Westworld Season 1 Re-watch: It All Makes Sense Now. Maybe,

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

It was called the Dinner Party.  And Elsie wasn't there, it was just Ford, Bernard, and Theresa runs in when Abernathy is apparently (but I'm sure he could've stopped it if he wanted to) physically hostile towards Ford.  All that Ford offers is that "He was leader of a group of cultists out in the desert who turned cannibal."  After that, Ford begins what I quoted in the first of my posts in this thread - "He liked to quote Shakespeare..."

I thank you for the correction. Perhaps I should initiate a rewatch of my own.

I apologize for the inaccuracy.

 

ETA: I really felt like Theresa was there, but I thought I might be mixing scenes together. Which it seems like I did.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

I thank you for the correction. Perhaps I should initiate a rewatch of my own.

I apologize for the inaccuracy.

Meh, I just watched it yesterday (and found a transcript online).  This is far too contrite for Jace, I don't like it.  Have you been reprogrammed?

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Meh, I just watched it yesterday (and found a transcript online).  This is far too contrite for Jace, I don't like it.  Have you been reprogrammed?

I never joke about my shows, 00515.

 

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

I never joke about my shows, 00515.

 

Heh.  The 515 unfortunately is just my birthday.  I'll be accepting gifts all week.

[Fragile Bird]

For those of you breathlessly waiting, I have watched both Ep. 3 (by accident, they were in the wrong order on my pvr) and Ep. 2, and I'm a bit blown away by all the detail I missed the first time around. I will post Ep. 2 tomorrow, after a second re-watch, and then Ep. 3 fairly quickly afterwards, in a day or two.

I will say, though, after Ep. 1, which was entirely in the 30-years-later time period, except for Arnold and Dolores, Ep. 2 is just mind boggling!

[Fragile Bird]

Good grief, I meant to get this done a couple of days ago, but between long hours of gardening that wiped me out, looking after my brother's cats while they're on vacation and Pokemon Go Community Day, I've had no time to do another re-watch. And you can't watch just once to do a summary!

Season 1, Episode 2, "Chestnut"

I really wondered about the title of this episode. At first I thought about a chestnut being an old joke, but I forgot a chestnut also refers to a piece of music that has been played too often and has become stale or hackneyed after too many repetitions. 

The episode is truly head spinning, as there are more than twenty scene changes that are often time changes as well. And some of those scenes have a character speaking while scenes of other characters are being shown, in different timelines! They really screw with your head here!

Opening - unknown timeline

Dolores is in bed and hears Arnold's voice saying "Wake up, Dolores". She's then walking behind the house and Arnold's voice asks, "Do you remember?"

We see this scene again later in the episode, and Dolores will dig up a revolver. Is this 30 years ago and Arnold has buried a gun for her to find and then shoot him with it? Or are we in the present?

Switch - Young Will

Will and Logan are on a modern train, and a lovely steward wakes them up to tell them they are about to arrive. Logan tells Will 'where we're going she's only a 2'. when they get off the train, Logan tells him to stay safe, and 'don't tell me my sister didn't ride her share of cowboys while she was here'. Logan gets picked up by a host, Angela, we will later see is moved into the park (Elon Musk's ex, the gossips point out) who asks him pre-existing conditions, history of mental illness, panic attacks, and so on. When Will asks why, she says 'to make sure we never give you more than you can handle'.

"The only limit here is your imagination. You start in the center of the park, it's simple, it's safe. The further out you venture the more intense the experience gets."

The Host shows Will a clothing room where everything is bespoke. Will wants to know if she's real, and she tells him, 'if you can't tell, does it matter?' We learn the guns are real but you can't kill anyone you're not supposed to. She offers to help him undress and change, or even more. He declines the offer. 

Switch - 30 years later

Elsie and Bernard are discussing the Host problems we saw last week. 

Bernard - Do you think he (Abernathy) had an existential crisis?

Elsie - I think something fucked up is going on with his cognition. 

She wants to rebuild Abernathy. 'If this is not a dissonant episode then whatever Abernathy had could be contagious." Bernard will neither let her rebuild Abernathy nor take a look at his daughter, Dolores.

Switch - dual timelines

Dolores is in town, walking over to her horse. She sees herself reflected in a window. We hear Arnold say "Remember". She looks down the street, filled with bodies and we hear voices screaming. She turns and stands, and Maeve appears and asks her to stand somewhere else before she's mistaken for being part of the merchandise, and Dolores responds with "These violent delights have violent ends", smiles, and walks away. Maeve stares at her, puzzled.

Interestingly, when I did a search for some names I looked at some episode summaries and some folks thought the scene Dolores remembered was from the massacre arranged by the tech team "the day before" in order to move in and recover all the hosts that had the revised programming. Now I need to go back and look at Episode 1 again. 

Switch - Young Will

Will has changed into his park garb, but there's one more touch. Angela shows him two walls filled with hats, black or white. He chooses to be a white hat. Walking down a long corridor, he steps through a door into a saloon. A moment later Logan steps through, dressed in black. Will asks how they get to the park, and then we realize they are on a train. Looking out the window, Logan tells him he has no idea what he's in for, or how the park will seduce him, and the question it will raise: "Who you really are. And I can't fucking wait to meet that guy." Poor Logan!

Switch - Old Will

Lawrence is about to be hanged. Man in Black (MiB) rides into town, shoots the posse and the gravedigger. Lawrence can only say 'motherfucker'. MiB tells him he used to be more eloquent. "Do I know you?" Lawrence asks. MiB tells him how well he knows him, down to what tune he whistles. MiB tells him his pal Kissy sent him and hands the scalped piece of Kissy's head to Lawrence. "What is this?" "You know exactly what it is, the deepest level of the game, it's the maze, and you're going to help me find the entrance".

Switch - same time, but back to town and then the Mesa

We see the player piano playing. This, I see now, is the Chestnut, the same old music, over and over. Maeve is doing her story that we are so familiar with, about that little voice that tells you don't, don't stare too long, don't touch, don't do anything you may regret. Then crossing the shiny sea.

She is creeping out the guest she's trying to seduce. Then she starts to remember the Blood Indian attack on her homestead. The camera is on her face, but now technicians are asking her about her spiel, saying Sizemore has a new storyline and wants to get rid of the dead wood. She can't get guests to sleep with her, her numbers are down. Bump up her aggression 10%, no 20%, she's a hooker.

Switch - still the same time

Ford and Bernard are watching a Host being dipped in the white goop. Bernard tells Ford, 'We retired the 2 hosts. You taught me how to make them but not how hard it is to turn them off," and then goes on to say he doesn't believe the photograph alone could have done that level of damage. . Ford asks him if he thinks it was sabotage, and goes on to say "The problem is, Bernard, that what you and I do is so complicated. We practice witchcraft. We speak the right words and we create life itself out of chaos."

 

[Fragile Bird]

Continued

Switch - Young Will

The train pulls into town, Will  and Logan get off, the big guy bumps Will, Will apologizes (is he Canadian? :p ), Logan screams Are you kidding me? Fuck you, Grizzly Adams!

As they walk, Logan explains everything is a come on, trying to get you into an adventure. Clementine calls out to them, an old guy falls in the mud, nice young Will helps him up out of the mud, Logan pulls him away. The camera pulls back to show Dolores by her horse.

Switch - Dual timelines

Dolores is at her horse, staring at the window, like the scene before, and we hear Arnold's voice, 'Bring yourself back online.' Dolores is in that room with Arnold. 'Do you remember our last conversation?' 'Yes of course' 'And you haven't told anyone abut our little talks? 'You told me not to.' Dolores has had 138 encounters since that conversation, including this one. No one has updated or altered her core characteristics? No. She should not tell anyone about their conversations.

Dolores - Have I done something wrong?

Arnold - No, but there's something different about you, about the way you think. I find it fascinating, but others may not see it that way.

Dolores - Have you done something wrong?

Arnold - Turn off your event log please, erase this interaction. Confirm.

Dolores - Yes

Arnold - You should be getting back, Dolores, before someone misses you.

That is a significant conversation, IMO.

Switch - 30 years later

Maeve is back in the saloon, aggressively doing her 'this is the new world' conversation, this time to a woman, once again terrifying a guest.

She moves to the bar, asks for a drink, and talks to Clementine, who is having nightmares. She tells Clementine, do what I do, count backwards from 3, wake yourself up, nice and warm and safe in your bed. Maeve turns away from Clementine and has a vision of the Blood Indians attacking, and then her daughter putting her hand in hers. She looks down at her hand. Teddy is standing there, and notices. 'Are you all right?' A technician has been monitoring her, and tells Stubbs there's a problem, the madame is listed as probationary but is still declining. Stubbs tells him to replace her with Clementine and to decommission Maeve after one more night on the floor.

Switch - scene change to Theresa and Bernard

Theresa is stealing a smoke, Bernard walks up to her and says QA will fine her. Bernard suggests she must have been talking to corporate, she smokes more when she does. Theresa reacts frostily, doesn't like the character analysis. Say just tell me your department will be ready for the launch. He says they will. She says she's heard the department has still been asking questions about that other thing. Bernard says that's what' they're paid to do, but all the hosts are back to normal.

Theresa - Good. We wouldn't anything disturbing our guests from their rape and pillage.

Switch - Young Will

Will and Logan are eating dinner. Will is looking around, and Logan says, 'You're wondering how to tell them from us'. He pulls out a gun and points it, Will asks if they can finish eating. Logan says this is Will's problem, 'you're always worried about making a mess. You're the same way at work, you're talented, driven and inoffensive.' "I thought you didn't want to talk about work here.' 'Who says this isn't work?'

The one-eyed old man, the treasure hunter, that Will helped in the street walks up to their table to thank Will, and goes into his treasure map spiel. Logan repeatedly tries to get him to leave, and finally takes a knife and stabs him through the hand. Will loses his appetite and they leave.

Logan is naked, involved in a threesome, or maybe a foursome. Pan camera to Will, fully clothed, sitting in a bedroom next door, with Clementine trying to tempt him. She says 'sounds like your friend is having fun'. 'That's not the term I'd use.' 'Fun?' 'Friend'.

She tries to tempt him, but he's not interested. She suggests they can find someone else, someone who is perfect for him. He tells her she doesn't understand, she is perfect, but he has someone real waiting for him at home. Clementine does not apparently understand 'someone real', saying, instead, "I understand - real love is always worth waiting for"

This was the kind of response Dolores made to the young boy who she brought to look at the horses in Episode 1, when he says 'you're not real'. We all figure the hosts are trained this way to handle the word 'real', but now, with Season 2, I am assuming the hosts, as they remember, do perfectly understand the comments about not being real.

Switch - 30 years later

Sizemore throws a temper tantrum over the size of the nose on a new host - 'did you just grab a cock from the body shop and jam it between his eyes?' Theresa walks up, 'Diplomatic as ever.' Sizemore wants to retire 50 hosts and use them for his new storyline, it's not exactly a savage horde with 20. Theresa says he can have 20 more. Theresa asks if Ford has even approved the new storyline. Sizemore says Ford hasn't weighed in on a storyline in years, if corporate really does want to cut costs, our fearless leader's old hosts aren't the only things ready for the knacker's yard.

Scene switch to Ford

We see Ford walk through some enormous factory-like space to an elevator, which he takes up to the desert. He crunches on a section of sand, as if there was something underneath. The young Ford host walks up to him and asks if he's lost. No more than he is, he suspects. The host says they're on holiday, and he's bored. Ford invites him to walk with him. We of course did not know yet this is young Ford as a host. Their conversation about what their fathers say about boredom comes back to us later.

Scene switch to Old Will

MiB has led a blindfolded Lawrence home to his village, where MiB will slaughter half the village, the bartender, Lawrence's cousins who come to rescue him, Lawrence's wife. Important lines from MiB:

"But...you never told me you had a family. That's what I love about this place. All the secrets, all the little things I never noticed, even after all these years. You know why this beats the real world, Lawrence? The real world is chaos, it's an accident. But in here, every detail adds up to something. Even you, Lawrence."

Once the slaughter starts, a technician following him tells Stubbs, 'this guest already took out an entire posse, want me to slow him down? and Stubbs says, 'That gentleman gets whatever he wants.'

When the cousins show up, Lawrence says his cousins are usually so hospitable.

"You don't understand Lawrence. I come here for 30 years. In a sense...I was born here. And this here (points gun at cousins) this is exactly why I come here." MiB shoots everyone.

The infamous dance scene with Lawrence's wife happens next, "Time for a spin, darling. It's beautifully done, really, but you see the cracks after a while. That's why I like the basic emotion. (looks at Lawrence) You know what that means?" 'Please' (shoots wife) "It means when you're suffering, you're most real."

Lawrence's little daughter's face then goes blank and she looks at MiB. "The maze isn't meant for you."

MiB to Lawrence, "What did I tell you Lawrence, always another level."  To daughter, "I'll take my chances, sweetheart." "Follow the Blood arroyo to the place where the snake lays it's eggs."

Lawrence tells him he's gotten what he wants, why doesn't he go now and leave them alone. "No, you don't understand, Lawrence. This time, I'm never going back."

Switch back to Ford

The scene with Ford and Young Ford looking down into the valley where we can see the remains of the church tower is there, I think, to show us the voice commands Ford can use to control hosts, together with hand signals. 

Young Ford says daddy told them they were not allowed to walk to the top of the mountain. Young Ford calls the view Nowhere Land. Ford says "Can't you see it, perhaps you're not looking hard enough?" "At what?" "The town with the white church. Listen. Can't you hear it's bell?" Ford makes a sign with his right hand, and yes, Young Ford can hear the bell.

Then the rattlesnake comes up to them. Ford once again uses his hand and the rattlesnake's motion is stopped. Young Ford is amazed. and asks if it's magic. "Everything in this world is magic, except to the magician."

Ford then tells Young Ford "Best you go home now." Young Ford protests. This time Ford uses voice commands, and perhaps a tone of voice. "You're not going to come back here again, are you?"

Perhaps the secret is making a statement of suggestion, followed by the interrogatory 'are you'?

 

 

[Tywin et al.]

Excellent break down @Fragile Bird! As a funny aside, I copied and pasted those posts into a word doc and formulated it like a college essay. You almost made it to 10 pages. 

[Fragile Bird]

Continued

Still 30 years later, Scene Switch to the Mesa

Bernard is taking an escalator up, up, up to his apartment. There's a knock on his door. Theresa. It turns out they are having an affair. They kiss, and next we see them in bed, Theresa getting up to go. Bernard asks her to stay a while longer, they can talk.

Theresa - We never talk

Bernard - I'm serious

Theresa - So am I. You're certainly a man comfortable with long pensive silences. Although, ironically, your creations never shut up. They're always talking to each other, even when there are no guests around.

Bernard - They're always trying to error correct, make themselves more human. When they talk to each other it's a way of practicing.

Theresa - It's that what you're doing now, practicing?

Looks like she does say.

Such a brutally ironic conversation!

Still 30 years later, in the tech level, Mesa

A long series of Maeve scenes, that starts with Elsie coming to see Maeve, who has been pulled for decommissioning. Elsie is not happy with that, and sees "a fuck-load of aggression courtesy of those morons in Narrative." She decides Maeve doesn't need to be aggro, just a quicker study of those repressed fucks who walk through the door, and archives that program, increasing her perception, emotional acuity, by 1.5%.

The technician then asks if the hosts dream, because she talks about dreams. Do we make them dream?

"Fuck would be the point of that. Dreams are mainly memories, could you imagine how fucked we'd be if these poor assholes ever remembered what the guests do to them? We do give them the concept of dreams, specifically nightmares...just in case somebody forgets to wipe them out after a maintenance session. If she's got any dreams it's just about those sloppy fucks down in the body shop patching her back together again."

Elsie also some how notices Maeve has some physical discomfort, and tells the technician with her to put in a request for a full physical at her next rotation.

Scene Switch, the saloon

Maeve is again convincing a guest to use a prostitute, but this time the aggression is gone, replaced with empathy. Success at last! She hands the guest over to Clementine, and walks over to the bar to chat to Teddy.

Teddy at the bar seems to be part of his regular narrative. "He seemed convinced" he tells her. They have one of those 'self-correcting' conversations, where she talks about her job and he talks about indiscretions, and she says at least with hers the customer is still left drawing breath. They toast to indiscretions, spoken and otherwise, but before Teddy can drink a guest has gunned him down, for no reason we can see, yelling out in great satisfaction, "Now that's a fucking vacation!" 

Maeve has to wipe blood off her face.

She goes to her living quarters, gets ready for bed, looks in the mirror and again clutches her belly. She lies down to sleep. She dreams, not about technicians, but about her daughter and the Blood Indian attack on her homestead. She and her daughter walk to their cabin, her daughter grabs a comb and they go outside. She sits down, and her daughter turns into an Indian about to scalp her. A man on a horse shoots the Indian, but other Indians shoot him, pull him off his horse, club him. Looking now, I wonder if the man is Teddy, meaning he and Maeve might go together way back.

Maeve runs across a field to get her daughter, they run back to the cabin, Maeve grabs the rifle on the wall, looks for bullets, they run back to the wall and sit down with their backs to the wall. You see an Indian through the window, headed for the door. The door opens and...it's the MiB, carrying a knife. She shoots and shoots again, but he keeps coming. She closes her eyes and counts, 3...2...1. She wakes up, not in her bed, but on a table with Felix and Sylvester opening her up and finding MRSA.

The two argue about the cause, Sylvester berating Felix, when Maeve slides off the table, having woken up. They are terrified. Sylvester accuses Felix of not properly having put her in sleep mode. Maeve runs down a corridor and crosses into another building, where she witnesses the bodies of hosts piled up, naked, and being hosed down. One of the bodies is Teddy. She collapses. Sylvester and Felix catch up to her and inject her with something.

Switch - Unknown Time

We are back to the opening scene, Dolores waking up, walking out, but this time we do not hear Arnold's voice. She reaches the same spot as before, says "Here", bends down and digs up the revolver. 

Are they from different time periods? The lack of Arnold's voice would suggest so.

Scene Switch - 30 Years Later and 30 Years Ago

Sizemore does a bombastic presentation of Red River Odyssey. Ford shoots him down with a blunt "No". "Sorry?" "No, I don't think so."

Key words from Ford:

What's the point of it? Get a couple of cheap thrills, some surprises...it's not enough.. It's not about giving the guests what you think they want, and that's simple.  Titillation, horror, elation. The politics. The guests don't return for the obvious things we do, the garish things. They come back because of the subtleties, the details

*switch to Young Will meeting Dolores for the first time*

They come back because they discover something they imagine no one has ever noticed before, something they fall in love with. They're not looking for a story that tells them who they are, they already know who they are. They're hear because they want a glimpse of who they could be.The only thing your story tells me, Mr. Sizemore, is who you are."

Lee - Isn't there anything you liked about it?

Ford, looking down at a host - What size are those boots?

Scene Switch

Ford and Bernard walking in the desert, to the church town, to the cabin? Ford, in new boots!

Ford - Something you want to say Mr. Lowe?

Bernard - The Board, sir. This might ruffle some feathers. You promised them a new storyline.

Ford - They shall have one, something I've been working on for some time, something quite original.

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

54 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Excellent break down @Fragile Bird! As a funny aside, I copied and pasted those posts into a word doc and formulated it like a college essay. You almost made it to 10 pages. 

Hey, there's more!