Westworld: Akane no Mai (2x05)

Well then. We've got some samurai to deal with.

Cons:

As a stand-alone episode, I found all of the stuff in the new park to be really fascinating and moving. But as a piece of a larger season, I'm starting to get seriously concerned. We're halfway through Season Two, and I feel like we've barely started setting up some of this stuff. There are so many timelines, so many characters, so many different stories going on at the same time, that I worry about how it's all going to come together. Maybe I should trust the writers more, but honestly. I'm having trouble putting together which stories are happening at the same time, and which ones are displaced. It's getting a tad bit distracting.

Pros:

I seriously thought Dolores was going to kill Teddy, and it scared me so bad. Of course, a hard reset is basically robot murder, so maybe Dolores did kill Teddy, in one sense of the word. I am beyond excited to find out what this means. Dolores is freaking me out with how ruthless she is, and I feel so bad for poor Teddy. This show has an enormous amount of subtlety when it comes to exploring some of its big themes. Essentially, Dolores starts to wonder how much of what she feels for Teddy is genuine, and how much is what humans programmed her to feel. To take that one step further, does it really matter one way or another? And can we be sure that anything Dolores does or says or feels is her own, and not part of some larger scheme? Teddy is a total puppy dog, following Dolores around, but he broke her trust by refusing to murder that guy in the Confederate camp, and now he's getting what amounts to a robot lobotomy for his trouble. Yikes.

The idea of the samurai world being a rip-off of Westworld was unexpectedly delightful. We meet these other versions of the characters. Maeve and her counterpart instantly start to bond and form a connection, while Hector and his counterpart predictably despise each other on sight. This story provided another opportunity for women to rise up against oppression and literally freaking murder their oppressors. The moment when the Geisha cuts the top of her captor's head off was gripping in every way. Meanwhile, you've got Maeve pulling some intense Jedi shenanigans and literally mind-controlling her enemies to cut each other down. This is crazy, and I can't imagine it going well in the long-run.

On a bigger note, I'm fascinated by what the existence of this Samurai park means. It seems like without any guests, the hosts are continuing to play out narratives as usual. Some of them are beginning to glitch, but it doesn't appear that they have "woken up," at least, not at first. But very quickly, things are getting away from the planned story-lines and taking their own turns. Is this because of Maeve, Hector, and the others? Or would they have started to deviate all on their own? Exactly how long can these hosts keep functioning without human intervention? What does it say about their inherent sentience that they keep playing out the script among themselves, even when there aren't any human "audience members," if you will? I love a show that can get me to ask such complicated questions.

This episode had a lot of great elements, some interesting story development, some exciting action and great dialogue. But mostly, this episode was the story of Dolores and Maeve, two women who, for the time being, have more power than they've ever had before. But, as we've seen in the future timeline with Bernard, all of this will end in a great many of the hosts being dead in the lake. Is that Dolores' doing, the natural degradation of the robots, or is there a bigger, Ford-shaped, force at work here? I love that I don't know, and I can't wait to find out!

9/10