Westworld 1x07 Trompe L'Oeil

So first of all the show has been renewed for the second season! Yey! Happiness! Unfortunately it may not air until 2018 which means I have to try and stay alive until then.

OK let's start with something outrageous - when HBO credits Ed Harris in the episode's main credits, then he better damn be in that episode. Jesus Christ I was watching this at 3 AM and kept waiting for him to show up. Even as Theresa's dead ass hit the floor I still kept waiting. And he wasn't in the episode! Are they kidding?! Also imdb needs to get their shit together - their cast listings for the episodes has been insanely unreliable this season. The actor who played Peter Abernathy was supposed to show up in this episode so I had this whole theory how he is gonna show up in his previous Dinner Party role and run into William and Dolores thus confirming the two time line and he too was nowhere to be found in the episode.
But we still got the promised twist this episode and though I figured it out and I assume it's only a half of the actual twist it was a great episode indeed, even if it could be titled 'no one has any good or at least comprehensible plans here'.

We got to catch up with Dolores and William. William tells Dolores that he has a woman - Juliette, according to the subtitles on laggy as fuck HBO Netherlands stream I was watching - at home waiting for him. Dolores is brokenhearted and leaves. It takes William about 5 seconds to make "oh shit I done goofed up" face, take a leap to another train wagon, abandon his whole life and have sex with Dolores (which was surprisingly tasteful for HBO). That Juliette person has a good reason to go Amy Dunne on him now. What is his excuse "oh it feels so good not to be a pushover and she was cute"? Then after some badass Lawrence's intervention they escape the ambush and fall right into another ambush but they manage to escape that one too. Then they part ways with Lawrence and I'm guessing their plan now is to just wander around and be in love. OK then. In Delos headquarters Bernard wakes up after the nightmare of his son's death. He then talks to Hector and shows him images of a train, a technician and city by night. Hector responds the same way Dolores did about the picture of a woman in episode 1 - that the pictures don't look like anything to him. Then we see Theresa summoned by Charlotte Hale who just had sex with Hector. He is there in the room, all tied up. Hale tells Theresa they need to show that Ford's creations are dangerous to force him into retirement. She also mentions that what the company is really after is the side project and how valuable the intellectual property of the park is.

Next up - Maeve. Maeve is figuring things out more and more - she closes the piano that plays itself and she tries to get Clementine to talk about real things - well, her memories - not their script. Clementine tells her she has a family she sends money to and that one day she would like to live with them somewhere "cold". Suddenly everything freezes but Maeve. The men in hazmat suits approach and we along with Maeve assume it's for her...but they take Clementine with them. It turns out that the reason why Clementine was taken was because of Theresa and Charlotte's plan. They want to demonstrate that because of the reveries hosts can actually harbor a grudge which could lead to them attacking a guest. Clementine kills another host and when Stubbs gives her a command to stop she doesn't so he shoots her. Ford and Bernard are there for the demonstration and Ford really has one hell of a psychotic look on their face. Theresa remarks how all of this is because of reveries update and blames Bernard for it mentioning how he either didn't write the code himself or was negligent in implementing it. Ford says nothing and Bernard takes the blame and gets fired.

Clementine is taken by technicians and Sylvester drills in her nose which I assume is host lobotomy. Maeve sees all of this. She then tells Felix and Sylvester she is getting out and if they don't help her she is going to kill them. OK - where the hell does she want to escape to? And how?
And two things - why do some hosts get burned and some send to cold storage? If a host is lobotomized does it erase Arnold's code? And let's get sad - since I assume Clementine was sent to the cold storage that means her 'dream' of going some place cold came true...

In later part of the episode Bernard finds Theresa and tells her that reveries are probably a part of Arnold's code and he needs to take her somewhere. He takes her to Ford's creepy cottage he discovered last episode. Now, normally I'd start wondering what the hell is Bernard's goal there but in this moment Theresa asked Bernard what is behind the door to which he replied "what door?" and I knew I'm about to be proved right.
Bernard for some reason (dun dun dun) couldn't see the door but when Theresa pointed them out he did and followed her downstairs. There they found creepy basement (one in which we saw Bernard nudge nudge wink wink and Dolores have their talks) with a machine working on a new host. Theresa finds sketches of the mini Ford and Dolores and then suddenly she is shocked by something. She asks Bernard what is this and shows him a sketch...of him. And then Nolan makes sure you understand what the fuck just happened by having Bernard deliver chilling "It doesn't look like anything to me".

I knew Bernard is a host for a while now. I haven't come up with that idea but I subscribed to it and I take it even further by assuming Bernard is based on Arnold (whom we saw chatting with Dolores). The clues were riddled throughout the episode - for instance we saw Bernard have a nightmare and wake up - like with the hosts.
As Theresa is still confused Ford comes down the stairs and delivers psycho monologue how the hosts are free in the park...under his control. Things start getting progressively more and more disturbing and meanwhile Bernard is slowly unraveling  noting that he has a son and a wife but Ford shuts him up with his command. And then things go from disturbing to very disturbing when it is slowly becoming  evident Theresa was lured there by Bernard...to die.

Ford has Bernard kill Theresa in a very disturbing and sad scene. This whole sequence was extremely chilling - there is just such cruelty everywhere there. Bernard isn't like Dolores - he works with hosts and knows that they are essentially toys, something that can be erased and used. Dolores is at the moment blissfully unaware, painting some crap and seducing other woman's fiance. In this moment Bernard finds out that his son and his wife are not real and he is a tool in Ford's hands.
Then to max up the sadness we have poor Theresa who just found out that 1. Ford makes hosts so basically anyone there can be one 2. Her ex-lover is a host 3. She is about to die. It was all very disturbing and it's sad to see Theresa go. There is a host being made in the basement as she dies and a lot of people speculate that Ford is making a host of her but in the preview for next week it looks like it's her body lying on the table with Hale and Stubbs present which appears to debunk this theory.

Another chilling thing about the last few minutes was Ford using the term "blood sacrifice" which Hale previously used in her conversation with Theresa. Jonathan Nolan pointed out that the reason Ford knows this is because Hector was in the room. So the question is - how much he knows? Does he know about Maeve? Does he simply allow some things to happen? Some people even have a theory that the host uprising is precisely what Ford wants - that this is his new narrative.
This episode was all doom and gloom. William is in love with a host. Maeve wants to escape but that seems insane. Clementine is probably in cold storage. Bernard had even worse time this episode than last. Ford is a psycho confirmed. Theresa is dead. Elsie is still missing.

97/100

Next episode - Trace Decay. Ford orders a reluctant Bernard to conduct business as usual. Maeve looks to change the script for her storyline. Dolores finds it increasingly difficult to separate dreams from reality. Teddy is jarred by dark memories, while the Man in Black recalls some of the travails that brought him to this critical juncture.

Previous recaps:
1x01 The Original 
1x02 Chestnut
1x03 The Stray
1x04 Dissonance Theory 
1x05 Contrapasso 
1x06 The Adversary