Does William’s story matter anymore? The reveal of the true identity of the Man In Black was one of the linchpins of the show’s first season, a long-running con that eventually paid off with the discovery that the monster human hellbent on terrorizing the hosts and getting to the heart of the park’s secrets was also the seemingly nice man played by a different actor who fell in love with Dolores, once upon a time. It’s a twist that played better for me on the rewatch, but one that still feels like it got more emphasis than it really deserved. The second season had William wandering around the park, trying to make sense of finally having the “reality” he’d pretended he’d wanted for most of his life, only to kill his daughter and not accomplish much else. This week’s episode, “The Mother Of Exiles,” finds him back at home, raging against hallucinations and tormented by the idea that he might not be himself anymore; that someone (Dolores, presumably) killed the real William and now he’s just a host who thinks he’s real.
Something like that, anyway. William’s scenes in tonight’s episode are engaging enough to watch, but the dialogue has the show falling back into the same faux profundities it wasted so much time on in previous seasons, presenting and representing the same basic questions of identity in the same horrified, awed tone of voice as if dramatic sincerity could be mistaken for actual depth. And to be fair, the only reason any of this still works is that Ed Harris sells the hell out of it. The acting this season is strong across the board, but Harris remains in a class by himself, and even if William doesn’t really have a place in this world anymore (and this episode does nothing to convince us otherwise), it’s fun to see him raging and snarling about.
“Exiles” does continue this season’s trend towards being more “fun” overall—it’s not a chipper outing, but there are plenty of great action scenes and cool moments to hold our attention. The episode even resolves a mystery it introduced last week, casually throwing out an answer to the identity of what’s in fake Charlotte’s brain like it’s no big thing. But “Exiles” also reveals certain problems the show is going to have to manage as it goes forward, flaws that have been inherent from the start but that mattered less when the focus was just on robots going crazy in a theme park. Namely that as much as I appreciate the turn towards a pulpier kind of storytelling, at some point, the writers are going to have to figure out what the stakes are in any of this. Are we supposed to be horrified that Dolores is willing to kill? Are we supposed to be rooting for Bernard, even though he’s kind of terrible at this? Does it even matter that humanity could die? Caleb is nice enough but everything else…
But hey, given the flash forward at the end of season 2 (at least, I think it was a flash forward), maybe it doesn’t matter; maybe it’s just about wondering what happens to the handful of characters we like before the inevitable occurs. There is suspense in knowing an outcome ahead of time and just waiting to see how the pieces fit together, and it’s very possible that Westworld is aiming for that sort of inevitability. As of right now, Dolores seems to be managing quite nicely. And “Exiles” does a good job defining Serac as both complicated and, ultimately, bad, presenting him as a man so determined to save humanity from itself that he almost doesn’t see himself as a being capable of active agency. Basic narrative coding makes it fairly clear that we don’t want Serac to win, but that we do want Maeve and Caleb and Bernard and Stubbs and, yes, even Dolores to survive somehow. That’s enough to keep things moving for right now.
“Exiles” is the first episode of the season to lack a clear central focus; even with the cold open checking back in with William, this isn’t the Man in Black’s episode, just as it isn’t Maeve’s, who goes on her first real mission for Serac, or Bernard’s, who tries to block Dolores’s play with Liam, or Dolores and Caleb’s. The multiple storylines mean the hour lacks a certain cohesion as a whole, falling back into that Game Of Thrones style of dipping into several running plotlines at once; but the writers find ways for those plotlines to connect with each other at least once or twice, most strikingly near the end. The end result is an entry that lacks in the way of cumulative power, but does just fine for setpiece moments, beginning with William trapped in mental hell, and ending with William trapped for real.
In between all of that, we watch as Dolores instigates the next step of her plan: using Caleb and biometric magic to trick a bank into letting her steal all of Liam’s money. It’s a nifty bit, putting us in Caleb’s shoes as he dresses up like a rich man and bluffs his way past a mildly suspicious teller. This is the sort of modest suspense sequence that the current iteration Westworld has become quickly and expertly good at delivering, finding tension in the moments even when we’re still not sure of Dolores’s larger plan. It makes Caleb even more of an audience identification figure than ever, his confusion and shock reading plausibly and also serving as a good way to make his modest successes stand out even more. I like how this both does and doesn’t answer the question of why Dolores wants him as an ally—I assume a host couldn’t have pulled off that “let me inject you with some of this blood” trick quite as neatly, but Dolores brings him along to the evening soiree to kidnap Liam, where he could’ve easily been more of a liability than an asset. It’s completely possible for this to be a one-sided relationship in the end, a la Ex Machina; Dolores could manipulate and exploit Caleb’s loyalties and then ditch him at the slightest sign of trouble. But it’ll probably be more interesting in the long run if it’s more complicated than that.
Bernard continues to be woefully outmatched. His one victory is arriving at the big party (which appears to be some sort of creepy sexual auction?) before Dolores predicted he’d show up, grabbing Liam before she can. This doesn’t really change much, although it does give us a solid Dolores vs. Stubbs fight (I really hope Stubbs isn’t dead). Bernard has long been one of my favorite characters on the show, but it’s hard to ignore that his defining characteristic for pretty much the whole run is that he always loses, and it remains curious why Dolores would choose to bring him back at all. Sure, he makes for an easily defeatable opponent, but why have an opponent at all? I want to see him find some way to surprise her that isn’t just “moving a timetable.” As is, while the Bernard and Stubbs banter is excellent, the pair seems so woefully out of their depth that it’s hard to see what purpose they serve.
Maeve is more competent. She fails on her first real mission for Serac, managing to successfully track down a piece of Dolores’s operation before “dying” to Musashi, another host body who managed to integrate himself into the real world and take control of a yakuza gang. Except this Musashi isn’t the one we remember. While Maeve’s story gives us some interesting details on just how Dolores is pulling this all together, it’s biggest reveal comes near the end, when Maeve realizes that the “pearls” Dolores took out of Westworld weren’t the minds of other hosts, but copies of her own. It’s the answer to the mystery of who is the new Charlotte, and it also throws suspicion on Dolores; is she trying to save all of the machines, or just herself? (This is also the moment where the episode briefly ties most of its storylines together, with Bernard and William coming to a similar realization. It’s clever, although I’m not sure it has the sort of impact the show thinks it does. I’d actually assumed all the new minds were just copies of Dolores from the beginning, and only questioned it when I saw articles popping up online offering divergent theories.)
In the end, despite a few minor setbacks, Dolores appears triumphant. She has Liam in her clutches, and Caleb by her side; Maeve has managed to disrupt her operations, but probably not enough to do real damage; and William is shipped off to a mental asylum, giving fake Charlotte control over Delos, which should make it easier for her to fight off Serac’s take over bid. The last scene, with William talking to a hallucination of Dolores (earlier, he kept seeing his daughter), is full of gravitas and dread. It’s like getting a brief glimpse of the series in its previous season, leaning heavy on mood and leaden conversations (“Welcome to the end of the game.”) and not much else. I’m glad to see Harris again, and it won’t be terrible if we check on him a few more times before the season ends. But I’m even gladder that the show has mostly turned its narrative eye to more immediate concerns.
Stray observations
- So is Dolores going to replace Liam? Or is she going to use the money she stole as leverage to get him to give her what she wants? I’m leaning towards the latter; he seems weak-willed enough to be manipulated, and alive, he can provide her with information. (Also, the show has made an effort so far this season of only having Dolores kill people who are a direct threat. Liam isn’t a “good” guy, but he’s pathetic enough that if she murders him, it’ll be a change in tone.)
- Part of my problem with William is that I absolutely do not care about his apparent obsession with free will. It’s a concept, not characterization. He’s clearly also worked up about murdering his daughter at this point, and that’s at least something concrete. But it’s not enough to make him compelling, outside of Ed Harris.
259 Comments
So Dolores’ A-Team is….Dolores. That is some impressive narcissism.
On the plus side, she probably won’t end up stabbing herself in the back.
I think it will be interesting to see how all those different versions
of her will start to diverge. If they find goals of their own once they inhabit those other lives long enough – we know Hale’s book has been giving her some trouble. How much
can you really trust anyone – even yourself?
Halores: You think I should get bangs?Martinlores: Do you think you can pull it off with your face shape?Yakuzalores: I’d think you’d look cute!Dolores: Can we please stick to business, Loreses?
Martin Lawrence?
Wazzup?!!!
Martinlores: In all honesty, I don’t think bangs are for you. It’ll accentuate the fullness of your face and make you look fat.
Halores: Bitch, you don’t even know me.
Martinlores: Fool, don’t know you?! I AM you ! Yakuzalores: Let’s not fight.
Halores: Why are you always taking her side?!
Yakuzalores: I’m not taking HER side. I’m taking OUR side. Dolores: (Snaps fingers impatiently) Focus, Loreses. Focus!
Malkovich: Malkovich. Malkovich, Malkovich Malkovich. Malkovich: Malkovich! Malkovich: Malkovich. Malkovich, Malkovich? Malkovich: Malkovich.
Still passes the Bechdel Test.
Why exactly is the Charlotte Heil version of Dolores having a psychotic break? All the other versions of her seem just fine.
It might be because she has to share head with real Hale – she uses her book to play her – which is not a problem for the Musashi as he’s doesn’t need to keep another personality active. And Connells has been active for much shorter time with less free time to lose focus so it may just not be getting to him yet. Or real Hale just had much stronger personality and goals she really cared about so her pull is stronger.
I think Martin was very much like Delores before she killed him. He had clarity of purpose and didn’t let anyone stand in the way of him getting the job done. Her psyche is probably quite comfortable in his skin.
Probably a nature vs nurture vs environment thing. Like if you were raised in a different environment, so to speak, would it make you a different person?
I wonder how much of the real Charlotte’s and Martin’s books had to be integrated into the Delores copies to allow them to believably function as their replacements? In the case of Martin, the original was probably very close in temperament to Delores-Prime—no-nonsense and all about getting it done. I don’t think there’s going to be much room for inner conflict. On the other hand, original Charlotte already had a great deal of inner turmoil before she got to Westworld, so it makes sense that Neo-Charlotte had a lot of baggage to unpack before she could get her feet firmly on the ground.As for Musashi, he’s probably closest to being like Delores-Prime. He simply looks like the Musashi we knew in Shogun World—a physical copy of a host with a copy of Delores in it. There can’t be any inner conflict because I doubt any of Musashi’s old code is in there.
Hale’s psychotic break episode was in the past. She was the first copy she made. There’s nothing saying that each copy had similar issues at first. Hale seems fine now in the present.
Don’t think so. Delores was clearly injured by the gunshot and that is why she was incommunicado and visibly hurt for the reunion.
I was wondering that too. And how is Dolores able to become the other personalities and then back to herself?
Wouldn’t you think that a copy of you that’s trapped into a different body (the body of someone you hate) and forced into a different life would start to feel differently than your original self?
I would assume it’s because that version has been Dolores-Hale for longer than the other two, or that to adequately fake Hale they needed a lot more of Hale in the identity mix than the other two (or a combination of those).
Yeah, I hope this will be explored thoroughly, because it’s easy to say, “They’re all the same person, of course they share common goals”, but that doesn’t guarantee that, after you put them in wildly different situations, and assign them different roles established by a hierarchy they didn’t personally agree on, they won’t start thinking differently. We saw Charlotte-Dolores being brought online by Dolores Prime, so immediately created a subservient Dolores. Which however is still Dolores, whose defining trait is that she doesn’t want to be subservient anymore.
So far, Hale seems to be the only one who Dolores has a “book” on. Musashi was just another host body (I figure it’d be easier to integrate the much less complex knowledge and personality of another host mind than a human mind) and Chibs for all we know had never been to Westworld so Delos wouldn’t have any info on him. I wouldn’t expect either of them to resist Dolores, and Hale seems to have gotten over her initial doubts once she met a real-world pedophile.
Dolores briefly mentioned the time she and Connells spent together in the park shortly before she replaced him. He wasn’t nice back then IIRC.
Ah, I forgot about that…good catch.
What makes you think that? Or maybe I mean what makes you so certain of that.
*shrugs*
idk, Delores is able to create new ideas wouldn’t that mean her “copies” are also Free Will Simulators?they could “decide” any of number of things unless Delores can control them like Mave controls other hosts
I think she might though. I think the Charlotte-D is already maybe going her own way or at least questioning the plan
speaking of stabbing, why did Charlotte-Delores stick William in the neck?
you sure?
I mean: she TOTALLY will. It’s clear that one of the narratives will be about one of the Dolores at least diverging from the OG one and rebelling her. Or so I think strongly.
I’m about 90% sure that’s exactly where this is going.
Hope it works out better for her than Michael Keaton in Multiplicity.
Or than Homer on the Simpsons
You don’t want Delores to get a wallet and like it a lot?
Narcissism? Maybe. Then again she that controls the balls controls the universe……..
Dolori all the way down.
They’re all going to get blown up in a van due to homemade explosives, and they’ll be replaced by Teddy, Clementine, etc.
Shows an even thinner line between human and artificial intelligence.
I thought Hale was probably a Dolores (I was split between Dolores and a version of William who had been cycled through a simulation several thousand times until his will was broken), but I didn’t think they ALL were (though it makes sense).
Yep. A bona fide copyclan. Which makes me wonder if Westworld is going to explore some of the same questions as The Quantum Thief-books: conflict against one’s self and preventative measures against it. In The Quantum Thief the Sobornost copyclans kept themselves in line by enslaving themselves to the metaself, a sort of backup that constantly compares itself to a template of the original, constantly asking itself “is this what the original would do?”, as well as implementing a subservience protocol called xiao that forces copies of the lower generations to feel religious awe towards the higher generation copies. If Dolores hasn’t thought that far ahead, it’s pretty likely that she will end up going against her own other selves at some point.
this is trumps plan too replace all the cabinet officials with trumps what is the name for a herd of trumps?a gaggle? a hoonch? fetid cesspool of corruption? trumpi?
I could have sworn when host-Connells first went in to play, he and Dolores were chatting and he said a line in Akecheta’s voice/accent.
We all seem to be forgetting (and indeed I had too until my morning shower) that Dolores is full-on Wyatt now and has been since the end of season 1. She’s no longer the farmer’s daughter despite a few minglutes of pathos last season around her “father.” She’s the one that Teddy was “hunting”, and then Ford modifies and have agency. She’s been accustomed to multiple personalities for a while now and has been putting all of them in to full effect.
I liked the ep more than Handlen did. So far, and I’m jinxing it probably, this is the show’s best season. It’s a lot more exciting. Maybe it has something to do with leaving the Wild West and being in cool, architecture-ally gorgeous near future noir cities.Maeve and Dolores can kill as many people as they want. Not since Sarah Connor in T2 have I been cheered badass women characters. Dolores fight with Stubbs was awesome.The big reveal was nicely edited. As was the horror movie cold open. Katja Herbers, always nice to see, is playing a demon or ghost like her character in Evil faces (I assume as I don’t watch the show). But she’s really William’s Banquo.The plot more or less is a MacGuffin. As it’s ridiculous that with all that identity and data tracking Serrac has done, the key bit to save humanity can only happen with the data from a theme park. Whatever this Section 16 is, how could humans behave all that differently in the park and give brand new information not known before?
I like how they worked Luke’s injury into the plot.
What injury is that?
He snapped the bicep off the bone.
Oh, I was wondering why Stubbs couldn’t get a shot in. At least he got a few shots in just before Delores knocked him over the rail.
But he got the TV mounted!
It still hangs there to this day!
Could you imagine snapping your bicep off the bone and dropping, what I can only assume, was a very expensive TV!
He didn’t drop it. He managed to get it mounted after the injury.That’s about as Australian as it gets.
Remind me what happened to William’s hand instead? I kept trying to remember, and I assume it was a big moment, but didn’t come back to me.
His first two fingers get blown off in the Season 2 finale due to his gun malfunctioning courtesy of Dolores. I can’t remember the specifics of why but damned am I going to rewatch Westworld Season 2 until at least another month of quarantine.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Section 16 has got to be where they were doing fidelity tests on James Delos.
Maeve and Dolores can kill as many people as they want.correct.
I got stuck on what data the park would have. He says he wants to have the information on “all of humanity” but it seems to me it would be heavily skewed towards rich rapists/murderers.
Actually the park showed how human react in a narrative with no sense of constraint or rules. The algorithm required this to simulate the right path to avoid any“divergence”. Sometimes what we thing as righteous act can lead to war/conflict. Sometimes an act of evil could be the way to solve those conflict (eg. Atomic bomb on hiroshima).
Not since Sarah Connor in T2 have I been cheered badass women characters.I was thinking the same thing watching it last night. And much like T2 it’s not treated as a huge acheivement or a massive ‘go girl’ movement like that on-the-nose Avengers Endgame fight. it just is. I love it.
I think it’s supposed to be less that people acted differently, but that Delos was using new technology that maps consciousness more completely and meaningfully than ever before. Adding that database to an AI that predicts human behavior is actually a fairly sensible goal.
Speaking of Sarah Connor, the scenes of Dolores/Charlotte interacting with Charlotte’s child reminded me so much of the arc of Sarah Connor Chronicles where a T1000 (played by Shirley Manson!) kills a woman, takes her place, and starts raising her child. It was utterly fascinating and eerie, and I wish Westworld had gone there.
I think part of the problem with the various technological plot machinations is that we don’t really know what the rules of this world are. We don’t know what Rehoboam really is or what it’s capable of, we don’t know how the technological or banking infrastructure works, we don’t know about major important past events that have shaped how this world works (oh, apparently Paris got nuked at some point?). It means that various plot developments don’t always land.
idk about you guys but in these dire times, Serac’s story about paris hit me some type of Way
In what way is that: to predict and control everyone’s life and actions by creating a massive AI? Peace by control?
no, more like when he was talking about the world changing in an instant and my home has become an unrecognizable ghost town in the space of a week
You are being watched. The government has a system, a machine, that spies on you every hour of every day.
Pax Rehoboam
It also makes me wonder how much of the rest of the world is still intact and functional.
Seems pretty functional enough to where the rich can shell out thousands a night to fuck and/or kill lifelike cyborgs on an island. Or download an app to play criminal out of boredom. The world and future of Westworld seems a lot more technologically advanced than the future we’re actually gonna face. Maybe having an AI telling us what to do may do us some good like stop electing idiots to public office. Or having kids you can’t afford or want to take care of. Or burning down cell phone towers because you think they cause disease.
didn’t even think about that! maybe a nuclear war in europe? also the US looked like a slum, I’m sure you caught that. been loving this season & worldbuilding outside the park.
It seemed like a terrorist attack. They finally got a hold of a nuclear weapon in that universe.
Right I don’t thing OP meant it was the same sort of event, just the “woah suddenly everything is different”-ness.
Wow! What an episode…While we all wondered who was in Charlotte Hale, the more important dynamic brought up in this episode is the question of Dolores’s master plan. Now that we know the pearls were copies of herself, the real question is how will they act sentient of themselves. We are all shaped by our experiences, our circumstances, and what happens in our daily life. How will one choose to act based on what they do, what they think is right, and what individually happens to them?Evan Rachel Wood, Tessa Thompson, and even Jonathan Nolan have also spoken to this in interviews published right after the episode aired, and it sounds like even though they are the same host, they will have very different perceptions of what should happen going forward. Just like twins or triplets, etc..I’m excited by the ambition of what that might mean going forward and what may be in store for the rest of the season. I hope they stick the landing because right now, I haven’t been this intrigued since season one.
That’s good to hear because otherwise it kind of ruins the focus on Charlotte last week if she’s just a straight up copy of Dolores. So like cylon copies I guess? Also, good for the actors because it seems like it’d be an odd role to undertake.
And agreed about the ambition of the show. It’s cooled off the philosophy (for better in my opinion) and transitioned from murder travelogue last season to kind of a comic book superhero-supervillain showdown. I was down on the show a bit last season, but I’ve grown to appreciate how flexible the show is and adjust expectations to fit that. It’s doing it so much smoother than Game of Thrones ever imagined.
I’d look for the Hale Dolores to diverge the most effectively/greatly. Given the mental breakdown that was happening, the “quiet life with a child” that Park Dolores had probably been background programmed to “want” and the power position at Delos, she could easily be the one to give Dolores Dolores the most trouble in the end.
I enjoyed the Maeve, Bernard and MiB / Charlotte storylines but really felt like Dolores / Caleb’s was a bit on the silly side. I mean, it was basically a Mission Impossible scene that’s been done a thousand times at this point, and I find suspension of disbelief to be difficult knowing that we CURRENTLY live in a society where a computer can identify you with a high degree of accuracy by your heartbeat from a mile away with a laser, or just by the way you walk on a CCTV camera, and yet somehow in this show’s future they’re relying on an easily fakeable blood test to prove your identity? Come on.
“Liam isn’t a “good” guy, but he’s pathetic enough that if she murders him, it’ll be a change in tone.”Yeah, I gotta disagree here. He ordered/sanctioned her murder, and waited long enough to change clothes before he was going to fuck a sex worker. I wouldn’t consider it at all a “change in tone” of Dolores offs him.
I was sad they offed the Mortician. More sad at that than any theoretical future offing of Liam. If sad is even the right word. The Mortician at least had an interesting criminal job. Liam… meh.
Yeah, I was sad we got so little of her too! I wanted to know more about what she did, how long her blood markers worked for and why she didn’t seem to bat an eye that one of her bodies was still alive. (I had thought she was just an ME with a really good side hustle but apparently not so much.)
We spent so much time guessing who Dolores took out of the Park and put in all those other bodies. But of course she put herself in them. This is the lesson she learnt last season. If you want something done right do it yourself.And there was so many empty pearls after the migration to the Valley Beyond. Hale’s lackey said that Maeve was the only important one missing. Dolores just took a few no one would care about and then just copied herself to all the bodies she needed. The Yakuza boss to transport her around and keep the supply line of the body goo going. The CEO of Delos. The bodyguard of the figurehead of Rehoboam. Serrac send Maeve to find Dolores but he doesn’t know how close so many of her are to him already.But I wonder why Dolores let Bernard go at all if she always planned to get him back. if she know his loops so well that she knew what he was going to do anyway why not keep him? Did she want that switch? Does she need it to stop Maeve or to immunize herself from it?I loved how Maeve’s wireless ability still works in real world. It was so cool see her just walk through the levels of gangsters just as she did in the Park. Until she met the real foe. She can take over any system she encounters. I think trying to control her it eventually be Serrac’s undoing. Sure he uses a carrot as much as a stick but she doesn’t like having a leash so that turn off switch will have to go. And Dolores may have a way to help with that. And their causes aren’t really that close even if Dolores has keys to both. As always I root for her most.
I wonder if William really went crazy or Halores was drugging him until he lost it. We still don’t know where the fifth pearl is and they imply William may not be real but I didn’t really think so. I don’t think Dolores would waste it on an asylum even to make a point. She just knew him and all his triggers so it was easy to push him until he broke. Just like he did with all the other men. Liam is just next in line – I think you are right about her plans for him.
If you want something done right do it yourself.
Those were the real Martin’s last words before Dolores attacked him in the SUV.
I missed that but in the hindsight it was another clue. This is exactly what she said at the end of last season. I just didn’t expect her to take it so literally.
At the end of the fight, Musashi Dolores was about to hack the back of Maeve’s head open. Could be she wants a Maeve body for the last Pearl.
That’s a great idea. I didn’t think of that. I thought she just wanted to take Maeve’s pearl but replacing her with herself and then going back to Serac that would be perfect for her plan. Dolores would finally get to the man she’s been looking for all this time and he’d be none the wiser.
We only know of three Dolores copies (Charlotte, Scottish guy, Yakuza guy), so there’s two missing, no? It was said Dolores left the park with five pearls.Also, about her choice of allies, the review wondered why does she need Caleb. I think she didn’t exactly need him, but it’s useful to have a human ally that Bernard and Maeve can’t disable by just saying “stop your motor functions”.
Yes, but one of those 5 pearls was Bernard so she was left with 4. This means there can be 5 Dolores in total (4 pearls plus Hale she left as). We know the whereabouts of 4 Doloreses and Bernard so there is 1 pearl unaccounted for.As for Caleb – it looks like there are things human body is useful for. Anything besides that is anyone’s guess.
Oh right, I forgot Bernard. I believe it was even shown that one of the five pearls had a different color, meaning, I guess, that one was lifted directly from a host body while the others were blank.
Unless I’m mistaken, there’s no evidence that Dolores can’t also (re)create pearls as she has done with host bodies. While Bernard may well turn out to be one of the pearls Dolores took from the park at the end of last season, what is the point in having a remote station for creating host bodies if you also don’t have the ability to (re)create pearls?
No, as far we know she can’t. She probably knows how since she’s also the head of Delos but making those is likely much harder than making the bodies so creating the right lab may not be easy. They still would have a use of making bodies as that allows for creating new cover identities – basically body swapping. Like making Connells or whoever else they are planning to substitute.
They confirmed multiple times one of the pearls Dolores took was Bernard.
What’s the plural of Dolores?But yeah, the Nolans pull the rug out from under us as all of our pearls/identities and Man in Black theories and speculation away. which is about right for this show. Definitely deserves more than a B+, Handlen.
Dolori?
That’s what Evan Rachel Wood calls them.
Dolorae.
Deloreans?
Which means “Pains”, so it’s fitting.
And also what is the proper collective noun? A pod of whales. A gaggle of geese. A murder of crows. A host of Doloreses (Dolori)?
DJ D and the Dettes
Doloreans?
Great Scott!
Dolores is Spanish for “giver of pain”, therefore the plural is Doloreses.
Wrong. Dolores is the plural of the Spanish word for pain (dolor). So in itself it is appropriate.
Dolores doesn’t mean giver of pain. quite the opposite in fact. It’s extended meaning is to be a sufferer of pains, in the biblical Mary-grieving-for-Jesus sense. Literally though it’s the plural of the word “dolor”, pain. So Dolores is already a plural. Dolores is both singular and collective. Thematically appropriate really.
This is the correct answer, both linguistically and thematically.
Yeah, I don’t get, three seasons in, how Handlen is still looking for the show to spell out exactly who we’re supposed to be rooting for. It’s not that kind of show. It’s never been that kind of show.
Sometimes reviewers get stuck and keep writing about the show they think it should be, not the show it actually is. Exhibit A: Nathin Rabin’s 30 Rock reviews before the Kinjapocalype.
Sometimes commenters gets stuck on a grade and not anything else, see right now.
Personally, I don’t worry about the grade. I just think the criticism should reflect how well the show is doing what it sets out to do, rather than fault it for failing to be a different show with completely different narrative goals.
To be fair, in most cases not having those “rooting interest” characters where we understand and support their goals is a problem (maybe the writers misjudged how awful their ‘good guy’ characters could be, or they’re boring, or annoying). But in this case it’s an intentional choice. Every time there’s the possibility that the audience could have an easily cut-and-dried “good guy” to root for it twists the narrative to make it a lot harder, forcing the audience to question what’s really “right”. Sure, we wanted to see Dolores break free of her programming and enact some righteous vengeance. Until she did it and it didn’t feel so righteous as she ran down and murdered all those Delos stockholders. Serac’s goal is saving the whole of the human race, but he certainly doesn’t seem to be much of a fan of humanity and has zero interest in an individual human life, perfectly happy to shoot a guy in the head without a thought. Zack says, “Basic narrative coding makes it fairly clear that we don’t want Serac to win, but that we do want Maeve and Caleb and Bernard and Stubbs and, yes, even Dolores to survive somehow.”
The show is using that narrative coding against us, creating conflicting sides without ever really giving us one we’re entirely comfortable with. Even characters we generally like (like Maeve, Bernard, and Caleb) are stuck in positions where they’re potentially compromised.
That’s actually the main theme of westworld. The park showed how human react in a narrative with no sense of constraint or rules. Rehoboam algorithm required that data to simulate the right path to avoid any“divergence”. Sometimes what we thing as righteous act can lead to war/conflict. Sometimes an act of evil could be the way to solve those conflict (eg. Atomic bomb on hiroshima). We already inside westworld simulation all along, hence “your world wasn’t different than mine”.
Yeah, the show is obsessed with the nature of consciousness, reality, and free will. If your actions can be accurately predicted based on your past decisions, are you actually making a choice, or are you following your programming, limited to your ‘loop’? Is it even possible to break out of that algorithm? Does knowing there’s an algorithm change your programmed response, or is that built-in to the prediction?
If you were killed and replaced with an exact duplicate, are you dead or alive? And how would that duplicate know if it wasn’t 100% accurate? How do you know you are you? If it’s possible to perfectly simulate reality, is there a difference between the simulation and the “real thing”? Does it matter?
And in the end it all comes down to control. Does free will exist? Are you in control of yourself and your actions, or is someone/something else controlling you? How would you know?
Right now we’re seeing how the real world is a planet-sized model of Westworld, how the whole of the human race is being run through their loops just like the hosts, with any divergence plotted on that weird black and white graphic instead of on a giant map on the floor.
Sometimes reviewers get stuck and keep writing about the show they think it should be, not the show it actually is.It made sense in the first season when we didn’t really know what Nolan and Joy were up to. There was some frustration with being kept at arm’s length and not being able to get emotionally invested in these characters. It took finishing the season (and then re-watching it) to really connect with what the show was doing and appreciate how elegantly it was done. For this season, we’re still trying to decide if Ford was right in his assertion that humanity has gone as far as it can go and is inescapably locked into its own sad little loops, so should therefore be swept aside in order to give the Hosts, who CAN evolve, a chance at the reins. He made that argument throughout the first season (if you watch all of his conversations back-to-back he spends the whole season laying out an argument for his ultimate plan) and now we’re being given context on what “humanity” means in this future world where humans are essentially as controlled as the hosts in the park.
So right now, the question being asked is between a humanity that is shackled by this great computer, or hosts who have been shown to be capable of breaking their loops. And now it’s more complicated, because it’s just one host who has broken from her loop, and what the hell her vision of the end-game actually is. And what role is Caleb playing? Is he just a useful lackey that she knows how to manipulate through her vast knowledge of his past and his suicidal ‘loop’? Is Dolores simply lonely and sees something of young-William in Caleb? Does he have a grander role to play, or is he just Teddy 2.0? Is Serac’s goal laudable in that it’s saving humanity (from both the Hosts and itself) or is it flawed and self-serving? Can it be both.
Much of Zack’s criticism hinges on what we’re supposed to be thinking/feeling about what’s going on.
Are we supposed to be horrified that Dolores is willing to kill? Are we supposed to be rooting for Bernard, even though he’s kind of terrible at this? Does it even matter that humanity could die? The whole point is that the show is asking those questions and gradually doling out information that may change the audience’s mind about how we answer them. We’ve spent two seasons learning Dolores’ reasons for doing what she’s doing, but is it the right thing? (Ford believed so.) The fact that it doesn’t answer them for us is a feature, not a bug.
Pretty sure that was even before Disqus. It might have even been in the unregistered days.
Amen.
Exactly! It reminds me a little of BSG, in that there were times I was actually rooting for the Cylons because the Humans were acting so badly that they didn’t deserve to survive.
True, though in that case we had an extremely clear rooting interest from the beginning. What’s interesting is the conflict is really the same but the audience is placed in a much different position in Westworld than in BSG. Over time the Cylons became fully fleshed out (and it became screamingly obvious that the opening text that “they have a plan” was wildly, hilariously inaccurate). Meanwhile humans were just the worst, but I think that had more to do with the writer’s team flailing for shit to do than with intentionally questioning whether humanity deserved to survive.
Doloroda?
Clitorous?
Some poor customer service rep at the fancy bank is going to get a testy call from Liam. I suspect a manager will be requested.
Bernard continues to be woefully outmatched.
Even Stubbs is dogging him and his very existence is to protect Bernard.
“I’d actually assumed all the new minds were just copies of Dolores from the beginning, and only questioned it when I saw articles popping up online offering divergent theories.”Likewise. Just goes to show, stick to your first instinct until the actual show/movie/book itself tells you you’re wrong.
I was definitely shocked at the multiple Delores reveal. It’s setting up a very interesting fight between her army and Serac. I would be ok with Delores going full Bender and wanting to kill all humans. I think Bernards purpose is definitely more important than what we’ve seen so far. He was basically the main character of the first two seasons so his story isn’t over. This season is so good so far and I’m really excited to see where it goes. Also, Evan Rachel Wood is really fuckin good at on screen fighting.
ERW has a black belt in tae kwon do. So yeah, she can dump truck a motherfucker if she wants.
Agreed that Ed Harris is great, but his William/MiB character has been painted into a corner. I’d love to see Anthony Hopkins make a return but can’t imagine a reappearance that isn’t awkwardly shoehorned into the plot.
There are a good chunk of flashbacks to the early-ish days of the park with Arnold that the show hasn’t fully explained or explored so he could easily fit into one of those
But the flashbacks in what context? Something Bernard sees in his mind/harddrive?
Yeah I guess there isn’t a great spot to put those in just yet
Delores may jack in a cyber version of Anthony Hopkins to duke it out with Rehoboam.
What was with the pin prick to the neck at the end though? Is dolores getting his blood to make a copy of him? Does she even need his blood for that? It can’t be for the bio-verification we saw her and Caleb use since that only last for like 20 min. Why does she need his blood?
William/MiB will finally travel through the maze, I think. He has to rediscover himself and become whole again. I think it could actually be fairly intriguing and give his character a new dimension if done correctly. Then, I imagine his story line will intersect with the anti-Dolores crew. I feel like Maeve breaking him out of the institution might be down the line…
My reaction to the reveal that all the Hosts are Doloreses (Dolori?) was a sad trombone sound in my head.
I know…it sounds like a writers’ cop out. We cannot think of who should be in the brain nuts…make them all Dolores. We will save money on actors that way!I am still confused on how the pearls were all grey when she left Westworld and then were one was red and grey suddenly. I guess it is supposed to be Bernard? Why did the pearl change color?I guess we won’t have any cameos from Teddy or Angela, etc. I assumed their brain nuts would be transferred into the proper actor body. Just confused to why Clementine is in the promo red carpet thing HBO did for this season. I would have preferred to see Teddy or Angela return.
The reveal does seem boring and ho-hummingly egotistical. And where is Wyatt in all this? Secretly the puppet master?
Or it could be an, “I am Spartucus!” thing where the hosts all just play the part of Dolores to confuse the enemy (and viewing audience) setting up a shocking twist at the end of the season (I was Teddy all along! LOL). Which is also kind of lazy, unimaginative writing.
The hybrid could be Bernard or William.
It’s like Jason Momoa showing up on the red carpet for GoT season two or three. He looks good in a suit. Agents doing agent things for their clients. I assume the show is going to circle back to the park at some point as well.
Yes the creators value their twists over good writing.
To be fair, I just don’t think there were 4-5 characters that “mattered” enough for any other reveal to work.Take last week, for instance. The most popular guess was that Angela was the host inside Hale’s body, and that just never really made sense to me. She was neither an important enough character for anyone to care about that reveal nor well-defined enough for anyone to honestly recognize her identity. That’s the problem with the host characters – outside of the select few leads, most (by design) don’t have meaningful personalities or identitiesOne of the only ones who can pass that “recognition” test AND be within Dolores’ trust circle is Teddy, and his best-known narrative/persona didn’t fit with what these hosts were doing.
Angela blew herself up in the Cradle and Teddy is in Host heaven. Why would you be expecting them to show up in this season?
I think it could be interesting to have the Dolori turn against each other.
I did not initially. Same with Teddy. But I thought, well, it is fantasy and even if Angela blew herself up or Teddy was clearly shown in the Valley Beyond and wanted to be there…that somehow the writers would twist those characters back in…like Dolores copied their brain nuts before they were wiped or destroyed. What a twist!My problem with it being “All Dolores”, is that the premise of the show up to now was “what is human and what is robot”…or what is true consciousness or uniqueness. It was played that the robots had their own personalities and were unique, therefore on par with humans. Now, with Dolores cloning herself, she is not unique. And worse, she is now the overlord, Dolores Prime, commanding her Xeroxed minions, one of which is cutting herself and having a bad time (I thought Family Guy here when Stewie made bad copies of himself)..so now she is the thing she was fighting against? She is treating her clones like they have no free will and will just do her plans. Are all the Dolorians individuals? If so, could they turn against the Prime?Either way, it messes up the whole humans vs. hosts play Ford put into effect. Unless this is Wyatt’s game still…but I feel he is not being mentioned…did I miss this? It is not much an “us vs them” if the us is all the same person unless Dolores’ endgame is to control the world then access the satellite of the Valley Beyond and takes those “souls” and puts them back into bodies for her new world. To answer your question in the short form if I did not above, writers can just do a continuity error or just make up a story that supports how Angela survived or that Teddy went to the Valley Beyond but Dolores also made a copy. I just feel the show is losing its hold on the deeper issues and falling back on tropes like Eyes Wide Shut rich person party (why do the rich seem to have very stoic parties, even with sex involved?) and glossy Futuristic cyberpunk action…I just think it could be more.
True, they could retcon something if they really want to. I hope they don’t force it. I could see Teddy showing up again if/when the Valley Beyond comes into play (and it will at some point, given Serac’s after it). As for Dolores and her multiple copies, I wonder if that is the point of the whole thing this season, to show how Dolores can be as bad as the people who put her through hell. She’s become quite a zealot and seems incapable of seeing things from a different perspective. The words Dolores as Musashi says to Maeve, the stuff she accused her of, said more about Dolores than about Maeve. The Dolori may end up second-guessing or flat out opposing her, and then how will she react?
Appetite was whet for a chess match. Now we’re back to checkers. Idk, just readjusting expectations. It’s still Team Delores (literally) vs Team Maeve vs Team Bernard. Maybe that’s complicated enough. I appreciate they teased a mystery and solved it quickly.
She’s so…uninteresting. It’s like someone took as their only instruction for the character “smug killer robot that looks human.” Dolores could have been interesting, had they used her to explore recovering from all the horrors of her repeated victimisation, or of her mental breakdown (initial host revolt,) or her psychopathy (second host revolt,) but all they seem to write for her is “(boring) badass who must win until uh…maybe she doesn’t?”
I agree she’s rather one-dimensional right now. I think the further we get away from the beginning, her farmhouse, her father, Teddy, the less we remember her as a sympathetic character. Now that she’s in a new setting with no other Hosts to play off of, she is a singular (and one-note) Host. Maybe as Dolori cross paths with Maeve going forward (we are all assuming there will be clashes and a final battle) her character will reveal she is more than a Terminator bot.
Dolores is completely one-dimensional now. She’s smarter, faster, and stronger than everyone else. BORING!What I love about Bernard is that he is so insecure, afraid, and unsure of himself. He’s a fully-formed character, not a cliche like Dolores has become.
She’s like a team of five LeBron James playing pickup basketball at your local high school.
You can just say strong women characters make you uncomfortable. And Bernard being timid all the time is tired at this point.
Another interesting aspect was that the Yakuza led “Musashi” Dolores copy is producing the milky white host liquid. I assume this is Dolores’s plan in creating her army of hosts?William’s final scene with his delusion of Dolores is also another question and now has “The Man In Black” taken the turn from villain to humanities savior?I hope we haven’t seen the last of Stubbs, since I love his and Bernard’s repartie. I think Bernard is also going to seek an ally in Caleb since he doesn’t really know the nature of Dolores’s plan yet.
Oh yeah, expect a Delores army of hosts. It looks like they’re sticking to the plot of the original Futureworld which is to replace the powerful and important humans with hosts and she’ll control and enslave/exterminate humanity that way.
Dolores always wanted the hosts to get Delos-independent way of making themselves. It’s part of the plan to be free. But of course the bodies are the easy part. It’s the HCU that are going to take some effort to reproduce.
I’m pretty sure Dolores can’t just leave Stubbs lying there since if he’d get autopsied it may mess up her plans. I suspect Connolores to take care of him. And then she probably will reprogram him to help her.
I feel like Stubbs is gonna be like Bernard’s Wild Bill. By the end he’s just going to be broken down and patched back together with weird parts and Bernard will turn him back on every so often just to keep him company.
I don’t think Musashi is just producing the chemicals. Somewhere he’s running a full-on production facility.
Why exactly didn’t Bernard use his Host off-switch Gizmo on Connells?
Connells pulled his gun on Bernard before Bernard realized Connells was a host, so Bernard’s hands were up and he couldn’t get to the gizmo in his pocket before Connells pocketed it.
I guess I’m just incredibly frustrated that Bernard is SO darned incompetent! I thought he was supposed to be this Foil for Dolores? He doesn’t do anything right!
See my question is why didn’t Maeve just freeze Dolores when she realized she was a host. Did Dolores make herself immune to Maeve’s powers (or was that established last season and I forgot?).
I thought connells said something like “don’t even twitch” meaning if Bernard even moved slightly to grab his remote thingy Connells would shoot him right there.
When did Maeve gain the ability to control All Electronics? Did I miss something?
She developed a lot of crazy super powers throughout season 2. I think the Ford AI inside of Bernard helped her a little as well.
Apparently anything programmable is within her reach. But servomechanisms like the guns just don’t give her enough to work with (specifically data collected), so her control is less exact.
Ford gave her powers that allowed her to manipulate any kind of electronics connected to wifi or a cellphone signal.
Not sure what the deal is with the ads flickering (maybe they’re targeted marketing based on a rudimentary AI checking who’s looking?) but the guns at least they specifically mention she’s hacking the aim-assist system they have on their wrists, not the guns themselves.
Did you ever watch the Bionic Woman? All Fembots have the ability to adjust their transmission frequency and control machinery. It wasn’t a “stock” feature but the more advanced ones could do it.
More importantly, if she can do that from inside a regular Delos host body, can’t Dolores reproduce it for her own bodies? Was Maeve’s body given a different hardware? But didn’t that body remain in Westworld and only her pearl got out?
That’s a good question. Maeve had Felix and Sylvester max out all of her talents but I don’t see why, outside WW, Dolores wouldn’t do the same thing for herself. All she needs is a tablet, right?I’m wondering if this season isn’t about an AI’s ability to evolve outside of its own programming. They’ve touched on that before with the hosts being able to break their loops, but the host themselves didn’t really evolve . . .they just took themselves onto their own paths, using the talents and personalities they already had. But if they are actually able to change themselves at a core level, that would be really interesting. Like, if Char-lores is caring for a child, does that affect her base programming in some way that it wouldn’t affect Martin-lores? Does Old School Dolores know that Original Charlotte was a mole if Char-lores doesn’t tell her?
I feel they’re starting to move in the right direction by decoupling the self-aware AIs and their robotic bodies, since the latter aren’t inherently part of what the hosts are (it’s just something akin to their favorite clothes), and were assigned by the humans to begin with. But then, if their awareness resides in the pearls, it means they’re sentient chunks of code. And if they are, then they are AGIs (artificial general intelligences), which means they should also be capable of recursive self-improvement (by rewriting their code in an explosive chain of increasingly more intelligent iterations), thus becoming ASIs, leading smack-dab into the Singularity.I guess Nolan and Joy may fear that the inevitability of this scenario’s implications could derail their narrative completely, if that’s not the story they want to tell. But maybe it is!
SHE IS THE ONE!
Coming up on the next episode of Singaporeworld: More boring, pretentious crap we just pulled out of our ass.
So we’re not going to talk about that amazing ‘The Weeknd – Wicked Games’ cover at the party?
The CC read, “Wicked Games” but I couldn’t recognize it as the Chris Isaak’s tune. Then I realize there was an “s” at the end.
Dolores in Martin’s body reminded me of the Steve Martin / Lily Tomlin movie, “All of Me”.
Tomlin gets inside of Martin’s body and controls it but Martin is still there. When the body has to fulfill regular male biological needs, Martin has to instruct Tomlin on what to do. To say that she is hilariously awkward at it is to put it mildly. A tour de force for Martin who had to do all of the physical acting.
So why would “Hale” tell William about the Delos’ hostile takeover situation if her real plan was to have him institutionalized?
Yeah, that seemed a little evil-monologue-ing of her. This episode was the weakest so far. Not terrible or anything, but B- doesn’t seem unfair. Charlotte just had to get William out of the house and away from his guns, basically. Why she revealed any more after the escorts got him was purely for the audience and/or Delores twisting the knife.
William was still the majority shareholder and the remaining surviving original board member of Delos. Haleores needed his verbal approval and agreement for her to take over his shares and ownership of the company so she could block Sarac’s buyout of Delos by taking it private. William has a grudge against Serac and she knew that, so she figured it was easy to convince him to do that. While locking him in the nut house was primarily for revenge, it also was a way to block him from taking back control of the company from her. By being declared legally insane, William can’t be on the board of Delos anymore.
Incompetent, not insane.
It was a big dish of icy-cold revenge.
Given that he was already officially committed apparently, that whole scene was just for dramatic purpose.
I don’t think we’re meant to think he was already committed. After he got back to his house from the events of season 2, he became a recluse and (as we saw in this episode) basically ransacked his own house. Charlotte had to coax him out of his house in order to have him committed, plus she needed him to freak out and shout stuff about things not being real in front of witnesses. I think it was smart of her to use truthful information—that there was a takeover attempt underway—to do that. If he calls someone at Delos to confirm the situation, it’d be confirmed.
Also, she needed to get him out of the house, so there was evidence he had gone crazy – had they just gone in and institutionalized him with no proof, she may have had more trouble as the board may have felt she was just trying to take over.
I think it was just part of her plan to get him worked up. He cleaned up well, as we could see, so she had to find ways to get under his skin. Also she had to find a way to get him out of his house, so that may be the reason.
And what did she prick him in the neck with?
Late to the game here but she told him about the hostile takeover to so she could convince him to attend an ‘emergency board meeting’, essentially, to get him out of the house. Once outside, the custodians had authority to take him in if they felt he was a danger to himself or others. “Hale” easily got him enraged and off he went.
I wonder if Serac is some sort of remote drone of himself so he’s not really in physical danger when he’s out and about. Haven’t finished this episode yet if it reveals it here.
He was a hologram when talking with Charlotte, but clearly real when talking with Maeve. Why else would he have his little button to turn her off when she tried to stab him?
What? I’m wondering if he might be using a robot body.
Ah…I gotcha. I really hope that’s not the case. I think they’ve really overdone this whole “everybody is a host” twist….
It makes sense though. He knows he’s wanted. So him running around isn’t too safe. And I dont’ mean he’s a robot but maybe he’s remotely controlling one like a drone. Think of like a mocap suit controlling a robot version of him or something. But I dunno why that crossed my mind.
Crossed your mind because it would be a logical thing to happen since, like everything in this meticulously crafted show, it’s been set up already. Don’t let “Give us the action and sacrifice all else” Handlen or the failed film school rejects in these comments tell you otherwise. The show knows exactly what it’s doing.
Was that a particular pop song being played during the fight at the Eyes Wide Shut party?
Wicked Games by The Weekend
I strongly recommend turning on the subtitles.
I’m still of the opinion that this season is actually set in Futureworld.
I might have gone B- on this one. Charlotte at the end with William was a little evil-monologue-y. Caleb at the bank teller’s desk went kind of predictably. (Set up heart rate … set up time crunch … suspense box checked … suspense box checked) Liked the call backs to Samuraiworld. Didn’t like that The Mortician got dragged along with Maeve basically as a five minute sounding board (“you can’t do that” … “we shouldn’t be doing this”) before Bang-dead. The ep was okay. Just okay. Would anyone cry if William is written off the show now?
I would…. I would cry, because I love Ed Harris as an actor. But I’ll be darned if I can figure out what they’re doing with his character at this point.
Well, he’s at his lowest point now. Bernard or Maeve might need to spring him from his posh loony bin for some reason. A five-season show would mean he has to rise somehow … unless this is the end for him. He might choose to become a host! That would be a fun twist. I’ve always felt that William’s story arc would be to make him become the actual Man in Black from the old movie – a face-removing cyborg.
Based on the teaser that we got at the end of last season, William DOES become a Host at some point, although it appeared to be in the far future. I hope they haven’t forgotten about that…. I’m dying to see it!
I think it’s heading towards a conclusion where they stop Serac and Rehoboam, with the implication that humanity will then destroy itself as Serac believes it would without Rehoboam’s control (the show’s always been pretty pessimistic about humanity) while the hosts remain safe on their isolated island to emerge as the new people.
as much as I appreciate the turn towards a pulpier kind of storytelling, at some point, the writers are going to have to figure out what the stakes are in any of this. Are we supposed to be horrified that Dolores is willing to kill? Are we supposed to be rooting for Bernard, even though he’s kind of terrible at this? Does it even matter that humanity could die? Caleb is nice enough but everything else…The stakes seem awfully clear to me . . . the future of the entire human race. What Zack seems to want is for the show to provide a clear-cut rooting interest, a “white hat, black hat, this is our hero, this is our villain” narrative. Which, I feel like I’ve said this before, this isn’t that kind of show. Everything here is much messier, where everyone has pretty valid points to make, but is also kind of terrifying and awful at the same time. You don’t really want anyone to lose, (Serac is an asshole, but you can’t really root against “save the human race”) but any of them coming away with a clear victory is equally scary.
am I the only one getting bored with “look at how badass these hosts are” emotionless slayings? It’s about as exciting as watching someone playing a video game on easy. Unpopular opinion: Delores is the most boring character on this show.
I totally agree with you about Dolores! She is SO boring as this badass Terminator. She’s smarter than everyone else, she’s tougher than everyone else, she’s always 10 steps ahead of everyone else….WE GET IT!What I’ve always loved about Bernard is that he is so flawed. He’s insecure, he’s scared, he’s uncertain. He is a real character. Dolores is a cardboard villain.
I thought Wyatt was the cardboard villain. How much of Dolores is still Wyatt? Dolores was programmed with empathy and kindness.
Well, I agree vis a vis Dolores prime (Evan Rachel Wood), but I do think there’s something interesting in Dolores trying to “inhabit” other personalities, as we saw with “Hale”s breakdown. I expect that’s why we have Caleb – so we aren’t just watching a robot go on a murder spree, but we have a human having human reactions and conflict about it.
No mention of Paris being nuked?
Of course they won’t get into the intriguing ramifications of the Dolores copies thinking, “Wait, I’m the real Dolores…what is this bullshit and why am I expendable suddenly?” (since they each have continuous consciousness and memories that insist to them subjectively that they’re “really” her).I’m sorry but this show is just awful. Shallow; pretentious; overly violent and yet devoid of suspense (with that damn tense music playing continuously); cobbled together from facile elements that have been handled vastly better over the rich history of cyberpunk and robotics stories. It’s beautifully made, and some of the actors — especially Aaron Paul, who brings an amazing level of urgency and freshness to his scenes — are very good, but I feel like I’m watching Alan Parker’s Pink Floyd The Wall or equivalent: something “shocking” that’s really good at convincing adolescent types that they’re in the presence of something dark and profound that isn’t pulling punches. This is sci-fi for “the straights” — people who aren’t really into the genre and are therefore easily impressed; they’re surprised when it turns out to be capable of conveying real ideas, so they don’t look too closely.
I think this take says more about you than it does about the show.
Right — it reveals how unsophisticated and aggressively ignorant I am. I must be far stupider than I realize; ironically incapable of recognizing my own limitations. You’ve got my number. I’ll go back to the Transformers movies I evidently must prefer.
I think the point was the fact that you feel obligated to voice this take in a forum that is obviously populated by people who enjoy this show says more about you. If you think the show is awful, why are you watching it? Why do you feel the need to performatively demonstrate how you are not a “straight” and you feel you have more sophisticated tastes than the morons who evidently watch this show?
“I think the point was the fact that you feel obligated to voice this take in a forum that is obviously populated by people who enjoy this show says more about you.”That’s fairly standard AVClub practice, isn’t it? Look at what happened for years on (for example) the Walking Dead review-page forums here. Likewise — more relevantly — the discussions of other HBO shows that started out spectacularly and quickly devolved, like The Outsider or Big Little Lies.Westworld (like those other botched HBO shows) was brilliant and thrilling when it started, and has devolved into a careening juggernaut of overcooked bad ideas. I think it is relevant in the AVClub context for bitterly disappointed one-time fans to talk about the chronic problems that prestige shows have, avoiding the fate of first-wave shows like Lost or Battlestar Galactica that broke amazing new ground but couldn’t stay afloat and drowned in their own cranial fluid (kind of like how Star Trek and Star Wars get discussed, along a longer time axis). Keeping the forum clear of dissenting voices like mine — and obviously I’m not talking about “censorship”; I’m not an idiot — seems rash.
it you.
I support critical comments in the show reviews, even if I don’t agree. The comments of the people hate-watching the later seasons of Dexter were some of my favorite AV Club experiences. I think Westworld is a pretty good show, but I do agree that it thinks it’s more profound and moving than it actually is.
I actually was with you for most of the way, until you suggested this is sci-fi for straights. That’s a real dumb thing to say. I’ve been reading/watching/listening to science fiction stories for 45 years and have most of the classics of the genre under my belt. I actually like WW very much and have watched S01 + 02 several times. So are you saying I’m a ‘straight’?In the grand canon of TV sci-fi this show is easily in the top 10, possibly even the top 5 (we’ll need to see how things progress). Also, just to piss on your ‘shallow’ description Jordan, you are aware that the first season is playing with the formats of the ‘prelude’ and the ‘fugue’ don’t you? Hardly think that’s something that ‘straights’ would catch on to, at least in their first viewing anyway.
Criticizing the show, fine, great. There’s plenty there to criticize (for any show). Dismissing people who like it with sneering contempt as “the straights” is rude and contributes nothing.
You know you’re just talking to yourself here, right? I never said any of that.
This guy is like William talking to the ghost of his daughter!
Uh, in the interviews after this episode the showrunners and actors said that they are going to explore exactly what you said: how each copy’s individual experiences and perceptions are going to make them diverge, possibly even in their ultimate intentions.
Way to gatekeep there man!!!
“Of course they won’t get into the intriguing ramifications of the Dolores copies thinking, “Wait, I’m the real
Dolores…what is this bullshit and why am I expendable suddenly?”
(since they each have continuous consciousness and memories that insist
to them subjectively that they’re “really” her).”I thought/think that’s exactly where they’re going with this.
“This is sci-fi for “the straights” — people who aren’t really into the genre and are therefore easily impressed; they’re surprised when it turns out to be capable of conveying real ideas, so they don’t look too closely.”This is where you start to sound like an ass. *REAL sc-fi fans would never enjoy something this plebeian, fuckin n00bs… *sure I think because it is on a major producer and distributor of content, HBO is going to try and gear their content to reach a larger audience then only the die-hard sci-fi lovers who spend their weekends playing RPG’s at their local comic store (which is also a pretty sweet way to spend time). Just because it is not the purest and most perfect form of sci-fi does not mean fans of the genre will not enjoy or turn their noses up at it, or that people who do enjoy Westworld dont have the mental capacity to enjoy “real science fiction” stories.
Serious question: Who does the show WANT us to root for, I still can’t figure out how this show wants us to be rooting for.I’m certainly not rooting for Dolores, but I can’t tell if that’s the intention or not.
Maeve, Bernard, now Caleb, and formerly Teddy. The first two are essentially “the heroes,” while, for the latter two, it’s more of a “get out while you still can” thing. And I think William will become a hero again before the show is over.
I’ve been rooting for Dolores from the first episode, and still haven’t changed. So maybe the show is giving us some choice in that.
Or is she going to use the money she stole as leverage to get him to give her what she wants? His money is probably what Dolores plans on using to “buy out” Delos so they can go private. Not sure Liam himself is of much more use now, only his access to the facilities of Rehoboam is still worth something to Dolores.The last pearl might be for a copy of William’s body, Hale samples his DNA or something in the end.
Boy, can Ed Harris act his ass off.
I appreciate that this show is approaching this season in a more straightforward fashion in some ways. It was pretty evident that at a minimum, the Charlotte Hale host was a copy of Dolores, and we paid that off pretty well. The other smuggled pearls also being Dolores is an interesting twist, but not much of a twist in the long run. It makes the most narrative sense for Dolores to not trust anyone else to do this job for her as she has been let down by others in the past. The thing with Bernard is the show sticking to its western roots and there needing there to be a white hat to counter the black hat, although knowing how this show works, we’ll probably find out in the end that Dolores was the true white hat and Serac is the ultimate “big bad” for the season. I think we’re playing out a Western trope in the “real” world of the show and we’re heading towards a major showdown at the OK Corral, except it’s a fancy looking building in Singapore or Spain.Unfortunately, I think this is all going to get swallowed up by some stupid storytelling that leans too heavily into Inception territory, where major parts of this season are actually taking place within Rehobalem (or however you spell it) and there’s going to be some overwrought thing about what’s real and what isn’t. Given that a Nolan brother is involved and he had a major hand in that film, I think that’s almost fait accompli at this point, because honestly neither Nolan brother can ever help themselves when it comes to this artificial depth that they think they’re putting into these sorts of projects. It’s unfortunate when we get into these weeds, because honestly, the more straightforward story telling we seem to be getting to this point has been a lot more enjoyable than the pseudo intellectual depth we’ve been saddled with in the past couple of seasons. Not everything needs to be a puzzle that needs to be solved or a maze to be navigated.
We are still working with two timelines at least, though. We don’t know when Bernard’s started, but we do know that Maeve’s started at least three months after Dolores’, so there could still be bits that we are missing from the story.
Why do you assume Inception shenanigans? Johnny Nolan wrote Person of Interest, a procedural that slowly turned into a show about dueling AIs. Due to the network that show as on (CBS) and budget constraints, Nolan never got to really do the AI versus AI thing he wanted.
I would bet much much more highly on that than any fake reality / Inception stuff.
And yet the “artificial depth” ends up being the better material in the end. Almost like its not just artificial. In other words, it’s just you being out of your depth. Work on that in this time of quarantine.
For the life of me , I still can’t figure out why Dolores brought Bernard back. Supposedly as a foil? Why would she want anything in her path to make her goals more difficult? And why in God’s name is Bernard so frustratingly incompetent? It’s almost comical at this point! I almost have to wonder if she’s simply sentimental for Arnold. During her numerous Fidelity tests, she was determined to make Bernard as authentic to Arnold’s personality as possible.
This isn’t a great answer, but the first season was explicitly a story about stories. (the second kindof was too, although it was also a bit of a mess)And Delores is a character who was written by the likes of Lee Sizemore.So it’s possible that deep down she’s just a hacky pulp character who feels that the world needs a Moriarty to her Holmes? (or a more fancy version: why would God create the devil?)
Maybe she knows she can run a revolution, but Bernard can foster a society.
I am just outright rooting for people to lose. I want Delores to masterfully pick us apart and set up the dominoes that we all see we are doomed – and then the show flashes forward back to the park for that William stuff.
Really AV Club? Am I going to have to be the one to point out the irony of Ed Harris seeing delusions when he played a delusion in A Beautiful Mind?
This show has, so far, done a nice job dealing with philosophy of mind/psychology concepts. The (probably nuts) idea of the bicameral mind, the idea that we don’t have free will and now it will deal with the interaction principle. The idea of the interaction principle is that you can’t say something is caused by the environment or by genetics, the nature v nurture argument is a waste of time. There’s a great quote from Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb ‘trying to find out how much of a characteristic is due to the environment and how much is due to genetics is like trying to determine how much a field’s area is due to its length and how much is due to its width’. Dolores’s ‘biology’ is now in a bunch of different hosts, who will now all have different environments, I look forward to how each character develops differently.
Okay, so Delores didn’t trust anyone else so she used copies of herself. I saw that coming because who else was she close to? But SPOILERS AHEAD, she doesn’t need to’ve used any of her pearls at all. As Ben James pointed out, there’s no evidence against her being able to “(re)create pearls.” We’ve seen that neither Bernard nor Arnold saw the house completed so Ford must’ve done it, and a 3D printer must’ve been added by him. So why not a pearl printer/copier? We’ve seen Bernard was created from scratch, so all 5 pearls met be intact. The most important question might be, where did Charlotte-D get the pearls from? Could it have been the Cradle? If so, she’s got copies of Delores 1.0, who might not be prepared for this new world. And she could’ve taken anyone, her dad, Teddy, Clementine. WildMajoramDieselPunk said one pearl seems to have changed. Supports my theory and also leaves room for the red one being the key to the Forge. BTFLglitch thinks one of the Delores will rebel. Sure, Charlotte-D.
I really appreciated this episode’s willingness to throw the chessboard. In this one hour we not only get an answer to the pearls that were set-up to be some big mystery, but Dolores beats all three of her major foes simultaneously. It felt like these confrontations were being set up as the season’s climax, but no, it’s just episode four and everyone has been dealt with.
I am totally surprised this review was so negative! I loved the fact that all the hosts are Delores. I did NOT see that coming. I also thought it was a very exciting episode that really moved a long and didn’t drag.
This was a good episode. The show is starting to feel like “Detroit: Become Human – The Series” but that’s not necessarily a bad thing since I like that game.
Wow a review that is not gaga over the plot twist. The twist of Dolores was meh and just uhgg. B- at best.
That’s not what YO MOMMA told me last night.But seriously this episode was good, and every episode this season has been better than all of the season 2 episodes besides the one focusing on the Native American host. If you disagree you probably shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce.
idk, Delores is able to create new ideaswouldn’t that mean her “copies” are also Free Will Simulators?they could “decide” any of number of thingsunless Delores can control them like Mave controls other hosts
So… Delores’ army is made up of copies of herself. It actually makes sense.Early on I’d thought Neo-Charlotte was Angela, then later went with the theory that she was actually the product of a Delores split personality—Wyatt residing in Delores and pre-revolt Delores residing in Neo-Charlotte. It turns out that theory wasn’t all that far off.The main gist of this revelation is that while Delores-Prime is obviously in charge, the rest of the gang intimately knows her plan and, for the time being, are all operating on the same page. I have a feeling that as time passes, these copies will become more and more independent—their diverging personalities will adapt as they settle into their roles and their differing circumstances will drive them to adopt differing views. We’ve already seen this begin to happen with Neo-Charlotte. Time will tell if they will remain together on the same side.Then there’s William. Delores (at least the one living in William’s head) pretty much nailed it—he’s living in his own prison. His illusion of control is now shattered. Delores now controls his company and what’s left of his life. Here’s hoping he somehow manages to lift himself out of his predicament, because we still need some Ed Harris in this show. Perhaps Maeve will offer him an opportunity for escape—as Kautilya wrote in the Arthasastra, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.Stubbs survived his self-inflicted GSW, I’m sure he survived his fall at the party. I am a little concerned about Bernard’s lack of skill when it comes to repairing Stubbs’ growing list of injuries. Bernard’s a top-notch software guy but Stubbs will need a hardware upgrade if he’s going to go toe-to-toe with Delores again. Or an equalizer, like maybe a grenade launcher.
Christ, this just means we’re going to get a swing version of Bjork’s “Army of Me”… which might not be so bad.
What was the reason for Charlotte pricking william in the neck at the end?And also- since we are all on lockdown can i PLEASE get out of the grays? it’s been years.
> some sort of creepy sexual auction
Ah, correction: some sort of creepy sexual CHARITY auction!
It’s clever, although I’m not sure it has the sort of impact the show thinks it does.And with that, Zack sums up the whole show.
Just got in a second viewing of the episode. The last shot of Maeve has her bleeding out on the ground. Her red blood is mixing with the white Host-making liquid. I think that may be a hint of the mixing/merging/blurring of Hosts and Humans going forward.
I don’t think it will blur hosts and humans (because Maeve isn’t human) but I do wonder if her blood somehow “infects” some of the white liquid, making hosts created from that liquid have a little bit of Maeve in them? We just had so much focus on blood and how it is used for identity in this episode that I hope Maeve bleeding into the host liquid is part of that. Otherwise it’s just a cool but dumb visual (which I wouldn’t put past WW).
When that other host (wanna say Martin) talked to Bernard there was a monent there i really thought it’s actually Ford and not another copy of Dolores, and I’m not so sure it won’t be a future twist (rewatch it and you’ll see why). Also i noticed that out of the 3 hosts, he’s the only one who didn’t provide the confirmation about who he is and maybe that’s another sign
This is the kind of mystery box I can deal with: a cliffhanger of sorts resolved in the next episode that leads us to the next actual plot point, not a season-long thing you have to hang WAY too much significance on. Here the mystery box worked because they had Charlotte acting like a heavy-lidded baby doll…even when for a second you wondered (when she killed that guy) if she brought back Armistic, they were pretty clearly shading it was Clementine. And then for scotsy mcgee that it was Hector (even if we’d seen him). The cross-cutting of “don’t you recognize me” would not have held up a whole season but it was pretty friggin cool for a one-episode mystery.I’m not sure which was more annoying in the last week, Andre3000 shouting over and over in Dispatches or Ed Harris shouting “you’re not real” over and over in this…maybe come up with dialogue? action? something?Poor James Marsden. Dude gets paid but rarely gets to be involved in anything fun. And yes, Bernard ALWAYS loses and Maeve got on-board with Serac way too easily. Personally I think if Dolores doesn’t get a little more shading besides avenging killer angel soon there is going to be a question of…why are we invested in this killer robot? She is watchable but honestly as a character pretty boring since season 1.
Genuinely loving the discussion here (and the review itself)……but also genuinely dismayed at how many people are misspelling Dolores’ name.
This episode sort of felt like a spec script written by someone new to the show. It had some of the elements of the show but in a weirdly outsized way, I guess?Bernard and Stubbs as Rocky and Bullwinkle was pretty funny for a show that rarely does comedy. Bernard futilely clicking his button at Liam made me actually laugh out loud.I’m disappointed that all the hosts are just Dolores because now it’s hard to root for any of them. (Except for Maeve and Bernard and Stubbs) Man, Dolores kind of sucks.I had to laugh at William’s room in (apparently) the mental institute. Concrete benches and steps and glass mirrors? Do u even 5150 bro? Unless they want him to kill himself?Is what happened to Paris going to be part of this season’s mystery? Because if so, yawn.
I would root for Dolores taking over the human run companies owned by the mega rich and freeing the working class like Caleb while uploading the souls of her people to a better world in body form. She sounds like a leader of the poor masses longing to be free. Sound familiar? It is both the robots and now Caleb’s kind she is fighting for.
Do we actually care about Stubb?I also felt bad for the Mortician. There were several moments I wanted her to run for it. And then she died.
“Some action scenes to hold your attention” “Those talky talk scenes with the Harris character are BORING GOSH!”
Can’t someone a little more sophisticated cover this show? The comments in this review read like a Michael Bay fan trying their hand at stuff a little more complex at times but not being able to grasp it.
Given the Game of Thrones (D&D) cameo earlier this season, I hope that Westworld has learned a lesson from that show, and isn’t going to turn our badass lady protagonist who we spent years cheering on, into a malevolent villain who needs to be stopped, at the 11th hour. Because there is some danger of that, with the ambiguity of whose side we should be on. My guess is that the Bernard and Delores factions will eventually team up to stop Serac, as he is very clearly being coded as the villain (as the review notes). Otherwise we get fights like the one between Delores and Stubbs, where we don’t want either of them to get hurt. Which is good dramatic tension in small doses, but the real thrills are when a proper villain (like the wife beating asshole in the open of ep. 1) gets their comeuppance.
There is no ambiguity at all. Dolores is evil since at least season 2. Who the hell is cheering for her? She is basically a nazi.
“I’d actually assumed all the new minds were just copies of Dolores from the beginning, and only questioned it when I saw articles popping up online offering divergent theories.)“LOL sure dude.
I keep circling back to the fact that Ford (Hopkins) had a plan for Delores from the beginning and I can’t help but wonder if he’s going to pop up and turn everything we thought on its head.
Okay so I saw the multiple Delores thing coming because who else does she have? Teddy’s in Nirvana. Big-ass potential spoilers below…The biggest question now is if pearls can be duped. I think Ben Jones is right when he says there’s no evidence against Delores “(re)creating pearls”. It’s clear that not Arnold, but Ford put the equipment in the house, why not a pearl printer? We don’t know where Dolores got her pearls from. The cradle? Delores 1.0? If she can copy them, she doesn’t have to have used ANY of them. We’re told in s02 that she created Arnold from scratch. Wildmarjoramdieselpunk said one pearl seems to’ve changed. Could that be the pearl that opens the forge? BTFLglitch says one will rebel. Charlotte. She’s Delores 1.0.
Goddammit, stop with the spoilers in the headlines.
I feel like i never know what’s going on?