Maeve marches a guest upstairs and taunts him into choke-y death-sex.
I’m not sure if we were supposed to find this scene arousing or repulsive or both.
And what does Maeve have against beds, anyway?
Credit: John P. Johnson/HBO
She’s all about sitting on safes and dressers during death-sex.
“How do you know?”
Maeve asks, which is a darn good question.
Seeing this prompts a Maeve software crash.
The body shop guys hit control-alt-delete to reboot her.
Did anybody else want to hear the Mac chime as Maeve came back online?
You remember how in the firstWestworldepisode we saw that sequence showing various departments engineering the hosts?
Then she notices a video wall that’s showing promotional footage for the park.
She sees herself on the screen, including her dreams that she learns were her past builds.
I could go on and on about this wonderful sequence.
It’s beautifully done thanks to Thandie Newton’s expressions, the music, the imagery, and editing.
You may or may not think ofWestworldas a perfect show.
But a scene like this is transcendent in a way that 99 percent of TV is not.
NEXT: DoesWestworldreally lack characters to root for?
Once back in the body shop, Lutz is now joined by the lunkheaded Sylvester.
Maeve wants to make some changes to her 20-point Attribute Matrix on the control pad.
Suddenly, we envy her a little.
Who wouldn’t want to notch up their charm and “bulk apperception” while reducing traits like paranoia?
It’s like playing with the Tony Robbins of tablet apps.
Maeve convinces the guys to increase her intelligence, and she looks like just popped theLimitlessdrug.
I reckon he’d seen enough fighting."
Once again this suggests the maze is a way for a host to break their loop of violence-death-rebirth.
Suddenly, Teddy has a breakthrough memory: Hewasin cahoots with the evil Wyatt.
“You think you know someone,” the MiB marvels.
At first, this twist was disappointing.
There are enough morally ambiguous characters on this show, and I happen to like Teddy.
In other words: Teddy isn’t bad; he’s just drawn that way.
And this makes you realize that we really don’t know any of the hosts.
Some viewers have struggled withWestworldbecause they’re having trouble finding characters to root for.
Some of the hosts like Dolores and Maeve have moments where we feel deeply for them, too.
But there remains some emotional distance with the hosts.
I thought I knew him, but I was wrong."
But if we want to increase our bulk apperception, we could take Modafinil.
If we wanted to boost confidence (at least temporarily), we could use alcohol or cocaine.
SSRIs swipe up our levels of well-being.
And on and on it goes.
And who knows what neuropharmacological wonders are around the corner?
This is a reason I’m lovingWestworld.
We think this show is about AI.
And it is, to some degree.
We observe these hosts' extreme and dramatic circumstances, and we feel they’re so different from us.
Like how a couple weeks ago, when I was ruminating about loops.
That’s why he was climbing a mountainhe was trying to get high enough to transmit.
This show is a lot about the mindhost and humanand even the facility is organized in a mind-like way.
Down here it’s so primal that even the lights and plumbing don’t work properly.
Triple flashlight!).
Bernard gets on a computer system so old the keyboard is out of the 1990s.
He discovers there are five unregistered hosts living in the park.
So he goes to check out a cabin in Sector 17.
There’s a family living here.
“Are you Arnold?”
Bernard asks the patriarch, and we thank him because that’s what we were wondering, too.
The father doesn’t respond to voice commands and attacks Bernard, who’s then rescued by Ford.
Ford explains these are host versions of his own family.
They’re all first-generation hosts built for Ford by the supposedly deceased park co-founder, Arnold.
Ford tries to reassure him.
This one gets my vote as the Biggest Hint of the Week.
So pretty much everything we learn about Ford just makes him creepier.
And speaking of the hosts being harmless, Ford later discovers his Mini Me killed his beloved greyhound.
The voice of Arnold told him to do it.
This should bother Ford more than it does.
All of which leads us to young sleuth Elsie Hughes and The Mystery of the Stray Signal.
She’s tracked it down to a creepy abandoned theater.
There she makes some big discoveries: 1.
The data is being sent to a Delos satellite.
The person doing this is Theresa Cullen.
The system is sending messages to original generation hosts' “bicameral” systemthe one designed by Arnold.
And naturally, after she relays this to Bernard, somebody grabs her.
Elsie’s fate is unknown.
“So if there’s nothing else, we’re done.”
Jeez lady, dead hosts have way more warmth than you do.
And that’s what I have for you this week.
Except a few things.
