S02.E05: Akane No Mai

[arc]

They actually switched from the electro-mechanical bodies to the biological-ish 3D printed bodies to save costs, according to S1. If I remember correctly. And building a biological body that looks and moves like a human probably almost requires that it have nerves and hormones like a human. So it's not about building in desire, it's about just copying the existing design of the human body and thus taking everything it's already got.[1] So really, by that point, why bother removing details like that when one could just gate them off or on in the brain unit[2]? If anything, trying to edit down the bio design would be more work.

[1] It's not for nothing that they show the little tool that magically heals minor wounds working on both hosts and humans like Old William. And even healing human skin properly involves working out the capillary and nerve hookups. Hosts and humans are biologically the same except for the brain:

Quote

Maeve: We feel the same.
Felix: We are the same these days. For the most part. One big difference though. The processing power in here [taps her head] is way beyond what we have. 

[2] BTW, Ford's Journey Into Night update presumably undid any such brain gating if it existed.

 

As for pain tolerance, that's a slider that can be adjusted for each host, as we've seen on screen in S1. Why would you believe they don't feel pain?

[piequinn35]

On 5/21/2018 at 10:20 PM, Quilt Fairy said:

I don't think Dolores is really "woke" and free, I think she's still playing out Ford's last narrative.

I agree, add Bernard and Clementine to Ford's last narrative.

I watched the first 5 episodes in 3 days, I am confused a bit about Bernard, well, he is confused too...

didn't Dolores know that Clementine took Bernard to the cave

Am I in the right episode? lol

ShogunWorld is interesting, Maeve and co's side trip, Maeve's discovering she's a telepath like Ford and can command non-verbally.

[mac123x]

Sizemore said they should go to Snow Lake because there's an access point to the underground facilities.  Shouldn't there be multiple access points in Japanese!Sweetwater so the technicians can come in and clean up the multiple bodies every night?

[SoWindsor]

I’m so sad. I loved this show and now I’m not into it anymore ? what happened!?

[Hiacios]

Oh, I hate Dolores so much! I can't wait to see her end.

 

Love the Japanese world.

[Nashville]

On 5/24/2018 at 5:19 PM, Netfoot said:

Like it or not, they are machines, designed for a purpose.  Why would they have been created to feel desire, and physically enjoy sex?  Sure, they might have been designed to pretend these things, but the expense of making them actually so, would be hard to justify.

Your statements assume facts not currently in evidence - that they are automatons with zero capacity to evolve beyond their initial design capabilities - when in fact this show’s entire plot appears to be focused on the exact inverse.

[Netfoot]

5 hours ago, Nashville said:

Your statements assume facts not currently in evidence - that they are automatons with zero capacity to evolve beyond their initial design capabilities - when in fact this show’s entire plot appears to be focused on the exact inverse.

Obviously, the writers can pull any required technological situation out of thin air; Deus Ex Machina, apropriately enough.  But if they do too much of that, the show becomes another Marvel Comic-Book movie, where everyone has "magical powers" and develops new ones to order, when ever they need to.

In this show, we have seen what appears to be the unexpected evolution (unless Ford did it on purpose?) of the machines, but this evolution would appear to be completely cognitive -- evolution of their software, if you like.  We know they don't "heal" themselves, because they have to be repaired.  We have no reason to think they have pleasure sensors in their genitalia, and nothing to indicate that they have mutated or evolved physically to develop them.

My statement doesn't assume facts not in evidence, it simply speculates about such facts.  

[BrooklynRat]

7 hours ago, Netfoot said:

  We have no reason to think they have pleasure sensors in their genitalia, and nothing to indicate that they have mutated or evolved physically to develop them.

My statement doesn't assume facts not in evidence, it simply speculates about such facts.  

I don’t think we have to assume they’re having sex because they have pleasure sensors.  It can simply be learned behavior they’re mimicking, that they’ve associated with emotional expression like hugging,  laughing, or crying. I’m sure they’ve been programmed to at least understand the act of sex—seems plausible they can appropriate it for their own purpose or expression. 

Edited May 26, 2018 by BrooklynRat
Grammar

[Head-Full-Of-Thi]

On 23.5.2018 at 8:46 PM, The Companion said:

I THINK they said without a reset. 

 

On 24.5.2018 at 4:08 AM, arc said:

Right, I was paraphrasing from memory and took a different interpretation of 'full reset' than what Luka1997 did, though on further reflection just shutting Teddy down into the maintenance mode seen inside the Mesa makes more sense than a personality wipe.

For what it's worth, the tablet said it was overwriting Teddy's "base level heuristics". Other files of his, like backstory, narrative, and attributes were untouched. (Here's a Youtube clip of that scene, in 1080p.)

 

Oh ok yeah it makes sense. Well at least we're still gonna get a version of Teddy...

On 25.5.2018 at 1:19 AM, Netfoot said:

Like it or not, they are machines, designed for a purpose.  Why would they have been created to feel desire, and physically enjoy sex?  Sure, they might have been designed to pretend these things, but the expense of making them actually so, would be hard to justify.

I don't understand the discussion that's going on about it.  The hosts don't have to feel pain or emotions either, they don't have talk to each other when no guests are near they can just pretend to be humans but that's not the case with Westworld. Ford and Arnold built them to be humans.

I guess the response they have to having sex might be programmed like their 'die when shot at' response, but Dolores purposely chose to reprogram herself so she wouldn't die, why on earth would she choose to remove her sex response? lol

[Netfoot]

5 hours ago, Luka1997 said:

Ford and Arnold built them to be humans.

Says who?  They were built to look like humans and to behave like humans - without question.  Given their function, they were built to perform sex, but why would it have been necessary for them to be designed to enjoy it?

[CatS]

I thought Delos bot was peeing, not masturbating?

[paigow]

On 5/25/2018 at 5:16 PM, mac123x said:

Shouldn't there be multiple access points in Japanese!Sweetwater so the technicians can come in and clean up the multiple bodies every night?

Iron Man: Hey kid, help me pull this gauntlet off of Thanos.

SpiderMan: Why not amputate his arm with one of your lasers Mr. Stark?

[MJ Frog]

3 hours ago, CatS said:

I thought Delos bot was peeing, not masturbating?

No, he was definitely having a morning wank.

But this discussion brings to mind one of the central mysteries of the show for me, and something that has never been fully answered that I am aware of: how much do the hosts actually feel? Especially when the park was up and running, were they merely great actors, as they were programmed to be? Or did they really experience some version of pain, and fear? Or even pleasure? The settings for pain tolerance would seem to indicate that they do, and did, at least experience pain (unless the settings were telling them how to act, rather than what to feel). And thus perhaps they felt other things as well.

So this then begs the question, if their interactions with the guests were to some degree experiential, and not merely performative, who knew about this? Did Ford, even though he demanded the technicians see them as things rather than people? Did the guests? Even though I would think the draw would have been guilt free pleasure/violence, just like with video games. Unless their world is populated by sociopaths, I would think the guests would be horrified to know that the hosts were feeling real fear, pain, violation. And if the hosts did feel these things, then they really were just slaves, who had their memories wiped to stave off PTSD, and to keep them from figuring out what they were. It would also mean that Westworld and all the other parks are nothing short of monstrous.

1 hour ago, tabularasa said:

Could someone explain me why critics thought this season was an improvement over season 1? It's a mess!

I still enjoy Westworld and will continue watching it, but as many have noted, it's not the same show. The first season struck me as a really interesting psychological thriller, whereas now it's become run-of-the-mill sci-fi, relying heavily on plot and reveals to keep things moving. Honestly, for me the show never quite lived up to the potential of the first episode. It has never done anything as interesting, or heartbreaking, as book-ending that episode with Dolores's sweet, hopeful, and utterly naive little speech, which meant something completely different at the end than it did at the beginning.

Edited May 27, 2018 by MJ Frog
Commas are important.

[WatchrTina]

On 5/20/2018 at 10:56 PM, WatchrTina said:

I really enjoyed seeing the same scenario played out by all the Japanese doppelgangers.

I'm quoting myself because today I went back and re-watched the first episode to see the original bank robbery scenario play out.  Oooooh, that was interesting and (for me) a TOTALLY different experience versus when I watched it last year for the first time.  There are so many little hints about the nature of the park in what the 'bots say. There is serious foreshadowing going on.  I highly recommend going back and enjoying it all over again.

One thing I recall is that when I saw the very first episode for the very first time I didn't much care about Hector.  Now he's just about my favorite character so I'm glad that the Samurai army in THIS episode didn't hack him to bits.

 

2 hours ago, MJ Frog said:

if the hosts did feel these things, then they really were just slaves, who had their memories wiped to stave off PTSD, and to keep them from figuring out what they were. It would also mean that Westworld and all the other parks are nothing short of monstrous.

The parks ARE nothing short of monstrous.  Arnold killed himself in order to try to shut the parks down when he came to realize that the 'bots were capable of achieving sentience and, as such, he'd unwittingly helped create a slave race whose raison d'être was to be raped and murdered for entertainment purposes.  The whole shit-storm that has arisen in the park now (the robot insurrection) is the direct result of that monstrousness.  But no one cares about that monstrousness (no one human -- at least no one in charge of Delos) because the park is already serving a nefarious purpose -- the gathering of that data that they're trying to smuggle out of the park in Abernathy's head.  "These violent delights have violent ends."  The monstrousness of the park is probably nothing compared to what Delos is REALLY up to.

Edited May 27, 2018 by WatchrTina

[MJ Frog]

1 hour ago, WatchrTina said:

The parks ARE nothing short of monstrous.  Arnold killed himself in order to try to shut the parks down when he came to realize that the 'bots were capable of achieving sentience and, as such, he'd unwittingly helped create a slave race whose raison d'être was to be raped and murdered for entertainment purposes.

Yep. That I realized. What has always had me curious is how much they felt before they were aware or awake to what they were. Sentience is no guarantee of free will. Indeed there is an argument that much of our own free will is illusory -- and not from a philosophical standpoint, but a scientific one. Were they sentient before they were "awake"? Is it possible that they felt emotion and sensation while still subject to their programming, in the dark as to the nature of reality, living in their own sort of Matrix? Or were they all just miming feelings, like the very fanciest of toasters, until they reached some critical mass of experience that made them magically "woke" like Dolores? The later would be the lesser crime -- seeing as both Dolores and Maeve put a stop to things shortly after they realized what was going on; it's pretty difficult to make the hosts be hosts when they can decide they don't want to be. But if it's the former, and they were used and tortured and terrified over and over, only made to forget it (kind of like Dark City), then the crime is SO much worse. And this is something the show has never really answered to my satisfaction.

[Ms.Moon]

I just love Samurai World.  I think this has become my favorite episode of this season thus far.  I watched the behind the scenes for this episode and it definitely made me enjoy it even more.  I thought Thandie Newton’s Japanese sounded pretty but I am quite happy to hear that it sounded correct to Japanese speakers as well.  I found out it was more of Japanese of that time period but her accent was good.  That made me really appreciate this even more I like touches like that even if I cannot tell the correctness of the accent Japanese speakers can and appreciated it.  

[Black Knight]

16 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Says who?  They were built to look like humans and to behave like humans - without question.  Given their function, they were built to perform sex, but why would it have been necessary for them to be designed to enjoy it?

Because the ultimate Delos goal, or at least one of the ultimate Delos goals, was for humans to achieve immortality by trading their flesh and blood bodies in for the type of bodies used by hosts. And most humans would want such an immortality to include the ability to truly feel physical pleasure, including of the sexual kind.

[Gyakuto]

I think the real issue with this series is it's just painfully slow. Long scenes of the 'man in black' riding into shot, conversations elongated by pregnant pauses (and annoying 'vocal fry'). I often watch at double speed just to skip over these dull scenes! I think a previous poster is correct in suggesting the writers seem to have divorced themselves from series one. It feels like they're writing it as they go along and if 'Lost' is anything to go by, this is not a good strategy. What we have here is in some respects a 'Pinocchio ' tale- non human life-forms trying to find 'themselves' and equality (Delores's story) crossed with a quest story (Maeve's daughter quest and the Man in Black), but this is so far back in the background that it becomes indistinct and u focused. As for the Edo World segue....I'm real Japanophile and yet I find this a bewildering branch of the narrative, albeit more interesting than the main West World part of the story.

A dog's dinner of a series, in my opinion.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Gyakuto

[ACW]

On 5/23/2018 at 10:03 AM, WatchrTina said:

Well, in his defense, he was leaking cortical fluid from his ear.  I think it was Sizemore who noticed that and panicked, saying "He's not awake, he's glitching!" (or words to that effect)  So perhaps we should attribute his failure to anticipate Akane's attack -- at least in part -- to technical difficulties, though I agree that arrogance played a part.

I think people are missing the forest for the trees here.

The Shogun acted as he did *because it was melodramatic and genre-appropriate*.  Within the context of the world he "lives" in, his nature and function was to do such things; and despite the robopocalypse and his personal injury, he was still acting according to his programmed nature.  Sizemore should be proud.

[WatchrTina]

2 minutes ago, ACW said:

Sizemore should be proud.

Sizemore continues to be freaked out by the improvisations.  He didn't write (in the script) that the Shogun ordered his men to burn their ears closed in response to the threat of a "witch" so he can't fathom where that kind of ruthless "thinking" would come from.  Sizemore has come to accept that Maeve is somehow different but he still thinks of all the other 'bots as things that are following a script.  He's not proud of the improvisations.  He's terrified.

[Dakisela]

On 5/20/2018 at 9:03 PM, DakotaLavender said:

Well, maybe many loved this episode but I found it unbearable and unwatchable. The show is all over the place and I just lost interest in the characters I loved last season. This show is a hot mess of carnage and slaughter and weak in plot. I hate it, I will watch but I just don't care about any of them. 

 

Thank you for this.  This show makes me feel really stupid.  I have trouble following the narratives with the time jumping, it's too dark to see anything, and now I'm finding that I am real close to not really caring.  There's other, frankly better, things to watch at the same time the new episode airs and carving out precious time to watch is becoming not that important any more......

On 5/27/2018 at 10:53 AM, CatS said:

I thought Delos bot was peeing, not masturbating?

I think the problem here is that he was doing it over the TOILET!  I didn't realize that was a popular spot for men to get off.......

[GustavMahler]

The best part of this episode was me singing the Stones cover....

[paramitch]

Quote

I think the problem here is that he was doing it over the TOILET!  I didn't realize that was a popular spot for men to get off.......

To clarify this -- Delos only urinated in the toilet. He was having his morning wank when he was still in bed.

[AudienceofOne]

On 21/05/2018 at 12:03 PM, DakotaLavender said:

Well, maybe many loved this episode but I found it unbearable and unwatchable. The show is all over the place and I just lost interest in the characters I loved last season. This show is a hot mess of carnage and slaughter and weak in plot. I hate it, I will watch but I just don't care about any of them. 

I went through a mental process before watching the first season of this because Abrams is notorious for throwing shit everywhere and refusing to clean it up. I was pleasantly surprised at how coherent season 1 was but this episode is a perfect example of extending the episode count by adding in unnecessary characters and complexity. An hour of stuff happened but nothing really happened except for Maeve's detour into unnecessary mysticism. I'm probably over-reading things but I really hate the tendency of male writers to give female characters mystic female motherhood powers. It smacks of misogynism. So Maeve banging out about being a mother while controlling men with her mind really annoyed me on a fundamental level. 

On 21/05/2018 at 12:19 PM, Ellaria Sand said:

And Dolores’ story line continues to confuse me. I’m haven’t jumped on the “Dolores is getting her just revenge” bandwagon. I think that we are supposed to question her choices. However, there is no nuance in her character...no hesitation, just death and destruction wrapped in silly, vague pronouncements. I’m hoping to see some purpose soon.

We can't know what Dolores is really about until the end of the season and so she's wandering around being cryptic. This is my second most-hated thing in these shows. 

On 21/05/2018 at 5:33 PM, eliot90000 said:

I completely agree. This episode was one of the cleverest this show has managed yet, and it's a very clever show.  The meta commentary has always been my favorite aspect of the show, which is why it's so fun for Maeve to have a writer along for the ride.  

Me last week: Why is the writer still alive?

Me this week: Oh, I get it. It's so we can have a narrator telling us how weird things are in Shogun World right now. His entire job was pronouncing, "This shouldn't be happening! That's not supposed to happen! There's no ninjas in this story! The Shogun's army doesn't come into town!" I think that's all he said.

On 22/05/2018 at 1:18 AM, tpplay said:

With JJ Abrahms Executive Producing, I wouldn't count on anything making sense at the end.  Apparently, that's not his strong suit.

Seriously worried at this point. 

On 22/05/2018 at 3:20 PM, Quilt Fairy said:

I don't think Dolores is really "woke" and free, I think she's still playing out Ford's last narrative.

I'm of the opinion that Dolores is awake and free but that's she's struggling to reconcile four different programming imperatives- Dolores, Wyatt, Ford's last narrative, and herself. All the other robots, including Maeve, have only the memory of their own backstory and the odd bleed through. Their "childhood" if you will. Dolores has multiple narratives to reconcile into a coherent whole. 

[dgpolo]

18 minutes ago, AudienceofOne said:

I'm of the opinion that Dolores is awake and free but that's she's struggling to reconcile four different programming imperatives- Dolores, Wyatt, Ford's last narrative, and herself. All the other robots, including Maeve, have only the memory of their own backstory and the odd bleed through. Their "childhood" if you will. Dolores has multiple narratives to reconcile into a coherent whole. 

This is so brilliant I don't think the writers even thought of it. Well done!