Based on the opening scenes of the episode, I could easily tell machines, technology and robots would play a major role in the series. at 1:58 we see Deloris for the first time, followed by someone saying ” Bring her back online”. so, at this point I’m just like yea, she looks real but she’s definitely a robot, kind of expected that. then that scene with her ends with a fly landing on her eye causing no reaction. ill speak of the significance of this later on.
after that scene, I was kind of thrown off, I want expecting a western vibe, but now that I think of it it’s called west world so it makes sense. the old fashion clothing, town setting, and steam train transportation intrigued me. I was very curious to see how a tech savvy society and a western society could possible mix together. The idea of mixing the past with the future was unexpected, but in a good way.
I started to analyze what was going on and started putting two and two together, I thought to myself how can someone be seen in a futuristic setting as a robot and then in a western seen as a human all within a matter of seconds? First I thought flash back maybe, but how could she still be alive? then I came to the conclusion of reanimation of the human mind, I thought somehow, they dug up on skeletons and used DNA fragment to create androids. I was wayyyyy off.
the second big shocker for me was at 9:30 when the dad, Peter, and the wife were shot and killed some maniac obsessed with milk, ill speak on the significance of this later as well.so long story short milk maniac gets killed by random guy in all-black who says to Deloris something about not remembering him even though the known each other for over 30 years. then says at 13:33 he didn’t pay all this money to get it easy. I paused mentally and said yea this definitely has to be some type of virtual reality. a world designed to live out any crazy dream.
at 16:36 this scene shows one of the robot things doing a small unprogramed gesture, touching her lips. the reasoning behind this was that Ford must have change the program, causing moments to be accessed form memories, it was brushed away as nothing much. Me knowing science fiction all too wells knew it wasn’t nothing, I wondered if her actions were actually a glimpse of self-awareness, he subconscious coming alive leading her to gain control of her own actions. moving away from the tile of robot to “human”
at 21:08 Ford is talking to a guy, I knew right away he was a robot due to the little detail of his eye moments. The fact that he was holding a casual conversation with this guy in a room filled with naked bodies was weird enough for me, but the fact that he would actually converses with the robots kind of made me question he sanity and how he views the robots. are they simply empty shells or something more to him?
Fast forward to where peter the father finds the image of a woman in times square. this caused me to question a lot of things, how could a physical object such as a picture enter the virtual world? or was in programmed in by someone? I wondered if this was foreshadowing, showing the viewers that the real world and virtual world were about to collide.
fast forward again to the scene of the milk maniac killing pretty much everyone in sight and pouring milk on them. he was supposedly glitching out and going against the story line created for him. I wondered if he was gaining the ability to break away from what he was programmed to do, and was starting to able to make choices of his own.
symbolism seems to be big in this episode and it is thrown in in very subtle hints. the scene at 43:10 following the milk maniacs massacre shows how the “robots” are made. they are dipped in a white milky substance. this might be a stretch but I feel that the need for the milk guy to kill those like himself ” the people in the virtual reality world” is connected to the fact that they are artificial. I haven’t seen one single cow in this show but yet he has a never-ending supply of milk, what if when he kills the people he pours the milk on them to symbolize their creation process, like mixing death with creation?
another form of symbolization I picked up on is this fly. in the opening scene, we see the fly land on Deloris, causing little to no effect. then at 27:00 we see the fly land on the sheriff and in that moment, he begins to glitch out! I questioned if the fly was meaningful. a fly is a bug, and in computer programing bugs cause viruses and glitches. what if someone has programmed this ” fly” to break down the system. well if that the case why wasn’t Deloris affected when the fly landed on her? Well I believe Deloris is much more aware of her situation that we are lead to believe.
at the end of the episode Deloris is questioned. she is asked two simple questions. have you ever lied to us? and would you kill a living thing? she answered no to both. The guy questioning her began to chat about her history and the fact that she can’t be broken because she has been fixed so many times and that she was the oldest host. The very last scene is where it all came to me. the fly is seen buzzing around Delores’s face and lands on her neck. I watched closely to see if she would glitch, she doesn’t, instead she KILLED the fly. Deloris killed a living thing. This means Deloris is very well capable of killing a living thing and does possess the ability to lie.
Deloris if much more aware that the is leading on.
