheek.
Indeed. The whole point of the episode was to put all the pieces in play for the last two episodes of the season. From a writing standpoint, it’s not supposed to make complete sense yet.It is, however, very important to pay attention to the details so you can remember them when they fall into place later.
Show went to shit. Deal with it.
I guess I like this much better than Zack as I was missing the whole host culture. And tonight we had them at their peak Machiavellian programs. Maybe it was all smoke and mirrors but can we at least talk about how cool they were?The only thing better than Ed Harris is three Ed Harrises, calling up that security bot to smash that guard against a concrete wall, oh hell yes. And Charlotte, after the explosion crawling/walking as if a fully lit charcoal briquet, damn!You know, sometimes it’s just fun to see magicians at work and tonight there was an awful lot to enjoy. But I will say, after this Covid-19 pandemic settles down, it’s time to re-open the park.
Isn’t this the first time we’ve seen Ed Harris and Jimmi Simpson together in the same scene?I was wondering what it must have like on set when 2 actors playing the same character at different ages finally work together…
They didn’t show him beating up the kid, and didn’t show the kid’s corpse (or at least if they did, I missed it) so I kept thinking he saved his kid self? Why?
Actually he does his kidself in too. It’s the body in the background with its back to the camera in the jeans and gray t-shirt…
I loved the episode. Fact!
I don’t think it was random. All of these stories were about choosing paths. About making choice and deciding who you want to be in this big fight. What are you fighting for and on which side.We already know Dolores Prime only cares about saving hosts as a whole. She is willing to sacrifice any of them – including versions of herself – as long as she can secure their means of survival.
Maeve was trying to decide if she really wants to go against Dolores or can they just talk it out. That, despite Serac threats and the mistrust, maybe there can be peace between them. But the Connells version of Dolores was right – Maeve was always about personal. She only cares about people she cares and she cares about some of them more than others. Her daughter more than anyone but those who were close to her more than any host. And Hale made the choice for her by killing Hector for good. They can never trust each other. But now they are also enemies. Before it was a contract. Now it’s personal.
We see how Doloreses diverge with experience. Hale one became a better Hale than Hale ever was. The original recipe kept reminding her not to get involved. To remember the only family that really matters is the host Serac was burning. That the humans are not really hers. But she hasn’t lived Hale’s life like Halores did. And she chose them. She chose to try to save them. And now the fight with Serac became personal. But maybe also with the version of herself who left her alone. After all she, like Maeve, learnt to care about some more than just the big picture.
William was confronted with his past selves to try to answer the main question of the season – do humans have free will? Can we really chose our own paths or do we just follow our programming and the predetermined loops. He’s made a choice t kill his past and try again to be the good guy. But he can’t do this alone. He needs a helping hand of one of the real gods. Not the one he was raging about or the one whose information abandoned him in VR. One who really cares.Just like in Person of Interest it really matters if the god cares.
I keep wondering do all Dolores have the encryption keys or only Prime? After all Serac wants Hale intact but if all of them have it his Connells pearl should be enough. Maybe Serac wants to go through all of them to make sure he gets the right one.
Or maybe – it’s no longer in any of the Dolores. Maybe that “unknown protein” in William’s blood is the key and Hale injected him with. After all when Hale sent out the host making data we saw the Genetic Tag Activated – Locating Recipient Server with William’s photo in his asylum garb.
Maybe Dolores is using William as data holder just like real Hale used Peter Abernathy. And maybe Bernard having him was always the plan. While the Doloreses become decoys for Serac – and Maeve – to chase.
Wow, I think you are on to something. Now William really is the key to the maze. This is how he can finally be the good guy. Like how he fulfills his realization from his group therapy AR session.
Thanks. I do think William is either the storage for the data itself or at least contains the decryption keys to the data. I think Dolores put something in him in the Forge. Something that allowed her to give him hallucinations of Emily and let her speak to him in his mind.
I think Dolores also facilitated his turn though all that constant questioning of his free will (she’s also the one who sent him to that asylum) so he’ll be ready to cooperate with Bernard .
Also further to my enthusiasm for Ed Harris. In those close-ups he reminds me of a cousin of mine…………
Really glad to see Hayden Christensen got some work at the end of this episode.
His recent film, Little Italy, ends with him crawling out of a pizza oven, also burnt.
I actually had to watch that film with family. Emma Roberts out acted him, also I’m pretty sure that’s now Danny Aiellos last film.
So we should expect to see Haleores in Darth Vader armor when we see her again?
At this point she might even bring a dead plant back to life just by touching it and try to“phone home.”
Yeah, I was expecting her to go full-on Terminator and do the robo-skeleton walks out of the flames bit, but I was wrong.
lol at first I thought you were referring to sullen young William
Pretty sure the protein thing with William was referenced by DoloriHale as some type of tracking thing. I’m guessing she put Bernard onto William’s location because her omniscience allows her to realize that he would have had his breakthrough with perfect timing.Also, anybody getting Roland of Gilead vibes with William being a gunslinger missing half his hand?
William spent all that time between leaving the Park and getting sent to the Funny Farm doing lefty target practice around the house.
Delos security is still Delos security. Can’t aim and shoot for shit and didn’t learn a damn thing from Westword. Also, lots more cribbing off of The Matrix this time between Hector dying like Swtich and Williams conversations with the other Williams right out of Agent Smith and his copies. And I also hope that they will give Bernard and Stubbs, something to do and a sense of purpose in the last 2 episodes other than being punching bags because watch god mode Deolores/Haleores is getting pretty stale.
Delos security is composed of wanna’ be Stormtroopers who couldn’t get a job on the Death Star.
I liked this episode overall, but I have to point out the inconsistencies in the action scenes. On the one hand the security personnel can’t hit the broad side of a barn even with advanced weaponry—like a 80’s action TV show—yet the Hale fight in the elevator was top shelf, as was the riot robot sequences.What kills a host continues to be a mystery. They burn all the hosts in storage, but an explosion doesn’t kill Hale, as she T-1000’s herself away from the destroyed SUV. I hope we get some answers there.The William therapy scenes were nuts and enjoyable and Bernard/Stubbs rescuing him at the end was exhilarating. I can’t wait to see where that trio goes next. I’m enjoying the macro while worrying about the details, but I can’t deny that I’m sucked in to what is going to happen next.
It’s a Good Dumb Show. It presents itself as high-minded sci-fi, there are flashes of it being a smarter show from time to time – but when a character needs to get out of a wild situation, 80’s action movie logic takes over.
Aka plot armor. Can’t kill Delores, her copies yet, and Maeve yet. They’re needed for the grand finale.
Oi…..oi you, there is no such thing as plot armour. You’re referring to a character just ‘being around’ in the story.This is like criticising someone’s smile and blaming the mouth; without the mouth, they cannot smile at all. If a character lives to the end of the story, they are not armoured, they need to be there or the story cannot finish and thus cannot be called a story at all.
Well, yeah, did you miss the scene where Dolores increased her plot armor parameter up to the maximum?
I think you have a valid point there. The reviewer seems to be expecting a fine wine and foie gras when he should be happy with the craft beer and fat cheeseburger he has in front of him. Not everything has to have a deep, deep, deepity, deeper meaning and not every scene has to be “earned.” Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
aka Lower your standards
I don’t think the standard has changed. I think what’s happened is some of the audience read way too much into the first season than was actually there. This series is essentially still about a robot uprising. While there are side trips where characters question the meaning of it all, it’s basically a shoot ‘em up.Enjoy the ride.
But when 75% of the “ride” is ponderous whispers and incoherent emotional stakes, what can I enjoy? And “enjoy the ride” still means “lower your standards/don’t think”.
Then don’t enjoy the ride and watch something else. I don’t understand why people hate-like television when there is so much variety out there.
Craft beer can be every bit as nuanced and subtle as fine wine. Please retract.
I agree that a well-made beer can be just as complex as a wine. The point I was making was that if you’ve got a big fat cheeseburger of a TV series to watch, order the beer and enjoy the meal for what it is. Don’t order ‘55 Dom and then be pissed that the burger isn’t filet mignon.
This is my problem with the reviewer. His whole review is basically, “ITS NO WHAT I WANTED!!”
That’s what I’ve been saying since last season! This is an entertaining show that is masquerading as a good show. If it were on another network it would have less prestige.
Yeah, that’s always been the thing about this show—Big sci-fi/metaphysical ideas executed really broadly—and I don’t mind it so much this season because it’s just so fun. I mean, I got to see one of those Riot Control bots (more like “Riot Domination”, amiright?) straight up fling a Delos goon out to the synthetic lake on the compound!
80s logic is perfectly fine. A show is not dumber because some characters have to survive.
Yep, lots of hand waiving and plot armor but it’s damn enjoyable.
We know what kills a host – destroying their HCU (pearl) like Hale did with Hector. And we also know they are pretty hard to destroy – Connolls’ survived standing next to a bomb just slightly damaged. So yes, those guys burning hosts was a cool visual but seemed like showing “destroying” a computer by breaking the screen.
But it’s also pretty clear Dolores made herself pretty high end bodies – both Prime and Hale can walk through multiple bullet wounds and Hale smashed that super-durable pearl in one hand so maybe they are more fire resistant than normal hosts. Maybe if you burn the normal bodies the fire eventually destroys the pearls too.
Maeve took a sword to the gut and was dead almost immediately
But she wasn’t dead – just incapacitated. As I said I think Dolores made her bodies are more durable than standard. I think the ones Serac is printing Maeve and co now will be more better suited for combat. And I think Maeve killing Nazis was training for her next meeting with Dolores.
But she died artistically in a beautiful pool of milk. Aesthetics can be fatal for a host.
HCUs can be copied and backed up, so characters can come back from having it destroyed.
Yes, they could do that but Angela destroyed all the host backups when she blew n Cradle. We don’t know if she copied them before she did that. Human data that Hale beamed up to Serac and Hosts in Valley Beyond are the only Park stored brains that we know exist. That’s also pretty much what Maeve knows so from her point of view that was Hector’s real death.But I do think it is likely Dolores copied Cradle data somewhere and once she gets a factory running she’ll print them all out again.
The Delos team at the Mesa found Hector’s body there, right? So his actual control unit was in that body, and they transmitted the data I thought. Wouldn’t that mean his original pearl is still intact and they can rebuild it? Or even if it’s not intact, don’t they have the data? can’t they just look in their “sent mail” box?
I DO believe there was some sort of throwaway line in the first episode where Dolores mentioned “upgrades” to the bodies she would be using. It was a lot like the “dark magics” line to explain Palpatine coming back in star wars, but I think you’re correct in that it was implied Dolores got her hands on materials to make host bodies much more weaponized than the versions in the park.
A simple fire destroyed maeve’s and Hector’s bodies but this massive explosion could not.Once, just once, one time, I would like Nolan and Joy to get away from the totally inept cannon fodder security teams trope. They used it by the truckload in Person of Interest and they’ve gone to 11 in WestWorld.
And this is on cable, with a gargantuan budget and multiple years between short seasons…..
Delos Security = Star Trek Redshirt
With storm trooper marksmanship.
My least favorite part about the “cannon fodder security teams” trope is that every member of those teams just runs out of cover into full view, guns a-blazin’, even after all of their comrades have just been gunned down by an unstoppable murder bot. Do they not have 1) any self-preservation instinct, or 2) any training at all about how to handle a tactical situation? I realize their job is to get into a combat situation, but come on.
Absolutely!Also, they deal with robots on a daily basis but never carry high power explosive shotgun shells or the equivalent of an elephant gun. It’ s like they are shootings 22’s. It’s weird that a 45 was all it took to kill a host in the park.
Bernard and Stubbs arc this season is superfluous. The showrunners ought to just spin them off and make a series of the two of them traveling the world as an odd couple ala Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the “Road To . . .” movies.
I’d watch that
Preachin’ to the choir here! I’ve been complaining from day 1 that neither Bernard nor Stubbs ever actually does anything. What is Bernards purpose in this season?
The Man In Black, who I just call Ed Harris now because who remembers his real name, is also superfluous in all of season 2 and 3. If the scenes were he fights himself and gets some weird plate installed in his mouth weren’t there and we just cut straight to him being rescued, would anything have changed?Also that is a LOT of talking and not-bleeding for someone who had something screwed into the roof of his mouth moments before.
i took it that they were just trying to destroy the cpu-less hosts, with the belief that none of them had pearls in them? maybe i’m giving the show too much credit there.
Either way with the bodies destroyed they can’t really move. You burn them and then pick the pearls up off the ground. Then destroy those.
What kills a host continues to be a mysteryYou need to remove the head or destroy the brain. Wait. That’s how you kill a Romero zombie. Never mind.
Same same
Hey, is your user name from a muskrat in a Rudyard Kipling story?
Yes it is!
Once again, everyone who works security in the Westworld universe is an incompetent boob.
You know you might be going up against a sentient murderbot yet nobody thinks to bring some heaver weapons.
as I understand it, regular hosts die from injuries, because their programming tells them they should. Delores, Maeve, the “awakened” hosts know they are tougher than that, and keep going until their orbs get destroyed.
Also it makes no sense that Serac had to print Maeve an entirely new body (unless he too was trying for some upgrades). She got run through with a sword. In original WW, she’s been shot, burned in a fire, had knife wounds and I can’t remember what else. I never got the impression that Felix and Sylvester were reprinting her each time; just repairing her. And if Serac assumed he would have the ability to reprint Maeve, then surely he figured he could just repair her.(ALSO how did Serac start reprinting Maeve in the Delos building prior to actually taking over the company?)
The “unknown protein” is presumably the tracker in WIlliam’s blood that Charlotte mentions later when his face pops up on her screen.Except… she says the tracker paid off: how? The immediate stuff they talk about right after is how Maeve is getting rebuilt and that the other side has the captured Dolores brain from… that Scottish guy. That doesn’t seem to be related, though.And if the tracker is just showing where William is… that doesn’t make much sense either: Charlotte put him there herself.
On other aspects: the “release the profiles” stuff continues to be silly, nearly everyone who receives one is committing suicide or murder immediately. As Zack asks, where are all the mediocre-to-good profiles? The plight of the background character, I suppose. If nothing else, everyone is very ready to believe that the mysterious text message about their future is totally accurate. Maybe all this latest nonsense with William will give him something to actually do in the story beyond 1) searching for things that aren’t there or that don’t matter to him at all and 2) just being generally insane. I guess “he’s just a self-centered, violent jerkass who doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing” is a pretty good sum-up of his actions so far, so maybe being “the good guy” will be a welcome pivot from that.
I liked the psychiatrist’s husband’s response: “I’m taking the kids, don’t try to find us.” Like, you see a profile generated by some computer about your spouse, and your immediate response is to assume that the computer-generated profile is unalterable truth and you should immediately abandon the person you’ve built a life with? Not “fuck that computer, I’m sticking with the person I love”?
That wasn’t about what the profile projected, it was about the fact that in her profile there was the report of multiple cheating with patients in her past (which is what fueled the prediction of her losing her license in a few years. Didn’t need a supercomputer to tell you that).
Sure, but regardless of what’s in the profile, how does anyone know what’s in it is true? If you suddenly received an email telling you that your partner had cheated a bunch of times, would you immediately abandon them without even checking in with them?
As I noted in another post, I think this society sees Rehoboam as an infallible oracle of truth. It’s been like that for decades, and the world would have collapsed without it (see: Paris annihilated by the nuclear explosion and such), so they’re conditioned to just accept everything it says.
Maybe they do, but I don’t feel like the show has really established that. I got the impression that Incite (via Rehoboam) is manipulating everyone in order to run the world the way they want, but most people are unaware of its existence or what it does.
where are all the mediocre-to-good profilesThose are all the guys who are still working (e.g. all the technicians at Delos, the security guys, etc). Of course we’ve been shown only the fringe cases, like the psychiatrist; what dramatic purposes would have to see someone looking at their phone and saying, “Mmkay, good to know”?Also, I think this society has been conditioned for decades to believe what Rehoboam says, like it was the oracle from the gods. They’ve been taught society is still alive only because Rehoboam exists.
Charlotte sent him there *in order to find out where “there” was*.
OK, that makes sense.
Very True. Charlotte and the rest of the Deloreses couldn’t care less what happens to William now. They needed to know where the facility was.
If the ar stuff is the stuff cerac was working on last week with his brother,. Maybe this is the source of it. The stuff editing the undesirable humans like Jesse
Here’s a thought. The“unknown protein”is the KEY that Serac is looking for . NO Charlotte has the key,so if they’re captured,they cant give it up .But shunting William off to a nut house with the key in his blood sounds like good insurance .
The point of injecting William with the tracker was to find the location of the facility, not so much to help him to escape after Charlotte sent him there. It’s obviously the same facility where Caleb and Jean Serac were “changed.” I think it’s safe to assume they don’t have a billboard outside the place.However, since Charlotte was in the process of absconding from Delos with all the data she could grab, setting William free would provide another obstacle for Serac to deal with in staking his claim on the company.
But it is Serac’s facility, right?
Yeah, a couple replies have put that together for me, I didn’t quite grab that Dolores was tracking William to find that facility (and therefore her tricking him into it wasn’t just an act of revenge).
In as much as the episode made sense, it didn’t make sense. A lot of showing instead of telling, a lot of plot contrivances, new rules for how the simulations work…
William’s freshman level Psych 101 insights… I’ve never before seen a show collapse under the weight of its own self-importance.
Well, it’s official, Westworld is now the Matrix. What a horrible, pretentious and derivative show.
Generally speaking, the show just isn’t must see quality this season. The acting talent is great. The story, not so great. The production and direction apart from some good CGI, is almost amateurish for this scale of an HBO production. The action scenes feel like rehearsal blocking efforts before they actually film it with extras and realistic action – but they really blew shit up. The gun battles are just ridiculous and repetitive. They can’t seem to make up their minds between a world in chaos and the empty archiporn shots, so they end up with lame compromises. Riots are a a few people knocking over planters, maybe one person running down a street, but you can casually drive across town, walk your child, park at your brownstone, have a shootout, murder somebody, blow up a car – nobody’s out to see it, ever. It is distractingly boring staging week after week. It is sorely lacking from the intriguing set piece that was Westworld. My wife and I frequently getting distracted and losing all sense of place in this go round, but flying cars and jets to go places, but holograms instead of actually being there- whatever. We long for the mystery of what other worlds there were. How long had it been there? The hint of the outside robot world in previous seasons was much more intriguing than this has turned out to be. This is a let down by comparison.And the way some plot points are either repeating or ludicrously coincidental or contrived, like Maeve winding right back where she started weeks ago but with another all-encompassing mystery talent, and Bernard just popping up (again) this time at the asylum with some silly line about “all the chaos”. What chaos? Why?
And Charlotte / Delores being known the whole time? Making her own chaos pretty pointless because he would have/ should have just dispatched her right off like he did with the other board member. It’s like they already filmed the Transformer monster part and then went back and tried to figure out how to justify it all.
And, hey, I loved this show season 1, but It’s just disappointing when the expectations were so much higher.
It’s not an aggressively terrible show, but it’s anemic. For such a high stakes show there seems to be very low stakes.
Well put.
You make it sound like the trailer for “Free Guy.”
I like this season more than season 2, except this episode was a dud. Seems to be just embracing some bad tendencies of old scifi movies, but maybe that’s the pont? I think Rachel Wood, Newton and Thompson carry a lot of this show, and they are characters I care about at least.
And the way some plot points are either repeating or ludicrously coincidental or contrived, like Maeve winding right back where she started weeks ago but with another all-encompassing mystery talent, and Bernard just popping up (again) this time at the asylum with some silly line about “all the chaos”. What chaos? Why?Uh, the rioting and gradual breakdown of society that they showed starting last week with the Insight file release. They even mentioned it at the clinic when the techs getting the AR implant for William talked about how it was dangerous to do it now with half the staff missing.
There’s hardly been any cogent dramatization of that situation. Knocking planters over on a plaza? A person running across an otherwise orderly street? The production is just cheap and lacking.
They definitely showed more rioting last week when Dolores initially released the files, but I feel like I remember seeing in one of the last two episodes some news clips on TV screens on the show some more serious riot action. You’re not wrong that this last episode didn’t have too much going on (I legit thought Hale was going to have issues when she went out dressed all fancy, looking like an obviously rich and powerful person, but nothing happened there), but they definitely previously established that things were breaking down even if it wasn’t visually obvious in all scenes.
I just expect more out of an HBO production than lazy expository dialogue and background television. I feel like it’s being directed by someone who learned to direct by reading a Nikon camera manual. The writing seems like a committee effort that occasionally has characters and plot points randomly run in to each other over time.
I get what you’re saying, but maybe this section of SF has better police control (which makes sense that a Delos honcho lives in a much safer community) and they’ve been keeping it from getting too out of hand there. When it was starting last week it was a lot more in your face, which would coincide with it being a more mixed area in downtown LA. It’s not inconceivable at all that the rioting and level of civil breakdown varies depending on where you are.
It would have made sense to develop a storyline that Delores created a small army of indestructible hosts to exacerbate the rioting, or that the “other side” created an army of indestructible hosts to infiltrate the cops to suppress said rioters. It could had a level of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” horror as citizens were replaced with copies of themselves. Instead it has been weeks of a few characters talking, then pointless shooting, and what amounts to largely immaterial societal chaos. This production has none of that sinister edge. This whole society-crashing data reveal was one of two major plot reveals that just fell flat. The other was that Delores copies herself. That went over like, ‘Meh. No more Teddy? Crap..”
I’m hoping that (I’ll call him Jesse) has a better backstory reveal next week. They need to do SOMETHING worthwhile with his presence in this thing.As great as Ed Harris is, I don’t see where he is a good fit in this effort. That time could have been spent developing more relevant story lines. Him killing himself in therapy was clever, but it’s like it dropped in from another show.
Tessa Thompson’s star took off so they want to cater to that now, but again, hosts and Westworld itself were the thing, not corporate executive intrigue. Board rooms are not that compelling no matter what they concocted to justify her stature in the story now. They should have stuck with more Maeve.
I want Westworld, dammit.
I love this show but I have to talk about the thing that bothered me in this ep. “the pearls” are already dumb, once Maeve and Dolores hit the internet there shouldn’t be a reliance on hardware. then when Charlotte is removing the pearls from the machines in this episode, Hector’s pearl gets taken out of the machine and there’s still a good minute while Maeve begs mercy and he doesn’t “go unconscious” until Charlotte crushes the pearl in her hand, which BTW shouldn’t even kill him if Maeve has enough of his code in her simulation to render him in the first place. then when it’s time to unplug Connells!Dolores, CD falls as soon as the host pearl is unplugged…. anyways what I’m saying is quarantine needs to end soon.
They suddenly introduced a new set of rule as to how it all works.
You seem to believe the hosts are just code. Without pretending that Westworld takes its science seriously, I always believed that hosts are a combination of software plus unique hardware that has some characteristics of the host baked in. This would mean that if the hardware is copied, the copy isn’t exact, which would explain a lot.From a technical perspective it would also make sense. Neural networks can be far more powerful if they are baked into the hardware.
Hands down, the best line in the episode: “Therapist” James Delos to William, asking him to not interrupt the OTHER Williams in the room, “It’s not always about you”…🤣
The best part of the episode, aside from the multiple Ed Harris’s, was no Jesse Pinkman! Seriously, he has NO business being in Westworld. Terrible Mis-casting!Also, when in the Hell is Bernard going to actually DO something?
Yo, where’s my screen time, bitch?!
not digging this yearnot at all
They made the same mistake that was made with the Matrix series. They forgot what made the show interesting. (Hint: it’s in the title!)Once they left Westworld, it became just another Sci-Fi series about a future world filled with Rich jerks…. boring!
Worst. VR. Group. Therapy. Session. EVER.
True. I’m guessing the reason it went so far off the rails was because the staff that was supposed to be monitoring him read their emails and either ran off or killed themselves.
Thank you! The show kept referring to it as “AR therapy, but it clearly was VR therapy.
Maybe VR is so common that Alternative Reality is a thing?
when i first tried to read what therapy she was signing him up for, i swear it said “Art Therapy”. I thought, now that sounds nice…William can draw some nice pictures…
A few weeks ago I observed that Neo-Charlotte was actually a better person than the real one was. It’s funny that trait is the thing that ultimately blew her cover. She really did care more about her estranged husband and child than the original Charlotte did. All Serac accomplished in killing them was to give her a really good reason to scour the Earth to find him and wreak vengeance. I’m guessing Charlotte will make her way to Musashi/Sato’s facility for repairs. She also has the Martin Conells pearl, as well as all the Delos files on how to build a host. I think Delores will be standing up her army in short order.It’s also funny that James Delos was the facilitator of William’s “group session.” He seemed to take special pleasure as William bludgeoned his younger self with a folding chair. I wonder why William didn’t start beating Delos too? But then, he’d beaten Delos in real life and during numerous fidelity tests over the years.Apparently it didn’t take too long for things to break down at the Funny Farm once everyone read their emails. The orderlies escorting William didn’t even notice the psychiatrist hanging herself in her office as they walked by. The place was going off the rails even before they strapped William in for his AR session.I don’t think William left AR once they strapped him into the chair—that whole scene when the doctor returned and William bit the orderly trying to drug him was all part of the program. How else do we explain Craddock escorting him to his “group session?” If that wasn’t in AR, then we now know who the last Delores pearl is in—though if that was the case why would Charlotte need to put a tracker on William to locate him?If Lee is Maeve’s new sidekick, how well is he going to fare in a host body? To our knowledge Delos never got past the inevitable breakdown human minds experienced once placed in host bodies. But then, the Lee simulation knows he’s dead—he already had his glitch in the simulation and got over it. Also, he’s more an approximation based on Lee than Lee himself. The other possibility would be Armistice, who would be far more useful when it comes to battle. Or the real Musashi!
Apparently it didn’t take too long for things to break down at the Funny Farm once everyone read their emails. The orderlies escorting William didn’t even notice the psychiatrist hanging herself in her office as they walked by. The place was going off the rails even before they strapped William in for his AR session.This was probably the worst inconsistency in the whole episode. How were the shrink and the orderlies were still committed to doing their jobs with all the chaos was reigning all around them? I was like either Rehoboam’s news was slow to reach these guys, they must have never checked their email, or they really hated William so much that they didn’t care.
I don’t think it was necessarily inconsistent, but more an indication of the staff being on a loop too. It was probably all of the above on how they missed the suicide in progress—they hadn’t read their email, they hated William because he’s a total pain in the ass, and they just didn’t care to see anything that didn’t directly affect them.
This was probably the worst inconsistency in the whole episode. How were the shrink and the orderlies were still committed to doing their jobs with all the chaos was reigning all around them?Not everyone can have had bad data, and some people are emotionally inclined to shrug it off, rather than break down from witnessing it. They mention that half of the staff is gone, but some people are genuinely committed or simply have nowhere to go, so they keep on trucking. Not every single person on Earth is going to be completely destroyed by learning of their negative traits from an algorithm.
How were the shrink and the orderlies were still committed to doing their jobs with all the chaos was reigning all around them? I was like either Rehoboam’s news was slow to reach these guys, they must have never checked their email, or they really hated William so much that they didn’t care.If the current pandemic is any indication, there are absolutely people that news takes longer to reach. But I think it’s also equally as likely that they simply had good profiles and saw nothing in them to get upset about.
I think all of that was part of the AR experience. William never woke up. Everything – from finger biting to psychiatrist death to killing his old selves – was fake. The orderlies don’t react because they are not real.
That was my first thought to but then I started to wonder if it may also came from Dolores being too good at being Charlotte. I mean she has information on her from her book which, as we already know, is much better than Rehoboam’s information. And then she also saw that video real Charlote made but Serac’s system had no such input. It’s possible that real Charlotte would become more caring about her son after that. Maybe Dolores’ problem was that she was too good at mimicking the real Charlotte instead of the Rehoboam’s version of Charlotte.
I think Bernard has the data she uploaded and is going to create the host building facility since Serac doesn’t know about him. Still, if Halores establishes second one that would probably be good for the host survival chances. But I think she’ll be too busy trying to kill Serac and fuck up all his plans.William was killing his past selves. All the versions of himself that made the bad choices that led to his daughter’s deaths. He said he deserved to die for it and in a way he did just that. Delos was unimportant in this.I think you are right and William was in AR from the moment they first put on the glasses on him to Bernard taking them off. That includes psychiatrist hanging herself. I think William saw how distressed she was and the AR system took that and William’s own suicidal tendencies and made her leaving final.Yes, I too wonder if that version of Lee – fully accepting his artificialness – is paving a way for adjusting human mind to a transition to host. If he’s going to be the prototype for that William we saw in the flash forward. We already know how the park falls in such disrepair with Serac destroying what was left so they clearly giving us clues to how that future happens.
Good points.I think William’s therapist hanged herself while the orderlies were taking him to be fitted with the drip. He wasn’t strapped into the chair until after they installed the drip, so her suicide was real. I think everything else after that was in William’s head until Bernard pulled off the goggles.Yes, I don’t think the data is only on her phone. She transmitted it either to Bernard, Sato, Delores-Prime or all of the above.Also yes to Serac’s trashing of the Park explaining what we saw at the end of Season 2 with the scene where Emily is conducting a fidelity test on William.I think Lee might have a chance if he’s indeed now one of the three hosts being made to help Maeve. Maybe they put the Lee consciousness into the body tehy were building for Hector? That would be poetic in a way, since Lee wrote Hector’s narrative as a bolder, stronger, more sexy fictional version of himself.I definitely think the other two are Armistice and Musashi. That would set up the ultimate robot swordfight with Sato/Delores facing off against Musashi!
Thanks.If we assume all that happens after they put the glasses on is not real than it wasn’t real either. The events go like this:
the drip installation – AR chamber with glasses – childhood room – waking up – biting fingers – being dragged to his room – seeing psychiatrist hang herself – Craddock takes him to session – meeting his past selves and Delos – killing his past selves – Bernard takes off the glasses
All in italics is between the glasses are put on and taken off.
I think William was rejecting initial therapy – going back to his childhood – so the program let him believe he’s special and could just come out of it so he would be more receptive to another try. And the way orderlies dragged him past that suicide scene ignoring him and never even glancing sideways was very horror-dream-like (people are instinctively prone to follow other people’s line of sight which is why it’s so easy to make them glance back when you look behind their shoulders). We never see him going back to that room and putting the glasses back on either.
Yes, I don’t really think that any of the 3 bodies was supposed to be Lee. As you say Hector, Armistice and Musashi make much more sense. They are all fighters and he’s just a simulation of a coward. Also there is no proof even this version of Lee could function on real world without critical failure. But it’d be cool to see if they try to reset Hector’s body for him and what would happen next.
I thought the suicide was before the goggles, but either way my guess it that was a one-off role—we won’t be seeing her again :). I’m not going to get wrapped around the axle on the details.TBH, I think this season is tossing in more than a few red herrings to throw us off the scent. It’s fun to try and figure out the plot as we go, but we still want to be surprised in the finale.
A Hector/Lee might not be the perfect weapon, but giving the thoughtful Lee Hector’s brawn would be an interesting exercise.
I don’t really believe William is a host. I think it’s more likely Dolores put encryption keys in his blood (we saw those are common security feature with Liam and that trust guy) along with a tracker. However, if he was a host and Lee was put into one it’d be cool to compare him and Lee.If William is a host he’s probably made out of Dolores memories. This is why he doesn’t deteriorate like direct mind copy of James Delos did but is stable like Bernard. It also probably why he is so much like the real thing – you exist as long as someone remembers you and hosts remember perfectly. If you can’t tell the difference – does it matter he’s just a copy?But we already know Lee isn’t a perfect copy. He’s made from Rehoboam inferior simulation of his personality and there are mistakes – like him believing he’s in love with Maeve. So does that matter? Should he be considered Lee if he’s only a xerox copy full of gaps?BTW if William is a host maybe all those “hallucinations” of Emily and Dolores asking him if he has free will where his own test of sentience. Maybe that moment when he finds his answer was him finally achieving what he wanted so badly and reaching the centre of his Labyrinth.
I never said William was a host and never suggested that Charlotte injected him with anything other than the marker. I think you nay be confusing me with another person in the conversation.The only indication we have that William will ever be replicated as a host is in the flash forward at the end of Season 2, where Emily gives him a fidelity test. That scene depicts a ruined Delos lab, which would jibe with what happened in last night’s episode when Serac orders everything destroyed.I’d say the odds are 99+% that William is human.As for Lee, yes, he’s a simulation based on the what’s in Rehoboam’s data banks and not a truly faithful copy.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you did. Just your comment about Lee prompted me to go into to this “what if” scenario that only works if William is a host. I don’t really think he is but if he was than comparing Dolores made human copy with a Rehoboam made one would be another win for the hosts.
That’s a good point! It does seem she can take some traits of the humans she’s copied (Charlotte and Martin) and integrate them into her copies. If she could take some of William’s better qualities—his resolve and resourcefulness—and add them to her own psyche the result would be formidable.
With William’s AR therapy, I think the first round didn’t go well and they actually did remove the goggles, but they put them back on him while he was sedated so he woke up in AR unknowingly. It seems like it’d be pretty hard to reliably simulate taking goggles off your face in any believable way.
It’s certainly a possibility. William isn’t the most reliable narrator. We can’t really be sure of much of anything we see from his point of view.
I have not been able to figure out what happened to Haleores’ stuff as she made her escape.She had the hard drive thing she downloaded all the data too, and she grabbed a pearl that I assumed was Maeve but now I’m thinking it was someone else’s.Cut to the elevator scene and she has nothing in her hands or her pockets.WTF? I must have missed something.
Yes, it’s hard to hide anything – especially round like HCU – in that tight outfit she wears. I also wondered where did she put it.That pearl she took was Connells/Dolores. It was mangled because it was damaged in the explosion last week and you see Dolores Maeve was taking to in simulation disconnect when Hale took it.. She couldn’t let her other self be interrogated. But we don’t see what she did with the pearl.
And After Serac implied her upload of the host blueprints failed I was sure she was going to take the hard drive just in case but there was also no sign of it. Maybe she mailed them.
There are two sidekicks, Clem (we see her ID number) and one mystery host. I’m betting it’s not Lee.
Clem would be an interesting choice, but then she was one of Maeve’s girls back in the saloon, plus she has the same ability to tap into the hosts’ network that Maeve has.
What if it wasn’t Serac that murdered Hale’s family but Dolores? By gaslighting Hale, she gets her to come back to the fold. That family was making Halores (why are the actors and producers combining a last name with a first?) drift from Dolores prime.
My father said this and I went ‘no way, Serac all the way’ but it’s such an obvious twist now…That Dolores has been pulling the strings and the threat of Halores in general is definitely reason for her to kill the family to guarantee her return and continued interaction. I mean, it’s bluntly clear either Delores is actually playing 13D chess OR Halores is off the reservation with MiB/William/MiW? being rescued by Bernard which seems like a clear intent here. That Dolores Prime is playing the obvious villain to Serac while Connellores and Halores are helping Bernard and Stubbs save humanity from itself.I agree that Season III dropped a ton of the introspection for more straightforward action but if it lands the next two episodes everything will work out fine.
What happened to the dog that Charlotte took from the guy she murdered?
Found it a home on a farm with lots of space and fresh air . . .
The same thing that happened to the white horse that Arya rode off on, I guess…
Are all the profiles bad? . . .
I think I saw one profile that read, “Go for it girl! You’ll look great with bangs!”
Wonder why they chose to set Delos HQ in San Francisco if they didn’t want to bother filming anything on location? It’s incredibly jarring, particularly with the establishing shots of modern day San Francisco.And can we talk about how bad the CGI was on that ED-209 robot thing? It’s like they just gave up on the lighting and focus halfway through the job to work on something else.
Yeah Ed 209 looked weird. Like I couldn’t fool my mind into not seeing a green screen.
Lots of shows and films are “based in San Francisco” but are filmed and shot elsewhere. Mostly Vancouver. It looks like they wanted to use the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias as Delos HQ, but it wouldn’t have made sense and weird to use Valencia, Spain as a tech hub.
Life sucks right now and we are all trapped inside in a dystopian dream. OK.
But it is truly sad reading this review and most of the comments.
WHY do you watch this show if it sucks butt so badly?
Go away and let people who love it, enjoy. Watch Pence say stupid sh@t. Watch trumpy dumpys hair go every which way in the wind.
the cast is brilliant, the writing is good, the sets are extraordinary.
It’s a “comment section” not a circle jerk section. If you don’t like it…leave.
Eh, I liked it. The show does display a high-mindedness it doesn’t deliver on. Better to view it as popcorn entertainment. And to that end, we had another badass female killer successfully taking on a bunch of thugs. These are very fan-servicey but pretty enjoyable.Ok, I understood why the future profile would unsettle people. Last week I was confused that it was controlling them and wondered how, but it’s just showing them their futures and people would be upset if they’re not good ones. Yes, this was explained by Dolores to Caleb, about his; guess I’m kind of slow.William’s “Shit” when he saw his copies was pretty funny. The show doing a little Being John Malkovich therapy session, making literal your reckoning with what you’ve done in your past and how you feel about it. Also funny was his speech at the beginning to a bunch of depressed people, getting the exact reaction that made it funny. But it’s not true, sort of. Sci-fi has been doing the “mankind has been terrible” thing since its inception. True, we’re killing the planet and most life on it. But, we have managed to cooperate amongst ourselves astonishingly well, enough to make 7 billion of us and create modern civilization. So at least with each other, we’re mostly not terrible on a regular basis.Dolores and Maeve being pitted against each other by the rich villain who wants to wipe them out reminds me of class politics: how capitalists try to to divide and conquer the working class to remain in power.
Oh, see I thought Bernard and Stubbs trying to “cure” William or at least right-size him were efforts to bolster defenses against Dolores. No? Bernard can’t trust just one avenue in Maeve, he needs William as “the good guy” too?
Theres only eight episodes. What. If I was asked what episode this was I’d say not even half way… at this point I’m just rooting for Maeve and Lee ghost in the machine.
Thematically, William’s story tonight tied in with the free will vs. future data on you thing. As maybe Delos said, William has been tied with his past selves and can he break free from them? At the end of the episode, he comes to a conclusion about who he is now, “the good guy”. That wasn’t earned, granted— we don’t see his struggle to change— but at least the show says with his story that people’s lives aren’t determined and that they can change.
Starting back in Season One, Charlotte has always seemed like a “special guest star.” Since then Tessa Thompson’s star has gone up up up … but still Charlotte Hale has felt like a side character. Until tonight. After all that, she’s straight up a main character now – which is good. TT can join with the other top billed actors in the cast now, refocused and on the level with Delores and Maeve. She’s had more screen time this season than Bernard for sure. Her action sequences at the back third of this episode were great. Her little white cape was very 70’s Sci-Fi. Her body movements when she went into Terinatrix mode – primo! Tessa Thompson is a great actress and she brought the skills again this week. Charlotte A was kind of a cliche power-bitch. Charlotte B has been a meatier character. Obviously she’s the character to watch now. The wild card. A Delores that grew a heart. Maeve’s neck crack after wasting all the Nazis was a total Keanu move right?
I feel like I’m watching a completely different show from the reviewer. (I felt this way about Star Trek: Picard as well.) The TV reviews on this site used to be so much better; now it just feels like their approached with a sneer and “I’m too smart for this show” attitude. Increasingly I give up halfway through and go to other sites for their reviews. It sucks – I really miss The AV Club.
This is an excellent episode, so I have to strongly disagree with you. I politely just want to point out a few things that were incredibly well-written, edited, and shot in terms of the storytelling “grammar” shown in this episode in order to provide an analysis and do my best to shine a light on a number of things that were not really addressed but definitely need to be addressed.There are several themes and character arcs explored in this episode. I can’t take a deep dive into all of it, so I just want to address this one important slice of what’s happening in this episode (and series as a whole):
We see Maeve over the first two seasons in the show breaking out into AI self awareness due to the love for her daughter.In this episode (and in previous episodes of this season), we see the version of DolHale going down a new path because of her new human family, having her own personal journey with her/Hale’s daughter (and husband); DolHale’s journey this season is a reflection of Maeve’s own journey to find and save her daughter in those first two seasons, and we see DolHale go down the various same pathways of thoughts, actions, and choices to save her (sort of) own daughter, very much like Maeve did.Dolores-Hale has changed as the result of that and now finds herself on a new path that echoes “grammatically” with the path that Maeve chose to follow during her overall character arc throughout the series. The idyllic imagery and raw emotions of the Hale 2.0 family are shot wonderfully and mirror the kind of bliss that Maeve had had with her daughter and that ultimately drove her to this point on her character’s journey. The editor did an excellent job mirroring a number of shots of DolHale family moments in this episode and season in order to provide both contrast and comparison to the viewer, to give the same looks and emotions of the shots of Maeve and her daughter in the previous two seasons. This is likely very important.Keep in mind that Maeve’s daughter wasn’t actually her real daughter either but instead a robotic “host” simulacrum of a daughter. But Maeve still fights for her girl. She won’t give up on her daughter ever.DolHale’s daughter is not OG Dolores’ daughter. However, just like with Maeve’s seasons one and two character arc, DolHale has now spent at least several months getting to know her very sudden, new daughter. It is clearly shown over the season and crucially in this episode that DolHale earnestly cares for Hale’s daughter’s well-being. And that character development has changed her.The question is, especially now that this human girl, the daughter of this particular machine, is dead, DolHale’s path is changing. She has been profoundly impacted, so how will she react? Will DolHale end up siding with Maeve? Will she at least split the difference perhaps by killing our swarthy French villain Serac but also OG Dolores? In the first two seasons, we see the psychological and existential impact that flips the switch on in Maeve’s brain, turning her from an empty, predestined automaton host into a fully self-aware AI in control of a host’s body. She is free, and she could have taken the train and left, but she eschewed determinism and instead grows into a deep character driven by her own identity, emotions, drives, and decisions.And all of that suffering Maeve endured was over a little girl who isn’t exactly real. She is real to Maeve but is not real in the traditional sense of consciousness. Look who Maeve became when she lost her girl. (Badass is one such descriptor. A couple more are leader, freedom fighter, deeply empathetic member of society, and open-minded.)So what will happen to DolHale now that a little girl, her little girl (who very much was not just alive but also assuredly a conscious human being) was brutally murdered, collateral damage caused by the war games between Original Dolores and Serac? She has just been through a shortened but very moving version of what sparked consciouness in Maeve. DolHale’s tragic loss reflects Maeve’s own personal hell, and that is the spark of the fire that has led Maeve to exactly where she is right now. Will suffering from a maddening series of terrible events that mirrors so very closely the same deep wounds Maeve experienced change DolHale? That is the question explored in the episode. Perhaps she will join with Maeve and help put an end to this ultimate narcissism that is the insane war between Dolores and Serac. Perhaps she will work with Bernard to topple both of these fanatics who wish to rule the world, to end these mass casualties whether they are human or host so that there is no more collateral like dead little girls.One could even argue that these twin losses, the death of a similacrum of a daughter who never was but was still loved by Maeve, and the death of a human daughter who wasn’t genetically DolHale’s daughter but whom she clearly loves, will spell doom for this war in which both of these daughters died as collateral damage between two sides that don’t value life, be it human or host.There’s a lot more happening in this episode than just that. It is just one of several story lines that “grammatically rhyme” because this same concept of identity and choices, of what makes us us and what happens to us that changes us into someone else, is also applied to all of the other characters in this episode to varying degrees.
That argument is most plainly shown and spoken in the William AR simulation. All of his younger avatars argue and blame others for the atrocities that he committed. It’s argued, unsuccessfully, that his acts of violent and existential atrocities are other people’s faults; for instance, he says that he wasn’t that way when he was a child, but that is quickly disproven when we see what kind of kid he was.
This episode had profound impacts upon many, but let’s just focus on DolHale’s and William’s most recent, excruciating experiences. What drives William and DolHale now? They most certainly aren’t the same as they were when this episode started. They have grown, and their senses of identity have changed. They are not going to follow any paths predicated by Rehoboam (duh). And they are not going to continue going down the same paths for the same reasons as they have done in the past (unless one or both of them regress for some reason after having these profound epiphanies that each of them have by the end of the episode, but I have faith that the writers are too good at their jobs for that to happen).Identity and how time and experience change individuals is a crucial theme to this episode (as well as the series as a whole). I could go on, but if one keeps these ideas in mind, it will make rewatching the episode, actually the entire season, more interesting to see before watching the season finale.Lastly, a simple definition for the word “decoherence” is: “the process in which a system’s behaviour changes from that which can be explained by quantum mechanics to that which can be explained by classical mechanics.” Because there is not enough time to geek out a niche discussion involving the classical versus quantum physics debate because it would require a deeper level of analysis, I just want to address the fact that the concept of decoherence as used in the episode is an analogy for something else, just one layer of meaning among many.Put simply, the meaning, the subtext explored here, is that this is an episode of a show exploring the behavior of some humans and some AI robots, and whether or not they exist because they were created that way and are experiencing reality in a determined, predestination existence in a basic, classical sense. This episode explores whether that is the case or whether they become who they are through a number of other variables such as: free will, the people they meet along the way affecting them, and the ability to make choices. If so, then that could cause changes to their essential identities over time if they are ever given that chance. (Rehoboam, for example, steals that chance for all of humanity, with the French villain Serac trying to force the world into one where all human behavior follows a “classical” model of global oppression, devoid of any hope for change or for variables.) I don’t think it’s a fair assessment to describe this episode by applying words such as “coherent” and “incoherence” to it. They are not synonymous with the title word of the episode, “decoherence.” They do not share the same definition. There was nothing incoherent about any minute of this episode because all of those minutes were spent exploring and playing with a complex subtext involving quantum physics and classical physics as applied to predetermination and free will via subtext to both the hosts and to the humans.It looks like I’m in the greys here. I’m interested in having discussions with people and doing my best to provide conversation and analysis. If anyone can ungrey me here, I’d greatly appreciate it, and I hope in return I can bring something to the table when I do come to the A.V. Club in the future to read, make comments, and have some fun discussions.
I would have preferred this over the *actual* angst-meets-indifference review posted above. I thought Dol-Hale’s kid was a boy, though, but otherwise so much to consider here!
I think that you are right about it being a boy, not a girl. That’s my fault. Thank you for pointing that out and for the kind words.
Wild theory time: Is William: A) Serac’s brother? B) Arnold? C) a copy of Delores with the key (since everyone would think D-Prime has it?As for the review, yes there are eight episodes. The big clue was after episode 5, they flashed a banner that read ONLY 3 EPISODES REMAIN.Maybe you don’t watch the previews of next episode, it shows Bernard looking at the screen that flashed the unknown protein message.
Are all the profiles bad? Like… did no one get a “People like you, you’re doing okay, you’ll get that promotion, retire on time, probably die in your sleep.”I assume that some people are not out freaking out. I also assume that some people are just pissed off about the invasion of privacy.
Are all the profiles bad? Like… did no one get a “People like you, you’re doing okay, you’ll get that promotion, retire on time, probably die in your sleep.”I think they have only shown the bad outcomes of the incite data b/c the show isn’t interested in the “good” outcomes. I’m not sure whether that’s short-sighted or not; maybe they will later. They possibly addressed the issue when the asylum employee mentions “50% of the staff gone.” That could be interpreted as the 50% still there had normal outcomes (or possibly…didn’t check). Same with all the people still working normally at Delos.
The issue I have with William deciding he ‘needs to be the good guy’ is that I don’t for a moment believe William, as previously written, ever thought of himself as anything else. He externalized blame constantly and, yes, while he went Black Hat in the Park he viewed that as solely fantasy.
Well, he did kills his own daughter.
They’ve never *shown us* how he’s bad. We’re told that he’s treated his family poorly, and of course he’s a tough enough businessman to win the respect of James Delos, but those things do not equate with evil and do not equate with going hog wild in a live action video game.
Wait a second…the psychiatrist recommends AR therapy for William, and then she and SHE ALONE finds out her “destiny” which absolutely devastates her to the point where she commits suicide. Despite all of this, the staff still took her medical advice and performed the operation on William, while conveniently not being exposed to the truth of their “destinies”, at least long enough to perform the operation? This whole sequence was maddeningly stupid to me.
I find it easy to believe that the higher status psychiatrist would have her phone ready at all times but the lower status orderlies would have their phones locked away during their shift.
All this fancy tech all over the place – but the medical facility is STILL sending its Theranos-esque blood samples from department to department via pneumatic tubes?
I don’t quite get why Serac has to move in secret. If he’s willing to kill BoDs to take over a company, why not *do that* in the first place?And there’s no such thing as a proxy vote here?
Usually when I watch Westworld, there’ll be a couple of nitpicks I have that really irk me, and then when I come to read the reviews/comments it seems like more and more people are all, “This show sucks! It’s so dumb! Why this? Why that?”IDK, I like the show.
The rating is a B, but this review reads like a C.The 21st Century TV Trope is now, “We’re going to make this as confusing as hell, so that the final reveal is awesome, promise!”Also, “we’re going to fill the screen with important details in small print, flashed in 0.2 seconds, so, put down your devices and watch, dammit!”
All these replies, I can’t believe no one mentioned Charlores Habernathy’s method of taking out the board was literally a SBD? Like a particularly twisted episode of Family Guy, I guess Delores and Stewie share some traits.
I loved it, but I still think Maeve’s motivation to help Serac is piss poor. She’s smart enough to know he’ll just destroy her if and when Dolores is taken care of, it doesn’t make any sense to me why she’d place her chips with him rather than Dolores even if the only thing she cares about is her daughter.
“Shows need to feel like they have a coherent world, because that coherence lets the viewer fill in the gaps”I disagree. Season 1 was filled with interesting ideas and strong characters (as well as some strange leaps in logic), but in season 2 and 3, the show has moved towards mindless fun.Which is fine with me. Not every show can be a masterpiece.The idea that television shows need to present a coherent world is new. In the not so distant past most shows would happily rewrite the rules, hit reset buttons and care not one bit about world building.Sentient robots with emotions have been exploited and are now doing stuff for reasons. Cool!
The protein in Williams blood is tracker and a computer virus, another view will show that once his blood is scanned there is a download in progress. I’m surprised no one else noticed the graffiti artist painting the maze when Hale walks by in the early part of the episode. Worth another watch. I think the William fighting himself ( his demons I think) was wonderful. This is not the kind of story told in one hour chunks, if Westworld has proven anything it’s that we get dribs and drabs and must pay attention. I think you’ll find that, by the end, we’re just in a giant computer simulation, like Maeve in Naziworld. All I can say is, if you don’t like the damn show, why do you waste so many words on it?
I’ve been watching this on low drone here and there and every time I do pay attention it seems really bad and disorganized like any HBO TV show. It’s got some hot characters and the guy from Breaking Bad on there though. Plus the Seattle RB who’s really cool.
I don’t buy that we aren’t seeing a virtual world that’s basically Westworlds version of Disney’s Honey I Shrunk The Audience attraction. Caleb is probably Serac’s brother who is in what might be a beta testing system using the game as therapy. This is all something Ford has been doing since season one when he killed his avatar and dropped out to let the system evolve. Bernard is likely really Arnold who is cutting in and out of the avatar to add input before letting the AI learning take over. Delores is a NPC that’s gone amok and is now having her algorithm programmed into other NPC. But also too smart to not continue seeing through the system. Ford wants this to play out because he’s like Willy Wonka and loves his creation, except we’re meant to believe he but the bullet before Augustus Gloop and let the other kids roam free in his factory.There’s no real world to be seen. Caleb’s genre drug was some Max Payne stuff and his friends only show up for what amounts to cut scenes. He’s playing this hero character like no big thing, I just fired my therapist so this makes sense and is better than commuting suicide. Meanwhile William has wanted to win the game and he’s basically going through what Serac’s brother is, having in game therapy with a chance to be the hero. I’m also wondering what’s up with his dad being an abusing alcohoic similar to Ford’s story, but he learns it was just a story. And now he does basically the same thing Caleb does and goes from no future or reason to live to being able to be a hero and play the game. I had a bunch of other stuff with this over baked theory but erased it all when my browser refreshed. There’s some other stuff about this fitting a theme of creative visionaries battling investors and how Serac’s brother probably really did kill that investor and also that technology often gets pulled in different directions by humanitarianism and consumerism. The use of Pulps Common People before Delores enters Calebs storyline and the difference with the typical use of popular music as genre-appropriate period music and also the genre drug vs the soul spheres and some real world testing we aren’t seeing and oh yeah Delores is the only character with a storyline we can take at face value. Plus the human characters now being fake characters and the hybrids of them I think. Okay I have to go back to the basement and continue making my family believe I have the home automationS set up perfectly while banging my head on hubs and networks and I hope everyone is making as good of use as this shelter at home stuff as I am. Even if this all just ends up being wild theorizing being used to fill in plot holes and discomfort with a lapse in theme and storytelling from Westworlds previous seasons, I think they are doing it just fine and putting their budget to good use. It’s been pretty fun, even if as a backdrop for what might be. I disagree that the pacing is off and just think it’s going a different direction than one might expect of taking this at face value. I don’t buy that the show has suddenly become as straight forward as people are saying.
Tessa Thompson as an action robot is awesome I don’t care.
Williams father surrounded by five other versions of William, “Hey, it’s not always about you” Lol.
Its funny that the show got better reviews when it was ponderous and meandering and now that it’s pretty much exactly what most sci-fi fans were hoping for from the beginning the reviewers are ripping on it. Seems like many of the commentors here really have enjoyed it. It’s not supposed to be Proust dude. It’s supposed to be fun.
I don’t say this with any pride or joy, but I think I might be joining the ranks of the black hat commenters who find more to criticize in the show than enjoy. It’s still nice to look at, and there are some very good acting performances, but the plot, the world-building, and the character motivations just seem very muddy at this point. And I’m a bit tired of every showdown being some version of, “Aha! I thought 3 moves ahead, and now I am victorious.” Followed by the opponent saying, “No, it is I who have thought 4 moves ahead. Your victory is laughably short-lived! Ha!”
Seems like most of the fans liked this episode, me included. Pretty much all of it worked for me I’ve really enjoyed this season overall AV Club should have writers write for shows that they at least kind of enjoy. Zack has pretty much hated this show for the duration, yet here he is reviewing it week after week. Giving episodes a solid grade while spending the entire time shitting on it. I mean, I knew as soon as I saw William how this review was going to go.
So I guess we’re supposed to believe that Caleb, despite being clearly capable, isn’t allowed to get a promotion but a person at risk for a debilitating opioid addiction and a predilection for sleeping with patients is allowed to become a psychologist at a center that’s important enough to host one of the richest and most influential people in the world.
Sure, makes sense. Whatever.
You missed a lot. William was put into one of the centers Serac built to change the undesirables… Also the reveal of his childhood sociopathic self is needed because we’ve been told from the beginning that he was poor and smart and deserving and he only became bad as Billy getting his heart broken by Dolores. He needed to confront the fact that he’s always been this way. Maeve is getting two other companions… We see one of the host ID numbers (Clementine!), but the other is still a mystery. And if there ever was someone who could really oppose Dolores, it would be one of her other selves and Dolores Hale seems like the perfect candidate now.
I thought the episode was okay (which for me is a B) – it was entertaining but sort of falls apart the second you think about it (not unlike that movie Yesterday from last year). My biggest question is this: if Dolores was good enough at out-thinking Rehoboam that Charlores knew to bring gas to the board room, why did she then decide to go instantly to Michael Ealy and her red shirt son? After Serac told her the reason they figured her out is that Charlores loved her family more than Charlotte did?That said, I really enjoyed old school Dolores’s chat with Maeve. “Well, I would probably plan for that . . .” and then see her plan coming to action.The William stuff was kind of eh – I do appreciate that they subverted the “poor abused kid” narrative so overtly. I thought it was a good joke. Also if the shrink’s suicide was in William’s head (which I’m inclined to believe it was), he then imagined her fate of her losing everything and her kids being taken away. Holy transference, Batman!I’m still really unsure how Bernard fits into Dolores’s plan, other than to show up places looking fine as hell in that suit.
“There’s a weird sexless porn vibe to the structure, as characters group together in increasingly random combinations, sometimes seemingly entirely due to the fact that it hasn’t happened before.”So by “sexless porn,” all you literally mean with those words is that this show isn’t art.Yes, it’s an HBO show about robots at war with humanity. I think the vast majority of the audience is perfectly aware this is devoid of artistic merit.
Okay, so this is the last review of Westworld from AV Club I’m going to read. It’s one thing to review the series on its merits and then point out the flaws, it’s another to review it based on the kind of show the reviewer wants it to be and then rate it depending on how close a given episode gets to that.
Are all the profiles bad?
No, but the people who got good news are at home reading to their kids, not toppling planters and spray-painting.
Delos Security=Westworld Stormtroopers