[6.7/10] We only have two data points to go on, but it seems like Episode 7 is going to the part of the average Westworld season where the big reveals happen. Les Escorches is less a story, or even a chapter of a story, than it is just a series of twists and revelations, and other instances of the show pulling back some curtains, even though there are undoubtedly more curtains to come. And honestly, I cannot be bothered to muster up that much enthusiasm for any of them.
But let’s start with the biggest one. We finally know the purpose of the park. It is not, as I once theorized, to use hosts as soldiers or as infiltrating doubles of world leaders and such. It is not, as I thought the show was hinting at, a commentary on online data-collection, where guests are the product not the customers. It is, instead, a testing ground for the park to test the accuracy of their downloaded and copied versions of the guests’ minds.
It is mildly clever. In turns the hosts from highly sophisticated toys or objects of fantasy into the control group for a grand experiment. It recontextualizes the conversations between Arnold/Bernard and Dolores, changing them from him testing her to her testing him. It shows that the hidden, presumably lucrative goal of this park is not just to entertain the wealthy with their basest desires, but to achieve digital immortality, and keep the human mind intact and copyable in some form after death.
It’s not a bad twist. I’ll admit that the “robots are there to test the fidelity of the copied humans” bit feels a little implausible to me, but it’s enough to pass the smell test. Human preservation is longstanding extension of science fiction stories where human-like robots are present, and a natural one at that. Nothing in this reveal is outright bad, beyond Ford’s usual array of portentous word salad in describing it, and the necessary gobfulls of exposition the episode doles out to explain it all.
But it just doesn't move me. Okay, the park exists to preserve people, even if the technology to put them in equivalent robo-bodies without them going mad isn’t really there yet. So what?
From a plot standpoint, it doesn't really change much. It means that anybody who dies may not be dead for long, but that’s been a part of Westworld from the beginning. Whether it’s the hosts being refurbished, or Bernard turning out to be the second coming of Arnold, or Elsie turning out have been imprisoned rather than killed, death has long been cheap on this show, so the possibility of familiar characters living on doesn't do much to move the needle.
It doesn't really do much thematically either. I like the broader theme that Westworld has been setting up for a while -- that there is a coming conflict between humanity and synthetic people as to who shall inherit the Earth. This reveal is an escalation of that conflict, one that shows that human beings have technology to make them as malleable and improvable as their potentially faster, stronger, counterparts.
But again, we’ve already had the idea of Arnold surviving as Bernard, of Ford maintaining robotic versions of his family (including him as a child), of Papa Delos existing in some form after his death, even with beaucoup kinks to work out. This is the big mystery that Westworld has kept under lock and key from the beginning, and when it’s out in the open, it’s perfectly fine, but neither narratively jaw-dropping or thematically impactful enough to really make a difference.
The second, related but less interesting reveal, is what’s inside Peter Abernathy’s head. It turns out to be a decryption key, one that will presumably decode all the human minds that have been transmuted to digital form. That at least has some symbolic resonance, as Dolores must effectively kill her father in order to obtain the thing that will give her power over her erstwhile controllers. It means there is a sacrifice she has to make in order to obtain her freedom.
But in practice, it gives us a farewell exchange between the Abernathies that isn’t nearly as emotion-laden as the one earlier in the season, a stock conversation between a confident-but-subtle-groveling Hale and an intimidating Dolores, and a thin excuse for the humans to escape a sticky situation thanks to some well-timed mayhem.
Well-timed mayhem is the name of the game here. If you want action, this episode features robots vs. strike forces, femme fatales pulling grenades, and skirmishes shot in silhouette. And it all becomes completely, utterly static nigh-instantly. There’s some meaning in the way that the hosts are indecipherable from the security forces, and we get yet another brick in the wall of ruthless Teddy being concerning, but it’s bland action that can’t excite otherwise.
It does, however, lead to the one well-done colloquy in this whole thing, which happens between Dolores and Maeve. The show has teased their interactions before, but it’s a compelling contrast, to see the two liberated and in-charge hosts clashing if not exactly having a conflict with one another. (Prediction: that will change, though probably not for another season or two).
Dolores is amazed at Maeve’s journey, but is ready to put her out of her misery, but Maeve wants to hang on to save her daughter. Dolores, having just lobotomized her father, has made peace with the idea that the idea of family implanted by their programmers is “just another lash,” but Maeve isn’t so convinced, and sees Dolores’s altering of Teddy’s psychology as something that makes Dolores no better than the humans. It’s brief, and a little too grandiose in places, but there’s a juxtaposition of perspectives there that generates more meaning than all the shocking reveals that “Les Escorches” can muster.
The last of these reveals is that Ford is not only alive and well (or at least his mind is), but that he’s imprinted himself on Bernard, to the point that he can not only order Bernard around, but even take control of Bernard’s body when he chooses to. It’s a neat enough twist in that it means we can question any odd behavior from Bernard in the “present” as potentially being directed by Ford, and it’s a reasonable excuse to keep Anthony Hopkins around.
But again, it feels like a twist for the sake of a twist, something hidden from us not because it really adds meaning when it’s revealed, but because Westworld wanted to deliver a shock at the appointed time. There’s plenty of potential -- in terms of storylines, character work, and metaphor -- in somebody self-aware but living with another person inside them who causes them to do things against their will. Why that information is delivered the way it is -- with the usual spate of exposition and florid nonsense and cryptic hints -- is beyond me.
But maybe I’m just watching the show wrong. Maybe I’m in it for the meaning that can be extracted from new souls finding their humanity, gaining their freedom, and establishing what self-identity amounts to in a premise that works fantastically as a series of though experiments, while the show wants to deliver soapy reveals and pulpy twists with abandon, with the idea that pulling the rug out from under the audience is more important that making those twists mean something.
“Les Escorches” has plenty of dramatic reveals, but it’s light on letting them amount to anything real, and that makes it pretty damn hard to care.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2018-07-06T22:13:03Z
[6.7/10] We only have two data points to go on, but it seems like Episode 7 is going to the part of the average Westworld season where the big reveals happen. Les Escorches is less a story, or even a chapter of a story, than it is just a series of twists and revelations, and other instances of the show pulling back some curtains, even though there are undoubtedly more curtains to come. And honestly, I cannot be bothered to muster up that much enthusiasm for any of them.
But let’s start with the biggest one. We finally know the purpose of the park. It is not, as I once theorized, to use hosts as soldiers or as infiltrating doubles of world leaders and such. It is not, as I thought the show was hinting at, a commentary on online data-collection, where guests are the product not the customers. It is, instead, a testing ground for the park to test the accuracy of their downloaded and copied versions of the guests’ minds.
It is mildly clever. In turns the hosts from highly sophisticated toys or objects of fantasy into the control group for a grand experiment. It recontextualizes the conversations between Arnold/Bernard and Dolores, changing them from him testing her to her testing him. It shows that the hidden, presumably lucrative goal of this park is not just to entertain the wealthy with their basest desires, but to achieve digital immortality, and keep the human mind intact and copyable in some form after death.
It’s not a bad twist. I’ll admit that the “robots are there to test the fidelity of the copied humans” bit feels a little implausible to me, but it’s enough to pass the smell test. Human preservation is longstanding extension of science fiction stories where human-like robots are present, and a natural one at that. Nothing in this reveal is outright bad, beyond Ford’s usual array of portentous word salad in describing it, and the necessary gobfulls of exposition the episode doles out to explain it all.
But it just doesn't move me. Okay, the park exists to preserve people, even if the technology to put them in equivalent robo-bodies without them going mad isn’t really there yet. So what?
From a plot standpoint, it doesn't really change much. It means that anybody who dies may not be dead for long, but that’s been a part of Westworld from the beginning. Whether it’s the hosts being refurbished, or Bernard turning out to be the second coming of Arnold, or Elsie turning out have been imprisoned rather than killed, death has long been cheap on this show, so the possibility of familiar characters living on doesn't do much to move the needle.
It doesn't really do much thematically either. I like the broader theme that Westworld has been setting up for a while -- that there is a coming conflict between humanity and synthetic people as to who shall inherit the Earth. This reveal is an escalation of that conflict, one that shows that human beings have technology to make them as malleable and improvable as their potentially faster, stronger, counterparts.
But again, we’ve already had the idea of Arnold surviving as Bernard, of Ford maintaining robotic versions of his family (including him as a child), of Papa Delos existing in some form after his death, even with beaucoup kinks to work out. This is the big mystery that Westworld has kept under lock and key from the beginning, and when it’s out in the open, it’s perfectly fine, but neither narratively jaw-dropping or thematically impactful enough to really make a difference.
The second, related but less interesting reveal, is what’s inside Peter Abernathy’s head. It turns out to be a decryption key, one that will presumably decode all the human minds that have been transmuted to digital form. That at least has some symbolic resonance, as Dolores must effectively kill her father in order to obtain the thing that will give her power over her erstwhile controllers. It means there is a sacrifice she has to make in order to obtain her freedom.
But in practice, it gives us a farewell exchange between the Abernathies that isn’t nearly as emotion-laden as the one earlier in the season, a stock conversation between a confident-but-subtle-groveling Hale and an intimidating Dolores, and a thin excuse for the humans to escape a sticky situation thanks to some well-timed mayhem.
Well-timed mayhem is the name of the game here. If you want action, this episode features robots vs. strike forces, femme fatales pulling grenades, and skirmishes shot in silhouette. And it all becomes completely, utterly static nigh-instantly. There’s some meaning in the way that the hosts are indecipherable from the security forces, and we get yet another brick in the wall of ruthless Teddy being concerning, but it’s bland action that can’t excite otherwise.
It does, however, lead to the one well-done colloquy in this whole thing, which happens between Dolores and Maeve. The show has teased their interactions before, but it’s a compelling contrast, to see the two liberated and in-charge hosts clashing if not exactly having a conflict with one another. (Prediction: that will change, though probably not for another season or two).
Dolores is amazed at Maeve’s journey, but is ready to put her out of her misery, but Maeve wants to hang on to save her daughter. Dolores, having just lobotomized her father, has made peace with the idea that the idea of family implanted by their programmers is “just another lash,” but Maeve isn’t so convinced, and sees Dolores’s altering of Teddy’s psychology as something that makes Dolores no better than the humans. It’s brief, and a little too grandiose in places, but there’s a juxtaposition of perspectives there that generates more meaning than all the shocking reveals that “Les Escorches” can muster.
The last of these reveals is that Ford is not only alive and well (or at least his mind is), but that he’s imprinted himself on Bernard, to the point that he can not only order Bernard around, but even take control of Bernard’s body when he chooses to. It’s a neat enough twist in that it means we can question any odd behavior from Bernard in the “present” as potentially being directed by Ford, and it’s a reasonable excuse to keep Anthony Hopkins around.
But again, it feels like a twist for the sake of a twist, something hidden from us not because it really adds meaning when it’s revealed, but because Westworld wanted to deliver a shock at the appointed time. There’s plenty of potential -- in terms of storylines, character work, and metaphor -- in somebody self-aware but living with another person inside them who causes them to do things against their will. Why that information is delivered the way it is -- with the usual spate of exposition and florid nonsense and cryptic hints -- is beyond me.
But maybe I’m just watching the show wrong. Maybe I’m in it for the meaning that can be extracted from new souls finding their humanity, gaining their freedom, and establishing what self-identity amounts to in a premise that works fantastically as a series of though experiments, while the show wants to deliver soapy reveals and pulpy twists with abandon, with the idea that pulling the rug out from under the audience is more important that making those twists mean something.
“Les Escorches” has plenty of dramatic reveals, but it’s light on letting them amount to anything real, and that makes it pretty damn hard to care.