1x04 Dissonance Theory

[7.2/10] The most striking scene in “Dissonance Theory” is one shared between William and Dolores. When asked where she’s headed, Dolores says that she feels like something’s calling her, that where she is isn’t right, an echo of her earlier confession that she feels like there’s something wrong with this world. And William responds that he knows that feeling, that he’s felt that feeling.

Obviously their positions are very different. Dolores has good, clear reasons to think her world is amiss, her path the wrong one, that there’s something calling her to a different life. Whether she knows it or not, her world is built to be one of raw hedonism where she’s something between a tool and a toy, oft-harmed or abused and made to serve the whims and worst impulses of others. The whole “universe” as she knows it is built like that. And there is something calling to her, whether it’s Bernard or Arnold or Ford or something else entirely, pushing her to be more or be different.

But William has none of the same such justification. As little as we know about the world beyond the walls of Westworld, we’re left to assume that he occupies someplace much like our own, with the same global problems, the same workaday concerns, the same search for fulfillment (albeit in a form that allows him and his brother-in-law to drop $40,000 a day on a crazy theme park).

Still, there’s common ground between guest and host -- one whose creators are more directly pulling its strings and sending her to repeat ruin, and one who can only wonder if the path he’s on is the same. It’s a potent parallel, one with the thematic and philosophical depth to support this episode even when its dialogue or teases or major setpieces fail.

Because that’s the common thread of “Dissonance Theory” (a title which gives a name to this particular sense of being ill-at-ease). Dolores is (as shown in terribly clunky lines exchanged with Bernard), anxious for something beyond her current existence, feeling it to be wrong in some way. William mainly follows the adventure he’s started, but speaks of the same sense of feeling called for more, something deeper than what he has and is now. Maeve starts to remember her nightly vivisections, receive hints that she is not, in fact, crazy and have reason to believe that there is something beyond what she sees and hears. And The Man in Black is searching for the same greater purpose within the game, something beyond playtime or storytelling, with “real stakes.”

All of them is after something more profound, trying to correct for some imbalance or asymmetry in the world as they’re perceiving it, even though the four of them are in very different positions.

Each is also seeking a measure of control -- over their lives, over their destinies, which puts them in the same position as Theresa, who’s trying to exert a little control over Ford. Ford is unleashing his new storyline, which is swallowing up resources and throwing things into disarray elsewhere in the park.

It’s a bit meant to give Theresa some depth, between her meant-to-be warm interaction with Bernard and her anxious-in-the-face-of-a-supervillain conversation with Ford. But the character isn’t written with much depth, and the performance is even worse, with a flat line delivery that renders every word out of Theresa’s mouth sounding like it’s being read off a cue-card.

But Anthony Hopkins, who was gravitas coming out the wazoo, can do no better with the generic mastermind dialogue he’s forced to deliver for their climactic scene. It’s meant to make Ford seem scary, like a heretofore unrealized force to be reckoned with. Instead, it becomes off-the-rack big bad dialogue about quiet menace and backstory and blah blah blah.

The point, at least, is clear. In a setting where everyone feels directionless, unsure of what the answer to their problems is, Ford can stop the world from turning with what seems like a thought. He can call to the stage a giant thresher, to tear up all that he’s build before, and break rocks as he sees fit. In a place where more and more individuals wonder if the gods must be crazy, he is a self-declared god, and acts the part. It’s just a shame his little coming out party couldn’t have had more force.

Still, the core of this episode is good, even if the time devoted to that scene drags it down. We spend a little more time with The Man in Black, showing that his encyclopedic knowledge of the park makes him clever, that he’s known outside of Westworld in a way that annoys him in his quest, and that at a place where some of the interactions can seem rote, he lives up to the Clint Eastwood-inspired roleplay the park is meant to be.

The coolest sequence in the show so far are in this episode, with Ed Harris reveling in the blackhat role, bursting out of prison, taking out the guards at a prison firing squad, and making with the weather-worn grizzledness that calls to some faraway place. The philosophy of Westworld has been solid, the dramatizing of it has been hit or miss, but in an episode like this one, The Man in Black’s escapades can at least provide some well-crafted, engaging thrills.

Maeve’s in the business of providing thrills, but in this instance provides something more unnerving. Just as the show does well conveying the action and coolness of The Man in Black’s escape, it communicates the fear, the unmooring terror, of Maeve having her memories on the operating table come back to here, and see portents that it isn’t all just a dream. She’s become one of the show’s most interesting characters, and the way she resolves her suspicions with her conclusion that “nothing matters” marries terror and intrigue.

She is, so far, the only person in the episode whom we see make a definitive choice about how to deal with that sense of dissonance. Whether it will stick remains to be seen, but whether it’s Dolores and The Man in Black with the maze, or William and his little quest that involves holding off Logan from murder and debauchery, Westworld at least sets up a compelling question, of how the people within its walls will respond to their feeling of disconnectedness, to that sense of a calling, whether it’s coming from a group of people in a room or from some place even further.