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S02.E09: Vanishing Point


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Aww Teddy, he loved Delores before they wrote his narrative for him.

I kind of hope that Ford was fucking with William and did send him a daughter-bot. If not, that means that William in one way or another has destroyed the entire Delos family.

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3 minutes ago, mac123x said:

So, MIB thinks he's a host, right? 

I think the MiB IS a host.  I didn't use to think so but he has survived WAY too many bullets at this point  But . . . if that's true then I think his daughter would have noticed when she patched him up.  Unless she's a 'bot too and those anomalies in his physiology "don't look like anything to me."  Damn.  I'm so confused.

4 minutes ago, mac123x said:

Elsie can go back to dental school for all I care, as long as she survives and Charlotte dies, but mostly as long as Charlotte dies.

And Dolores.  Don't forget Dolores.  She needs to die a lot for driving my sweet Teddy to suicide.

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Poor Teddy. James Marsden killed that scene. I do love the connections between the hosts that seem deeper than the narrative. 

Speaking of amazing scenes, the scene where Bernard is trying to push Ford out of his head was awesome. 

Loved that his daughter knew all about him after all. 

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This was a good episode.  Great acting from everyone.

Sela Ward still looks good. 

I am glad to see Teddy couldn't go along with killing anymore but he still spent most of the season just tagging along with her. I liked him better in S1 when he went on his adventure with William. The end was some of his best work.

Always love when Ford and MIB interact. 

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From the recap:

"Enough games," says MiB as he drains his glass. He pockets the metal card and walks over to Juliet. Watching him, Ford goes full Bond villain, intoning, "No, William. I think perhaps one...final...game." Subtlety, thy name is (not) Westworld!

I rolled my eyes SO HARD at that, especially considering Anthony Hopkins could have delivered that exact sentiment non-verbally -- just have the camera linger on his face while a slight smirk develops.  Let your world class actors actually act, Show!

"All the guests laid bare in code in a vast server -- like the cradle, only much bigger. It's called The Forge."

This seems exactly the kind of bullshit name a place like that would use for those purposes.

I got serious Lost flashbacks to Dharma Initiative station names like The Swan and the Flame.  [shudder]

"Where's the scanner?" They were built in, says MiB, slowly adjusting his hat....It's the first thing they give you when you walk in!

Okay, sure, for Westworld and probably the Raj, but I didn't see a lot of hats in ShogunWorld.  Also, people take hats off for past times like sleeping, bathing, fucking -- does it have to be on your head to scan correctly, or is proximity enough?  This is some serious magitech.

19 minutes ago, WatchrTina said:

I think the MiB IS a host.  I didn't use to think so but he has survived WAY too many bullets at this point  But . . . if that's true then I think his daughter would have noticed when she patched him up.  Unless she's a 'bot too and those anomalies in his physiology "don't look like anything to me."  Damn.  I'm so confused.

Plus the QA redshirts did the neck-thingy on him and it showed "Clear".  So either he is a human or he's a heretofore unseen version of Host that can pass the test.  Or he's right and the whole thing was a set-up from Ford and the neck-thingy test was a fakeout.  Except they didn't show him the results, just the camera, so I doubt it was part of a narrative.

9 minutes ago, ShadowHunter said:

Sela Ward still looks good. 

According to the Googles, she's 61!  If I didn't know better I'd have guessed early 40s and WAY too young to play Ed Harris's wife.

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I don't know, I still don't think MIB is a host or a robot. I think he is just a really fucked up human who became obsessed with WestWorld to the detriment of his humanity and his life in the real world. Truthfully, he could totes survive those gunshots (it appears that small caliber rounds were used) as long as they didn't hit any arteries or major organs. I agree that Delores needs to pay for what she did to Teddy; I'm also of the belief that she just might be the true villain of the piece. Also, poor Clementine - always being used as a tool by the corporate overlords. 

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(edited)
On 6/17/2018 at 9:40 PM, lucindabelle said:

How does a bot have a baby?

They don't.  If the MiB is a host I would assume his consciousness was shifted into a host body relatively recently (long after his daughter was born) and that Team MiB has figured out how to solve the whole he-goes-crazy-after-a-few-days-or-weeks problem they had with the Delos-bot all those years.  The problem with that theory is that I can't imagine Team MiB solving that problem and Ford not finding out about it, yet Ford definitely thinks that that problem has NOT been solved (hence his hiding in the Cradle.)

Changing subject -- can we talk about poor Clementine?  That girl cannot catch a break.  First she gets lobotomized, then she gets reanimated to play a role in Dolores' robot revolution, then she has to drag Bernard's butt half-way across the park single-handedly, then she is one of the few 'bots that gets "killed" in Dolores' attack on the Mesa (RIP Angela) and NOW she's been turned into a doomsday weapon for the humans to use against the 'bots.  That girl canNOT catch a break.

Then again, Emily didn't have a good day either.  (RIP Emily?)

ETA:

On 6/17/2018 at 10:10 PM, ShellsandCheese said:

Also, poor Clementine - always being used as a tool by the corporate overlords. 

Great minds think alike!  There definitely needs to a scene where she has a "Welcome to Westworld" moment of real vengeance on her persecutors like Angela did.

Edited by WatchrTina
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(edited)
1 hour ago, mac123x said:

So, MIB thinks he's a host, right?  That's why he was cutting into his forearm, to expose circuitry or some such.  Emily was right when she told the QA redshirts that her father has had a psychotic break.  He's going to wind up catatonic when he realizes he's a real boy after all and that he murdered his own daughter.  Yikes...

That's was my take, too. I think that he is a human - a really awful one - who thinks that he has been turned into a host. He has definitely had some sort of psychotic break and its been a long time coming. Even when he was wearing his tux at the party and later in the bedroom with Mrs. In Black (well named), he kept grabbing his right forearm.

I love Ed Harris but I will be fine if this is his departure from the show. The character just brings endless ruin and misery to all. 

1 hour ago, TobinAlbers said:

Emily was an idiot goading her father about toppling him and underestimating just how immersed he was in the world that he wouldn't take her as part of the game and shoot her.  I saw that tragedy coming a mile away...and yet we never saw her reading on whether she was human, right? 

I'm not ready to say that Emily is dead. There often isn't finality to those moments that make you gasp in shock. We have seen too many people reappear - in one form or another - after a supposed death. If she is dead, what was the purpose of her character? To make her father look even more miserable than he already is?

32 minutes ago, mac123x said:

Okay, sure, for Westworld and probably the Raj, but I didn't see a lot of hats in ShogunWorld.  Also, people take hats off for past times like sleeping, bathing, fucking -- does it have to be on your head to scan correctly, or is proximity enough?  This is some serious magitech.

I though that was strange as well. The mind scanner was in the hats? Come on - they could do better than that.

Overall, this was a strange episode. We got a lot of back story that I didn't know if I wanted or needed. Actually, it provided a rather sad take on the Delos family and William's destructive influence over it. 

Poor Bernie. He has had a rough time of it. At least Ford is no longer rattling around in his head. I assume that his ride in the dune buggy will ultimately lead him to getting washed up on the beach...because I think that's the one piece of the timeline that's still missing.  

And RIP Teddy. I will miss James Marsden and his glorious cheekbones.

Quote

Actually, Elsie can go back to dental school for all I care, as long as she survives and Charlotte dies, but mostly as long as Charlotte dies.

Every post should end with the bolded statement...but mostly as long as Charlotte dies.

Edited by Ellaria Sand
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(edited)
8 minutes ago, WatchrTina said:

Oooh, please elaborate.

I don’t think it’s hugely significant. Slaughterhouse Five is a story that is told in a non-linear timeline, the same construct used by Westworld. It’s also set during a war, but I think the timeline is the reason for its appearance in the episode. 

Also, Billy Pilgrim is an unreliable narrator, and so is MIB, I think. 

Edited by Pixel
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What a contrast to last week's episode - which was a quiet, beautifully told story of love and awakening, presented without gratuitous violence, and which (to me) contained almost a new thought in this show - Ake's realization when he saw the deanimated bodies that not only has he lost his love, but others have as well.  He is the only character host or human -  that sees beyond himself.  This week - MiB's disaster of a family, lots of violence, endless questions and few answers.  I have to admit my favorite part was Maeve's masssive side-eye at having no choice but to listen to the endless exposition around her.  As long as Charlotte, dies, of course.

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4 minutes ago, Pixel said:

I think the timeline is the reason for its appearance in the episode. 

Yes, I'm very familiar with the story but I missed the reference in the episode.  Did someone say "And so it goes" after a death?  (That's a hallmark of that story.)

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C'mon, show. I should be shook when the MiB kills Emily and Teddy kills himself, but the writers keep milking the buildup of each moment to the point where you see the end result before it happens. Argh!

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Man.  This show really just fucks you up.  Between last week's love story, and this week's family hot mess, I'm spent.  I don't know how people that binge this show are able to cope.  I need the week in between to settle myself. 

Sela Ward is hot fire.  She did so much with her material this episode.  Poor, poor Juliet.  

MiB may have killed his own daughter!  Nuts!  So basically, sweet William was always going to be fucked up.  He turned to Westworld, his real world, to be his real self, vs. the "white hat" version of who he pretended to be in the real world.  Mind. Blown.  Ed Harris is killing me in all his scenes, and I was on the edge of my seat for all his scenes with Sela Ward. 

The hats being the scanning device to gather all the psych data (I'm assuming that's what it is) completely caught me by surprise.  I wonder how it works in Shogun and The Raj?

James Marsden is a treasure!  In such a small handful of scenes, you just feel all of Teddy's hurt and pain.  In many ways, he is more human to me that William ever was.  Also.  Fuck Delores for driving him to that end.  Fuck. Her. 

In all of these narratives, I think I care the least about what's happening with Bernard.  It just isn't holding my interest as much as some of the other stories.

I need Maeve back in the game ASAP.  

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What a downer of an episode.  I am having a hard time with where the MIB narrative has gone.  In the real world, almost everyone thinks he's kind, generous, a philanthropist.  For 2 weeks a year, in an artificial world where it's encouraged to be a psychotic shit,  he's a psychotic shit.  So what?  If the one person who "sees through you" is your wife, then yeah, you have a bad relationship with your wife, but it doesn't mean that everyone else is wrong about you.

There were at least 2 different timelines in this episode, correct?  This was the first time in a while where I hard a hard time knowing when we were.  It's hard to tell when you don't have Bernard's glasses (or lack thereof) and wardrobe guide you.  IIRC, Dolores killed the GN Indian on Day 3, and that just seems too early for most of the other stuff that was going on.

Some of these deaths better be non-permanent because 1) I want to keep watching Teddy and Maeve, and 2) there aren't going to be enough living humans or hosts for another season.

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My goodness, what an episode. I possibly lost two of my favorite characters, Teddy (my namesake!) and Emily. I didn't realize how much I liked Emily until I thought she was dead. Happy Father's Day indeed. I guess I'm gonna hope she was a host, but I don't think so. We'll see. 

I guess Teddy was pissed off with Dolores. I wasn't sure until he made it clear. I was so proud or happy when he went against his programming and let the Ghost Nation guy slip away. Dolores is learning that if she keeps acting like a human then the hosts are gonna rebel against her too. Even ones that love you. Oh man, there must be some kinda parallel with the two stories tonight. MiB killing someone who loves (loved?) him and Dolores more or less killing someone who loved her. I don't know what it is of course, just thought of that while typing.

Maeve is going to survive, that is one of the happier parts of tonight. Also, Ford pronounced Maeve much differently than I hear in my head, and how others say it. 

William a host? Emily? I dunno, but I'm looking forward to the answer.

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28 minutes ago, WatchrTina said:

Yes, I'm very familiar with the story but I missed the reference in the episode.

William hid his metal 'profile' card in a copy of the book.

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33 minutes ago, WatchrTina said:

Yes, I'm very familiar with the story but I missed the reference in the episode.  Did someone say "And so it goes" after a death?  (That's a hallmark of that story.)

I don’t think so. It was where William’s profile card was hidden. 

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So according to MiB's proflie, he's a Category 47B (which is apparently rare, appearing only 0.0072% of the time).  Category of human ?  Host ?

Mrs. MiB saw that she was married to a monster after watching his murderous spree through Westworld over the years -- and that's why she killed herself, I guess.

Was that one Ghost Nation host able to control Teddy -- and that's why Teddy didn't gun him down ? 
Or was that Teddy's conscience trying to assert control from his newly acquired killing ways ?

I thought it was curious that the Ghost Nation was trying to keep Delores out of the Valley Beyond -- posts in previous episodes have discussed about the Ghost Nation being the protector of Westworld.  I guess that didn't work out too well for those humans that the Ghost Nation had captured.

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17 minutes ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

I guess that didn't work out too well for those humans that the Ghost Nation had captured.

Bringing knives to a gunfight didn't work out too well for Ghost Nation, either.

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(edited)
2 hours ago, mac123x said:
Quote

"Enough games," says MiB as he drains his glass. He pockets the metal card and walks over to Juliet. Watching him, Ford goes full Bond villain, intoning, "No, William. I think perhaps one...final...game." Subtlety, thy name is (not) Westworld!

 

I rolled my eyes SO HARD at that, especially considering Anthony Hopkins could have delivered that exact sentiment non-verbally -- just have the camera linger on his face while a slight smirk develops.  Let your world class actors actually act, Show!

YES. One of the first rules of good writing is: omit unnecessary words. This is one of those things that probably looked fine on the page, but once they had Sir Anthony in front of them they should have realized that he could have pulled this off without saying anything, and the scene would have been the better for it. I wonder if they had a different writer from last week -- a lot of heavy handed dialogue this time.

Edited by MJ Frog
punctuation
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MIB killing his daughter part is bad writing, in my opinion.

MIB is a father, even if he has suspicions about Emily being a bot, he would have verified before killing her.

I just hope his suspicions were right, that he indeed killed a bot, but that is unlikely, given she has a family artifact (his profile) from home, something not a host would have.

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I hope Teddy isnt really dead for real. His life has been so terribly tragic, forever doomed to love Deloris, no matter how much she couldn't, or wouldn't, love him. I so wanted him to strike out on his own and make his own way, but I guess he was always tied to Deloris, and finally killed himself when he realized he couldn't live with, or without her. In a weird way, he ended up being a deconstruction of the Love Interest style character of the main hero. He had nothing to do (they didnt even write him a backstory until way later) but love one person, even when that person clearly stopped deserving them. I do hope this isnt his real ending though. 

Speaking of depressing, poor Clementine. She is just forever an abused pawn to whoever she happens to be around at the moment. 

MIB has lost his damn mind. Except, he was pretty cracked up to begin with apparently.

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So we think that may be the man in black was talking about his character when he said he belonged in West world, not the fact that he is really a host? And you could have a profile and still be a human being? What did he mean with his very first line didn’t he say when I began seizing?

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Can we talk for a second about how they misspelled “psychological” on the MiB profile card? I mean, considering this whole thing is a giant psychological experiment, you'd think someone would have caught that.

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(edited)

Honestly. After last week's episode, this bored me to tears. I realized how much I no longer care about William, the MIB, his daughter, his wife. 

Edited by catrox14
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2 hours ago, mjc570 said:

What a contrast to last week's episode - which was a quiet, beautifully told story of love and awakening, presented without gratuitous violence, and which (to me) contained almost a new thought in this show - Ake's realization when he saw the deanimated bodies that not only has he lost his love, but others have as well.  He is the only character host or human -  that sees beyond himself.  This week - MiB's disaster of a family, lots of violence, endless questions and few answers.  I have to admit my favorite part was Maeve's masssive side-eye at having no choice but to listen to the endless exposition around her.  As long as Charlotte, dies, of course.

Well said! Last week showed great promise of beauty. But this week's episode went back to total nonsense. Westworld became total gibberish and confusion about who is real and who is a host. This detour has ruined the show. They should have stayed in the theme parks with elaborate narratives and stories, a mix of guests interacting with hosts within intriguing stories in the parks and how their experiences changed their lives in the real world. 

This season of massive carnage and slaughter, immortality, and host/real life confusion is a jumbled mess of stupidity. 

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1 hour ago, Law Mom said:

Can we talk for a second about how they misspelled “psychological” on the MiB profile card? I mean, considering this whole thing is a giant psychological experiment, you'd think someone would have caught that.

Have you seen how poorly many some coders write? Not surprising. :D

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This week on What a Waste of Sela Ward, we discover that the Man in Black is not only trapped in a loop more thoroughly than anyone else, but it's rapidly shrinking. Teddy strikes one more blow for true love. Maeve and Bernard need better malware protection. Charlotte is in a loop too; she keeps coming back to the opinion that she has everything under control. Clementine gets used and doesn't even get paid for it. Delores has never heard "One Tin Soldier". It looks as if she and the Ghost Nation leader are headed for a traditional showdown at high noon in the valley.

 

But who will turn the valve to flood the area?

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4 hours ago, jbrecken said:

I am reminded that Sela Ward's character on Sisters was named Teddy.  Coincidence?  Probably.

And her character was an alcoholic.

I kept thinking about how Evan Rachel Wood played her stepdaughter on Once and Again.

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4 hours ago, mac123x said:

So, MIB thinks he's a host, right?  That's why he was cutting into his forearm, to expose circuitry or some such.  Emily was right when she told the QA redshirts that her father has had a psychotic break.  He's going to wind up catatonic when he realizes he's a real boy after all and that he murdered his own daughter.  Yikes.

Helluva episode to air on Father’s Day, huh?  ;>

 

So far as the “Slaughterhouse-Five” reference goes: it’s been more years than I care to remember since I last read the book, but it remains one of my all-time favorites - and it seems to me a paraphrase of the book’s very first sentence would be appropriate as hell;

Listen: WestWorld has become unstuck in time.

;>

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Marsden was outstanding in his scenes when her first came online and when taking a stand against Dolores.  In a show with the likes of Hopkins, Harris, and Wright (heh, sounds like a law firm) it's easy to be overlooked but he was wonderful.  So how does Teddy end up in the water with all the other dead hosts?

For weeks people have been speculating that William is a host and I've dismissed the idea.  Until this week.  Now I'm not sure.  He certainly looked like he was checking his own circuitry.  About too many bullets to be human, there was a school shooting not long ago where a teacher took down the shooter but was shot 3x in the act.  He took bullets to the abdomen, hip, and arm and was not only released from the hospital the next day, he was making public appearances a couple days later.  (Of course this teacher is half the age of MIB and in good physical shape.)  So it is possible for MIB to be human and on his feet after several bullets.

8 hours ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Every post should end with the bolded statement...but mostly as long as Charlotte dies.

And as long as Maeve lives.

Yeah, the shoot 'em up episodes are not nearly as compelling as the heartwrenching story last week.  I'm still Team Ake all the way.

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I’m wondering if the MIB is going to have an “ah ha” moment now that he saw that his daughter did have his profile card in her hand when he killed her. He may go all out nasty and try for an assisted suicide (like when a criminal baits a cop to end his life by aiming a gun at him) or he will finally find that one cell of kindness in his human heart. 

I’d love to see Maeve fixed and to get back out there. 

What did Bernard toss to Elise before he took off in the vehicle? 

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25 minutes ago, Mindthinkr said:

What did Bernard toss to Elise before he took off in the vehicle? 

I think it was a beacon/tracker thing so QA could find her.

I loved the Teddy portions of this episode (although we got too little), but, boy, William really is a deranged, self-involved bore. Perhaps he and Dolores really do deserve each other...?

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