Crisis Theory – Comments

Published May 4, 2020 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi! Thanks for your instant take, I enjoyed listening as always 🙂

I had to disagree this time though I loved the episode! I’ll write a bit about the riot scenes, and then some more general things I’m bursting to talk about.

First re the riot – I’ve been in a few riots myself and I found this one of the more realistic ones on screen :/. The police definitely do screw up as bad as they did in this one! There’s plenty of incisive brutality too don’t get me wrong… but it’s balanced by exactly this kind of screw-up. I could definitely tell some stories about that ;). The policing style was much more similar to UK riot policing, except with tear gas – I think that’s realistic for a future society where most disorder has ended, and the role of the police is mainly to calm things down. Iirc you see the look in one of their faces when they shoot that guy down – they don’t really look used to that or prepared for it.

Tbf to the giant AI football (sorry, soccer ball!), there were a few mitigating factors. Firstly, they said what we were looking at was a perimeter a mile from Delos. So using my maths… that would mean the first line was spread over a three-mile circumference. They are going to be dealing with pockets of disorder everywhere else, and trying to calm it too. AND there is definitely going to be much heavier presence in reserve between the front lines and delos. The riot control bots are going to be spread throughout all of that and delores is likely causing flashpoints elsewhere too to keep them busy. FINALLY they have to remember that dolores might be able to turn the riotbots, the humans may hesitate or even turn as well – that means they don’t want all the cops too close to Delos either. With all the data leaked, many riot cops would have quit so they will be thin on the ground. Riding the police copter, caleb probably bypassed their strongest defences who were waiting for any rioters who broke through.

Ok now that’s through with! About Bernard’s scene being the most emotional (which I totally agree with) – are we sure that wasn’t deliberate? I think the writers may have been trying to make a point about the importance of individuals, as opposed to the importance of grand plans there. The story arcs of this season weren’t really about Dolores – more about her chosing to take on the role of mother (hinted at when she talks about how all her kind were built from her – making her the mother of them essentially), and nurturing three individuals: Caleb, Maeve, and Bernard. Each one of them is stuck in their own loop, which they have been in all the last two seasons. Bernard is stuck greiving his kid and getting lost and bewildered by everything else, Maeve is obsessed with finding her daughter and can never see a bigger picture or understand anyone else, Caleb can’t see himself as anything other than what the ‘system’ has made him. The final half of this season sees Dolores sacrifice her selve(s) to finally break each one out of their loops and give them a genuine freedom. That’s the thing about freedom, and free will being hard – she was the only free agent in the entire world, now there are three. It took bringing down westworld to free her, and bringing down the whole human world just to free those three. I think the question we’re supposed to ask is: is it worth it? What is freedom worth to us?

Her method with Caleb harks back to season one and her own loop, where she drops the can and as a result starts a relationship with a helpful stranger, which changes the stranger’s life and reveals something about them. The scene with her bleeding in the alley was an exact repeat – this time with someone who she chose herself.

I think overall, this season was trying to do something, which really was a reinforcement of what the last two seasons were all about – to talk about what it means to be truly free and truly conscious. The last two did that mainly through philosphical dialogue from Ford. With this one… there’s a theory about science fiction, perhaps you know it? That sci-fi is never really about the future. Instead, it’s always really about the present. (for example 1984 – it was originally planned to be released in 1948, and the title was a play on that. At the time the UK was getting authoritarian with ration cards, national service, forced ID… but I digress!) In the same way, all this stuff with surveilance and the giant football, seems to be a reflection of our own PRESENT. We are dealing with mass automated surveilance, predictive algorithms. And we are starting to ask – what does freedom mean for us? When we can be predicted and coralled by “nudge theory”, do we really have free will? What price is order and safety worth? How bad are we willing to make things if it means we can be free? Serak is a great character for that because he is a true benevolent dictator – so we can explore these questions without all the complications of corruption, leaders acting in self interest.

I think that’s why he HAD to die – it’s a symbol of the main
characters’ rejection of him, their choice of freedom even at the cost of disorder. Have you read Ursula le Guin’s short story “those who walk away from Omelas”? I feel like there were a lot of parallels, but in that ending scene instead of walking away, they walk back and destroy the compromise at the heart of their society. Serak’s last moments were pitifull – I don’t know what I think of that yet. It was definitely an emperor has no clothes moment where we realise in the end he was just a lonely empty shell. I think that reinforces the choice they made and justifies it – that in the end all his sacrifice gained him nothing.

Connecting Dolores up to the football was kind of a deus ex machina… it would have been nice if they found a more subtle way to do that I guess. But you have to admit the symbolism was awesome! All the callbacks to other films like fight club (did you notice everyone calling Caleb sir, like they do Tyler???) – it was poetic even if it was a bit obvious. It felt like the writers were worried people wouldn’t get their point so they gave up on subtlety this episode 🙁

Anyway. I’d really like to hear you talk more about what this season means for us now and its’ commentary on our society and how we can live in it.

Hope that input’s useful to you 🙂
Looking forward to hear your deep dive!
Tim

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