Modest Little Loops and Whatever Devices: Westworld, Episode 5
Dolores breaks free.
At this point, it seems that every episode of Westworld (okay, all five of them so far) begins with some stage setting in the form of a conversation. This week, we open with Dr. Ford talking to his favorite decommissioned host and telling a story about an old greyhound dog his family had as a child that ends with the grisly death of a cat. A seemingly domesticated thing capitulating to its natural killer instincts. (Sometimes Westworld is a little too on-the-nose with its metaphors and parables: Does Ford really need to tell a creepy story every time he has a point to make?)
But, hey, foreshadowing. Why not.
Then we cut to Dolores — Ford’s seemingly domesticated thing — in a graveyard. (You wonder how the hosts perceive this particular piece of scenery. What do they understand about death?) She hears a voice calling her: “Find me,” it says. She answers: “Show me how.”
BUSINESS GONE BAD
William and Logan, meanwhile, are now entering a more dangerous and hedonistic part of the park (the further out you go, the more the violence and sex and sexual violence you get) and talking about economics of the place. We learn that at one point Westworld was hemorrhaging cash and that one of the partners killed himself. William looks visibly uneasy in this new environment. “Whoever designed this place,” he says, “you get the feeling they don’t think very much of people.”
But they’re here to do business themselves, so Logan cuts a deal with some ex-Confederate hosts to steal and deliver bottles of nitroglycerin in a ploy that will involve holding up a stagecoach of Union hosts. (Sometimes it’s hard to tell in which historical period Westworld designers are placing their narratives. Before the ex-Civil War soldiers entered, I would have placed it in the early 19th century.)
The Westworld orgy has more glitter than a Brony convention, but is actually kind of tame — more risque than “Eyes Wide Shut,” but not quite “Caligula.”
Elsewhere in Westworld: the MIB and his unwilling sidekick Lawrence part ways again after the MIB slits his throat to collect blood to transfuse a dying Teddy. We don’t see any of that, but apparently blood transfusions in Westworld are far less complicated than they are in, say, hospitals with humans. But it’s not as if the MIB is doing it out of the goodness of his tiny black heart. He needs Teddy to find the maze, and besides, he says to Teddy: “It’s not my fault you’re suffering.” This is not the first time the MIB has offered this critique. In the first episode he expressed bafflement that some of the hosts were designed to develop feelings for each other. It seems now that he wasn’t saying he didn’t understand why you would want them to experience pleasure, but that love would also bring suffering. But he offers a theory for it: “Your humanity is cost-effective,” he tells Teddy. Making the hosts flesh and bone is cheaper, he contends. (I cannot imagine how this would be true, but to be fair, I’ve never RFPed anyone for AI hardware. Or wetware, in this case.)
Speaking of AI wetware, Maeve is back at WW HQ again, naked on a table. Surgeons are repairing her and finding her self inflicted wound. They suspect she was looking for something. One of the surgeons is leeringly informed that there’s a new “bottled redhead loaded up in the VR tank ‘awaiting instruction’” har har, because fucking the new hosts is apparently a perq of the job.
THE REAL WORLD… WESTWORLD
William and Dolores are having an extensive conversation about free will and William explains the appeal of WW. You can do whatever you want and “no one in the real world will know.” Dolores asks what he means by “the real world.” He says he thought hosts weren’t supposed to pick up on the meaning of phrases like that.
(Here is where I find some of WW’s explanations a bit clunky. There’s a scene in the Jason Reitman film Thank You For Smoking where the lead character, a tobacco PR guy, is talking to a Hollywood agent about a scene they could do in a movie where astronauts are smoking. The PR guy finds this logistically implausible and points out that cigarettes in an oxygen-heavy environment would probably blow everything up. The agent replies that it’s an easy fix. One line of dialogue. Thank God we invented the whatever device that prevents the spaceship from blowing up! Sometimes it seems that there are one too many “whatever devices” in Westworld.)
Lawrence: “How is the lunatics always find their way to me?”
At any rate, D0lores’s realization that there is another actual world results in another trip to WW HQ and another conversation with Dr. Ford, who condescendingly asks her if she’s considering “breaking out of her modest little loop.” He also interrogates her about Arnold and whether she’s been hearing voices. (Why she isn’t taken offline when it’s apparent that Ford suspects she’s developing some autonomy of thought is a mystery. I expect that a whatever device will soon appear to explain it. Or a shifting timeline that indicates this isn’t all happening chronologically.) She says her last contact with Arnold was 34 years ago — the day Arnold died. She seems to be in analytical mode when she says it, but after we hear her telling herself, “I didn’t tell him anything.” It’s unclear whether she’s talking about Ford here, or Arnold, or maybe even William.
Who is, incidentally, negotiating the nitroglycerin shipment with El Lazo, who turns out to be Lawrence — throat good as new. He advises Logan and William that the scales in any deal are always tipped, and if you can’t tell how, they’re tipped against you. Hoary gambler cliche, but exactly the sort of thing you expect the hosts to say in WW at this point. Dolores thinking that maybe Lawrence is a kindred spirit tries to talk to him and ask if he’s also hearing voices, sensing the same things she is. “How is the lunatics always find their way to me?” asks Lawrence, harkening back to an early episode where bicameralism is explained in the context of skepticism about it — with dismissals from skeptics that people who hear voices in their heads are generally regarded as lunatics.
As William and Logan prepare to rob the stagecoach, the question of what to do with Dolores arises again. She decides she’s going with them and ditches her innocent farmer girl duds for jeans and a gun. This is new Badass Dolores. But the stagecoach robbery goes awry when Logan, ever the asshole, insists on violence and begins to beat one the Union soldiers, which results in an all out brawl and dead hosts.
The three return the booty to El Lazo and the Confederates pay him for the nitroglycerin — or what they think is nitroglycerin. Lawrence has replaced it with booze and taken the nitro for himself, to be used in a future revolution. As a reward, he offers Logan, William and the Confederates their choice of naked women, most of whom are painted in gold, a la everyone’s favorite James Bond movie. (Unclear whether they’ll end up dead in this one, though.)
CORPORATE CONSPIRACIES, CONTINUED
At WW HQ Elsie is examining a host with an unusually large penis, which seems to serve as a dramatic excuse to a) make a joke about the host’s underappreciated “talents” and b) ensure that the male/female frontal nudity balance is not entirely 0/everyone. She notices the guy with the stray host who bashed his own head in being wheeled past her, and darts out to get a look. In order to get access, she has to blackmail a surgeon who had sex with the aforementioned “bottled redhead” awaiting initiation. She notes that the hosts log events even when they’re not on.
Dolores: “I imagined a story where I didn’t have to be the damsel.”
In examining the host, she finds a wire and a transmitter, which she realizes is being used to smuggle data out of the park. This neatly matches a funny plotline of a recent Westworld parody by The Ringer, “I Spent $5.3 Million at Westworld AMA,” wherein guests sometimes kidnap hosts for corporate espionage purposes — which actually is a reasonable plotline. (The parody portrays a version of Westworld that’s crasser and dumber than the original — and therefore, far more likely to represent what real Westworld would be like if it existed. There’s also more sex in parody Westworld, and it isn’t mostly confined to Maeve’s brothel, because why would it be? Maybe they invented a whatever device that incentivizes guests to mostly have sex in the privacy of a WW guest room.)
BUT NOT ALWAYS!
And here’s the obligatory orgy scene everyone has been waiting patiently for. The WW orgy has more glitter than a Brony convention, but is actually kind of tame. Like, more risque than Eyes Wide Shut, but not quite Caligula.
It’s not compelling enough, at any rate, for William and Logan to stop bickering. We learn in the course of the argument that Logan is William’s soon to be brother-in-law — and boss. Logan predictably begins bullying him in a kind of ersatz Patrick Bateman way, but without the Bateman smarts. Eventually William blows up and pushes him against the wall. (Why is this specific theme what happens narratively in every movie ever made that involves a bully bullying a more mild-mannered guy? Mild-mannered guy always seethes — shut up, bully! Shut up, bully! — and then inevitably looks for wall upon which to press the bully by his lapels. Just once, it would be nice to see the mild-mannered guy just roll his eyes and call the bully a moron, but I guess this is not the time or place.)
While this is happening, Dolores is upstairs seated across from a fortune teller, who is suddenly transformed into a mirror image of herself. She is hallucinating. She notices a fiber sticking out of her wrist, she pulls it and opens up a vein. This may not be a metaphor — it looks a bit like the literal wire and transmitter than Elsie removed from the headless host earlier. She thinks she may be unraveling — literally and metaphorically.
“I imagined a story where I didn’t have to be the damsel,” says Dolores
She returns to find William having a meltdown over Logan, Westworld, all of it — but mostly Westworld and what it is doing to him. “They create urgency, ostensible danger, so they can strip us down” he says. He doesn’t like this raw animal state. “It’s a sick game and I don’t want to be a part of it!” Dolores feels the same way. She kisses him and implores him to run away with her.
The Confederates, meanwhile, have realized that the nitroglycerin they were promised has turned out to be booze are taking it out on Logan, beating him. One of them tries to go after William too, but New Badass Dolores shoots him to save her new love.
William is surprised and elated. He asks how she was able to do it. “I imagined a story where I didn’t have to be the damsel,” says Dolores. It appears that she has broken out of her modest little loop.
Dolores and William join Lawrence on the train, the nitro safely hidden in a host corpse in a coffin — decorated with the maze icon we’ve seen several times now, in various incarnations.
MIB vs. DR. FORD
I suspected from the first episode that the MIB and Dr. Ford had a relationship, but I’m still not sure what it is. The penultimate scene puts them together, sitting across the table from each other in a saloon, Teddy inanimate by their side. The MIB informs Teddy: “Everything good that’s ever happened in your life — and everything rotten — this is the man you have to thank.” It’s revealed that the new nefarious Wyatt character may be in some way inspired by the MIB. In fact, it may be “someone to stop me from finding the center of the maze.” The MIB philosophizes about the maze and says it’s important because he believes it gives the whole enterprise a sense of purpose.
Ford is baffled by this obsession. “If you’re looking for the moral, why not ask?”
“I’d need a shovel,” the MIB replies, indicating that Arnold is the only one who can answer that question. Then perhaps testing the limits to which Ford has designed WW for his own ends, he takes a swipe at Ford with a knife, and is stopped by the otherwise inanimate Teddy, who gets a nasty cut from the blade. The MIB seems to have expected it, and Ford has no interest in thwarting his quest. “Far be it from me to get in the way of a voyage of self-discovery.”
Finally, we cut back to WW HQ where a surgeon who’d been working on reviving a robot bird (without permission from his superiors) is once again in a room with naked inanimate Maeve. The bird flutters to life and we see the joy on his face turn to horror as it lands — onto the waiting finger of a fully awake now Maeve, who sitting up, smiles and says, “Hello, Felix. It’s time you and I had a chat.”
Previously:
Exploding Cigars! Westworld, Episode 4
The Voice of God: Westworld, Episode 3
