Westworld - Contrapasso - Review: “Heroes and villains”

“Perhaps you are unravelling,” Dolores is told towards the end of Westworld’s fifth hour. She is told this by a vision of herself, the second such vision she’d had during the course of “Contrapasso”, one she sees thinking she is sat opposite a woman reading tarot cards. The woman simply does not exist - she certainly isn’t another Dolores - and the cavity in her arm created by pulling on a loose thread of skin was also an illusion.

As the first half of this debut season has progressed, Dolores - and indeed Maeve, though more on her later - has been moving ever closer to uncovering the truth about her existence, learning that she isn’t real. And while “Contrapasso” did manage to progress things in that regard too, these scenes were indicative of something else. Yes, her ability to pull open her skin and seemingly feel no pain, only the emotional shock of seeing that happen, is a big red flag - had it actually happened. But it didn’t. What’s important here is that, in human terms, one might suggest Dolores is losing her mind. Furthermore, Westworld provided a potential reason either for her state or a way to fix it: Arnold’s voice inside her head.

Though she told Ford that she’d had no contact with her creator for 34 years, 42 days and seven hours - aka when he died - she soon tells William that there’s a voice inside of her that says she needs him. It’s interesting to contemplate why that might be; Dolores has prolonged her loop for several days now, and I can’t help but wonder whether that’s the key. Two weeks ago, I wrote about how the loops and the reveries will ultimately collide and cause the impending AI rebellion, but with Dolores, the more she’s stuck in this version of herself, the more she’s learning and the closer she’s getting to realising the truth. Teddy’s attempts to keep her safe are always going to come up short since he’s a host and killable (and essentially designed to be put to the slaughter at any given point; he’s the Sean Bean of Westworld), but William’s inability to be killed as a guest (*) makes him far better equipped to keep Dolores on her path.

(*) One question still remains here: with Logan taken prisoner by the ex-Confederates, is it possible for him to die from, say, a loose punch? We’ve seen that Teddy couldn’t put a bullet in Man in Black’s head, and that the stray from two weeks ago smashed his own head in with a rock to avoid killing Elsie, but there’s ultimately no way of telling if a punch could unintentionally irreparably damage one of his major organs.

For Dolores, though, this was a pretty big episode. Not only is her robotic mind beginning to falter (or, arguably, strengthen in ways that will be problematic for Ford and co.) but she transitioned from the scared stable girl - the damsel, as she put it - to a woman looking like she belongs in the world Logan sees. A woman who, without much hesitation, drops a group of ex-Confederates in the blink of an eye. A woman who is prepared to shoot a crate of nitro-glycerine if she doesn’t get what she wants (*). That’s a big change, one that makes me hope that she doesn’t exit this loop for quite some time.

(*) Given that William was in the train car too, Dolores would have never actually fired that bullet. Even if Lawrence didn’t know that, any attempt at tension was greatly diminished.

More than that, it’s a change that speaks to the nature of her personality, and the state of personality within the park. Earlier, Ford had asked in her “dream” whether she’d be a hero or a villain, were she to take on a bigger role for herself; later, Logan asserted that “there is no such thing as heroes or villains”. Certainly, there’s a case to be made that Dolores just turned herself into the hero of her own story, but Logan’s words are fascinating. Is she a hero outright, or just a hero in comparison to the wretched hive of scum and villainy (to borrow a line from Star Wars) that exists within Westworld? Can there truly be any heroes in such a violent and artificial place?

What we do know, however, is that there can be villains. Wyatt is a villain. The ex-Confederates are villains. And now we learn that The Man in Black has turned himself into a villain in an effort to improve the park. It speaks to his obsession with the park - and perhaps a hint of desire for control and/or narcissism - that he’d do such a thing; ultimately, he probably knows this place as well as if not better than Ford does. Having created it, Ford’s view of the park would be different and perhaps less critical in places where Man in Black would see through the issues (similarly to Ford poking holes in Sizemore’s second episode storyline), especially having been attending for three decades.

The conversation between the two men was tense and engaging, and watching Hopkins and Harris do their thing together was wonderful. There’s a mutual sense of respect and yet dislike that radiates from the encounter, like two former friends meeting for the first time in years and unable to fully put water under the bridge and move on from the past. It sheds some light into the relationship between them and the park - and helps explain Stubbs saying in the second episode that Man in Black gets whatever he wants - but also raises more questions: namely, is it simply through regular attendance that Man in Black knows Ford, or is there something deeper? (*) Certainly, there’s history there; the assertion that the park only survived because of Man in Black appeared to vex Ford. In any event, I’m curious to see what happened on the day Arnold died and learn the truth about their past.

(*) Man in Black told Lawrence early in the hour: “As another old friend of mine likes to say, there's a path for everyone. Your path leads you back to me.” I’m not completely sure as to whether Ford has said this during any of the previous episodes, but I’m confident in saying he’s the only real candidate for saying this.

“Contrapasso” was a solid episode that felt like it was setting up more than it endeavoured to resolve, though the progression Dolores made was excellent. Still, there was a lot going on within the hour to enjoy.

Other thoughts:
• As mentioned above, Logan’s in some trouble after being set up by El Lazo, aka Lawrence. It’s entirely possible that this is where the “No one can die in the park” theory will be broken, Logan’s death being the one to send the park into disarray.

• The conversation where Logan told William how he really feels was brutal. No wonder William didn’t save him from the ex-Confederates.

• I’m not going to address the multiple timelines theory with regards to Lawrence - a) because I’d rather just let things play out as they will, and b) if I write about this, I fear a necessity to write about all of the major theories and their status each week, and that’s a rabbit hole I’m not going down - but I am intrigued by how his loop works right now.

• So, the orgy scene. It says a lot about the state of cable television - and shows on HBO, in particular, though other networks aren’t innocent - that while I didn’t not notice it, I hadn’t actively paid attention to what it was until I saw a half dozen articles popping up on Twitter about it. One of my notes during that scene was commenting on it being a Game of Thrones style sequence, and both that and this show’s almost obsessive desire to populate the background of its scenes with graphic sex is intriguing, to say the least.

• Maeve’s awake and wants to have “a chat” with Felix, the butcher who supposedly failed to put her in sleep mode last time. This pretty much confirms that sleep mode is insufficient at this point and that the hosts’ programming will override the command whenever it feels like it.

• Teddy not only didn’t die once again, but Man in Black managed to bring him back from the brink of death by giving him some of Lawrence’s blood.

• Ford tells Dolores that they aren’t friends, but I’d imagine they have more to their relationship than what we know of them now.

• Someone managed to embed some tech into a host to transmit data out of the park, which means that there’s a serious security issue. Either that, or Ford’s doing something shady.

What did everyone think of “Contrapasso”?