Westworld: Decoherence (3x06)

Parts of this episode had me saying oh damn, and other parts had me yawning.

Cons:

The yawning parts were William's therapy sessions with other versions of... himself? This felt like a less interesting, more sloppy way of examining the same ground we already covered with his character. I loved the ambiguity of where we last left him. Institutionalized, taunted by Dolores, alone but constantly haunted. And here I felt like we just got more of the same. William doesn't really... fit with the bigger story being told, and I felt his presence here like an intrusion, in a way I don't think I was meant to.

Also, I just want to point out... we're six episodes in. There are only two more episodes of the season, and I for one feel like I'm just starting to get a sense of some of the key players and their motivations. It's a lasting problem with Westworld, but one I did want to highlight here. There's just too much going on!

Pros:

On the flip side of that, the stuff going on with Dolores/Charlotte was insane! I love the complexity here. Basically, Dolores-as-Charlotte gets found out by Serac. How? Well, "Charlotte" was too caring and concerned about her ex-husband and kid. Think about that for a second. You would think that it was the bits of Charlotte bleeding through that would make this host act differently, but it seems to be bits of Dolores' emotions that are making things more challenging, not the human parts. That raises so many interesting questions about identity, and how much the empathy and connection that this person is feeling is coming from the host, and how much is coming from the human.

Plus, that action scene! "Charlotte" running for her life, deflecting bullets, killing Hector, and trying to rescue "her" ex-husband and daughter! Everything going terribly wrong! That explosion! All of it was so captivating and heartbreaking and I really didn't think we'd be going to such an extreme place so quickly. A kid dying is no joke.

Also, we had Hector's death in this episode, coming at such a tragic time. Maeve is just able to wake him up and get him to remember the truth, and then Dolores (as Charlotte), crushes his little pod thing and kills him. I felt so, so bad for Maeve and Hector in this situation, because Dolores is basically treating them as pawns in Serac's game, which is... kind of what they are at this point? But I think about how hard Maeve has fought to make meaning and love out of her existence, and to have that stolen from her here was one of the biggest blows of the episode.

My Westworld reviews tend to be short, and I think the reason for that speaks both well and poorly for the show itself. On the one hand, the ideas that this show grapples with are very broad and ambitious, and it's hard to talk about them in such a casual way. On the other hand, I don't know that the ambitions of these themes are all that well-executed, and that can leave me struggling to find things to say.

Ah, well. Just two more weeks before we say goodbye - will the hiatus last forever and ever once again?

7.5/10