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

drink every time a new character is naked when they're introduced

finally caught up to this. i'm a vote for this show is fantastic.

OK that last bit with Ford + Dolores was fantastic

the beardo douchebag technician is even lazier than the black hat douchebag wannabe Delos-owner, though

Good to know our clockmaker god carries a pocketwatch in his vest THPPBT

oh shit actual goosebumps

this show just earned everything it's asked of me.

Given the Lynchian nature of some of the sequences in this ep, I think my idea that we're watching a couple of different timelines in the history of the park might still end up being the case - but as above, I don't care anymore. This is getting really good.

yeah this was an excellent episode, and the trailer for what's to come is rather exciting (thandie newton in a jumpsuit leading a swarm of armed invaders into the HQ)

Also this episode made it pretty clear - to me, anyway - that the park operators and hosts have more in common than they do with the guests, including that most of the park techs joke about being recycled or whatever as a means to stave off the anxiety that they might be a "host" themselves.

And did I miss it earlier or is the same technology used to repair and clean the hosts the reason why illness and disease have been eradicated in the "real world?" Has that been made explicit?

i thought this ep was pretty bad! gratuitous in its presentation, tedious in characterization, parsimonious in the various 'mysteries'

still hooked tho :/ fuckin hbo

the douchebag & dork nonbuddies are so uninteresting and unconvincing

This is the first episode where I really got in tune with Dork Nonbuddy (that is his name now, thanks): He put a lot of work into his "hmm, maybe I should shoot this robot that is choking my new BiL" look, and then again when it was time for the "why do I care so much about what you think, robot girl?" look, and then like four more times when he had to chew it up with no lines. I officially care about what happens to this guy that barely talks! That's good TV.

Dudes name is McPoyle always will be

his motivation is "i am a good man," but if there's any commentary on videogamers here it ought to just be "i don't have much interest in sex robots, also i'd like to see what the good-guy quest lines are on my first run through but my friend keeps capping the npcs, it's so annoying"

among repeat players you'd see the userbase coalescing into types if not factions: scuzzbags who just like to kill and fuck, push the limits of pvp violence and trolling; true LARPer types who get really committed to their character and the immersion of it (whether as hero or villain); and completionist/a-press weirdos who want to experience every last thing, map out the underlying rules/patterns and explore every weird glitch.

And those bathroom gamers who are secretly shitting by the hitching posts

are you a gamer, goole

I'm watching a few more of these, just started ep 4. I find the trick is to tune out the dialogue pretty much completely whenever one person has been speaking for more than 5 seconds. And simply finding other things to do during everything set outside of the park, in the control room or whatever, cause the "as you know gentlemen" is off the fucking charts in this thing

why is borgen even in this

meta commentary about emmy chasing in this latest 'sode

and the allure of turner network television syndication

lol

Cast
Main cast
Evan Rachel Wood as Dolores Abernathy, as the oldest host; she is a Western girl who discovers her entire life is an elaborately constructed lie.[4] Her aesthetic drew influences from Andrew Wyeth's painting Christina's World as well as Lewis Carroll's Alice.[5]
Thandie Newton as Maeve Millay, a host; she is the beautiful and sharp madam of Westworld.[6]
Jeffrey Wright as Bernard Lowe, head of the Westworld Programming Division and creator of artificial people, as well as the current manifestation of Nyarlathotep, who was called from beyond the darkness to unleash the inscrutable nightmare of maddening hellfire and mind-numbing insanity.[7]

I bet my kid can pronounce Nyarlathotep though

Basically I'm waiting for S1 to end and come out on DVD before I dive in.

man I really hope the McPoyle = Man in Black theory isn't true

all of the conversations of Anthony Hopkins, etc, seem to indicate we're seeing things that are happening contemporaneously and not two different time periods so uhhh idk how that could be the case

the main pieces of "evidence" seem to be the different versions of the Westworld logo in certain scenes and the fact that McPoyle and friend haven't interacted with many of the main characters other than Dolores. There's a lot more evidence that points to it not being true but that hasn't stopped the fanboys tying themselves in knots about it (and the show was created by a Nolan brother...)

spoiler: it's actually named for the guy who created it, Mr. West

"Wake up, Mr. West!"

"...or may I call you 007?"

kanye in wild wild west instead of will smith

The two-timeline thing doesn't really make sense, as the hosts they're interacting with seem to behave identically to the ones in all the other scenes

yeah. Especially given the MIB's speech this week about how different the old robots were and the grizzled prospector dude that Anthony Hopkins hangs out with

also Dolores' glitching is consistent w/ her scenes with Wright and Hopkins

Seemed odd that Dolores had interacted with Arnold 35 years earlier. Would have thought technology would have moved faster than that and the idea of continuance of memory wouldn't continue from unit to replacement.

Also wondered about weight of a unit/robot. Presumably has to feel close to human for a pleasure unit to feel right.

Haven't seen the show or checked in with this thread, but thinking of diving in and watching. How's it holding up so far? Promising? House of cards?

OK, episode one was pretty good, especially from a storytelling standpoint. Some of the (over) acting, especially of the humans, was questionable, and dialogue was dubious, but it's already pretty rich and deep and can go all sorts of places beyond its Blade Runner origins. Looking forward to episode two!

Keep it up! It gets really good in four and five

Seems like there's a good chance this series will become Lost after a while and stop making any kind of coherent sense whatsoever.

I thought you were my friend.

People once thought a ship made of iron would sink, so I could be wrong about this.

no doubt in my mind a series brought to you by the brain of jonathan nolan is going to turn into some bullshit before long

This is really addictive but not exactly satisfying so far. Hoping it learned some lessons on how NOT to do things from LOST. Will keep watching. Definitely a lot of potential.

a lot of this is v on-the-nose and i understand why ppl wouldn't like it but the obviousness doesn't bother me the tone is v evocative and the whole simulacra somehow turns out to have not entirely lost its appeal to me

I assumed with the park being an ongoing business that the robots wouldn't be that massively old so wondering how Dolores can have interacted with Arnold 3 decades earlier. Had thought the robots were about 10 years old at oldest and still then surprised taht robotic technology wouldn't be in a constant flux of updates. Also not sure to what extent an individual unit is being updated instead of totally replaced. I know that several different stories have been programmed into them over time but not sure about length of time. 35 years does seem longer than i would have thought for a working piece of technology to be kept going. Would think that there would need to be standards kept up for any public entertainment/interaction with technology with frequent inspections and insurance requirements etc.

Has there been speculation that there's more than one Dolores? One out there in the park being menaced by guys in hats, and another having deep conversations at HQ?

She sees herself in the Day of the Dead parade, or was that a hallucination like in the Tarot card scene. Lawrence seems to have been fixed so fast I thought maybe they have two Lawrences. Maeve appears to be on the repair table twice, a few minutes apart.

But on the other hand Bernard tells "his" conversation-Dolores that she needs to get back before she's missed.

Maybe we're meant to wonder exactly this. Maybe there will be a big reveal of an entire warehouse of Doloreses.

If there is more than one Dolores are they sharing memory/consciousness? Still not fully getting to waht level any of these things has an identity.

Was Dolores in parade a glitch memory of an earlier event?
& is everything on soe form of loop anyway. Or was that some brand new story.

Very weird if it is just a bunch of entities on some form of performance loop or at least one with restricted variables responding to being brought together. There is a high level of surveillance but is everything running on the idea of if certain criteria met then follow this path of behaviour until next criteria is met near binary programming. Not sure to what extent the moderators are hands on.

Yeah I think by "loop," Dolores more or less just comes out of the store and drops the condensed milk every X days, unless something happens to disrupt that loop (whether a guest intervention or a ripple from some other event). Then she has to go with the flow of that disruption. I gather that in normal operation (pre-episode 1) this was working fine, with the handlers only intervening occasionally. The reason the series focuses on the "now is the time when things start to go wornggg" is that it's more interesting than smooth sailing.

Nobody ever made a TV show called "everything is fine and everyone is making good decisions."

(Though I confess I'd probably watch a show like that, I know no one will make it, wah.)

i'd probably watch a show that was just guests fucking around in the park tbh. ultimate Let's Play.

Dollhouse was the same way. There were interesting bits of problem-solving and each mission was its own little world; that was plenty diverting enough for a half-dozen episodes in the mode of a procedural. But of course, to generate the overarching conflict narrative they always hurry to introduce the equivalent of OMG-the-AI-has-achieved-consciousness, OMG-the-robots-are-developing-autonomy.

Same storytelling formula shapes almost every sci-fi thing, because television is a perpetual motion machine and no one can ever just be happy and nothing can just keep going. You're not going to see Romeo and Juliet living in a nice brick house with some cute kids.

In the first episode they imply management has much grander ambitions than entertainment. I assume this is explored?

season 2 a robot runs for president

the twist: the other candidate is also a robot