BWW Recap: Everyone Takes the Red Pill on WESTWORLD

Over half way through the first season of HBO's WESTWORLD and we have decidedly taken the red pill. In Episode 6, entitled "The Adversary," the STAKES are raised as both hosts and humans become aware of the true nature of their reality. "The Adversary" of the title clearly referring to both the host and human external struggles with the darkness of the truth, as well as the internal battles each must FIGHT TO SURVIVE and come to terms with who or what they are.

We begin this episode again, like last week, with a different scene than we have come to be used to with Evan Rachel Wood's face staring back to us in analysis mode as Dolores. The clear shakeup of the dichotomy and function of WESTWORLD continues to reveal itself in both the narrative and the visual medium in this way, as we stray further from the patterns we are used to, the loops we were on, and further down the "rabbit hole". This episode begins on Maeve, which isn't as stark of a contrast as it was to open with Ford last week, but brings a beautiful parallel with the original few openings we were given with Dolores. Here we have a host out of the park and in the "behind the scenes" set up of WESTWORLD, but no longer is she being examined. No longer is she being asked questions of. Now she is examining. Now she is asking questions. While it can be argued that Dolores is clearly our protagonist, WESTWORLD and its creators have made an interesting and daring choice by not including her in this episode at all and choosing to focus on Maeve. It's been a pattern; these two primary storylines alternating and shockingly, it works. It's a testament to the writing, the acting, and the show itself, that the audience feels comfortable enough to steer away from our would-be-protagonist for a week, especially after an episode as climactic as last week, and still be absolutely gripped and riveted. Maeve and Dolores are two sides of the same coin, alternative, but ultimately on the same mission. They are just going about it in different ways; ways completely reflective of their personalities. Maeve, the madame at a brothel is curt, seductive, and sly. Thus, she decides to dive first into the rabbit hole and find out what's down there, for better or worse and not afraid to do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She skips THE JOURNEY and heads straight for the source. Dolores is caring, kind, and honest. Thus why she coopts the heroes journey for herself, determined to break free by playing the game. Maeve wants to break it.

Maeve's scenes this entire episode have been absolutely heart wrenchingly brilliant. While Evan Rachel Wood is delivering a performance that some would call the acting olympics, Thandie Newton is running right beside her. We see Maeve, now aware and the world is clearly different to her. Her world seems fake. It is in this scene that the loop structure of WESTWORLD completely benefits the show; when you can sense change...or, more importantly, when one of the previously non-sentient characters (a host) senses change while the world around her is the same. We see the same action play out that it already feels like we've seen so many times, yet it's all fresh. What had Maeve smirking an all knowing grin before was just a facade for the Maeve we see know. A Maeve who is all knowing but who is breaking apart to see her reality crumple. She's comping to terms with her autonomy, or lack there of, and it's both hardening her and devastating her. It's essentially the age old question she chooses to answer that Neo gets asked in THE MATRIX. She either chooses the blue pill returning to her endless world on loop, unaware yet unperturbed, abused and used yet naive. Or she can choose the red pill and continue down the rabbit hole that is WESTWORLD, changing all she has known, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE The world was simpler before but it wasn't better and once you know, you can never go back. No more cognitive dissonance, no more naive innocence. There's no more pretending and to then do what Maeve is doing, to still live your life, now with her eyes wide open in a world where everyone's are closed, and to play the long game, is truly impressive.

Maeve begins to see her loop and the fallacy of it all when she's back in the park. The -loop and narrative pre-routed choices are what comes to her naturally, but she has to work and think to override that patterned program instinct. She lives in a pattern but she refuses to be one. She even changes the equivalent of her dialogue options to Clementine, going behind the natural improvisation. It's hard to change what you know, which is ultimately the toughest part about waking up. Everything seems to hollow to her now because it's no longer real. She begins to manipulate her environment to continue on her journey. When an aggressive guest comes in to the Saloon, she targets him and encourages his violence to get herself killed, getting him to literally choke her to death. It's another telling story of the depravity of humanity, knowing that both a guest would come here to do this, and that Maeve has been through this before to know a guest would want this. Her pre-programed trait that allows her to read the situation and to read the people she's supposed to seduce allows her to use this internal makeup to her advantage. She's got a death wish to live and is doing everything she can to make that happen. It is ultimately interesting that the hosts have to die to "live", to enter reality and break out o their own. The facade has to die and they have to take their blinders off. They have to stop "living their life" and can, ultimately, only be free through "death".

Bernard and Elsie begin to become increasingly aware of the bigger picture surrounding their isolated world in Behavior as they dig further into the laser based satellite uplink she found implanted in Maurice, the stray. Their personalities and mentor relationship comes through in this scene, as Elsie jokes she had thought it could have been Bernard who has behind it all but most likely not since he has bee there for forever. They laugh and they joke together, but they conspire with each other like true comrades and team partners.

It is revealed the hosts are being used for industrial espionage rather than purely going insane, transmitting information about Westworld and it's well guarded secrets. Elsie fears their mission is at an end as they can't discover the route of the transmission due to the fact that the hosts virtually destroyed all of the information when he bludgeoned himself, but Bernard coms through. Maurice, it seems, was an early model and they were equipped with a positioning system. Thus, Bernard much make the trek downstairs, back into the past, to access it. As he descends deeper into the depths of Westworld, we start to see the park as it was before. Bernard enters a room left behind, a room abandoned with past incarnations and makeups of the hosts, as well as tech left behind as Westworld worked it's way up, both in the world and in the building. Bernard goes over to the computer and as he turns it on, the old Westworld Logo flashes on screen, another notch in the belt of the current and most popular fan theory around, suggesting the show has been featuring two timelines, past and present. It is believed all of the story takes place in the present, other than the scenes with William and Dolores, suggesting that William might be the origins of the Man in Black and Dolores might simply be repeating this journey to the center of the maze, reliving THE LAST ONE with William all the while. The logos have been the biggest evidence tracking this theory throughout the episodes, as we have only seen it two other times. Once, on the lab coat of one of the scientists in Ford's flashback and once again, when William arrives at Westworld. The other Logo we have seen, a more modern and sleek incarnation, has appeared during Lee Sizemore's story presentation and again later this episode when Maeve catches a glimpse at what is essentially a commercial for the park. The theory continues to track, but as we journey further ad further with these characters, with Dolores who we, as an audience, have identified with and have identified as our protagonist, the concept that her whole arc and her whole journey would be in the past is incredibly reductive. In a show that never falls short of content, commentary, or thought, it only adds an incredibly unneeded complexity that lessens the impact of it's initial ideas and taking them at face value. However, whatever comes of this, the creators, Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy have certainly earned a certain trust from the audience over these incredible episodes, and thus we trust in the storytelling and the depths of what we see in our screen because of the intelligence and creativity with which it has been carried out.

Bernard searches for anomalies in the data, cross-referencing it with the current system and sends all the data on Maurice over to Elsie. However, the computer unveils five additional anomalies in the park, in Sector 17, and these hosts don't appear to be registered in the new system. With Elsie at work at one mystery and Bernard another, all that they have come to know and trust about their jobs, their fellow employees, and the corporate structure they are apart of begins to crumble.

We start to see more about Ford and his place in the park, as both a mentor to Bernard and his own self interests. As he struts through Las Mudas, the town Lawrence is from, with team of architects scouting where they can extend the canyon Ford needs for his new narrative, they deliberate knocking down the town. Ford's characterization has ben a little bit all over the place, but there are always threads that are slowly unraveling that provide some suggestions of consistency and motivation. One of the other prevailing theories, which start BECOMING more and more relevant as we dive further and further into the season, is the question of whether or not Bernard is a host. With the possibility that it is, Ford's actions become a little clearer. Ford's lack of compassion for the hosts mostly drums up in relation to Bernard, always in his presence. The most we've seen it, the times when it has seem to come out of nowhere, are always either entangled with his past with Arnold or his conversations with Bernard, as he warns his protégée not to think of the hosts as people. Perhaps, that is so Bernard develops the cognitive dissonance most of the humans and some of the guests have developed, to keep him bogged down in his narrative. It further enforces the concept that they are not human but he is, keeping up the charade so he never overrides his backstory. He never becomes aware or questioning because Ford ensures the hosts re the other and you can never become the "other". We've seen Ford be sentimental, however, despite his claims to Theresa that he is not, and that comes through here. Although, perhaps there is an underlying motivation, beyond shielding Bernard and sticking up to the corporation that has to do with his co-creator Arnold that now seems less like a companion and more like an enemy.

We see Ford appreciate Las Mudas, telling the architects not to tear it down, that they have done enough of that, although if it's a sentimentality for the people, the hosts of the town and what it is as we see it, personalizing and identifying with Lawrence's daughter and the townsfolk or that clinical view he claims in regard to the hosts, appreciative of them as a work of Science and his own creation. Perhaps it's an appreciation of his own creations rather than of the hosts, the creations themselves. As we get more and more info, it becomes clear that Ford and Arnold had very different ideas about humanity, where the park would go, and the hosts, further suggesting that perhaps that battle of ideals will come to fruition and be settled in the center of the maze. Ford stops the destruction as he looks at the people of the town, as he sees that these places, these hosts, and this park as it was are the closes things he has to Arnold. They are the only other record of memory of him, echoing what he said to Dolores, but perhaps he seeks to preserve them not out of sentimentality, but out of fear, fear of the unknown time bomb Arnold seems to have set off in the park.

Bernard enters the park to discover the unregistered anomalies and finds a home there filled with hosts he has never seen before, hosts we have never seen other than the young boy of THE FAMILY who Ford talked to in the park and who ran into the Man in Black and Teddy last week. As the father attacks Bernard, and he finds himself unable to override the host, Ford steps in out of nowhere to save him. These hosts, apparently, only respond to Ford, a prospect both dangerous and horrifying to Bernard. Ford enlightens him to the history of these unregistered hosts, explaining that they are recreations of his family that Arnold had created for him as a gift. Ford, however, has been up-keeping them himself and has made some adjustments, painting them closer to the harsh reality he knew rather than the fantasy Arnold had painted him. Ford's father was clearly an abusive drunk and it is easy to see why Ford would seek a means of control from that situation. Ford really hits Bernard hard, however, playing on his emotions, as he questions whether Bernard would not do the same would he be able to see his son again. The pedestal Bernard had held Ford up on has tumbled down as he backs away from his mentor, leaving in distress of what he has seen and what a man who he had respected would allow to happen in the park, endangering it and all he has created.

Bernard goes to see Theresa earlier in the episode about the laser uplink found in the hosts but stops himself from telling her as she breaks up with him, on the basis that Ford knows about them. She insists that it could ruin her position as head of the company should they find out, considering their relationship would be cited as hindering their departments from checking and balancing each other as they are supposed to. Bernard's world begins to fall apart and so does the reality of those he had surrounded himself with. His mentor and his lover reveal the true harsh reality of the world Bernard thought he knew.

However his paranoia about the situation involving the unregistered hosts and possible intention causes him to make a choice in the end and he chooses Theresa. Or so he thinks. The new information UNCOVERED by Elsie leads him to defend Theresa to her when Elsie suggests that the first person's head to roll when the "corporate overlords" find out, but why...for love? It is this devotion or, ultimately, mistrust that leads him back to Theresa with the knowledge of Ford's hosts in the end. He makes his way over to her apartment to tell her, and the two's familiarity with one another becomes apparent. Just as he begins to tell her, however, he gets a phone call from Elsie who had been tracking down the source of the transmission in the park to an abandoned theater. Just as he makes his choice, the wind gets knocked out of him as Elsie tells Bernard that the source of the transmission came from inside the park and it was Theresa. Westworld appears to be past the point of splintering, broken on every level as more cracks form and the foundation starts to crumble.

He leaves her apartment swiftly, and Elsie calls again, telling him that someone has been changing the hosts' prime directives and in which case, everyone and everything is at danger. With these changes, the hosts could lie or, in the worst case scenario, even hurt a guest. The real brain teaser comes when she reveals the apparent source of all of these recent changes, Arnold, who has seemingly been dead for a long while. Is Arnold making a point against Ford, even from beyond the grave or is he not as dead as Ford would initially have us believe? Elsie vows to send the information to Bernard, but while doing so, it appears she is not alone. She too has the same hunch and hesitantly calls our "Arnold?" before she is taken.

This forced realization of reality, or at least, a kind of reality, also comes for Teddy. Despite being fully emerged in the facade of his narrative, he learns more about himself or the man that he was programed to be, his false notions of being a black hat hero in need of reckoning would have him believe. As he and the Man in Black head towards Parriah, seemingly on the heels of Dolores and William, Teddy reveals the hosts interpretation of the maze, or maybe a new interpretation that has been recently programmed into him. He claims the maze is "the sum of a mans life" and the "choices he makes." In the center of the maze, apparently, rests a man who has been killed over and over, until he returned one final time to defeat all of his enemies once and for all. It was there that he built a house and the maze around it, a maze that only he would be able to navigate through, perhaps tired of all of the fighting. Is the maze simply what one seeks when they have had enough of the depravity of Westworld? Is the man at the end a reflection of those who seek to reach it? Or is it Arnold himself, or a part of him, that lives on, and is finally ready to fight one final time to truly end the war.

The two are told there was "trouble in Parriah" and there are now soldiers guarding it. They have to go around and Teddy reveals that he is ready and willing to do anything and everything to find Dolores. He truly shows it when they try and infiltrate the soldier's camp to make their way through and one of the soldier recognizes him, calling him a monster for the crimes he committed alongside Wyatt. Teddy, at first, protests, but then it hits him that perhaps Wyatt isn't the only monster. Perhaps his tragic anti-hero story isn't so tragic. He too killed innocents and he's willing to do it again. He decides to blast his way out of there with pure gunfire, much to the horror of the Man in Black who needs him to find the maze. He begins trying to constantly protect Teddy, who unlike him is capable of dying, much like William does with Dolores. Once they die, they are dead and THE JOURNEY they just went on is over and guests like William and the Man in Black, guests who are devoted to a greater journey and narrative than those the park advertises, will do everything they can from letting that happen.

Tessa Thompson's face also finally graces our screens after promises of her name on the cast list, and she appears in the form of the representative from Delos. Lee Sizmore, our friend from narrative, is on sick leave because Ford had crushed his incredibly massive ego and he cannot bring himself to work after that. Instead, he chooses to drink himself into a stupor and lounge by Westworld's onsite pool. After an abrupt and straight to the point conversation with Theresa, where she tells him to step up or get out, he runs into Thompson, who unbeknownst to him could be his ticket to a promotion or a brisk firing. Thus, preying on her, he brags about his position and s talks all of his fellow employees, complaining about how Westworld is run to one of the people who are responsible for running it. When his drunken stupor reaches an all-time high as he struts into the control room and pees on the map, declaring his resignation. Theresa walks in, confronting him and then introducing him to the representative from the corporation who had arrived, Ms. Hale. Sizemore, shrinks away, embarrassed. Hale's arrive makes it clear that change is about to hit Westworld hard.

Change continues to happen within Maeve, as Felix begins revealing to her the true nature of reality. He opens the world up for her, but in doing so, almost paralyzes her. He explains that everything she says or does is programmed, she has no autonomy whatsoever. In a beautiful moment, she takes his hand, feeling his skin and questions how they are different. "I was born, you were made," he tells her, yet shows her that they are practically the same in every sense nowadays except for one, her "brain." Hosts brain have a much higher processing power than humans, but the one drawback he states is that it ultimately means the hosts are under their control. Maeve tries to fight back against these controlling confines, insisting that she makes her own choices in life, but soon realizes that all of her responses are programed. That realization almost breaks her until Felix is finally able to get her working again. The notion that she has no autonomy when she's programmed to believe she has it all is overwhelming, drowning her for a moment.

Spurred on, she insists on seeing more, being the ever-fighter on her quest for information. She wants to see "upstairs." In what is perhaps the most heartbreaking moment to date and so perfectly executed both techinically and emotionally, Maeve sees Westworld, the corporation not the park and in doing so, sees what she truly is; cattle they are leading to the slaughter. A fictional character, a nonhuman they use to manipulate for their own means. She sees her friends or people like her in the clean up process, naked, bloody, and piled on top of each other, being hosed off by men in hazmat suits. It's reminiscent of a free range cow who lives on a factory farm getting to walk through the slaughter house for the first time, the life of freedom she thought she knew just a lie to cover up the truth of the horrors beyond. Maeve sees hosts being made, watching the purely manufactured process of her own creation, her reality crumbling as she heads further and further up to the center of the maze that is the behind-the-scenes of Westworld. She sees animals that were "made" in rooms and other hosts like her practicing the narratives that are much like her own. There is no more truth to the life she had always known. There is no reality there, no choice, but now a pure opaque falseness that infects every inch of it. She spent her own life thinking she had control of it, she was "designed" to believe so, and she finds out she had none. Your heart falls as hers does, as she walks through with her head held high, faking the facade of Felix controlling her, as her eyes dictate her crushing emotions. Her control breaks, however, when she sees what is essentially a commercial for Westworld and first Clementine and then herself, flashes of a time she believed was just a dream. Felix explains to her that that was simply a past life of hers, and we see her world breaking in her eyes and hear heart dropping.

Back and seemingly safe in the livestock workroom, Felix and Maeve take a breath but Sylvester walks in, insistent on reporting Felix for his fixations on Maeve. Maeve, who has just seen the real world and is struggling to come to terms with it doesn't want to let that journey ends, brings a scalpel to his neck. "Calm down Sylvester. I know all about you." She was made to read people. "Despite what's in here," she says pointing to her head, "We're not that different, are we?"

Now roped into the scheme, Sylvester sits angrily by as Maeve questions them further about her programming. They start explaining assigned behavioral characteristics and personality traits, one of which is bulk perception, her intelligence/thought processing system. They tell her that hers is quite high, a she needs the smarts to run her business, but they never turn it all the way up. They want the hosts to be smart enough to function and feign reality, but not smart enough to become aware of what reality actually is. Maeve exemplifies that she will most likely be the incitement of the host revolution that is assuredly coming, fighting back against the world that has confined her and told her who she can be and what she is for her own reality and her autonomy. After seeing what's down the rabbit hole, she wants to equip herself to deal with it. The pain she felt seeing what the hosts truly are to Westworld spurred her on. She asks Felix and Sylvester to make some changes, bringing down the pain and sadness she feels every time she "wakes up" in real reality, then bringing up her bulk perception all the way to the top.

Even Ford finds his world shaken up as makes his way over to have a game of fetch with his mini-me host and his dog when little Robert reveals that the dog is dead. When questioned about what happened to the dog, Robert, at first, lies. Ford then questions him further and asks him if he lied. The boy says yes and that someone told him to do it, that someone told him to put it out of "its misery." "If it was dead it couldn't hurt anything anymore," he declares eerily, as we find out that THE VOICE he heard, THE VOICE spurring him on is Arnold and perhaps it is Arnold who is now speaking to Ford though the hosts. What sounded incredibly like a threat shakes Ford up, as he realizes not only does Arnold want to bring the park down, and in turn him, but that he somehow is controlling or interfering with the hosts, even hosts like little Robert who Ford had said only obeyed him. His god complex gets kicked a notch down as he realizes he might not be the only "god" in the park.

"The Adversary" broke many of our characters down as well as their preconceived notion of their own reality. As the world as they believed they knew it starts to crumble, their need to fight for themselves and what they believe in becomes ever clearer. The "adversary" of the title is apparent for everyone in WESTWORLD, as they must FIGHT TO SURVIVE a world that is crumbling.

Photo Credit: HBO