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Some shallow observations: 1. Does Aaron Paul have any facial expressions besides "sneer"? Since I wasn't particularly engaged by the story, I found myself wondering if he actually has an upper lip, and how he's able to drink through a straw. 2. Solomon's voice was too muffled and the BGM too loud. I think I missed a few things it said but wasn't invested enough to turn on CC 3, The entire time Caleb and Dolores were moving around the guts of that facility, all I could think of was they were in the areas between testing tracks at Aperture Science, only GLaDOS is way more snarky and entertaining than Solomon. Major complaint: Caleb killing his partner was not the shocking twist the writers seem to think it is. I kind of figured that out the first time he had inconsistent memories. Structurally, if they were going to go with a "memories altered" plot, they should have spread it over more episodes. Prior to this episode, we only got quick flashes of it. They should have introduced the details of the false memory earlier. Like have him explain it to Dolores after they met. She could give him a knowing look, then proceed with giving him his real memories back. As written, we're given the details of the false memory and immediately given the true memory. Kind of dampens the impact . Maeve last week: I need backup Maeve this week: Based the word of one Dolores (Charlotte) I'll send my backup minions to kill another copy while confronting the more dangerous original alone. Though I'm assuming this is the real Dolores and not the one that's doing something in Berlin.

One other thing that bothered me -- William's self important speech about how we've squeezed this planet dry, blah blah blah. Basically saying humanity has despoiled the planet. Really? I don't think we've seen any evidence to support that.

Apparently one of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it shots I was complaining about earlier included some pretty pertinent information. There was a shot of 4 readouts from the host-printing devices showing their various states of progress. If you freeze and zoom in, each one has a host ID number. Two of those bodies being printed were presumably Maeve and Hector (before Charlores crushed his pearl). One of the other two had an ID number that matched a readout from a previous season for Clementine. So that's probably who Maeve was smirking out as she came out of the goo. I question the wisdom of bringing back Maeve's "help" in bodies that the Doloreses will be able to instantly recognize. I think it'd make more sense to have Clementine played by Indistinct Man in Crowd Number 3.

So the nickname "Charlores" really applied this week. [rimshot] I'll see myself out. But seriously folks, all I could think of was "short 8 episode season, why are they padding it out with Maeve in WarWorld and William in cliche-therapy?" I don't know which side to root for at the moment, but I'm leaning towards an independent Charlotte, no longer following Dolores but going Terminator on Serac. Though she was being kind of stupid in the board meeting -- the gas knocked out everyone else but he's still standing there smugly, gotta assume he's a projection. There's a trend on TV, this show in particular, that I'd like to see go away: planting plot relevant information in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it, small font at a skewed angle text message. I don't mind when they plant easter eggs that way, but I shouldn't be required to record, replay, slow-mo, screen-cap and enlarge just to figure it out. This week there were a couple of them and I only caught the "anomalous protein" thing from MiB's blood test. I think there was some pertinent info in the host-fab facility but I wasn't sitting 2 feet from my screen so I missed it. Same with the first therapist - I guess the message from home was upsetting enough that she hanged herself (unless William hallucinated that too). Why did Serac have Maeve and company printed at Delos? He obviously has access to a fabricator elsewhere, because he made the previous Maeve body. He already suspected there was a Dolores copy inside Delos, so the only explanation is "plot required". Was that the other body that was being completed in the Delos body shop? I saw "100%" marked but otherwise didn't see a name like they had with Hector (RIP).

Hopefully it'd be like the clothing store that Dolores and Caleb went to, where you could put on a holographic suit over your sweats.

Oh oh, I just figured this one out -- Liam must have said "you have to save Martha!"

I'm probably overthinking this, but should we draw any conclusions from their choice for a "romance" song? Not to spoil a 50 year old movie, but Love Story doesn't have a happy ending. Calling it now, Dolores dies of Ali MacGraw's Disease.

Tonight on ForeheadWorld... a big mess of an episode. Other than to allow the director to do some (allegedly) cool camera work, what was the point of having Caleb on drugs? Oh, they got to play some genre-themed music I guess. I recognized Flight of the Valkyries, Theme from Love Story, and Major Tom. Serac's narrating voice over was clumsy exposition. Since he was dictating it to Rehoboam, who has all the information already, it was effectively As You Know exposition. Lazy writing. If they wanted to do flashbacks filling in Serac's character and motivation, they could have just done flashback scenes containing dialog between him and his brother, etc., and trust the audience is smart enough to keep up. Maybe the actor playing the brother wasn't up to the task. Speaking of actors, was that Serac's current actor de-aged, or did they get a look-alike to play him in the younger flashbacks? I didn't understand Liam's death scene, interspersed with Caleb's PTSD. "Who do you think I am?" What? Did Liam call him by a different name, or call him daddy or something? Yeah, I believe I said aloud "oh come on". And they were all from the Stormtrooper school of marksmanship. Maybe 20 yards away spraying multiple machine guns at three stationary targets, and no one got hit. Also, if the rocket launcher has homing capabilities, why did Caleb need to stand up (exposed to ineffectual gunfire) to aim the thing? Point straight up and fire it from the comfort of the RideShare cabin. Seriously though, as soon as I saw Dempsey Sr.'s enormous forehead, I couldn't stop focusing on it, like one of those pictures whose eyes follow you no matter what angle you're looking at it.

Danerys Stormborn from Game of Thrones. Confirms her narcissism. If she indeed has the Original (heh, season 1 reference) and 4 duplicate Dolorii, did she do something to her copies to make them recognize her as the leader? Is it just because she looks like Dolores and therefore doesn't have to cope with the "round peg in a square hole" issues that the other's have to deal with by being in a body that doesn't match their identity?

I enjoyed this episode. Everything is coming up Dolores! Everything and everyone, apparently. I was caught off guard when Stubbs and Bernard showed up at the masquerade. That's some good writing -- they telegraphed it earlier but intervening scenes with Charlotte / MIB and Dolores / Caleb were so good that I forgot about it until they popped up to kidnap moron. I mean Liam. No, wait, I was right the first time. Signing a blank check... The reveal of the Yakuza boss was a logic bomb for me. Presumably Mr. Yakuza Boss was a pre-existing human being. Therefore Dolores would have replaced him with a host that looked like HIM, not Musashi from Shogun World. Didn't make sense to me. other than for script convenience so Maeve would have someone to recognize. When Dolores and Caleb were at the "bank" (which looked like a convention center), and she told him that the faster his heart beat the faster then blood magic would fade, I noticed the background music had a subtle heartbeat rhythm to it. Very nice, I don't like that Dolores holds the key to the Area 16 project data on all the guests (a.k.a the Forge), AND the key to The Valley Beyond where Teddy, Akecheta, etc., are living now. Too many keys, unless the writers are conflating the Forge and the Valley Beyond. Musashi's henchmen said there were armed people out front. Musashi said "they must have been tracking her". Presumably it's Serac's people. They can make her a new body or patch up this one.

I think whoever is piloting the Charlotte bot had that information but had to access it. I imagined her internal thought process was surprised and took a second to open the files. The dude was stroking Nathan's hand while he pet the dog, so it was pretty obvious he was a creep. Charlotte removed an object from his pocket and thanked him for already disabling the cameras. Presumably it jammed the CCTV in the area so he wouldn't be recorded perving out on kids.

I saw a theory that Caleb is inhabiting Charlotte's body, and there is more timeline fuckery going on this season. I'm having a hard time believing that, since all the events involving Caleb would have to occur before any of the Dolores / Charlotte scenes. I think the chronological order would be something like: 1. Dolores-as-Charlotte (Charlores) escapes the park with 5 pearls 2. Charlores masquerades as Charlotte at some of the Delos meetings. 3. Charlores builds a host body for someone (unknown Helper, possibly the scotish guy) 4. They build a Delores body and put her control unit inside it. 5. All of Dolores / Liam and Dolores / Caleb interactions occur. 6. Dolores refurbishes the Charlotte body and puts Caleb in it. Since he already appears to have some cybernetics (fixing brain damage from that time he alluded to getting shot in the head) maybe he already has something equivalent to a pearl in his head. 7. All the scenes of Charlotte interacting with her ex, her son, Serac, etc. My problem with that is step 5. Dolores spent a good chunk of time cozying up to Liam, and for the duration of that time there was no one in Charlotte's body. How does one explain her extended absence from Delos during this time, a long vacation? I hope not, because "some or all of what you've seen was just a simulation" is such lazy writing. It's a cop-out to cover over inconsistencies and plot holes.

My head-canon is that other people would have seen the injury and might wonder how it disappeared so quickly. I dunno. Ooh, good point. Also Charlotte / Nathan were facing right and Dolores / Charlotte were facing left, so another mirror image... uh, image. Dolores handed Charlotte a mirror. And lots of mirrored figures in the opening credits too, I'm sensing a theme.

Serac said the decryption key to Delos's data was in Dolores's brain. Does that track with the end of season 2? I thought Bernard shot Dolores at the Forge, and he opened the path to the Valley Beyond. Wouldn't the key be in his brain-ball? Maybe I'm misremembering but I don't what to rewatch S2 to figure it out. The frequent fade to black scene transitions were jarring at times. Caleb and Dolores walking to the diner [black] Charlotte waking up in bed [black] Caleb and Dolores arriving at diner. Why? Was there some artistic reason that I missed? I think there was supposed to be some symbolism with Charlotte spooning her son, then Dolores spooning Charlotte, but while I'm good at seeing symbolism, I'm lousy at interpreting it sometimes. I'm surprised (but kind of happy) that they didn't have Caleb react to Dolores's miraculous healing after she rescued him, since she'd had a fatal gunshot wound a couple of days earlier. Future medicine might really be that good. That's my guess, and yes he had a whacko storyline prior to becoming her father. He was The Professor, leader of a cult of cannibals.

I think they were going for an homage to another Star Trek episode when the computer was possessed (just roll with it) and Kirk asked it to compute pi to the final digit just to tie up the processing power. I wish they'd actually just copied that instead of trying to be clever, because "what is the square root of -1?" is a relatively easily answered question.

I liked how the aspect ratio changed when Maeve realized she was in a simulation. I think Lee should have frozen too since he was part of the simulation (whereas Maeve is running inside her own hardware). I'm a bit bummed that Stubbs is a host. S1 he was firmly human, to the point where he slept with a gun because he was afraid of the robots. S2 was more ambiguous since he hinted at being a host but left it ambiguous enough that he could be either.

I agree with that. The list is pretty short for Dolores since she didn't interact with a lot of other hosts 1. Peter Abernathy (assuming his brain wasn't scrambled) 2. Angela (who got blowed up with the CRAD-L) 3. Lawrence? 4. Lawrence's daughter? The only other named hosts with much of a personality are Clementine, Hector and Armistice, but they were with Maeve mostly. I don't remember them interacting with Dolores at all. They might have to go with purple-shirts like the sheriff

Teddy was a two-pump chump. That's the real reason why Dolores tried to reprogram him (at least in my head canon)

After Episode 1 revealed the existence of Rehoboam the AI, I wonder how much of this season is going to be spent on questions of determinism vs free will for everyone, instead of just teh hosts like season 1. Just how good is the AI at predicting / manipulating people's actions? Is there going to be a reveal that the AI set up the Westworld massacre as the means to some other end?

The opening credits included a 3D printed bird that flies too close to the sun and loses it's feathers... so who is playing Icarus -- Delores I assume?

I'm intrigued enough to watch next week, so that's mission accomplished I guess. It's almost like this is a new show with some characters borrowed from a previous one. The futuristic setting is pretty meh. I realize this has a TV show budget, but it looked as shitty as the "advanced" technology in the DIvergent movies. If the twit at the party was right and this all turns out to be a simulation, I'm going to scoff loudly at the hacky writing. (Took me a minute to recognize that his date was Haley from The Originals using her real accent.) Speaking of "all a dream" BS, did anyone notice if the aspect ratio was different for Maeve's scene, thus indicating that she's in a simulation? Because I'm having a hard time believing one of Delos's actual parks was Nazi World. Sure there are some sick sadists who would enjoy that shit, but the negative PR would be tremendous. I don't think CC would have helped. They were speaking in the future!!slang language of petty criminals. It was meant to be incomprehensible by someone who isn't a part of that subculture. If done right, that can add some verisimilitude to a future setting. If done wrong (like this was) you wind up with a garbled mess and audience disengagement. All I got out of his SEVERAL scenes in the underworld is that he's a low level lowlife and he doesn't do "personals;" whatever that means. They honestly had too many new characters and concepts introduced this episode, so adding this patois on top of it was off-putting. Sweet jeebus I couldn't understand him. I hope his replacement!bot tones down the accent.

I semi binge watched on Amazon Prime (like 2-3 episodes at one sitting). Running theme for the season was Victoria doing questionable things to get the love and approval of her subjects, and Albert being hyper-judgmental about it. This episode showed that Albert was wrong, because he finally got the adulation of the populace when they started chanting "God Save Prince Albert!" outside the exposition. I thought Albert was being stupid about it. Does he remember what the Brits did to a couple of unpopular kings in the past? Charles I, James II... Hell, they had the whole Chartist movement this season. Vic wanting her people to like her was pretty rational.

I was coming here to ask if the Bobbie, Avasarala, and Ashford plots were from the 5th book. I read 1-4 but stopped after Cibola Burn because I absolutely hated the book. Book 3 was pretty bad with the disaster porn, and Book 4 took it up to eleven, plus Murtry was SO implausible his every action kept taking me out of the narrative. The show made him much more plausible, mainly because he adjusted his behavior based on the current situation. I wonder if I should read book 5, but based on your comments I think I'll skip it.

I don't think it was spelled out explicitly, but I assumed that was the spacecraft bearing Gold!Statued!Veidt back from Europa.