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Previously on Westworld: Hello old friend, hello old daughter, hello old train.
The latest episode of the show was called ‘Les Écorchés’, which I believe is a reference to the anatomical diagrams that showed the musculature of human bodies without any skin. There’s certainly a strong metaphor there for the underlying drive behind people and the parallel to hosts — driving by the underlying wills despite the facsimile of human outerwear.
Not only do Dolores and crew dress up in the soldier outfits of their enemies, she explicitly calls out this theme in her threatening scene with Charlotte Hale. The episode showed us two timelines, one in the future with some sort of Bernard and Stubbs being interrogated by Hale and Strand to find the missing Abernathy control unit, the other in the past as it all led to where it got ‘lost.’
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There are a lot of key clues and notes, the way the first shot is Bernard clutching a photo of his fake son tying back to the fidelity of Berarnold. That’s an answer quickly understood as Ford explained as Bernard reverse-explained that Dolores knew Arnold so well, it was easy for her to spot a Bernard fake. A clever turnaround that makes a lot of sense in the context of season one.
As per usual, the oft clunky dialog is elevated by the contextual production design and the superb acting. As much fun as it was to see Ford and Bernard interact again, this led to a new sort of body horror for Bernard, being completely taken over. Although he seemed to get around instructions slightly to keep Elsie safe, this wasn’t enough for Ford’s desires in the way he wants to ‘open the door.’ Whatever that means.
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This storyline ended with Teddy punching Irish stereotype Mustache McLaughlin to death, Angela blowing herself up, Maeve dying, Lee Sizemore in peril, and the Man in Black perhaps dying too. That’s a lot to set up for the next episode. It was quite an intriguing showdown to see William versus Maeve, to see William suffer for his crimes in past loops against Lawrence. I was glad to see Lawrence was awake, but the game had levels that William didn’t realize. But did Ford?
One of the weird notes for me was the self-immolation of Angela versus the caricature soldier ‘Engels.’ There are believable elements to his characterization, certainly. And it was clear that Angela the Host could easily manipulate him, but it made the scene a bit cheaper to me.
More thematic connections are made with the idea that it’s a giant Delos game of a sort, an experiment of variables and controls and yet one that Ford still tries to manipulate from beyond the grave. There are still mysteries to solve, but things were pushed forward strongly here, with a lot of great confrontations and interactions.
There are a lot of dangling threads that need to be tied up, but I wonder how they’ll end up. Not everything always works with this show, and it wasn’t as strong an episode as the last few, but it worked overall to keep the story barreling for the inevitable horror show ending.
What did you think of this episode? Tell us in the comments below!
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