Except MIB doesn’t really seem to give a shit about Dolores. He’s all about the “maze” and finding some “deeper meaning”. It doesn’t seem like it’s because a love affair with a toaster went sour.
Besides, it doesn’t make sense. Why would Dolores have her “awakening” with William and the sit on it for 35 years?
A couple of thoughts on hosts:
How do they “repair” them? I mean we see Maeve and Teddy and so on show up full of bullet and knife holes and we see the techs digging bullets out of them, but how are they actually fixed?
They “retire” a hose by drilling into their brain (or whatever) through their nose. What happens if someone shoots them in the head in that same spot? Are they permanently broken?
Can the hosts be so damaged that they just scrap them? I think the one that bashed its’ own head in was retired because of it’s behavior, not because it was beyond repair.
Why does every host seem “bespoke”? They are printed bodies full of software. Don’t they have copies?
Sex with a robot prostitute is only appealing because the robot is played by a human actor. The newer “hosts” are bio-engineered humans like the Replicants from Blade Runner or Cylons from Battlestar Galactica, so they would feel like a skeleton wrapped in muscle and skin. I kind of feel like having sex with Dolores might be like fucking a silicone bag full of hydraulics and clockwork parts.
While not discounting him lying, Ford claimed last episode that his “family” were the only clockwork robot hosts left. Dolores is an old model, but presumably from the first generation of humanoid synths.
Are you sure? He said the family were the last ones left that Arnold built himself, but I don’t think he said they were the last mechanical ones. And when Theresa showed Bernard the “blueprint” of his design (“That doesn’t look like anything to me.”) I’m sure there was one of Dolores there too. Unlike Bernard’s, it showed mechanical hardware inside.
Presumably the outer layers are either bioengineered flesh or something damn close that stays at body temperature.
But when Bernard asks the computer to pull up a list of first generation hosts designed by Arnold, Dolores was prominently on the list. The scene is ambiguous about whether he meant first gen hardware or first gen software but since apparently the first gen have extra hardware not present in later models, it strongly suggests that Dolores hasn’t been moved into a modern body.
I think the purpose of showing the Dolores schematic was to show us that these were the original Host schematics before dropping the Bernard bomb. That is, it’s meant to imply that Bernard is a first-generation (or at least very old) host like Dolores, not anything about their current hardware. Besides, Bernard was very surprised to see old model hosts and everybody knows about Dolores. It wouldn’t be that surprising if everyone knew a few of them like Dolores were still running around. It would’ve been pretty well known, too, considering they have to patch her up now and then.
I suppose she could have old hardware, and it could tie into the whole “old hosts can talk to the satellite uplink” thing, but I think what I said is the more likely intended implication.
MiB seems very goal-oriented, I don’t think he’d be raping Dolores just for kicks. I think it was more likely a scalping or similar was in the offing. I’m trying to recall if this was before or after he scalped the Indian dealer…
You know, that could answer the question in my mind about where Bernard’s convos with Dolores take place in terms of her current storyline (current with William and Logan). It didn’t seem feasible that she was being returned all the way to host headquarters for a chat after fleeing her father’s farm and then put back by the fire before the boys woke up, but if there are remote facilities like that scattered all over, that would make more sense.
That is, of course, unless those convos are taking place in another time entirely. Or if they’re taking place inside her head by remote communication (‘I’m in a dream’) rather than in a physical meeting.
I’ve wondered about that too. While they do have the actual hosts in the maintenance areas - Maeve’s story proves that - it does seem like there’s something going on with the timelines. Those “interviews” between Bernard and Dolores can’t be happening at the same time as her quest, unless (as you say) they’re happening in virtual reality while Dolores is “sleeping”.
Remember, too, the lawman host who tried to retrieve her from the Mexican village, but backed off when she resisted and William stepped in. Someone at Mesa HQ seems to want to return her to the Abernathy farmhouse narrative.
I don’t necessarily know if I like this twist, but I also don’t think I’m thinking entirely clearly about it either because I feel I’m influenced by a lot of podcasts.
That being said, I don’t think I like this twist because it seems almost too easy for me. Like, of course the second-in-command guy is the one to be a host. Sure, there is a lot of weight to the reveal, but I almost think it would have had more gravitas if, say, Elsie walked around the corner and SHE was the host the whole time.
It also throws all of Bernard’s old scenes off kilter. Maybe it’ll be revealed in the subsequent 3 episodes, but why even have him have the affair with Theresa? Why have him work with Elsie the way he did? Or have half the conversations with Ford that he did? In retrospect they were clearly for our (the viewers) benefit and don’t fit within the kayfabe story of “everyone has to think of Bernard as human”. Namely the “This is who Arnold is” conversation. Bernard has no reason to know who Arnold is, and if Ford wanted him to know it, why have a “real” conversation? Why not just download Arnold into his mind for when someone brings him up? It seems pointless.
And the conversations with Dolores are what? The hosts “practicing normal conversation”? To what ends?
The twist seems a bit too unoriginal and convenient for my tastes. At least for right now, this could all change with some explanation I feel.
I re-watched ep 1 last night. The MIB dragged Dolores into the barn early on. In the next cycle (or at least a later cycle), he bumps into her in town and says “I’m sorry, I have other plans tonight.” Later he kidnaps the card dealer, takes him out to the canyon, drains most of his blood (why bother?) and scalps him.
We don’t know Fords motivations for making a Bernard host. But there are obviously motivations by several parties to develop the host technology into something far beyond glorified prostitutes and roleplaying NPCs.
Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton? Nothing to go wrong there!
In one of the previews, we do see a tech handling Dolores’s face.
I thought that was an employee. But either way, I think they saw she was way off script. But when they realized it was because William brought her along and not a malfunction, they just let them do their thing.
The woman from management explicitly said in the “Trompe L’Oeil” episode that they were more interested in the code than the park and the hosts. I assume the interest is in the artificial intelligence.