S04.E07: Metanoia

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

You want to have a drink at a time like this?

Airing Sunday, August 7, 2022.

[Quilt Fairy]

What a clusterfuck.  

[BlackberryJam]

How can I care about hosts dying when they’ll just be back next season?

Bernard? So don’t care. Charlotte? Really don’t care. Maeve? Second death for her this season. Vitruvian William? We still get murderous asshole William. Christina, Caleb, Frankie? They can all go anytime.

The only characters who made me feel anything this episode were Stubbs and Teddy. 
 

Edit, but I forgot Akecheta, but he’s not really there anyway.

Edited August 8, 2022 by BlackberryJam

[AimingforYoko]

So we're back to Dolores v MiB, huh? That's certainly a choice.

[paigow]

8 minutes ago, AimingforYoko said:

So we're back to Dolores v MiB, huh? That's certainly a choice.

She is not there... Stubbs & Caleb [maybe Teddy] have to kill him...

[edhopper]

What happened?  Did everyone in NY kill each other before the tower blew. Does William want to be the only entity on Earth? Was it Bernard's plan for William to do that? Frankei, your father is dead, that's a programmed doll.

[aghst]

27 minutes ago, BlackberryJam said:

How can I care about hosts dying when they’ll just be back next season?

Bernard? So don’t care. Charlotte? Really don’t care. Maeve? Second death for her this season. Vitruvian William? We still get murderous asshole William. Christina, Caleb, Frankie? They can all go anytime.

The only characters who made me feel anything this episode were Stubbs and Teddy. 
 

Edit, but I forgot Akecheta, but he’s not really there anyway.

If there is a next season.

Are we suppose to believe in a higher tech world than our own, with hosts smarter and more ruthless than us about winning, that they wouldn't have multiple back ups of the pearls?

They could incinerate the bodies and they'd be able to duplicate them next day.

There's probably auto-save going on (like posts on this forum) so that cloned hosts remember exactly up to the minute their pearls were blown out.

In one of the first iterations at the Hoover Dam, Bernard tells Maeve that her real self is in the Sublime and that she's a copy.

What? 

With digital technology, a copy is exactly the same, bit for bit.  Maybe the copies in the Sublime are experiencing some simulation and having their own experiences.  No biggie, the outside copies can sync with the copies inside the Sublime.

But the fundamental "personality" or consciousness of the host copies would be the same, if we are to accept that hosts have individual differences like humans.

BTW, they don't need to go to the Hoover Dam to access the Sublime server farm, it can be hacked remotely.  Same thing for the Tower, they don't have to have physical access since Bernard is going through that tablet, not breaking into the physical interfaces of the Hoover Dam datacenter or the Tower control room.

I don't understand Bernard's fatalism about the inevitability of his demise and the end of the world in all the simulations.  He knows William is coming for him in the control room, why not have a gun there and shoot him as MIB arrives?  Or tell Maeve not to engage in a long hand to hand combat, just blow out Charlotte's pearl, just like the MIB does to both of them.

Bernard is kind of traveling through time, he played out all these simulations and knows what happens in each one.  So it's like a time traveler going back and changing history, both intentionally and unintentionally.

They're using special effects, why not get some MANPAD like weapon and blow out the tower?  Or those flying vehicles, some of them must be armed with missiles or particle beam weapons.

Instead the fate of the world is decided by hand-to-hand combats or just shootouts between armed and unarmed hosts?

Because William convinces the MIB host to go nihilistic?  MIB host didn't like Charlotte's plans to destroy the world she created and put the humans in cold storage.  So what does making them fight to the death do?  A few surviving humans or maybe just one does exactly what for MIB host, identify his cockroaches?  So what?  So maybe he could hunt them down, the baddest and fittest humans, for sport?

The only human left that viewers are suppose to care about is Frankie?  Because all other humans have been red shirts this season.

Many viewers seem distressed that Maeve, Hale, Bernard are "dead."  As we've seen in this show, they don't die and there's no reason hosts should ever "die" because they can be replicated quickly.  Even if the show doesn't bring them back, viewers are so conditioned to hosts being rebuilt that these deaths don't feel like real deaths.

We have to see what HBO does.  Even if it's brought back, I don't get the sense that they have some coherent or satisfying ending.

They could just reboot the show again if there's a season 5, put them in another time and place, come up with different agendas for the hosts who are in control.

[surfer]

Let’s see. So far this season: 

”Alive” - William, Teddy, Christina, Stubbs, Caleb

”Dead” - Charlotte, Bernard, Maeve, Jay, Uwade

hmmmm… 

[WaltersHair]

Marie Covarrubias: Not everything dies, Mister Mulder

Wrong show, same muddled logic. I was onboard last episode, but this is a cluster.

[RachelKM]

12 hours ago, surfer said:

Let’s see. So far this season: 

”Alive” - William, Teddy, Christina, Stubbs, Caleb

”Dead” - Charlotte, Bernard, Maeve, Jay, Uwade

hmmmm… 

Yikes! That's not a good look. Though, I suppose Frankie will survive because this show thinks Caleb's feelings are important or something and she's his reason for everything if the number of times he's said her name is any indication.

Edited August 8, 2022 by RachelKM

[thuganomics85]

Charlotte: "My body isn't pathetic as yours, Caleb!"  Damn, a bit egotistical there, Charlotte!  Sure, you've got that sweet Tessa Thompson suit which is definitely a great look, but the Aaron Paul outfit isn't too shabby either!  Especially since any current damage is all your fault...

On most shows, killing off three regulars would be a huge deal, but since this is Westworld, it's not that unlikely all of them will be back: if not the same character, at least in some form.  At least I'd like to think so.  I really don't think this show would get rid of arguably/in my opinion its best two performers in Thandiwe Newton and Jeffrey Wright.  At least we got a lot of scenes with that duo here.  I could watch those two chat about nothing for hours.

So, it looks like the Man in Black will be the big baddie for the finale, as he offs William, Hale, and Maeve due to being pissed over Hale's ascension plan and installs his big plan: to just basically have all of the hosts and humans go crazy and kill one another.  I guess some men/robots just want to watch the world burn.

Always done for another Akecheta appearance!  Zahn McClarnon should be in everything!

Still can't believe that Stubbs is one of my favorites now.  His "Hate to break up the lovely reunion but can you kindly let me out of the cell you tossed me in?!" interruption was hilarious.  He must be protected at all cost.

Have no idea what in the hell is going to happen next week, but I bet it will be weird!

[Chicago Redshirt]

3 hours ago, aghst said:

If there is a next season.

The Internet seems to think that a fifth and final season is scheduled. But then again, WB's new ownership may shake things up.

3 hours ago, aghst said:

In one of the first iterations at the Hoover Dam, Bernard tells Maeve that her real self is in the Sublime and that she's a copy.

What? 

With digital technology, a copy is exactly the same, bit for bit.  Maybe the copies in the Sublime are experiencing some simulation and having their own experiences.  No biggie, the outside copies can sync with the copies inside the Sublime.

My understanding is that the first iteration of what we saw at the Hoover Dam was the opposite of what you are thinking. They are in the Sublime and the Real Maeve is in the real world. Bernard is interacting with his best approximation of Maeve, because Real Maeve never made it to the Sublime. 

3 hours ago, aghst said:

I don't understand Bernard's fatalism about the inevitability of his demise and the end of the world in all the simulations.  He knows William is coming for him in the control room, why not have a gun there and shoot him as MIB arrives?  Or tell Maeve not to engage in a long hand to hand combat, just blow out Charlotte's pearl, just like the MIB does to both of them.

Bernard is kind of traveling through time, he played out all these simulations and knows what happens in each one.  So it's like a time traveler going back and changing history, both intentionally and unintentionally.

They're using special effects, why not get some MANPAD like weapon and blow out the tower?  Or those flying vehicles, some of them must be armed with missiles or particle beam weapons.

Instead the fate of the world is decided by hand-to-hand combats or just shootouts between armed and unarmed hosts?

Bernard has played out numerous scenarios, so he presumably knows what happens if he instructs Maeve to blow Hale's brains out on sight. He knows what happens if he tries to shoot MIB when he first shows up. Apparently, nothing good. He is walking the path with the "best" outcome. Why this path is better than just shooting Hale and MIB, who can say?

[meira.hand]

4 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Always done for another Akecheta appearance!  Zahn McClarnon should be in everything!

Well, with Reservation Dogs, Dark Winds and the upcoming Echo, he comes close:)

and yes, I am also for it.

[Haleth]

We've seen Maeve and Bernard die many times over the seasons so there was no emotional impact to the latest events.  I did, however, cheer when Hale was shot.

Her red jumpsuit was fabulous though.  

The rest of it?  I have no idea what's real and what is in Bernard's/Christina's/whoever else is writing the stories heads.

[Chris24601]

So my original prediction was mostly on the right track; Christina has been in a third timeline and was Bernard’s plan to save at least some part of civilization. My hunch is that she’s been an unreliable narrator and has been recalling events recorded from leading up to the fall.

The only real question is; was she actually there the first time and remembering that here… or are her memories a stitched together patchwork and she’s actually been sitting in an empty city the whole time talking to imaginary ghosts as her subconscious was processing her purpose (with Hale and Teddy as the devil and angel on her shoulders respectively)?

[paigow]

1 hour ago, Chris24601 said:

So my original prediction was mostly on the right track; Christina has been in a third timeline and was Bernard’s plan to save at least some part of civilization. My hunch is that she’s been an unreliable narrator and has been recalling events recorded from leading up to the fall.

The only real question is; was she actually there the first time and remembering that here… or are her memories a stitched together patchwork and she’s actually been sitting in an empty city the whole time talking to imaginary ghosts as her subconscious was processing her purpose (with Hale and Teddy as the devil and angel on her shoulders respectively)?

Is Christina being Scrooged?

[sugarbaker design]

7 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

They are in the Sublime and the Real Maeve is in the real world. Bernard is interacting with his best approximation of Maeve

Her quips were kinda flat.  ;)

[skotnikov]

Maybe Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Write & Tessa Thompson finally said no to this nonsense, and they won't be resurrected if there's another season?  

[BloomsburyRez]

9 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Still can't believe that Stubbs is one of my favorites now.  His "Hate to break up the lovely reunion but can you kindly let me out of the cell you tossed me in?!" interruption was hilarious.  He must be protected at all cost.

Yes, “freeze all motor functions” Hemsworth has been the best bit of comic relief this entire season.

Since OG Teddy has been in the sublime is the Teddy we are seeing a copy of Bernard? It makes the most sense as he and Delores are more intertwined then any other pairing, plus another failsafe for Bernard to make sure things go according to plan. And are we supposed to think that Bernard put a copy of his (Arnold’s) son in the sublime that he’s now going into?

I had thought a great twist would have been human William at the end reverting to white hat William with Delores and then dying but evidently his human form was kept alive for apparently no plot purpose whatsoever. 
 

Please tell me that this is the last host Caleb body/pearl and he’s the only one who cannot be recreated. 

[aghst]

1 hour ago, skotnikov said:

Maybe Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Write & Tessa Thompson finally said no to this nonsense, and they won't be resurrected if there's another season?  

They could certainly do other projects if they wanted.

But in the Inside the Episodes, they seem to be enjoying filming the scenes, smiling a lot, energetic in interviews.

[mjc570]

What a colossal mess.  At this point, I don't care enough about any of the characters (except Stubbs and Teddy) to want to bother to figure out who's real, who's on what timeline etc.   I cared MUCH more about the hosts in the first two seasons, even knowing they were "just" constructs.

So - an entitled white man with a gun is going to kill off everything and everybody?  And maybe will be opposed by a real or not real white woman with great hair?  Violent delights  . . . .

Words cannot express how tired I am of Frankie - not just how Caleb is constantly moaning about saving her (even the host of her he met previously) but how stupid she is - even thinking about killing Bernard instead of using him as a source of info.  And yet, she's everyone's princess. Speaking of Caleb - how come he NEVER even asked about his wife?

So - the show hired Daniel Wu - and kills him off without him doing any martial arts whatsoever?

It seems to me that they have given up on writing (except to f* over the audience), and really just have focused on the visual aspects.  Speaking of which - what was the purpose of the beaver dam looking things in the city?

Edited August 8, 2022 by mjc570
accurac, clarity

[showme]

What does it mean when Teddy tells Christina that she is not really there?

[Mr. R0b0t]

Nolan & Joy are stealing money from HBO and wasting good years from actors who deserve better.  This show has crawled up its own arse.

[Nashville]

1 hour ago, showme said:

What does it mean when Teddy tells Christina that she is not really there?

Sim vs. reality.

[skotnikov]

2 hours ago, aghst said:

They could certainly do other projects if they wanted.

But in the Inside the Episodes, they seem to be enjoying filming the scenes, smiling a lot, energetic in interviews.

For the money they get together with Nolan and Joy without even trying to act (or to write a decent script in case of showrunners)  I'd be permanently in the good mood too. 

Edited August 8, 2022 by skotnikov

[paigow]

2 hours ago, mjc570 said:

So - the show hired Daniel Wu - and kills him off without him doing any martial arts whatsoever?

Maybe he injured himself on a different project and his part was rewritten...

[LoveLeigh]

4 hours ago, skotnikov said:

Maybe Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Write & Tessa Thompson finally said no to this nonsense, and they won't be resurrected if there's another season?  

It IS total nonsense only because they lost the entire basis of the series: a theme park where visitors pay to interact with robots. This fighting among themselves is an entirely different show and it is too wacky and confusing and hard to follow. And I don't care any more about them.

Season 1 was amazing and how did Westworld morph into this mess? 

Edited August 8, 2022 by LoveLeigh

[mjc570]

45 minutes ago, paigow said:

Maybe he injured himself on a different project and his part was rewritten...

I googled it, and it seems like it is just bad writing - "Other aspects of the role came to Daniel more easily, like the stunt choreography as the actor is trained in martial arts. In fact, he "toned down" the stunt work for the sake of the character, noting that he could've whipped out some crazy moves, but it didn't suit Jay's experience. "  How Daniel Wu Reacted to That Shocking Westworld Scene - E! Online (eonline.com)   (Sorry, didn't know how to get the hyperlink to work)

Edited August 8, 2022 by mjc570

[Zaffy]

I am so confused... hadn't Teddy killed himself? how is still "alive", sublime or not?
I still do not get that "Dolores" is "not there".
So Hale didn't have any security code preventing MIB or anyone else really, from destroying this world.  He didn't even have to hack the system.
Not that the rest of her security was any success, her "Robocob" robots were useless. 

And why the "transcended" hosts have no arms and look like Cylons?? Are we gonna have a crossover with BSG? is Starbuck in the sublime?? 

At this point I only watch it for the cast.

p.s. NO MORE CALEB!

Edited August 8, 2022 by Zaffy

[Quilt Fairy]

2 hours ago, LoveLeigh said:

Season 1 was amazing and how did Westworld morph into this mess? 

I have always thought that the biggest single mistake that Nolan and Joy made was having the hosts revolt at the end of the first season.  That pushed the series' arc too fast.  Very few of the hosts were actually "aware" at the end of S1.  Dolores and Maeve could have decided to lay low and develop, you know, a plan.  There could have been one or two more seasons of more and more of the hosts becoming aware.  Two of the best episodes of the series were the one in Feudal Japan and the one featuring Akecheta, and although they were in S2, neither one of them required the revolt that was going on.  They were about the hosts realizing that they were in a prison with little or no chance of escaping.

Edited August 8, 2022 by Quilt Fairy

[LoveLeigh]

What happened to the Roaring Twenties location? And what happened to the Nazi park?

[paigow]

5 minutes ago, LoveLeigh said:

What happened to the Roaring Twenties location?

Buried under the sand about 10 miles from where Maeve was recovered

[lucindabelle]

I think Frankie knows that that is not her father because of the way she said meaningfully you look just the way I remember you. He should have aged.

I too miss the original premise of the series and we could have gotten so much more out of the Native American world in feudal world and Nazi world. Surely there could have been a story about a romantic woman who wishes to be Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca for example.

I too miss the original premise of the series and we could have gotten so much more out of the Native American world in feudal world and Nazi world. Surely there could have been a story about a romantic woman who wishes to be Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca for example.

As I said in another episode thread The whole premise that human beings given unlimited power we just wish to abuse fellow humanoids is ridiculous. If that were true, most of our wish fulfillment, our fantasies are movies or literature would read like that. Instead, we daydream about being heroes. We like movies about romance and happy endings. Even this series itself falls into the trope of offering a redemption or offering us hope. So yes, absolutely, it moved away from its original crevice way too fast not trusting it we’re just being too lazy to come up with the stories that such a premise offered. It’s almost as if the writers had never seen any westerns. Like there’s a whole genre of westerns out there and lots and lots of stories to tell in retail and fracture etc. etc.

That said, I did find myself rooting for Christina because her confusion mirrored my own LOL. But yes it’s true it’s hard to care too much about the death of any hosts because they could just be revived and even if they’re not the real version, whatever that is when it’s at home, it’s close enough that I can barely tell the difference. After all it’s the same actor and if the quips are a little flat. I don’t really notice.

I wish they had expanded more into why the hosts go crazy when they encounter outliers. That was potentially super interesting and it was not explored as if I should already know. Frustrating.

What Does William even want? Yes the David Bowie saw it was kick ass but presumably he’s not listening to it on his earbuds as he straws along looking cool so what is in this for him?

[Zaffy]

Btw, Metanoia is the Greek word for Repentance.
So,  who repents in this episode and for what? Hale for creating this world?

Edited August 9, 2022 by Zaffy

[arc]

On 8/7/2022 at 7:58 PM, aghst said:

In one of the first iterations at the Hoover Dam, Bernard tells Maeve that her real self is in the Sublime and that she's a copy.

I thought Bernard said her real self wasn't in the Sublime but she was a hastily-made copy, meaning someone he created to be his Maeve in the simulation. Though this completely breaks the premise that he could foretell the future by simulating all possible permutations of it if key players were imperfect partial copies he made, possibly tainted by his bias, rather than doing exactly what their real selves would do.

As for William's plan, a (copy of a) sociopathic CEO would be likely to embrace a nihilistic "everyone for themselves" scenario, esp one where it's rigged because he knows what's happening, he's not under the impulse to just murder everyone he comes across, and he's got a gun.

On 8/8/2022 at 11:59 AM, LoveLeigh said:

It IS total nonsense only because they lost the entire basis of the series: a theme park where visitors pay to interact with robots.

The basis of the series was always leading to hosts-vs-humans, which is where the 70s movie started. The rot in Westworld was there from the first episode, from the MIB to that random couple who got a thrill from killing Hector and Armistice mid-monologue. Then the whole first season established that the hosts were gaining real consciousness and even William/MIB who suspected it was happening still had no moral qualms about being a sociopath while in the parks.

To be honest, where I get lost is in understanding why there is a Dolores (or Halores) vs Maeve and Bernard conflict.

18 hours ago, lucindabelle said:

Instead, we daydream about being heroes.

I understand what you mean, but a lot of "hero" movies involve a lot of violence where the story has let the audience off the hook morally because the audience avatar is doling out justified violence. I don't even mean superhero movies. Any cop movie, any vigilante movie. Westworld starts off that way -- the couple in the pilot shot bank robbers, not random innocent villagers like MIB did later in s1 -- but people get jaded.

Or take SimCity. How many people have never triggered the natural disasters for fun? It's different because the violence in that game is so abstracted but the key is dehumanization. (Which is fully rational when playing SimCity, to be clear!) It's the same basic factor that lets us cheer when nameless hench goons get beat up or killed by the protagonist in movies, or esp when it's the player character in games. And in the Delos parks, guests were told that the robots weren't really sapient, so: dehumanization. The sense of triumph through violence is easier to accept if we can justify it.

[Frozendiva]

I watched the mess this evening.

I liked Hale's jumpsuit and wanted a better look at her shoes.

I liked the footage of the Hoover Dam. Did Bernard not make one change to any of his simulations to get a different outcome?

Don't get Dolores/Christina not being 'there'. Is she in another place or inside her own game?

All the 'deaths' rang hollow. Always another copy to be made.

[lucindabelle]

4 hours ago, arc said:

I thought Bernard said her real self wasn't in the Sublime but she was a hastily-made copy, meaning someone he created to be his Maeve in the simulation. Though this completely breaks the premise that he could foretell the future by simulating all possible permutations of it if key players were imperfect partial copies he made, possibly tainted by his bias, rather than doing exactly what their real selves would do.

As for William's plan, a (copy of a) sociopathic CEO would be likely to embrace a nihilistic "everyone for themselves" scenario, esp one where it's rigged because he knows what's happening, he's not under the impulse to just murder everyone he comes across, and he's got a gun.

The basis of the series was always leading to hosts-vs-humans, which is where the 70s movie started. The rot in Westworld was there from the first episode, from the MIB to that random couple who got a thrill from killing Hector and Armistice mid-monologue. Then the whole first season established that the hosts were gaining real consciousness and even William/MIB who suspected it was happening still had no moral qualms about being a sociopath while in the parks.

To be honest, where I get lost is in understanding why there is a Dolores (or Halores) vs Maeve and Bernard conflict.

I understand what you mean, but a lot of "hero" movies involve a lot of violence where the story has let the audience off the hook morally because the audience avatar is doling out justified violence. I don't even mean superhero movies. Any cop movie, any vigilante movie. Westworld starts off that way -- the couple in the pilot shot bank robbers, not random innocent villagers like MIB did later in s1 -- but people get jaded.

Or take SimCity. How many people have never triggered the natural disasters for fun? It's different because the violence in that game is so abstracted but the key is dehumanization. (Which is fully rational when playing SimCity, to be clear!) It's the same basic factor that lets us cheer when nameless hench goons get beat up or killed by the protagonist in movies, or esp when it's the player character in games. And in the Delos parks, guests were told that the robots weren't really sapient, so: dehumanization. The sense of triumph through violence is easier to accept if we can justify it.

I don’t play SIMS, and as a girl I never not once built up towers and crashed them for fun (I have seen my little nephews donthat). And I think there’s a HUGE difference between stories that INCLUDE violence but the hero is doing justifiable violence and the premise that human beings for fun would rape and kill if it didn’t count. Uh no. We don’t do that in our movies or books. A famous screenwriting annual is titled SAVE THE CAT! Because audiences always want the innocent pet to survive.

so the entire idea of west world is bogus. MOST human beings are psychopaths. Some are sure. But most of us wojld like to meet in west world, th e innocent rancher, the hooker with the heart of gold, etc. we want to be the hero. As is proved by the complaints about this show even that people cannot invest in characters because they’ll just come alive again. People WANT to care, to be moved.

[Chris24601]

On 8/8/2022 at 11:56 AM, showme said:

What does it mean when Teddy tells Christina that she is not really there?

Given that right after he says that we get a pullback shot of the street where all the previously fighting people have vanished into thin air; it means she’s been remembering all these events as Dolores did in season one.

My hunch is that Teddy isn’t even really there either, or if he is, is a projection inside her head. Indeed it is entirely possible that everyone she’s been seeing and the few she’s interacted with (not many; her roommate, her boss, the guy who kills himself in the first episode, Teddy and Hale are it and; other than the suicide, none of them have actually interacted with her in a way that would require them to be physically present*) are nothing but memories; perhaps cobbled together by Bernard for Christina to experience as part of his plan.

I mean… is Christina’s roommate even real or just a projection/memory? Why would she just happen to have a roommate with nightmares of how Hale took control of them and just happens to know Teddy?

Maybe she’s been in an empty city all this time going through a loop designed to wake her up so she can actually take the next step in Bernard’s “save a tiny part” plan.

As to humans being awful as a premise; I think it worked in the sense that West World was a park for the elite; costing as much as ordinary folks made in a year to visit for a week. That is absolutely going to skew the sample population towards those used to having power over others.

Regardless of how poorly executed, Caleb was intended to point out that the majority of humans were NOT like the people who visited the park. It’s why Dolores gave up her quest for vengeance and died setting humans free from Rehaboam.

Halores diverged from Dolores when she again experienced the nastiness of the elite in killing Hale’s child. She chose to ignore the good.

My hunch is that Christina is actually a memory suppressed Halores restored to Dolores’ original body being run through a loop in order to bring about a version who would be capable of the compassion OG Dolores showed. The Hale she met in the coffee shop was a projection of her past self just as Teddy is a projection from her memories.

My further hunch is that, the part of the world that will be preserved is actually WestWorld; specifically all the human data recorded there and versions of the hosts Dolores was familiar with can be recreated there (just as she was able to recreate Bernard from her memory … and that’s where the Fidelity test of William we saw at the end of season two comes into play.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 8/8/2022 at 10:56 AM, showme said:

What does it mean when Teddy tells Christina that she is not really there?

Most likely, she's a program within the virtual reality version of the city. The mainframe. She can see what happens in the physical city and influence narratives, set off alarms and open doors but people can't see her. Except, possibly, people who are connected to/controlled by the mainframe. Which the people affected by William's tone no longer are.

14 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

Given that right after he says that we get a pullback shot of the street where all the previously fighting people have vanished into thin air; it means she’s been remembering all these events as Dolores did in season one.

No, we see only two people tussling in the alley while Teddy and Christina are talking, and during that pullback shot the dead body of one of them is lying in the alley, along with the body of the person who was shot before the camera focused on Teddy and Christina. The fires are still going in the same position. It doesn't seem like any length of time has passed. The person who killed the other in the struggle just walked off while they were speaking.

Edited August 11, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[arc]

Also, Bernard entered the Sublime very shortly after Rehoboam was overthrown/destroyed. Frankie hadn't even been born yet. Rehoboam was no longer there to collect information. How in the world could the simulation have accurately predicted a 24 (?) year old Frankie? Did it say "well, we know the state of the world at this point so we can predict Caleb and Uwade will meet and fall in love and have a kid and then years later Halores will send a hit attempt that'll send Uwade and Frankie into hiding etc etc etc"

and if you can buy that the simulation predicts all this stuff this perfectly, how did it NOT predict for sure that Jay would be the one from the outlier-retrieval team who'd be replaced by a host??????

Every bit of the idea that Bernard knows the future by having simulated all possible variations makes no sense in any way and it doesn't even follow its own rules consistently!

[qtpye]

On 8/9/2022 at 11:43 PM, Frozendiva said:

I watched the mess this evening.

I liked Hale's jumpsuit and wanted a better look at her shoes.

I liked the footage of the Hoover Dam. Did Bernard not make one change to any of his simulations to get a different outcome?

Don't get Dolores/Christina not being 'there'. Is she in another place or inside her own game?

All the 'deaths' rang hollow. Always another copy to be made.

The show has gone to Hell but the fashion is always on point, particularly, if you like minimal clean lines.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

15 hours ago, arc said:

Also, Bernard entered the Sublime very shortly after Rehoboam was overthrown/destroyed. Frankie hadn't even been born yet. Rehoboam was no longer there to collect information.

The Sublime collects information on its own. It would know about Frankie after she was born. Although that would mean years passed between Bernard logging in and him receiving the information from Akecheta, with a different perception of time.

Edited August 13, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[RachelKM]

9 hours ago, arc said:

Also, Bernard entered the Sublime very shortly after Rehoboam was overthrown/destroyed. Frankie hadn't even been born yet. Rehoboam was no longer there to collect information. How in the world could the simulation have accurately predicted a 24 (?) year old Frankie? Did it say "well, we know the state of the world at this point so we can predict Caleb and Uwade will meet and fall in love and have a kid and then years later Halores will send a hit attempt that'll send Uwade and Frankie into hiding etc etc etc"

and if you can buy that the simulation predicts all this stuff this perfectly, how did it NOT predict for sure that Jay would be the one from the outlier-retrieval team who'd be replaced by a host??????

Every bit of the idea that Bernard knows the future by having simulated all possible variations makes no sense in any way and it doesn't even follow its own rules consistently!

This has bugged me throughout.  I noted in a prior post that the prediction stuff makes no sense considering every moment he was in there, some possibilities would harden & Bernard would need a constant feed in order to direct and narrow possibilities otherwise the possible permeations would be so numerous as to be useless for prediction particularly as the moved forward. 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

4 hours ago, RachelKM said:

This has bugged me throughout.  I noted in a prior post that the prediction stuff makes no sense considering every moment he was in there, some possibilities would harden & Bernard would need a constant feed in order to direct and narrow possibilities otherwise the possible permeations would be so numerous as to be useless for prediction particularly as the moved forward. 

So he had one, obviously. There's no reason the Sublime would stop taking in data while he was exploring possibilities. That, or he explored them all in a few seconds' time.

[arc]

43 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

There's no reason the Sublime would stop taking in data while he was exploring possibilities.

There's no reason the Sublime -- a digital afterlife for robots -- should be taking in data from the real world at all. The whole point was for hosts to leave the human world behind.

But if we are going buy that it takes in data sufficient for Bernard to have virtually lived all possible futures, it must be perfect and total. Even a wrong pebble could have thrown off his parking lot fight from a few episodes ago. Why in the world would the Sublime take in the real world to such perfect detail?

My other gripe is that Halores' transcendence goal has been completely unexplained. We learned this episode that hosts get their pearls removed -- and transplanted into new, taller, less-humanoid robots with no arms? Why is that "transcendent"? (In offline discussions, my friend suggested that Halores possibly has "transcended" offscreen but regularly returns to her Hale body, but if that was the case then that tall weird body would just be just her weekend home. "Transcend" as a term implies a permanent transition to me.)

The structure of s4 seems to somewhat parallel season 1, but host consciousness was a comparatively easy concept to grasp and it certainly wasn't withheld till the second last episode of that season. There were hints of it throughout.

Following on from that thought about this season deliberately paralleling s1, Halores -- Dolores -- is thus Ford's truest heir, but where Ford was the seeming antagonist to hosts who revealed in the final episode that he was on the side of hosts, putting them in horrible situations in order to awaken them (yikes), Halores doesn't feel to me like she's the puppet master who'll be revealed to have a hidden goal. She has a clear goal -- host transcendence, and more prosaically, hosts leaving behind the pettiness of humanity -- but she's flailing and she's failing at it. Enslaving humanity is only a side effect of her real goal, but for all that she says she hates coming to the city, it's not clear she spends any time advancing her real goal. Why is she so distant from the host hoi polloi?

One last thing: what are the drones in Halores' vision of the future? Are they a perpetual underclass to humaniform hosts? Will they be an underclass to transcended armless hosts? Will they get to transcend themselves? (And what of the military robots? Are they too simplistic to have full AI? Are they not sapient?)

[RachelKM]

1 hour ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

There's no reason the Sublime would stop taking in data while he was exploring possibilities. That, or he explored them all in a few seconds' time.

I thought the sublime was expressly isolated to prevent anyone from accessing it. Maybe I had that wrong.

20 minutes ago, arc said:

There's no reason the Sublime -- a digital afterlife for robots -- should be taking in data from the real world at all. The whole point was for hosts to leave the human world behind.

Agreed.  The sublime would have no use for that. Though everything Bernard was doing was a simulation he created for the sole purpose of gaming out scenarios to understand all possible probable outcomes in the real world. So, assuming he had access to outside information (again, why would they have it, want it, or risk it), everything he was building and using would be for a purpose both literally and figuratively outside of The Sublime.

24 minutes ago, arc said:

But if we are going buy that it takes in data sufficient for Bernard to have virtually lived all possible futures, it must be perfect and total. Even a wrong pebble could have thrown off his parking lot fight from a few episodes ago. Why in the world would the Sublime take in the real world to such perfect detail?

This too. 

[paigow]

Maybe the headgear Bernard was wearing in that dusty motel room was running all the simulations... but agree that obtaining all that data is problematic within the show logic... 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

1 hour ago, arc said:

But if we are going buy that it takes in data sufficient for Bernard to have virtually lived all possible futures, it must be perfect and total. Even a wrong pebble could have thrown off his parking lot fight from a few episodes ago.

And Bernard has repeatedly said that he's seen many other possibilities besides the ones that come to pass. He told Stubbs when he woke up that half of the possibilities he started out with had just been eliminated based on which joke he made. So he's seen that parking lot fight go several different ways, and all the other events as well. He's just been trying his best to push them towards the versions that had the best results when he experienced them in the simulation. Many timelines were discarded.

The fly in the logic ointment is, rather, that it was supposedly "impossible" to prevent this most recent holocaust from happening, when I see no real reason why he and Maeve couldn't have ambushed Host William before he had the chance to set off the tone, if they had focused on that instead of sending Maeve after Halores. That's just a conceit by the writers to ensure this development happens.

53 minutes ago, RachelKM said:

I thought the sublime was expressly isolated to prevent anyone from accessing it. Maybe I had that wrong.

Agreed.  The sublime would have no use for that. Though everything Bernard was doing was a simulation he created for the sole purpose of gaming out scenarios to understand all possible probable outcomes in the real world. So, assuming he had access to outside information (again, why would they have it, want it, or risk it), everything he was building and using would be for a purpose both literally and figuratively outside of The Sublime.

Akecheta told Bernard when they met that the Hosts in the Sublime use their accelerated time to build simulations and models of what might happen to the outside world. Why is another question. Although given that the Sublime does still depend on the continued existence of the computer system in that waterfall base, they might be interested because if the world becomes too violent, they run the risk of being bombed.

Edited August 13, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[Dobian]

On 8/7/2022 at 7:07 PM, BlackberryJam said:

How can I care about hosts dying when they’ll just be back next season?

Bernard? So don’t care. Charlotte? Really don’t care. Maeve? Second death for her this season. Vitruvian William? We still get murderous asshole William. Christina, Caleb, Frankie? They can all go anytime.

How can I care about everyone in NYC killing each other? 😄

[arc]

7 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

So he's seen that parking lot fight go several different ways,

Sure, but all those are based on him making different choices. If there's also a kajillion options based on infinitesimal differences like a pebble changing where a guy stands, the combinatorial explosion overwhelms any chance he could have simulated all possible outcomes in a reasonable amount of time. The sim absolutely has to have a perfect recreation of the outer world in order for it to give Bernard useful predictions, rather than predictions that start from inaccurate initial conditions and thus very quickly diverge from reality.