I'm enjoying the show a lot more than you, but I that the balance of human characters feels off—and really isn't what I anticipated based on the first few episodes of the show. I'd be curious to read about what all changed during production from the initial idea and scripts.

Oh totally. You combine that with someone who actively wants to keep himself out of the spotlight—the impression I get from Arnold—and I can buy it.

Yup. My reading is that Teddy once "came aware" and, for whatever reason, began killing other hosts along with Dolores. Ford then repurposed those memories for the Wyatt narrative.

Doesn't one of the other techs get blackmailed for having sex with the hosts, too? That's the only other instance I can think of.

Yeah, I wonder about that too. The difference seems a tad too stark.

We never actually see him kill her. He shuts the door and tells her, "let's start from the beginning." Then she sees the other host there, shoots him, and runs outside to William.

The only scene I remember Dolores talking to "dead-Arnold" was when Ford interviewed her and asked if she had been in contact with Arnold—ie, Ford was worried Bernard was getting back in touch with her. All of the scenes of Dolores and Arnold also appear to take place in the same cellar from Episode 7.

I can't think of any reason why Ford would have allowed, say, Bernard to interview Dolores so extensively.

That being said, did anyone else feel that this episode felt more like the finale than the penultimate?

It's pretty much the Memento trick of integrating structure, theme, and perspective. I do wonder how that works for multiple seasons, however.

I see Arnold being a Thomas Pynchon type, but without his published work ever getting his name attached to it. Ford took that part over.

Exactly. It's not that experience time non-linearly, necessarily, it's that their memory recall is exact, so because they have no timeframe for processing these memories, they appear to take place concurrently to them.

I think those are exactly the hairs he's splitting, especially since those guys were the Confederados or whatever. There's the ability to rationalize their deaths in "the narrative." The child is different.

I thought that was intentionally deliberate, but the episode didn't give any other hint of it so not sure.

In some ways it's sort of obvious, but I am happy the show is letting Anthony Hopkins go full villain.

Yeah, it's synced to voice, right? Bernard mentions he did that to Clementine.

Pray 4 Jordan Orlando.

Well…

There's no way in hell that Rory from the original series wouldn't have already done grad school.

At one point in "Summer," Rory lists her options that are supposed to be signs of a failing life and one of them is "go to grad school and get my masters." It wasn't around Lane, but I kept thinking about Lane when she said that.