Maddy and Teresa are back for their tag-team recap of Westworld. Maddy’s the Maeve who thinks none of this matters, and Teresa’s the Dolores, determined to see the beauty in everything. Welcome to Episode Five of the season, “Contrapasso.”
THE RECAP SECTION
Dr. Ford sits chatting with his old Cowboy Host friend in his office, telling him the story of a greyhound his family adopted. He explains that greyhounds are used to chasing felt rabbits around a track in circles and that one day, his family greyhound spotted a cat. It chased and chased it, which was beautiful to watch, but after catching and killing the cat, the greyhound looked confused, as if it didn’t know what to do next, because greyhounds excel at the chase. [Teresa: I felt like Ford was trying to rationalize his treatment of the hosts by basically arguing that captivity and running your track/loop is a better purpose than getting what you think you want only to not know what to do next. Except that there’s always another cat, or squirrel, and there’s an entire life greyhounds lead off the track that he’s not even considering. Ford, your analogy is a pile of horse shit.]
Dolores stands in a graveyard just outside a town called Pariah, which is apparently the den of all sin in Westworld (and that’s saying something!). She has more flashes of imagery she may have experienced, and we hear her voice ask the one she’s been hearing — Arnold’s voice? Bernard’s? — to help her find it. William pulls her back to reality, saying that he heard her talking to someone. She says “It must’ve been the wind,” and she goes into town with him and Logan. The “Confederados” (Confederate soldiers who refused to accept the Civil War was over) are gathered in Pariah, and Logan wants to join in with them to get to the part of the park where there’s a war on. [Maddy: Yet another historical plot-hole, among many such plot-holes. Is the Civil War still in progress, within the fiction of the theme park, or is it over? Seems like it depends which part of Westworld you’re in, and who you ask. Lee Sizemore doesn’t seem like a particularly organized narrative designer!]
Logan also clarifies that the Pariah part of the park is “hemorrhaging money” because of what a free-for-all it is, and that the company he and William work for is looking to buy Delos Corporation out. Meanwhile, Williams not pleased with what he sees in Pariah, saying “Whoever designed this place didn’t think that much of people.” [Maddy: I think Logan and William might have been referring to all of Westworld with those lines, not just the city of Pariah, but I admit it wasn’t entirely clear.]
The Man in Black has rescued Teddy from being tied to a tree and left to die by Wyatt, but Lawrence questions why. Teddy’s losing blood and won’t survive their journey. They are joined by the Little Boy that Dr. Ford took to see the church steeple, who asks them if they’re lost. The MIB sends Little Boy for water, which Lawrence thinks is weird, since he just went for water and filled a bag bigger than a canteen. The MIB empties that larger bag…then kills Lawrence. Apparently, he was wrong about needing to follow Lawrence to The Maze. Clearly Teddy’s the one he needs to follow. RIP Lawrence. (Until he’s reset.) The MIB, who slit Lawrence’s throat, hangs him in a tree upside down, allowing the blood from his neck to drip down into the now-empty bag.
Back at Westworld HQ, Maeve is being repaired by Felix and Sylvester. While Sylvester runs off at the mouth like a douche, Felix is a bit suspicious of Maeve, commenting on the fact that the knife wound he fixed was a “contained incision. Almost as if they were looking for something.” Suddenly, Maeve’s hand jerks before he can get too close to inspect, and Sylvester laughs at him for being afraid of her, thinking that the reason Maeve escaped last time was that Felix forgot to put her in sleep mode. They part for lunch: Sylvester to enjoy a ham sandwich and a VR “nubile redhead,” and Felix to…the dead bird in his locker? Eeew. [Maddy: I was surprised to hear Sylvester referring to VR here. Does he prefer VR as opposed to having sex with a robot? Would having sex with a robot feel too much like being “at work,” for him, since he repairs robots for a living?]
The MIB has apparently given Teddy a blood transfusion courtesy of Lawrence. As Teddy bemoans his pain, The MIB explains that Teddy (and the rest of the hosts) used to be so much better, that when he first started coming to the park, the MIB took “one of you” apart and marveled at all the glorious pieces. But Westworld decided to make the hosts more organic and less mechanical…because it was cheaper. So now, the hosts feel more pain and can bleed, etc, not so much for the guest experience, but because their “humanity is cost-effective.” [Teresa: For some reason, I have a hard time believing that organic materials would be cheaper than mechanical ones in the long run. Especially considering how often it needs to be replaced. Maddy: Perhaps organic construction is cheaper than plastic because it’s more biodegradable, and in the future, we have more environmentally-friendly laws? I can’t believe I’m the one defending a Westworld plot-hole this time, haha.] The MIB convinces Teddy to go with him by saying that Wyatt and his men took Dolores.
Dolores continues to have flashes of the church, a running girl, and shooting in Pariah later that night. William approaches to check on her, and they take a walk. Dolores begins to question whether or not every moment contains many paths to choose from, not just one, and that whichever one you choose can change your life. William asks if she wants to change her life, and she replies, “Doesn’t everyone?” He agrees, then starts talking about Westworld as a park, alluding to the “real world,” expecting her not to register what he’s saying. Except she does. She tells him she feels the whole world calling to her. As William reprimands Logan for calling Dolores a doll with her in earshot, warning him that “she understands,” Dolores gets caught up in a Dia de los Muertos parade when she sees herself in it up ahead! After trying to follow herself for a bit, she hears a voice talking about “dreamless slumber,” and she collapses.
Dr. Ford is interrogating a naked Dolores, asking her if she has become dissatisfied with her “little loop.” He relates her desire to his own, since this park is apparently entirely the result of Dr. Ford’s daddy issues. His dad told him that he should be satisfied with his lot in life, because the world owed him nothing. So, he grew up to be an entitled jerk and created his own world in Westworld. Then, he asks her if she remembers the person he used to be. She can’t. He asks if she can remember Arnold. She says she can’t, but he says that Arnold is there in her programming. He’s been feeling around Dolores’ arm, and is pressing her hand so hard it hurts her. Once he puts her in analysis mode, Dolores says that the last contact she’s had with Arnold was over 34 years ago, but that the last thing he said to her was that she was going to help him destroy Westworld. When Dr. Ford puts her back in Dolores mode, she asks him if they are very old friends, to which he replies, “I wouldn’t say friends, Dolores. I wouldn’t say that at all.” When Ford leaves her alone in the dark, she tells someone, presumably Arnold, that “he doesn’t know. I didn’t tell him anything.” [Maddy: Did Arnold leave some remnants of himself in Dolores’ programming, for her to talk to? He must have, unless he’s still alive secretly…]
Later, Felix is trying to reanimate a dead bird that he “borrowed” to practice working behavior code. It doesn’t go quite right, and Sylvester walks in on him, berating him for stealing corporate property, and thinking that he can rise above his butcher station to ever be a coder.Sylvester warns Felix to destroy the evidence, then calls him over to help with another body. It’s Maeve again. [Teresa: the way Sylvester talked in this scene, from the weirdly caste-based attitude, to the fact that “personality tests should have weeded [Felix] out in the embryo,” make it sound like the people that work at Westworld might not be your average folks who apply for a job. Are they as enslaved as the hosts are somehow? Are they supposed to have free will? It all feels very Brave New World. Maddy: This all plays into my own personal theory that the future of Westworld isn’t a progressive one at all, but rather a nightmareish one. Any future that would create a theme park like Westworld seems like a grim direction for society. This show definitely isn’t an optimistic piece of science fiction.]
Finally, Logan, William, and Dolores get to have their sit-down with El Lazo, who turns out to be either a reset, or a re-purposed Lawrence! Having rescued Slim and brought him back to El Lazo, Logan wants an introduction to the Confederados in return. El Lazo isn’t keen at first, but then he agrees to introduce them and gives them the mission of stealing a shipment of nitroglycerin from Union soldiers for them. Dolores gets to finally sport some gunslinger clothes!
Logan, William, Dolores, and Slim approach the wagon with the nitroglycerin and, at first, the plan is to take the wagon peacefully. But Logan being the asshole that he is, insists on beating up a host that calls him a name, causing the other Union hosts to get violent, which causes William to have to kill three hosts to protect them all. This makes Logan way too happy. When they deliver the nitroglycerin to El Lazo and the Confederados, El Lazo convinces them all to spend the night in his brothel before going off to blow people up.
Meanwhile, Elsie is working on a bartender host who needs fixing. He’s as well-endowed as can be, but he’s not able to pour a drink worth a damn anymore. [Teresa: Yay for equal-opportunity full-frontal nudity!] She then sees the medical team wheel in the Woodcutter from “The Stray” who self-sabotaged. They’re taking him to the Livestock department, then to be incinerated. She follows.
Elsie blackmails a Livestock tech named Dustin who’s been having sex with hosts that have been brought in (they record every sexual encounter) to let her in a room alone to examine the Woodcutter, or she’ll report his unauthorized use of the hosts and embarrass him in front of his colleagues. [Maddy: Elsie’s “creepy necro-perv” insult is quite hypocritical coming from her, since we’ve seen her kissing a host who was checked out before, in the pilot episode. I guess she’s powerful enough to get away with it, since she’s a programmer with the power to clear memory logs. I wonder if any of the employees at Westworld are allowed to actually “use” the hosts sexually, or if they still have to pay for it, or whether they can even afford the cost of paying?] Dustin agrees, and she starts poking around. She discovers a laser-based satellite uplink in the Woodcutter’s arm that she reports to Bernard. Someone is using the hosts to smuggle data out of the park. The drawing that was originally thought to be Orion was actually a target.
Later that night, El Lazo’s brothel turns into some kinda Western version of Eyes Wide Shut. People. Boning. Everywhere. [Maddy: Nice cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Something I Can Never Have” here. The anachronistic covers are one of my biggest love-hate things about Westworld, by the way. I hate how distracting they are, but the covers themselves always sound good, so … I’m torn.]
In the midst of it all, Logan and William get into a fight when William tells him he wants to go no further with him into his war game. Logan then tears William down, telling him that the only reason he chose William for this trip was that he was no threat to him, and that his sister probably chose William for the same reason. William insists that he earned his place at the company, that no one handed him anything. Logan scoffs at his Executive VP title, saying that upper-middle management is as far as he’ll go, but that the day he earned that title was the happiest day of his life. William is about to go ape-shit, but stops himself, giving Logan reason to gloat about how right he was about him. [Teresa: William should’ve kicked his ass! Maddy: Logan is eminently hate-able here. But I gotta admit, Logan’s line about “there’s no heroes or villains, it’s just a giant circle jerk” reminded me a little bit of how I feel about Westworld the TV show … kidding … sort of …]
Meanwhile, Dolores wanders around the orgy and happens upon a fortune teller, who holds cards out to her. She draws a card with the image of The Maze on it. When she looks up to ask what it means, she’s sitting across from herself. She tells herself that she needs to follow The Maze, and when Gunslinger Dolores asks what’s wrong with her, Creepy Dolores replies, “Perhaps you are unraveling.” Dolores sees something like a loose thread in her arm (the Woodcutter had something in his arm, Dr. Ford examined her arm). When she pulls on the thread, she opens up a bleeding gash and freaks out, but when she looks up again the fortune teller is gone, and then the gash is gone. She gets the hell up out of there. [Maddy: I wonder if Dr. Ford installed that uplink into the other guy’s arm. Maybe it’s all part of his new storyline where he forces the hosts to worship him like a god, and the satellite in the sky has to do with the narrative. He could have installed something like that in Dolores’ arm too.]
Dolores happens upon El Lazo pumping all the nitro glycerin into Slim’s dead body, and filling the bottles with tequila. Apparently, Slim’s work for the Revolution isn’t done yet, and this double-cross isn’t going to go over well with the Confederados. She finds William and begs him to leave with her before the Confederados find out about the switch, but William’s not in the mood for the “urgency” the game is creating, saying Westworld is designed only to strip him down to his most primal. Dolores insists they can find a way out, and then says that a voice inside her is telling her that she needs him. They kiss. Aww. Dolores’ first love who’s not Teddy.
As they run away, they see Logan getting beat up after the double-cross has been discovered, but William won’t stop to help. As he’s getting punched, Logan smiles at William getting dark. When they’re confronted by the Confederado soldiers, William tells Dolores to run, but DOLORES SHOOTS THEM ALL. Willliam, shocked, asks her how she did that. She referred to him saying that Westworld is a place where people come to change the story of their lives and says, “I imagined a story where I didn’t have to be the damsel.”
They get on a train out of town only to find Lawrence there (and he is indeed the same Lawrence) with the coffin containing Slim’s body. At Dolores’ gunpoint, they all agree they’re on the same team, and she notices the Maze symbol on the coffin. She says (to Arnold?), “I’m coming.”
The MIB and Teddy stop into a tavern only to be joined by Dr. Ford. The MIB asks Ford how he’s doing at the game, and Ford asks him what he’s looking for exactly. The MIB talks about the game’s need for a real villain (which is why he himself has made his “humble contribution” over the years), to which Ford replies, “I lack the imagination to even conceive of someone like you.” Ford questions the MIB about what he’s hoping to find at the center of the Maze, and the MIB explains to Teddy that the world outside that he’s never going to see is a “soft” world where everyone has every single need met. Everything is taken care of…except purpose and meaning, which is what people (who can afford it) are hoping to find in Westworld. [Teresa: Which is probably most people in a world like the one he describes?] The MIB wants to find the center of the Maze, because he feels that whoever created Westworld wanted to express something real and truer than the “sweetly affirmative bullshit” on the surface in Westworld. When Ford tells him that if he wants to know the moral of the story, he should just ask, the MIB says he’d need to ask the guy who died 35 years ago, who almost took the park with him had it not been for the MIB. [Maddy: I assume this means the MIB bailed Westworld out financially, perhaps after the scandal of Arnold’s death.] The MIB then threatens to “cut Ford open” to see what he can find, only to be stopped by Teddy, ever the loyal puppet. The MIB asks if Ford’s trying to stop him, but Ford isn’t interested in getting in the way of “a voyage of self-discovery.”
Felix goes back to Livestock to take another crack at reanimating the bird, which he finally does successfully! It then lands on the outstretched finger of Maeve, who’s now sitting up on her gurney looking regal as fuck. She tells Felix that it’s about time they had a chat.
THE OPINION SECTION
Teresa: We’re now at the halfway point of the season, and this episode was the most exciting yet as far as big chunks of the story moving forward. It was thrilling to watch both Dolores and Maeve make such huge leaps forward with their individual awakenings, and it’s so interesting to see their different approaches. Whereas Dolores seems afraid of the things she’s been seeing, and is following a voice toward answers, Maeve is following herself, getting herself killed over and over in the hopes of learning more each time she returns to Livestock. When talking about the development of our personalities, we often talk about “nature versus nurture,” and it’s interesting to see how the way these two female hosts have been programmed affects their responses to the changing circumstances around them. Is Maeve so much more straightforward because she was programmed to be a madam and therefore has a harder, more cynical edge? Or is this Maeve’s burgeoning individual personality? Is Dolores following instructions because she was programmed to be an obedient rancher’s daughter, or is this her personality? It’s likely both, and I’m fascinated looking for the places where nurture and nature will diverge.
In addition to the big jumps for Dolores and Maeve, we also had an amazing first scene between Dr. Ford and The Man in Black, which gave us more insight into the MIB’s motivations, as well as a seemingly long-standing hostility between him and Ford. A couple of things struck me about this conversation. First, the way that the MIB talked about the creator who died 35 years ago seemed to imply that the park only had one creator, which would explain why Ford was looking really offended. Interestingly, the MIB says “I wonder what I would find if I opened you up…” before attempting to attack him with the knife. Earlier in the episode, he describes to Teddy taking “one of you” apart and admiring the many beautiful pieces. I thought it interesting that he used the same language for Ford.
This coupled with what I mentioned in the recap above about Sylvester talking about Felix and their employment in a weird way makes me question the nature of the people who work at Westworld. It’s starting to feel like none of them is real, or if they are, they’re not exactly in control either. The MIB said that the park wasn’t taken down with Arnold “thanks to him.” What does that mean? Who are the forces beyond Ford? Despite Ford’s omnipotence in Westworld, it’s clear from how he talked about his father to Dolores, as well as the way the MIB talks to and about him, that he might have much less power everywhere else.
I mentioned Brave New World in the recap section, and it occurred to me that in that novel, the religious worship the “T” as in the Model-T, and have replaced the word “Lord” with “Ford.” Ford, the creator of the mass production of automobiles, is worshiped as a god. And on Westworld, we have Ford fashioning himself into a god. Sylvester seems really adamant about the lowly Livestock medical team not being able to progress into coding and Behavior, much like the society in Brave New World is divided into castes, each conditioned to be happy with their station in life. Now I wonder if the connections between that novel and this show will go any deeper?
Incidentally, one of the protagonists of Brave New World, the one who is dissatisfied with how things are and becomes the custodian of a “savage” who was not raised under the World State, is named Bernard. (Does that make Dolores the “John the Savage” of Westworld? Does the park replace soma in this society?)
The one thing that bugs me — and it’s not a complaint about the show necessarily, but about a philosophy expressed by the MIB — is the idea that once everyone is fed and taken care of financially, that people stop being able to find Purpose. As if the only things that people want and need are material. As if without financial need, people stop wanting to excel and be good at things, or stop wanting to love and care for each other, or even stop hating each other. Hell, even the MIB’s purpose is Discovering Purpose. I have this problem with a lot of dystopian fiction, actually, and this might be a big reason why I love Star Trek so much. Every person having their basic needs met, or doing away with the need for money, doesn’t mean that people won’t have things they will continue to strive for. “Purpose” means different things to different people, so I don’t buy that Westworld exists because the real world couldn’t find purpose.
We see that played out on Westworld between William and Logan. Theirs isn’t a struggle over money, but power and respect. Even with their financial needs met, there’s still the individual desire to do better and be better. That’s the amazing thing about humanity that the Westworld park doesn’t allow for, and makes William say that whoever created the park didn’t think too highly of people. People won’t find Purpose if, rather than trying to be better, they are indulging their basest instincts.
Which brings me back to the powers that be outside of Westworld. I’m curious about who’s pulling on Dr. Ford’s puppet strings. To whom does he answer? Perhaps the reason why Arnold wants to destroy the park is because the park is helping to destroy their society?
I love the Big Ideas Westworld continually sparks in me week after week.
Maddy: I love Teresa’s Brave New World comparisons in her opinion section, and I’m also loving the way that this episode finally introduced us to some of the marginalized people in the “real world” of Westworld HQ. I’m much more interested in Felix’s plight than in Bernard or Elsie.
I had wondered whether Westworld would reveal that perhaps some of the employees at Westworld HQ are, themselves, robots. Instead, I think the show is showing us that the employees of this mega-corporation aren’t actually well-off or powerful after all–or at least, the lower-level employees aren’t. They aren’t literal robots, but they are robots in a metaphorical sense, working within a system that is massive and outside of their control, “just following orders” and so on. It’s all very Milgrim Experiment.
Sylvester’s references to personality tests and job placements suggests that the real world might not be so different from the Westworld theme park. Dolores might be disappointed, then, if she ever did have the opportunity to escape. The idea of having an assigned part to play is a very depressing one indeed, and it’s a theme that we’ve also seen play out between William and Logan, too.
The main aspect missing from Dr. Ford and the MIB’s little chat is the fact that both of them are ridiculously wealthy and privileged characters who are using both humans and robots as their playthings in an elaborate game. The MIB wants for nothing–he has everything he could ever want in the “real world”, and he still wants more. He seems to believe this is a problem with human nature, but I think that’s because he doesn’t want to acknowledge that there’s something wrong with him for viewing the world in this way. He could be using his desire for purpose to do good, but instead, he’s chosen to torture and rape robots in a mega-expensive theme park. I’m guessing that in the “real world,” just as in the Westworld theme park, the MIB treats people like objects who must bow to his every need and entertain him. He is a truly unnerving villain, and we see his younger counterpart in Logan’s nihilism.
Unfortunately, the Arnold plotline just isn’t that interesting to me, at least not yet. Westworld already has a lot of dueling paternal influences. The pilot episode was all about a father’s love for his daughter spiraling out of control, and it seems as though the idea of fatherly love (or the lack of it) has become another theme in Westworld. We’ve learned from Dr. Ford’s story that he has some daddy issues, and also, he wants to cast himself as a paternal figure to the robots. But then we have Arnold, who is their “true” father–the one who wants his “children” to destroy the park.
I guess I think the story would be more interesting if there were more of a maternal influence in here somewhere, or if the “daughters” in the park had some more agency. The reveal that this mysterious Arnold dude is behind the robot rebellion… well, it’s just a little less interesting than the story I hoped to see, because it explains away the plot at hand by introducing yet another dude behind it all. It’s also too bad because we have characters like Theresa and Elsie working in Westworld HQ–women who have power and who, at times, use it for immoral ends–but their storylines have been quite lukewarm in comparison. The two of them present an opportunity for Westworld to have more diverse representations of women, and yet, no episodes have made much use of them yet, instead passing off their plot points to other (male) characters to see through.
My favorite character is still Maeve, who got barely anything to do in this episode but nonetheless intrigued me in her final scene. Dolores is starting to become more interesting, but even in that case, it still seems as though she’s largely manipulated by the men around her, as opposed to making her own choices. I know Westworld is playing the long game, because they have a lot of seasons worth of story to tell, but I want these female characters to have a bit more to do besides dramatically kissing male characters who happen to be in close proximity during their epiphanies (both Maeve and Dolores have had scenes like this, in the prior ep and in this ep).
On that note, one of the most interesting aspects of the pilot episode for me was that it appeared to be a story about robot romances and alliances, but with this episode, Westworld pairs Dolores with her new human love interest. I’m sure that eventually Teddy is going to show up and feel betrayed that William, a human, is going to be the one to “take her away from all this” or whatever. I’m already bored by that storyline and it hasn’t even unfolded yet.
Westworld still manages to play by Game of Thrones rules when it comes to lazy depictions of sex work, and this episode is no exception. There’s some male nudity in this episode, but by and large, this is a show that predominantly features women characters in the nude, and they’re usually women with no lines and very little to do. Maeve is the exception, but she’s not in this episode, and I think it’s worth noting that, by and large, Dolores is presented as the main female character of this show, not Maeve.
Dolores is still getting cast as the “alternative” to the rest of the female hosts, and I don’t think I like the duality that’s being presented, particularly in the scene where Dolores (wearing men’s clothes and carrying a gun) sits on a couch looking uncomfortable in a brothel full of nude sex workers. Plus William keeps trying to “save” her from having to see other women in brothels, as though she’s never seen this sort of thing before… yet still, she seems shocked every time, and it’s getting old. I’m glad that this episode is starting to undo the whole “Dolores is ‘pure'” framing, but they do it by putting a gun in her hand–and her relatively chaste kiss in this episode happens with William, the “Nice Guy” who’s been patiently respecting her virtue for days and treating her like a tender flower this whole time. Not exactly a sexual awakening or an empowering reclaiming of her sexual self.
I’m still not convinced that Westworld‘s view of gender is particularly progressive or sex-positive. Yes, this show depicts a dystopian future that is still, apparently, an oppressive one that continues to have racist and sexist views, and those views are reflected in the theme park in the world of the show. But also, I think the biases of our real society–you know, the actual world in which we live–get reflected on Westworld the TV show, too, and that’s unfortunate. The result is that we have a show that revolves primarily around heroes like Dolores, Teddy, and William, who are framed as “good people,” whereas the rest of the cast is framed as no-good criminals (and, of course, sex work and sex in general are depicted as being equally depraved as, say, egregious violence and torture). This is a show where every sexual act we’ve seen so far has been either assault or non-consensual or framed as an unhealthy power exchange.
Dolores and Teddy were the only exception to that rule so far, and now, that’s done–since Dolores is with William, who has power over her even if he doesn’t want to admit it. Even when Dolores is making her own choices, they’re still often framed as a man’s choice–either Arnold’s or Dr. Ford’s or Bernard’s. Perhaps if Theresa and Elsie had more power in Westworld HQ, this would be a different story, but as far as we know, the two of them are as clueless as Dolores when it comes to what’s really going on.
As the resident pessimist around here, I just want to continue to register my own disappointment about the fact that Westworld–both the theme park and the TV show itself–seems to think that audiences want “circle jerk” scenes to keep them interested. Casting scores of nude women and painting them with gold body paint shouldn’t be a given for “prestige television.” Actually giving those women something to do, narrative-wise, would be nice. That doesn’t necessarily mean they all need to wear men’s clothes and shoot guns, though. That’s reductive, too, just in a different way. There should be more than two options for women on this show, and so far, I’m not seeing much on Westworld.
I’m hopeful that Maeve and Elsie will prove me wrong next episode; the ending of this episode gave us a great Maeve moment, so next week, I’m crossing my fingers that we head back to her storyline!
(images via screencaps/HBO)
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