Westworld: Fidelity (4x06)

Hell yeah, Caleb's back, Maeve's back, this is a great episode!

Cons:

I don't really have any particular story-line that didn't work for me this week. Maybe just the same general complaint I've been saying all season, where I'm interested in various bits and pieces, but some of the larger thematic build of the season still feels sluggish/unnecessarily complex. The truth of Westworld is that they aren't really treading any new or original ground when it comes to sci-fi, so the uniqueness and spark has to come from the characters and the actual interpretation of these old tropes. Sometimes I'm impressed, and other times I feel like something tired and overused is being dressed up in a new shiny coating and being passed off as something fresh.

Pros:

Aaron Paul is a damn good actor! This whole episode shows Caleb, or rather a host built based off of Caleb, making escape attempts from Charlotte Hale. Charlotte is determined to figure out the secret as to why Caleb was able to resist all those years ago, and why humans continue to "wake up" from the control. She actually arranges to let "Caleb" escape to reach out to his daughter Frankie, but Caleb doesn't give any new information that Charlotte finds useful. All of the imagery, the dead/dying Calebs of the past, the utter torture Caleb goes through just to get an apology out to Frankie, it's really something. And then just the existential dread as you see Charlotte disposing of one Caleb and starting over with a fresh host... it's just so eerie, this sense of inevitability and looping, that whatever sliver of his original consciousness remains, it will never be able to fully escape, not even in death... chilling!

And then on the flip side of that, we see Frankie working with the rebellion to fight back against Charlotte's evil plans. Her story was potentially a little less interesting to me; this episode both introduces the character of Jay, and reveals him to have been replaced by a host, which felt a little wonky pacing-wise. But that aside, I still really like seeing her; this character is a bad-ass and it feels very earned. We see her as a little girl in flashback, starting her efforts to rescue humans who are not fully under the sway of the hosts. She's queer, which we love to see too, just making a note of the girlfriend...

And I just love that she's fighting back, while still holding onto hope that her father might be out there somewhere. What a tragedy, that moment in the end when "Caleb" gets his message out, and Jay immediately destroys the receiver so the message doesn't all go through. I liked watching Frankie work out her complicated feelings about Maeve, too. Maeve left with her father all those years ago, and Caleb never came back. Of course Frankie would be less than thrilled about the idea of bringing her back to be their ally.

Stubbs and Bernard, on the other hand, are eager to have Maeve back on their side. I'm glad that these two characters are interacting with Frankie now, because it connects the stories and gives us less to keep track of. Maeve's triumphant moment of return was lovely to see, I can't wait to learn more about how she might save the day in the coming weeks!

This felt like the best of what Westworld can offer; honestly, it gave me some good season one feels, in terms of how invested I was in what was going on. I hope the rest of the season can stick the landing!

9/10