Westworld: Virtù e Fortuna (2x03)

This episode was absolutely ridiculous, but in a good way. I saw one reviewer call it "pulpy," and... yeah. Good move.

Cons:

Okay. So. With that being said, I do question a bit of the optics of the race relations in this show. I think we're supposed to be made uncomfortable by the revelation that one of the other park locations is Imperial India, but it's really hard to watch a scene of a bunch of white people sitting around enjoying themselves as they are served by Indian hosts. Not to mention the way the Native Americans in this episode are made up to look like total nightmare monsters who stare threateningly at everyone they come across and speak in short sentences meant to alienate the viewer from them. I just... ehhhhhh. Also, there's a moment when Bernard gets taken by some Confederate soldier Hosts, and, again, I'm just not thrilled with the optics of any of this. I'm not saying that the show shouldn't include these elements, but I don't think I trust them to do a good enough job diving in to the complexities of the historical periods they are choosing to interact with.

Also, the CGI tiger looked kinda crappy, although better than poor Shiva from The Walking Dead.

Pros:

But honestly I still had so much fun with this episode, and I think it's easy to see why. Dolores is so fascinating. Her actions in this particular installment make me wonder how she feels about the other hosts and their... personhood. She's willing to kill them to get what she needs, sure, but does she see them as robots or as fellow sentient beings? I think the argument could be made that she finds herself superior to the others. And this is going to cause problems going forward with Teddy. There's a great moment where Dolores orders that certain men in the camp of soldiers be executed, and Teddy decides to show mercy. How is Dolores going to react to the autonomy of her boy toy? I'm not sure it's going to be good for Teddy in the long-run.

Joe Abernathy breaks my heart. We still don't know exactly what Charlotte is up to, but in the near-future scenes we do see that Abernathy continues to be the key. Whatever information he has possession of, it's driving him mad. For all that Dolores is a bad-ass now, who seems totally ruthless and willing to do whatever it takes, the sight of her ailing father is enough to break her just a little bit. There's a great mix of human connection with these characters, and also the bigger mystery of who knows what and what they want. It's seeming increasingly clear, if you hadn't already pieced this together, that Charlotte is a horrible person with dastardly plans. I'm just waiting to learn what exactly those plans are.

Meanwhile, Maeve, Hector, and Lee are still running around trying to come up with a plan. There was an odd amount of off-putting humor in these scenes, mostly because this damn writer just can't keep his mouth shut. We learn that Hector is something of a fantasy for Lee, written to be an idealized version of himself, pining for lost love. He's pretty shocked and upset that Hector and Maeve are in love now, because he definitely didn't write them that way. We focus a lot on the programming of the hosts in this show, but I'd be intrigued to learn even more about the process behind actually writing these characters, and what it would do to a writer to see them going "off-script."

We see Bernard and Charlotte continuing their escape efforts in the aftermath of the original massacre, and my absolute favorite thing about the episode happened - Bernard hard-wires Rebus to make him the most incredibly efficient sharpshooter in the world, but also gives him a good moral compass. He then sets him loose, and Rebus kills a lot of the other hosts who have been rounding up humans and killing them. This is just such a creative idea - Bernard basically created a weapon that can keep going indefinitely, and help them out by just running on autopilot and killing problematic elements. But, of course, there's also the ethical implications. Bernard knows he's a host, and fundamentally altering Rebus' personality must be a difficult thing for him to reconcile within himself.

The Imperial India scene at the beginning comes full circle, as we see the guest of the park does indeed survive, and winds up getting found by the Native American hosts. We also see Maeve and her crew getting accosted by a samurai host. It seems that the boundaries between all of these worlds are getting less and less substantial. I'm so excited for a culmination of all of these different worlds. And if the bleed-through gets bad enough, and if Dolores gets her way, are we going to see the hosts taking over parts of the real world? Dun, dun, dun...

8.5/10