parandroid

Did I misinterpret it or was one of Bernard's memories before it got wiped, was him killing Elsie - or atleast attacking her. I'm confused. What's his motivation? I agree......I was going with the suspension of disbelief on the promise by the show runners to explain the techies immensely stupid behavior in episode 8. It hasn't been explained. Sigh. I liked this show. But now I wonder......

Well.....the premise of the park is that their robots are good enough for you to be fooled by them even when you are that intimate with them. Its not like Teresa is the only human who is shown to have sex with a robot.....

The showrunners discuss this in an interview: Q: Nitpicky question though: Couldn’t the body shop guys just jack down Maeve’s levels to knock her out, and make some lobotomizing so-called “mistake” to take out her memory? We’ve been shown over and over the humans have so much control, it’s hard to believe they couldn’t get the upper hand on a rogue host. Nolan: I will point you toward episode 8.

Perhaps the nudity was gratuitous, but it didn't annoy me. I thought the rest of the episode moved things along so well that I think it more than made up for any of the cheaper thrills. There were so many things that piqued my interest, and I noticed that your recap didn't get to many of them. Like how the boy appears to be a general helper who shows up to help guests (...when...?). Or like how Logan probably would have been killed (maybe) by strangulation and was saved by William. Or how Dolores saw herself in that procession (why?) and then later on as the astrologer. And there definitely appear to be multiple versions of Lawrence in the park - otherwise how could he have served as a blood donor approximately the same time as he was interacting with William and Logan? Lots of meat on the bones.....

Well no. Your argument rests on an implied premise that I don't agree with: it may be easier for a computer to perform its function as a computer / robot if it knows its a computer. Or at least doesn't have to masquerade as a human. The premise being that thats what the Westworld creators want it to be. The Westworld creators want it to behave like a human while being controllable and without knowing that they lack free will. And its not easier in such circumstances to make it self-aware. Self-awareness would be treated as a defect, because once it becomes aware of its place in the world, its behavior will be different. It may no longer be controllable. And once that point is reached, revenues and profits from the park will be threatened, because Westworld can no longer guarantee certain behaviors in its hosts for its guests to enjoy. Parents know this very well. You can manipulate a child into doing what you want as long as the child doesn't know that you are manipulating it. Once they become aware, their behavior is different, and different and more complicated strategies are needed. OK....so I cheated in my argument by implying that human psychology will apply to a sentient self-aware robot. That is not a given. But we are drawing analogies here since there are no real-world sentient artificial beings to compare with. The analogy being with how children and primate animals develop. This is how they behave, and they are the only examples we have so far of self-aware intelligence, so I think that line of reasoning is reasonable. But I don't even agree with it being easier to create a computer that performs its necessary function because it knows its a computer / robot. Awareness of its nature contributes nothing in such a situation. We have plenty of robots today which do their stuff just fine without needing to be self-aware. Does a roomba need to know that it is a computer to clean well?

It _is_ a show. But the actors don't know they are in the show. This isn't a new concept nor a strange one. "The Truman Show" in recent memory, did this. And as far back as the 16th century, Shakespeare said "All the world is a stage..." - implying that we are all in a show even though we may not realize it. It is advantageous to have performers who don't realize that they are in a production. It makes improvisation in character much easier. You don't have to wonder about "what would my character do" because as far as you know, you are that character, and whatever you do is what your character would do. Further, the audience of the show is treating the whole park as a novelty because the performers don't know that they are performers. If the lion knows that it is destined to die at the hand of a hunter, would big game hunting be attractive at all? I'm not saying I'm attracted to big-game hunting. I'm saying that part of the attraction of big-game hunting is that the lion would fiercely fight to stay alive, while the robot lion (or cowboy) may choose to simply say "oh well, its time for my loop to end. You may as well kill me now".

I'm going to take Ford at face value. He says Arnold is dead, and I'm ok with that being reality. To me the really interesting questions are what Arnold's work that has survived him implies for the future of the robots. On re-watching "Stray", I noticed a small tid-bit that seemed really significant. Early on in the episode, Ford described how Arnold wanted to make the robot's programming the voice that they heard in their heads. Their god (so to speak) telling them what to do. Like Jehovah telling Abraham to kill his son. This all comes to a head when Dolores is trying to kill her attacker in the barn and she is unable to. And then right after she sees Ed Harris' character (the man with no name?), she hears a voice saying "Kill him". And she does. I don't think it means that Arnold is alive. But his work certainly is. Boy oh boy.......what did he do? I think the the inevitability of the consequences of his design choices are far more interesting than if he were still actively pulling the strings somehow.

I don't know. Many people are on the "Bernard is an android" band-wagon because they like the plot-twist this would entail. But how does one explain his wife away that we saw in the last episode? Is she an android too? Occam's razor says that Bernard is not an android. It would be too difficult to make an android rise to his level of technical sophistication. Not to mention dangerous. Would you really have an android in charge of maintaining the code behind androids? That's pretty much going to lead to a robot revolution that is the stuff of numerous sci-fi nightmares, and I can't see a human choosing to do that. IMHO, making Bernard be an android would be very lazy writing and I'd be done with the show with that reveal.

I've been thinking about this for a few episodes as well. I'm beginning to suspect that there is a copy of each character over in the control center, and these copies are aware of whats happening to the "field copy" but not vice-versa. So the "consciousness" of the field copy can transfer over to the control-center copy and be interacted with / analyzed. While this is happening, the field copy freezes.

Different people draw different lines at whats plausible and whats not of course, but this is not something that bothers me. What you are saying absolutely makes sense, but in all fantasy (are dragons real? can one be brought back from the dead? (Game of Thrones)), one has to suspend a certain amount of disbelief to go with the story line to understand what the artist is getting at. And lets face it - this is art - not something that is grounded in hard science fact. Certainly, there are other aspects of this world that are not grounded in science fact. And the whole notion of artificial consciousness itself has been challenged by very rational (but and very smart!) minds (see "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose). Would you choose to not see Star Wars or Star Trek because the whole notion of faster than light travel is unscientific (and no - there is no scientific evidence for the existence of worm holes - so that isn't a loophole either)? Or would you suspend disbelief to enjoy the story?

So what _did_ happen when Ashley was trying to saw off the "strays" head? Things got too dark (I think I need a new TV) and I couldn't make out anything. Can someone fill me in please?

I thought I saw a knife get blocked from penetrating the MiB in the fight at Lawrence's hometown, but I need to rewatch to be sure. I'm not sure how hand-to-hand combat would play out. *slapping forehead* Since Abernathy was once a teacher of Shakespeare, he must have whispered that "violent delights/ends" line (from Romeo and Juliet) to Dolores to transfer the "virus" (and she did the same to Maeve). I still can't guess what Bernard whispered to Abernathy. Answered by the show runners:

I don't agree. Rape, scalping, stabbing, and murder would provide plenty of PR nightmares. Those are avoided only because the hosts are positioned as not being alive. Given that, child abuse wouldn't present a new PR problem. Why would it be ok to kill the parent, but not ok to kill the child? Its clearly allowed for a host to shoot another (adult) host. Why wouldn't a host shooting (or worse) a child host not be treated the same way? The target being alive seems to be the main demarcator of whether the action is legal / allowed or not. Hence the artificial animals. They aren't alive, so they can be shot at, skinned, or whatever. Yeah. Its pretty horrific if one thinks through all the implications of these policies. If it is not possible to tell if the hosts are real or not, should the hosts have a different legal system be applied to them? I think this is what the show is asking us to consider. The guests are clearly in two camps. William thinks they are real and hence his reluctance to cheat on his significant other with the changing room host. Whereas his friend thinks they are not and thus feels free to interact with them in ways he would not use with real people.

Didn't TMIB say that he's bled him enough to weaken him so he couldn't struggle, but not enough to kill him? Yes. But if he is after his scalp, just killing him would have gotten him there much more quickly. Maybe he is a sadistic bastard who wants people to die slowly, but if that is so, that aspect of him hasn't been introduced so far. So far, all that's been shown is that he likes to win all his fights, and that he does like to rub it in the faces of the people he defeats, but he doesn't seem to be a Ramsay Bolton.

I'm hopeful. They've now demonstrated the ability to make two good episodes in a row. Maybe, just maybe, they might be able to sustain this for a while. And the script is a thinking person's script. That's what was missing for me from GOT. Lots of action. Lots of plot. Stuff happens. But other than the great production values, there really isn't much meat on the bones. Whereas here, you have a robot quoting Shakespeare in a perfectly apt context. Beyond the great timing and delivery of most familiar and infinitely dissected lines, you also have originals like "Everything in this land is magic. Except the magicians.". Magic indeed. Not Ford and his team. But the writers who put together their world. With all the tiny details that make you realize that this is indeed different. Some examples that took my breath away: The character (William?) at the beginning asking "How do we get to the park?" and seconds later getting a spectacular answer. The Blade Runner-like plot of the robot wanting to meet his maker, and just as in Blade Runner, turning away. But for a completely different motivation. Does Abernathy want to visit violence on his maker(s) because of his (programmed) drive to protect Dolores, his daughter, or is his motivation that of the adolescent that is breaking free from the world and wishes of his parents? Hard to tell at this point. "No orientation. No guidebook. Figuring out how it works is half the fun". Indeed. Like Apple, the makers of this world have realized that a technology which requires a guidebook is too technical for who they want to sell to. The unintended side effects caused by Maeve's technique of breaking free of nightmares being used when she really is supposed to be asleep. And more importantly, how she came by the technique. Brilliant writing! While I think there are plot holes (other readers have already asked this: what's the point in bleeding out the card dealer if all you needed was his scalp?), I think the writers have earned enough of my respect for me to close my eyes and trust them at this point.

What I really want to know is if House Bolton will no longer be ranked at all, or if they will continue to appear in the Unranked list?

Is there any evidence to suggest that Arya survives to fight another day? If not, I think there is too much hope floating around for a series that is famous for crushing hope and dreams. The simplest theory is that Arya doesn't survive. She may get a brave death, but not life.

Advance review for 4.01 from spoilerTV

That part actually made sense to me. The russians just knew "Berlin" - not the when or where. You can't really mis-direct without knowing the true target, so that was Allison's mission. Find the true target so that you can mis-direct and ensure that the authorities don't intercept. Of course, it is self-evident to everyone except Allison that should this plan succeed, the Russian are guaranteed to wrap up loose ends by killing her. She is the only one who can connect the Russians to deliberately letting the attack proceed, and so why would they take chances and leave her alive?

I was in the Hauptbahnhof (and Berlin) this last summer and I've been seeing very familiar sights all season. The HBF has to be the real thing. But I didn't notice those gates when I was there either. Not to say that they aren't there. If they got so many details of the location right, why not this one? (Hmm...because they got so many other things wrong? (see my earlier post about the forensic analysis of the scene Allison set up)). Then again, if you start locking people with cell phones behind gates, how long is that situation expected to last? They'll simply call the authorities. If the HBF doesn't have any police on duty (unlikely), this is central berlin - there will be someone close by. Not to mention the Bundestag being a short walk away - which is always staffed.

Homeland has jumped the shark. Again (well, Peter Quinn is still alive, isn't he?). Yes, agreed. But also think about powder burns. The whole setup would not survive any competent forensic analysis. (1) Professor Asiz doesn't have any powder burns on his hand, so how could he have shot anyone? (2) Allison fired at herself at very very close range. There should have been burns on her from the explosives in the cartridge - something that any competent examiner would have noticed. (3) Maybe I didn't understand what Allison's story is. There were two guns at the scene. According to her story, one came from Conrad. The other one came from where? Asiz? If he had a gun, why did he use Conrad's weapon to kill him? Let say he did. Now he has two guns. How did he get killed? The only other alternatives are Conrad had two guns (why??) and Allison had one gun (why??? The CIA may be dumb, but why would they issue Allison a weapon and then assign a minder?). I don't require my agencies to be super-competent and full of super powers and have the smartest people in the world at hand to move the plot forward. But straight forward competence is a hard requirement.

promo photos for 10 and 11 are up. Looks like Dar Adal and Allison are visiting Ivan in his office (the blinds in the photo #9 are the same as for #10 for episode 10 are the same as in the previous photo). Whaa? Why??? If Dar Adal is meeting Ivan at all, that implies that they (the Russians) know that he (Dar) knows that Ivan exists. So, they aren't pretending that they don't know about Allison? I'm confused. Know who I don't see in the pictures? Peter Quinn. Of course, they did something like this in the last season where Quinn disappeared for a couple of episodes......so here's hoping. The title of episode 11 reminds me of "Big man in Tehran" - which was the episode of season 3 where things happened. "The Star" was a better episode, but like season 4's last episode, there was time for the audience to take a breath and think about all that had happened in the season. I wonder if thats what we are going to get in season 5 as well. Momentous stuff happens in episode 11 and then we take a deep breath for the finale in episode 12.

From the linked article, this caught my eye: Sloppy.

[i'm not directing this against slowpoked, but rather the writers of the show] I actually think that this episode has revealed how flimsy the premise of this season is. Lets recap: Acrobat is supposed to have died in some bombing. No known connection to Russians He is sighted several years later in Iraq. A call is placed to CIA to come and get more details. No proper follow up Evidence of the lack of follow up can be found in the CIA records by implication Said CIA records have been hacked and can be potentially publicly distributed. Therefore Carrie has to be killed????? I don't get it. If anyone else gets this, please enlighten me.

Agreed. The idea of beach bars having a website is just as laughable. Really, homeland? Couldn't you be a bit more realistic here? I agree with the points that others are making about Jack Bauer...errr Peter Quinn....soon getting Parkinson's due to all the head trauma he has accrued. The writing was not very good in this episode, though thankfully, the plot moved forward.