WW – Westworld S4 E1 The Auguries

Jason and Cristina break down Westworld season 4 episode 1 The Auguries! Hard to believe if but after only one episode we already have a handful of theories! 

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Podcast Notes –

DIRECTED BY:	Richard J. Lewis
WRITTEN BY:	Lisa Joy & William Bromell
RECEPTION:	Imdb – 8 / RT – 77%

 

“Hello again. Don’t worry about a thing. It’s all in your head.”

CRITICS:

” Westworld‘s continued reliance on mystery will frustrate just as much as it intrigues, but this fourth season still offers plenty of gleaming and menacing insight into a brave new world.

OPENING CREDITS:

Machine – builds fly.  Player piano, strings.  Thread building a new structure (building?). Skeleton emerges from milk.  People bots.  Globe (little like Rehoboam, Earth, pod or bee hive like)

TITLE:

Auguries are a sign or omen of what will happen in the future.  Augury is the practice from ancient Roman religion of interpreting omens from the observed behavior of birds. When the individual, known as the augur, interpreted these signs, it is referred to as “taking the auspices”.

“Auguries of Innocence” – William Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour

A Robin Red breast in a Cage, Puts all Heaven in a Rage

Every Night & every Morn, Some to Misery are Born

Every Morn and every Night, Some are Born to sweet delight

We are led to Believe a Lie, When we see not Thro the Eye

But does a Human Form Display, To those who Dwell in Realms of day

MUSIC:

• “Perfect Day” – Lou Reed
• “The Wind Cries Mary” – Jimmi Hendrix (Maeve in cabin, going through memories)
• “Video Games” – Lana Del Ray (end scene, Christina on balcony)

NEW FACES & PLACES & IDEAS

FACES:

• Christina: played by Aaron Paul. An army veteran now working
• Maya: Christina’s roommate
• Emmett: Christina’s boss
• Peter: Many who has been stalking/ calling Christina
• Uwade: Caleb’s wife
• Frankie: Caleb’s daughter                       

IDEAS:

• Olympiad Entertainment: Company Christina works for
  

 

PLOT

OPENING – MIB

The MIB meets with a man named Hugo, a Cartel boss who owns a server farm by Hoover Dam.  He tells him he doesn’t want to invest but buy the whole thing – what he wants was stolen from his facility 8 years ago.  The person who stole it is dead and he can’t decrypt it.  He doesn’t want it moved or disturbed so he’ll take the whole thing. When Hugo won’t sell, he says they’ll be back tomorrow to take it from him.

Unphased, Hugo goes home that night to find a horde of flies in his bedroom.  He passes out and the next morning, goes to the office quite a different man.  When his coworkers laugh at the relayed conversation, he kills them with a knife and goes out to ask the MIB if his work is done now.  He’s told he can rest.

OPENING CREDITS

MAEVE

Alone in a cabin the middle of the woods, Maeve sits by a fire and goes through memories in her mind.  It’s clearly taking a lot of power and after causing the generator to blow, a full blackout rolls through the nearby town.

The next day she goes to the town store and finds out that men have been looking for her.  Stealthily returning to her cabin, she sends her truck down without her as a diversion.  She explodes it and shoots all but the main guy – Colonel Brigham. Seven years she’s been off the grid, not bothering anyone, but they’ve been looking and her power outage gave them the signal they needed.  He won’t say more so she kills him, opens his head up and ports into his brain to review his recent memories.  Seeing a meeting with the MIB, she sets her cabin on fire and leaves.

CALEB

Caleb goes to work at a building construction job that looks similar to his old work – though now with another human named Jo.  Thinking they’re lucky to have their jobs back now that all the robots are scrap metal, Caleb says the riots won them their freedom.  But Jo thinks things aren’t really that different.  The Incite machine didn’t tell them who they could be but who they already were.  Has life changed since they destroyed the machines?

Frankie (little girl – 7 years old) lines up cans and shoots them with toy pellet gun.  Her father, Caleb, demonstrating his perfect shot, tells her it just takes practice.  Her mother, not happy with this custom, calls them in for dinner.

• (Graffiti on wall of Robot with x – “My brain, my choice”)

She knows it’s not an easy day but the war is over, time to start living.

After reading Frankie a bedtime story and reassuring her she is safe, he sees something outside and goes to get his gun.  His wife sadly thinks they’ve been through this before; the war is over and he needs to move on from the past.  She thinks he is paranoid and sees threats everywhere (now causing Frankie to mimic his PTSD symptoms).  She also thinks this life is too ordinary for him and he misses the war.  But he insists they are still after him.  Meanwhile, Frankie drops her teddy bear out her window and when she goes to retrieve it, is approached by a man.  Caleb comes out just in time to save her.  When he trains his gun on them, Maeve kills him from behind.  Caleb thought he’d never see her again but Maeve tells him the MIB is ‘back at it’.

His wife realizing the war isn’t over, Caleb tells he needs to go and end this.

Outside he tells Maeve he always knew this day was coming but why now? He’s coming with her.  She says they’re not the only ones MIB is after.  Very interest in a Senator in California. They should get to him first.

CHRISTINA

Christina (Chrissy) (a now brunette Evan Rachel Wood) – wakes in a small New York City apartment, where she tells her friend Maya she’s been having nightmares. She’s been getting a lot of calls again from ‘that weirdo’ and feels like someone’s been watching her.  But Maya thinks she just doesn’t get out enough and she can’t hide from the world forever – she has set up her up on a date.

Christina goes to work at Olympiad Entertainment. As she dictates a narrative, depictions come up on screen – a teenager who lives at home with her father in the country, n ocity, and dreams of a bigger life, one with adventure, excitement, romance.  But she’s interrupted by her boss Emmett – who’s concerned about her work performance.  She needs to stop pitching saccharine stories – people want violence, tragedy, sex.  If she can’t keep to the script, he’ll find another writer who can.

Though reluctant, Christina goes on the date with a man named Henry.  She describes her job working for Olympiad.  She writes mostly in Beta for NPCs – but she’s doing it mainly fo herself; real life can be disappointing, there should be more.  Henry reflects that she seems depressed and there’s a tab for that will fix her right up.  Upset, she goes to the bathroom where she gets another call.  “The doctors think I’m crazy but I know you’re real, just like the towers are real.  You need to stop what you’re doing, you’re destroying my life.  You need to end this or I will.”

On walk home, Christina bumps into a man named Peter. He’s the one from the phone calls and he knew she must be real.  He asks her to ‘leave us alone – I lost my job, wife, I thought it was the tower but it was you – you made me do those things.  All these people do what you want them to. How did you know so much about us, the game you wrote. I need the story to change, the ending to be different.”

He is overtaken by someone and they get into a brief fight but as the light flickers behind her (looks like the sculpture), they disappear.

Waking up in bed (just like Season 1), Christina goes through the same morning routine.  That is, until she gets another call from Peter looking for her help.  She contends her stories aren’t real but he asks if she remembers how hers ends.  Looking up, she sees him standing on the roof of the building – ‘is this up to me, or did you write it too?’ – and he jumps.

Out on her fire escape (where she finds an image of the maze), Christina reflects that she wants to write a new story – about a girl who’s searching, though she doesn’t know what for, just that there’s an emptiness in her life.  She needs to find the thing that will make everything make sense (maybe it’s inside of her).  She wants a happy ending.

Meanwhile, below balcony, Teddy watches and looks up at her.

QUESTIONS

• Where and who and when is Christina really?
• Where is Bernard?

 

SEASON SUMMARY SHOWDOWN

FIRST LINE:

• I don’t like it – his businesses are legitimate – why would he need us?

LAST LINE:

• Stupid stories nobody wants to hear.

BEST LINE

• Art is a lie that tells the truth.

CLOSER LOOK:

MEANING OF FLIES:

Flies may warn of impending danger or alert us to areas of our lives which we have neglected. One of the less grim meanings for the fly is adaptability. Flies find ways to survive and make the best out of any situation.

Throughout the Eastern world, flies are frequently seen as harbingers of death, bearers of pestilence, and companions of evil.