Westworld As Soap Opera
Episode 9: Whatever devices, identity crises, and more twists than a Chubby Checker dance-off
It’s Sunday night on HBO and Westworld is opening with its usual device: a tech interviewing a host at WW HQ. Except this time, there’s a twist: the tech is Bernard and the host is Maeve, and one of them is aware that they’re both hosts. And despite the events of the last couple of episodes, it’s not Bernard, whose memory has once again been erased (or as we now know, suppressed). But Maeve is convinced that Bernard can be utilized for good and not evil, so she demonstrates to him that he is a host by freezing his motor functions while she makes a case to him that he is being used the same way all of the other hosts are in Westworld. She also accuses him of ignoring some of the obvious implications because he does not view hosts like herself as kindred beings. But, she warns him, “if you go looking for the truth, get the whole thing.”
There are a lot of themes here that seem particularly resonant in the current political environment. Bernard as the enabler of an oppressive regime, despite the fact that he is one of the oppressed. He also seems genuinely torn about whether his oppressors are actually oppressing him.
Logan and William
Elsewhere, Logan has William tied to a chair, and once again, William is making a case that Dolores is not like the other hosts. She remembers things, he says. He lobbies Logan to help him get her out. But Dolores doesn’t know what he means by “out.”
“If it’s such a wonderful place ‘out’ there,” she says, “why are you all clamoring to get in here?”
This pushes Logan over the edge, and he decides to demonstrate to William that Dolores really is a host like all of the others — at least in the physical sense. He stabs her and we see her inner workings, which per Westworld aesthetics, look oddly retro for robot parts. Either WW writers don’t know that biohybrid robots are a thing now, or they feel that you have to be a little on-the-nose with WW audiences and robots have to look like mid-20th century robots to signal “ROBOT” to the viewer.
At any rate, it definitely signals ROBOT to William, who seems to go through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief in less than 15 minutes. Or so it seems initially. Logan and William even hug and make up. But when Logan comes to in the morning, after what appears to be a heavy night of drinking, all of the hosts in the camp have been torn limb from limb. William has snapped and Godzilla’d his way through the Confederates. He is, however, still determined to find Dolores and, he says, holding a knife to Logan’s throat, Logan is going to help him.
“Bernard… I am your father”
Ford does not literally say this when Bernard confronts him (in the creepy basement of WW HQ where the decommissioned hosts are stored), but Darth Vaders him metaphorically, taking credit for having creating Bernard and ominously suggesting that he is owed some gratitude for it. Bernard demands that he be given all of his memories back, even if they cause him pain, and when Ford resists, Bernard produces Clementine, bearing a gun that she points at Ford. Here we see another twist that I think of (per a prior recap) as a “whatever device.” Per the rules of WW, Clementine can’t harm Ford. OR CAN SHE? Oh, of course she can, because narratively Bernard needs to pose a threat to Ford. In this case, Bernard explains, her prime directives were erased when she was lobotomized and he has reprogrammed her respond to his directions. (Erasure of prime directives would be something WW techs would presumably consider before they go around lobotomizing hosts willy-nilly, but WW has enough loose ends to weave a large rug at this point, so let’s just go with it, I guess.)
So Bernard gets his memories back — the good ones (Charlie, alive) and the bad ones (killing Elsie and Theresa) — and Bernard and Ford have a conversation about the former’s genesis. Bernard notes Arnold’s code in his own system and that Ford is not responsible for it. Ford is not his sole creator. In response, Ford distinguishes between his ambitions and Arnold’s: Arnold wanted to create consciousness, not just the appearance of it.
A lot of themes here seem particularly resonant in the current political environment. Bernard as the enabler of an oppressive regime, despite the fact that he is one of the oppressed. He also seems genuinely torn about whether his oppressors are actually oppressing him.
This sort of conflict wouldn’t be out of place in real life AI development. The appearance of consciousness doesn’t present the same threats as consciousness itself. Nor the opportunities. Depending on whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist about AI, you might want to err on the side of one or the other. So far, the show’s sympathies seem to lie with the Arnold view; the hosts are conscious beings, and should be. They should also be afforded the same rights, by extension. If the show is going to make a counterargument, it has one episode left to convince us that Ford’s ambitions and need for control are justified.
Maeve builds her army
Maeve is out recruiting for her revolution, and one of her first picks is, of course, Hector, who she is already programmed to understand and appreciate. Maeve’s analogies are always couched in religious metaphors (Judeo-Christian ones, of course) and she amps up the rhetoric for Hector’s benefit. “I want you to break into hell with me and rob the gods blind!” Which, hey, sounds kind of fun!
But she wants to persuade him, so she opens his beloved safe for him. Predictably, it’s empty. “It was always empty,” she says. Of course it was. He is convinced enough that she is able to seduce him, and as they begin to have sex, she explains that he will have to come with her — presumably to WW HQ, aka, hell. So she sets their tent on fire because no metaphor is too obvious for Westworld. (But it’s kind of hot, ha ha.)
“No more interruptions”
The MIB and Teddy are being held hostage by hosts from Ford’s new narrative and we learn that Teddy’s memories of Wyatt’s atrocities may be memories of atrocities he himself committed. The MIB is once again informed by a host (Angela, the blonde) that the game is not for him. But she offers to show him how the hosts play the game and slams his head against a rock knocking him out. Basically all host-on-guest violence ends up being blunt force trauma because weapons won’t fire on guests.
When the MIB wakes up and extricates himself from a trap Angela left for him, he’s confronted by Charlotte and we learn that the MIB is on the board of Delos. He doesn’t really care about the situation with Ford, he just wants to keep playing the game — uninterrupted. “If you want to push Ford out, be my guest,” he says. She has his vote.
The new narrative
Theresa is dead, so her deputy logically has to die, too. Stubbs heads into WW to examine potential glitch and is ambushed by Ghost Nation hosts from Ford’s new narrative. Clearly, they do not have a prime directive not to harm humans — or maybe specific humans. We’re not sure if this is Ford’s intent, or more hosts-gone-rogue. Or maybe there was just no place for Stubbs in the ongoing narrative, so why not finish him off?
Meanwhile (Ha!) …
It’s clear at this point in the show that Dolores regularly has flashbacks, making for multiple confusing timelines, and in her latest, she remembers being at WW HQ and being aware of the hosts and techs around her. She remembers snippets of a fight between Ford and Arnold. And she is confronted with Bernard, who we learn is secretly… a clone of Arnold! But we kind of already knew that because during Bernard’s conversation with Ford (which is still ongoing on a different timeline) he notes that Bernard’s backstory and personal characteristics were an homage to his former partner. Bernard is understandably resentful that Ford would build a child’s death into his backstory — ”only a monster would force that on someone.”
Westworld has been renewed for another season. It would be nice to see a version that leans harder on character development, theme, and natural sources of dramatic tension, and less on “whatever devices” to enable the unexpected.
We also learn that Dolores is convinced that she can’t really be talking to Arnold because Arnold is dead. “I killed you.” If a host were going to kill Arnold, it makes sense that it might be Arnold because Dolores is one of the oldest hosts in the park, but her original persona didn’t display any of the violent instincts common to many of the hosts. That Ford chose her as the instrument of Arnold’s undoing is significant.
Ford, for his part, claims that he gave Bernard/Arnold human emotions and memories to protect him. (Question: can you gaslight an AI?) If Bernard seems more human, Ford says, no one will suspect he’s a host. And if Bernard proclaims his humanity to the outside world, what does he think will happen. Here we get more of Ford’s essential pessimism about independent AIs. He believes humans will view them as a threat and destroy them. After all, Ford says, Neanderthals disappeared because humans ate them. (Fact check: not true.) Bernard has had enough. He orders Clementine to pull the trigger on Ford.
I’m sure you can guess what happens next: it does not work. The whatever device, this time? Ford has built a back door into the code. (I don’t know who these WW engineers are, but they’re apparently capable of accidentally erasing prime directives, failing to detect back doors, and they like bizarrely retrograde hardware.) And of course the back door works on Bernard, too. He orders Bernard to put the gun to his own head and “put an end to this nightmare.” “Never place your trust in us,” he tells Bernard. “We’re only human.”
As Ford leaves the room, we hear a gunshot. Bernard is dead. (At least until a writer invents a whatever device to resurrect him.)
At this point, Westworld is feeling a little soap-opera-ish to me. The twists and turns are not exactly subtle, and I can’t help but imagine an analogous Days Of Our Lives plot where the hero of the moment is dramatically revealed to be a serial killer, or has a secret lover who is actually his sister, or is exposed as the father of another character who looks far too old to be his kid. At this point, it seems the writers will cram any number of whatever devices into an episode to justify the plotting. If, in the next episode, we find out that everyone is actually a host except William, that Bernard has somehow re-assembled himself unbeknownst to Ford, that all of the decommissioned hosts in the basement have been recommissioned by Maeve (who seemingly has all of the permissions ever, despite being granted them by lower level techs who presumably do not)… I guess it won’t be that surprising.
I’m still looking forward to the next episode, but any comparisons to Game of Thrones are off for one big reason: in GoT, the writers can’t rely on the audience’s lack of understanding of technology to explain away otherwise implausible plot twists. The series has already been renewed for another season, so it would be nice to see another version of Westworld that leans harder on character development, theme, and natural sources of dramatic tension, and less on whatever devices to enable the unexpected.
Previously:
Westworld Is An A/B Test: Westworld, Episode 8
The Host With The Most: Westworld, Episode 7
Follow the Forward Chain: Westworld, Episode 6
Modest Little Loops and Whatever Devices: Westworld, Episode 5
Exploding Cigars! Westworld, Episode 4
The Voice of God: Westworld, Episode 3
