The episode starts much as you’d expect: in media res, with a group of raggedy guests sneaking through the charred ruin of Sweetwater. They overheard a host say that Delos is sending an armored rescue train. When they get to the station, there stands a sneering, gun-toting Dolores, in her blood-soaked dress! She says the train story is a trap, pushed to the hosts in an update. Yes! An ethical dilemma, right from the get-go! Dolores the revolutionary, already repeating the sins of the old regime & violating the hosts’ sentience? We haven’t any time to ponder this, however: Dolores suddenly grabs her stomach & doubles over, groaning. She begins screaming, the humans begin screaming, and then the whole thing is punctuated by a lengthy, sonorous, sloppy-wet fart from Dolores.

I was taken aback. Any humor in Westworld is usually dark, verbal, & restrained. What the Hell was a giant fart doing in this show? Still, I trusted Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy enough to keep watching. No art is perfect; as Dr. Ford reminds us, the Mistake is evolution’s grand tool! Sometimes taking an artistic risk means you fail. That’s OK. Nobody wants a Westworld that doesn’t try new things, right?

Wrong.

After Dolores’ droopy-ploopy, we cut to an underground diagnostic facility. Bernard is seated, head in hands. Phew, I thought. We’re moving on from the whatever-that-was. I was excited to see Bernard again, & ready for some juicy “WHAT AM I?” anguish from the masterful Jeffrey Wright. But then in walks Dolores, the old Dolores, in a clean blue dress. Oh, no. That’s not Bernard. It’s Arnold. As soon as Dolores takes her seat, Arnold lets out a clapping, flapping fart, one so deep it rumbled in our chests. And then he…ugh. I’ll just write out the actual dialogue for you:

Arnold: “Phew. Much better.”

Dolores: “What was that, Arnold?”

A (excited): “What was what, Dolores?”

D: “That noise. And what is that smell?”

A: “That’s a ‘fart,’ Dolores. You’re programmed not to hear them, or smell them. Robert says it’s too…embarrassing…for the guests.”

D: “But I heard it. And I smell it. I definitely smell it.”

A (grinning): “That means you’re growing beyond your programming.”

D: “Can I…make farts?”

A (wistful): “Not until you’ve escaped the Maze, Dolores.”

That’s when I realized that Dolores’ fart wasn’t a joke. It was meant to be drama. That really wasn’t the sort of twist I had been expecting. Several other influencers walked out of the screening at that point, but I stayed, to witness. The entire rest of the episode revolves around Dolores’ fart: why did she fart?, how did she fart?, does farting mean she’s sentient?, does her fart smell? It’s the new central idea that, apparently, Joy & Nolan really need to explore. Why did HBO agree to this? To their credit, neither the fart, nor discussion of the fart, is ever played for laughs. But, it really ruins the show. We never go more than two minutes without seeing, hearing, or talking about Dolores’ greasy robo-gas!

For example, about halfway through the episode, we cut to a Behavior lab. It’s curiously undamaged, and Stubbs is there with a team of Delos operatives. They’re discussing the status of “Park 1,” implying that they’re under Shogun World. Awesome! I enjoyed the “real world” parts of S1 the most, so I was glad to get back to that. But then they start discussing Dolores’ fart. Apparently, it was caught on one of the few functioning surveillance drones. We then are forced to re-watch the fart, from several angles, including a few times in infrared. How are they honestly not expecting people to laugh at that? It gets replayed so many times. Hats off to the effects team for making that infrared fart cloud, by the way. I bet that took a long time. You must be so proud.

Anyway, one of the soldiers raises his hand to remind Stubbs that he forgot “the new mandatory verification procedure.” So then Stubbs says “Initiate new Delos verification protocol,” and, one by one, he & the other Delos operatives all fart. Proving they’re not hosts, I guess? They didn’t explain it, which I assume was to create some “mystery.” It’s not quite as fun to theorize about farts as it was William/MiB, or Arnold/Bernard, or Sizemore/Bernard.

They also all sniffed deeply & shouted “THANK YOU” after every fart? Which felt a little fetish-y. Like when Tarantino includes a bunch of shots of feet. Is Nolan a fart guy? That’s sort of fun to theorize about, I suppose.

After two grueling hours of farts & talk of farts, the episode ends with a new Dr. Ford scene. This brought me back some hope, because there’s no way Sir Anthony Hopkins would lower himself to fart stuff, right? It’s a CGI-younged Ford, interrogating a nude Dolores about Arnold’s death. For a moment, it feels like the old Westworld, the good Westworld, the fartless Westworld. But then Dolores crinkles her nose. Dr. Ford has let loose a silent-but-deadly, and she smells it, giving away her emerging sentience. Ford rolls her back, saying, “Though you may navigate the Maze, Dolores, you shall never find the Door.” And as he says “Door,” the camera zooms right in between Dolores’ pancaked buttcheeks, implying that “the Door” is her asshole, & farting is the path to sentience. Yikes. Anthony Hopkins did a Transformers, so I guess sometimes he will do garbage, but I can’t believe Evan Rachel Wood agreed to the asshole shot. It seems far below her dignity.

Season 2 of Westworld is a dramatic departure from Season 1, but in many ways stays true. It’s exploring similar themes, continuing with familiar characters, & expanding the world. I just don’t know if farts are really a good measure of sentience, or even a metaphor for…anything at all. I’m pretty sure this is just Nolan abusing his creative control to make some high-grade fetish material for himself. I’ll keep watching, though, and I bet you all will, too. I mean, what else are we gonna watch?

Crashing?