“I only know what I tell myself.”
This short and surprising line of dialogue is spoken by Caleb (Aaron Paul) to Caleb (still Aaron Paul), who, along with many other Calebs, find themselves in a unique hell in “Fidelity.” He’s already faced the devastating news that he couldn’t stop Hale (Tessa Thompson) from taking over the world. 23 years agobut things get worse when he discovers as a Host that he has not achieved fidelityit’s starting to malfunction.
Hale has been bothering to make 277 back copies of Caleb because she’s desperate to find out how she was able to resist his mind-control parasite, thus becoming the first Outlier. Her hope is that if she finds out, she can stop the Outliers from “infecting” her Hosts and causing them to commit suicide. When he was human, Caleb mocked Hale by stating that she knew how she was able to break free of his control, so all she has to do is keep creating more Calebs until he knows the answer.
Hale tells him all this in his cell, bringing a comically large hourglass to signal his impending demise. She also tells him that her daughter Frankie (Aurora Perrineau) is alive, causing Caleb to break down in tears of bittersweet joy, a moment powerfully played by Paul, even after Hale taunts him that she has put one in. from their hosts in the rebellion of Frankie’s Outlier. After Hale leaves, the opaque windows in her cell turn transparent, and Caleb gets another harrowing scare: he’s not alone. Several other Host versions of himself occupy similar cells, and all are in various stages of falling apart.
It’s the first of many entertaining and unnerving moments in “Fidelity” in which Caleb is forcibly reminded that he’s no longer human. But luckily, a specially degraded version of Caleb gives our Caleb a hint about needing more time, so he checks the hourglass and finds a small cartridge in it, which knocks him out so he can appears to be dead. One of Hale’s drone hosts hits the finish button, causing jets of fire to erupt from the ceiling. The only escape is through a grate in the floor… which mysteriously has a small arrow engraved on it indicating how the grate should be opened.
As Caleb escapes, he falls into a pile of bones and ash, clearly the remains of Calebs who weren’t so lucky. As he travels through the bowels of the Olympiad Entertainment building, he begins to see signs that he is not the first Caleb to have escaped in exactly this way. There is an ashen footprint on a wall, where a previous Caleb leaned. After fights a Drone Host, he finds a bloody handprint on the wall, indicating that Caleb had already experienced the exact same fight, and perhaps even received the same wound.
But nothing beats the horrific scene Caleb encounters after crawling through the vents. There’s a dying Caleb by an opening, and when our Caleb looks down, he sees a giant drop with the bloodied corpses of two other Calebs on the ground who were so desperate to escape they risked the fall. Fortunately, the dying Caleb has an idea: to act as a human cushion so that our Caleb can survive the fall. It’s a sacrifice, but the two Calebs are united in wanting to contact Frankie. they fall. Our Caleb lives. The other Caleb dies horribly. And finally, Caleb makes it to the roof of the building, where he uses a construction elevator radio to send an audio message to Frankie.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Hale planned Caleb’s escape; if several previous Calebs had taken the same route, Hale would have discovered it before reaching Caleb #278. Certainly she would have searched the entire building for him to make sure he didn’t break free for real. But Caleb only finds this out after delivering his message, when Hale appears, holding the cartridge that he clearly left in the hourglass, and says that he waited a long time for him to get far enough away so he could hear the message hoping that contain something. key code. It is not like this Hale snaps Caleb’s neck and causes a new Caleb Host to be made.
If you think about it for more than a minute, none of this makes sense. Why did Hale make the escape so elaborate? If everything had to be exactly like this for Caleb to send Frankie a message, does that mean she was making copies of Caleb specifically to be in the other jail cells to scare him into giving him the cartridge clue? Did she put the other Calebs there, or was she intentionally leaving dead bodies lying around the building for him to find? Also, why did Hale allow this to happen in the real world instead of a simulation, saving valuable time and resources?
I didn’t care about these questions one bit when I saw “Fidelity” because, again, it was so funny and creepy, and now I only partially care about them. I can always do some hand gestures on Western world when it’s entertaining. What irritates me much more are the two uncomfortably crowded flashback scenes in the episode. The first is of young Frankie skinning his knee and refusing to walk on it. Caleb gives him a pep talk, where he reveals the incredibly cheesy way he managed to resist Hale’s flies: “You know what kind of person can’t be beat? The guy who doesn’t give up.”
The second stars young Frankie, just after Hale has taken over the world and finds young outlier Jay with his mother. After escaping, Frankie says something about how Jay can be his new brother, which Jay angrily refutes. having lost his real brother to Hale’s anti-Outlier machinations.
Cut to Frankie and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) in the present, heading to the desolate remains of Mobworld to revive Maeve (Thandiwe Newton). Frankie is suspicious when Bernard reveals how much he knows about fixing Hosts, and even more suspicious when Bernard somehow knows that even the rooms of Mobworld were able to scan a person’s data instantly by having the room scan Frankie. However, he still wants Maeve to be rebuilt because he recognized her a long time ago, when Maeve stopped by the house to warn her family to hide. If anyone knows what happened to her father, Frankie thinks, it must be Maeve.
When the other rebels join them at Mobworld, Jay (Daniel Wu) announces that Hale knew they were coming and that there is a traitor among them. Frankie instantly shoots Bernard, who is he identified as Host at the time Bernard took her scan data, which could be used to make a Host version of her. (Bernard’s reason for making the copy: “It’s complicated.” Sigh.) However, he wants both Bernard and Stubbs to be alive at least long enough for Maeve to be whole, much to Jay’s annoyance. That gives Bernard the opportunity to tell Frankie later that one of the returning rebels is one of Hale’s Hosts, but he somehow doesn’t know which one he is. It’s Jay, as Frankie finds out when he says something about being like a brother to her, which alerts her to it thanks to the awkward flashback from before her. They have a huge fight, and Maeve wakes up and kills Jay and rescues Frankie at the last second. The end.
Still, “Fidelity” Is An Effective Episode Thanks To The Classic Western world insane Caleb story, a good enough one that I don’t care if the rest of What the Hell Is Going On With Christina™ is delayed another week (or more). But there are only two episodes left and the world is still under Hale’s control, Caleb isn’t working, Christina is probably Dolores but with her memory wiped, and Bernard still won’t tell anyone what the plan is. Season four has been a marked improvement over last season, but it’s about time Western world pick up the pace
Assorted reflections:
- Bernard specifically mentions that Hale has one of those megasimulators, which leads me to be smug about my belief that Dolores is in it, generating narratives for Hale’s controlled people in the real world.
- You’re telling me there’s technology that can remotely find people who break free of Hale’s mind control, but there’s no test that can tell the difference between a Host and a human being? Shouldn’t everyone in the rebellion go through a metal detector once in a while?
- How can the drone hosts hear someone blink, but even with that map locating the outliers, they can’t seem to tell them apart otherwise?
- How did Hale know the rebels were coming to town if she hadn’t replaced Jay yet? And is this something significant to the narrative or just a plot hole? You can never really tell with Western world.
- One of Caleb’s memories is of walking in a field with his daughter, and it seems aAlmost exactly like the memory Maeve frequently displays of her walking in a field with her daughter. Is this just a parallel, or did some of Maeve’s data make it to Caleb’s core?
- Do the nurses really eat their patients’ pudding while they’re unconscious, or was Caleb’s future wife just a monster of the highest order?
Want more io9 news? Find out when to expect the latest Wonderful Y Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe in film and televisionand everything you need to know about house of the dragon Y The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.