Way back in the first season of Westworld-back when Teddy was so young, so innocent-series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy re-popularized a term from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: These violent delights have violent ends. What it suggests was both cryptic yet very obvious. However, after more than a year and a half of television spent in Robert Ford's park, nothing seems quite so obvious anymore. Even that quote becomes nebulous in a series that seems to have no beginning or end, and in which the timeline increasingly resembles an M. C. Escher painting. So begins "Phase Space," which with hardly the greatest artfulness turns the tables on us again. The hour starts in exactly the same fashion as season 2, with a seeming flashback of Bernard testing Dolores' diagnostics and seeing just how human she can become. Six weeks ago, it was a reminder of how far Dolores had traveled from being the smiling and benign rancher's daughter to a revolutionary who shows no quarter. However, as we learn tonight, this is in fact not what that sequence is at all. Rather Dolores is doing a fidelity test on Arnold... or maybe Bernard? By design it's not clear. What seems less by design is the sneaking suspicion that Westworld is erring very close to reaching the point of diminishing returns with this kind of narrative twist that throws the timeline into yet further chaos. There may be an unseen god among the hosts named Robert Ford. But he is reintroduced tonight playing the player piano... just like Dolores is in the same episode. Both are still playing games, even if one might be oblivious that she's still hitting the preprogrammed keys... Maeve is living. And it's that life which makes this episode worthwhile.
Review of Phase Space
