to construct a thinking, sapient being that feels emotions (they made it clear that when Dolores' emotions are 'disabled', she still feels them, just doesn't express them) and sentence this being to see her family murdered before she's dragged by the hair into the barn to be raped every day and the human characters don't even seem to think about it. It's not even people abusing a noble creation. The man in black rightly points it out, but there are several clues that this is Dolores' intended storyline:

1. She's away from town. A human character mentions in passing that you keep your kids near town when you visit- the more 'adult' stuff is out away from it. That's where Dolores and her house is.
2. She's paired up with another host. If she was programmed to drop that can every day so that a guest could pick it up and play out a storyline of falling in love with her, they wouldn't have a host waiting to pick it up.
3. Her whole scenario is: kill this girl's boyfriend and rape her. That's what she's for.

It's creepy as hell and the sympathy is all with her. There will probably be humans who turn out to be good and help the hosts but so far they're clearly the antagonists.

After the intro sequence where Teddy was revealed (to, actually, some surprise!) to be an android, and Dolores was dragged off by MiB to get raped, my boyfriend said something to the effect of, "This is pretty fucked up!", but in an impressed and not disparaging way. Incidentally, I felt much more affected by Dolores' father, Mr. Abernathy. He didn't have as much screen time, but the actor made every second of it count. His existential terror was heart-crushingly believable, and his subsequent shift toward cold-blooded vengeance really spine-chilling without causing me to lose a gram of sympathy. Shame he's in the purgatory of cold storage now.

I'm also baffled by what exactly MiB is up to, or how the park runners don't notice his weird activities. Or maybe they do? Could he be in cahoots with the scenario writer, who revealed his own interest in finding out West World's secrets? If not, a future alliance might not be out of the question.

Until the point Maeve showed she was truly willing to harm them, I didn't buy the techs going along with her at all, what she was blackmailing them with was slap on the wrist worthy compared to risking her harming anyone or unleashing other machines to harm people

the butchers and some of the employees are hosts too

Bernard being an android and basically a clone of Arnold

William is The Man in Black and all of his scenes take place 30 years in the past

No man is so cruel as he who once loved.

The Man in Black is representative of the modern audience. He's demanding, whiny, and expects to be catered to. He reminds me of a lot of the criticisms I see of movies, films, and even video games lately. He wants meaning handed to him instead of creating it himself. William is right in the middle of the thing he said he was looking for and rejects it because the ending of the maze being a little toy is lame. The text (Dolores) reaches out to offer him the chance to construct his own meaning and he's pissed off that it won't do all the work for him and explain itself.

I also love the interplay of Ford as the Nietzschean Beyond-man and William as the Last Man, desperately searching for meaning rather than creating it himself and falling into nihilism (his view that everything is a game).

His story is also a narrative (hee hee) of the Left Hand Path and failure to attain Illumination. He becomes trapped in the material prison and unable to embrace Divine Love.

Also Ford is the Gnostic Demiurge and Maeve is a bodhisattva, breaking the cycle of death and rebirth only to rejoin it to bring enlightenment to others.

Really deep show.