Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Westworld airs on HBO in the US on Sunday night. Do not read unless you have watched episode six, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday at 9pm.
It’s the most unlikely partnership since Mel B and Eddie Murphy. She’s the host with the most, the whorehouse madam with a mouth the size of the Mississippi. He’s a Delos lab rat, who gets his kicks from fiddling with robotic bird DNA. But put them together and you can’t deny the electricity. Specifically the electricity passing through Maeve’s system after Felix does what any sensible human being should never do under any circumstances; willingly make a robot smarter.
Maybe Felix’s fiddling will be the act that sparks a rebellion from Westworld’s hosts. Certainly Maeve would have enough motivation. Before messing with her “attribute matrix”, Felix had obligingly given Maeve a tour of “upstairs” – the spaces within the park’s HQ where employees get creative, whether it be making sure a buffalo walks convincingly, or sculpting the face of a new host in putty like that woman did in the Lionel Richie video so many years ago. With each new floor she visits, Maeve is more and more disturbed. Everything she thought to be true turned out to be fabricated. The only exception to this being her dreams, which in fact weren’t a subconscious fantasy but memories of an earlier build. When hosts are rebuilt, their memories are supposed to be wiped. But, says Felix, that doesn’t always happen because it’s a bit fiddly. Oops!
As a measure of their guilt, and a result of being busted in their roles as host pimps to Delos employees, Felix and his scenery-chewing colleague Sylvester (played by the impeccably named Ptolemy Slocum) have turned Maeve’s “perception” levels up to “55”. Not only does this make her cleverer than any human, she’s also clued up as to precisely how badly she and her fellow hosts are being treated in Westworld. If I were her, I might be inclined to do something about it. Which perhaps is what she means by her third consecutive episode ending zinger, “Dear boys, would you like to have some fun?” At least, I certainly hope it is.
The thing about this week’s episode is that, suddenly, the robot revolution could come from anywhere. We’ve got Felix’s coding, the hunt for Arnold (of which more later), and Ford’s fake family, hidden out in sector 17 where no one ever goes but which looks quite nice actually and would be ideal for a family on a mini-break.
The fake family is a recreation of Ford’s actual blood relatives, only made from metal and rubber. They were built by Arnold back in the day and given to Ford as a present and are some of the last remaining original hosts in the park. They’re so cute: if you say “turn the other cheek” to them, their cheeks actually turn inside out and reveal their mechanical innards. They also throttle people and drink a lot and kill dogs in the woods. Honestly, you’d love them.
This revelation answers the question of little Robot Robert’s identity (he is a simulacrum of a young Ford). But elsewhere the mystery deepens. Ford’s fake family, it turns out, have been hidden from the rest of Westworld. What’s more, they haven’t been upgraded to the latest software and were only stumbled across thanks to Bernard’s investigation into the runaway woodcutter.
Ford makes out to Bernard like the whole thing is just a sentimental trip, a reminder of his upbringing and the heady early days of the park. And yet, you wonder. First, the hosts’ lack of updated programming means they can’t be controlled by anyone but Ford. Second, in a twist on last week’s opener where Ford recalled watching his dog kill a cat, the family dog has died at the hands of little Robert. Robert justifies it as a necessary homicide to stop the dog killing rabbits. But if that’s the kind of logic he applies to dogs, wait till little Robert sees what some of the park’s guests are getting up to. All in all, if we’re looking for insurrectionist robots, it feels like this cabin in the woods might be worth keeping an eye on.
Last up in terms of bad robots (brought to you by Bad Robot), we have the mysterious case of the transmitters. In this week’s late twist we learn it’s Theresa, the boss of QA and intermediary between Westworld and the Delos board, who’s been smuggling data off-site through transmitters buried inside first generation hosts. In a further surprise, it turns out the communication wasn’t one way and that someone from outside has been using the transmitters to reprogram the hosts too, including their “prime directives”.
It turns out the bicameral mind was more than just a theory that inspired Arnold’s development of androids, but an actual practical application. Someone is now using that application to talk to the hosts in their “minds” and change their behaviour. This is what we are hearing when, for example, Dolores was incited to kill Rebus in episode four. The identity of the outsider remains unknown, but we all know who we think it is: Arnold. For someone who’s dead, notes Elsie, he appears to be quite a prolific coder.
Unfortunately this could be the last observation Elsie makes, because the intrepid programming department employee ends the episode getting throttled. Some might say this is what happens when you ignore every single horror movie ever and unduly hang around in an abandoned theatre trying to uncover a conspiracy. But maybe it’ll turn out ok. Perhaps it’s just little Robert mistaking her for a dog.
Finally, and in the hunt for the maze, the Man in Black and Teddy are edging ever closer. In trying to track down Wyatt, the pair have found a tunnel to the “old territories” guarded by a bunch of Yankee soldiers. After marching into the camp dressed in Yankee uniforms, Teddy is recognised as the man responsible, alongside Wyatt, for the massacre at Escalade. This is the guilt Ford was talking about when he updated Teddy’s back story and it’s real. So real that the previously clean-cut Teddy is now dirty and unshaven with bags under his eyes. This has its upside: after the duo are detained by the soldiers, bad Teddy is capable of busting himself out of his bonds and shooting all the Yankees dead with a machine gun. The Man in Black watches with a look that says he’s both impressed by Teddy’s newfound sangfroid and a little scared. The pair are now free to enter the tunnel, which may even be the maze itself.
Notes from the prairie
Lee “there’s nothing likeable about me” Sizemore makes his return this week. It turns out that since his last story idea was rejected by Ford, the head of narrative has been on sick leave. This convalescence has largely involved him lying on a recliner in the Delos resort (on the top floor of the Westworld complex) and necking margaritas, crying about how his creative vision has been stymied. Theresa tells him he should get his ass back to work to fix all the glitches Ford’s new narrative has provoked. Instead, he starts chatting up a young woman by telling her how incompetent his bosses are. That woman turns out to be a board member. So Lee follows it up by urinating on QA’s interactive map. At this rate, he won’t be getting his bonus at Christmas.
The map for the maze makes two uncommon appearances this week, first in Lawrence’s village as Ford visits, and second on a brand about to be applied to Teddy’s flesh. Once you know what it looks like, that map turns out to be everywhere – and yet the Man in Black still keeps the one he found on a scalp. Guess he’s sentimental like that.
Finally, if you haven’t already, why not give my comment piece about Westworld and fan theory a spin? Would love to hear your thoughts!
Questions for next week
Why does Theresa smoke? And who lets her do it indoors?
Westworld’s advertising slogan, “Live without limits”, sounds a bit like the tagline for a brand of incontinence pads. How would you improve it?
Ford is accompanied on his site visits by engineers dressed in white jumpsuits and hard hats. Are they the same guys that guarded the base in Moonraker?
When will the official Westworld site with all the maps and stuff be made available in the UK?
