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I was not a fan of episode 8!

After such a momentous episode last week, this ep kinda spun its wheels, sidetracking Bernard with a mission to tidy up after himself (although with a hint that he killed Elsie) and not doing much of note with Young William or Old William.

Although on that front, we did get MIB recognizing the Wyatt follower from long ago:  she was the host in white who welcomed Young William to the park in the 2nd episode.  She also showed up as the woman with the white umbrella in Dolores' flashback to the host training center (which we see buried in the Young William scenes but we know Ford has been digging up in the scenes set in the present).  MIB also said he had been married for 30 years, and we know Young William is about to get married during scenes we know (or suspect) are leading up to "the incident" that took place...30 years ago.

I feel like it's getting a little pointless to keep stacking up evidence in favor of that theory.

Perhaps more notable is that Dolores' flashback seemed to suggest that she was responsible for the massacre that Teddy remembers as being Wyatt's work.

I did like the scenes where Maeve was able to rewrite the other hosts' programming on the fly by telling them stories.  Unfortunately, the more scenes they do with the hapless Delos techs, the less and less plausible it gets that they could do any of this without getting caught or having ample opportunity to reset her (even before this episode's aborted attempt).

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OR, to your last point, someone is aware and they're letting it happen. Don't forget, someone was already adjusting Maeve's settings. We saw that happen in episode 3 or 4 and then it was confirmed in episode 6.

I'm going to be disappointed if Elsie is dead. I liked her. For now, I'm following the rule that says that you're not dead unless you died on screen. Plus, how was Bernard able to be in two places at the same time? He's back at HQ when Elsie gets grabbed. Unless...there's two Bernards...

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Dolores = Wyatt is a common theory.

I like the idea that Bernard is physically modelled on Arnold (i.e the man we see conversing with Dolores is actually Arnold not Bernard), but cannot accept that Ford has an Arnold model running around under the pretence of being human when Arnold was an employee of the firm less than a lifetime ago. Someone would surely recognise.

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On November 21, 2016 at 10:53 AM, Craig H said:

OR, to your last point, someone is aware and they're letting it happen. Don't forget, someone was already adjusting Maeve's settings. We saw that happen in episode 3 or 4 and then it was confirmed in episode 6.

 

I'm going to be disappointed if Elsie is dead. I liked her. For now, I'm following the rule that says that you're not dead unless you died on screen. Plus, how was Bernard able to be in two places at the same time? He's back at HQ when Elsie gets grabbed. Unless...there's two Bernards...

That is a good point about Maeve.

I'm also a little skeptical of how Bernard's wherabouts line up with the timing of Elsie's murder?/abduction.  That said, they showed us Bernard choking her, and thus far, the show hasn't played false with us  - when something happens on screen, it really happened (just maybe not when we think it happened).  I'm also not sure  a Bernard who is able to defy his programming and not kill Elsie would line up with a Bernard who couldn't with Teresa.

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Which one?

 

So Bernard was built in Arnold's likeness, reached a level of conciousness that Ford killed him, but could always rebuild.  Delores killed Arnold, and what we're seeing from her is a mashup of all her timelines.  Maeve is more advanced than anyone else, and is setting up the host revolt (probably will be next season's driving story).

 

And that pretty much confirms that William = MIB, as Logan's being a complete prick and prodding William snapped him and turned him into a godmoder.

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I feel like the Bernard in Arnold's likeness should be a dead give away, but then again....long term patrons like "MIB" don't know all of the backstage programmers and stuff, and one can assume that a lot of the staff was added after Bernard was already an employee.  Or something happened, and a lot/all of the original staff let the park.  I don't know....that one is a little weird and hard to swallow.  

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I think it's safe to assume that most of the staff working now is from Delos, so they wouldn't have arrived until after the incident that required William and Delos to save the park.  They definitely wouldn't have known Arnold, because that was after he was dead.  Also, in one of the earlier episodes, I believe it was said that Arnold was more of a mysterious figure than Ford, even when he was alive, and that Ford had essentially scrubbed Arnold from the record after his death.

Now, is it plausible that Ford could have done such a thorough job of wiping Arnold that somebody working there, especially high-level movers and shakers like Teresa, couldn't have found an old photo of him somewhere in the great, wide world?  Probably not.  But on a show where Ford also has the knowledge and technology to create life-like A.I., I guess I can extend it some leniency and believe he also had the knowledge and technology to create some kind of super-worm that could erase someone's entire existence off the web (plus maybe send out some specially designed murderbots to tie up real life loose ends).

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Yeah, so Delores being gears and clockwork instead of synthetic organs seals the "3 timelines" theory (original park where the disaster happened, William and Logan sometime later, MiB & Wyatt now, sometime after that).  @Raziel403 is spot-on with the whole "we're seeing a mashup of Delores' timelines" thing.  

Anyone else notice, when Logan pulls out the picture of his sister/Billy's fiancee, that it's the same pic that drove Papa Abernathy mad?  Please ignore the fact that guests are supposed to be stripped of all personal belongings in order to avoid things like that, of course.

Speaking of Mr. Abernathy, don't forget that the plotline of the Delos rep using him to smuggle out data is still in play and was not mentioned in this episode.

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36 minutes ago, Playa Shunna Ver 3.0 said:

What seems wierd is that Ford has a picture of him, Arnold, and the other guy in his office.  I understand Bernard was probably programmed to not be able to see the pic, how did no one else ever see that photo in Ford's office.  He has picked it up in several episodes.  Maybe I'm wrong.  

They just think it's a pic of young Ford and Bernard.  Black don't crack.

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We also seemed to gloss over that Teddy may actually be Wyatt, as his memory changed from helping Wyatt murder the town only to be turned on himself, to him doing the slaughtering himself.

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Probably best not to try and over-think it in a show where junior technicians are running amok re-programming machines at a whim from the hosts, but I am incredibly sceptical how nobody would recognise Bernard as Arnold. I mean, its not literally like Arnold/Ford built the park solo from scratch is it? Investment had to be forthcoming from somewhere. It was a predictable but bizarre twist.

I don't think Maeve is that much more advanced at all. I suspect we'll see a variation on the revolt being Ford's mechanation all along (we were explicitly told that Maeve's settings had been altered prior to Felix getting his hands on her .. & that Ford knows everything that goes on with the hosts .. & now we have the final admission that Ford possesses a backdoor into the code of all hosts). With security lured out & trapped by those unfriendly new host types, I suspect the next chapter is Ford taking over the whole park. But to what end!

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Also of note, Ford commanded Bernard to commit suicide using the same narrative commands that Maeve has been using on the hosts she changes.

 

That adds a bit to the Ford is a Host theory too.

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I'm starting to get the feeling that Logan is the Man in Black if only because Delores is so deathly afraid of him.

Unless William does something so totally awful that deeply scars Delores.

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11 hours ago, A_K said:

Probably best not to try and over-think it in a show where junior technicians are running amok re-programming machines at a whim from the hosts, but I am incredibly sceptical how nobody would recognise Bernard as Arnold. I mean, its not literally like Arnold/Ford built the park solo from scratch is it? Investment had to be forthcoming from somewhere. It was a predictable but bizarre twist.

 

I believe the idea is that Ford, the reclusive Arnold, and staff spent years building the park and then Arnold was killed and there was a park-wide incident shortly after the park opened.  As you can see from the "Delores in the underground hallway" flashback, much of the staff (if not all?) were killed.  The park was eventually bailed out and restarted and I'm assuming there was complete employee turnover except for Ford.  Ford then built Bernard sometime after that.  So the only people who would have known Arnold are dead or have moved on.

 

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Yeah - the film is worth a watch, although it goes downhill pretty sharply after an interesting start. Features an incredibly prolongued ending / chase scene.

I've read they plan to do several series with this. Really interested to see where they could take the storyline beyond season 1.

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On 11/30/2016 at 10:25 AM, Technico Support said:

By the way, has anyone here watched the original film?

Are you shitting me? OF COURSE I HAVE~!

I think that is why I am like "Okay, fuck this show," every time I try to binge watch a few episodes.   It just seems deliberately convoluted, while the movie was pretty straightforward.

It does not help that I am old and stubborn and find it difficult to appreciate the fact that the anti-tech premise of the original movie really doesn't feel appropriate in this modern age where tech is so openly embraced that we leave half of our active memories on our smart phones and share what we had for breakfast with the world via social media.

You could not make a movie like Colossus:  The Forbin Project today because given the average pessimistic outlook on humanity and an increasingly tech dependent society, the audience would be like, "Maybe the computer is right and we WOULD be better off nuked? and Colossus ends up being the protagonist.

If you tried hard enough, you could even spin Demon Seed to make Proteus IV look stellar.  All he wanted to do was have life outside of his shell.

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