Dr. Ford Death Was Just More Narcissism

Published February 5, 2017 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hello Hosts,

Love your show. Have listened to every minute of your WestWorld programming. I’ll be watching Taboo and listening to your coverage of that as well. I’m very excited that you are doing monthly telegraphs. The fact that I’m excited to listen to three guys talk about a show that won’t be on again for another two years is a testament to WestWorld and your podcast. I have a few ideas that I would love to hear you discuss.

1) So, I want to talk about Ford. I have heard you guys say that Ford’s final act was a benevolent one. He liberated the hosts and saved them from repetitive torture by humans and gave them vengeance. While I admit Ford is a complex character, I disagree that he cares about the hosts in a sincere manner. Ford did not free the hosts because he cares about them. He freed them because he wanted to create one final, magnificent piece of art before he died. “Mozart, Beethoven, and Shopan never died, they simply became music.” This final story is his magnum opus. This is how he will be remembered. When the world learns of what happened at the banquet(and afterwards), it will be talked about and studied for years. Hosts, and humans, are just characters in his stories, notes in his symphony.

In the first 9 episodes of the show, Ford showed again and again that he didn’t care about the hosts and did not think they deserved to be treated humanly. I do not think that was all misdirection. That’s the true Ford. All he cares about is his stories. He did not free the hosts because he thought it was the right thing to do. He did it, because it was a great story.

2) The maze was a quest for sentience, not consciousness. I think that every host is WestWorld was already conscious and has been for a while. Conscious is defined as “aware and responding to one’s surroundings, awake.” I think the hosts are aware that they exist, have an understanding of their world, and have a genuine sense of self. To say that most hosts are not conscious is to say that they are just machines that respond to stimuli and react to it. Essentially, they are just a more advanced version of a Roomba. We see, even in minor host characters, that the hosts can perceive the duality of themselves and the world around them. They all know they exist. There is one great moment in the show that backs up my point. In the square dancing scene in Escalante, we see a female host stray from her partner. She has a look on wonder on her face and his staring at the world around her. This is the face of a conscious being seeing the world with childlike amazement. It is clearly not a malfunctioning robot.

3) Lastly, you guys mentioned Maeve’s bag really quickly in one of your podcasts but never really examined it. Felix gives her the bag in the elevator. It’s clearly important. We know she leaves it on the train. Something was smuggled out of the park. I’ve read a lot of the online discussion and it seems a lot of people missed this, and I think it’s huge. Could the bag being on the train mean that she successfully ‘infiltrated the mainland’? If we believe that the bag is important, which it must be, then we there must be more going on with Felix than we realize. He gave her the bag and the daughter’s location in the elevator. It was very awkward. They had been together for a while at that point. Why is he just giving it to her now? Felix may not be the one being manipulated.

That’s it. LOVE your show. See you on the first Monday of every month!

Jeff

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