The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Westworld' Season 4, Episode 5 Recap

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Joanna, David, and Danny break down 'Westworld' Season 4, Episode 5, “Zhuangzi.” They start by recapping everything that happened in the episode (2:13), before discussing Christina’s story and theorizing about who sent Teddy (3:53). Later, they go through other storylines in the episode (34:37) and go to Theory Corner to talk about the frequency of the Earth (57:42). If you have any questions or thoughts about 'Westworld,' you can email Joanna, David, and Danny at [e-mail] 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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form themselves into a shape of a chair so that I could sit on them. Just joining me of their own volition. It's Danny Hyphison, David Shoemaker. Hi, guys. How are you? Chair! Chair! I got nothing. I got nothing.

I'm great. We are here to talk about season four, episode five of Westworld, John Dutt, directed by Craig, William McNeil, written by Wes Humphrey and Lisa Joy ever heard of her.

Before we get in on to that, just some programming reminders really quickly. elsewhere on this feed, this PrestiHTV podcast feed, Ben Lindberg and I are covering the final run of episodes of Better Call Saul and the show is getting really damn good. I'm pretty sure. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure Brian Cranston and Aaron Paul are showing up on Better Call Saul this week. So listen, man, he likes Breaking Bad. You might want to watch Better Call Saul. Wow. Spoiler alert, Joe. The creators have been out there saying it. So I'm not that worried about it. And actually, I don't know if it's actually going to happen. But we're pretty sure this is the week.

Spoiler warning, speaking of, we've only watched up through this episode so we don't know what's to come. We have wild theories and ideas, but no actual facts about what's to come on Westworld. So that is all you're getting in this episode. And of course, as always, you can email us Ed Harris bodysuit at gml.com. We got a great scene with the old bodysuit this week, which we will talk about in a second. David Shoemaker. Yes. Do you want to tell us what happened on this episode of Westworld?

I'll do my best. Hale, is that what we're calling it now? Hale? Just hail? Hale shows up to the park. Chair Loras. Charlotte Chair. Chairloris shows up to the park to check in on her creation,

curb an outbreak of outliers, and monologue about her hopes that her host creations will, quote, unquote, transcend. Oh, and she makes a chair out of people, and it's phenomenal. One of the outliers gets rescued by the team of rebels and stubs, but now before she, quote, unquote, infects William and makes him question the nature of his own reality, which prompts him to phone a friend, aka Ed Harris, in a body suit. Christina, for her part, skips work to hang out with Teddy

and finds out she's a quote, unquote, God in this world who can control other people. She can also see the tower now. She takes control of her boss at work and breaks into the back room to discover she's controlling all the people in Manhattan and still has time to meet up with an old friend who is none other than bored God herself. Charlotte Hale, aka Chair Loris. The end. pretty straightforward. We are going to do things a little differently this week.

Like, this episode is pretty straightforward, I think, and I don't think it was very confusing what was happening. We are all on at least two, if not one timeline. So we can discuss whether or not we think there's multiple here or just the one. So we're going to ask. By Westworld standards, it's not confusing. By the standards of any other show, it's still pretty confusing. You mean the idea of robot transcendence isn't what every, you know, every show is dealing with? Okay. Milk toast. So we're going to be asking all the questions this week.

And I want to start with the big one that we've been asking ourselves since the beginning. Who is Christina? What's your current analysis based on everything Teddy showed us in this episode? Who is Christina? I just want to say with great confidence that I am more confused than ever. I feel like I know so much more after this week. And yet to the very, the most basic question. I don't feel like I have a solid answer.

I'm at the point where I've come around to what Joe said at the beginning of the season, that she might, Christina might be a human being. I have zero like show text to point to to to back that up. But it just feels like the only plot twist really left out there of significance. Christina's a person. So Joe, I know I kind of gave you some crap that that seems impossible. But I'm at the point again where I don't even know. Maybe Christina's a person.

Because Teddy had that line. She said, do we know each other? And he said, no, I knew someone just like you. And now I don't know what that means. I got, well, I don't know if this counts as like, you know, cribbing off somebody else's homework. But I, there was a recurring theme and a few really smart fan theories that I saw online. That I thought I read before this episode and now can't quite get out of my head.

Basically, the idea would be that she's a person with a Christina brain, I mean, sorry, with a Dolores brain to some, in some former fashion. But the key is that the constant looking at herself in the mirror refrain is going to somehow bear out to her looking in the mirror at some point and realizing that she's not Dolores. Like she's just been seeing herself as Dolores the whole time, but she's actually a human body that looks totally different in some way or another. Say that again?

The idea being that she's just that it'll be some other actress playing Christian. but that she has because she has the Christina pearl or the Dolores Pearl in her head she's been seeing herself as Dolores the whole time when she looks in the mirror she sees Dolores but but we avoid the thing of like how do we make a human that looks just like Dolores because she's not she doesn't actually look like that who knows it might not be that complicated but that is that makes a that's really interesting but you could imagine you could definitely you could definitely envision a scene in which She's staring in the mirror and then realize,

and then it's someone else, it turns out that's been staring in the mirror, saying Dolores the whole time. I don't know that I've bored you guys on this podcast, but I love to talk about the TV series, Quantum Leap, one of my favorite shows of all time. That's exactly right. Yeah, I didn't think about that.

Yeah, it's a classic Quantum Leap moment where you're watching one actor walk around, but at some point in a mirror reflection, you see that it doesn't look like that actor at all. It looks like another person. So, um... Do you remember the one where he got sent back in time to save JFK from assassination and he failed?

and then it turned out he was there to save Jackie O the whole time? Yes, I do. Quantum Leap's an incredible show, guys. I was just recently talking about. We've all seen Quantum Leap, obviously, but maybe for the people who may have not seen it. I mean, I have seen it, but perhaps for the other people. Quantum Leap is just about a guy who, a scientist from the future,

who unlocks kind of time travel, and he hops around from various host bodies in time on his own timeline, quote unquote, putting right what once went wrong. like changing the past, but he stuck ping-ponging bodies because he can't get home because something went wrong with their experiment. Is that accurate, David?

Yeah. Anyway, that's Quantum Leap. Great show. You guys should watch it. Just being into the grass, you know. Yeah. He is Lee Harvey Oswald. Isn't he in that episode?

Maybe not. Is that who he was? I don't even remember who he was in the episode. I just remember the big reveal at the end. So he still pulled the trigger even though he was Lee Harvey Oswald? Maybe he wasn't. I don't really remember.

I think, yeah. And never mind. Let's not talk about quantum leave. But I will look at the details of that episode and I will I will DM them to you, Danny. Here's my theory about Christina. And let me just say this for the record. If she's not a human, I just want to say, I got a couple like tweets from people like looks like Lisa Joy lied. If she's not a human, I really doubt it's that Lisa Joy lied. I think it's probably that I misinterpreted something that she said because like I am not here to accuse anyone of lying. I am less certain than ever. that Christina is human. That's where I am this week, given her godly powers. But my best theory about her is that whatever she is, human with a Dolores Pearl inside of her,

whatever it is, like Hale created her, whatever she is. That seems evident from this episode. Why would Hale create Christina? That's my question. I'm a lob back at you. Setting aside the human,

host conundrum. I think that what we saw this week, I mean, this isn't interpretation. I mean, what we saw from Hale this week was that she tried to create a world of host transcendence and has to this point, after 23 years or whatever, sort of failed at it, right?

She's created a world of like host omnipotence, but she's not, but she still hasn't, as we saw her, you know, yelling at, at the man in black host, She hasn't, none of them have really transcended yet. And so it makes a certain amount of sense, right, that she would, that she would sort of put a new Dolores in an incubator knowing that she has previously found her way through the maze and to sort of see if she can model a path forward based on that, right?

So you think transcendence is equivalent to like bootstrapping consciousness. Yeah. I think transcendence, and Danny, I'm curious to hear what you think, but I think this idea of transcendence is leave your fleshy body or your whatever and upload to the cloud. Because some people, some of the hosts have transcended. It's just she's making it a choice and not everyone sees that as the future. A lot of them like to stay in the park and fuck around with the humans where she's like, this is supposed to be a stopgap. What I would like is for everyone to like upload themselves to the cloud. We see that one host in her office sort of get the pearl taken.

out and then slosh forward and there's the empty like head. So leave the bodies behind. Just be pure code that that's host transcendence as far as Hale believes it to be. But the hosts don't want to do that. They want to stay with their bodies. Like what do you think, Danny? What was your understanding of the concept of transcendence? I agree with Joe.

I think that it's she literally said leave like leave the flesh behind and forget her exact phrasing. But she said, like, we're trying to leave the flesh behind and transcend. And I assume it's some version of the sublime or, you know, the robot cloud that they're heading toward. Although I understand where Shoemaker's coming from of achieving consciousness. I think that as beautiful as I love season one where Dolores reaches consciousness. I think that they've been really hit or miss on explaining whether other robots have, like, achieved that. Mave clearly has. It's super unclear if any other robots have ever gotten there or how willy-nilly it is. It's like, did Ted get there, did Lawrence, like, did they go through some, like, really emotional moment like

Dolores did? I have a lot of questions about that stuff, but I agree with Joe. The theme clearly is they thought it would just be like, oh, like, everyone will go off and be happy and make their own decisions. And actually, they're just toiling in sin and they really like just dicking around in the murder sex park, just like the humans did. Let's answer the where-when question. Do you think Christina is in the same place as everything else is happening this episode?

and is she in the same time as everything else happening in this episode? Probably? Okay, probably, David? I'm sort of been, I mean, I think I've come around to your implication last week that she might be in a near but slightly, slightly separate timeline. That may be the things that we're seeing in the other timelines are reactions to what's going on in Dolores or vice versa. but I do think that she's relatively in the same place.

So we no longer think she's in the simulation. We think she's in the real world. Whether or not she's now, no? She did have one line that threw me off. What was that? I thought we were done with the simulation stuff. And then she had one line that said, oh, it basically said it's a perfect mirror.

Is that what the one? Yeah. I think she said it's like they built a perfect mirror of this world or something. They definitely left the door open to some of the stuff we see in this season could be in a simulation of the world or not, I kind of think it would be better and cleaner if all this was not happening in a simulation happening in the real world.

But Dolores definitely said when she went into the control room, that was like a mirror of the season one control route or the host, she went in the world, she definitely said that that control room had a replica of all the hosts. Or sorry, all the humans or whatever. Yeah, I think that she's, I think that she, I don't believe that she's like in a you know, body suit somewhere where all this stuff is happening

in some, you know, in a computer simulation. I do think that it is the real world relatively. Now, I'm not sure that if you go, that there's a big distinction once you get beyond that, right? I mean, she could be walking on a treadmill when she thinks she's walking to work every day

or she could, you know, whatever. But like, I do believe that this body that we're seeing exists in the like corporeal world. that everything else is happening in. She says when she's in the room, she says this world is just a story and I'm the storyteller,

I think is what she says there. I think it would be so much cleaner if she's just there, and we saw her walking past stubs at some point or whatever, but we didn't. Wait, don't we think we, weren't there some screen grabs thinking that Aaron Paul ran past her?

That's not her. I looked at that scene. Oh, really? 100% not her. It's just a brunette in New York City. It's a pretty brunette in New York City. The,

they just, I feel like they worked really hard to make us think that this was the same place, same time, which with Westworld always makes me suspicious. A little too hard, you think? You know what I mean? I'm glad we started this episode off by agreeing it was all really simple and easy to follow. Well, deceptively so, maybe. The, um, the Chair Loris question in this episode, I was like, is that how we can track it? I'll just say she's wearing a different outfit.

when she meets Dolores than she was when she was sitting on the chair. So it's not like she walked, yeah, she's wearing black in that scene and white elsewhere. That's a good catch. You can have a costume change, you know what I mean?

Like you can dress differently for brunch if you want to, but. Well, no, no, but didn't she say I was here for just the day? Yeah. Yeah. So. It does, of all the stuff,

I mean, Charlor's plan coming apart does seem to, I mean, I guess does allow for a little bit of varied interpretation. But of all the arguments for her being, for, for there being a simulation. Yeah. For Christina being in a simulation, that scene was, I think, the most compelling.

Just, I mean, and not for any particular reason other than kind of a weird use of Charleros's time, right? I mean, when she could theoretically be in a simulation or something else. Okay. So here's my current sort of theory about why Charlotte, Hale Charter Loris would create Christina. There's a couple options here. One is that she wants to create the innocent Dolores, to find out what would I be like

if I never had to go through the harrowing bullshit that I went through? So what if I create a me that just gets to live a very nice life? And maybe that's just therapeutic to like get to see a. a version of yourself out there who's not had to suffer like you've had to suffer. Or maybe it's an experiment where she's trying to figure something out. Something I thought was really interesting was I was going back to episode one of the season to when Christina has this monologue at the end. She says, earlier when she was talking about the story she's creating for this, like,

Dolores analog that Christine was creating in the game. She says she dreams of a bigger life with excitement, adventure, and romance. I want to write a new story about a girl, a girl who's searching. The girl doesn't know what she's searching for. She just knows that there's an emptiness in her life, or maybe it's inside her. And when she finds the things she's searching for, everything will make sense. I want a story with a happy ending. Stupid, stupid stories, nobody wants to hear. So my theory is that like, bored God, Charlotte Hale, who's like, what is the point of all this? I'm so bored. What is the point of life? Has created a little innocent version of

herself. And she's watching her to find out what is it I actually? want. Does that, what do you guys think? I like that idea. I do think that there's, I think that the more evil Cheraloris gets the more, I'm sort of

looking for the face turn, right? Or at least the, the Ford style turn where it's like, it's not, it wasn't quite as diabolical as we thought.

Yeah, oh, the face turn, exactly. Sorry. I always mess up that particular wrestling a thing, not the heel turn, but the face turn, right? So like that whatever she's doing with Christina here, that's why, let's get to Teddy. That's why my new favorite theory is that Hale sent Teddy. Okay, let's start big umbrella question. Who is Teddy?

Danny Hyphitz. Who is Teddy? I kind of thought Teddy was Teddy, but I mean, I don't know. I suppose Teddy could be anybody. I suppose Teddy could be like Hale. But at that point, we get into the question of like, Hale is Dolores, but Dolores has become a lot like Hale, so if Hale, Dolores was in Teddy, I don't know.

Honestly, I get lost to all these questions. I kind of think Teddy is probably Teddy, but you're right, it depends on Hale's endgame. I probably agree that Teddy was probably sent by Hale because she just knew he was there and I'm torn. Because on one hand, it's obvious that Teddy was like, don't go off your loop, like we've already been here too long. Like, I don't want them to discover us.

on the flip side, Hail no, it's like, how could Hale not know that Teddy's there? It seems like impossible that Teddy could just be lurking in this world. How could Teddy go on a date with Dolores and Hale not find out? It feels like a ridiculous plan?

This seems like this, no, but that's a question. I mean, I think that question is much more sort of brick and mortar than it is just a philosophical question about the show, right? I mean, it's hard to imagine a version of this world if Christina is indeed out in the real world where Hale doesn't have one of her army of men in black following her around all the time, you know, or just like keeping an eye on her like, why not?

You have an endless supply of robots. All the humans are cameras, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, there's a few options, right? Like that he's actually Teddy and Bernard sent him, which was sort of what we had been thinking for a while. But I'm leading away from that now. Is he a remembered version of Teddy

and did Hale send him? Just the way in which, Dolores remembers Bernard and builds him, right? So is he remembered? Because Teddy's codes in the sublime and only Bernard has access. So if there's a Teddy here, it's a remembered Teddy.

It's not like core code Teddy, right? Well, do you think that's what happened? She's sent in Teddy as like a robot. Like, okay, protect Dolores to make sure nothing happens to her. But then during it, he's become whoever's in Teddy, maybe Teddy's in Teddy, maybe someone else in Teddy. Teddy's become more like Teddy and it's like,

oh, actually, you should know all this jazz. Well, maybe, but that seems a couple degrees too cute for me. If she wanted someone to protect Christina, she didn't need it to be Teddy, right? I do think that there's an argument that, like, a remembered Teddy is not significantly different than an actual Teddy. Oh, so you think he's not really there? No, no, no, no. I mean, if you had to make Teddy from scratch, based on your robot memories of him, you could, you would get to the teddy we've seen in the show up before this season without too much trouble, right? He didn't have much of a third dimension.

Oh, so she writes all these scripts and she's written Teddy. in? Yes, and to the degree that he's quote-unquote evolved, that script too. Well, I think you guys are talking about two different things. Danny's saying she and I think he means Christina and you're saying she and I think you mean Hale because there is a theory that like is Teddy just an imagined version. So there's like Teddy that Bernard said, Teddy that Hale said or Teddy that Christina has created an imagined in there.

And the quantum leap reveal of he doesn't actually look like. like James Marzen is coming for that character also. Like that's another thing that people are wondering, I think the fact that Maya can see Teddy means he's not imagined. Like I'm really on board with people always looking out for imagined people in Westroll. I think that's very smart. But I think because Maya can see Teddy. Because like last people were like is Maya imagined.

But like Teddy can see Maya and Maya can see Teddy. So unless they're both figments of her imagination. But if they're both figments of her imagination. Oh, man. But if Dolores can change the moods of any person in the entire, like, why couldn't, like, her, like, love? Why couldn't she have, like, manifested this person into real life? She could have. And that's, I think that he exists, but she made, she, like, recreated him from her memory the same way like she did with Bernard, basically all the, like, a bunch of times.

She just recreated Teddy in her head. But, like, is he just imaginarily there or is he physically there? I think he's physically there. And she basically, like, made him. But how does she make him if we're in the real world? I don't know. How does she control all these people? people's emotions.

She, I mean, the answer, if that's, if we're going to take that to be true, the answer is she wrote an existing person into that role and no, he probably doesn't really look like Teddy. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I think that's a really good compromise. Yes.

Someone else is that, I think that's a really, really good theory, actually, that like Dolores doesn't look, Christa doesn't look like Dolores, but has Dolores's unit and that she has taken a random dude and made him look like Teddy in her head, but like made him talk and sound and do Teddy things. but he's not Teddy. That actually all would track a lot. Because going back to the episode one thing I read, she dreams of a bigger life with excitement adventure, romance.

That comes before Teddy comes out of the shadows and beats the shit out of someone, right? So like she says romance and then Teddy shows up. No matter what, though, I still think Hale knows he's there. Because I think what's really important about that lunch scene between the two of them is that when Dolores tries out her new God powers and creates a,

distraction, a diversion from the conversation, Hale notices, and to me looks almost proud. Like, she's like, okay, she's figuring some stuff out. And so to me, it's like she wants Dolores, Christina, sorry, she wants Christina to wake up. Okay. I agree that she notices, but I don't think she's happy about it. Okay. What do you think, David? I guess this is maybe a stupid question, but why is Hale why does Hale feel like antagonistic right before that moment?

Why does she feel like she's, you know, I have a way of making people talk, like, why break character in that moment if in fact she's just trying to monitor the goings on or see how, you know, the evolution, Christina's evolution is going? I don't know, because sometimes Ford

would be weirdly antagonistic with Dolores in season one, even when he was trying to wake her up, you know? And I think those forward parallels, like, especially with, like, the scene of the hosts of the humans dancing in the street, which is so season one, the hosts, like, dancing in the street sort of thing. The four parallels are so strong. I'm still so happy to be wrong about any of this, but, like. Well, here's, I mean, I guess just, I don't know if it's time to put a bow on the Christina speculation or not. But I, but since you mentioned the four parallels.

Yeah. when I'm thinking about what Christina is or what Christina's reality is I saw somebody point out after last in the last episode when she overslept and woke up and there was the whole there is the painting she didn't remember painting that someone online suggested that like

Maya just put it there like Maya is the one who's doing the painting in the middle of the night and like but like then if that's part of Christina then like is Christa you know there's a lot of ways that we can look at this but I guess I keep thinking of the reveal from see Season one, that Dolores wasn't, that, that, that, you know, when Dolores was, was in the, the lab with Bernard, that she was actually testing him and he was, whatever, like, that whole

thing, like, what is the, what is the reveal for this season? Is it that, could you imagine, this is all speculative, I mean, this is just totally ridiculous, but is it easier to imagine replaying Christina scenes at the bar and having it turn out she's sitting there talking to herself if, by, through a quantum leap style fade or is it easier to imagine through quantum leap style fade that like everybody's faces are different when we when we refocus on it i'm totally 100% on team two it's actually she forced a different guy to act like teddy and i think it makes a ton of sense you're so right about season one like what's the twist here and i think and again let's just like for a second all the season one callbacks they did a

what door callback she didn't see that door and then walked through it they did the dancing as joe noted like the dancing was very season one the host goes crazy to murder scene like the milk guy in season one. I mean, the humans gaining consciousness. They have the control room in Manhattan. It's like inverted color-wise, but it's like the map they had of Westworld. They mentioned the Judas steer. They mentioned Waldgard. There is literally like 10 references in this episode to season one concepts.

However, one of the big season one things we're missing here is one of the timelines we saw in season one, all the stuff with Dolores and young William and her like leading astray and looking for the church and stuff. We basically later find out that Dolores has been. in some ways, wandering the park randomly, lost in her memories, like 30 years later, thinking she's doing things from 30 years ago. And it's like, actually, we're talking to yourself the whole time. To David's point, I think the season one callback that is hiding in plain sight is all these

things she's talking to Teddy are, I completely agree. It's not actually Teddy. It's a guy that she's making act like Teddy. And like, that's the big reveal. Like in season one, it was like, William's not there. And in this one, it's like, he actually is there. It's just not the guy. I'm totally open to that.

I'm still, of the options, I still prefer Hail Made Teddy and Sent him there. Also, what if it's Caleb? No. I don't, I think that's a twist too far. Don't you think? A twist too far should be the name of our podcast. But they kind of made Caleb a little William-like when he went to Temperance world. In season one, Dolores did all her weird stuff of what. I'm just saying.

It's true. Trying to make William Teddy. Maybe trying to make Caleb Teddy. I don't know. So to the point that Teddy makes at the end that this is a whole world of Christina's creation, right? Christina's world. Yeah. So is, I mean, is that, are we to believe that she is, that her storylines are powering the entire real world that Charlotte Hale is in charge of? No. What I think, I mean, I don't know the answer to this, but here's my best guess. that the only humans left are the ones that are in this Manhattan Park and the dusty rebels in the desert. And that's it. And then the rest of the world is just hosts.

You think we killed off all of humanity off screen and not only that, but like there's not a Shogun world for two-thirds of the Earth's population to be existing inhabited by flies? Yes, I do. What makes you think that? That's a big, that's even more. happening in the margins. Mine's a twist too far that like, what if Teddy's Caleb? And you're like, actually they slaughtered like 10 billion people.

I don't know. Like, because I think creating, because another reason to create Christina is to make her just like engine the stories of the park, right? Because Hale is like, I got other shit to do. So let me create a version of me to do that. But like, are there verses of her all around the world? Because like, I think if we're

inverting season one that in season one, the hosts are contained to the park. And I think in season four, the humans are contained to the park. You don't let the dinosaurs roam around the world. You put them in the park. It's true.

And you come and visit them, you know? Is it possible, though, that she just hasn't gotten around to the rest of the world yet? And she's, this is like, phase one is take over America or New York City or something. And the plan is to, you know,

to grow it from there. They said they conquered the world to a biblical degree. I'm not going to just a point for myself, the point for myself. They use the term conquered to a biblical degree. But I guess I disagree with Joe. Wait, maybe I'm confused. Joe, are you saying that like the whole world's been conquered and the humans are like fly, why fly like basically mental slaves? Are you saying like the humans are dead everywhere except Manhattan and these people in the desert? Like they're dead. It makes sense for everybody to be dead from, yeah, from a from a plan point of view. We were talking about that time, that Roebaum

timeline prediction from season three. And it was like mass casualty event, population collapse. 23 years. So that's now. Population collapse. So I think everyone's dead and the hosts get to hang out, well, Paris doesn't exist, get to hang out, you know, wherever else in Rome and Shanghai, whatever. And then like the humans just get to be slaves in the park. And that's it. Because the Y-fly tower, which kind of feels like special, one-of-a-kind, is only there. It's not all over the world. We don't know that. We don't know that.

No, you could definitely imagine, like, the last scene of the season is... Pull out and there are towers. Wow, fire towers everywhere. And the man in black has been meeting in a very weirdly granular level with every local leader around the world speaking different languages over the, you know, at the same time. Yeah. Because they're the whole army of them.

I know that this really isn't the point of anything. And even Westworld gets a, you know, pass for storytelling and contrivance. But if they're all mindwashed, brainwashed. brainwashed, sorry. Why is the tower invisible? Or was it only invisible to... It's invisible... Well, that's the question about Christina being a human, right?

Because let's talk about who can see the tower and who can't. As far as we know, all the hosts can see the tower. Yeah. But the humans can't. Except for outliers. If you're an outlier, which means you're a human and you've woken up, then you can see the tower. Which I'm not going to lie is kind of a silly plot point.

because it's much easier to explain, yeah, that's like the Chrysler building. Exactly. Think about it again. Just give it a name. Yeah, why did you make it look like a creepy web-covered needle? I don't know. It's New York. A lot of things are freaking disgusting.

That's ESPN's new headquarters in South Street Seaport. Everybody's cool with it. But the, but yeah, no, it's what I mean. It's like, except for the storytelling point, I'm not really sure what the plan is because it does make it more difficult. And also, as, you know, relating to what we just said, if we're, just expecting everybody to go about their lives. If the whole point is normalcy,

then it would be easier to let the rest of the world continue on in some form of fashion than to try to disguise the fact that the rest of the world is smoldering ashes. Charlotte says the world is ours. We've taken our masters and made them into what they made us. By any definition, we have conquered them to an almost biblical degree. I think Williams says that, but yes. I'm sorry. Thank you.

I don't know. And like, so, I mean, a good question is when she gets on the train, And she goes to New Jersey. What's going on in New Jersey, right? New Jersey looks pretty abandoned, except there are some people there that she's able to control. Christine is able to control with her little host mind. And she tells them to go away. Are those hosts where they human?

I don't know. And I mean, we don't know. The people we see Christina control in the park are those two people, her boss and the bus boy in the restaurant, right? Those are the people we see her overtly control. Are those humans or are they hosts? Humans. Do you think her boss at the gaming company is a human? Yeah, for sure, because she, like, told them what to do.

Because Teddy said any one of them could be one of us is what Teddy says. So there are some hosts in there also. I guess I'm confused. I'm glad we talked to with this. So when she, when Dolores, sorry, Christina and Teddy, are looking, and I thought it was so funny when he's like, do those people look happy? Do they look for Phil? I'm like, you could do that for right now for like the, I don't know,

five billion people in the world. Do you look happy? Do you look for Phil? But he points at them and he's like, change how they feel. And she does. Those were humans, right? Maybe. I totally 100% thought those were humans until you, until this moment right now. Me too. What would be the, so, sorry, no, no, let's ask you the question then. Okay. So wait, do you think that they're hosts?

And if so, what is the mechanism here? Or what is the implication? I'm sorry. I think I'm just making things more confusing. They're probably humans. But I just, the only person I think might be a host is her boss at work. Because Teddy says, people you think you know, people at work, any one of them could be one of us. So I think her boss at work.

So the question is, can Christina just control humans or can she control hosts as well? I think it makes more sense if she can just control humans from a narrative point of view. Okay. Because it makes her sort of the mave, like Fun House Mirror. So, yeah, completely agree on that she made. Yeah, she's like, yeah, she's, yeah, opposite Maeve from season one. She can control humans. And so I think her boss is a human, but, um, which I kind of enjoyed.

I enjoyed the plot line. Yeah. Let me get off. We can move on, but again, it's subverting our expectations, right? And they did the one door again with Bernard from season one where he couldn't see the door. And they opened it and they were like, oh, the walled garden is everywhere. And they closed and come back. It's the door.

It was nice. I only want to move on because I think I'm making things more confusing for people. So I want to ask about this outlier infection question. Danny already mentioned that this host killing a bunch of people is reminiscent of the milk glitching host from season one. It's also reminiscent of William killing a bunch of hosts because if we're doing the Funhouse Flip thing, there's that part in season one where William just like kills everyone all the hosts and takes them apart because he's having a mental. break from reality. So how exactly does an outlier infect a host?

How does that work? What do you think is going on there? I don't I mean, to the baseline, they're basically like, oh, this host was supposed to transcend and then she went off the rocker. And like the actual factual things we have are Williams, like the outliers are infecting the hosts

and making them kill themselves. And they've had like three dozen of these things happen. I think I assume the reason is basically the outliers have made the hosts question the nature of the reality and made the host just question the concept of free will, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know you want to call that. Empathy, I don't know.

But I feel like that's the main thread to pull on. Like the Derek Zoolander, who am I? David. Yeah. I haven't thought about this super deeply, but I'm sort of two minds about it. One, it's that I think that there's, if you, if you flip the script, right, go back to season one, if you as a Westworld goer, or somehow suddenly made aware that the host had consciousness, particularly after you had like raped and pillaged and murdered and everything else, you would probably have a pretty significant crisis, right? In that in that moment, if somehow you were immediately aware that everything you'd been doing, you'd been doing to sentient beings, you could imagine that that would happen and this is sort of the reverse, inverse.

whatever, of that. I actually think you just hit that. That's exactly it, because when season one, when young William finds out that Dolores, he thinks she's conscious, he's like, we can't do this, we can't hurt her, and Logan thinks he's crazy. And in this one, the hosts have basically been told the humans don't have consciousness. They're not really aware of it's going on. It's all a show, like the robots, like they don't have.

And then when they see, actually, these people are aware, it freaks them out. But then there's also the concept that we kind of wink at in this show of bootstrapping consciousness and the sort of last level there is to go to for the hosts, if they're going to, as I was talking about earlier, if they're going to transcend whether or not that's the direct meaning of transcendence in this usage. And we did see, you know, we saw Charlotte Hale cutting herself again,

which is probably, you know, a reference to James Delos as he was like incapable of reaching that final plane of consciousness when he was in his holding cell or whatever that was in the basement. And the one host who had gone on the killing spree, I don't know if she had done any self-harm, but she did sort of seem covered in blood and gore in a way that sort of implied it. So maybe I'm totally wrong,

but maybe it's just, maybe what the outliers are doing to the host is somehow alerting them to the fact that they are incomplete, that there is a higher level of consciousness that they have yet to attain, and that's sort of what drives people off their rocker. Can I talk to you about,

like what I think the big, big question commentary this maybe season and maybe this series is trying to say, which is, and we've talked about it before and the show has talked about it before, but I think it all comes back to mortality and this idea that nothing matters if nothing ends, this idea that Charlotte being so bored because nothing, you know, like when Caleb says, I have something you don't, and it's like, I have a sense of the importance of the world because because I know that things die. I've lost a friend. My friend died.

I know that things die and things end. And when you think about that idea of mortality, I feel like when Arnold loses his son in season one, that is like a big trigger for him to like question what's going on. And eventually when Arnold dies eventually, that has a lot to do with Ford sort of figuring out what he thinks of this world and how it should be. And so I think eventually what Charlotte may be actively working towards

is this idea of uploading your code to the cloud forever, is that true existence or is true existence putting a robot consciousness in a mortal body that will die because that means that life matters if life ends. Do you know what I mean? I think that makes a lot of sense. And as an addendum to that, one of the original premises of the show is suffering makes you real. Suffering brings reality.

And that once you reach the level where the humans were originally in the show or where the hosts are now, once you're no longer suffering, you basically just start questioning reality. And like that happened to William where he just was like, am I real? I don't know.

And then now it's happening to them again because they're not going through any adversity anymore. Yeah. And the idea that she's back like on the self-harm thing, What I think is so interesting about Hale or Cherlores, or whatever you want to call her from season three, is that she kept the burn marks on her arm, right? Like she was in this big explosion. She came out. She was charred, Loris, right?

She comes out. She fixes almost everything except for, like, that arm, right? And it, like, keeps it as this reminder. And again, that, that to me strikes me as, like, a reminder of mortality, right? like that we are vulnerable flesh. She's cosplaying vulnerable flesh, right? Because she could just slap a new arm in there, no problem. I just think that's a really interesting thing.

We had an email from a listener, Kevin. So the episode title of Zhu is from this very famous Chinese text. The most famous story from there is the man who dreams he's a butterfly and he wakes up and he can't decide whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man or a man dreaming he was a butterfly. And it's this whole thing about questioning the nature of your reality or what is real. If that feels more real than this or if you can't tell the difference in the parlance of Westworld, does it really matter? You know, all of that stuff. But there are other aspects of that text. And one of our listeners, Kevin wrote in saying this quote,

few are able to match the beauty of natural consequences and the earth cycles and the state, the content of effectiveness and discernment a little muddled. But Kevin says, Charlotte thinks she's conquered the world and has made it perfect with her wife like control. But I think she'll soon find out that the world slash nature is cyclical and not meant for unilateral control. Which again, to me, speaks of mortality. Or maybe it just speaks of like these cycles, right?

Humans on the up and up, hosts on the up and up. Like we're cycling loops, little loops. Little loops. I think you're dead right in the loops thing. I have a larger... I have another theory that ties them what you're saying, but can I also read... Sorry, how do you pronounce the Chinese philosopher's name?

I think I listened to a Harvard professor say it, so I think it's Zhuang Zhe. So I have another theory, another theory. I quote from that philosopher, and I think it perfectly explains the show. I'm going to truncate it a little. The quote is essentially, there was a beginning.

There was something before the beginning. There was something before the beginning, before the beginning. There was being. There was non-being. And it says, just now I have said something, and yet I do not know whether what I've said really means something or just not mean anything at all. And I read that and was like, that's Westworld.

That is Westworld. Classic. Wow. What is, what is, I love Westworld for that reason. because like I cannot decide whether or not it's empty calories or whether or not there's something really profound going on but if I can't tell the difference doesn't really matter you know what I mean?

I love this show. David, let's talk about your favorite character, which is Ed Harris in a bodysuit. Huge episode for Ed Harris in the bodysuit. David just loves guys, like bald guys with a little scruff. I don't know why. It's true.

Constantly, just constantly distracted by the smoothness of, bad Harris's head compared to the crags on his mortal face. Dare I say his bald head is like a like a fun mirror for you. Yeah, it's true. I can't imagine, and this show is, this show has had plenty of different versions of the same people. I can't imagine an actor filming a conversation with himself being as wonderful as this scene was,

any other actor in the world. I mean, this is just, it was just one of the great scenes. The fact that one of the two Ed Harris's was, you know, suspended, prone in a, you know, body suit circle, made it sort of, you know, visually interesting. First of all, is this the first time that we're, this is the first evidence that we have that Ed Harris, the human, sorry, that William the human is alive in the current storyline. Like, we know that he had been alive to the point where he had encountered a host of himself before. But he's fully right now, now, right? Yeah, confirmed human William alive in the now now now. Yeah, because we've seen Hale talked to him, but that could have been whatever.

But as, as day says, we're in the now now now. It's a sort of interesting wrinkle in the show, right, that humans can also live forever if they're body suited up, I guess. That's what I'm saying. Immortality is bullshit for everyone. Humans shouldn't get it and host shouldn't get it either. Wasn't there an episode of like Jim Hinson Storyteller that dealt with this issue? I love Jim Henson storyteller.

Wasn't there an issue? Wasn't there one where they killed death? I mean, I know this is like a classic old like nerdy like a fairy tale or whatever. Yeah, it's a Brothers Grimm storyteller. I thought there was a Jim Henson storyteller where they killed death and then it ended with all the old people sitting around complaining because they were so alive, you know? But yeah, this is a real, I mean, it's obviously a narrative with a lot of historical resonant.

But yeah, I thought that it was not just because the acting was so great, but I think it is in terms of the way direction this show is going to go, I mean, the idea that there's like a William, host William Alliance in the offing, I think is one of the most sort of exciting

things that could happen, right? I would love that. I would love that. The fact that, the fact that despite, and maybe, you know, Hale's spending too much time micromanaging Christina and giving her, you know, fidelity tests in the cafe or whatever she's doing.

Maybe she, maybe her plan is too big even for her robot mind to handle. But it does seem sort of incredible that she drove and maybe it's part of the plan. She drove host Man in Black to William and to a spot where he

seems almost inevitably is being forced into some, not just consciousness, but forced into switching sides a little bit, right? Sounds like you've reached the center of the maze, my friend. I'm just like, this is what I love about Westworld is I'm like, what does that mean, though? Like, exactly.

Like, achieve true, bootstrap consciousness, a tree, too, like, what does that mean to be at the center of the maze? You're fully cognizant of something. And if they're all just hails code, which is what William says, we're all you. She had to code all of them into existence from her own code because she doesn't have access to the sublime. who, you know, what is a William at the end of the day and all of that? So should we talk about Stubbs or Danny is there anything you want to say about William,

the William V. William scene? No, I thought Ed Harris summed it up with the Will with the, Who Am I? Great stuff. Yeah, which Ed Harris was that. I mean, and also this does, we talked about, I mean, I mentioned the previous time that we'd seen William come face to face with his host. But this is just, this is the, again, the Funhouse Mirror version of that, right? This is now, now the first one, William was just like, what the hell, do you mean there's more than one of me? Which is where we'd always sort of seen William in the past, right, dealing with his own, trying to reconcile with his own mortality.

Am I human? Am I a host? And then in the flash forward sequence, which may be closer than we thought at the time. You remember the stinger from last season? Or from season two? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, where we're like, is this hundreds of years in the future?

And, like, if they're like, actually, it's 23 years, I'll be like, okay, sure. Maybe. I guess so. Yeah, a lot of, but just, but in that sequence, he's sort of, am I a host? What am I? Like, whatever. And now he's just sort of like, I know fully who I am. I know what the issue is.

I mean, I know that they can make host of me. I know that they're basically me. But I'm not the one yelling who am I. I've, he's at a place now where he's comfortable with his own humanity because he's a human, but that's significant. He's like this body suit's pretty great, so I'm having a good time. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet.

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Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. Stubbs, I don't know if there's much else to say other than the fact that like tweet fucking tweet is a great line read. Just just great line read. But also he has that significant. They almost learned something from the park line that he says about the way in which Hale has built this thing to be very similar to the park.

But like do you have any sense of like what Stubbs feels like they didn't learn? Did he say almost or they must have? I thought he said they must have learned something from the park. I thought he said almost. Maybe must have. I think everyone could learn something from Stubbs, who's very funny every time he speaks. Do you want to swab the deck? Swab the deck.

You're right. He said, Hale must have learned something from the park. You're right. Okay. Scrap that question. Stubbs is funny. That's the whole point. Swab the deck, Joe.

Daniel Wu gets to do a cool slide move, not the full extent of his martial arts skills, but he gets to run up some stairs and do a slide move. So, okay. Wait, did we, I don't know if this is later in the notes. He did sort of disappear into the shadows for a minute in that stairwell. Uh-huh, sure did. Do we, or we must be. Oh, my God.

What are we saying here? I've seen this theory on Reddit that, that, that he's been host replaced, right? That guy and the two C was going up the stairs. They're on like the ninth floor. He like stops on the stairwell and then we don't see him for a minute. Oh, my God. I'm not going to this didn't even occur to me. You're telling me that it wasn't just like movie TV timing where he ran up, like something.

He was replaced in the stairwell at that moment in time. What happened at Caleb's house pretty quickly? That was like, that seemed like hours. Not like that. What we're talking about a span of like minutes here, aren't we? Oh, yeah. It would have had to have been like but a bittibu boom. Also, to what end?

Why would they be replaced and then kill William when the whole thing she was like, kill this woman? Maybe it's more important. and see what they got back in the base. A mole in the operation. Because the whole thing felt sort of like a trap, right? Well, it was a trap in the sense that the man in black was there. It's ridiculous that they got away. Let's just be clear.

They just ran in, grabbed a lady, hopped on a boat and sped off. We're just going to have to jump ahead and do that this maze was not meant for you, the dumbest team award. Because I think the dumbest team award very clearly goes to this rescue team. because they panned in on Manhattan and there is one, one single boat coming up the Hudson River. Literally one boat.

And this is the people trying to blend in. Let's be the only boat on the Hudson River in broad daylight and we'll show up and no one will see us, even though the whole freaking tower is on the river. What are they doing? I also have a classic Game of Thrones questions about location and how long it gets from one place.

another. Like, is the desert crew in Nevada? I said it right that time, I think. Right? Why did they have a boat? So, like, did they take a boat around the Gulf of Mexico to get to New York? And how long did that take? Bada big, bada boom, to quote David Shoemaker, like, how long is it take to get from the desert waste of Nevada to... Even if they drove or flew or did whatever, they must have gone. gotten to New York and decided we'll take like, I don't, a boat to Manhattan instead of, I don't know, the dozen forms of various public transportation you could just take and blend in. I thought this was very silly.

Maybe there are walls around because there has to be, there have to be walls around this park, right? Christina went to New Jersey like really nilly. You're right. I don't know. I thought it was very funny. Honestly, it got us to stub swab the deck line. It looks great, but I had questions.

I was like there's literally one boat in the harbor. Even if there were like nine other boats in the river, I wouldn't be yelling about this. I just was so funny that they're trying to blend in, so we'll take a boat in the middle of the day. I agree. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you just have to say a few more things out loud. I mean, I thought the boat was, yeah, I agree about the boat.

Also, when they walked into town, you know, like it didn't seem like somebody should have just said, hey, play it cool, you know, or at least somewhere. This is what frustrates me with the show. Like these are all, these are humans, but they're kind of like robots. So let's just everybody straight face it. All right. Let's not be too.

Let's not try to stand out. We change our clothes, but like, let's, you know, whatever. I don't know. What frustrates to me with the show is that, look, the real answer to what we're saying is 95% probably it's TV. Just go with it. Why are you learning about this? But the problem is this is the show that's like, well, when it's widescreen, the character knows they're in a simulation.

And it's like, when a show asks you to look into the details like that, it's not too much for us to be like, why is there only one boat on the river? So maybe it was too easy. Maybe it was just too easy. Maybe it was a trap. And it's a little point. I don't know. I think that in terms of the time, like,

not time travel, the time it takes to travel somewhere. Yeah. I'm willing to overlook that until we're given a reason to believe it matters. I just think it's bizarre that these things are happening on like opposite ends of the country. Like, why aren't they have,

why aren't we in a desert waste a little closer? I guess there aren't any East Coast desert waste. That's why. Yeah. No, to travel. I mean, yes. It would be nice if they would explain it, although maybe the real explanation will be significant

when it comes when we finally get it. But, you know, this far in the future that you could travel that far, even with like a, you know, whatever the futuristic equivalent of like a, you know, 68 Chevy pickup truck with one wheel falling off is, yeah, it's feasible that you could just travel

really quickly, you know, in the future. That might not matter in the show. It probably will, though. I also let that whole scene look so much like Inception, like the inception, like the base dream world where the whole premise of like, everyone in this city will attack you because we're in a, I don't know,

you're in a dream. And everything, so many parts of this episode reminded me of inception, including them being at dinner and being like, you don't know my name and just very inceptiony. That was a fun scene, though. Ed Harris is having so much fun in that scene, that opening dinner scene.

And then Clementine rolls up. Like, I thought that was really fun. It's like the staging of that sequence was that he was had dinner trying to recruit the mayor of, did we know what city though? He wasn't the mayor. The guy was bragging about being richer than the mayor, I think, and being like, I'm in judge.

He was just fucking with them. He was just fucking with two humans. He was just playing with them. And then he had to go do work. He and, you know, as the like beat cop of the Manhattan Park or whatever, the stubs, I guess. And then he was like, stay here, don't move. And then they had to just sit there as the restaurant emptied out

because he told them not to move. And then he came back to fuck with them some more. And he asked what his name was. And that was just an incredible, incredible reaction. We've all been there, you know, where you're real, you're on, having dinner with somebody. And you realize you don't remember their name. We're old friends. We're old friends.

I haven't used Shoemaker's first name in five years. I wonder why. Yeah, the boat thing was conspicuous. The boat thing, by the way, the boat thing could also just be, they were filming during COVID. And they had a lot of weird, weird filming issues with how they could like. That's true. extras and whatnot. I did like, it seemed to me like William gave a little smile, like, because William saw

Stubbs in the group. And it seemed to me like William gave a little stub, like, oh, hey, Stubbs. Hey, that guy's here. Oh, I interpreted that as I can't wait for all these people to murder these people. But what are them as Stubbs? This time it's personal. We have very different reads of that smile. Fair enough.

I love though, by the way, what do we make of when, when the outlier is there on the roof staring at the tower. Yeah. And she starts monologing to the person that approaches her as if it's... The expectation is that it's one of the, you know, one of the other outliers

and she starts talking to him like a kindred spirit and it turns out to just be William who got there first. Is the fact that like these outliers are just like ready to monologue at the drop of the hat and assuming everybody is like-minded?

Is that sort of like self-referential? Is that just a wink at like what we've seen before in these moments or does it not really matter? You know what I mean? I know exactly what you mean. I think it's similar to the man, because we got the story of the man

who was on the street in the earlier episodes, right? That he's an outlier. And I assume that this woman was his ex-wife in this episode. Possibly. Like, they made that plausible, right? If he's any indication, once you're outlying,

you are going to model. to anyone who will listen because you're having a break with your reality, right? Like, he was just shouting stuff on the street, right? So she's shouting stuff. She's monologue on a rooftop. Sort of seems similar. Do we think that Maya, who is having fly dreams? Do we think she's headed towards, like, Outlierville?

Like, is she about to wake up and see the tower? It would make a lot of, it would make the story a little bit neater if that was indeed what's going on with her, as opposed to one of the myriad other things. I agree. Okay. Ramin Chavadi Corner really quickly. There was a little snippet of nine-inch nails the day the world went away when during lunch that Dolores and Charlotte were having. Lou Reed's Perfect Day, of course, hit the street dance.

And Handel Sarabande was the classical piece of music playing on the keyboard, not by Anthony Hawkins, but just by some rando guy with bloody fingers. We're officially at Theory Corner We've kind of been theorizing this whole time But Danny, is there anything Any other big picture theory corner stuff That you want to mention here? Yeah, we hit a lot of Theory Corner Let me just expand a little bit

On what Hale was saying about the sound and stuff She says that the Earth had a natural rhythm That made people happy And basically she basically said it made them I think the term she was like Harmony or harmonic but they dip below that frequency and it creates chaos basically saying people have the range of sound you can hear just like there's ultraviolet light there's range of light you can't hear there's a range of sound you can't hear and she was saying the earth has that sound and i was kind of like amazed at that concept and they actually mentioned it again in the making of the episode yeah lisa joy expounded on it yeah so i looked into this and it's actually kind of a realish thing so there's earth the earth is something called a heartbeat it's not really like a heartbeat but basically but basically the Earth has, for lack of a better term, like this electromagnetic pulse field, it's,

I believe it's like 8 hertz. I couldn't get the exact measurement of it. But basically, there's a bunch of theories that's either like there's solar radiation, there's the Earth gets struck by lightning like 50 times a second, there's ocean waves, there's all these things going on that are kind of like creating electromagnetic waves that people can probably detect. And they've done some studies and people are able actually, this actually might affect people's brain waves in a way.

and again, that sounds probably a lot cooler than it actually is. It's really more like your brain can detect these things. And there's a pretty like cockamamie theory out there that enough people might actually be able to affect the earth back. Like not only can the earth's quote unquote heartbeat affect your brainwaves, but if everyone was collectively super stressed, like theoretically the pandemic, everyone's stressed and anxious at the same time, you could affect the brain weight, the earth's heartbeat back. Now, I don't think that is true.

That doesn't seem super plausible that everyone on Earth is being stressed and that affects the Earth. I don't think that's true. However, in this show, the fact that they've actually brought up, well, the Earth has a natural rhythm that we've disturbed and it controls everyone now. Just like the theory of consciousness that they had from June's theory of consciousness didn't work, but they're like, but it could work on the robots. I kind of think that where this is going is. is the same way the tower emits a sound and it controls the people. If Dolores either makes people feel a certain type of way, literally,

or wakes up enough people, their feelings and emotions could be turned back on the tower and like turn the tower off or mess with the tower. And that you, like, basically the power of numbers will actually be able to mess with the frequency just by people waking up in and of itself in mass, we'll mess with the tower. And that's kind of think where we'll be heading in this season.

I'm definitely the tower is blowing up before the end of the season. Though is that... Even a Westworld to be tone deaf enough to like try to like, oh yeah, we're going to have a show, a season building toward blowing up a tower in New York City. Yeah, I mean... This isn't exactly like waiting, like the ninjas attacking the hero one at a time in terms of like villain's stupidity.

But it is sort of like a recurring theme on this show that these people put a lot of time and ever. effort into a giant suspended ball. Yeah, exactly into conquering the world and then suspending it by toothed, by dental floss. You know, not yet. A thinly veiled metaphor of spider webs and flies. I would just,

I would just bury my, whatever my devices, I would camouflage, to your point, camouflage it or bury it underground and not make it such an easy target. A good metaphor for this show, though, a good explanation of like some of the show's flaws of like, I just wish they had run it by like a regular person and been like, does this make sense? And in that process, someone would have been like, maybe don't like have the whole season, you know, in New York City akin to, you know, don't blow up the tower. Call it something else. Maybe they won't blow up the tower. You're probably, someone probably said don't do that.

So they probably won't do that. I just want to correct. I've had a couple emails about this. A bunch of people are like, I think it's two on the nose. The tower is where the statue of liberty is. That's not where the statute of liberty is. And in fact, we get a shot of the statute of liberty in this episode. So like, I don't live in New York.

but I have been to New York and that's not where the Statue of Liberty is. It's out on the water, sure, but it's not, you know, on Liberty Island or whatever. It's actually the site they used is for the tower. It's a real place. It's the Port Authority Station and it's going to take 80 years to build, but eventually it's going to be up in four. I mean, what's really fun that we find out in the upper episode is that it's actually a hotel and Cabo. That's their second Cabo location. So they were just like just decided to shoot a bunch of Cabo, which.

They're just using HBO's money to go to Cabo. It's brilliant. It's great. We actually have to do this podcast the rest of the season in Cabo. Yeah, that's what I was told. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do a look ahead unless there's anything else you guys want to talk about this episode. Okay, great.

Let's go ahead, yeah, yeah. The title of the next week's episode is Fidelity. And we know from me, I mean, Caleb's coming back. So, you know, that's all I have to say about that. Anything you guys want to say about Fidelity and Caleb and what you hope to see from that episode. More Aaron Paul cry screaming. That's all I can never hope for.

I feel like my philosophical yearnings are being met or at least being like sated, right? Like the like the like the like the like the deep questions of the show are at least are being answered or some of them are being answered with regular enough regularity that I'm not spending my off time like cataloging the things that the show is leaving unresolved. They're resolving so much. No, I know. This is what I'm saying. I'm not spending time making a list. Like that list making has been a big part of watching the show over the past few seasons. And especially the past two.

And the momentum is frankly sort of stunning. You know, what am I hoping for? I'm hoping that I'm like entertained for 50 minutes like it happened for the past three weeks. Yeah. I mean, that's how I feel about like watching Tessa Thompson sit on a chair made out of people. Like, you know, and Lisa Joyce said in the after episode, video that she wanted to do that in season one. And someone either emailed us or tweeted at me, like, what do you bet if that had happened in season one? Those people would have been

naked. I was like, 100%. That's what Westworld was doing in season one. But she wanted to do a human chair in season one. She got to do it in season four. But that's the kind of stuff where like I'm not so spun out, trying to figure out what the hell is going on around me. I can just enjoy these flourishes, these stylistic flourishes. I can enjoy Tessa Thompson. just like cooking with gas, playing a board god, you know, hanging out in the middle of the street.

Yeah. Yeah. Danny, how are you feeling about the season? I mean, I think Shoemaker put it well with the momentum is great. The momentum is going well. I think the mistake of season three was kind of putting the plot twist,

the reveals ahead of like actually an enjoyable plot. I think the season's doing a way, way better job of sacrificing, some of the obviousness of the plot twists for more enjoyable content. So I'm enjoying this season way more. I have one, this isn't really a quam, one knit. In terms of plot twistiness,

we've made our fair share of Cylon jokes on and off the air as well as I'm sure anybody watching the show, right? I mean, it seemed like at various times we've been on the verge of, is it a robot, is it a human being the point of the show too frequently? This season, not the case,

at all. And I think that actually there's like a weird sacrifice they have to make because when Caleb shows up in the next episode, like the only confusion about who's a host and who's a human is sort of self-delusion, right? So Caleb's going to show up as a host. Is there going to be anybody that's surprised, or not surprised, but is there going to anybody

confused as to his nature of the nature of his mortality? You know what I mean? Like if he walks up to Charlotte Hale, is she going to be like, oh, well, Charlotte killed him, I guess. But like, if he walks up to anybody else, they're going to be able to intuitively know that he's a host, right?

Yeah. So, you know, I don't know that that's going to be the question that next week's going to ask. No, no, no, I don't think it is either. Yeah. But, I mean, so presumably the sort of cliffhanger, I mean,

he's a host now, right? But do you think we're going to wrap that up in five seconds in the next? This is a separate question. We're just going to, that, I mean, the momentum the show's moving at, we're just going to establish that that's true and then move forward with host Caleb

as the savior of the host or whatever the plot's going to be? Yeah, probably. I think what we said, I forget when we said this, but it's like, I mean, Plot twist, spoiler for Edersteller and skip this if you don't want to hear.

But the same way, understeller at the end, he sees his daughter, but he's like, his daughter is like 60 years older than him by that point. Probably something similar of like him and his daughter will be like a similarish age and we'll probably, I mean, I have to assume they're going to meet at this season, right? So at some point, I don't know, but next episode, Caleb and his daughter will meet and it'll be very just nice and also kind of awkward. one more question though again stupid question I'm sure there's an obvious answer to this are we sure Caleb's not in a body suit somewhere one can only hope

she said they killed them please at this point please email us at Aaron Paul bodysuit at D.com just kidding I have not I have not we don't have to claim that because you said it now we have to claim it don't email it because we're going to stick to Ed Harris bodied suit but now we have to claim Aaron Pollock

Aaron Paul body suit that one we might get a cease and desist for having that let me float let me float one other thing by you you know what that should be your um your better call saul email for you and you and ben mr paul body suit yeah Aaron Paul hoodie Aaron Paul Beanie to hide the fact that Aaron Paul is not uh no longer 20 years old okay we're just like yeah bitch and just like have enough h's until it's like a unique

Gmail we have another stupid question Is William an outlier or is it even that remotely significant to his story? I think I don't know and no. I don't know if he's an outlier and no, I don't know. The outlier thing's confusing to me. Well, in terms of Caleb being, like the big question we were asking is why was Caleb important, right? Why is he important? And then we were sort of like, is it just because he's an outlier?

Could that be why? And I kind of feel like, yeah, that's why. I hate the outlier thing. I got to say, this is my least favorite part of the last two seasons. It's a little insulting that they're just like, yeah, you're 99% of people. You got no idea what the fuck you're doing. These random like two percent of people who like can make their own decisions cool. Now, do you get any inkling into like why or how?

Nope, none. It's just like these two percent of people make decisions. The rest of you are like losers sucks to suck sheeple. And I don't know. I think it's really odd that there's no insight into why or how. I wonder if we get it because. the theme again of this season is the choice, right? And it's the outliers that can make a choice.

And Charlotte says this whole thing, like William is like, if you wanted all the host to transcend, why don't you just make them all do it? And she says, because I want them to have choice, right? Because that's what they would have done. That's what the humans would have done to us. So I'm trying to be a better God than the humans that came before us and let my host babies have a choice. But they're making the wrong choice.

And I would like to... Wait, the choice as it pertains to humans, I mean, are you implying that you just, you can be an outlier if you set your mind to it? No, but if you are an outlier liar, you can make choices that non-outliers can't. What it is. Okay. So what's his significance? I mean, I think in the very broadest sense, we've seen Charlotte Hill trying to figure out, like, she has a plan, but now she's trying to like, like retroactively build her brain trust, right? So there's, so she has, she's building, she is somehow trying to incubate Christina, which is just sort of represent or which is

Dolores, the most bootstrapped of all hosts historically, right? She has, she deliberately kept William alive in his body suit all this time because he's this sort of most weirdly philosophical of all humans.

Like, in terms of deliberating about his own morality, and then we have, then we have Aaron Paul, then we have Caleb, who's the sort of most outliery of outliers. It's sort of she's just getting the sort of best version of each thing and putting them all in her little menagerie.

I don't know what the point is, but it does seem like she's sort of recruiting the best of the best in some sense. I think the plot, I'm sorry to keep harping on this, but I feel like the plot again is, she's got, she said she's God in this.

It's God, Moses, Moses was like, you know, guys, right-hand man. And she's Moses, and she comes down, and she's like, all right, let's go to the promised land, let's transcend. And everyone's like, but I love the sin.

I love the false idols. Sin is dope. And she's mad. Give me, Give me the golden calves. All right. Same listener, Kevin Ronan, letting us know that the larger tagline of the season

is destroy your enemy by making them your friend. Just like quick reactions to that. Who do you think is making someone their friend in order to destroy them? David Shoemaker. Can't deny that. What is it? Destroy your enemy by making them your friend.

I think it's just like, I mean, you know, dogs evolve to like be really nice. And now they're like, oh, like, you know, we give them a nice kissy life. It's like the humans are like, oh, if you befriend the host, they won't, you know, murder and slave you. Well, we see the man in black, you know, out there making friendly overtures to all these politicians before he replaces them. And I guess in a sense, inviting the whyfly people into host town. and sort of made, I mean, into the world that she's creating is opening, you know, her arms to her humans, even though they're never, they're losing humanity in the process.

I think it's like this show at the core, it's a Western, and I do think the core question of the show, if we could boil down to a sentence, it's like the most Western storyline, which is like, this town ain't big enough for the two of us. Humans, hosts, one of you got to go. And the upper hand of power is with these biblical themes of the humans create the host,

forever and ever, and then one creating the other. As the balance of power shifts, it's the one with the short end of the straw is like, hey, we're not so different, you and I, and they feel bad, and then the balance of power shifts, and eventually they'll have to find some term of long-term equilibrium. Which is hybrids, I think, I feel like. Yes, I think a hybrid host human is where it has to go.

Like a centaur, like the top half is a host And the bottom half is a human... More like a sater. Like a sater, right? Right. Like Passover? What is? Robot hoofs and a robot tail and human upper torso.

Murman, pa. Murman. All right. I just want to circle back to something that Danny referenced earlier, which is the walled garden concept from season one. Ford said that to Dolores, like your mind is a walled garden. Things bloom there. Nothing can touch it.

So like that. But I also just always want to bring things back to the same. Alice in Wonderland idea because they've always cast Dolores as a sort of Alice in Wonderland figure in a blue dress, et cetera. So the walled garden that Alice is always trying to get into in Alice in Wonderland, when she finally gets there, there's a mad queen painting the roses red and trying to play croquet with flamingos, et cetera. I feel like she's inside the walled garden and the mad queen is herself, aka Charlotte.

like just making people like that that is that is red queen behavior uh queen of hearts behavior is what Charlotte is doing like making people dance and play the keyboards until their fingers are bloody so I feel like we've made it to the center of the maze in the garden and it is like the whole point in Alice is like she idealizes was at the center of what's in this wild garden and when she finally gets in there it's a shitty hells game honestly um so welcome to the center of the maze and the Wild Garden, everyone. It's scary here. Anything else we want to talk about for Westworld this week?

Do we do it? I think we did it. I mean, there's so much more we could talk about. Isn't it so fun to talk? I'm so glad we're doing this show. I'm so glad I get to talk to you guys about it every week. Thank you guys are doing it. And I'm so glad I'm sure everyone listening to this can sympathize.

I'm so glad that it's like an exciting show to talk about. And not just in terms of Danny's readings of the Old Testament and how it pertains to it, but just like the actual action of the show, you know, dudes getting replaced in the shadows as stairwells and stuff. I love Danny's Old Testament reads, and I'm going to, I have some emails to forward to you, Danny. Actually, we got a lot of responses to those theories, so I want you to see them. All right, well, we'll be back next week with Fidelity and presumably Aaron Paul. In the preview for next week, we see Charlotte, like, pull his hair and talk about making him her pet.

Like, this is, this feels hornier even than season one. sort of what's going on with Charlotte Hale. I'm just going to put that out there. I don't think anything could be hornier than season one. I think season one was like more overtly horny, like teenage boy horny. And then this season is more like S&M adult horny. Do you know what I mean? Oh, yeah, the 100-person orgy with people covered in gold in season one.

Yeah, that's probably teenage boy. All right. We'll be back next week with whatever that might bring for us. This episode was produced by Carly. Sheriboga, please do email us at Harris Bodysuit at gmail.com and we'll see you next time.