2x06 Phase Space

[7.2/10] This is the definition of a piece-moving episode. Rather than uniting every story around an overall theme, or letting any single character have even a mini-arc within the episode, this is just about checking in with pretty much all of the main characters and moving them to a different place, more literally than figuratively.

You can halfway ferret out the theme of finding someone who looks familiar, but who’s in a changed state that makes them different, but that is, admittedly, something of a reach on my part, and at most a salve of an episode that is more a patchwork quilt than a unified whole. But the patches are mostly fine, some even quite good, even where they don’t really have much to do with one another in an outing that comes off like an interstitial.

The most obvious of these is the interludes with the new, ruthless Teddy. After last week’s heartless upgrade, Teddy is now ready, willing, and able to shoot folks when they’re no longer useful to him, to show blatant disregard for the safety and well-being of humans, and to seem to have no compunction about taking life whatsoever.

It’s an interesting, if heavy-handed shift for Teddy who, in his way, thanks Dolores for “fixing” him. Seeing the good natured guy turn bad as though the Krusty the Klown doll’s switch was flipped from “good” to “evil” is a different kind of heel turn than, say, the implied slow burn path for William. It seems to be building to a heavily signposted “what hell hath I wrought?” from Dolores, who looks at her new cold-hearted beau with a sense of trepidation and maybe even a shade of regret.

As with most of this episode, it feels like that exists more to set up something else down the line rather than be its own thing here, but hey, the robo-revolutionaries have commandeered a train and are headed for the Mesa, so at least some stuff’s about to go down, y’all.

That isn’t the only scene in the episode of a young woman confronting a formerly decent, now ruthless gunslinger. The highlight of the episode is a conversation between latter-day William, in his The Man in Black guise, and his daughter, Emily.

It’s hard to put my finger on why, but the best I can offer is that the scene comes off as a bit of truth in the midst of these otherwise outsized events. There is a realness to the conversation between father and daughter here, a believability both to the way the taciturn William offers matter of fact assessments and resignations about the way his daughter acted, and Emily sees through his bullshit and calls him out on his “suicide by robot” mission out here.

It’s the little details, like William confusing his daughter’s feelings on elephants with his wife’s, or the way that Emily sort of half laughs at her dad’s misconceptions, that make the relationship seem lived-in and worthy of the baggage that the show tries to hang on it. It’s the first time we see William smile -- not smirk or offer some half-crooked upturned lip -- but genuinely smile, at the thought of some measure of reconciliation with his daughter.

That makes it all the more impactful (if not exactly shocking) that he goes back on his word to bail on Westworld and instead leaves his daughter behind. That too seems to be a choice to move the character where he needs to be, but it does so on the back of deepening the relationship between two characters, in a way that shines a light on who each of them are, which is the least you can ask for from a piece-moving episode like “Phase Space.”

There’s also plenty of raw plotty material. Hale uploads the contents of Papa Abernathy’s brain to the folks at Delos, who then finally agree to send a rescue team. Stubbs sees Abernathy bolted into place and seems to have second thoughts about the cruelty shown to him. And the rescue team arrives, playing the “we’re in charge now” game with Stubbs as a commonwealth-accented brute hits the usual gruff enforcer notes. None of it is especially compelling -- as it feels like the show dutifully going through plot points with one of Westworld’s dullest characters as the anchor -- but again, it sets certain pieces of the narrative where they need to be, which seems to be the overall goal of this episode.

“Phase Space” also cleans up the remaining loose ends from Maeve’s adventures in Shogunland, in what feels like more of a post-script to last week’s episode than a vital part of this one. But regardless, the Samurai business is one of the most exciting parts of the series -- both visually and thematically -- and so watching the ronin have a tense duel, or Akane tear Sakura’s heart out, or the pair of them sending Maeve’s own words about choosing one’s own fate back at her, it’s just nice to be along for the ride.

I’d be lying if I said that sights like Akane burning Sakura’s heart, or the power of her and the ronin laying down their swords and settling, or Maeve bidding farewell to her counterpart after that old movie poetry didn’t reignite my passion to go watch a bunch of old Samurai movies. Some of this may feel a little perfunctory, like material they just didn’t have space for in the last episode, but it’s still damn good.

I was less enamored with Maeve finally finding her daughter. The twist that Maeve was replaced with another host who fills the mother role in the homesteader story was a bit too predictable, if nevertheless jarring in how you can feel the reveal’s effect on Maeve. The Ghost Nation warriors showing up right as Maeve arrives feels too convenient, but given how clockwork this show likes to make things, maybe there’s some explanation. And while Thandie Newton acts the hell out of it, Maeve’s monologue about her daughter’s dolls, and how the mother doll will never let anything bad happen to the daughter doll, is way way way too on the nose.

On the whole, for a reunion that the show has been building up for nearly a whole season at this point, there wasn’t enough in the moment to do anything but underwhelm. Maeve’s whole “I have to do this alone” bit is mildly understandable, but comes off contrived and cliché, and the confluence of all these events is just too perfect, too neat, to be meaningful despite all the build up to it.

Last but not least in this frankenstein of stories, we see Elsie and Bernard realize that something internal to Westworld’s computer systems is fighting QA’s attempts to get things back online, and is fending off those attacks and incursions with creativity and variation rather than with some rote form of protection. They trace it to a simulation within Westworld called “The Cradle” which requires manual access.

Most of this feels like exposition and plot position, that mainly serves to deliver our tease for the next episode. “Phase Space” gets a bit creative, showing Bernard’s Matrix-like experience in the digital version of Sweetwater in letterbox to distinguish it from the real world. And, naturally, he comes across Ford, who’s the source of the system fighting back. Duuuun duuuun duuuuun. It is, again, a bit of a predictable twist, and I’m not exactly excited to have Ford’s riddle-ridden soliloquies back in the offing. But hey, it’s a cool moment, and especially in piecemeal episode like these, that becomes what Westworld runs on.

Again, as an assemblage of scenes, “Phase Space” isn’t bad. Bits like William’s conversation with Emily, or Maeve’s farewell to Akane play like gangbusters. But in this arrangement, the episode never rises above being the sum of its parts. Some of those parts are good, some of those parts are bad, but all of them are the lesser for being stitched together rather than the natural pieces of some greater whole.