Imagine if a real Jurassic Park was combined with a world-immersive, role-playing game. You could go anywhere you wanted and the dinosaurs would lay out challenges for you -- and you’d be free to blow their prehistoric brains out at will.
Now imagine if a T-rex began to realize its place in this world.
This week's Westworld, "Dissonance Theory," doubled-down on the idea that the park is nothing more than a real-life video game to many of the visitors and employees. But what happens when the characters the visitors take for granted figure out that their lives aren't what they thought? Dolores is well on her way there, and Maeve the Madam now has solid proof that something's terribly wrong.
"Dissonance Theory" was Westworld at it's best (so far): mysterious, captivating, beautiful and just fun. Here is what happened with our main point-of-view players.
Dolores
Our Alice in Wonderland is again being questioned by Bernard in the underbelly, this time about what happened at the farm the night before. He’s not as intrigued by her explanation for fleeing as he is her sense of loss regarding her parents -- and her belief that something’s terribly wrong with her world.
He asks Dolores to play a secret game: he calls it The Maze (gasp!). Find the center of it, he says, and in doing so you might find freedom. That’s something she’d like, she thinks.
She wakes up from her “dream” and finds herself back with White-hat William and Logan. They’re tagging along with a bounty hunter to find a wanted man, Slim. On the course of their journey, Dolores has two flashbacks. The first, triggered by seeing the creepy daughter of Lawrence (the Man in Black’s hostage), seems to hearken back to a previous life in a strange town. The second recalls her farm after one of the many shootouts, with mysterious figures in white-and-red suits (henceforth called the Suits) cleaning up the mess of bodies. Needless to say, these leave her pretty shaken up; still, she refuses to leave William.
When the crew finds Slim's hideout, Westworld goes into full-blown video game mode. Fantastic shootout? Check. Weapons upgrades from dead foes? Check. Logan shooting the bounty hunter because now-prisoner Slim dropped an "Easter egg" to the "best ride in the park?" Absolutely check.
William and Dolores aren’t so keen on that last part, mostly because William doesn’t want to drag his lady love on a dangerous goose chase. But when Logan (whose family apparently owns a stake in Westworld's corporation) politely points his gun at Dolores’ head, and when William threatens to kill their prisoner/Easter egg, they agree part ways for the time being.
Theresa
It’s safe to say that the park’s corporate overseer isn’t please that hosts are continuing to go bonkers. Theresa’s interrogating Elsie about what the heck happened with the host who smashed his own brains out. She calls the frustrated technician out for the continued anomalies and assigns her own team to take over the investigation.
That night (after some casual sex, of course), Theresa reveals to Bernard she’s nervous about a meeting with Ford about the massive new narrative he’s cooking up. With the board antsy about Ford, she’s got to try to buy everyone time before heads get chopped.
She finds Ford by a massive excavation project that’s somehow related to the new narrative. They walk to a Spanish villa that seems very out of place in Westworld for what can only be described as a tense lunch meeting.
(Aside: They go past a bunch of hosts dressed in a variety of styles breaking rocks with pickaxes, a provocative image that would bring slavery to mind if these were real people. But, as Ford repeatedly reminds everyone, they are mere tools to Westworld.)
This scene is one of Anthony Hopkins’ best so far in the series. Ford knows that Theresa and the board want to get in the way of his plans, so he does his best to put the kibosh on her. He describes how, in the park’s beginning, he and co-creator Arnold made the park exactly how they wanted.
“In here we were gods,” he tells her. “You, merely our guests.” You know Ford still sees things this way.
He says Arnold, who favored hosts over people, lost perspective as corporate interference grew and eventually went mad. But Ford didn't; he adapted. "As you know, I've always seen things very clearly." If anyone else said this the way he had, it would've almost meant nothing. But from Anthony Hopkins, you know he knows exactly what's up, and the veil on his threat is nonexistent.
With the wave of a finger, Ford pauses all the hosts around them (and it turns out there are a lot of them). Theresa then realizes that she’s sitting at the exact table, in the exact seat, where she once had lunch with her parents during a vacation years before. Ford only smiles; just as a video game never forgets what a player does, he knows everything about everyone in his park, visitor and employee alike -- including who’s sleeping with who, as it turns out. He “politely” asks her to stay out of his way -- and to be nice to Bernard.
Theresa tries to be assertive with him, but Ford’s outmaneuvered her. He’s still in control of his world, down to each minute detail, corporate interests be damned.
The Man in Black (MiB)
Seriously, can we just spend an entire episode with this guy? He may be a villain (?), but he’s wicked fun to watch.
We find him with his captive/sidekick Lawrence. MiB, wanting to discover the meaning behind the game of Westworld, is struggling to figure out the riddle Lawrence’s creepy daughter told him a couple episodes back about a snake. Lo and behold, they find a woman -- with a hell of a snake tattoo -- bathing in a river. This woman, Armistice, is the same person we saw in the premiere shooting up the town of Sweetwater.
Turns out she aims to break ole Hector, her partner in crime, out of prison. MiB volunteers his services in exchange for learning the story behind her magnificent tattoo.
He and Lawrence get themselves arrested and taken to Hector’s prison. Interestingly, despite all the crap he gives Lawrence, MiB mischievously hints that “I’m here to set you free.” That, and him name-dropping Arnold to Armistice, makes his quest in the park all the more curious.
We also learn, in case you had any doubt, that the MiB is a real person and not a host; a visitor hanging out with Armistice’s crew recognizes him as someone with a charitable foundation, of all things. Hmm.
With the help of some fantastic exploding cigars, MiB manages to break Hector out and save Lawrence from yet another execution attempt. It’s bold, it’s violent and it’s utterly hilarious.
His end of the deal finished, MiB gets his requested story from Armistice. She says that, as a child, her town was ambushed and her mother murdered by these monstrous men dressed with horns. She had to cover herself with her mom’s blood in order to appear dead herself. Since then, she fills the sections of her snake with the red ink (blood) of those men. And who’s blood will paint the head of the snake? The blood of one Wyatt, the mysterious madman Teddy was pursuing last week.
Speaking of Teddy, MiB and Lawrence later find him beaten up and tied to a tree (turns out he actually survived an episode). They’re dynamic should be interesting to watch, to say the least.
Maeve
Aside from Dolores, Maeve is the host to watch when it comes to uncovering Westworld’s secrets. During a conversation with Clementine, something with her hearing goes wrong, as if an audio speaker had gone haywire.
She suddenly has a flashback of the saloon after a shootout, with the mysterious Suits cleaning up. She then sees the inside of a modern, terrifying operating room as if she’s on the table, with a Suit urging the others to sew her up with a bullet still in her belly to save time.
Like all the flashbacks in Westworld, they leave the remembering host shaken up. Maeve goes home, checks that there aren't any surgical marks on her stomach and sketches one of the Suits before she can forget it. As it turns out, she's done this a lot; she finds a pile of Suit drawings hidden in the floor. This sort of revelation can't be good for one's sanity.
Outside, a bunch of Native Americans are being escorted onto a train. As Maeve walks by, one of their children drops something: a toy Suit. A soldier tells her it has something to do with their religion but that they’ll never say what it is to an outsider.
Back in the Saloon, Maeve spots one of Hector’s men, and Clementine casually remarks that Hector spent a good bit of time with the “savages.” Cue the light bulb over Maeve.
Sure enough (and thanks to MiB’s jail rescue), Hector and Co. come riding into town later that day to repeat the Big Ole Shootout/Safe Stealing plotline. This time, though, Maeve pulls a gun on him in the saloon and makes a proposition: Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll just tell you the combination to open the safe.
Hector, it turns out, has quite a way with words; he sounds more like a prophet and priest than anything as he answers Maeve’s inquiries.
He tells her that the Suit figure is a “shade,” a sacred figure in the natives' lore, sent from hell to “oversee” their world. Realizing that she’s not crazy, that other people have seen the Suits before, Maeve tells him the “shades” have stood over her before and made things as if they’d never happened.
She then draws Hector’s knife and tells him to cut open a spot in her stomach. He refuses, so by golly she goes for it herself and tells him to reach into the hole. He does (I mean, what the hell at that point, amiright?) and what does he pull out? A bullet.
“What does it mean?” Hector asks.
“That I’m not crazy after all, and that none of this matters.”
By this point, Hector’s posse outside has been either killed or arrested, and the lawmen are at Maeve’s door demanding entry. Facing certain death, Maeve now knows death isn’t so certain. She grabs Hector and kisses him passionately as new bullets come flying through the door.
As end scenes go, this is a beauty. Maeve may not know what's going on, but she knows that something is going on and death may not be what it once seemed. When backed into a corner, Maeve can now take the video gamer's route out: screw it and just start over.
Quotes of the Week:
MiB, to a visitor that recognizes him from the outside: "One more word and I'll cut your throat, you understand? This is my f****** vacation." Point taken, sir.
Ford, to Theresa as the giant excavator they saw earlier barrels toward the old villa and its fields: "I'm not the sentimental type." A simple phrase, yet illuminating to Ford's character.
Hector, when Maeve has a gun to his head: "Interesting way to start a conversation."
Maeve: "It's an interesting kind of day." Ya don't say?