‘Westworld’ is a masterclass in fractal storytelling
NOVEMBER 8TH, 2016 — POST 303
The following with contain spoilers for Westworld so far.
Westworld couldn’t sit still this week. The sixth episode, entitled ‘The Adversary’, saw the show start to deliver on a lot of the slow-burn storylines that have been ticking over these past few weeks. The status of the “young boy” character was revealed, Maeve’s trajectory for the rest of the season has been securely founded, and the Bernard/Robert/Arnold triangle is starting to sing. The cliffhanger at the episode’s end is the most apparent physical threat to one of the park’s staff so far and seeks to indicate a “play with fire, get burnt” thesis that is typical for the genre. This last note is well within co-showrunner Jonathan Nolan’s wheelhouse, sharing writing credits on The Prestige which contains a line that might as well be a dictionary definition of hubris:
“‘Man’s reach exceeds his grasp’. It’s a lie. Man’s grasp exceeds his nerve.”
But perhaps the most dramatic beat in an episode stacked with dramatic beats was the revelation about Teddy. One of the first faces we met in show back in Episode 1, Teddy was the all-American boy returning to Sweetwater to continue his courtship of Dolores. Or at least, that’s what his initial narrative said. Teddy’s new narrative has him on the classic Western revenge path for a Union general named Wyatt he fought under in the Civil War, a general who he witnessed slaughter the battalion he served in. A slaughter that, despite bearing witness to and seeking revenge for, Teddy apparently escaped unscathed from. How exactly he managed that becomes apparent in ‘The Adversary’. Teddy was Wyatt’s accomplice. His desire for revenge is then simultaneously a desire for personal exoneration. The epitomic white hat Teddy bears the narrative trauma of mass murder.
The trick done on the page with Teddy’s character is exceedingly difficult. In the world, Teddy really is a different person in the wake of the reworked narratives. He has a different history, a suite of traumatic memories. This is the unique beauty of the host set-up: for the sake of the theme park, they can be whatever the park staff want them to be. However, Teddy simply can’t be whatever the writers (whether in the park or in Westworld’s Writers’ Room) want him to be because we the audience get in the way of this. We see an actor, we understand a presence on screen to be the condensation of a character. And Teddy’s been a supreme, albeit wounded, hero. We just wouldn’t buy (at least enough to keep caring about him) if he just flicked as is justified by the host-narrative mechanic. As circuitous as it seems, Teddy has to be shown to earn a new status as if he were a human character. And the way he earns it has to be believable by the same criterion.
The loudest scene of ‘The Adversary’ is the scene when old Teddy earns new Teddy. Teddy’s arc has to be believable and as such the scene is technically formidable in a perfect three acts. Having been caught by the Union Army with The Man In Black after it comes to light of his involvement in Wyatt’s slaughter, we open in this scene with both Teddy and The Man In Black tied to wagon wheels in a Union camp, populated by tents, soldiers, and a Gatling gun on the back of a cart. The soldiers wonder what to do with their prisoners. This is Act One — a stable state of events that characters have a desire to change. One of the soldiers moves in with a red-hot iron with the intention of branding Teddy. After exchanging a catalog of pithy dialogue, Teddy breaks his binds and takes control of the iron, fighting off the soldiers. To talk in trite beat sheet terms, the approaching iron is the Call To Action, the dialogue is Teddy’s Debate as to what to do, and grabbing the iron and attacking is the Acceptance Of The Call. So we’re in Act Two.
We get myriad action shots: The Man In Black breaking free, revolvers burping bullets into Union soldiers, the pair scrambling to fight to a position of dominance. But there are a lot of guys. To talk in Snyderian terms, the Bad Guys Close In. There aren’t enough bullets in anyone’s revolver to fight them off. Except there are. We move into Act Three as Teddy climbs atop the cart, mans Chekhov’s (Gatling) gun, and spews rounds across the camp, mowing down every soldier in sight. The Climax comes to an end as the Gatling gun cools and the scene is resolved with some banter between the two. At the end of three Acts, Teddy is a changed man.
The brilliance of the scene isn’t that a story-craft nerd can pull it apart and lay it atop a story template. But rather, that Teddy’s transformation is completed so efficiently. Most importantly the three-act structure compells us to believe the transition, that it really was earned, an arc that first grounded violence in self defense and soured to deliver violence who’s justification is shaky at best. So even though Westworld the park can have Teddy flick on a dime, Westworld the show needed him to move. And in an expertly executed three-act scene, they earnt it.
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