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 two, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday at 9pm.
The way she does just what she’s told
So Dolores has stopped sleeping. If, that is, robots sleep. Or indeed if the hosts of Westworld are actually robots and not sentient beings, only made of silicon. The host who introduced us to Westworld, whose daily ritual defined the format of the opening episode, has had her regimen shaken by a voice in her head. A voice that takes her to the bounds of her father’s ranch late at night, to a plot where a rifle is buried.
To whom the voice belongs and to what end the rifle will be put are questions the viewer is left asking. But what is clear is that Dolores can remember the past – something a host should not be able to do.
We’re not the only ones fascinated by Dolores. Chief designer Bernard is also hanging out with her, having secret robo-therapy sessions. He demands the sessions be wiped from her memory lest the subjects of discussion (as yet unidentified) be discovered by others. Also an admirer is Newcomer William, a man unlike most of the paying customers in that he possesses some shred of morality. He has fallen for Dolores. You can tell from the way he picked up her tinned peaches.
Dolores is a prism through which we can view Westworld’s developing themes; individual agency, the power of memory, the role of women in a chauvinist world and, of course, what makes a human. Events this week suggest she will also be a first order protagonist. Not only is she in possession of a weapon, but she can access the same foreboding biblical rhetoric as her (now decommissioned) father. When she is disturbed from a memory of a previous slaughter in the town by whorehouse madam Maeve, Dolores’s response is to stare steelily into eyes and repeat: “these violent delights have violent ends.”
A girl who has just changed her ways
Maeve has her own journey of discovery this week, one apparently forgotten by episode’s end. She is adjudged by those in Westworld HQ to be under-performing in her key role; persuading guests to have sex with androids. She must be brought in for a personality tweak. The subsequent work makes her more assertive but also notes that she has MRSA (on which, more below). She goes back to the saloon, reprogrammed but no more seductive. This may be because the real reason for Maeve’s below-par performance is that she is dreaming, or more accurately having nightmares, of another existence on the prairies where she and her daughter were almost killed by a Native American tribe.
[An aside: just writing Native American makes the oddness of Westworld’s dramatic situation stand out. To what extent do race and gender politics play out in this future world, and therefore in this contemporary drama? Maeve is an English-accented woman of colour in an imagined 19th century. That she is too “assertive” for white customers is a concept familiar in 2016. But no mention is made of her race in “the park”. Set at an indeterminate point in the future, there are clearly imbalances between gender; female hosts being abused by ugly men is part of the reason for the park’s existence. But in the drama, that divide is subsumed into the science fictional one of human v host.]
Maeve wakes from her bad dream to find herself under the knife. The MRSA is being chopped out of her all-too-fleshy organs. The surgeons are afraid of a revivified Maeve and back away. She in turn pulls a scalpel of her own. She escapes the operating theatre and makes it to what can only be described as an abattoir for hosts. She falls to her knees. The surgeons find her and deactivate her again. In the charnel dome is a decommissioned Teddy watching everything with blank eyes.
It’s down to me, yes it is
Maeve is reprogrammed once again and, this time, she has the charm the punters want. The person responsible for this success is Elsie, who works in the lab. She cares about the hosts and their ability to function successfully. She also believes that hosts can’t dream, that the nightmares they experience are actually pre-programmed horrors, a safety mechanism should a host’s memory ever fail to be properly scrubbed clean after a nasty encounter with a guest.
Elsie is the diametric opposite of the foul-mouthed Lee Sizemore and his narrative team. It was Narrative who upped Maeve’s assertiveness, trying to force the issue. They also devised the new storyline, one whose aim is largely to provoke fear. Odyssey on Red River contains Native American warriors and famous civil war generals. It is overruled by old man Ford. He says it doesn’t allow the guests to explore themselves. And an expensive outlay for a foundering company is cancelled.
Ford (named after Henry? Or John? Or both?) may have more reason for suggesting Westworld is about exploring one’s self than his company knows. For out in the desert, it appears he has created an android version of his younger self. An idle boy on holiday in the park, but miles away from anywhere and anyone, and a child who received the very same advice from his father as Ford did, the pair take a walk through the desert and Ford shows the boy what the actual next storyline will involve: religion.
Notes from the prairie
I am having difficulty understanding the biology of our hosts. I’m assuming that the milky stuff we see them being spun out of is some sort of conductive material. But if they are robots as we understand them they’d need batteries and microprocessors, but we don’t see any of those. What we do see are lots of blood and guts. Which raises two questions: a) how do they squeeze them in there and b) why bother with the real thing (that can catch MRSA) when the sole need for them is so newcomers can feel like they’ve killed something? A bit weird.
Also, if they melt down every host each time they’re “killed” (a la Teddy) is that not a bit expensive? And if they do, why had Papa Albernathy already played several characters?
After last week’s discussion over the Gunslinger and his humanity or otherwise, Jonathan Nolan confirmed that he was human. This week he goes one level deeper in his hunt for the ultimate secret and visits a village populated by Mexicans. He kills them all, of course, but gets the info he needs about where to find the maze (as mapped on Kissy’s scalp) from the mouth of a young girl: “The maze isn’t meant for you. Follow the blood of oryo (sp?) to the place where the snake lays its eggs.” Which if I’m right in thinking, means Nando’s in Milton Keynes.
Finally, Bernard and Theresa are having an affair. As well as talking to each other in secluded corridors like they simply hate each other. Whatever turns you on I guess.
Questions for next week
Will Maeve wild out? Will Dolores kickstart the revolution? Will William succumb to base desire?
