The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Westworld' Season 4, Episode 4 Recap
Episode Date: July 19, 2022Joanna, David, and Danny break down 'Westworld' Season 4, Episode 4, “Generation Loss." First, they briefly recap everything that happened in the episode (5:25) before analyzing each story line—st...arting with figuring out when in the timeline Christina’s story is taking place (11:52). Later, they go to Theory Corner to discuss what they think will happen in the second half of the season (54:32). If you have any questions or thoughts about 'Westworld,' you can email Joanna, David, and Danny at EdHarrisBodySuit@gmail.com Hosts: Joanna Robinson, David Shoemaker, and Danny Heifetz Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Dad, are you out there?
It's me, Frankie.
Do you copy?
Do you copy?
Frankie, what are you doing out here?
I told you we need to go back and pack.
I'm trying to reach Dad.
Welcome back to the prestige TV podcast feed.
I'm Joanna Robinson, and, you know, join me, number one,
king of the bear, the bear, teddy bear, very popular, wildly popular, Westworld theory.
It's Danny. Hi, Danny. How are you doing?
Just trying to look chivalrous.
And also coming to us with the sort of world weary, he knows where the bodies are buried,
especially a Mave attitude. It's David Schoonmaker. Hi, David. How are you?
Just so everyone's listening knows, this is the 267th recording of this podcast.
I mean, 278th.
Gotta have fidelity. Got to have fidelity. We are here to talk about Westworld,
season four, episode four, generation loss.
Broadly on the Prestige TV podcast feed,
there's a few things going on.
There's the Better Call Saul podcast.
By the way, I haven't seen this week's episode.
I hear it's a doozy.
I will be talking about it with Ben Lindberg on Wednesday,
but I'm currently like shielding myself from all social media
to avoid Better Call Saul spoilers.
So that's where we are in the end game of Better Call Saul.
You want to tune in and check that out.
And then, of course, you know,
just various other things,
popping up occasionally the prestige TV podcast feed.
So it's a great, it's a great feed.
You should subscribe.
The Ringer Fantasy Football Show, it's almost training camp.
Shameless plug.
Hell yeah.
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And the press box with Brian Curtis, which I just finished her.
recording six minutes ago.
Mere minutes ago.
Back to back, doubling up.
I mean, this is why you know where the bodies are buried.
Spoiler warning.
Nothing.
We've only watched up through episode four of the season.
So we're not spoiling any of the future.
There's the next time on.
We will talk about it probably at the very end of this podcast.
I got some tweets about some bloody fingers that we saw in that teaser.
So we could talk about that.
But really, we're focusing on here episode four.
And isn't that enough?
because plenty of things happen in this episode.
You can always email us at Harris bodysuit at gmail.com.
Ed Harris bodysuit at gmail.com.
Harris bodysuit at gmail.com.
We're getting a ton of emails and that's fantastic.
We'll address some of those throughout the episode.
Generation loss.
I just really want to quickly address the title of this episode
because last week we talked about it in a technical sense, right?
This idea that the loss of quality between subsequent copies
are trans codes of data.
But we had a listener, Kara, email in to talk about the lost generation, this concept that
Gertrude Stein coined that William's favorite author Hemingway liked to use.
And it refers to, of course, the young people in 1920s who are sort of the in-between
the two World Wars generation.
So that could refer to the resonance of, you know, temperance world, right?
Because that's when that takes place.
You could also refer to, if you want to, Frankie's generation, the generation that was lost to, you know, the Yfly, which we'll talk about in a second, that lost generation. What does it mean for an entire, you know, youth population to be mind controlled? Something fun to talk about. And last but not least, before we get to Shoemaker's excellent recap of the episode, should old acquaintance be forgot and days of oldling, Zine is the
little phrase on the HBO Max app below this episode.
This, of course, is from Old Link'sine, the song that we sing at New Year's for no good
reason.
There's actually no good reason why are we singing at New Year's, except it's really fun.
Based on Robert Burns' poem, Old Lingzine is old Scottish for, you know, many days past.
but to paraphrase
Meg Ryan and when Harry met Sally
I think it's just about old friends
so that is
that is what we're dealing with here today
David Schemeager do you want to tell us what happened
on this week's episode of West Rome
I would be delighted to
In Christina's world, Maya has a bad dream
and Christina has a dreamy date
with Teddy
Over in the other timeline
Bernard and C go into the desert to dig up a weapon
which it turns out is the desiccated
corpse of Maeve. Meanwhile, Caleb and Maeve nearly escaped the park with Hale and tow as Caleb
tries to fight the Wife Fly mind control. There's a showdown at Adelo's demolition site. Mave
blows herself up in order to stop the man in black. Caleb calls in a rescue team, but he doesn't
make it out of there alive because Charlotte Hale reveals Caleb is actually undergoing a fidelity
test in the future. It's been 23 years. He died. She won everyone's wife flight except we learn
C and her team of outliers. Oh, and by the way C is actually grown up
Frankie, just like we thought Westworld is back, baby.
Danny is Westworld back?
I mean, it definitely is.
I mean, it's certainly like escaped the valley it was in last season.
I think this episode wasn't quite as good to me as two and three, but probably just
because two and three were more like mystery journey.
But this one was like a lot of answers.
I think earlier in this season than usually get, it's almost like the plot twist was that
they were kind of given to you midseason, whereas usually get it at the end.
But they actually answered a lot of questions, which they don't.
usually do. It's like the twist was inside the house or something, right? I mean, it was like the,
the greatest twist that the devil could possibly pull here is that we're all in one timeline,
it turns out, and we're going to tell it to you halfway through the season, you know,
we're not even, I mean, certainly there's more twist to come. We know what we're dealing with
here. But all the conversations that we had up till this point, we're just sort of put to rest,
Put to bed. Ed, it feels kind of amazing.
Jonah Nolan said something in the post episode,
sort of behind the scenes, videos that they do
where he's just like, we love messing with the audience.
And that's why we put this big reveal in the middle of the season.
Well, he actually said, I love fucking with the audience.
I love fucking with the audience.
And I think that the reveal here,
I love that idea of we're sitting here going,
how are they going to stop Charlotte Hale from taking over everything
with her flies.
And the answer is, they're not.
They didn't.
They failed.
They lost.
So, yeah, I think that's really fun.
Can I start with just I respect them for doing that?
I'm going to just spoil Game of Thrones and it was four years ago.
And if you're mad, I'm sorry, just skip.
However, part of me deep down always wanted the zombies to just win and all the humans just
die because they couldn't stop arguing.
Like, I didn't really want that, but part of me did.
I respect that they're like, actually, nope, that human race is enslaved by robots.
I like that they actually did that.
Yeah, I actually also kind of wanted that I zombie wins everything ending to Game of Thrones as well.
No, I do think there's actually a real added benefit to this, which is there are a million nits you could pick with the storyline.
But because it's not the last episode, you're not left picking them, right?
That might be new ones to pick.
But like, you know, you should have seen my notes before the reveal started kicking in this show.
I had a lot of complaints.
Not like, you know, I was actually enjoying it a great deal, but I was just sort of caught up in like,
why is this happening like this?
And why is this happening like this?
And my first one of the show was, like, was there, I understand how the great,
the, he was in the great beyond that he's like looking at Bernard, that is, he's looking at
every possible iteration of human life.
And I, we're supposed to believe with it.
But was there no version of the future in which he had, he could have come before the takeover
happened?
Was there no version where he could have come and, like, found the, the, the, the, the, the,
why fly technician that started the whole project.
and killed him in their crib?
I mean, was there no version of this
where he could have done it?
But you know what?
I'm done arguing with it because it's already happened now.
It's like Dr. Strange.
It's like couldn't say no stuff just like,
I don't know, trip down the stairs or something
and just like fall in it.
But I don't know.
I feel like Skynet is always going to sky net
no matter how many times you try to stop it, right?
Totally, totally, totally true.
No, but my point is, congratulations to the show
because if this had been the last episode,
you know, if they had waited until the end to reveal it,
I think I would have been,
we would have been whining the whole episode
about the little things
that could have gone differently.
Now, hopefully we're moving forward.
I actually give a shoemaker
on a key point that I have to say,
which is I think they actually stuck the landing
with all the reveals.
I think that revealing, you know,
that the daughter C is Caleb's daughter
and that Mave and they're buried there.
Maves the weapon, blah, blah, blah.
And Caleb's dead and all the stuff
that they did and it's been 23 years since he died.
That all landed and made sense.
And at the end of it was like,
oh, that made sense.
Like, I think actually,
midway through the season,
like, they're at a good destination
for this show
and that this episode put them at a good destination.
For being honest, the journey to it, I had a lot of questions as I was watching.
I probably didn't enjoy it 100% as much as it did in the first watch.
I probably enjoy it more on the second watch now.
But there were also parts that I had more fun with like Teddy coming back with Dolores
and those moments, the lipstick rolling.
Those were the moments where I would just kind of my critical brain turned off or just
figure out what's going on and just was just able to just enjoy and like, all right,
I just enjoy that they're sitting on a date again.
That's kind of the thing about Westworld is like sometimes, and I think I might have
mentioned this last week, but sometimes I will knock a show for like late season Thrones
used to do this where you would just have characters repeat lines that we had heard in
previous seasons and it would annoy me because I was like there's no logical reason why this
character would say something that this other character said back in season three other than
to give us that sort of like, remember, remember when the show was better and you liked it?
But with Westworld, it always makes sense because they're on these loops.
And so it's also, there's such comfort in Westworld of those repeated lines.
So I'm not sure, like, which line thrilled me more, just trying to look chivalrous or fidelity.
Like, both of those things just gave me that, like, the thrill of the familiar that doesn't feel tired and just trying to remind you the familiar.
It's like the thrill of the familiar wrapped inside of a new story that they're trying to tell.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
I was telling someone about this and comparing the show to Lost.
And I was like, you might not enjoy the show as much.
But if they put a book in obscene in this show,
you better believe that they're doing it really deliberately.
And it's going to matter at some point.
It's not just like to get, you know,
just to see how quickly they can make a book sell out on Amazon.
If you're a lost fan, how did you feel when Maeve said,
see you the next life, darling?
Well, she blows herself up.
All right.
So let's start with Christina slash Dolores,
because it's the easiest one to do.
and I just want to start by asking you about Maya, right?
So Maya tells her, tells Christina her dream.
That's the roommate, right?
Maya is the roommate played by recent Oscar winner, Ariana DeBos.
And she tells her this dream about having a picnic with her family
and all these flies attacked her dad and then her mom and then her
and then she doesn't remember anything after that.
I think the easiest interpretation of this is that Maya is like one of the wife-led humans
and this is a memory of how it happened to her.
Do you think there's another trick?
hiding here or or do you think that that the surface read is is what we should believe here?
I'm all over the place on her.
I mean, I told you it was episode one or whatever that I, or episode two, I totally thought
that she was just almost a figment of Christina's imagination.
I compared her to Francis on this, on, on, on Caleb's cell phone from last season.
There is very strange.
And then, but there, there have been parts where she seemed obvious, and also the part with
sitting on the bench just seemed,
there's a whole,
there's certain scenes,
everything seems really odd.
And as we've seen over and over again,
oddity usually comes with a purpose in this show.
But I don't know.
I don't know.
The fly thing now makes me think,
well,
is she an outlier?
Is that?
And speaking of things happening and definitely having a reason,
we had,
you know,
when the,
when C's outlier posse said,
we found another outlier,
we got to go grab her,
you know,
like I was like,
you know,
now we got to,
which her is this going to be?
It's certainly somebody we know,
right?
I mean, there's everything sort of connects.
So now I'm thinking about that.
She can see the flies.
She's aware of the flies.
She's dreaming of the flag.
Is that part of the condition?
Those are two pretty dramatic,
dramatically different ends of the spectrum, right?
In terms of her significance to the show.
And I guess somewhere in the middle is she's just, you know,
Christina's roommate.
So, yeah, I don't know.
What do you think, Danny?
Well, I don't think that she's a random roommate.
I don't think Christina went out there on Facebook
and just went into like the New York City renters group
but it was like, hey, two bedroom studio, like, who knows with inflation, $40,000 a month
or whatever, it costs in 2090?
Like, I don't think it's random, right?
So it's just the question is she's controlled by flies or she's controlled by something
or she's part of something.
Is she a regular person controlled by flies and just is there and like all those weird,
like weird moments and like the second episode, I think, where Christina's like, oh, I was
in this weird mental hospital and the guy who died died 30 years ago.
She's like, hmm, what do you make of it?
It's like either the tower or hail or whatever is using it to keep tabs on Christina
or it's why does she know Teddy?
It's like, is she connected to Bernard or like how is, like for whatever reason it's not random.
I think the question is, is she a conduit for like hail to keep tabs on Christina?
And we're going to figure out why Dolores Christina is in this.
Or is she a conduit for Teddy Bernard C, the Caleb's daughter, Frankie, like whoever,
to like stop Hale.
I think what side the roommate is on is to me is the next big question.
Yeah.
So like in previous episodes, we've talked about this is like the binary being Operation Wake
Christina up and Operation Keep Her asleep, right?
And I feel like, yeah.
Yeah.
And I feel like my, based on how she was reacting, when she was telling that dream story,
it didn't seem like she was testing, trying to test Christina or a reminder of anything.
It seemed like she was lost in her own horror.
So that makes me feel like she is a Y-flight control human.
And if she's there to keep Christina asleep somehow,
she's not aware that that's her job.
Like she just doesn't seem aware or in control of everything that's going on.
She's off-script, if that's the case.
Yeah.
She's slightly off-script, but not like in a, you know,
I don't imagine we'll see a scene with her where she's reporting to Hale
and saying, like, well, this morning.
Christina oversleps. What does that mean sort of thing?
Yeah. Totally agree with Danny.
Who's running the sort of wake up, stay asleep campaigns, or, you know, I guess specifically
who Maya is working for is sort of an interesting question, right?
I mean, but you can even imagine that there is a version where Hale is running the wake-up
campaign, right? I mean, I think we naturally assume that the waking up is being done
by pro-delorus, pro-anti-Charl forces,
and that Dolores wants, I mean,
that Hale wants to keep her asleep,
but Hale has her,
because to some extent,
has allowed her to be alive
in one form or fashion.
And there's definitely a version of this story
in which she's trying to wake her up
to get the key that's in her head
or whatever crazy thing that she thinks
that Dolores had that she needs, right?
Well, Hale is Dolores, which is easy to forget.
That's true. We don't know exactly
what's going on, the other thing,
But, you know, there's a lot of, there is some, we don't know for sure who is trying to do what, is on saying.
And a good reminder of that is if we think about all the ways in which this is mirroring season one,
a reminder that it was Ford.
Ford who we thought all through season one was invested in keeping all the robots unconscious,
we find was the one pushing Dolores towards consciousness.
So if we put Hale in the Ford role this season, which there are other parallels we see in this episode,
Yeah, she could be team wake her up, or at least team testing her in some way.
And speaking of testing, I feel like, I mean, I had just pure joy seeing James Marzen
showed up.
Love the lipstick milk can roll.
Love, don't mind me, just trying to look sure of her voice.
Love the music cue from season one, episode one, the same music cue we hear when she drops
the milk can for the first time, all that stuff I loved.
Marston is just oozing charisma.
but it feels like Teddy, if this is indeed the Teddy we know,
feels like he's here to test and or wake her up somehow.
What is your interpretation of that scene?
Like, is this really Teddy, is my question for you guys?
This, to me, was obviously not a callback in any sort of literary way,
but it reminded me a lot of the second half of season one,
even into season two, where our favorite actors got to act for the first time
or got to sort of like take on another,
a second level of their character for the first time.
This is the first time that James Marzen's gotten to do this on the show.
I mean, there was kind of a slightly awakened teddy
that was somehow less interesting than the sleep teddy, you know?
I mean, he really hasn't gotten a lot to work with.
Just to see him lean back in his chair and smile
just felt like the greatest just awakening
that the show could possibly give us at this point.
But yeah, I think that, I think that,
the implication is certainly, and they can be wrong, that he's spent the past five trillion
years in the Valley Beyond and has found a measure of whatever...
A personality?
Personality, host humanity, whatever else.
And that's all kind of brought to bear here.
And is he trying to wake up or is he trying to test her?
If you rewatch the dinner scene and you pretend that it's like an interview, like from season
one, and instead of their bare asses being on these cold metal slabs, they're just had dinner,
and you kind of see what Teddy's asking her.
It makes a little more sense.
It's not like exactly an interview,
but it's like a mix between a first date and a job,
not the job interview,
but like the way they would talk to the host,
like, oh, what do you think?
What's your, you know?
Are you a question the nature of your reality?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think they also, they have the Frank Ocean song cover, right,
playing in this, right, pink and white,
which is a great song from Frank Ocean album,
from Blonde.
And I think one of the lines in it's like,
you know, it's the same way you showed me.
I think that that's not an accident.
I mean, it's kind of like a reverse of how Dolores spent so much time trying to get Teddy to, like, wake up or see the world.
Teddy's kind of in that role now.
So, yeah, I think that it's just kind of, as we've been saying, a lot of this is like a mirror image of season one.
And the Teddy Dolores relationship is just the next aspect of that.
Yeah, Rameen Javati gave this interview to Liz Shannon Miller that I think you'd read over on, I think it's consequences sound about the lyrical meaning.
Like, the lyrics of that song are very much.
important to the meeting of the scene. He says, like, it's about past relationships or past
memories, but you're right, Danny, that there are lines about sort of role reversals and
flipping, showing you what you showed me, but also like some tragic stuff in there about, like,
you know, falling and stuff like that. So I don't know if it's like...
The chorus to the song is, you showed me love, glory from above, regard my dear, it's all downhill
from here. Right. Like how closely we're supposed to be reading these lyrics? I'm a little worried.
the question then it becomes like
you know last time we saw Teddy
he was in the sublime we know that Bernard has access
to the sublime so are we meant to believe perhaps
that Bernard and or
Maeve because we know that Bernard and
Maeve hopefully will be working we hope
they're going to be working together it's not just
like he's going to be dragging her corpse around
right so like whose idea
was it to send Teddy
I feel like we have some indication
that it might have been Maeve's idea only
because in last week's episode,
she tells Caleb, like,
don't pick up the milk can, right?
And this week's episode,
she's like,
I know every loop and every move of this park,
which means that even if Teddy and Dolores
wasn't her storyline,
she and her godlike Mave sentience
knows the Teddy and Dolores story
and that it's important to Dolores.
Do we want to establish the quick baseline facts here
that we learned in this episode,
just take care of this?
Stop me what I'm wrong.
Caleb is dead and 23 years later he's like, you know, being tested this whole time.
May's been buried in the sand.
So now we're at this point where Bernard and Stubbs dug her up and the woman see that they were with is confirmed Caleb's daughter who's part of this resistance now.
Hale has won the war.
Hale is controlling all these people.
And we presume, this is my question, are we presuming that Dolores is like, so now that we know that Stubbs and Bernard have dug up Mave and.
and then the Caleb serves 23 years ago.
Are we assuming that Dolores and the roommate
are happening at the same time as Bernard and Stubbs?
We're assuming that in the same world and everything,
and they're in the question.
I don't think we can know that for certain, but...
You can't know that for certain,
but I guess here's what I'll say.
It makes a lot more sense that everything would be in one timeline starting now.
And that they wouldn't be leaving this of all things out there
as like the hanging twist or the big question.
on the show.
I think narratively that it just holds together a lot better.
I don't think it's particularly interesting.
Well, I guess the answer could be anything,
but it's not particularly interesting
if this simulation or whatever this is
at another point in time.
I don't know.
I feel like Christina, wherever she is,
whenever she is,
is like just a little bit in the future
from Bernard digging Mave up.
Because I feel like whatever Bernard
me ever going to do next is going to set in motion sending Teddy.
Right?
So I think she's just like a little bit ahead, but not much, like weeks maybe or something like
that, do you know?
Or she's way far in the future or is happening exactly concurrently.
But like either way, I think everything we're seeing now is roughly 23 years in the future
of where the season started.
And I think that the biggest indication of that is, we're not the biggest, but I think another
another piece of support to that argument is what a lot of people noticed, I think, after
the last episode, after Charlotte Hale's monologue, which is that the sort of generation of,
the previous generation was that the flies didn't work on very well, was tossed out or was
eliminated in one way or another. I think now in retrospect, it's clear that every time that
Christina went outside, everybody was under the age of 40, basically, or more better under the
age of 30, that what she's surrounded by is the generation of fly-fi bots that, or hosts,
I guess we're calling them that Charlotte Hale has created.
But the hosts, but they're humans, right?
They're humans.
Yeah.
But they're the ones who were infected as kids whose brains are more malleable.
Right.
And then the adults were a lost cause.
Does Shoemaker, does it bother you at all that you would be a lost cause?
Well, Joe and I would probably be, you know, part of the new generation?
No.
Okay.
talking about your brain's just rigid and not malleable.
If we're doing, I mean, seriously, would you rather be a fly host as opposed to just gone?
I'd rather just be a host host, then at least you're, you know, part of the crew.
David, David's like, I crave sweet release.
Joe, are you prepared for a world in which now that Charlotte is calling humans hosts that maybe they're going to start calling hosts humans, and that's the source of the,
I mean, I'll say this.
I'll say this.
On the Lisa Joy human friend, I've had, I'm less certain about that this week than I've ever been.
Okay.
And I'll get to Y at the end.
But the other indication that we're all in the same timeline, though they don't interact directly, so we don't know yet.
But when Caleb runs out of the building, right, we see the Olympiad, like he's in the building where Christina goes to work.
And the world he runs into looks very similar.
to the one that Christina's been walking around in, right?
So that we don't know it for a fact.
It's Westworld.
A twist could be around any corner,
but it seems like Caleb is now exactly where Christina is.
But this is a good point,
it's a good point, though,
just to highlight the daylight between you two.
Shoemaker kind of thinking we're probably on the same timeline.
Joe, you kind of think that Dolores is ahead
or Christina's slightly ahead,
because that's a big point,
because if Christina is slightly ahead,
that probably does mean that Teddy is being infiltrated.
on behalf of Bernard or the resistance.
But if Shoemaker's right and they're on the same,
it probably is what you said earlier, Joe,
where maybe Hale is the one to kick-starting this process.
So I think that's actually an interesting...
The only reason I think that Bernard and Mave
would have been sending Teddy is, like, again,
presuming this is the Teddy we know.
Last time we saw him he was in Sublime,
Bernard seems to be the person who has access to the Sublime.
And in that flash of visions he had last week,
we saw what we thought was the Hoover Dam.
So we think that maybe they'll go to the Hoover Dam, download, print a brand new Marsden this time with an actual charismatic personality and send him to New York to do something for Christina or its hail.
Let's talk about Bernard Stubbs and Frankie and her merry band of Matrix reloaded outliers in the desert.
Okay, so the Frankie is Caleb daughter, we talked about it last week.
It's a prediction a lot of people put out there, as as Schemaker said, from the first trailer,
a bunch of people were like, we think this is adult Frankie.
Given that it's something that a lot of people saw coming, and it was a theory that I ascribed to,
I was still delighted by how it was executed.
I thought it just came about really well.
It wasn't like a big, done, done, done at the end of the episode, it was almost like underplayed.
you know, Bernard tosses off
and mention you get like the Chris
cross-editing,
but it wasn't treated as this sort of like
record stop moment.
What did you guys think of it?
I thought it was,
I mean,
I thought that they had so,
they must have had so much fun
watching everybody
doing an in-zone dance
for the past three episodes
thinking they cracked the code
of the show and knowing that
they were just going to give it all away
in episode four.
Right.
And I think that the Bernard's delivery
was like,
the purr, it was the icing on the cake.
It was just like it wasn't even a reveal.
It was the monotone guy just said it like we all knew it, which we all did.
And I think, I mean, the way, if that was the, if that was deliberate.
Wow.
What a master stroke to just proceed with that level of confidence, you know.
That, that was, it was amazing.
Yeah, I think, yeah, I think underplaying it is probably the move.
And then the mave is the weapon.
We had a couple emails predicting this.
We had some theories last week.
I'm not sure we landed on the end.
idea that it was mave necessarily in the desert, but like Fred reading a couple other listeners
emailed this in before the episode dropped to predict that it would be Maeve. Here's my big question
about this. And I've seen other people have this question. Mave blows herself up. She's under tons of
sand. Perhaps William is also down there as well. Why would Hale leave Mave there, knowing what
Maeve is and what she can do.
None of that scene made sense to me.
I got a lie.
I mean, I think that if you're watching it, the whole thing with like Caleb and Maeve, that
whole episode leading into the moment, none of it, I didn't think a ton of it made sense.
Like, I didn't really understand why Hale was just handcuffed and was like, okay, I'll
just follow you guys.
But it made sense more later when it was like, oh, okay, well, it was a simulation.
That's why it was a little off.
It was a fidelity test. Yeah.
However, I still don't, when I was in the moment, I was kind of like, okay, Mabe's going to
blow herself up. Why? Why is Mayve getting blown up? And now having rewatched it, while the things
that were off made sense, I still don't get exactly like, why would Maeve be left there? Why did you
have to sacrifice her? So it all seemed a little, it almost seemed like they were kind of writing it
backward. Like, well, Maeve has to be found in the desert, so she'll just die there. And then
they kind of forgot to like make it make sense a ton. It's not like a huge deal break or anything.
But honestly, they've killed Maeve so many times and tried to make it dramatic. I mean, she
lost the sword fight to Musashi last year.
Like there's so many Maeve deaths that, I don't know.
What I really appreciate about this one is that it's resolved within the episode.
Like it's not a, oh my God, did they kill Maeve and we're never going to see her again?
By the end of the episode, they're like, oh, no, it's just, you know, she took a 23-year
dirt nap and she's back.
But like the...
Are we talking about this now and now is it's now the time to talk about the blowing up,
or are we going to get there again?
We'll get there again.
All right.
I just wanted to like...
Where are we going?
We're getting there.
Again, where are we going?
I just want to talk more a little bit more about Bernard right now and just say,
does it work for you to have such an omniscient character in a show like this?
Bernard knowing everything.
Well, I mean, I'm sure all of us would, you know,
proclaim to be part of whatever the Jeffrey Wright fan club is called these days.
We all know he's a fantastic actor,
and we all know that he can do a lot more than play a monotone robot.
But that said, in terms of the character of Bernard,
sometimes the best way, the best path forward is to just like take the narrowest road, right?
Just the, I mean, it's just him being this monotone kind of, you know, three-eyed raven or whatever.
Oh, look, literally as Carlos put this into chat, a little bit of Brand Stark.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, he's just, this is, it's, it's just such a narrow specific thing, but like,
you know, not all of our robots need to be these like really broad, wacky characters,
you know, sometimes they can have a more specific role.
And in this case, I just think it's been, I mean, listen, we wouldn't want this for the next
couple of seasons, but right now, I just, I think it's certainly much more compelling and much more
fun than, you know, when he lost his memory after the flood and,
was trying to pretend that he wasn't in two different timelines, right?
I mean, this is a much better version of that.
Yeah, I think a couple episodes from now when Bernard tries to predict something and he's
wrong, it's going to be like, uh-oh.
And I think that's kind of probably where his character's going.
I think I am enjoying Bernard.
I think that you do need the fish out of water.
I think Brand Stark and Game of Thrones, again, kind of sucked.
Everyone hated him.
But not even Brand's fault.
It's more like you kind of have some, got to have some characters on the side who are
like, what's the deal with this dude?
Like, what's going on?
And that's, you need the comedic.
relief to play off it, which I think that for the most part, they've actually done well.
But I do think that eventually there's going to be a moment where something goes off from
his predicted plan, and that will be, I think, where it really gets interesting.
I think there is built-in comedy to not just sort of the outliers, but the stubs in Bernard
dynamic.
Like, maybe if Brand Stark had a stubbs, this would have all played out, you know, with
love and respect to Hodor and Mira, like this all would have, that dynamic would have worked
better if you've got someone just being like eating tuna melts and listening to Blondie,
that's also along for the ride, you know?
Or blonde.
Also, I just want to say he's computer, he's basically like AI Moses and he's just telling
people what to do in the desert and they're like, why?
And then it works out.
And you know what?
Maybe like, you know, following Moses in the desert, you know, probably wasn't all fun in
games all the time either.
Something I want to say about the visuals of this episode is that I was delighted to learn in
the behind-the-scenes video that.
that the fan that they brought in to sort of like blow a hole in the desert to unbury Mave,
that was a practical effect.
Like that was just like a real fan that they brought out there.
The explosion in the demolition yard, which again, we're going to talk about in a second.
That was a practical effect.
They actually just blew that shit up.
The Rohoboam ball falling was definitely digital effects.
And that was not my favorite part of the episode.
But I love, I feel like they're trying to get back to their roots, which is just like a lot of.
That was practical too.
That was a real Rojobe.
No, no, no, no, no, no, all pixels.
But I'm curiously, why was that not your favorite part?
I just didn't think it looked that great, you know.
But I think the practical stuff they did in this episode looked really, really good.
I agree.
I agree.
My only, I mean, listen, if I want to pick one knit about that whole.
Art director hat David Shoemaker right here.
No, no, no, not about the visuals.
It's just about the uncovering of Mave.
And I agree.
I'm not, we'll get to Mave again in a minute.
But the way that Frankie, I don't know if it was supposed to be humorous,
but the way that Frankie just gave herself over to Bernard about two seconds into the conversation
surrounding the dig, like this is still a stranger, right?
I mean, she's got a, she's got a motive for wanting to follow him on this, on this journey.
But like two sentences into the conversation, he's just like, your father abandoned you
when you were eight and she was like, yeah, you know, like it's not even, there was no, like,
How do you know all this stuff?
Like, who are you?
I agree.
The other part also, the only, honestly,
even in the moment you're right now that you say it,
I didn't even think of that.
The only part of the Bernard arc in this episode that I was like,
why aren't they mad at him is when he almost walked out into the desert
while they're all trying to hide from the airstrike?
And Bernard's like, I want to get, I want to get airstruck.
And then she's just like, all right, let's go.
And she's not like mad.
Like, hey, you almost got us all blown up.
She's like, okay, let's keep going.
It was bizarre.
I guess it was there to inform us how they stay hidden,
like how they're being hunted by these, you know, drones, I suppose.
But, yeah, that was a little bit of a bizarre moment.
It was weird that there was no reaction because if there's no,
they're not mad at him, it's like, well, why is the scene even there?
Was the implication?
The implication was that the bug that he caught would have caught the attention of the drone.
Oh, that's why he was out there.
That's why he was out there and that she,
and that when after she netted him,
she saw and realized that he saved the day.
Not going to lie, he probably could have said that to her.
That would have been very helpful.
That's so funny.
I didn't understand that at all.
I thought the bug moment was like,
ah,
I remember now that Mave is just over the crest from this beetle.
I thought that too.
I just watched Dune on the plane ride back from Los Angeles,
and they also have a thing with bugs going in there.
And I just kind of thought it was a metaphor.
But you're right.
Actually, literally the bug being a problem would be more.
I didn't even think about that.
It's amazing.
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Let's finally talk about the Maeve journey.
So Maive and Caleb and Hale,
again, the showdown in the below level of the park.
In the behind the scenes,
they refer to the towers,
like both the mini one here and the big one,
as hail towers,
I guess kind of like Trump towers.
I was thinking like hail, like a real,
hail, all hail, yeah.
So I'm just going to call her hail.
If they're calling them Hale Towers,
I'm just going to call her Hale.
We should remember occasionally that
Dolores is in there, but like, for all intents and purposes, this is Hale.
So that's what I'm going to, I'm going to call her.
Mave blows all this shit up.
First, she disables her own hearing, and then she blows the Hale Tower up and, you know,
disrupts what Hale and Caleb were doing and temporarily disables the man in black.
How did this sequence work for you?
I enjoyed it.
I thought that Mave doing that with the sounds and everything was really interesting.
I was more intrigued when she blew up all the glass.
My first thought was that all these people who are these texting chambers are going to run out.
Obviously, now in retrospect, we know that it was all kind of a simulation and Caleb's just doing everything.
Honestly, I was distracted in this scene because I went from thinking in the third episode that, wow, Westworld's back.
Like, basically I stopped questioning why characters are doing things during scenes, and I just started enjoying the scenes.
And then the fourth episode, right when they blew up the glass, Caleb grabs the glass and holds it to her throat.
And then they just very nonchalantly drag hail around her.
Like she's not extraordinarily dangerous.
And I was just kind of confused again.
So I think I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't just in the back of my mind
through the entire Maeve Caleb arc of this episode,
wondering why did they just throw hail in the back of this truck?
Like she couldn't get out.
It was in retrospect, it made sense.
I'm not sure I agree with you that it was all a simulation
because I think we're supposed to believe that everything we're watching happened up until that part, because it cuts to black and up until that part that Hale goes, you dozed off there for a second, Caleb, like, are you okay? And that is the fidelity test. It's similar to, and anyone's mileage may vary, but like it's similar to in season two when William is like, kills his daughter, is walking through the desert, finds the underground thing. And then we find out he's in some sort of fidelity.
test, but I think we're not supposed to think that everything leading up to that was a simulation.
We were watching everything that happened, and then William got in that elevator, went underground,
and then it was like he was in the fidelity test.
I think to Danny, I mean, I took the same position Danny did, mostly because I thought it did
answer a lot of questions, right?
It does.
It does.
Or at least puts to bed a lot of questions.
You don't have to answer them.
You know, if Mayve had indeed been wearing different outfits two episodes ago, you know,
back to back. Like, that's this, this is, the fidelity test is this sort of answer that, I mean,
that can kind of cure what ails yet. And I did have, I had like seven questions in a row.
Let me get my notes. Why does Hale, what is Hale doing? Why does Hale go so easily? Can't Hale fight?
Can't Hale overpower Caleb? Shouldn't she think she could overpower Caleb? Can't Hale break the handcuffs
slash wrist ties? What I was wondering. But I guess if the, I mean, is the answer, she knew that the military guys were
coming and they were on her side and she just wanted to watch and see what would happen up to the I mean is that that was my thought that like she knew that what they were heading towards the extraction she already had those guys so that she was just fucking with them essentially which seems on brand for her just seemed it just seemed incredibly weird for any host for any host to not assume they could win whatever I mean if everybody she's she's more advanced than Maeve right so no matter how well Maeve you know knows or stuff
of, I would think that you shouldn't.
Well, she was acting like she got arrested.
Mave literally was like, you're coming with us.
And she just did.
And I just, I think what got me was in a show where they keep always referencing things.
And it's a spiral staircase.
It always comes back to the same point.
There was just no reference point for the host being like, okay, yep, I'll come with you.
I'm handcuffs.
It's over now.
And so on one hand, look, it's television.
Just go with it.
And I'm getting lost in the sauce here.
The problem is the show really encourage you, encourages you to get lost in all the sauce.
To live in the sauce.
Yeah.
To live in the sauce.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's all.
I think that in this-
What do you think, Joe,
what do you think
Charlotte Hale's plan was?
Like, I don't,
you guys are completely right.
That it makes no sense
that she would just get
like zip tied or whatever she gets
and like go into the back-o-truck.
But I don't think,
I think she just knew
where they were going.
But what was she trying
to get out of this situation?
No, no, this is,
this is something I don't,
I'm not saying that I have a better answer.
I don't have any answer at all.
Well, the irony is,
who knows because Mayve got left.
So it had to be about Caleb because if they left Mave in the desert and presumably didn't copy her anything.
I mean, the reason I will say from a storytelling point of you, the reason that we had to see it.
Actually, okay, I haven't stumbled upon the answer for this.
She was confident that her Wiflea goop would kick in and that she would take pleasure and watching Caleb gun Mave down.
And the whole big thing that happens this episode is that Caleb defies her and doesn't succumb to the Wiflea.
you know what I mean?
And she's like, she has that moment where she's like,
how did you disobey me?
You know, which I feel like is going to be a big reason why Caleb is resurrected here
in New York and 23 years later.
That make, now, I'm stepping on the theory corner a little bit,
but something that makes a ton of sense with what you just said about Caleb,
or we can save it for Theory Corner.
Let me just say a couple things really quickly.
Okay.
We'll circle back to it at the end.
To go back to Maven the Man in Black Underground,
I just want to shout out like some of the staging.
of that was very reminiscent of the
season one watching Mave in the Homestead
be stalked by the man of black,
remembering all those shots of her
cowering in her house. And so to watch her
then like fuck him up was fun.
And then also
when they're moving through the park, we see
the signal
that's going to Kayla being transmitted
along the power lines.
To me, that's an
indication that maybe those lamp posts that we've seen
in New York are not just like
physical matches of the WIFLIE, but
like Y-fly signal boosters
right to like get the sound
that's coming from the tower
throughout whatever
is happening in Christina's world
so they're routers actually I guess if you
have Wi-Fi it's a mesh network which is actually
the term they've used before. Beautiful mesh network
I want to talk about this cave
this Caleb and made flashback that we get
to when they blew up the last
whole bone ball and Cabo
as it turns out is where
that that lighthouse is
I want to ask resident dad
David Shoemaker.
When Mave hacks Caleb's Olympic system, and she says, let me show you what freedom feels like.
And what we seem to take from that is being a parent is freedom.
David Shoemaker, being a parent certainly brings a lot of joy to it.
Would you call it freedom?
Is that what that feels like to you?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, yes.
Well, I mean, listen, to give yourself over, give your life over to somebody else.
There's a lot of freedom that comes with that.
Oh, I love that.
There's a lot of responsibility, too, but it also just simplifies things.
It is real freedom.
Danny, what did you, did you enjoy or did you roll your eyes at the fact that we get like
Maeve in the, you know, the gladiator shot of Maeve running her hand along the wheat that we've seen a million times?
I'm so glad you said the gladiator shot.
That's all I think of every time they do it.
Also, who cares what I think?
I don't have kids.
I want to hear more about shoemaker saying children are free.
That's not at all what I thought he was going to say.
say. I know. Well, that's what I thought he was going to say when I asked the question,
but I guess that's like, that's the whole thing. It's like, you can't know until you tried it.
But, but. Do you actually elaborate on that shoemaker?
Yeah. Like, giving yourself over to someone's freeing. That's deep.
It's just, it just crystallizes things. It just really simplifies things, you know?
It's just like the moment that you hold your child in your hand or whatever your first, you know,
entry into parenthood is. It's just, it's just, it's like, it's, listen, I give whatever my,
A buddy of mine, a guy that I know is having a kid, I give him a couple pieces of advice.
And it's very simple.
One of the things is you got to give yourself over to the clichés and all the woo-woo shit
because all that stuff that just sounded laughable 10 minutes ago is going to be like utter
truth at this point in time and you shouldn't be resistant to it.
One of the other pieces, by the way, which is buried in the question that you asked, is
don't be a sarcastic, bad attitude, dad, because it just poisons the whole thing.
And by the way, being up at 4 o'clock with your baby who's crying is better than what
you would have been doing otherwise.
So, you know, it's just kind of silly.
I love this.
I feel like I learned something.
This is very nice.
And I like what we learn from this flashback in terms of what Caleb means to Mave.
You know, she talks about watching him be potentially mortally wounded and what that taught
her about mortality, not just like, because as you say, we've watched Mave die a million times.
We've watched Hector die a million times.
We've watched her agonize over that.
But like every time those people come back.
And so for her to watch Caleb dying and know that he could actually really die and what that meant to her and all of that and how she then makes this decision to just leave him so that he can have a normal life with, you know, to stop fighting the war and to start a family of his own and and meet his wife.
I just, I thought that whole sequence was pretty, pretty beautiful.
Very basic question.
Yeah.
So were you right then that they had a romantic relationship?
up till that moment?
I don't know that I was right.
What do you?
I was expecting a big
Joanna Robinson victory lap here over that presumption.
I think they could just be war buddies, you know?
I don't know.
The way that Caleb said,
what does that mean for us or what happened to us
made it feel like they were,
that that's what they were winking at.
I completely agree.
I got to be honest,
I have no freaking clue what to make of the lighthouse scene.
I don't know.
I also got the vibes.
Like, it's not our,
imagination. Like there's some thing they're hinting at of Caleb and Maeve having some kind of history.
He said, yeah, what does this mean for us? But then his like wife is there in the hospital with him.
I'm like, well, when did they start dating? Like, when did that happen? And I feel like that we were
watching them meet. And Maeve is like, if they had a relationship or not, though I agree, it's enticing
to think that maybe they did, that Mayve looks at him and says, that's a better life for him, not running
around the world with me. They met in the hospital? Yeah.
That his wife was a nurse.
She's a nurse?
Yeah, she's a nurse.
I missed that.
I didn't realize she was wearing like doctor things.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I think we were watching their me cute and Maeve watches it too.
And she's like, yeah, I should go.
This is better than whatever he was doing with me.
But that she, I mean, no matter what, whether it was actually like consummated sexually or whatever, she has this soft spot for him.
She has this like very strong affection for him, so much so that she risked all of their safety to reach out to check in on him.
Right. So he's a vulnerability for her, which I have questions about maybe that's why Hale wants him. I don't know.
That seemed a little bit glossed over. Yeah. But I, you know, whatever.
Well, I think that she wouldn't have short-circuited the freaking United States of America with her power surge if she didn't like love him, right?
I think she loves him. Whether or not that sexual love or something else I think is up to interpretation. But I think I do think she loves him. Yes. And, and, you know, Hale even says like, it's so interesting to.
me that both Dolores and Maeve are so captivated by you, essentially.
Like, she has the same questions we do, which is like, what makes you, Aaron Paul so special?
You know, I was going to say, I got to tell you the truth, Maeve can do way better.
I mean, I don't know.
Those bangs are looking great on Caleb.
You think, you think Maeve should hold out for Marsden?
I'm just throwing it out there.
I just, I just kind of, I mean, no shade to Aaron Paul.
It seems like a great guy.
Just, you know, I have, you know, hold, you know, Maeve can get whoever she wants.
The heart wants, Danny.
I think we all know that.
Here's my favorite thing that I discovered out of this episode.
So, Kale died.
It's not that.
That's not my favorite part.
Kailv died.
It's been 23 years since he died, right?
He's in eight, but he actually died 23 years ago.
Something sparked in me, which is I always love to go look at like Jonathan Nolan's stuff
and see other stuff he's done and see how much it is influenced what we're watching here.
So I googled how much time passes on that wave planet and interstellar when Matthew McConaughey misses his daughter growing up.
And it is 23 years exactly interstellar that McConaughey's character is on the wave planet and he comes back.
And his daughter, Murph, good old Murph, has been sending messages out into the void while her dad was gone for 23 years.
It's fantastic.
And also they're always pulling from other no-one stuff because Inception, Hale literally says the stuff from Inception,
which is like the thing about dreams
it's like when you're thinking of dream
it's like how did you get here
and then that scene
Leo de Caprio's like how did we get here
Hale looks at Caleb's like
how did you get here Caleb
it's like just directly pulling from all the
Nolan movies
Are you guys interstellar fans
Do you like interstellar?
I love Interstellar so much
me and Kevin O'Connor
are on the interstellar train
Shoemaker makes me cry
Um
The um speaks loud
There were moments in interstellar
interstellar that made me wonder if either Nolan had ever met a person.
But the science and the narrative, you know, the conceit of the whole thing was really
incredible.
Carlos says interstellar's mid.
Yeah, our producer Carlos thinks it's mid.
Like with a lot of Nolan stuff, there's high highs and low lows.
And I do think that the scene where McConaughey finds out it's been 23 years and then he goes
and watches the messages from his kids and he
hard cries while he watches them is
some of the best thing, like one of the best things I've ever seen.
Can we briefly spoil interstellar to explain why I love it?
Spoilers or interstellar? Why do you love it?
So the base plot of interstellar is basically that humans
got to get off Earth because we've fucked it up and they skipped the part
where they explain how Earth is awful and they just get to like, we got to go,
we got to solve the theory of gravity, we got to go really far away and we got
to solve, we have to solve theory of gravity super hard.
really, really, really long movie later,
there's like 10 dimensions
and we have to travel through time
to meet like the future humans who survived
and they have to come back to us
to give us the theory of gravity.
But the question is like,
what actually can like transcend dimensions?
Love.
And they think it's just love.
Love transcends dimensions.
And that's really corny.
But actually how many forces
can actually get you to even do that or try?
It's love.
Love transcends the dimensions
made me cry.
So I know it's kind of a weird movie.
I don't want to hear shit.
I love interstellar.
Shadow Kevin O'Connor.
Shemaker anything you want to say about Understeller?
No, no, except that I'll just say that, I mean, yeah, it felt a little bit like,
like the most brilliant possible way to get to love is the only thing that transcends dimensions or whatever.
I'm going to cry right now.
Just thinking about love and gravity.
I'm going to cry it out.
It was, I don't know.
I just think that.
Anne Hathaway gives that speech about love in that movie, and it is incredibly good.
Shoemaker's like as an actual father who actually knows what love is like.
I did not like an estella.
No, no, no, no, no.
I just think that there's, I just think that, listen, I mean, for, for my money,
and there's some Christopher and old movies that I really, really adore,
but for my money, you might as well just take, like, I don't need the, the feints at
Spielbergism with my, like, heady sci-fi, right?
Just be smart and skip all the other stuff, and we'll find heartwarming moments along the way.
like, you know, when a host comes back
after two years of absence
and is wearing a nice suit
and kicks his feet up at a restaurant.
You know, like that, to me,
is more meaningful
than the sort of like ham-fisted,
let's tell a story about love.
I like, I like the idea.
I like that this is the,
this is Jonathan Nolan freed of the,
you know, whatever, Spielbergian shackles.
Like, that's what makes Westworld great to me.
And also, I do like that his stuff repeats.
I think there's something, I mean, to me.
Me too. Me too.
I like the fact that, like,
person of interest is like a sketchpad for, you know, everything that he's done.
Yeah.
I mean, it's really cool.
And that's frankly how, like, a lot of our great artists have worked over time.
There's so many things.
I mean, inception, I mean, look, the idea of consciousness at the edge of a beach in the ocean,
like in the waves cresting in and out.
Like, that's so much of inception.
Memory and all of that is memento, right?
Season two is bad memento.
The, the way that I understood season one and, like, when I was, when I got really in the
weeds of Season 1 of Westworld trying to like figure it out. I watched all of the Nolan films to
try to like see what the themes were that they were preoccupied with there. It's also really
informative if you want to like really crack the Nolan code to look at the Christopher Nolan
films he made without his brother and to look at the films that that Jonah wrote on, you know,
and like what the differences are in the thematics that are explored there. And I think what's
always been true about Westworld is that this is a film, this is a show made by a kind of
couple, a married couple, who were new parents when this show started. So much the show has always
been about parenthood and parenting, you know, whether it's like your robot creations or like the thing
that turns Dolores into Hale is losing a child. Like all of this stuff with parents and children
is the constant feedback loop, the love loop of interstellar and of this show as well.
I also just, it's also, I don't know while if they were parents, but also they were playing the
Cowboy Vidig and Red Dead Redemption, in my opinion, presumably extremely stoned.
I love all of that.
All of that's in the sauce, as you say.
We've talked about the flies before and how the flies feel like a reference to season
one, but we've got some emails, and I've seen some theories around some of the other
mentions of, like, flies and cattle in Westworld.
First of all, there's the season one, episode one conversation between Dolores and Teddy,
where she talks about the Judas Steer, which is, like, the, the, the,
one animal in the herd that wherever they go, people will follow.
Like, Dolores was the judas deer of season one, right?
She says, that's the judic steer.
Rest will follow wherever you make him go.
And he says, how do you pick them out?
And she says, you just know these things, same as I knew you'd be back.
And he says, you say, I'm predictable.
There's a path for everyone.
Your path always leads you back to me.
So that's Dolores and Teddy, season one, episode one.
And then Dolores and Teddy in season two, episode five, Akane Omai,
an episode that we think about in, like, terms of Shogun World,
but there's a lot of Dolores and Teddy in that episode.
That's the episode where they have sex,
where she changes his fundamental core programming.
It's very disturbing.
But she has this conversation with him about the disease
that spread through the cattle on her father's farm in that episode.
And she says, did I ever tell you about the year we almost lost the herd?
Quarantine the cows that had it, but it kept spreading all the same.
Daddy finally figured out that it wasn't spreading from cow to cow.
it was the flies that carried it.
He worried over it all night.
How do you stop a sickness like that?
One with wings.
Say it was you.
What would you do, Teddy?
Teddy's like, Teddy, nice guys.
Like, I would put them in the barn and protect them.
And she's like, fun fact, we just burned them all.
Like, Daddy burned them the week.
It's quite the party trick.
Daddy burned them the week.
The infected made a pyre that went on for days and it stink, but the flies hate smoke.
The herd lived.
Does this stir anything inside of you, Danny, in terms of thinking about how this
fly spread disease that we're dealing with here might be dealt with or what we can understand
about Dolores's state of mind or anything like that. So if I answer this, I'm going to go into
theory corner. So if you want me to get in my whole theory corner spiel, you let me know.
You unleash me and I'll go. But I think that it's all connected. Shoeaker.
Well, are we talking about the smoke chase the flies away or you would kill me?
Like, do you think that we should hang out in the sauce and think about it about how that could
pertain to what we're watching here?
What do you think it for it?
What do you think it means?
I think it can't be a coincidence.
There was like she's talking about a fly, you know,
a fly transmitted plague.
You know, who would be,
who would we burn in this case, right?
And like, um,
all the,
all the gooped humans,
do we burn them and just start again with just the outliers?
Is that what we do?
I don't know.
Is that what?
would Dolores would do?
That's what, yeah, that's what, well, old Dolores would have done.
But was that, was that, was that, like, Wyatt?
That was, you know, is definitely Wyatt-ish, absolutely.
Well, I think where I come with the flies, the flies, I think are a biblical reference.
Again, I'm a firm believer, like, the core text of the show, the foundation is the Bible.
And it's specifically the first, like, five books of the Bible.
It's Genesis through Deuteronomy.
And there's a lot of smiting.
there's a lot of people, there's a lot of plagues.
And I think the flies fundamentally represent plagues.
There's a lot of like more petty arguments than you probably remember and people fighting
and they're like, oh, done with those people.
God threw a plague.
I think that the, again, I think that a core thing you remember, so season one, the idea
is they literally say God, the idea of God, the Sistine Chapel.
It's like it's not from above.
The gift is from within.
That's the divine gift.
So I think that it's important to remember that God in the show is being represented.
represented as free will. The idea of true free will decision making is God in this situation.
So again, I think season one is Genesis. You know, God's relationship with the world, how did that
begin is the creation of Adam, creation of AI as a free will species. Book two is season two,
Exodus, leaving Egypt, leaving slavery, the Red Sea, et cetera, leaving the park. Book three,
Leviticus, maybe one of the more boring of the five books, maybe one of the more boring seasons.
You guys can decide Mount Sinai and commandments. I get a little lost with the
Season three parallel. Someone has a better one. You'll let me know. Season four, it's pretty clear to me.
It's season four, it's the book of numbers. Again, wandering the desert for 40 years.
And then God, it's basically like, you know what? No olds. None of the olds can come into the
promised land because you guys messed up and the new generation can come into the promised land.
The Kindle will do it. We're going to wait for all you guys to die. And so that obviously jives
directly with what Hale's saying where the older people, the ones with the original
brains, no offense, Shoemaker, are the ones who are, you guys got to go, the young, the
malleable, the hopeful, whatever you want to call them, will be able to enter into the
promised land. However, one of the olds who was, there was only a handful of people who were allowed
to enter the promised land, even though they were too old. Do you know who that person was?
Caleb? Caleb, one of Moses's spies named Caleb, was allowed to enter the promised land
because he was a true believer. So, I mean, my God. I mean,
and how on the nose can you get?
So I think that that's clearly what's going on here.
Book four, you know, it's numbers.
And I think, I mean,
Shoemaker as he holds his son.
And it's nice to see someone who's allowed
to enter the promised land
and someone who will not be allowed side by side.
I love this theory.
This is fantastic work.
Well, I got to, I'm not even trying to say it's a theory.
It's not as good as teddy bear bear,
but it's almost as good.
Nothing's Teddy Bear Bear Bear Bear.
I don't even think it's a theory at this point.
I think it's more just like they're reading
the Bible and they have a guy named Caleb who's allowed to enter the new war. And what happens?
23 years after he died, he's like a route and he enters the new world with all these younger people.
And so I think at this point, it's very obvious to me that they're directly doing one at one season is loosely one book of the Bible.
And I think at this point we can start to look at, okay, what's the end game here? What are they trying to say?
I think you can get lost in the sauce again very easily. I think that the one thing I'm confident on is that the role of Moses kind of
of shifts among the characters.
And someone, Dolores is Moses in the beginning.
Bernard's probably at some point.
You probably at this point, hail in some ways,
is, again, who is a version of Dolores,
kind of has a Moses-esque role in a way this season.
If she's the one deciding which generation,
I don't know.
It's pretty difficult.
So the role of Moses God wanders around,
but that's clearly the foundational text of the show.
Since we're in Bible study,
do you mind if I read an email that we got from one of our listeners?
We had a couple people write in Chelsea, Chelsea, Johnny, about the meeting of the name Christina,
basically putting the Christ in Christina for this character, right?
And so Chelsea wrote, season two, Johnny is, season two, Dolores is similar to an Old Testament God,
taking vengeance on the earth for its wickedness and saving a handful of lives on a boat,
a.k. the ark. I didn't finish season three, so I can't speak to that. But here in season four,
I think Dolores is switching from God to Jesus. A,
the name for obvious reasons. B, most Bible believers view Jesus as being fully man and fully God,
a concept that's perfectly confusing and in line with Westworld shenanigans. Is Christina a host or
human? Probably both somehow. But so this idea that like, that Dolores Prime was an Old Testament
God, but this Dolores is a New Testament figure, possibly. I think it's all in the sauce,
as you say. But I love that idea of mapping onto the five books. Which you raised last week,
but you have a much better coherent argument for it this week, which I really like.
Shoemaker, anything you want to say in Bible study?
As someone who actually majored in religion in college, I just want to say no.
No, I think that that's all on the nose.
I mean, I think that my, you know, sort of abiding theory when we had these conversations about Westworld is that it's never one thing at a time.
And you can draw inspiration and reference things without trying to.
You know, you don't have to read every single thing into something else.
I mean, Joe, you certainly remember those,
those just beautiful days when everybody was convinced
that the entire narrative arc of Game of Thrones
was based on like Norse mythology or like one specific, you know,
like one specific reference or whatever,
the War of the Roses or whatever.
People were like trying to draw out every single parallel.
The Tyrion is the God tier and whatever else.
It's, you could be, everything is everything at one.
once. That's what that's what writing is.
I agree it's never one thing, but I do think it's, I think that there's a lot to what Danny
has to say here. And I think especially the use of the name Caleb is like cannot be a coincidence
that is very important. Let's talk about Caleb for a second in terms of like why he's so special
to Hale. Why is she rebooted Caleb and running fidelity tests on over 200 versions of him?
What's your favorite theory around that?
Well, I think she was pretty straightforward. She was like, well, there's got to be
something with this guy that Mav and Dolores kept you around.
And she's also
Dolores, right?
I mean, in a practical level,
she started off as at Dolores.
So I think that,
that, that, you know,
there's merit to that fascination.
And, you know,
I think that I'm sure there's
some larger outlier outreach program
or whatever that she has,
that she's working on.
And this is, and that he's, you know,
going to be a part of that.
Why she would spend so much time with him?
I mean, I think that's a good question.
I'm not exactly sure how this works in terms of time management.
And, you know, when your plan is world conquest.
What does your day-to-day diary look like when you're conquer the world?
Sure.
Danny, what do you think?
Why is Caleb so important?
It's free will.
It's a little disappointing to me because I don't actually think they ever set up why Caleb
has free will very well in season three.
I don't think they ever really did a good job explaining or laying that out.
But I think very clearly that, I mean, that's really what they were trying to say about the outliers.
I think that was a very clunky hole.
Even if it's a good idea, I thought the whole roll out of outliers as a concept was clunky.
But again, I just think that Caleb, in a show where the ability to have true free will is compared to like be touching God itself, the idea that Caleb is able to.
fight off the flies and change his mind and shoot,
Maeve,
that is what Hale is trying to study
and either recreate or stymie or use to her advantage.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so Caleb is important to a version of Dolores
who we've been told is dead,
so let's just say she's dead,
but he's important to that, Dolores.
He's important to Mave.
He's important to Frankie, right?
So he's someone who could be used against all those people.
But to your point, I think that fact-finding idea is maybe the most cogent here in terms of,
Maeve says to Caleb in the season three finale, you've done terrible things, you've done generous things,
but she, meaning Dolores, didn't pick you for your capacity for violence, but for your capacity to choose.
Yes.
Right.
And then to your point about what Ford said in season one about choice, Ford says it begins with the birth of a new people at the
choices they will have to make and the people they will decide to become. So for recycling
season one here, and this time we're talking about humans in the host role, the white-fled
humans and their emergent choice in a new world where Hale has made it so they don't have any
choices. The special, not too confused your sauces, but the special sauce that Caleb has
that allows him to defy the Y-fly
and to do whatever it was that he was able to do in season three
can't really put a finger on it is, yeah,
I just completely agree with you.
Something that Hale either wants to bottle or to eliminate.
So I think that's fascinating.
I think that's correct.
And again, I think it matters in terms of this is,
I do think, I know, as Shoemaker keeps saying, like, he's right,
Like it's never being pulled from one book.
But I do think the promise lands a theme here with Caleb.
I think that when Caleb's running out there, it's a thing.
And I will just say, right, just in terms of Caleb, you know, the biblical stuff I will say, in numbers, Moses' followers are complaining in the desert.
There's no meat to eat.
And in this season, they go to the desert and the diners out of pastrami.
Bro.
Do we not count tuna's meat?
It's fish, so it doesn't count.
I don't know what the biblical interpretation is of that.
I'm not going to lie.
Of what?
Does fish count?
Yeah, his fish meat?
Yeah.
I mean, fish on Fridays, right?
Yeah, that's true.
Hale says to Caleb, when he defies her, when he doesn't shoot maybe, he shoots William instead,
she says, how did you disobey me?
Tessa Thompson, like, clenches it out, right?
And he says, I have something you don't have.
What do you think that is?
Free will?
a soul or
a conscience?
Well, we have to say that
if you watch the subtitles,
it's I have something you don't know
and then it's like parentheses like pants
because he's like out of breath
but it says I have him,
you don't have pants.
Pants, yeah.
So it's pants.
It could be pants.
Yeah, I don't, I mean,
clearly he's, he's, you know,
beating his chest and saying,
I'm a human and you're not.
Humans have something that hosts, yeah, yeah.
Well, is he saying humans or him?
I feel like he has free will.
And if he's saying anything to Hale,
it's probably the same way that a host gets put,
like season one, season two,
a host doesn't have consciousness
because you have your operating instructions.
And Dolores goes through the maze
and basically finds the center,
listens to her voice,
and it realizes your voice has got,
maybe he's saying to Hale,
like, you're actually just following Hale's instructions.
Hale's DNA is still you.
You're not really, Delores.
You're not making your own decisions.
You're just kind of doing what Hale's voice is telling you to do.
So maybe he's saying Hale doesn't have free will either.
I look forward to finding out what this is.
I don't think we have the answer,
but I think that question is crucial.
What does Caleb have other than pants?
Except she's wearing pants,
some very beautifully tailored pants.
So, uh,
you know,
um,
and then I want to like circle back to that idea,
the Hale,
Hale and Ford,
uh,
comparison,
right?
Because this moment when he runs out into the streets of New York
out of the gaming company and then she comes out and she stops everything,
right?
Uh,
lot of in season one when Ford brought Teresa to that restaurant and he made everyone freeze with
just the lifting of his finger, right? He didn't like pull out a tablet and do anything. He just has
this godlike power of lifting his finger and making everyone freeze, which is what Hale does
in this scenario. Does that like Hale Ford comparison work for you? Like how are you feeling about that?
yeah i think i think i think that's definitely where we are and i think the biggest difference between
we we talked about this at the beginning right when we were talking about who's running the dolores
op i think the you know anything could happen i guess but the biggest difference is we were totally
wrong about for but he didn't turn like he kind of turned into the hero by us being wrong about him
right if we're wrong about what's going on with christina or even if we're wrong about hails motives i don't think
she's going to turn into the hero of the story. But who knows? I mean, that's sort of the,
what we keep saying in this show over and over again. I don't know that Ford is like the hero.
Like when he dies, I'm like, yeah, you should probably die because of everything that you've done.
But at least you win out on a redemptive arc rather than like, you know, the mustache villain,
mustache twirling villain. So, yeah. Yeah, I think that, I think that, but I do think that
Hale is being set up is to sort of the anti-ford, you know, for this season. I mean, I think it's
Part of what's sort of implied in any story about robot human power dynamics is that whoever has the most power is probably, you know, the bad person.
Well, two things about fourth.
They're clearly making their connection.
They said after the episode that Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, that like the how we made the episode thing,
they literally said that shooting the scene in the quarry where they blew everything up, they said we were trying to find a scene that would evoke the physical terraforming of the, when he,
unveils all those agave plants.
It blows up the earth basically from season one.
I think that the other comparison with Ford is,
Ford said consciousness is a burden and basically that the humans should die,
we're done, and that the host should take over.
And you could argue that Hale is just doing what Ford wanted to do,
that this was the continuation of Ford's vision.
Not that he's actively controlling anything still,
but that he was like, yeah, the host should cook us.
That's, we're done.
Like, this is fine.
I made something better.
Should we take stock of how many human characters?
So the beginning of season, Danny is like, I miss how many humans we used to have.
And now that Caleb are like, the human that we were cleaning to is now a host,
should we take stock of how many humans are left in this show?
I mean, isn't literally just Ed Harris in the cry of sleep?
Is there anybody else?
Well, Frankie and her pals in the desert, I think.
The new generation of humans, right?
Yeah.
I think that's it.
If I'm missing someone, it's William's head, Maya, a wife-led human.
Are we counting the Wifled humans?
I don't know.
I suppose.
The homeless dude who can see through everything.
That guy.
All of those other Wifled dudes on the outside.
So weak bench, guys.
Really weak bench of humans.
I'm not having to say I like Frankie.
But, you know.
I like Frankie too.
I also think that one of the really cool things about Caleb turning into a host
and one of the most kind of inexplicable,
inexplicably resonant things,
considering where we all were with Caleb a couple months ago.
is that him turning into a host
makes, I think I care more deeply about a host
than I ever have before
because I have all of my human baggage with him,
despite the fact that like, Dolores and Mave,
you know, Bernard are like some of my favorite television characters.
And certainly Mave has a sort of level of depth
in more different directions than most human characters on TV.
But I don't know, man.
Like there's not a, I mean, there wasn't a second where I'm like,
well, now he's a robot.
but I care less about him.
You know, I might care more about him.
I think what's also true is that Aaron Paul has,
as an actor,
Aaron Paul has always been most successful in, like,
really, really, really over-the-top dramatic acting.
He's incredibly effective at it.
Like, stuff that looks like almost kabuki,
like hysterical performances from other people.
For some reason, Aaron Paul can pull it off.
And I'm not sure he's as good with the super, super subtle stuff.
So giving him the whole, like,
am I me? Is this now? Like Evan Rachel Woodstuff from season one, I think works tremendously well for what kind of performer he is, you know?
I think that's on the money.
Yeah.
And also it reminds me of when they turned Stubbs into a host in season two,
I'm pretty sure they did that just because they liked Luke Hemsworth
and wanted to bring him along for whatever time jumps they were going to do.
So they're like yada yada, yada Stubbs is a host because I'm really not sure that it works
all the way from the beginning that Stubbs is a host, but I don't mind because it means
Luke Hemsworth is still here eating tuna mouths listening to Blondie.
All right.
The other thought experiment I thought we might want to do,
is sort of, if we had to slot people into two teams, two sides, team evil, team good, or however
you want to describe it, how would you sort everyone, Maeve, Caleb, Bernard, adult Frankie,
the outliers, Christina, Teddy Hale, like, where does everyone go? Danny, can you bucket people
for me? Team Hale is the team enslaved humanity for our own fun. And then I would say the spiritual
forefather of that, if we're being honest, is Ford. And then on Team Hale, you've got the copies
of William.
Can we talk about this for a set?
Do we really talk about this?
When Maeve decided to sacrifice herself
to blow up William,
did she not realize
there was more than one William
and this was a totally hope
like ridiculously unnecessary thing to do?
Super tough for Maeve.
Really tough to kind of,
that's the Bueno.
Yeah.
I think she did not know
that Hale would just be like,
oh, okay, Apple,
Apple C, Apple V.
Here's a new William.
Like, no problem, you know?
It's tough.
Bad strategic use.
But honestly,
is there anyone else on Team Him?
It's Team Hale, it's team.
And then there's like the William copies.
And then the last question is like, okay, is Teddy working on behalf of Hale or someone else?
Because I think that's kind of it.
Yeah, Teddy and Maya, I think, are the questions, right?
James Marsden and Ariana DeBose, which side are you on?
But like, if it comes down to everyone versus Hale, that still won't see, or Hale plus
William, that still won't seem unmatched to me, which is to our earlier point.
why it's so ridiculous that they just trot her around in handcuffs
because she's so overpowered.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's, I think that,
well, I mean, this is going to be what the story has to figure out a way.
They have to figure out a way to really tell the story.
The thing about what the power that Hale is accumulated up to this point
is that it's all sort of dependent upon itself, right?
I think that the big key thing that we saw this episode
that will potentially play out going forward
is when Mave just like hacked into the sound machine
and just like ruined everything for like, you know, two minutes.
Like everything was just pre, was, went haywire.
So like, like, Hale doesn't need any friends if she has control over every human on the earth, right?
She doesn't need any friends if she could just like lift her finger and have utter control over everybody.
But if the sound machine goes haywire, then she's got nothing, right?
So, yeah, it's a little bit, it's a little bit, like I said, dependent upon it,
dependent conceptually upon itself.
Operation blow up, the sound tower seems to be maybe what the back half of the season might be.
Dude, that little, like, you know, monster menace ending that we got to the episode, I think,
sort of points us in that direction.
Where do we stand with Christina in all of this?
Let's just do a Christina check-in.
Classic Christina check-in.
Host, human, simulation, real world.
How are you feeling, Danny Hyphids?
We got to come back to a question from episode one that the trend.
trying to make us forget, which is that they demonstrated us that Christina is in control of
real life events and writing them. And we still don't know what that means. And the tower is
able to control people. But that doesn't mean that like who's sending the signals to the
tower. It is now, if we put all these pieces together heavily implied that Christina,
Dolores, whatever we're calling her, is in some way in controlling the tower unknowingly
through her video game development.
And so, I don't know.
Like, what's, I don't know.
Is she still plugged in to her album for the end of season three?
Or like, why is Christina in control of this?
I genuinely don't have an answer for that yet,
but I just don't want to forget that Christina
is unwittingly in control of this tower in some form, it seems.
Well, I think they make, I mean,
I think that there's a pretty straight line through,
which is that like if you're going to control all the people on the planet,
you got to have somebody figuring out what they're going to do, right?
And as long as there's going to be some semblance of civilization, of normalcy, of whatever,
then what they do can't be like, you know, stand in cold storage and wait for orders.
They've got to, like, go about their lives.
And for whatever reason, Charlotte Hale has determined that that's important.
And so Dolores is there to give them things to do.
Are we on team that, are we on board with the idea that this New York we're seeing with a tower in it
and the why-flied humans, the gooped humans on their loops,
that this is a flip-flop park
and that we have robot guests and human hosts.
I think it's real Manhattan,
and they made it in a park, but it's actually Manhattan.
Yes. By a park, I mean robots go there to get their rocks off,
not that it's made in the middle of the desert somewhere.
Yeah, that sounds true to me.
I think that the explanation for why Christine is there,
I don't know what they will do.
I will say this.
The only thing that would make sense to me
if, like,
because Hale has to know that Christina's out there.
I think it would be really, like,
I don't know what explanation they could give
where Christina's like writing plot
and deciding how people live and die,
but Hale's not aware of it.
So the only thing that would make sense to me
is that Hale is wistful for Dolores
because Hale at her core, like,
was Dolores at the beginning.
And that she just, you know,
is nostalgic and wistful
And if she's just like unaware or it's random, that will suck.
I think it much more likely that Hale did it, you know, knowingly.
I saw a really nice theory about this.
And it was in the comments.
It wasn't a main post.
So I'm so sorry.
I don't have the Reddeter's name at my fingertips.
But it was, would Hale create an innocent version of Dolores and try to give her a life, like the innocent life that she sort of longed for?
Or if you just wanted, oh, actually, when she created four Dolores?
eye at the end of season three, one of the lines was like, if you wanted someone to do a job,
do it yourself. And basically she's like, I need someone to do this, but also have me do it
without any of the, I don't know, maybe that's part of it. I love the idea, I love the idea, by the
way that the robots are, that the robots are going to New York, the former, formerly known
as host, you're going to just regular, whyfly human-filled New York to get their rocks.
Like, they, like, humans want to get away from things by going to, like, the old West and, like,
killing things and having sex with things.
And robots are just like,
like a vacation for a robot is going to New York and being like,
I went to a vessel.
I went to a book reading last night and they didn't have AC.
And the wine ran out really quickly and wasn't good anyway.
And then you like,
high five your friend.
But if,
but if role playing like normalcy is like a refreshing change for you,
if you've been like a,
you know,
a broth,
in a brothel for all of your life or something.
Exactly.
No, yeah.
I know. I get it.
Here's the one reason why I'm sort of like a little more shaky on Christina as a human than I have been in the past.
I was so certain last week because of that aspect ratio I talked to you guys about in terms of like every time we've seen a letterboxed aspect ratio on the show, that means we're in a simulation.
And if we're in regular old, you know, non- widescreen, then we're in reality.
And then a bajillion of our listeners emailed me to remind me.
to remind me that in season three, when Mave is walking around talking to Lee Seismore,
we're not in letterbox until she becomes aware that it's a simulation,
and then the bars come down and it's in letterbox.
So if a host is in a simulation and doesn't know it's a simulation,
then it's not in that aspect ratio, which is just classic Westworld and frustrating.
But I just want to acknowledge that we got a gagillion emails about that.
I was wrong about that.
That's not a surefire way to know whether we're in a simulation or not.
So it's still on the table.
Even though it looks like Caleb and Dolores slash Christina are in the same place,
it's still on the table that this is somehow some kind of simulation,
whether it's the sublime or what.
It's possible.
I think it's tidier and simpler and it feels like the season is trying to be tidy and simple
by just putting them physically in the same place.
But I just don't want to leave anything off the table because it's Westworld.
Do you know what I mean?
I agree.
Anything else we want to talk about?
Oh, we did get an email from someone pointing out that last season when I think it was Solomon, the sort of glitchy AI, was making its predictions of what would happen if Rehobom was destroyed.
Oh, yeah.
It said, like, sort of end of, it gave the timeline it gave for like the end of the population was 23 years.
So it was right.
So last season, Solomon said mass casualty event in one to three years.
So we can assume that maybe that was the war that Caleb and May were fighting in.
Massed casualty event six to ten years.
So isn't it convenient that we are now in a seven to eight years in the future timeline?
Mass casualty event 12 to 16 years.
No clue on that one.
And then population collapse 23 years.
And then end of human civilization, 50 to 125.
years. That's what Solomon said last season.
Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
It's all, it's all happening.
All right. Anything else we want to make sure we hit in terms of theory corner, anything else
before we hit The Maze is Not Men for You, Dumb Human Award?
I think I've got all my notes out.
Incredible. Danny?
Bueno. I think we're well. A lot more answers than questions this week.
As we said, we've got very few humans left on the on the board for the maze is not meant for you.
dumb human award. It doesn't have to go to a human, but the maze is not meant for you. I'm going to
give it actually to Maeve and Caleb for zip tying hail and throwing her in the back of a truck.
And they should have known that she was going a little too easy through all of that. What do you guys
think? It's Maeve. I hate to do it. I love Maeve, but yeah, the last time Maeve fought
Dolores or whatever, she had to cut her arm off. And this time she just handcuffed her with
like these, like, ratchety handcuffs she found. Yeah. So it's Maeve.
Yeah, I'm really tempted to give it to Mave too and Caleb.
I'm really, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the way they handled Hale and just say in my head canon that didn't really happen that way.
That was, that was.
Fidelity.
Caleb's unfidelity recollection of the whole thing.
I'm going to give it to Hume and Caleb from the flashback for still wasting time with binoculars and counting guards when the woman standing next to him can just tell you how many people are there and exactly.
what to do.
That's a really good one.
There's no way that, like, what is the soldier from?
This is, Caleb's doing a military operation 50 years from today.
This is 2022 we're doing this in.
He's doing this in like 2070, 2065.
There's no fucking chance he's using regular-ass binoculars to see where human beings are.
At least have them make thermal or something.
Those binoculars are probably 40 years old.
I should have said this when you guys were asking me whether or not I thought
Maeve and Caleb were like
knocking military boots in the war.
If they were,
fun trick that Maeve can hack his
limbic system that would come
in handy if, you know.
We didn't even talk about that. I know we did
for a little, but like, man, the implication there,
I'm just saying, if they were having sex,
can you imagine the sex with just a little
tongue, just, pooh, here's like heaven itself.
That's what I'm saying. That's crazy.
And we should point out, in case people didn't watch
season three, which I heard a lot of people are excited that people are having fun with season
four. So they're like, do we even have to watch? Can I just skip and watch season four?
And I'm like, you could probably get away with watching a YouTube recap and then hopping into season
four. But they, that's a huge point, though. You're right. You can just skip season three.
You could. And I think they know that. I think they structured this season so that that was the case.
But Caleb's Limbic, not everyone has it, but Caleb's Olympic system was like a thing that
happened in season three. So that was the call back to that. Schroemaker studied religion in college.
Can you just skip the book of Leviticus as well? Like it's like, can you just skip Leviticus?
You can totally skip Leviticus. It's a lot of stuff about, it's like rules, right? It's just
God giving Moses rules. I guess there's a bunch of stuff about like atonement in there,
which you could probably tie loosely to last season. It's like the schedule. It's like Leviticus
could have been an email. A season that could have been an email. Love that for us. A season that could
have been a YouTube recap. So that is what season three of Westworld was.
Just a few closing things before we go.
First of all, if you watched all the way through the credits to the end of this episode and got to the HBO logo,
the tritone of the tower, of the Hale Tower, played over the HBO logo in a really fun way.
It was like a fun little HBO logo Easter egg, which I can't remember ever having seen on an HBO show before.
So that was really fun.
The title of next week's episode, please forgive me if I butcher this pronunciation.
I did look it up, but it's Shuangshi, I believe is how you pronounce it.
Famed piece of literature, so I will definitely be talking about that.
English lit corner next week. And then last but not least, in the next time on, we see
bloodied fingers on a piano. And I got several people asking me if I thought Anthony Hopkins
slash Ford was playing his fingers to bloody stumps, whether as a host or human, well, it has to be a host,
host or simulation in next week's episode. So over under, Danny Hyfitz, did they get Hopkins back?
Oh, I thought you said over under how many fingers does he have left, over under nine and a half.
Did we get Hopkins back for season four of Westworld?
I don't think so.
I would love to be wrong.
Shoemaker?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It seems like...
Oh, I don't know.
Why not?
I mean, we'll be shocked if we do.
Marsons here.
Let's bring them all back.
I could see them wanting to do it because they've sensed interest was fading in the show.
And I also think the fifth episode would make a lot of sense for that.
decision. I feel torn about it. What I do love is that they've built themselves a show where they
could bring anyone back at any time and I won't get stressed about it because we're all
hosts and simulated anyway, so who cares? And like the joy of seeing when Teddy died, it felt
like he needed to stay dead because it was this big moment for Dolores in season two, like that she
let him go and all this sort of stuff. And so back then I was of the mind that he should stay dead and
stay gone. But I'm so thrilled
to have Marston back that I don't give a shit
actually. So I don't give it
like bring everyone back. I don't I don't
give a shit. Make me feel like it's Westworld
season one again. They should just bring
Fort Anthony Hopkins back as another
like
person like Christina who doesn't know
who they are while they're there that works at the
video game. Like have him come in.
He's a local shopkeep. No, have him
walk into the creative room like Steve Bouchemi
with the backwards baseball cap and the
skateboard. I just have a little kids. Yeah.
It's just like, hey, it's Joey.
He works on the creative team too
and just have him like walk through one scene and that's it.
Great. All right.
Well, if Anthony Hopkins says,
hello, fellow kids in next week's episode of Westworld,
you will have heard it here first from Shoemaker himself
who taught us a lot about what it means to be a parent,
which actually genuinely was pretty profound.
I was going to say,
my takeaway from this episode is give yourself over to the woo-woo shit.
And if that's what it's like to be a dad,
then I'm ready to be a dad because of Westworld,
because Westworld has just made me give myself entirely over to the woo-woo shit.
So no matter what, like, I think what nitpicks we had to pick or criticisms we had about how quickly Hale walked out of a park,
we really liked this episode.
We're having a good time with Westworld this season.
It's great to be here.
We'll be back next week with episode five.
Ed Harris bodysuit at gmail.com.
Love your emails.
Please keep sending them.
And we will see you next time.
This episode was produced.
by the very talented
Carlos Jeroboga.
We'll see you next time.
Bye!
Shout out Teddy Bear Bear Bear.
