3x03 The Absence of Field

[7.2/10] There’s two key ideas in “The Absence of Field.” One is identity. The new Charlotte Hale is stuck between who she really is and who she’s pretending to be. Caleb is bucking up his life’s programming that defines him. Even Dolores is asked who she is on multiple occasions. The other is parenthood and its effects, with the host’s relationship with Charlotte’s son, Caleb’s relationship with his mother, and even the host’s relationship with Dolores reflecting the sting of absent parents.

Those are interesting ideas! If there’s one thing that Westworld’s premise of sentient, reprogrammable robots lends itself to, it’s questions of identity. Having one host inhabit a flesh and blood person’s body and try to claim their lives, losing the space between who they are and who she is in the process is the sort of compelling way to dramatize an identity crisis that nothing other than a science fiction show could accomplish.

In the same way, questions of the lingering damage parental abandonment leaves you with is less specific to a story about androids who gain their freedom and start trying to take over, but still, they’re powerful in this setting. Much of the theme of the show as a whole has been that as much as humans see themselves as different from the hosts, and the surviving hosts increasingly see themselves as better than their fleshy counterparts, the differences and distance between them is blurring by the second. Having both Caleb and robo-Charlotte experience (and perpetuate) the pain of being parentless, draws interesting lines between them and the human experience overall.

The catch in “The Absence of Field” is what it always is for Westworld. As compelling as those notions are, they’re almost entirely sunk by cruddy, overly direct dialogue and weak storytelling. As opaque and unclear as this show can be at times, especially when it’s muddling its themes or obscuring its mystery boxes, nothing about it is subtle. That means that characters literally declare how they feel, or practically announce the theme of the episode rather than allow it to bubble up organically.

That’s particularly frustrating because the show’s all the more powerful when it doesn't do those things. One of the clear ideas motivating this season is that so much of mankind has turned its behavior and choices over to algorithms and machines, thereby turning us into the type of slaves or children that the hosts never want to be again.

This episode dramatizes that idea really well in the opening sequence with Dolores and Caleb in the ambulance. The paramedics don’t know how to respond because they need the machine to tell them what to do, while Caleb, who’s performed battlefield triage, knows how to respond thanks to real knowledge and experience. When the “cops” come to apprehend Dolores, he stands up to them, asks to see identification, even stands at gunpoint and doesn't budge because he’s not someone who just follows orders or the path he’s given.

Those are both great, telling moments. The former speaks to the overdefined paths that the world creates for people, leaving them helpless without the guidance of their digital overlords. The latter speaks to how Caleb bucks up against that system and thinks for himself in a way that distinguishes him, to Dolores and to the audience, without the show ever having to explicitly tell us that in dialogue.

But then “The Absence of Field” has to gild the lily in that closing scene on the pier. It has to have Dolores outright show Caleb that his life is dictated by a specific formula, one where powerful others have decided what he can or can’t be and can and can’t do. She has to tell him that he’s not like other people. She has to tell him that she’s helping him because she was once like him. In short, that scene deigns to have its characters bluntly communicate those strong ideas to the audience, rather than letting those characters choices and treatment of one another speak for itself.

The same goes for the parental neglect side of things. My favorite stretch of the episode, outside of the thrill of that ambulance chase, is when robo-Charlotte finally finds Dolores. (Incidentally, I kind of assumed that robo-Charlotte is Teddy, especially given how Dolores seems to care for her, but who knows!) Their relationship has the rhythms of an absentee parent and child, but that’s driven home when the two retreat to a hotel room together. Dolores heals her would-be child. Robo-Charlotte asks her surrogate mom if she’ll stay and cuddle her to sleep. It’s bizarre but sweet, with the tenor of their relationship communicated entirely through the imagery and their dynamic in these scenes.

Sure, the show sets the stage a bit in the cold open when Dolores turns on robo-Charlotte and tells her that they have “no fathers and mothers” but that idea comes to life from the pair’s interactions, not in the dialogue. The problem, then, is that afterwards, we see Dolores monologuing to Caleb about his own mommy issues, or Charlotte’s ex-husband and kid hammering home the absent parent point, or even robo-Charlotte herself speechifying to some creepster in the park she’s strangling, and it just feels like the most generic prestige drama pablum. It feels like the show isn’t confident enough in itself or its characters to let them work on their own without that type of hand-holding.

It can scoot by given the quality of the acting and the imagery. Tessa Thompson isn’t my favorite performer on this show, and she’s not particularly able to turn the chicken shit dialogue into chicken salad, but she is good at delivering that vacant, confused, lightly scared look and demeanor of one person trapped in another trying to hold onto who they are. At the same time, the episode is full of gorgeous symmetrical images, or sad slices of domestic life, that convey those themes of identity or parental loss than all of the episode’s clumsy words can.

But the impulse to try to marry those ideas, those images, and those performances with weak, overly explanatory dialogue, severe pacing problems, and more yawn-worthy twists leaves the episode as a moderate thumbs up at best. It’s nice to look at, to think about, and when the characters aren’t talking, to listen to. But the second Westworld starts trying to have its characters vocalize and explain what it all means, the more it undoes the impact of all its intriguing ideas.