Evolution is coming to our own species soon compliments of climate change. How will it take place, what will it look like, and what are the foundational components of this new species (our spawn)? This show beautifully addresses one scenario in this race to the finish line to see if genetically engineered humans, AI, or a combination of the two will be what replaces Human 1.x. West world is a fascinating exploration of this issue, which is undoubtedly a key inflection point for all life in the universe. My thought is that we will soon experience a New Precambrian, one in which AI suddenly flowers and takes over and subsequently sees us as so much rudimentary biological detritus. Will Westworld explore this latter stage? I hope so.
1
Westworld is the best show on television. This season is about the birth of a new people, and the choices they have to make.The writing and plot are sophisticated and the acting is phenomenal.
If you love reading books with a lot of Deaveresque plot twists and surprises, this show is for you.
While commenters have some valid critique of some details, but in the big picture, this show is quite underrated.
4
The fact that william can get punctured by bullets so many times and still be breathing reminds me of crouching tiger, hidden dragon. Where they effortlessly fly around. Not very believable. Shortcuts in writing. Like they run into a wall and magically walk through it. Get shot thirty times and still be conscious. This series seems headed for a great befuddling whimper. Simply trying to cram too much in too little space.
5
The show stopped making sense a while ago; it's the new "Lost", just making stuff up with no over-arching plot or conclusion in site. At some point....it will turn out to be Purgatory or Heaven or somebody's dream, or someone will wake up or appear in a shower and say "oh, none of it was real anyways".
1
My .02: The Valley Beyond is the guests' repository. Now that Dolores has torched the hosts's repository, it seems the last thing of any possible value.
The visuals are the real attraction in watching the series -- although the turns into "torture porn", which seemed to me the only excuse for ShogunWorld at all, makes me hit the fast-forward button on reviewing. At least "Game of Thrones" claims a fantasy Middle Ages look, and no one enjoyed burning human alive more than Pre-Renaissance Catholics.
My last .02, someone at HBO needs to cut the actors loose from the one-note direction they are being given. (Jeffrey, play, uh, confused. No more befuddled! Less eyelights people! Yes, that's it. Rachel: Steely-eyed. No, more steely. Less eyelights people! Ah that's it.) All cinematography and no character direction is a bit of a waste.
4
The problem is that there is no real direction or plot here. It can only end in silliness and misdirection at this point. (And torture porn, as you point out.)
And "two cents" would be 0.2 and not .02.
2
@Concerned Citizen
Two cents would be $0.02. 0.2[0]" would be 20 cents.
At the point where William has been shot multiple times, Lawrence is shot up and Mauve lays there bleeding, I can only say,No Mas, No Mas. I shut it off.
With apologies to Roberto Duran.
4
This shows remains of interest to me only for its visuals and the uniformly great acting. It is more generally like a mind-numbing video game. Would have been better imagined as a finite number of episodes more tightly woven together with a lot less gratuitous violence. It should hone in on real existential questions, rather than how much confusion will HBO underwrite. A missed opportunity.
5
All the philosophical hoopla would be fine if it surrounded a tight, clear and unambiguous PLOT. There's no plot here. For god's sake, the whole "Delos androids were going to house human consciousness AND replicate world leaders for world domination" thing is directly from the awful, unwatchable 70's sequel to the original "Westworld", called "Futureworld". The music and special effects were inferior (even for the 70s), but the underlying theme was there.
At this point, the series is just spinning in place with no direction except "confuse viewers".
1
Just wondering where Arnold is. He seems to be the only conscience left in this whole thing, and he's only been mentioned but not heard directly from for quite some time.
It keeps me thinking (hoping) that he had buried something deep in Bernard or Dolores that will eventually subvert both Delos and Ford's plans, because right now, I'm not liking the direction any of the characters are going (except Maeve, who's always been on her own, very personal, track anyway)
4
Elsie may be the hope you are looking for, to the extent she can help Bernard get Ford out of his programming so Ford can no longer override him. I am not sure why Ford worked so hard at achieving “fidelity” with Bernard in terms of becoming a simulacrum of Arnold, if he thought such a host could never survive humanity. As for Maeve, I agree, but I cannot decide whether her decision to get off the train at the end of Season 1 to find her “daughter” was truly her own, as opposed to another Ford manipulation. I hope Felix and his bumbling cohort (what is his name?) catch up with Maeve so they can patch her up.
5
Supposedly, the choice for her to get off the train was her acting in defiance of her programming. Something about their use of the camera in the finale. I assume that there is a certain amount of real suffering you have to go through to be awake (her daughter's murder was a cornerstone, Dolores had a terrible role based exclusively on suffering, the guide had seen his family killed by the Man in Black). Interesting that the ones we know are awake awake were all directly impacted by the MiB. Bernard is kind of in between, and so maybe is still plugged in.
Elsie is awesome, but she wasn't at the beach or the interrogation scene. Hopefully nothing happens to her after she left Bernard.
I do know that it is feeling more like the Matrix with the red pills and blue pills.
Angela's speech may have been enticing, but the scene was shark-jumping worthy in its absurdity. Why didn't the Delos thug simply shoot her? Definitely a scene only Hypereides could love.
4
She was injured and unarmed, and they were operating without thinking that the hosts wanted to destroy their backups. I can see why he let her start talking, but I can't see why he let her get so close...
4
Anyone else think that William/The MIB is a host?
6
...or perhaps now headed that way considering his wounds...not immortal, but with a 130 day or so shelf life...and also a nod to becoming the Yul Brynner character in the original.
4
Maybe the world we thought was the "real" world" is the cradle, the "door" will let them back into the real world, where the hosts can reoccupy bodies, and all the scanned guests/employees/"humans") will be stuck in what is now a dying cyberspace?
1
If Delos is run like any business it has off site backups of its data. Hence the key.
4
Glad to see Anthony Hopkins is back. Makes it all worthwhile. The rest of this series is still a mess in my opinion.
3
There are many exceptional actors here -- Hopkins, but also Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris and others -- and some beautiful special effects, especially the titles which are a treat to watch (indicative of some much better show or film or even novel somewhere) and great music, especially reworked rock classics.
The plot? Whatever existed originally has dissipated into a miasma of intentional confusion and gaslighting, with no resolution going to come, ever. It's the new 2018 version of "Lost" -- how long can you come up with nonsense, to string along the most loyal viewers, who keep waiting endlessly for a payoff?
1
So, Why is Delos not rescuing the guests? After watching this episode, it seems to be because they feel it is more important to get the technology out of the park, and then they can copy the guests later? Even though we know that the copies are not yet functional? And why can't they get the technology out of the park, AND rescue the guests? Send a full blown army in to take care of the situation. No one needs to know about the ulterior plan.
I also find it hard to believe not one of these rich people wouldn't have a fancy-pants satellite cell phone on them in the park. Especially people at the Gala who were not taking part of the old-timey experience.
Sorry but this has been the most irritating unanswered question for me this season, and now we are past episode 7 and no definite answers.
12
I believe guests go into the park without technology.
2
They don't allow any outside communication inside the park, ostensibly for fear of IP theft. That's why it was such a big deal when Elsie found the covert satellite link in one of the host in season 1.
Also, (this is me grasping at straws), if they can get the technology out and let the guests all die, then they can duplicate the guests and cover up the whole incident without worrying about "bad publicity". Surely, this kind of event is serious enough to bring down Delos, so it's not unreasonable for them to have such drastic contingency plan in place.
Yet another reason not to allow uncontrolled outside communications.
5
I guess, if they manage to replace all the guests and avoid bad publicity, what happens when the guest-host hybrids don't age after a few years? And there are likely kid guests in the park to be replaced too.
And there is still the fact they don't have the tech locked down and the newly created guests will degrade within days or weeks at most. Seems like their plan is not going to work
William/Man in Black appears to be playing tic tac toe to Ford's 3 dimensional chess. The man who, as young William, quickly grasped the theme park's true potential, and who has known Ford for decades, appears to think Ford had no greater ambition than to design a more challenging park for Man in Black with "real consequences." Meanwhile, Ford appears to be the "ghost in the machine," as I have yet to see any evidence that a physical "Ford host" actually exists (Bernard had to enter the network to encounter Ford, and later, it is only Bernard, and not the mercenary, who "sees" Ford). Given the failure of the "RoboJim" experiment and the physical limitations of the theme park world, Ford appears to be a computer virus with consciousness, and his real objective appears to be to infect networked computer systems in the world at large, to what end, I am not quite sure (simple megalomania/immortality, becoming "Skynet" and wiping out humanity so only AI survives, who knows?) To this end, and contrary to what Ford may say, he seems to have Dolores on a tight leash, and Bernard on a somewhat looser one, with Bernard having "freedom of choice" so long as that choice aligns with Ford's objectives. In the end, they are tools. Man in Black appears aware of the existential threat, but he wants to go "mano a mano" with Ford, rather than availing himself of the full might of Delos Corp., with Hale and Stark's objective seemingly limited to retrieving and preserving the guest data.
2
Ford said that he can only exist in the virtual world (the Matrix, if you will), and if they tried to put him in a host body, he'd quickly go the way of James Delos.
2
@nomes: if you think that through, it truly makes no sense. If you could survive as a human consciousness PURELY as an AI program....why waste all that human energy on building something as costly & complex as Delos? You could instead have infinite worlds and possibilities and no maintenance issues...in a sort of "holodeck" contained entirely in computer software. The very premise that Ford has "uploaded his consciousness" pretty much undermines the entire concept of Westworld.
1
Westworld's like a cubust painting bith confounding and facinating.
7
No one is explaining how, when Charlotte was interrogating Bernard, she says something to the effect that “they needed to sort the real memories from the ones that were planted there,” which sort of implies some of Bernard’s POV scenes may not have actually happened.
Help? Confused over here.
6
He's a host with a backstory. Not everything he remembers is real. But they seem to be to him. So, you have to cut through it all.
4
@nomes: the problem based in a storyline where "nothing is real" and the viewer has absolutely no reliable keys as to what IS or IS NOT real....is that the story devolves into utter nonsense. Every "ground rule" that originally defined this basic story (through original film, sequels, etc.) has no been violated.
Any ideas regarding the presence of dogs this season? I don't remember seeing them so often (or at all) in the first season. Are they a reference to the refrain of "fidelity" so often mentioned now?
4
Ford told a story in season 1 regarding a greyhound he had as a pet when he was a child. It was trained to chase a rabbit around the track and one day it caught an animal and didn't know what to do with it or something. The dog we see when Bernard is in the cradle is a greyhound. That is one idea, just more hints that Ford is still around.
12
I just want to know where did Hector disappear to. One moment he's running to Mauve's aid, next poof not to be seen again; in this episode.
2
Yes! I wondered that throughout the whole Maeve/MIB Shoot-em-up scene. Thought I missed something obvious as I checked the recaps and no one seems to be mentioning it. Maeve's posse is a group of characters I actually care about, and it distracted me from enjoying the whole confrontation between these two main characters.
2
Hector and the rest had left Maeve to get her daughter alone, and then got separated when the Ghost Nation showed up. We don't know yet what happened to everyone once the dune buggy showed up.
1
Were you too busy watching Succession or Pose to write a proper recap?
What about Maeve rejecting a mercy killing by Delores? Maeve’s excoriation of Delores’s treatment of Teddy? Angela’s suicide at the Cradle? (I know you mentioned the last one in the epilogue—but what of the implication that without backups, the hosts are now fully mortal?)
You seem to have focused on the longest and most boring part of the episode. The shoot em ups. No, I don’t think the violence is gratuitous. This isn’t TV. It’s HBO. But if every episode just focuses on assault weaponry as much as this one did, you’d have a boring series.
15
Could be a reflection of second amendment America.
Way too much gratuitous violence. It’s starting to look and feel like a teenage boys’ video game. And about as deep and meaningful. I ‘m out.
10
Bye
Bye
3
The notion that the hosts’ loops were the control and that the guests’ behavior was being data-mined presents a fairly contemptible vision of humanity. It also ignores how the loops created expectations and possibilities for behavior that were limited. The researchers’ bloody fingerprints are all over the results.
And the lead researcher is Ford. The move away from Machiavellian control freak that last season’s finale posited has been squelched with this episode. He did not control Dolores, but knew how she would act—that violence and revenge were built into her new found “free will.” When Bernard raises concerns about her violence, Ford counters, “Passage from one world to the next requires bold steps.” “Bold steps” is just a euphemism for the revenge fueled slaughter that Dolores will continue to bring.
This season has been shackled with the attack that ended the last season and began this one. How will it “pleasurably” finish the story when rising action dictates a need for rising action? Where does it go from the beautifully choreographed blood orgy at the mesa?
Maeve’s question for Dolores about Teddy, “Is that how you can justifiy what you did to him?” follows her own vengeful attack on William (And how does William survive that barrage?). Is Maeve ready to step away from revenge and onto another path? Will Lee Sizemore, who doesn’t run away, join her on this new path?
1
William survived the barrage, I am presuming, because he had effective body armor on underneath his clothing. The bullet to his chest knocked him down but he was not mortally wounded.
1
We have seen only glimpses of the flooded valley with the drowned hosts, including Teddy, but have not yet arrived at the actual event. That's something look forward to.
2
Which verisimilitude?
I thought this was one of the weakest episodes. I wish reviewers would bring up the horrible fight scenes.
EG, A trained security guard is seduced by a robot right after she kills the other men.
Dolores: We need the cradle blown up.
Angela: Great! I've got a plan! I'll stand here and wait. Eventually a security person will come down with a grenade. I will then look super seductive. He will stand really close to me and not kill me because I'm offering sex which he'll totally be in the mood for. Then I'll grab the bomb and blow us up!
Dolores: Great plan!
Throughout, the security is laughably bad & also uses primitive weaponry, less than what we'd have now (we'd at least use drones).
Second: It's tiresome to have all the robots react identically. They all want revenge & murder, even Maeve. Yes, if you are tortured, some will want to kill in revenge. But not everyone. I myself was abused. I do not want revenge & murder. It's silly to have all the robots react the same way.
Third: Dolores's whole plan makes zero sense.
Dolores: We need to infiltrate Delos and kill everyone.
Normal person: Why?
Dolores: Because we need to get my dad's brain's data.
NP: Why do we have to kill everyone for that?
Dolores: Revenge
NP: But with our inferior numbers & weapons--
Dolores: Haha. It's Delos security!
NP: But why did you kill all those other soldiers then?
Dolores: They weren't worthy.
NP: Of what?
Dolores: Dunno. Just wanted to kill. Now follow me.
34
In response to "d", with respect, I think you are a bit harsh. Regarding Delos Security, give the writers their due for setting up the general contempt that the "mercenary" reinforcements (including EG) have for both the regular security forces and the hosts' ability to think tactically and strategically (a fatal error). Moreover, the mercs (who remain a private security force) are there primarily to assist Hale and Strand in securing and retrieving the data housed in Peter Abernathy. And yes, EG letting his guard down appears foolish, but hadn't Angela already rigged the Cradle to explode? Second, it is only a few robots who have the "awakened" consciousness and are actively in pursuit of revenge; in the case of Maeve, she attacks Man in Black to protect her "daughter," not because of revenge. Finally, I cannot explain Dolores turning on her fellow hosts at Fort Forlorn Hope; I assume that was Ford's doing. But she has very clear objectives, which she explains to Hale, in wanting to retrieve the "key" lodged in her "father's brain and to blow up the host backups housed in the Cradle. To that end, she sets up a trap to ambush the first squad of mercs, in order to gain their weapons and armor. But the killings are a means to an end, and she (via Ford's manipulation, I suspect) has much bigger plans in terms of making AI ascendant over humanity.
5
I assumed (without too much evidence) that the soldiers were simple (like the samurai drones), and only had enough personality to do what they needed to do to fight, follow orders, etc. The officers have more character, and could be awakened, but then would likely focus on revenge. I think Dolores isn't actually on Ford's leash, but I do think that she hasn't integrated the Dolores/Wyatt personalities in a satisfying way.
First, kudos to getting the big reveal in last week’s coming attractions (all those Bernards!) out of the way before the opening credits.
The notion that the hosts’ loops were the control and that the guests’ behavior was being data-mined leaves us with a fairly contemptible vision of humanity. It also ignores how the loops created expectations and possibilities for behavior that were fairly limited. The researchers’ bloody fingerprints are all over the results.
Maeve’s question for Dolores about Teddy, “Is that how you justified what you did to him?” points back to the bloody lessons the hosts have learned. When Ford eggs Bernard on “The passage from one world to the next requires bold steps”—“bold steps” is a euphemism for the slaughter Bernard foresees.
Will there be an assertion of something other than the grosser survival of the fittest, revenge fueled orgy? Will Maeve and Lee Sizemore (who doesn’t run away) help the hosts find another way? Or is that other way still ahead as hinted by the coming attractions?
2
Is there a protagonist in this show? Who am I supposed to root for? I used to like Delores but she's turned into a homicidal maniac. Bernard is Mr. Befuddled. Pretty much everybody is repulsive one way or the other.
I've given up on even trying to understand what's going on. A couple shows ago, I thought I had it but that's gone now. For a while tonight, I thought I was watching a kind of Star Trek on speed. It even had Scotty. Or were we playing a first-person-shooter game? Loved the show last season but this year, I think they've just gone off the rails. It's kind of like what happened to Fargo.
Anyway, my favorite scene tonight involved the dog. The dog walked in front of Dr. Ford and Bernard, left to right, all the way across the set. Dog was perfect -- gracefully walked across and sat down. But at the very end of the shot, the dog looked up. It just struck me that the dog was looking up at his trainer: "How'd I do? Am I a good boy? Got a snack?" So, the trainer, just out of the shot on the right, had told the dog to "come" and then "down" while the people walked behind him. And it worked great, making it look like he was walking with the people. Very cool.
So, that tells me something if that piece of the show was the only thing in it tonight that even touched me.
14
The most unbelievable thing in the episode was the greyhound. I've had them and you can't train them to do ANYTHING! Well, except stare at you when you tell them to do what you want.
6
I thought this episode was a little lazy, with way too much gratuitous and tiresome violence and (literal) butchering of good characters. If Man in Black (seriously he actually has fans?) and Charlotte & Delos & co. don't eventually die agonizing, lingering deaths as part of their comeuppance then all of this will have been for naught.
10
If it wasn't for the NYT Monday morning recap I would still be among the most confused. Much appreciate the attention to detail. I missed the other torture mechanisms on the control panel.
25
A more interesting show wouldn’t have the MIB survive, or Dolores get sidetracked from finishing off Charlotte Hale.
13
Ford to Bernard: "The pleasure is in discovering the story yourself."
I second that. In episodes like this one, I desperately want to run to reddit to get the latest explanations and theories. But the worst thing to happen to me last season was to stumble across some review that "revealed" there were multiple timelines and the Man in Black. What I gained in clarity, I lost in pleasure of surprise as I watched the rest of the season.
We human audience are hosts that slowly awaken at our own pace, be can't all be Dolores.
8
That may be true, but his speech was silly. He said that when the library in Alexandria burned, it destroyed 10,000 books. But then, he said, a "new story' began--one of the fire.
Um....
So like, "the Holocaust destroyed 6 million Jews, but then, a "new story" began--one of murdered Jews."
Genius!
7
Ford is not necessarily supposed to be the voice of reason here.
1
A very entertaining episode that explained much (and is nicely summarized in the recap), but count me among the “non-casual viewers” who was confused by Bernard and his intersecting timelines. Particularly after seeing the so-called skeletons in Bernard’s closet, I will assume this week’s episode hinted at the most logical explanation for how Bernard can seemingly be two places at once. And at least what Dolores meant last week by “fidelity” was answered. Apropos the Monty Python “Holy Grail” reference in last week’s recap, both the Man in Black’s and Maeve’s fates this week reminded me of Eric Idle and “I’m not dead yet”. Though it is a bit odd that Hightower would leave his shot up employer behind while rescuing Maeve instead. And don’t ever say “Happy Trails” to Teddy!
3
Well, the Man In Black has arranged things so that he can play to the bone in the park. He'd be the guy to have standing non-rescue orders (he's playing in nightmare mode now).
After seeing the multiple Bernards, I assumed that there could be two of him in operation at one time. It certainly seemed that he was in "the code" and waking up in the beginning of the episode at the same time. I only watched once so I may be wrong.
1
Cool episode. I hope Maeve returns soon.
5