Westworld S1 at 10: rewatch or reminisce | Ep 4: Dissonance Theory (first aired 23 Oct 2016)

[u/InvestedFan]

Spoiler warning: this rewatch assumes you've seen all of Season 1, and the comments will discuss its biggest twists. Watching for the first time? Go in unspoiled and join us once you've finished. Please spoiler-tag anything from Seasons 2–4, like this: spoiler, as plenty of people here may not have made it to the end yet.

Ten years ago today, HBO aired "Dissonance Theory". The Man in Black gets his best material yet, Dolores goes further off her loop than ever, and Maeve picks up a knife to find out whether she's going mad.

Rewatching, remembering or catching up later: all welcome, and every thread stays open.

Rewatch so far: Ep 1 · Ep 2 · Ep 3 · Next: Ep 5, Contrapasso, 30 Oct. Full schedule in the Ep 1 thread.

Ep 4: a few things to talk about

• Why "Dissonance Theory"? The title points to psychologist Leon Festinger's idea of cognitive dissonance: the discomfort of holding beliefs that don't fit what you're seeing. It grew partly out of his study of a doomsday group whose prophecy failed, where the most committed members doubled down rather than let go. Who in this episode is doubling down, and who is starting to let go?
• "I want to be free." In the old basement room, "Bernard" offers to take away Dolores's grief. She refuses: "The pain, their loss... it's all I have left of them." Then he gives her a game: the Maze. "If you can do that, then maybe you can be free." Knowing who is really in that room, how does the scene play now?
• The Man in Black off the clock. A guest tries to thank him: "Your foundation literally saved my sister's—" He threatens to cut his throat. "This is my vacation." Then he tells Armistice his theory: Arnold made a world where you can't die, broke his own rule, and left "one story left to tell... a story with real stakes." Was this when he became a person rather than a monster for you?
• "Don't call me Billy!" Logan shoots Holden to get to El Lazo and urges William to "go black hat". "It's a game, Billy!" Meanwhile Dolores tells William that when strays found their way home, it "never occurred to me that we were bringing them back for the slaughter."
• Maeve and the shades. She hides a drawing under her floorboard and finds a stack of identical ones she doesn't remember making. Very Memento, fittingly for a show co-created by the man whose short story that film was based on. Hector calls the figures "the men who walk between worlds", then digs the bullet out of her. "That I'm not crazy after all. And that none of this matters."
• Ford and Theresa. At lunch, every host in the restaurant freezes mid-pour at Ford's word, and a giant excavator rolls over the hill. "In here, we were gods. And you... were merely our guests." Anthony Hopkins later said this was his favourite scene to shoot all season.

Music

• The player piano plays The Cure's "A Forest" as Maeve's hearing starts to slip. Ramin Djawadi said the hard part was the left-hand accompaniment, and he wondered aloud whether the choice was just the park's programmers indulging themselves, or something deeper in the title and lyrics.
• Bizet's "Habanera" from Carmen ("love is a rebellious bird") and a Scott Joplin rag also play.

Did "A Forest" fit for you? Lost in the woods, chasing something that isn't there...

Ten years on

• In the original Ep 4 discussion thread, the biggest laughs went to Lawrence's one-word reaction to being saved from execution by the Man in Black twice running, and to a commenter imagining the guest whose saloon evening is ruined by Hector's raid after paying "20-40k for this vacation". Plenty of people simply said "I love everything about Maeve and Hector."
• One 2016 commenter pleaded, "So can we finally be done with all of the timeline theories?!" Meanwhile Frame Rated's review wondered whether Ford might have built Bernard in Arnold's image. Who was right in your house?
• Spot the detail: Lawrence calls it "Old Hob" prison, an old nickname for the Devil, and the control room calls it Los Diablos. Bernard also tells Elsie the woodcutter's carving isn't Orion: "There are three stars in Orion's Belt, not four."
• US viewing dropped about a fifth from Ep 3, to 1.7 million households, because it was up against The Walking Dead's season 7 premiere. In the UK, 1.09 million watched on Sky Atlantic.

- Check out the original 2016 trailer for this episode: see u/SongforAubrey's Ep 4 trailer post.

Ep 4 in a nutshell

"Bernard" offers Dolores the Maze, and she wakes at William and Logan's camp with a gun in her hand. Maeve has flashes of being shot and of a masked figure, then finds a stack of her own drawings of it under the floorboard. Theresa takes the woodcutter investigation away from Elsie. The Man in Black finds the snake: Armistice's tattoo. He breaks Hector out of prison with an exploding cigar, saves Lawrence from a firing squad, and learns that the last name on Armistice's list is Wyatt. In Las Mudas, Lawrence's daughter tells Dolores "Same as you. Don't you remember?" Logan shoots Holden and steers the group towards Pariah. Ford shows Theresa how completely the park answers to him. Hector's gang raids Sweetwater, and Maeve trades the safe combination for answers, then has Hector dig a bullet out of her stomach before the sheriff's men open fire.

Rewatched or remembered, what stays with you from Dissonance Theory? Thoughts, memories and favourite GIFs all welcome.

[u/InvestedFan]

Quick one to get us started: four storylines running side by side this week. Which one did you most look forward to back in 2016?

- Dolores and William heading off her loop, with Logan making trouble

- The Man in Black chasing the Maze through Armistice, Hector and an exploding cigar

- Maeve piecing together the shades and asking Hector to cut her open

- Ford showing Theresa exactly who runs the park

[u/Tykjen]

Whenever I see William's little chat to Lawrence about not having free will... I just smile :)

"What if I told you...I'm here to set you free."

[u/InvestedFan → u/Tykjen]

Ha, same. Very Morpheus. And quite something coming from him, of all people. By the finale, he gets something close to what he was after.

[u/AnnualZealousideal27]

Ford freezing everyone at the lunch with Theresa is my favorite scene in this episode.

[u/InvestedFan → u/AnnualZealousideal27]

An excellent scene! Hopkins agreed. He said it was his favourite to shoot all season. And the table turning out to be the one Theresa sat at as a child makes it even creepier. First time round, it left me as uneasy as Theresa, trying to work out what was going on.

[u/i_max2k2 → u/InvestedFan]

Hopkins suddenly went to his Dr. Hannibal persona.

[u/CB2001]

I will never stop believing Ford’s story was an allegory for filmmaking and how directors want to tell good stories and studios just want to pander.

[u/InvestedFan → u/CB2001]

Hard to argue with, especially this week. At lunch Ford says Arnold "begged me to not let you people in, the money-men", and that it's "not a theme park, but an entire world". In Ep 2 he dismisses Sizemore's pitch as "parlour tricks". Someone in the original 2016 Ep 2 thread put it neatly: "Ford is arthouse; Sizemore is blockbuster."

[u/CB2001 → u/InvestedFan]

These are the things that lead me to believe the filmmaker analogy. The only detail that’s different is that I see Ford as an old-school film director, who came in and made films where stories and characters mattered first and foremost, understanding the audience is smart enough to understand the story without it being spoon fed to them. Sizemore is the newer generation filmmaker who hasn’t watched any films older than he is and grew up on spectacle, and sold his artistic integrity to agree with the studio’s view on what they think the audiences want instead of what the audiences actually want because it’s the only way for him to be able to work by being a “yes” man. Not to forget, Ford’s name comes from director John Ford, one of the big names in the western genre in film.

[u/SongforAubrey]

You're taking my job bro lmao

[u/InvestedFan → u/SongforAubrey]

Ha, not a chance! I've enjoyed revisiting each trailer through your posts, and they've added to the buzz around the anniversary. No plans to do trailers myself. Keep them coming if fancy, and if do feel free to drop a link in here too if you like! 😀

[u/SongforAubrey → u/InvestedFan]

Thanks, man! I've also enjoyed reading through the discussions under your posts, seeing different people's interpretations of the show is always interesting. I was busy yesterday, so the anniversary post had to be late 

[u/HaveYouSeenMyIpad]

Still some of my favorite tv of all time