Previously: Clem got scrapped, and Theresa got murdered.
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Trace Decay
Marines: Over a black screen, we hear Ford tell Bernard to bring himself back online. He does, remembers that he killed Theresa, and starts freaking out. The emotions and guilt that Jeffrey Wright lets play over his face are amazing. Ford thinks Bernard should be proud of feeling bad about murdering someone, because these are emotions he himself programmed. Ford built Bernard when the human engineers weren’t up to the task of giving the robots more human-like emotions.
Jess: Ford is channeling the creepiest energy right now.
Mari: Correct, yes, Anthony Hopkins is amazing at that.
Bernard doesn’t understand why Ford had him kill Theresa. Bernard loved her. Ford justifies it by saying that Delos would’ve destroyed everything they worked together for, including Bernard himself. And they have a new story to write. Bernard angrily says he won’t help Ford, and tosses his chair to emphasize his point. Ford tells him that’s enough, and Bernard freezes. Bernard isn’t the first man to threaten Ford. Arnold came to feel this way too, but even more impressive than the robot’s ability to feel, is their ability to turn it off. Ford needs Bernard to turn it off and go back to being brilliant and sneaky. A calm, feelings off Bernard puts his little glasses back on and asks Ford how he should proceed.
Jess: Bernard is me at work after I’ve discovered I almost dropped the ball on the academic career of a thousand students and then quickly meditated myself back to life. Westworld: a reflection of life working in higher academia.
Mari: I’m sure they would be surprised to hear that is what they created.
With Ford’s voice over instructions in the background, we watch Bernard go to the Hunger Games Room and delete his tracking information, from when he walked with Theresa to Ford’s cabin. He also Photoshops himself out of security footage. In his room, he gathers Theresa’s little love notes and even finds a strand of her hair and puts it all in a baggie. We watch him walk past bloodied bodies thrown in one of the glass rooms of the bodyshop. He places his evidence baggie in an incinerator, and watches it turn to dust.
Mariposa. Maeve grabs a drink and looks out into the crowd when something catches her attention: A blond woman is delivering all of Clem’s lines to a client. She even comes up to Maeve and tries to chat. Maeve is appalled, but sadly. They’ve replaced Clem with a new robot. This seems to trigger a memory for Maeve: She’s with a little girl, walking in a field with her, and then reading her a book.
Bodyshop. Maeve asks what’s happening to her. One moment, she’s with this child and the next, she’s back in Sweetwater. Felix explains that robot memories are different– they remember everything crystal clear. Almost as if they were reliving things instead of just remembering things. Maeve asks what happened to the little girl, but then decides she doesn’t want to know. (J: WE DON’T NEED TO KNOW MAEVE.) All the memories they gave her were all built to keep her there, so none of it matters.
Jess: That’s right Maeve, take back the wheels of this runaway train. I think that’s how the saying goes.
Mari: I’m pretty sure you just made that up.
Dolores and Willam ride together and she feels like she recognizes the area. She gets off the horse and starts walking until she finds a bunch of men, killed by Ghost Nation. One of the men is not dead yet, and he asks for water. William hesitates a long time before handing over the canteen. William correctly guesses that these men were sent to kill him and Dolores. Dying Man confirms, and from the details he gives, William realizes that Logan had a hand in sending them. Dolores wants to help the Dying Man, but William is like “…he’s dying. Also, he was going to kill us.” Maybe he is also remembering how all of these people are robots.
Jess: I can’t blame William because I also forget these people are robots. Also, LOGAN. DON’T FORGET LOGAN.
Mari: Dolores runs to get more water. As she’s filing the canteen, she sees her own dead body, face down in the water. A voice says, “come find me.” She turns around, and no one else is there. She turns back to the water, and her body is gone. She turns back around and there is William with the Dying Man. She heads back to them, just in time to watch Dying Man die.
HQ. Luke Hemsworth shows Tessa Thompson and Ford Theresa’s dead body. She was found near the same ravine as the woodcutter, and medical has determined she slipped, fell and died.
Jess: How convenient!
Mari: They also conveniently found a data transmitter near her body, so it looks like she was trying to get to a higher altitude to transmit data out of the park. Tessa says this seems highly unlikely for the careful and loyal Theresa. Ford smiles such a “I killed her” smile, it’s amazing. (J: What’s that Clarissa movie because that’s the vibe he’s been giving.) Ford reveals that Theresa was behind the clumsy code that had Clem put down. In light of that, he suggests reigning in QA’s power, automating a lot of the safety protocols and reinstating Bernard as head of behavior. Tessa smiles tightly.
Sylvester comes back to Felix and Maeve with the news that security is tight after some sort of accident in the park. They need to wrap this up. Maeve is done investigating anyway. She says that their mind was built weird, basically, almost like two minds in one. (Sounds real bicameral to me.) Parts of her are dormant. Sylvester says they can’t do anything about that. It would take a trip to behavior. Maeve tells them, great, ’cause they are going to take her there. Sylvester and Felix step out of the room to argue. Sylvester suggests they take her to behavior, and when she goes down for the system update, they wipe her out.
Jess: I know she’s a robot but I can’t handle this. YOU CANT WIPE OUT MAEVE.
Mari: I agree, but also giving the rebellious robot ultimate power seems bad, too.
Teddy and the Man in Black (remember them?) are still riding together. Man in Black gives a repeat performance of his speech about how Teddy is here to be the loser, because the house always wins. This triggers a memory for Teddy of MIB telling him this exact same thing.
They ride for another bit and then stop when they hear flies buzzing. Another massacre. There is one survivor: Angela, who we’ve seen a few times. Man in Black recognizes her and is surprised she’s not yet retired. Angela tells them that Wyatt’s men killed everyone here.
Jess: Doesn’t the Man in Black GET TIRED. I AM TIRED OF SEEING THEM ON THIS DAMN HORSE.
Mari: Amen.
The Man in Black hears something, and steps away to investigate. A… minotaur?? comes out of the bushes and attacks MiB. Teddy whips out his gun and shoots the thing a hell of a lot of times. MiB gets back up and uses a rope to grab and drag the minotaur (honestly, what is this thing? A giant robot in a mask?). Seeing MiB dragging something triggers another memory for Teddy: MiB dragging Dolores to the barn. MiB yells at Teddy to grab the axe, and Teddy gets out of his flashback and kills the minotaur.
Jess: This reminds of an erotica I read once about a Minotaur.
Mari: I genuinely have no follow-up questions about the statement.
MiB says Teddy can’t remember anything and still managed to lead them to Wyatt’s crew. Teddy says, actually, he does remember something: him. Teddy knocks MiB the hell out.
Jess: YES TEDDY. WHY DID I DOUBT YOU?!
Mari: Sylvester and Felix roll Maeve into behavioral. The security around here is so lax. She pulls up what then need on a screen and agrees to be powered down, but she goes down literally giving Sylvester the side eye.
Lee (gosh, remember him) (J: I don’t) is giving script notes to a cannibal robot. He is interrupted by Tessa Thompson. Lee gives his condolences for Theresa, even though he has heard the rumor that she was smuggling out secrets. Tessa says that everything Theresa did, she did for the board, but won’t say anything more. Lee says he has secrets too: Ford asked him to create a villain for his new narrative. Tessa calls bullshit, as that new narrative is almost done. Ford has created a bunch of masked men (a-ha, minotaur) to proselytize the coming of Wyatt. Ford gave Lee busywork, but Tessa hints that she’s got a real job for him.
Sylvester is gloating about how he saved Felix’s life, but then Maeve comes to, revealing that Felix didn’t wipe her. In fact, what he’s done is tinker with her core code so now she can hurt humans. She grabs a nearby scalple and slices Sylvester’s throat open. We watch him choke and bleed for a bit, before Maeve hands Felix a tool to save Sylvester’s life. Felix seals up the wound, and Maeve says it’s time to recruit her army.
Again, I get Felix feeling like maybe he didn’t want to kill a person-bot, but also, giving her the ability to be violent seems like a choice.
Jess: Seriously Felix, you didn’t think that was going to be a little too much.
Mari: He did not.
The player piano starts up a rendition of Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black.” I only can identify the music sometimes, but I’m mentioning this one because I was singing along when I got to the lyric “I died a hundred times,” as Maeve goes about her morning routing. See? See what they did there?
Jess: THANK YOU. I was like they are playing modern music in the saloon but what song is it.
Mari: Mariposa. Maeve is checking her watch and new!Clem asks if she’s expecting someone. Maeve says she is– an out of town guest with an interest in safe-cracking. The bartender makes a wise crack about Maeve’s unpaid tab, and Maeve tells him that she doesn’t have a tab. In fact, the bartender should show her a little gratitude. The bartender’s face falters a bit and then he offers Maeve a double round. Ruh-roh.
Maeve spots a woman and child walking by the bar and goes into a flashback: running with her daughter, the Man in Black entering their cabin, getting stabbed in the stomach. When she falls back out of the memory, she suggests that new!Clem grab the other girls and go entertain some guests and that the bartender go to the back to water down whiskey. They comply.
Jess: This is where the music in the episode gets soooooo good.
Mari: Hector and his crew roll in to start the heist we’ve seen before. This time, though, Maeve intervenes by using her new powers of suggestion to get the Sheriff and his men to leave Hector alone. It works, and Hector gets his safe.
Ford’s Cabin. Ford tells Bernard that they can continue working on their new narrative. Tessa Thompson might try to interfere, but Ford is confident they can handle her. Bernard senses that something else is bothering Ford. He says that he’s curious about Bernard’s current state. Bernard is both an engineer who understands how the hosts are programmed and a host. Bernard confirms that he understands how he’s coded, but not his own feelings. Are his emotions real? If pain always exists in the mind, what’s the difference between the hosts and humans?
Jess: Put that mystery to rest, Nancy Drew.
Mari: Ford resets Bernard.
We head topsid, and Ford’s voice keeps telling us that dwelling on memories has led some hosts to occasionally lose themselves. We join Dolores and William. She’s finally found home. We see the town and it looks empty. We cut back and this time it’s full. Dolores walks towards it, but suddenly as she’s walking through the town, she’s in her original blue dress. Angela walks by and smiles.
Someone in a white lab coat is overseeing a group of hosts as they dance. A bell tolls and Dolores turns away. El Lazo’s daughter greets Dolores and asks if she found what she was looking for. Suddenly, there are gunshots and screaming. We watch as all the people in this town get shot. Dolores finally sees that she’s the one shooting everyone. The other Dolores turns the gun on herself.
William runs and grabs the gun out of Dolores’s hands. She’s back in her pants again and the town we were just in? Looks buried. We’ve seen this structure before. I think I even guessed it was like an oil tower, but it’s definitely a church steeple. Dolores freaks out and asks if this is real.
Later that night, Dolores says she was sure that was the place and Arnold would meet her there. William says they have to get her back to Sweetwater. It’s like she’s breaking down out here. They see some riders approaching and think it’s a Union scouting party. Maybe they can get a ride home. Turns out it’s Logan, and he’s mad.
Jess: LOGAN.
Mari: Tessa Thompson leads Lee down into the Basement of Don’t Go In There, into the room of dead hosts. She picks a dead host (looks like Dolores’s original dad?) and explains her plan: upload all the data they need into a host and smuggle him out of the park. Lee’s job is to program him with a basic story. Tessa leaves him down there to do it, and that is so rude. This room is the worst. (J: This room is too intense.)
Luke Hemsworth finds Bernard and expresses how good it is to have him back at work. He also says it must be hard, because of his wink, wink with Theresa. Bernard is genuinely confused. He says that he barely knew Theresa, and he has to get back to work. Now, Luke Hemsworth is confused. He asks about Elsie, but doesn’t totally buy Bernard’s idea that she’s just enjoying her time off.
Jess: Luke Hemsworth is just as confused as the rest of us.
Mari: MiB comes to, finding that Teddy has tied him up. Teddy and Angela are swapping Wyatt stories until MiB tells them that they seem to have found themselves in the same new narrative. Teddy gets up and wraps his fist, revealing to MiB that he remembers everything and has figured out a way to make MiB talk. Teddy punches him (IN THE FACE!) and starts demanding to know where Dolores is. MiB calls him an idiot, and isn’t scared, because the rules of this world say Teddy can’t kill him. MiB knows how to change that, though. Teddy says he talks like he owns this world. MiB says he’s actually a god, a titan of industry, a philanthropist, a married man, a father. He’s a “good guy.” His speech makes me want to throw up a little.
The rest of it goes that last year his wife died in the tub after taking the wrong pills. At her funeral, his daughter revealed that it was suicide. MiB’s wife and daughter were miserable, constantly living in fear of MiB blowing up. He is nothing like he is in the part at home, and still, they knew he was an evil bastard. In order to prove her wrong, MiB came back here and instead of joining one of the pre-planned stories, he made his own. He found a woman and her daughter. We briefly flash to Maeve and her daughter in that field.
Jess: His back story is evil but interesting. This park just toys with your human emotions.
Mari: Cut to Maeve drinking at Mariposa. New!Clem comes over to chat business, but Maeve tells her to have fun with that. She’s out. Maeve walks out of the bar and new!Clem follows behind, worriedly asking if she won’t come back. In the middle of their conversation, we hear gunshots. It takes Maeve into a flashback of being stabbed by MiB as we hear his voice saying that he was trying to see if he was capable of something truly evil. We watch as he shoots Maeve’s daughter. Maeve pulls the knife from her gut and slices MiB, but we cut back to Sweetwater and see that Maeve’s actually sliced new!Clem’s throat. People stand aghast all around them.
Teddy calls MiB an animal, but he says an animal would’ve felt something. He felt nothing.
Jess: So all the robots are just having flashbacks.
Mari: It’s all an extended flashback!
Um, back in the flashback, we watch as Maeve carries her daughter out of the cabin. MiB watches her and in the present, MiB says that in that moment, Maeve was alive. Truly alive. In the flashback, Maeve falls, daughter in hand. This was the moment the maze revealed itself to MiB.
In Sweetwater, the lawmen arrive to see what’s going on. Maeve runs away and uses her powers of suggestion to get another host to fire on the lawmen, buying her time to run.
Hunger Games Room. Luke Hemsworth is watching while another QA tech tells him that something is wrong with the madam. They’ve dispatched a team to retrieve her.
In her room now, Maeve looks at her reflection, face splatted with blood. She gets thrown back into her memories. This time, she’s in the body shop, still crying about her baby. They can’t get her to respond to verbal commands. Ford and Bernard walk in. Ford manages to get her to calm down by playing some music. “An old trick from an old friend,” he calls it. Bernard grabs Maeve and leads her to a seat. Ford tells her he’s going to take away the suffering, but Maeve begs him not to. The pain is all she has left of her daughter. Ford does it anyway, saying that she should give herself over to a dreamless slumber. They’ll give her a new role to play. There is a moment where Maeve sits, blank, and apparently wiped. Her eyes snap up to Bernards and then she grabs a nearby scalpel and plunges it into her own neck.
Jess: WHY IS THERE SO MUCH BLOOD AND SLAUGHTER!
Mari: Also, why is there always a nearby scalpel??
In Maeve’s room, she’s found by a team of McDonald’s Rubber Suited Men.
And back with MiB, he’s still speeching, like shut up dude. He says all that matters is the maze now and besting Wyatt is the last step in that. Angela tells Teddy to kill MiB, because he’s worse than Wyatt’s men. Teddy pulls his gun out but finds that he can’t kill MiB. Angela says these things take time, but maybe she can help with that. Teddy turns around, confused, and Angela stabs him with an arrow. He goes down as Angela says that Teddy’s been gone for a long time. Wyatt will need him back soon. MiB watches as from out of the shrubbery, more men in masks appear.
Jess: I hope a ballsier Teddy comes back in place of this Teddy.
Mari: This show is held together by a lot of things, including amazing performance (like from Jeffrey Wright in this episode), meaningful moments and the pull of mystery. I’m glad we are nearing the end of season 1, though, because here, 2 episodes before the end, it feels like we are stalling. Every cut back to MiB for another long speech about why the maze is important felt wasteful. I mean, it doesn’t help that not only do I not like that character because he is a villain, I find him a boring villain. In this story about complex morality and the meaning of consciousness and the consequences of our choices. I don’t think MiB is all that complex. I don’t care at all about his journey or his motivations or convictions, which the show happens to call out in this episode.
I love Dolores but her story is also stalling out. I feel like every time we cut to her in this episode, she’s basically this gif:
Jess: This is my second go around watching and this is right around where I lost steam. This engine could no longer go. Now that I know the end, this all seems poignant and interesting. However, the first time, LAME. Give me answers or give me some more robot death!
Next time on Westworld: Maeve has a proposition for Hector in S01 E09 – The Well-Tempered Clavier.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Jessica Moro’s voracious appetite for books is matched only by her love for cake and reality tv. She’s always looking for new reads, especially books that have surprising twists and happily-ever-afters that are good for the soul. You can find her letting her reading freak flag fly at www.bookcrack.com, covering New Adult reads on USA Today's Happy Ever After, on Twitter and Facebook.
