In Review: Westworld (S4 – Ep2) Well Enough Alone

Synopsis: In Well Enough Alone Maeve and Caleb uncover a Delos plan to replace prominent figures with Host Androids. William looks to relaunch the Delos Theme Parks.

The Story

Having barely saved Caleb in last week’s episode. Maeve and Caleb drive to the home of a state senator to find out why he is backing William’s plans aka the Man in Black. Upon arriving they discover that the senator and his wife have been replaced by android hosts. When she gets access to one of the droids’ data Maeve learns that William and Charlotte Hale had the Senator killed.

Meanwhile, William has a rather heated exchange with the Vice President while playing a round of golf. The second in command to the president threatens to shut Williams businesses down if he does not cease his plans to relaunch the Delos theme park. William pretty much metaphorically flips the vice president the bird. Has his assistant Clementine murder the Vice president’s secret service agents, and then he proceeds to kill the Vice President himself. 

Elsewhere, Christina is recovering from her ordeal from last week but becomes somewhat agitated when she sees a few dead birds near the ground near her workplace. This prompts her to take a day trip out of state to visit a Mental Health centre, which appears to have been closed for a while. This does not make sense to her due to the fact that there is a wing in the centre, which is dedicated to a dead man whom she only spoke with a day or so prior.

At Delos, Charlotte Hale speaks to the real William aka the Man In Black who she has kept alive. She tells him her plans and shows him his host double before putting him back on ice. Meanwhile, Maeve and Caleb have found their way onto a train, which is taking them to the newly resurrected theme park, which now boasts a 1920s Chicago theme.

The Acting

Thandiwe Newton is on wonderful form in this week’s episode and gets some fantastic one-liners. A favorite moment is when Caleb (Aaron Paul) and Maeve are getting changed at the theme park. When the host droid is propositioning Caleb by offering to help him get dressed. Maeve turns around and says, “He may be rather basic, but he does know how to pull his own pants up.” Had I been drinking anything at that point. I’m pretty sure I’d have spat it out while laughing. It wasn’t the line. It was the timing and the coolness of Newton’s delivery.

Tessa Thompson makes a return this week as Charlotte Hale and she is pissed. She has a few short scenes in this episode, but it’s the second one where she is pretty much telling William as in the original version her intentions were great to watch. We also get a great performance from Ed Harris as The Man in Black. His strongest scene is with the Vice President.

Overall

Well Enough Alone is a much stronger episode than last week’s opener. As we get a little more backstory to events that have transpired since the last series. It seems that Charlotte Hale is using her host version of William to rebuild the Delos park, but is also substituting powerful senators with host androids. Her justification for this action is to keep the world safe. But it perhaps goes a bit deeper than that.

The new Charlotte character and what her purpose is remains to be a bit of a mystery, but I suspect it is something that Deloras Abanathy put in place to stop Delos as it seems that other host androids from the show’s past are coming back to life.