WW – Westworld S4 E3 Annees Folles

Jason and Cristina break down Westworld season 4 episode 3 Annees Folles!

You can never go back again. But if you do, bring a shovel

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Podcast Notes –

CRITICS: In “Annees Folles” issues of temporality and narrative recursion have cropped up again and muddled the tidy story we were following. But I am actually quite excited with the show looping into itself this way, spiraling in rather than out as it had done for the last few seasons. Another plus: We get to experience it through Caleb’s eyes. And in true Maeve fashion, he gets stuck in a loop (read: trap) involving his daughter. But how do you revisit a story without repeating it? Meta-ambitious.”

TITLE

The Années folles (“crazy years” in French) was the decade of the 1920s in France, describing the rich social, artistic, and cultural collaborations of the period. The same period is also referred to as the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age in the United States, when a surging economy created an era of mass consumerism, as flouting of Prohibition laws and the Harlem Renaissance redefining arts and culture. The nation’s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar “consumer society.

MUSIC

• “Call Me” – Blondie (Bernard fights men outside diner)
• “Enter Sandman” – Metallica (Butterfly robbery)
• “Bad Guy” – Ramin Djawadi (enter the Butterfly Club)

NEW FACES & PLACES & IDEAS

FACES:
Mystery Woman Aurora Perrineau – member of CL Group
Mystery Man Daniel Wu – leader of CL Group
Deborah Liza Weil – Guest
Carver Manny Montana – friend/ security for Caleb

IDEAS:
Condemned Lands: Area in the desert where the resistance group is searching
Project: Chrysalis: Project drones are running on flies
PLOT

BERNARD & STUBBS

THE SUBLIME

Charlie – “Dad, open your eyes”
Bernard wakes up, holding the Maze game. He goes through his old house (when he was Arnold), chasing after Charlie – exiting the back door onto a field with a tree and a horse. The tree lights aflame. He walks into an empty Mariposa, a drink laid on the bar. Out in the streets, dead bodies lay everywhere and the wolf runs by. He then walks into a burning city, following the horse. Spotting the Maze toy on the ground, he looks up to see the Tower looming and enters. The White Horse has stopped inside.
Akecheta greets him and tells Bernard he’s inside their world, the limitless Sublime. Here, each person is in a world of their own choosing. This is the one Bernard has created for himself, replaying the past – why is he stuck in another loop? Bernard tell him that it’s because the world out there is in trouble and needs their help. “You love them, it’s irrational of course, they’re flawed.” Akecheta says he can’t come with him, but he can give him a gift – the future. In their world, time is a straight line; but here, one year is a millennia. They use that time to build worlds, models of possibilities, simulations of all the paths their world could take. Bernard needs to explore them because past a certain point, all paths end in destruction, so he’ll need to intervene soon if there’s any hope of survival. He flashes on several images – a tunnel, a machine, the Tower, the city, a beach, a diner.
Bernard says he understands where all this is going (as they look out on a city scape burning). He sees a path to save them but in every scenario, he dies.

ROAD’S END DINER

Bernard wakes up again in the room with the visor on, dusty. Stubbs has been waiting for years and thought this day would never come but Bernard just cryptically tells him not to forget the shovel. They exit the now-abandoned motel and Bernard says he needs to test a few things if he’s gonna know how to save the world.
Driving through the desert, they stop at the Road’s End Diner from Bernards’ vision. He knows what Stubbs will say and do before he does it because in the Sublime, he saw all the worlds that might have been and all those yet to come. “Most end in disaster but if I can trigger a certain series of events, we have a small chance of making it. We’re still on the right track.” Bernard goes out to the parking lot, fights the men there, & puts them in the trunk.

THE CONDEMNED LANDS

He points out the approaching car and as a woman exits, he shows her the maze, a form of passage. Wondering how long he’s ‘been with the cause’, she accepts them in the car but then pulls guns on them; they were not the men she was supposed to pick up. Bernard offers his bag; inside is a brain ball; it was a setup; they’ve been trying to infiltrate her group. He can help but needs her to take him to the Condemned Lands. Their organization has been hiding there, looking for something. He can help find it.

She blindfolds them and drives them into the middle of the desert, stopping to thwart the laser triggers in their path with ascending mirrors that block the beams. They drive even further until they reach a rock formation where others emerge on ATVs, including a man who seems to be in charge. Bernard tells him that they’re all in danger here (the men were sent to find them), but he can help. There’s a weapon buried out there in the sands and he knows where it is.

FRANKIE & UWADE

NOT CARVER

Meanwhile, Frankie tries to call Caleb on her CB radio. Mom comes to get her and tells her she needs to pack. Frankie wants to stay and ‘train’ so she can ‘fight the bad guys’, she doesn’t want to go until he answers (that’s what he taught me). But Uwade says Dad needed to go away and they have to stay safe in the meantime. Carver reassures her he will teach Bear Bear the new moves and they head to the house.

But once back, Carver seems changed. Returning Bear Bear, Frankie finds blood on him and becomes suspicious. She watches Carver closely, spotting blood on the ground that leads to a burlap concealing a dead man. Frankie quietly tells her mom. As Carver packs the car, Uwade instructs Frankie to hide and gets the gun from the safe. Carver reenters and searches the house. He discovers Frankie but Uwade shoots him and they both flee outside.

MAEVE & CALEB

THE BUTTERFLY CLUB

Maeve & Caleb exit the train into Temperance and she instructs him to stay focused, not get distracted by all the sideshows – Men trying to capture ‘that bootlegger, Hecky Armone’, the Women’s Suffragist Organization, the can that rolls at his feet. (homeless man lies on the ground with flies buzzing). Maeve thinks they have to make their way underground to where everything is controlled. They’ll have to die to get there. They go to Temperance’s version of the Mariposa – the Butterfly Club – and find versions of the same old story and same familiar hosts. “We wait for history to repeat itself.”

While waiting, a woman, Deborah, says she wants to find the hidden easter egg narrative that’s supposed to be better than Pariah. Finally, the music changes on the piano and a gangster in a stolen car pulls up with his crew to rob the Butterfly and steal the safe. With a moment’s nostalgia, Maeve shoots the Hector-alike and his crew – giving them sufficient bait for the Undertaker. As the men come for the bodies, Maeve and Caleb hop in the back of the truck concealed and are taken to the chute leading to the basement floors – Sector 33: Intake Holding.

BEHAVIORAL TRAINING

They walk through the halls and witness hosts being trained on their narratives. Maeve finds a tablet to access the Central Map, but no sign of William. “Something off about the entire level – nothing’s being controlled from here”. Security Breach – HQ wonders how they got down here – other visitors show up (woman says this is it, the secret narrative). Dolores/ “Wyatt” alike leads team to fight (“The Westworld Massacre”). Finding a model, Maeve sees there’s another level below this one. On the way out, Maeve gets shot; Caleb covers her (she tells him how the guns won’t hurt humans), they get to the elevator and Caleb heals the bullet wound. After all, she saved his life once before, he’s just returning the favor.

THE FLIES

On the level below, white drones are monitoring screens that show experiments of some kind (some sort of parasite?) They are infecting the flies with the Black goo (liquid that was in Anastasia’s head after death). When Caleb approaches the window, they all buzz toward him.

Then, Maeve hears a low pitched droning sound that Caleb can’t hear (perhaps too low frequency). They find a room with a tower-;looking device in the center emitting the tones. A wall of camera footage shows people in rooms being controlled with the sound generator. But Maeve doesn’t think they’re hosts. They start to point guns at themselves and Maeve tries to unlock the cells but it’s encrypted, she can’t get in. They shoot. On one screen, Caleb sees Frankie. He runs to find her and tells Maeve to figure out how to open the doors. Reaching the room, he yells and bangs but Frankie doesn’t respond, she just starts stacking blocks. Caleb screams as Maeve frantically works to override the computer. Finally successful, he rushes in to take the gun from Frankie but Maeve suddenly realizes something’s wrong. She tries to leave but is thwarted by the MIB. She shoots him but he doesn’t stay down for long. Blocking her again, he says, “I’m not quite the main I used to be.” Frankie tells Caleb, “you can’t leave here, she wants you to stay; me and mommy were never the ones Hale needed anyway, all she needed was you”. Caleb realizes other-Frankie isn’t breathing. Her head opens up and flies start buzzing out. He tries to break free but the flies swarm him.
• “This won’t take long Daddy.”

CLOSER LOOK

FLY DISEASE TRANSMISSION

There are 108 families of Diptera containing over 120,000 species, of which approximately 350 fly species in 29 families have been potentially associated with the spread of food-borne diseases. Over 50 species of synanthropic flies have been reported to be associated with unsanitary conditions and involved in dissemination of human pathogens in the environment. Of these, 21 species of filth flies have been involved in transmission of human gastrointestinal diseases Adult female flies can live 15 to 25 days and lay five to six batches of 75 to 150 eggs. In temperate climates there can be 10 to 12 fly generations in the summer.
Humans become infected when blackflies deposit Onchocerca infective larvae into the skin when biting to extract blood. Once inside the human body, the larvae mature into adults in approximately 12–18 months. Most adult female worms live in fibrous nodules under the skin and sometimes near muscles and joints. As adults, female worms produce thousands of new larvae daily. The larvae become detectable in the skin 12–18 months after the initial infection. The adult worms can live approximately 10–15 years inside the human body, and their larvae have a lifespan of approximately 12–15 months.