Exploding Cigars! Westworld, Episode 4
The joke’s on you, see?
It’s all a gag. Just one big exploding cigar.
That’s the lesson at the android heart of episode four: “I’m not crazy,” Maeve says after she’s removed the cheroot from her lips — and Hector has removed the bullet from her belly — “and none of this matters.”
Maeve’s reality had exploded in her face. The joke, she realized, had been on her. Smoke ’em if you got ‘em.
This episode has a smoking fetish. Maeve had a cheroot. The Man in Black escaped from jail using an exploding cigar. And Theresa lit a Virginia Slim while having lunch with Dr. Ford — right after he told her he was a god, and she was merely a guest.
In each case, smoking is a reference to the title of the episode, i.e., cognitive dissonance. We have an inner drive. We seek consistency in our beliefs. When those beliefs are challenged, we are motivated to achieve consonance. Peter Abernathy had to warn Dolores. The woodcutter had to find where the earth meets the sky. Maeve needs to find the shades.
In order to find consonance, humans do funny things. The more invested we are in a thing, the further we may go to justify our mistaken beliefs. That’s what makes Maeve such an interesting character: her primary drive is self-actualization, as we saw in her opening monologue: “In this world, you can be whatever the fuck you want.” As a program, she’s not invested in fooling herself. She’s invested in seeing the world for what it is. That makes her the perfect vehicle for seeing through the park’s ruse.
It’s only fitting that the man who showed her that reality is false is named Eschaton.
Eschaton means the end of the world.
A Widening Scope
Seeing the world for what it is was another big theme in Episode 4.
The Man in Black is a constant reminder of this. The turd in the punchbowl whose primary drive is to pull back the veil. In Episode 4 he “follows the blood arroyo to where the snake lays its eggs” and finds the bandit Armistice. He then speeds up the bandits’ timeline by breaking Hector Eschaton out of jail three days early. His reward: Armistice tells the MIB about Wyatt, and the MIB rides off to kill him.
This plot raises some questions, of course. One is why, if Wyatt is a new part of the park’s narrative, is he also a part of the MIB’s search for the maze. The simplest explanation may be that the MIB only thinks he’s outsmarting the game; that park management is constantly adding crenulations to his quest. Hence what he said when he first saw Armistice: “How have I never met you before?”
The MIB’s own fearsome reputation is itself questioned when a Guest in Hector’s gang decides to acknowledge the MIB’s world outside the park. “Your foundation literally saved my sister’s life,” says the Guest. “one more word and I’ll cut your throat,” replies the MIB. “This is my fucking vacation.”
Dolores
Meanwhile, Dolores continues on her path to self-awareness.
In the beginning of the episode, Bernard tells her about the maze. “It’s a very special kind of game,” he says, sitting before her, dressed all in black. “The goal is to find the center of it. If you can do that, maybe you can be free.”
“I think I want to be free,” replies Dolores.
The center of the maze is beginning to sound a lot like the center of the self. That could easily be connected to Dolores’ own feelings. “I feel spaces opening up inside me, like a building with rooms I haven’t explored.”
Later in the show, we see Dolores meet Lawrence’s child, who draws the maze in the dirt. Dolores sees a grave, a gun and a church, which appears to be a white version of the black church we saw in episode one. She’s then approached by park management in period costume. They want to take her back for diagnostic, she’s too far off her path. But Billy intervenes. “She’s with me.”
Billy to Dolores: “I guess I thought they kept you on paths or in zones.”
“I used to think there was a path for everyone,” says Dolores. “Now I think I never asked where that path was taking me.”
Billy and Logan
In episode four, we see two interesting conversations between these two.
In the first, Logan (wrongly?) suggests that the park sent Dolores to keep Billy interested. Logan is very much invested in the idea of the park as entertainment. Billy disagrees. He sees the park as a series of moral decisions with consequences. The conversation reveals part of their backstory.
Logan: “This is why the company needs to bump our stake in this place. They can give even you a sense of purpose.”
Billy: “You said the trip was about welcoming me to the family, this is business?”
Logan: “With our family William, everything is business.”
This conversation, of course, is about free will and a larger reality. Namely, the difference between feeling you’re the “manager of circumstance” (Billy, apparently) or the “architect of your life’s experience.” (Logan, it would seem)
It’s connected to the conversation the MIB has with Lawrence in the armored stage coach headed to prison.
“Choices, Lawrence,” he says. “You tell yourself you’re at the mercy of mine because it spares you the consideration of your own. Because if you did consider your choices, you’d be confronted with a truth you couldn’t comprehend. That no choice you ever made was your own. You have always been a prisoner. What if I told you I was here to set you free.”
Open Questions
In episode four, we see that the savages who live in the perimeters of the park worship the shades. The shades, according to Hector Eschaton, visit you after you die. So why is it that park management allows the worship of the shades/themselves? Does park management know? Does park management care? Or, are the frontier lands beyond Sweetwater actually out of the control of management?
Speaking of land, that was a big earth mover. What did Theresa mean by “neighbors”?
And when is Bernard actually speaking to Dolores? She’s clearly off her path right now, making it difficult for Bernard to have alone time with her (at least physically).
In fact, the entire need to have the android bodies reused is an interesting point. You’d assume that management could 3D more bodies at will. But there seems to be a connection between the Host’s corporeal selves and their cognition.
But then, the mind-body problem is a topic for another episode.
