The Big O Showtime: The War of Paradigm City

Holy mother of...

Am I really that good at guessing things?

I'm getting ahead of myself, but we got answers. Oh boy, did we get answers.

Again, things start off right where we left them. Dastun is confronting what looks like his younger self in a movie theater, Angel is having an existential crisis in a studio she found underground, and Roger is racing off to get Dorothy's brain back from Rosewater. Then the bombing starts. Yes, the Union's air force has (apparently) finally arrived and are carrying out their campaign of destroying Paradigm City. Shit's being destroyed all over the place, Roger ends up falling into a giant hole and we get our first mind screw of the episode. We cut to Big Duo, still flying straight into the sky, while Schwarzwald gives one last bit of cryptic info, that the power of god has been chained by men too small-minded to use it properly. Then Big Duo crashes into a giant stage light. We'll come back to that.

Somewhere, The Doctor is dancing.

 Rosewater meanwhile seems rather excited about the arrival of death from above, as he activates Big Fau and begins shooting laser beams into the sky. He even orders the military police to do the same. This where Rosewater is finally putting his plan into action. He deliberately used the Union to build Big Fau, then betrayed them so they'd attack Paradigm where he would use Big Fau to stop them and become a hero. Then he'd leverage that into a cult of personality around himself and institute a new order with himself as its godly figurehead. That's actually a pretty good plan. Emperor Palpatine approves.

More of the religious subtext comes through here as well. Several people, including Rosewater, refer to these bombings as divine wrath and say things like "Judgement day has come". If that's the case, then Rosewater is setting himself up as a kind of messiah figure. He sees himself as Jesus in Armageddon. The son of God (Gordon Rosewater) with divine power (Big Fau, a megadeus) who will save the faithful (the people in the domes and presumably whoever accepts his new regime) while purging the world of sinners (everybody else). But before that can happen, the gray overcast clouds that have been hovering over Paradigm all series finally dissipate. Revealing the giant stage lights for everyone to see. But we'll come back to that.

Fair warning, shit's about to get weird....


Okay, so back to Angel down in the underground studio. She's still trying to make sense of what she's seeing when who suddenly appears but Gordon Rosewater! And Vera the Angry French Lady! Both still very much alive. Angel, and the audience, are sufficiently confused by what's going on but Vera helpfully explains. Yes, Angel's memories are fake, filmed in this studio, and it was Vera who played her mother. Not only that but Gordon is her father. He can't really comment as it looks like he's gone senile but this just freaks Angel out more and she pulls her gun on Vera. Vera isn't worried though, just whipping Angel's coat off her back. At least until Roger arrives to rescue her.

I'd look like that too if I found out I was on reality TV

The sight of Roger and the scars on Angel's back shock Gordon back to reality and he finally, FINALLY gives us answers. Buckle in readers. Okay, first of all The Union aren't foreigners. There Gordon's failed tomatoes, his brainwashed kids, who were released back into the wild after the experiment. I guess the failed Memory implants convinced them they were foreigners while wandering around the wasteland. Second, there are no Memories of before 40 years ago because nothing existed before 40 years ago. That was when the performance started. According to Rosewater, it was decided that actors didn't need memories to play their parts so everyone had their mind wiped. Third, it was decided that somebody should be able to change their role in the performance, someone who could negotiate between the actors and the director. And that person was Roger, who if Gordon can be believed hasn't aged in 40 years. Finally, Angel isn't one of Gordon's tomatoes. She isn't even human. She's a Memory. This revelation isn't as well explained.

How do I manage to stay looking so young?
I don't know, my whole life has been a lie. 

Holy shit. I know I had that "Paradigm is actually a performance piece" theory, but I didn't mean it literally. Speaking of, it seems I was right. But that's been foreshadowed pretty well so really the only surprising thing is that Paradigm City is a literal stage, with giant lights and everything. Actually given that the Union doesn't have an Air force and all that's up there is lights, where'd the bombs come from? Whatever, the more interesting revelation is the one about Roger. Not only that he's actually 40 years older than everybody (how has he not aged?) but that he's the negotiator between the actors and the director. Naturally one asks who the director is. Well think about it. What's the one thing Roger can do that no one else in Paradigm can do? He can pilot a megadeus. Roger is the only person in the show who can pilot a megadeus for an extended period without the megadeus seizing control. So if Roger is the only one who can pilot a megadeus and he's also the negotiator between the actors (the people of Paradigm) and director, then logically we can assume that the Bigs are the directors. If true, then Schwarzwald was talking about Rosewater earlier.

In theatre, Directors are the ones in control of everything. They have the final say and guide the whole production. Effectively, they are the gods of the play. So if the Bigs are the directors, they are the gods and Rosewater is the small-minded man trying to take their power. He's an actor who's going beyond his role, making himself the director. This revelation also retroactively Schwarzwald as well. He discovered the truth, that they all actors unknowingly playing parts, so it's no wonder he rejected his previous identity as Michael Seabach. He clung to his new identity as Schwarzwald because it was something he chose for himself. He could finally exercise his free will, not just unknowingly play a part.

H.G. Wells felt the same way about the movie.

Rosewater's not doing so hot either. Seeing the lights over Paradigm, he remembers something. He isn't Gordon's son, he's just another tomato. But this doesn't seem to sink in for him yet, so we'll get into that more next time. But I promised to talk more about Angel a review or so ago, so let's get into that. Vera gave Roger a message for her, "A bird when plucked of its wings will become that which it was before it evolved into a bird". A basic knowledge of biology will tell you that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but how that applied to Angel has been uncertain until now. Having her past revealed as completely fabricated has been Angel's metaphorical plucking and Gordon's revelation explains the second part. Angel isn't a dinosaur in that she's a big lizard monster, she's a dinosaur in that she's an anachronism. A creature from before the beginning of Time. She's a Memory, from before the play began. But what this means still hasn't been adequately explained.

With (mostly) everything now revealed, all that's left is the big showdown. Roger vs. Rosewater. Big O vs. Big Fau. Roger even points out their differences before the credits roll. Rosewater is sure of who he is, he's the actor who's been so consumed by his role as the villain he's actually trying to take over the production. Roger doesn't have any idea who he is, because he so often changes the role he plays and can spend time offstage. So I guess he's the stage manager? I don't know, this metaphor is getting stretched thin.

Point is, we're all set up for the finale. But one more interesting thing happens before the episode ends. Beck appears at Roger's place, looking over the prostrate Dorothy. He seems rather apologetic about what he did, so I'm curious about whether he's going to undo his damage somehow. Only one more episode dear readers. Come back tomorrow for the finale!