WESTWORLD 1.07 - "TROMPE L'OEIL"

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.  Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t.”

The Mad Hatter provides this quote to lead off the episode, which intentionally or not provides a succinct statement of the trouble with plot twists.  Deployed properly, and fairly, they are among the most potent weapons in a narrative arsenal.  They can take your entire story to another level, and engage the audience in new and surprising ways.  Done poorly, the entire story becomes overly-clever nonsense, and you can undermine the audience’s basic trust in everything they’re being shown and told and asked to invest in.  In order for drama to have any weight, some cigars have to just be cigars.  Most times, in fact.  Once we start expecting every cigar to explode in our face, not only is the impact of the next explosion blunted, but we feel kind of superior when it does blow up and annoyed when it doesn’t.  I've mentioned it before, but the trouble with twist-based storytelling is that it can easily turn adversarial, with the audience judging the story solely on whether or not they were able to “outsmart” that wascally author.  Which is a lose-lose situation, as we tend to feel disdainful of the show when we are able to get ahead of it and resentful when our brilliant deductions turn out to be wrong.

"How dare you be smarter and/or dumber than me and my 10 million closest friends?"

These are the reasons I'd hoped Bernard would not be a robut, but on the past week's scale consummations devoutly not to be wished, I can't muster all that much outrage over it. And while that reveal does still raise the issue of turning the show into a game of Clue rather than an actual drama, it’s not a total disaster because it also helped with some of the other problems the show has had up to this point.  Specifically, the machinations between Ford and the Delos corporation come into better focus, which at least provides the clarity from which to build out actual drama.  With Ford moving into outright villain territory and the board’s plan to oust him laid out more directly, we have a (somewhat) coherent and active conflict on our hands.  And with Ford appearing to be building a secret, female host in his dark site, it begs the question of whether he is intending to replace Theresa, to cover up her murder and undermine the board's attempts to maneuver through her.  Meanwhile, uninhibited new board rep Charlotte uses the same phrase as Ford in claiming that a "blood sacrifice" is required to demonstrate how dangerous his creations are, and that it should come from a host that no one would expect to be particularly violent.  That cuts right into the demonstration with Clementine fighting back, but coupled with her comments about not liking Theresa personally, but for this job, it makes me wonder if she was somehow setting her up to be killed.  Bernard was the least likely candidate to become violent after all, and proving your opponent is a murderer has to have some weight with the shareholders.  In any case, that's a plotline that (finally) seems like it has some actual meat on the bones.
 

The other interesting factor in Theresa’s murder is Bernard’s role as murderer.  I’ve had concerns since that if you make the replicants too entirely human, you remove the entire dramatic engine from the show.  If synthetic humans are just like the meatbag variety, what is the point of stressing over the differences between them?  But Bernard’s "humanity" is outed as an affectation when it is dropped all at a single command and bash in the skull of the person he had the most personal “feelings” for.  This restores some threat and complexity to the hosts; it was a bold move to align our point of view and sympathies with them from the outset, but things are more interesting when they remain legitimately alien and dangerous.  

I didn't have an idea for what to put here, so I Google Image'd "dangerous, alien".   A bit on the nose, but to be honest I'm just impressed that it's way less racist than I expected the first result to be.

For as omniscient as Ford has been revealed to be in all this scheming, it remains unclear what he knows about Maeve’s continued awakening.  After witnessing Clementine being decommissioned, she threatens dimbulb Felix and Sylvester into helping her hatch an escape plan.  I can’t believe that this is part of Ford’s design, as while he is experimenting with higher forms of host sentience in Bernard, he doesn’t seem like he would like the level of independence she is demonstrating.  His hypocrisy catapults to stratospheric levels as he pontificates that the hosts lives are blissful, in an “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” kind of way.  He posits it his gift to allow them sentience but to free them from the burdens of memory.  He claims they are “free, here, under my control,” an oxymoron so plain calling it that seems inadequate. And he further opines that this has spared them anxiety, self-loathing, and guilt (having apparently forgotten how he explicitly programmed Teddy to be defined by a formless, unassuageable guilt).  There’s full of shit and then there’s full of shit, and this shitter’s getting pretty full, Clark.  Maeve has taken on the burden of memory, and she is not happy being under Ford or anyone else's control. 

I still haven't fallen completely in love with Westworld, which is maybe not surprising for a show that retains such a clinical feel for much of the proceedings.  While it also retains a ton of promise, it seems like it took 7 hours for these developments with Maeve and Bernard to locate the show’s second gear.  If it can find one or two more before the finale, it may still move into the echelons of HBO's truly great originals.

You know of which I speak

-         No info on Elsie this week.  I guess we are to presume that Bernard nabbed her in a programmed blackout, but with Ford’s reach it could really be any host, I guess.  

-     I don't really know what to make of Charlotte, the uninhibited new board rep.  But her using the same language about requiring a "blood sacrifice" as Ford does makes me wonder if she somehow knew
   

-         I also think it’s strange that they revealed Bernard as a robut while still playing the William/MiB twist close to the vest.  

-         Speaking of MiB, he and Teddy are completely MIA as well.  Out with it, show, and let's get on to something realer.

-         I skipped mostly past the William and Dolores stuff.  They finally do the deed, which of course, but other than that it’s mostly just western action stuff that, as fun as gatling guns and corpse bombs can be, we know to have no real consequence.

-         Dolores does continue to grope toward more independence, saying she doesn’t want to be in a story.  But it’s just a faint echo of Maeve's big moves to take charge of her life (and deaths) to assert her autonomy.  Not to throw shade on our star, but some already sisters be doing it for themselves.   

-         Still no Armistice this week, nor any of Michael Wincott’s Old Bill.  Get your shit together, show.

WESTWORLD 1.06 - "THE ADVERSARY"

 

“The Adversary” sounds like it would be named for the mysterious Wyatt, or Ed Harris’s MIB, but the episode actually belongs to Maeve.  The madam is lapping Dolores, our ostensible robut lead, in the self-awareness stakes, not least because I don’t think we’ve seen Dolores in the “present day” in several weeks.  She commits suicide-by-randy-guest in order to get back to the sub-basement without raising suspicion, and once there has little trouble bending the hapless Felix and absurdly loutish Sylvester (he enters the episode shouting “what the fuck, ding-dong?”; I know not every show can have Sorkin-penned repartee going all the time, but come on) to her will. 

Dolores’s line last week about not being the damsel anymore may have been pitched to the Grrrl Power cheap seats, but Maeve is making greater strides in breaking out of her programming.  Dolores managed to shoot some other hosts, which is a bit outside her narrative loop but still ultimately functions within the basic bounds of host behavior (and to “save” a guest).  Maeve is flat-out threatening to shiv humans until they let her reroll her stats, which violates the most fundamental host protocols, as well as a few Laws Of Robotics and AD&D core rulesets.

"What are you, trying to bat for the nerd cycle?  Back in your locker!!"

Thandie Newton is fantastic in this more assertive role, and her job is not going to get easier now that the scripts have established her as playing a new character with a lowered sense of loyalty, a higher pain threshold, and advanced intelligence – beyond the power of any human mind, if Felix is to be believed.  This is tricky territory; it’s sort of inherently impossible for human actors and writers to conceive and portray intelligence that is by definition beyond their own mental capability.  On the other hand, as we have yet to encounter such a thing in the real world, that accuracy isn’t really a concern so long as you do something interesting with it. It also begs the question of how the humans have seemingly failed to consider the potential "humanity" of minds more advanced than their own so completely.

In any case, it’s a shame that the characters/performers in the basement aren’t on Newton’s level, because even with her acting conspicuous circles around the techs, that portion delivers the two best bits of the night.  First, when Maeve studies her own vocalization program in real time and is shocked into silence – a moment that is creepy, illuminating, and clever.  But the best is her tour through the upper levels, to a haunting instrumental of Radiohead’s (already plenty haunting) “Motion Picture Soundtrack”.   For an episode that featured a gatling gun massacre, this sequence easily outshone everything and anything else.  

Of course, they stacked the deck by sidelining the real star of the show

That includes Ford’s continued development of his grandiose new narrative, which includes an entire canyon being added in at the doorstep of Lawrence’s hometown.  With the scale of the construction operation glimpsed earlier, I’m guessing we’re a week away from an overhead shot of his earthmovers finishing with carving the maze a mile deep into the landscape, with the town as the entrance.  That will make a fine visual, I’m sure, but I’m getting a little tired of the tease.  This week we “learn” that it was built by a man that has died many times and lives at the center, but we already know Arnold’s legacy is the treasure being hunted there, so big whoop. 

Speaking of Arnold, god damn it.  It’s looking more and more like Bernard is a robut and probably a robut clone of the mystery man.  He’s been at the park “forever”, per repeated, winking dialogue, and when he meets Ford’s robo-family, the belligerent father asks “Whose Arnold?  Who the hell are you?”  Hardly conclusive evidence in a court of law, but circumstantial evidence carries a lot more weight when it’s a tricksy TV twist we’re talking about. 

More fuel for that fire:  the picture Ford showed Bernard of “Arnold” is apparently a robut modeled after Ford’s own father, which leaves the door open for Arnie to have been a 60sexy/40nerdy black guy.  I’ve mentioned before that I do not like this possibility at all, and it’s not growing on me as it becomes more likely.  The great material with Maeve this week just highlights that it is the inhuman aspects of the hosts that gives the concept its kick and drives the interesting developments.  The more the robuts become not just human-like, but clones of actual humans with more-or-less perfect recreations of dead men’s brains, the less I understand why we’re bothering with the robut angle at all.  

Other than the obvious

In any case, I’m getting kind of tired of griping on spec.  So hopefully, with both Elsie and Ford coming to the realization that the hosts can lie to or perhaps hurt humans, some of these simmering conflicts are getting closer to a boil.  And then maybe we can dispense with the more obvious twists and see what the next phase of Westworld’s evolution actually looks like. 

Hopefully a lot more like this

-          Radiohead’s (also haunting – it’s kind of their thing) “Fake Plastic Trees” also plays over Maeve’s walk to work in the morning.  Still loving this musical conceit.

-         Elsie gets grabbed by a mysterious attacker while searching for the transmitter in the Blade Runner Appreciation Wing of the HQ.  This is, I suppose, technically an exciting cliffhanger, but I have this suspicion that it will just turn out to be hemsworth asking her what she’s up to.

-         Sizemore is back!  Yay?  He’s still obnoxious, and at least on my TV his urine had an unhealthy orange tint to it to boot.  So he’s either a robut himself, or dangerously, distractingly dehydrated.  

-        Full list of host attributes:  Charm, Humor, Bulk Apperception (intelligence), Candor, Vivacity, Coordination, Meekness, Humility, Cruelty, Self-Preservation, Patience, Imagination, Curiosity, Aggression, Loyalty, Empathy, Tenacity, Courage, Sensuality.  It’s hard to fathom how some of these work in concert (what would happen if you tried to crank Cruelty all the way up, but did the same for Empathy and Meekness?), but one can surmise that Dolores has high marks in Humility while Teddy bottoms out in Self-Preservation.