WestWorld: ...Where nothing can possibly go worng!

I guess I was just imagining a cliche scene where someone goes to execute the now injured and defenseless MIB, he accepts his fate... BAM!

....wha? I'm still alive? It's been switched back! etc etc

I feel like the fly buzzing on Zach McClarnon's hand is a nice callback to Once Upon A Time In The West

I reserve the right to change my mind later but this weeks episode is worth every stupid thing this show has put us through. so good. I love Zach McClarnon anyway but big props to HBO & co for making this episode so he could just crush everything, everything

I'm going to go smoke and drink and cry and etc.

the admins thinking the new patch would take on a host that hadn't been patched for over a decade smdh

Pretty expansive for a bottle episode imho. When I saw Hopkins’ name in the opening credits I didn’t know what to expect.

yeah this week's episode was easily the show's best

^ ghost nation stan

it hasn't changed my underlying opinion of the show but yeah this one was good!

though an unfortunate discovery of the past two eps is that tessa thompson is a bad actress.

that was discovered in season 1 tbh

but yeah this was the first ep of westworld i've actually enjoyed. it's the kind of thing that L O S T used to do really well and imo had a lot more to do with the success of that show than the internet sleuth stuff

yeah this show is a mix of world-class actors and people who come across like they're in a made-for-tv action movie. I think tessa, shannon woodward and (especially) ambigiously accented QA woman are all terrible, but it's probably not a coincidence that all the non-robots come across terribly, there's way more depth to being robot achieving sentience than there is to being the human fighting robot-uprising. they give them pretty crap dialogue too.

I can't believe the show that made the last episode is the same show that two episodes ago had elsie saying '"we're going to need some more firepower"

boo hiss you're wrong

I can't believe the show that made the last episode is the same show that two episodes ago had elsie saying '"we're going to need some more firepower"

― iatee, Wednesday, June 13, 2018 11:12 AM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh! This is one of those ilx posts that I feel is trying to bully me into believing that line is obviously bad. But I'm going to be brave this time an ask outright: what is so obviously bad about "we're going to need some more firepower" without the context of something like say particularly cheesy delivery? Is it the word "firepower"? I doesn't seem wrong for her to communicate to Bernard that she wants to restock or upgrade the gun she is carrying (see I'm already awkwardly avoiding the word firepower myself because I'm nervous it is unacceptable...).

ride or die for elsie imo

Oh! This is one of those ilx posts that I feel is trying to bully me into believing that line is obviously bad. But I'm going to be brave this time an ask outright: what is so obviously bad about "we're going to need some more firepower" without the context of something like say particularly cheesy delivery? Is it the word "firepower"? I doesn't seem wrong for her to communicate to Bernard that she wants to restock or upgrade the gun she is carrying (see I'm already awkwardly avoiding the word firepower myself because I'm nervous it is unacceptable...).

good guys saying some variant of 'we need bigger guns' is totally an action movie cliche.

I don't think elsie adds anything to the show, her entire character could just exist.

Fair enough. I'm more offended by the action movie cliche of useless disposable security/"cavalry" stormtroopers that are there to just pathetically die at the hands of hosts no matter what. There's no tension during their scenes because as soon as you see them you know they'll find a way to die ASAP.

Yeah, the security guys "hup hup hup"ing around is the worst part of this show. wtf was with the light-up vests that tell them when someone is sneaking up on them? It's not just that the scenes are kind of narratively pointless like Evan says, but they're also shot just like 80's low-budget scifi action movies, complete with all the cliches. You see the goon shooting his gun from an elevated catwalk and you know he's going to be clutching his chest and diving over that railing any second.

They're too reminiscent of the kinds of movies that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was parodying, basically!

tessa thompson is a bad actress.

totally wrong, but she's a weird fit for this role. seems like her role should probably be played by an older actress.

anyway, this is by far the best episode in the history of the show, and definitely the only one that ever made me feel anything beyond "this is cool"

"this" meaning last week's McLarnon showcase, which I just watched

Whelp

back to your regularly scheduled crap westworld

Both of those deaths were so stupid. Like, get a fucking move on, there’s no suspense here, take the shot (and then the obvious, even dumber reaction shot, for bonus eyeroll)

I’m rooting for an episode that’s just Elsie & Charlotte timelines. That’s where I’m at.

Caught up on the last couple of weeks last night. Ghost Nation ep is one of the best television episodes I've seen in a while. At least up until the point when I realized that a piano arrangement of 'Heart-Shaped Box' was playing on the soundtrack, which ripped me right out of the moment. WTF @ the musical choices this season.

I assume the climax of the season finale will be set to a children's choir singing 'Lightning Crashes'.

player piano doing "wake me up when september ends"

Jug band version of 'All-Star'.

they've always had the player piano playing things like this. Black Hole Sun, some radiohead song.

yes, and now we’re making fun of it

Here we go

Whew

lame

I kinda drifted off this after the 4th or 5th episode, it just got kind of dull and meandery. Was it worth carrying on?

(Of the second season, that is.)

y'know, one of the most important parts of running the long game of multiple timelines is making sure everything comes together at the end, and I'm not sure they got that note

Everybody is aware that there is a post credits scene aren't they? NOt sure if that answers anything but does seem to add another layer.

the incredibly ambiguous mid-credits scene was entertaining but very much of the "oh, our mind-twisting plot seems to be tidied up -- check THIS shit out"

I stopped at the end of s1 and I'm feeling good about that decision. My sense is that this needlessly complex style of storytelling seems to be there to a) produce empty "aha" twists and b) obscure the fact that the story, themes and characters aren't actually all that interesting for the most part

I like seeing the movie-style wild west robots shoot stuff

When the system-admin-Logan(??) was giving them a tour of the overly elaborate digital facility/library(??) that was only there to represent(??) what the forge software was doing (right???). I suddenly felt like I was watching Matrix Revolutions and I was filled with dread during that whole sequence.

that is exactly what it was, yes. they were completely inside the computer at the forge

the virtual world the hosts were being uploaded to was also running there, although it's now been offloaded to somewhere else (tbd). which was confusing with all the "you lost them all" talk, needlessly complex that they kept making points like that and then immediately rolling them back because they were trying to fake the Delos people out, or they were trying to emphasize Bernard didn't really know what he did

all of the actual underlying plot points were fine, imo, if a little rote. the execution was sloppy

I have mixed feelings on the quick transition from "Dolores has a different body now" to "we've got a couple Dolores instances running around and they're irl" at the end

I thanked the narrative police for having that brief moment where the humans that were present were asking "wtf are they talking about when they say there's a door?!" because if there was a visible crack in the sky that actually existed this would have gone from semi-firm science fiction to whoopsy-daisy

It seemed like a sloppy compromise between what the story writers wanted vs. Evan Rachel Wood's contract.

xp

So what was the "Logan" then? Just an avatar for the tour guide? The virtual tour of the forge is obviously to accommodate the audience because that's certainly better TV then looking at lines of code over Delores's shoulder, but in the universe of the show it's pretty silly and excessive to have that as the interface of the secretive forge testing and archival process. The book thing especially.

Logan was the system itself having an avatar, although it was obviously responsible for everything they saw there

the hosts were designed to work in a human-viewpoint world and it was their natural way of interacting so I don't know why they'd be presented with something completely foreign. the book thing was a little heavy-handed but was so much "do you see!" after you realize it's the same notation that was scrolling through the player piano in the opening sequence

I stopped at the end of s1 and I'm feeling good about that decision. My sense is that this needlessly complex style of storytelling seems to be there to a) produce empty "aha" twists and b) obscure the fact that the story, themes and characters aren't actually all that interesting for the most part

I think the story, themes and characters are interesting, which is why the fact that they've gone so far down the rabbit hole to be even more frustrating. the two focused episodes (samuri, ghost nation) in season 2 were imo the best episodes of the series so far. if they had decided to do the whole season in a similar manner it would have been great.

you guys must really like reading subtitles

hey man, I did my best to stick to criticisms of the broad strokes of the plot and avoid any nitpicking, which I think is a lost cause in a Nolan family adventure. I'm willing to accept this sucker for what it is, a high concept romp with some sense of mystery imparted by fragmenting a script and editing the show accordingly. if I can't poke at it a little without being stereotyped as some poring-over-subtitles obsessive then why do we even talk about it

the forge library reminded me (excessively) of Doctor Who and that episode with River Song

I thought this was alright. certainly better than some of the press is claiming it was. I liked the house they were in at the end. Missed the mid and end credits so I guess I'll go back and watch those.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Millard House

it's not a dream...it's a FUCKING NIGHTMARE

i lol'd