Lingo

Actually, I thought Abernathy was lobotomized. I definitely recall seeing a robot getting lobotomized in the pilot episode; pretty sure it's Abernathy. BTW, something that was interesting about the pilot was that Bernard whispered something into Abernathy's ear as he was putting him away into cold storage, something we didn't get to hear. It may be nothing, it maybe coincidence, or it may be why Charlotte chose Abernathy ... although since Bernard is Ford's robot slave it's hard to imagine he and Charlotte being in the same conspiracy. I agree with all of this, except what was bolded. According to Ford, it was Arnold who built Ford's robot family, as a sort of creepy personal favor. But I imagine Ford amusing himself by "returning the favor" after Arnold's death. Why did Ford (according to the theory) build a robot in Arnold's image? Perhaps because he is sentimental and misses his old friend. Or perhaps the sadistic fuck loves the idea of having his former rival now be his own personal slave. Perhaps a little bit of both. I'm pretty sure we haven't seen Dolores flash back to MIB when in William's presence. If we did, it's possible what you actually saw is present-day Dolores, retracing the steps of Past Dolores/William, and perhaps occasionally remembering MIB. I've rewatched all the episodes and I think all the scenes work with the "multiple-time" theory. What you're probably remembering is Episode 3 (I think), wherein Dolores comes home alone, is about to be raped in the barn by another host, but sees MIB in a flashback and then shoots the host dead and escapes. If I'm correct, then this is all in the present. Then at the end of that episode (after other scenes) we see Dolores collapse in William's arms. That leads you to believe that the William storyline is also in the present. But what us "multiple-timeline" supporters believe is that the show is deliberately tricking you, and that final scene is actually 30 years ago. In the present, the voice in her head and the gun someone buried on the farm for her to find allow her to escape her loop and then decide to retrace her past-self's journey. In the past, we don't see how/why she escaped her loop. Perhaps it was a very similar incident. Perhaps some guest kept her away from her home one night, so that by the time she got home, her parents were already dead and the bandits gone. Perhaps, like Logan suggested, the park operators reprogrammed Dolores to chase after William. Perhaps it's all Arnold's manipulations, because in the past timeline, she seems intent on following his instructions. (We do see a scene in which "Bernard" asks her how she feels about her parents' deaths and then suggests she go find the maze, though it's not clear when this scene is set. I want to think this is actually Arnold, but Arnold is supposed to already be dead by the time William and Logan show up.) I'm not sure where you're getting that first part. As for MIB, I disagree with that too. It sounds like he's been coming to the park for 30 years and that he's been doing terrible things to the hosts for most of that time, and all those "harmless" activities were slowing eroding away his soul. His efforts at being a philanthropist etc. were his way of hiding his true nature, that his wife could actually perceive. He came back again after she died to see if he'd feel anything after doing something particularly evil, but nothing says he wasn't doing terrible things in the park before then. It did sound ambiguous at first, but I think Emily had to be his daughter. Emily is the one who told him that living with him had been a hell. But the way MIB told it, this was a surprise to him until after his wife had already died, so I don't think his wife said that to him. To me, Charlotte being MIB's daughter would be an example of an unmotivated, meaningless twist -- aside from shock value, there's no reason for it. Except I guess to explain away the actor's young age ... but then why is she black?? Like, if you're going to add a twist to the story just to explain away a bad casting, just cast someone different! Actually, her age doesn't even bother me (I think she's more just a representative of Delos, not the person in charge of the entire corporation) so I see no reason for this twist. But they didn't notice her manipulations of the hosts. The heist was in broad daylight. She didn't get the attention of Stubbs et al. until well after dark, when she slashed Clem's throat and caused a scene. On first viewing, I felt like the point of that scene was just to show off Maeve's new abilities. (She didn't get the attention of the park operators because Hector and Armistice were always going to get away, she just hastened it.) Then someone on some other website that perhaps her plan involved stowing away something in that safe that would help her escape. Maybe her plan was to meet up with Hector and Armistice's gang that night to get away using the safe's contents. I didn't think that she intentionally got caught ... she looked too alarmed and frightened in those final scenes. She had some other plan going until the gunshots triggered her flashbacks.

MIB has mentioned that he's here to set the hosts "free". He seems to have figured out that the maze is Arnold's secret way of giving the hosts consciousness, or setting them free from the artificial limits of their programming and allowing them to do things like leave the park and kill humans (you're not really free unless you can kill a human!). For some reason it seems he wants to help them reach this goal. He believes it would give meaning to the lives of the hosts, and somehow to his own life too. In this episode he saw something in Maeve that he'd never seen before, a level of grief that convinced him she was alive. Maybe it gave him a moment of regret and he decided that he should set the other hosts free as a sort of compensation for all the terror he's unleashed upon them all these years? As for William, yeah, I dunno why he's so invested in his little adventure with Dolores. We're supposed to believe it's because he can really be his true self out there, but the writing and acting aren't really selling it for me.

Why?? Maeve and Clementine are two different ageless robots. William and Clementine met 30 years ago. Clementine was already a prostitute at that time (possibly the madam), and as we learned last week and this week, Maeve became the madam only a year ago, after her incident with now-old MIB.

Well, news of the co-creator of the park killing himself there would be very bad publicity. Bad for business. I think Arnold is alive, though. He faked his death (his "body" being a blood-and-guts robot duplicate), and since then he's been hiding (perhaps in the park somewhere), trying to destroy the park and set the bots free. He's using satellite transmissions to send messages to Dolores, reprogram Maeve, and persuade little-boy-Ford to kill Ford's robo-dog just to taunt Ford.

Can we take a moment to appreciate how well the show has done the last few episodes to end on a wonderful note of dread and creepiness? MIB's sad backstory interwoven with Maeve's current storyline, climaxing with that girl bot (I'm going to call her Talulah) stabbing Teddy in the chest... I don't know if that actually surprised any of you, it didn't surprise me, but I just loved that final shot on Talulah, where you look behind her and suddenly all the shadows start slowly creeping around and you realize all of Wyatt's people have been right there in plain view the whole time...whew! I got chills. And whoever's composing the soundtrack is just killing it, especially over the closing credits.

About 4-5 years, perhaps? It's not unrealistic for a company to lose money for a long time before finally going under. I think the timeline works, but we'll see.

That kid seemed to be breathing and moaning up to the very second Dolores walked back up to him, so I feel like William didn't kill him behind her back. I think the scene was intended to show him continuing to slowly lose his empathy for bots not named Dolores. I'm pretty sure the maze has never been mentioned in William's presense. I do remember that the Maze symbol was on the coffin on the train -- even in shots with William -- but he didn't notice it. This episode may also be the first time Dolores has mentioned Arnold to William, although I'm less sure about that.

Logan and William's conversation didn't mention how long ago Arnold's death was supposed to be. He just mentioned that the park is still "hemorrhaging money". So William and Logan's storyline could be soon after Arnold's death.

So far. What if the "incident" from 30 years ago is Logan's death? Maybe William flips out, murders Logan, pins it on a bot (Dolores), then goes home and is promoted in the company to Logan's old position. Then he's in a position to save the park, and ultimately take over Logan's family and become the respected "titan of industry" and philanthropist.

Well in previous episodes they've mentioned "rotations", as if the employees come to work for just a limited time and then leave. But, does this imply that they never come back?? Sounds fantastically expensive to me. Or, you know what? Fuck it -- if Ford is such a genius that he can build robots that are so life-like not even the techs notice, then who's to say that he hasn't figured out how to make his secret robots age?

Here is what's in Jonathan Nolan's resume: Memento. The Prestige. The Dark Knight Rises. Interstellar. All movies dealing with timey-wimey stuff and/or tricky plot twists in the last act.

I'm also confused about the Wyatt storyline, especially from MIB's point of view. MIB thinks Arnold created the maze. The little girl robot tells him to find the snake. So he goes and finds the lady with the snake tattoo and asks her about the tattoo, and she tells him about Wyatt. So now MIB think Wyatt is the next part of the maze. And yet when he meets with Ford, MIB says that Wyatt is "something new" and speculates that Ford put Wyatt in the park as a new villain, a worthy adversary for the MIB, to stop MIB from reaching the center of the maze. (And Wyatt does appear to be something new Ford invented for his new narrative, though "grounded in an old truth"). So first MIB seems to think that Wyatt is part of the maze (and thus Arnold's invention), and then he thinks (apparently correctly) that Wyatt is someone new invented by Ford. And yet in this episode he still seems convinced that Wyatt is part of the maze! It's totally confusing. Sometimes I think the writers invent this stuff as they go along. Here's another thing where it seems like the writers are on different pages: what's causing the robots' anomalous behavior? In the first episode it all seemed to be triggered by the photograph that Peter Abernathy found, which caused him to whisper the "codephrase" to Dolores, and so forth. But it also seemed that Ford's "reverie" code had something to do with it. But it also seemed to have something to do with Arnold. And now it also seems to have something to do with Arnold or someone giving the robots commands via satellite. So which is it? All of the above? This show is kind of incoherent at times.

Actually, Adam started to read the rules and it sounded like the rules said he needs to wait until the reward is all settled and the rewardee(s) are about to walk off the beach to their reward before he tells Jeff he'll use the advantage. So, what it sounds like to me (here I'm speculating) is that if it's a group reward, he may be able to take the place of any person on the winning team. And if it's an individual reward where person X wins the reward and then chooses Y and Z to come with, then Adam can switch places with X or maybe even Y or Z. But he probably can't pick his own reward posse (which is probably for the best anyway, as X will still take the heat for who he chose).

I just rewatched. I wanted to see Maeve's parts again, plus all the conspiracy parts. This episode definitely feels like the middle of a mystery novel, where the clues start to come together and all the potential victims have suddenly realized that there's a mystery killer in their midst! I rewatched because as I wrote my reply I suddenly came up with a new crazy theory, that it's Bernard who has been working with Theresa all along. At the end of the episode, I was thinking, he came up there to actually warn Theresa about Elsie's snooping, which leads to her being taken. Part of the reason I thought of that is because we don't see how his conversation with Theresa continues after Elsie calls him. But rewatching it, the private conversations he has with her don't seem to add up that way. Actually right now, I've come up with a new even crazier theory: If Bernard is a robot, then Theresa is using him without his knowledge! She forces him to do things and spy on people for her, then deletes his memories of it! OK, that's way out there. I still wonder what secrets he's keeping though. In earlier episodes, it seemed that he was trying to get Elsie to stop her investigations in a gentle way. He always tries to get her to do her job, but she takes the initiative to continue the investigation. And when she reports new findings to him, his responses are always very measured. And it seems significant that she's only told him about all this. If he wanted to keep things secret, all he'd have to do is get rid of Elsie. But in this episode, he actually helped Elsie's investigation by looking up the data in the basement. And if he were part of the satellite conspiracy, he wouldn't have sent Elsie after the stray to begin with. So I don't know. It could of course be that the only secret he's keeping (besides his liaison with Theresa) is his secret conversations with Dolores. But that would conflict with my belief that her conversations are actually with past-Arnold, so I don't want that to be true ;) Here's another theory I have, concerning our killer Arnold (or whoever's pretending to be Arnold): Maeve's rebellion is just a planned distraction; his real master plan involves Dolores. It has to be significant that only a few robots have been misbehaving so far, and that Dolores told only Maeve the secret activation phrase ("The violent acts have violent ends"). Arnold doesn't want all the robots to rebel at once. That would cause the park to be immediately shut down and all the robots captured, scrapped or reprogrammed to avoid future rebellions. Right now he's just causing a little chaos and terrorism here and there to distract the park managers. Maeve's rebellion is essentially a script of Arnold's design; he predicted she would react this way. Right now she's being surreptitious, but soon it will lead to an attempted takeover of the park by Maeve and her friends. It will be big and bloody -- and it will tragically fail. But that's all part of Arnold's design. He just wants to distract the management from his actual goals with Dolores -- whatever those are. But she'll survive the purge following Maeve's rebellion because she won't be suspected to be part of it.

I have almost no problem believing that present-day Bernard could be a very intelligent, super-realistic android secretly created by Ford. If anyone could build such a robot, it would be Ford. And it doesn't bother me that Ford would talk to such a robot as if he were a real human, just for the sake of having a vestige of his old friend back. Under this theory, of course, Bernard would have no idea he's a robot, and come to think of it, I'm not sure anyone else would know either. After all, why would they allow a robot to be put in charge of other robots' behavior? So I think it would have to be Ford's secret. Maybe Bernard is indeed intelligent enough to program other robots, but maybe Ford actually does it for him, and Bernard just THINKS he's doing it. Overall, I'm about 66% convinced of the theory that past-Bernard is actually Arnold and present-day Bernard is an android duplicate. (And about 95% confident that William is the MIB.) By "past-Bernard is Arnold", I'm referring almost exclusively to the scenes in which he's talking to Dolores (but also the scene in which he's talking to his son's mother). Part of the reason is that otherwise I don't know how those scenes square with other scenes of Bernard. Most of the time, Bernard seems to be just minding his own business and is just as puzzled by the robots' odd behaviors as Elsie is. Why would Bernard be so interested in Dolores? Assuming the MIB is correct in saying the Maze is Arnold's creation, how would Bernard know of this Maze that Ford doesn't even seem to know completely about? And wouldn't it also be an odd coincidence that he takes interest in the same android who saw Arnold on the day he died? People keep mentioning that Dolores is clothed in her scenes with Bernard. This has an easy explanation. Bernard is doing something surreptitious with Dolores. He's having secret conversations, and at the end of each one he urges her to run along before someone notices she's missing. No time or need for dressing/undressing. And notice, even though it has glass walls, that these meetings are in an entirely different location than all the other scenes of techs maintaining the hosts (and the scene of Ford talking to her). It's a dirty old room with old fixtures and a simple concrete staircase in the background that we've seen Bernard descend. There also seem to be some small windows to the outside at the top of one wall, as in a basement. This is his secret meeting place with her. I imagine it to be very close to Sweetwater, probably in a basement just below the ground that techs occasionally use for simple maintenance procedures. (Well, this paragraph doesn't really add to the argument that this is Arnold, or is set in the past, but it's not inconsistent with it.) Anyway, I can't take credit for hardly any of these observations -- I've read them in articles on other websites. But I think it's very plausible.

Ah, so maybe the real Arnold is hiding in the park by pretending to be the robot! :O Uh, but that wouldn't work because he'd keep aging .... :P

I'm not saying he came back one last time. I'm saying he killed himself to escape his enemies (which is how he "defeats" them). I admit I may be completely mistaken about this. Unless you mean: if he killed himself, how is he causing the robot uprising right now? As for that, I have no idea other than delayed programming. Yeah you're right. I know they're two different towns, but I keep calling Lawrence's hometown "Pariah" by mistake (I didn't catch its name).

What a moving episode. How would you feel if you died and went to "heaven" and THAT is what you saw?!?! It's hard to care about Dolores' slow road to consciousness (or whatever's going on with her) when Maeve is tearing up the fast track. It's like Dolores is playing through all 32 levels, while Maeve just took the Warp Tunnel to the end. Oh, Elsie. You were supposed to be the smart one. I really hope you live through this. The other child robot is Ford's brother Tommy. His name was mentioned by the Ford robot the first time we saw him. Ford also mentioned a brother. I never considered the possibility that Arnold might Ford's father, and I don't think that's the case. I think Bernard just took a guess when he found this old man living in the park. But then again, he's seen a picture of Arnold so he should know what he looks like, right? It seems that shenanigans are afoot in this park that are escaping even Ford's notice, which surprised me. I thought he might be the saboteur but apparently not (never suspected Theresa). He seemed genuinely puzzled by the dog's death, and also seemed surprised to find the Maze symbol in Pariah. It was almost like he's not familiar with it. Personally, the Maze symbol looks to me just like a representation of the brain, and so I've always figured that "getting to the center of the Maze" is just a metaphor for consciousness. Arnold wants his robots to achieve sentience, hence he's sending them into the Maze. That's why the girl robot tells the MIB that the Maze is not for him. Sometimes I think the MIB is not aware of this, so he's going to be terribly disappointed when he finds "the center" (I assume there's no literal maze). But on the other hand I remember that he told Lawrence that he intends to "free" the robots, so maybe he wants to help them gain consciousness too. Here's my take: it's another metaphor. Arnold was repeatedly "dying" (living in agony) due to his memories of the "personal tragedy" in his life, not to mention the pressures of his job. The myth says he came to life one last time to vanquish his enemies, but in reality Arnold actually vanquished his enemies by killing himself.

She's not saying she'll get revenge. She's saying she thinks he made a bad move. If I had to guess, probably Hannah, or maybe Will. You know, someone it makes sense to vote off if you're trying to keep your tribe strong. Someone who Brett and Sunday probably tried to half-heartedly suggest as an alternative before TC. We don't see everything that goes down and I don't believe Brett and Sunday did literally nothing before Jay roped them in. And speaking of that, I don't need to see Jay telling Brett and Sundae who to vote for. I can connect the dots myself, thanks. It's obvious it happened, so there's no need to show it. In fact I'm glad they didn't show it, because throughout TC I was still in suspense as to which way the vote would fall. If I'd seen a meeting, it would have robbed some of the suspense for me. Yeah, that is a good reason to vote her off. I too thought it was very dumb of her to be so open of her dislike for Figgy. It showed Taylor that she didn't give a shit about him. She and Figgy really are a lot alike in multiple ways, actually. Well, I'll be darned. I really thought there was a rule against blurting out strategically-relevant information on your way out, as I can't remember it ever happening (Eliza doesn't count, she said it before the votes were read) -- except once early in S1, one survivor (Stacy I think?) exclaimed that Sue was a liar, and I think Jeff chastised her for it. Well I'm very surprised it doesn't happen more often. I guess contestants are by and large much classier than I take them to be -- either that or just too shocked! (I mean, how is it that all the people who got voted out with an idol in their pocket never mention it on the way out?? Sure it makes you look dumb, but a lot of players take the game in stride on their way out and would be willing to embarrass themselves for a laugh.) Anyway, that was a good interview. Re the voting off of minorities and women, Michaela pretty much says what I was thinking: Took the words right out of my mouth.

I'm under the impression that the spilling of secrets, such as who has the idol, simply isn't allowed once Jeff starts to read the votes. Otherwise I'm sure a lot of spiteful players would have shouted all sorts of things on their way out over 32 seasons. I imagine there's a significant financial penalty for breaking such a rule in their contracts. I can't even remember there ever before being an outburst like Michaela's -- an accusation and a stare-off. That in itself might have been skirting the rules.

So Michaela's words last week -- if you're in a majority and you can't "figure it out", then you deserve to lose -- were prophetic for both Figgy and herself. Dang. Ultimately I think she couldn't have won -- no poker face -- but I think she could have gone far, and I'll miss her because she was definitely entertaining. I don't think it was a smart move on Jay's part, but I respect him staring down Michaela and owning it. He had nothing to be ashamed of. It's just a game. Have they actually merged at 13 before? I thought 12 was the largest they've ever done. Am I forgetting some seasons? I'm not entirely certain I agree that Jay would've allied with a "loyal, strong and strategic" man. That basically describes Joe Anglim, and everyone wanted him out at the first opportunity.

Gingerhead is Chris. I think. :)

And meanwhile Hannah was overcompensating, trying to prove her worth after her panic attack. It was inevitable that those two would butt heads. Michaela is great at challenges but she could use a little diplomacy. And Michelle is pretty darn good at challenges too, leading her tribe to two come-from-behind victories despite her team's (i.e. DAVID's) incompetence. Too bad she's in such a precarious position within her tribe. David, how bad can you possibly be??? I'm beginning to believe Zeke's suggestion that he's throwing the challenges for some reason. It's unbelievable he's so bad. But it looks like we could end up with a mega-alliance of outcasts at the merge: David, Zeke, Adam, Jess, and Ken, along with Chris. If only we could get Michaela in there too.

Count me in as thinking that was probably a bad move on Dave's part. Or at least, he's not playing the odds. Because these days they do a tribe swap more often than not, so that tribe majority that Dave sacrificed his idol for will probably be gone within days. But even if (if, if, if) there's not a swap, look at this "majority" he has. He has Jessica, who pissed off Ken and voted for CeCe, and who wasn't much an ally to Dave to begin with. He has Ken, who voted for Jessica and seems a little impatient and unsubtle in his game play. And Ken clearly didn't know he was going to play the idol (it was probably a snap decision) and clearly didn't think it was a good move, so there's going to be some friction between them. He has CeCe, who won't be happy Jessica voted for her and hardly seems in the loop. I'm saying, this could be a foursome that would be hard to keep together. And he just burned his idol with not great odds of getting it back or being aligned with the person who gets it. And he made 3 enemies out of Chris, Bret, and Sundae. He essentially turned himself and Jessica into a "power couple", not to mention his already obvious alliance with Ken. That makes him even more of a target. On the other hand, if he just laid low and voted out Jessica, well it's true he and Ken and CeCe would be on the bottom again. But probably CeCe would have gone next. Then there'd be 6 left, close to the merge, and the majority would probably target Ken next. Dave had a good chance of making it to the merge. But it sure made for a great episode!

Out on the Giant Ring Swing: Michael Torres Out on the Salmon Ladder: Najee Richardson Ethan Swanson Grant McCartney Thomas Stillings Out on the Wave Runner: Adam Rayl Neil Craver Flip Rodriguez (DQ) Joe Moravsky Nicholas Coolridge Jessie Graff Out on the Double Wedge: Josh Levin Chris Wilczewski Brian Arnold Jake Murray Out on Stage 3: Daniel Gil (Cliffhanger) Drew Dreschel (Hang Climb) So if you don't look at times (too tedious for me at the moment), you could say that Jessie tied for 7th place this season. Which is frickin' wicked.