Caleb Has the Ultimate Identity Crisis on an Especially Grim Westworld

“I only know what I tell me.”

This brief, beautiful line of dialogue is spoken by Caleb (Aaron Paul) to Caleb (nonetheless Aaron Paul), each of whom—together with many different Calebs—are in a novel hell in “Fidelity.” He’s already confronted the devastating information that he did not cease Hale (Tessa Thompson) from taking on the world 23 years in the past, however issues handle to worsen when he discovers as a Host that hasn’t achieved constancy, he’s starting to malfunction.

Hale’s been bothering to make 277 earlier copies of Caleb as a result of she’s determined to find how he was in a position to withstand her mind-control parasite, thus turning into the primary Outlier. Her hope is that if she figures it out, she will stop Outliers from “infecting” her Hosts and inflicting them to commit suicide. When he was human, Caleb taunted Hale by claiming she knew how he was in a position to break freed from her management, so all she must do is hold creating extra Calebs till she learns the reply.

Hale tells him all this in his cell, bringing in a comically giant hourglass to point his incipient demise. She additionally tells him his daughter Frankie (Aurora Perrineau) is alive, which causes Caleb to interrupt into tears of bittersweet pleasure, a second powerfully acted by Paul, even after Hale taunts him that she’s slipped considered one of her Hosts into Frankie’s Outlier riot. After Hale leaves, his cell’s opaque home windows develop into clear, and Caleb will get one other distressing shock—he’s not alone. Several different Host variations of himself occupy comparable cells, they usually’re all in numerous levels of falling aside.

It’s the primary of many entertaining and unnerving moments in “Fidelity” of Caleb getting forcibly reminded he’s not human. But fortunately, an particularly degraded model of Caleb offers our Caleb a clue about needing extra time, so he checks the hourglass and finds a small cartridge in it, which knocks him out so he seems to be useless. One of Hale’s Drone Hosts hits the termination button, inflicting jets of fireplace to erupt from the ceiling. The solely escape is thru a grate on the ground… which mysteriously has a small arrow etched into it, indicating how the grate must be opened.

When Caleb escapes, he drops right into a pile of bones and ash—clearly the stays of Calebs who weren’t so fortunate. As he travels via the bowels of the Olympiad Entertainment constructing, he begins seeing indicators that he’s not the primary Caleb to have made this precise escape. There’s an ashen handprint on a wall, the place a earlier Caleb braced himself. After a combat with a Drone Host, he finds a bloody handprint on the wall, indicating a Caleb had already skilled that very same brawl, and maybe even acquired the identical wound.

But nothing beats the horrific scene Caleb finds after crawling into the vents. There’s a dying Caleb by a gap, and when our Caleb appears down it, he sees an enormous drop with the bloody corpses of two different Calebs on the bottom who had been so determined to flee they risked the drop. Luckily, the dying Caleb has an concept—to behave as a human cushion so our Caleb can survive the autumn. It’s a sacrifice, however the two Calebs are united in eager to contact Frankie. They drop. Our Caleb lives. The different Caleb dies horrifically. And lastly, Caleb makes it to the roof of the constructing, the place he makes use of a building carry’s radio to ship an audio message to Frankie.

It doesn’t require a genius to know that Hale engineered Caleb’s escape; if a number of earlier Calebs had taken the identical route, Hale would have figured it out earlier than attending to Caleb #278. Certainly she would have searched the constructing excessive and low for him to verify he didn’t get really free. But Caleb solely finds this out after delivering his message, when Hale seems, holding the cartridge she clearly left within the hourglass, and says she’s waited a very long time for him to get far sufficient so she will hear the message in hopes it might comprise some clue. It doesn’t, so Hale breaks Caleb’s neck and has a brand new Caleb Host made.

If you consider it for greater than a minute, none of this is smart. Why did Hale make the escape so elaborate? If every little thing needed to be precisely this manner for Caleb to ship a message to Frankie, does that imply she was making copies of Caleb particularly to be within the different jail cells to freak him out and provides him the clue to the cartridge? Did she place the opposite Calebs there, or was she deliberately leaving corpses laying concerning the constructing for him to seek out? Also, why was Hale letting this happen in the true world as an alternative of a simulation, saving valuable time and sources?

I didn’t care about these questions within the slightest when watching “Fidelity” as a result of once more, it was so enjoyably eerie, and I solely partially care about them now. I can all the time do some hand-waving at Westworld when it’s entertaining. What irritates me way more are the 2 flashback scenes awkwardly crammed into the episode. The first is of younger Frankie skinning her knee and refusing to stroll on it. Caleb offers her a pep discuss, the place he reveals the extremely tacky means he managed to withstand Hale’s flies: “You know what kind of person can’t be beat? The kind that doesn’t give up.”

The second stars younger Frankie, simply after Hale took over the world, discovering the younger Outlier Jay along with her mom. After they escape, Frankie says one thing about how Jay might be her new brother, which Jay angrily refutes, having misplaced his precise brother to Hale’s anti-Outlier machinations.

Cut to Frankie and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) within the current, heading to the desolate stays of Mobworld to revive Maeve (Thandiwe Newton). Frankie is suspicious when Bernard reveals how a lot he is aware of about repairing Hosts, and much more suspicious when Bernard in some way is aware of that even the rooms of Mobworld had been in a position to scan an individual’s information immediately by having the room scan Frankie. However, she nonetheless needs Maeve rebuilt as a result of she acknowledged her from way back, when Maeve got here by the home to warn their household to cover. If anybody is aware of what occurred to her father, Frankie thinks, it should be Maeve.

When the opposite rebels be part of them in Mobworld, Jay (Daniel Wu) proclaims Hale knew they had been coming, and that there’s a traitor amongst them. Frankie immediately shoots Bernard, who she pegged as a Host the minute Bernard took her scanned information, which could possibly be used to make a Host model of her. (Bernard’s purpose for making the copy: “It’s complicated.” Sigh.) However, she needs each Bernard and Stubbs alive at the least lengthy sufficient for Maeve to be accomplished, a lot to Jay’s displeasure. That offers Bernard a possibility later to inform Frankie that one of many returning rebels is considered one of Hale’s Hosts, however he—in some way—doesn’t know which one it’s. It’s Jay, as Frankie discovers when he says one thing about being like a brother to her, which suggestions her off due to the ham-fisted flashback from earlier. They have a giant combat, and the reawakened Maeve kills Jay and rescues Frankie on the final second. The finish.

Still, “Fidelity” is an efficient episode due to the traditional Westworld mind-fuckery of Caleb’s storyline—one ok that I don’t thoughts the remainder of What the Hell Is Going on With Christina™ being delayed for an additional week (or extra). But there are solely two episodes left and the world remains to be underneath Hale’s thumb, Caleb’s non-functional, Christina might be Dolores however along with her reminiscence erased, and Bernard nonetheless isn’t telling anybody what the plan is. Season 4 has been a marked enchancment over final season, nevertheless it’s excessive time Westworld picks up the tempo.

Assorted Musings:

• Bernard particularly mentions Hale has a kind of mega-simulators, which is main me to be pre-smug about my perception that Dolores is in it, producing narratives for the Hale-controlled folks in the true world.
• You’re telling me that there’s know-how that may remotely discover individuals who break freed from Hale’s thoughts management, however there’s no check that may differentiate between a Host and a human? Like, shouldn’t everybody within the riot should stroll via a steel detector each from time to time?
• How can the Drone Hosts hear somebody blink, however even with that map that locates Outliers, seemingly can’t distinguish them in any other case?
• How did Hale know the rebels had been coming to town if she hadn’t changed Jay but? And is that this one thing significant to the narrative or only a plot gap? You really by no means can inform with Westworld.
• One of Caleb’s reminiscences is of strolling in a discipline together with his daughter—and it appears almost precisely like Maeve’s often proven reminiscence of her strolling in a discipline along with her daughter. Is this only a parallel, or has a few of Maeve’s information made it into Caleb’s core?
• Do nurses actually eat their affected person’s pudding whereas they’re unconscious, or was Caleb’s future spouse only a monster of the very best order?

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