Westworld S01 E03 – Through the looking-glass.

Previously: A nice guy and an asshole roll up into the park.
—

The Stray

Marines: 3D PRINTED ROBOTS!

Dolores is in an examination room, powered down. Bernie enters and tells her to bring herself back online. He asks if anyone has interacted with her in a diagnostic since their last conversation. Dolores says no. She’s been cleaned and serviced 3 times, but no diagnostics. He asks her if she’s told anyone about their conversations. “You told me not to.“

That established, Bernie sits down and hands her a wrapped packaged. It’s a gift. She unwraps it as he explains that he used to read this story to his son at night and he thought she might enjoy it. It’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Bernie grabs the book back and opens it to a specific page for Dolores to read. “Dear, dear,” she reads. “How queer everything is today. And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night.” 

Sweeney: I like the explicit linking of Dolores with Alice here when her whole blonde-haired-blue-dress appearance is very Alice and I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to note that this show likes to overdose on big! thematic! references! so this is nice.

Mari: Bernie asks if the passage makes her think of anything. Dolores says it’s like the other books they’ve read, which were all also about change. “It seems to be a common theme.” 

Bernie guesses that people like to read about the things that they want the most and experience the least. Dolores asks where Bernie’s son is now. He tells her she wouldn’t understand. Maybe that’s why he enjoys their conversations so much. Bernie orders her into analysis mode and asks why she asked a question about his son. Without the accent, Dolores reports that they’ve been talking for some duration and she hasn’t asked a person question. “Personal questions are an ingratiating scheme.” Rough.

Sweeney: Too honest, Dolores.

Mari: Bernie next orders her to keep reading.

“Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I?” 

We cut to black and come back with Dolores waking up in her bed. New!Dad is letting the cows out. Dolores is performing some part of her morning routine we haven’t seen before. She opens a drawer and finds the revolver there, wrapped in a cloth. She looks concerned and quickly puts it away. Mystery Man’s voice asks if she remembers. Flashback to Man in Black dragging her to the barn to rape her. Out of the flashback, Dolores opens the drawer again and the gun is gone. Like… what?

Town. William watches some boys roughhousing and then walks past Clementine and generally ambles along until he sees someone bringing in a wanted man named Horace. He quickly breaks free from his captors and starts shooting town-folk. William watches as Horace grabs Clementine to act as a human shield. William lines up his shot, but hesitates to take it. Horace shoots William instead and he falls to the ground. Horace keeps roughly handling Clementine, saying gross, rapey things to her. But then he’s shot. We see that from his position on the ground, William took his shot after all.

William hurries over to help Clementine up and a townie, a bounty hunter presumably, compliments William on his shot. Then, he invites William to join him in a hunt for desperados. William smiles like he’s considering it. Clementine asks if she can’t tempt him inside to express her gratitude, but William still turns her down. (S: Good Guy!™) She leaves with a kiss.

Ben Barnes, still the nameless asshole, comes wandering into the scene, adjusting his fly as he is wont to do. He freaks out over the fact that William totally killed someone. William shows him the place where he got shot. He thought they couldn’t get shot. Ben Barnes is like, well, you can’t get killed. It wouldn’t be fun if they didn’t shoot back. I guess we’ve seen that with MiB. He gets shot a lot, but he never even flinches.

Anyway, Ben Barnes asks if William feels ~alive~. He wants to go have sex with more robots, and tells William he’ll appreciate it once he’s been married to his sister for a year. William, my dude. You are marrying into this family? I’m sorry for your holidays.

Sweeney: I love Christmas but having to hang out with this asshole every year would be enough to make me quit the holiday entirely.

Mari: William tells Ben Barnes that he has other ideas in mind. He wants to go bounty hunting! Ben Barnes calls it JV shit. William tells him to stay, then, because he wants a little adventure.

HQ. Cullen finds Bernie, who makes excuses about having a late start after not getting much sleep. Cullen isn’t sympathetic, especially since they are dealing with Ford’s surprise narrative. The board is uneasy. And obviously, she is, too. Ford is throwing existing storylines into disarray and meanwhile, Bernie’s team is still pulling hosts for follow-up, even though the whole problem with the update was supposed to be fixed. She tells Bernie to get his house in order.

In an exam room, Shannon Woodward is questioning Bandit 1 about his interaction with Bandit 2, aka the milk murdering one who is now retired to the Basement of Don’t Go In There. Shannon Woodward shows Bernie some footage of Bandit 2, specifically of him talking to an unseen someone named Arnold. Shannon Woodward asks who Arnold is.

 

Bernie explains away the Arnold thing quickly, but she’s got more. Bandit 2 killed six hosts and let three go. The six he killed were all hosts who had killed him before, like he was holding a grudge. As they consider this, she gets an alarm for a stray host. QA needs a tag team to go track it. Bernie tells her to go and do something that’s actually in her job description, especially because the last thing they need is Theresa (!! So much better than calling her Cullen, my god. The trauma.) storming down here and seeing this. Bernie promises to do more digging, but wants to get Bandit 1 back upstairs.

Shannon Woodward and Luke Hemsworth ride the elevator topside. They exchange barbs over how sucky the other is at their job, but with sexual tension.

Park. Teddy is accompanying a female guest in a rad vest. He calls out a burly guy, basically challenging him to a gun fight. Teddy and Vest Guest best them in the gun fight, hooray fun times. They handcuff the dead hosts outside the saloon, as Teddy explains that they don’t want someone walking off with $500 worth of what is now merchandise. Maeve sees the dead bodies and objects, but Teddy pays Maeve for the trouble. She flashes back to Teddy’s body in the body shower. She remembers.

Clementine You’re New-s Vest Guest, who quickly abandons Teddy to go off with Clementine.

Teddy heads to the bar alone, but then promptly sees Dolores walking out of the store. He’s the one who grabs her can today, and they exchange the dialogue we haven’t seen in full since episode 1.

We join them while they are taking their riding break. Dolores asks where he’s been and he gives a vague “away.” If he could stay here with her, he would. Dolores asks what if she doesn’t want to stay here. Sometimes she feels like the world out there is calling her. Teddy tells her about a place down south where the waters meet the sea. Dolores wants to go there with him, but he vagues that he’ll take her someday. Dolores calls him on that vague “someday,” and the fact that it probably means never. She wants to go now. She kisses him, but he breaks it and tells her that he’s got a bad, bad past and he’s got some reckoning to do before he can deserve a woman like her.

He uses the word someday again and Dolores is not happy.

Sweeney: I mean, she just fucking told you. RUDE.

Mari: Teddy and Dolores ride up to her house and the cows are out and there are gunshots. Teddy tells her to stay put, as he always does.

Gunshots and screaming transition us to HQ and a machine building and coloring an eyeball, line by line. Then we are looking at someone’s eye. The camera pans out and we see that Ford is talking to Teddy in an exam room. He recites that a coward dies a thousand deaths, but also like, Teddy has died thousands of times and it doesn’t dull his courage. Ford asks if that’s all Teddy aspires to. He regurgitates his lines about there being a girl named Dolores he doesn’t deserve, but maybe someday soon. Ford tells him, nah. They will never be together. His job isn’t to protect Dolores. It’s to keep her in town so the guests may find her in case they want to best the stalwart gunslinger and have their way with his girl. SO GROSS.

Sweeney: HUMANS ARE THE WOOOOOORST!

Mari: Ford asks if it ever occurred to Teddy to run away with Dolores. He references the red in his ledger. His nebulous backstory is why Ford is here. He doesn’t actually have a backstory written up, just some vague guilt programmed into him. Ford thinks it’s time to give him his origin story which will fit into the new narrative. A fiction which is rooted in truth. It starts in a time of war, the world in flames, with a villain called Wyatt. Ford uploads the backstory and suddenly Teddy is having flashbacks to Wyatt, a blond man in a soldier’s uniform, shooting people and looking evil. Teddy explains that Wyatt claimed he could hear the voice of God. It started in Escalante when the Army was sent to put down the natives. Wyatt was a sergeant and he went missing for a few weeks while out on some maneuvers. When he came back, he had some strange ideas. Probably about murder. That’s a guess.

Sweeney: You are so good at TV!

Mari: I try so hard!

Player piano. Dolores walks out of her store, but this time she’s harassed by Bandit 1 in service of one of the guests. Dolores turns them down and Teddy swoops in to her rescue. The guest looks uncomfortable, and even more so when Teddy flashes his gun. The guest whines to Bandit 1 that he wanted something easy. Bandit 1, new!Bandit 2 and the Whiny Guest all leave.

Later, we see Teddy giving Dolores shooting lessons. I don’t know why this is really heartbreaking to me. I mean, Teddy and Dolores are written to be hero and damsel in perpetual distress. The fact that he’s teaching her to shoot here? Man.

Despite Teddy’s lesson, she can’t shoot the gun. Something about the way she tries and looks confusedly at Teddy makes me think that she physically cannot shoot the gun. Teddy tries to comfort her by saying that some hands weren’t meant to pull the trigger. Their moment is interrupted when Vest Guest rides up with the Sheriff. She’s signed up for a bounty hunt, which the Sheriff gives us backstory to. They are hunting a man named Wyatt. Teddy obviously signs up and says goodbye to a weepy Dolores. She makes him promise that he will come back. He does, but then he adds “someday soon,” and the look on Dolores’s face is like, “…mother fuck.”

A group of men sit around camp and argue about who is going to cut the wood. They freeze in the middle of the conversation as Shannon Woodward and Luke Hemsworth walk into the scene. She explains that the stray host was the woodcutter in this camp, which means all the other hosts got stuck in a loop, waiting for a supper that never came. Luke Hemsworth insults her for not being able to program more than one of them to make a fire. She’s like, “oh, we can. But thanks to a new policy from your boss, only one of them is authorized to touch the axe.” He quickly sings a different tune about how weapons privileges have to be doled out selectively.

Sweeney: It was a good move to have this back to back with that moment where Dolores seemed physically unable to pull the trigger — confirms the idea that while some hosts can do things like shoot not-fatal guns and start fires, those abilities are activated selectively. Dolores cannot shoot a gun because she is perpetual damsel in distress. The damsel doesn’t shoot back.

Mari: Excellent point!

Inside a tent, they find a bunch of the stray’s woodwork. Luke Hemsworth thinks it’s stupid that the hosts have hobbies and backstory, but Shannon Woodward notices that there are some strange markings on the wood. Looks like a constellation.

On the bounty hunt, the Sheriff and Teddy exposit some more about Wyatt and his new backstory. This time we see more of the flashback, Wyatt shooting people down, as Teddy voiceovers that Wyatt thought the land didn’t belong to the natives or the new settlers. It belonged to him and something that was yet to come.

The party comes across a bunch of hosts cut up and tied up to trees, bodies swarming with flies. Vest Guest is wearing a pancho now but once you have a nickname, like that’s it. Vest Guest gets close to one of the apparently dead bodies, but of course, he sputters awake. And it was a fake-out freak-out, because the next thing we hear is ROARING. It sounds like a mf DINOSAUR out there, you guys.

And that is also a fake-out freak-out because all of a sudden there is a ton of gunfire and the bounty hunters are surrounded. One of the guests is way over being shot at and wants to go back ASAP. The deputy offers to take the scaredy guests back. Vest Guest, the Sheriff and Teddy all choose to stay. Teddy runs out and draws their fire, providing cover for everyone.

Shannon Woodward and Luke Hemsworth are still tracking their stray. She’s staring at the markings on the wood work, but it’s Luke Hemsworth who identifies it as Orion.

Bernie interrupts Ford who is working on a host. First, though, Ford yells at a worker who covered the host he’s working on. Because they aren’t real, see! They don’t feel cold or ashamed! They don’t feel it when at least one character an episode inflicts bodily harm on them while they are in powered down mode in an exam room!

Anyhow, Bernie is following up with Ford about the fact that retired hosts were hearing voices and talking to the same imaginary person. Arnold.

 

Sweeney: Many good guesses!

Mari: Ford tells Bernie the story of the real Arnold: he was Ford’s partner when they started this endeavor, back in the days when they worked in the park with engineers and no guests. He was erased from the history like those dudes who helped found Facebook. We flashback to Arnold, working on robots and stuff. The hosts started to pass the Turing test after the first year, but that wasn’t enough for Arnold. He wanted the hosts to be conscious, which he imagined as being built by memory, improvisation, self-interest, and something else he didn’t know. He was basing all of this on the theory of the bicameral mind, which Bernie helpfully informs us is the idea that the primitive man believed his thoughts to be the voice of the gods. As Ford keeps explaining how Arnold took this debunked theory and used it to build the hosts, we get a flash of Arnold watching as Peter Abernathy talks and moves. Unfortunately, Ford says, Arnold hadn’t considered two things: the last thing you want a host to be in the park while they are raped and killed is conscious, and two that the other group that considered their thoughts to be the voice of the gods were lunatics. Flash of a host (looks like Ingrid Bolsø Berdal in a dress) with deep scratches all over her face and chest. Ford says they abandoned the approach, except for the voice commands used to control the hosts.

Like… “These violent delights have violent ends?” maybe?

Sweeney:

Mari: Ford finishes by saying that Arnold didn’t understand what this place would become. The guests come to enjoy power they don’t have in the outside world and the least they can do for the hosts is make them forget. Bernie says that’s cool, but some of them are remembering. That isn’t addressed because Bernie also asks what happened to Arnold. Ford says he died at the park after the search for consciousness consumed him completely. That doesn’t actually sound like a cause of death, Ford, but okay. At the end, Arnold only talked to the hosts and saw something in them that wasn’t there. Ford dismisses Bernard with a reminder that the hosts aren’t real. They aren’t conscious. He mustn’t make Arnold’s mistake. Bernie laughs nervously and asks why he would. Ford says that he knows that the death of his son Charlie still weighs heavily on him.

Cut to Bernie on a phone call with GINA TORRES. Who the heck decided Gina Torres should be a little part in this?? MORE LINES. MORE GINA TORRES. (S: AGREED.) Anyway, Gina Torres is his wife (ex-wife?) and they share feels over the death of their son.

The hunt for the stray continues, but Shannon Woodward needs a pee break. Of course, when her pants are down, she hears terrible rustling noises. (S: This is why I don’t pee in the woods. Or generally go into the woods at all.) She hustles to pull her pants back up and peaks over a ledge. Down in a pit is the bloody stray host. Shannon Woodward calls out for Luke Hemsworth (Stubbs! A name!) (Stubbs? Really?) Stubbs runs over.

The bounty party is still hunting for Wyatt, but it’s night time and this is 0% my idea of fun. Would not pay, ever, thank you. This is only confirmed when there are more dinosaur roaring noises and men in creepy hooded outfits surround them again. The Sheriff is promptly killed and Vest Guest loses her shit. Teddy tells her to run. He’ll hold off the entire group of hooded men. AKA, he’ll just stay here and die.

Stubbs is going to repel down into the pit and grab the stray. Shannon Woodward calls Bernie and the caller ID finally gives me her name: Elsie Hughes. Bernie doesn’t answer so she leaves a message: they found the stray, but it’s acting real weird. Almost like he got an idea in his head that they never programmed.

Bernie is downstairs in the private exam room where he meets with Dolores. He brings her online and tells her that he needs her help. He needs to decide what to do with her because he thinks he made a mistake. He was just fascinated with her, but he was being selfish. It might be better if he restored her to the way she was before. Dolores asks if there is something wrong with her. Bernie says no, but the world she lives in is tough. She starts to recite her lines about seeing the ugliness in this world, but Bernie stops her scripted responses. Dolores asks if she’s changed. Bernie answers her with a question: imagine there were two versions of herself. A curious one and a safe one. Which would she rather be? Dolores says she doesn’t understand because there aren’t two versions of her. There’s only one. “And I think when I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” Which is what they keep saying the guests come here to do…

Bernie orders her into analysis mode and asks what prompted that response. Dolores says she doesn’t know. There are tears in her eyes when she asks if she’s done something wrong or made a mistake. Bernie repeats Ford’s words about evolution forging life through mistake. Bernie shares a story about teaching Charlie to swim and letting him go even though he was scared to do it. Dolores asks if he still wants to change her. Bernie says no. They should let this play out. He asks her to tell no one about their conversations and stay on her loop. Then, he dismisses her.

Park. Dolores is in town, still looking rattled, when the deputy rides in and reports that Wyatt set a trap and the Sheriff stayed to fight. Dolores asks if the deputy will be going back to get them, and he will when the rangers get in, but tells her that basically that party is as good as dead.

Dolores rides home and the cows are still out. Shots up at the house, but this time no Teddy to tell her to stay put. She rides over to find her dad dead outside the house. As she looks at new!Abernathy, she flashes to old!Abernathy. Bandit 1 is there with new!Bandit 2 and the Whiny guest, along with a few others. Bandit 1 drags Dolores off to the barn and throws her down in the hay. When she lands, though, she finds that she’s hidden a gun there. She aims it and shakes.

She flashes back to Man in Black approaching her and hears the Mystery Man’s voice tell her to kill him. She does shoot and Bandit 1 goes down. Dolores runs out of the barn in time to see her mother shot and killed. One of the men rounds the corner of the house and shoots Dolores in the gut. She looks down at the wound, but then we hear the man again, tell her to get back here. The wound isn’t there. She was flashing to some other moment she was shot in this same way. Dolores runs, mounts her horse, and rides away.

Sweeney: A gruesome way to drive home what a fucking nightmare consciousness would be for these hosts.

Mari: Stubbs drops a flare and repels into the pit. Elsie puts the stray in sleep mode, but of course, as soon as Stubbs is down there and starts HACKING THE STRAY’S HEAD OFF, the thing comes out of sleep mode. It pushed Stubbs down and climbs out of the pit. In her haste to get away, Elsie trips and lands on her back. The stray picks up a gigantic rock, but then uses it TO BASH HIS OWN HEAD IN.

Out in the woods, Ben Barnes is complaining about paying 40k a day to jerk off alone in the woods playing white hat. (S: I’M SORRY THESE PEOPLE ARE PAYING 40K A DAY?? WHY?? GIVE ME YOUR MONEY INSTEAD THANKS.) William hears some rustling and it’s Dolores, stumbling and looking ill. William catches her as she faints.

I know that Dolores’s arc here isn’t particularly subtle, much like her fly slap at the end of the pilot. However, it felt like it made sense, at least in the way that she was able to quickly overcome whatever block didn’t let her pull the trigger when faced with her repeated trauma. I’m saying, yes, it did happen quickly, but also of course it did in the face of something so horrific. I enjoyed the progression of Dolores’s story right up until she collapses into the arms of the white hat at the end. That’s like two steps forward, one step back.

A List of Questions:

Is MiB used to getting shot so that’s why he doesn’t flinch? Or was it just a surprise to William?
Is that “someday I’ll take you” conversation standard between Dolores and Teddy?
Does Teddy always teach Dolores to shoot when she’s harassed? Is this “minor improvisation?”
Teddy shoots the hooded men a bunch of times but none of them go down. Are they guests?
T-rex or pterodactyl?

 

Next time on Westworld: Dolores joins Willian on his bounty hunt in S01 E04 – Dissonance Theory.