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

only three episodes left in the season!

at this rate we need a second season to figure out the other half of what's going on other than minor corporate shenanigans and an off-kilter android designer

did I miss something or are we still technically up in the air about whether Elsie is alive

no clue as yet

this show is lowkey bad but also immensely entertaining

idk I have seen what else ppl watch on tv and this isn't that bad

like are you going to watch two episodes of "how i met your mother" or like an episode of "orange is the new black" and unflinchingly say you better spent your time

I'd say some highbrow elitist thing about reading a book but I have read (or at least started) some really bad books

The real winner of this show are (were) Bernard's impeccable suits.

OTM

had this same conversation

feel like this show is spectacularly bad in a way that a lesser show cldnt hope to achieve

anthony hopkins performance feels like a protest against the show itself

so... what happened to Elsie?

i hope it ends with the protagonist finding philly at the edge of the park and becoming a mcpoyle bro

i mean, i like watching it very much, hence lowkey bad rather than high. the dialogue is often objectively bad, and the seriousness with which it takes itself is both truly not made for these hyperironic days and at times difficult to easily swallow

so I guess Bernard is an Arnold-bot then

i was stoked on the mystery of the first couple eps but after that it just seemed like they were all "lets do everything in the world all at once"

i was pumped about the show early on but i have to admit that when there were oldtimey piano covers of johnny cash, rolling stones, AND soundgarden in the first episode i got a really bad feeling

ha good call

they had nine inch nails in episode 5 and that basically made me forgive all this show's faults tho

lol elmo, I just asked about Elsie, too

I think the implication so far is that Elsie got taken out by Bernard and he doesn't consciously remember it because it's bad

maybe elsie got taken by a diff faction, feels right

something about the physical laws of danger don't make sense to me (read: shit is incoherent)

the confederados shot a gatling gun at the train, shredding the car walls. but presumably guest william is supposed to be impervious to those bullets; maybe thumped a little but not seriously injured. eh ok. we saw one of the bullets (pulled out of maeve) and it had some kind of odd screw shape? is that meant to signify "tech here" and everything gets handwaved after? i guess i'd appreciate if the show didn't stretch it too much past that...

MIB setting off some minor explosions was presented as something special; something approved from the office for a preferred customer. but then later on we've got a lot of shit blowing up for everyone, nbd.

as a commentary on video games it's got a glaring oversight: missions where you're totally ok but have to protect a vulnerable NPC (MIB with teddy, william with dolores) are annoying as hell and no fun at all. i would expect a player to want to know if a storyline has graduated a character into special or semi-protected status, so you don't feel cheated if they get shot unexpectedly! esp after trekking days into the desert with them...

yes i do feel like a chump for putting this much thought into it

itsnotthatdeep.jpg

idk, bullets deform when they hit things

Anyone read any Jonathan Hickman comics? This is starting to remind me of that. No characters, no free will, just a very sophisticated diagram. I'm still enjoying it though.

That said Bernard being a toaster and Anthony Hopkins being EVIL are about the least mindfucky twists I could imagine

the best show on tv right now is Ash vs Evil Dead btw.

also, what happened to Marti (Bojana Novakovic) ?

gave up on this

It's still fun but it's definitely petered out, expectations lowered etc.

Bernard at the end perfectly captured hoe I felt at 3am last Tuesday

This took a turn toward 90s NBC fodder in ep 6 but I'm still hooked

Wonder if Bernard's wife was just cg and ai or if she is a bot locked in a room somewherr.

MIB setting off some minor explosions was presented as something special; something approved from the office for a preferred customer. but then later on we've got a lot of shit blowing up for everyone, nbd.

He was disrupting the scripted storyline. They had to trigger pyrotechnic effects that weren't already in the storyline. The other explosions are all planned, built in to the environment, expressly designed so as to never risk harm to guests.

the confederados shot a gatling gun at the train, shredding the car walls. but presumably guest william is supposed to be impervious to those bullets; maybe thumped a little but not seriously injured.

Hey, this is why you "print" a piano instead of just building one, why everything is constructed to purpose from synthetic components. Ford and his hosts/employees can have complete control over how things react to stimuli, whether they pop squibs and die, allow a bullet to pass through and hit a host, or stop it so it doesn't hit a guest. The behavior of the cover in a firefight is variable, just like hosts have different scripts to respond to the attitude of guests.

QED BLAM

man y'all are harsh on this show

OK, I haven't been following this thread at all, because we literally just finished the second episode, and I doubt I can convince my wife to keep going without good reason. The acting, particularly the (what I assume to be) humans is just so bad, and the dialogue is worse - or should I say, "The fucking dialogue is fucking worse, fuck, what the fuck?!" And there are just so many (not good) questions we have about the very setup, let alone mystery or motive or why the fucking company is fucking lit and decorated like a fucking dark, bleak bomb shelter, fuck!

So, if we stick with it will we be rewarded, or are the first couple of eps kind of what you see is what you get?

Rewarded is a strong word, but I do think that the show improved a lot in episodes three and four, once a lot of the exposition is out of the way.

This is more of a turn-my-brain-off, popcorn chomping type of show for me. I appreciate that it's trying to be profound/intelligent, but it's mainly a fun watch, nothing revolutionary.

ok that british dude is really embarrassing but he goes away for a while, and I just chalked the interior design up to like well obviously this is several decades into the future and idk I guess this was just architecture/design trends then idk

Josh, I was mostly annoyed until ep 4. Then I got into it and mostly just enjoy the dumb parts for what they are

the show is an excellent companion piece to this thread

I lolled at the lines they gave Raising Hope tech when she was sleuthing in spooky room:
What the fuck
shit

Hey, a lot of thought went into those lines. Imagine if she'd instead said

What the shit

Fuck

?

What the shit-fuck, fuck!

I can't tell if it's supposed to be funny or not. Like, are we in a future where half the lexicon is profanity? Because it is so ridiculous.

this show is all kinds of inconsistent but I don't care, I still find it very enjoyable. except I do fall asleep in the middle of every episode for five-ten minutes.

also apparently HBO Go starts hosting episodes the actual minute they finish airing on TV?? who knew!!

btw they are available immediately, like right when the show airs

and even before it airs if you live on the west coast

I thought their offices are pretty nice for being a concrete building embedded into a plateau

Then again I feel like the characters swear a lot less than I do, so I might be the counter-Josh

gbx, I mentioned to Stevie D that if Go/Now are the same, they appear the minute the show starts airing, not at the end. So 9PM on the east coast

the show is an excellent companion piece to this thread

― tried Blue Apron and we died (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, November 14, 2016 10:41 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol pt taken

I'm glad we all decided early on that the show is bad in many ways, that way we can concentrate on important things like piano printers rather than groaning about the level of quality dipping each week

I don't think it has been dipping

I meant how we typically talk about these shows-- Wow, this is great. Episode three is not so good. I'm done with this show. Wait it's good again. Now it's bad.

My spouse is my barometer. She had literally never heard of WestWorld when we watched the first episode, which intrigued her. She was further intrigued by friends who really like the show, so she was eager to watch episode 2, but she has enough problems with it (and was pretty bored with it) that I have to decide whether it's worth lobbying her to keep watching. Obviously I can keep watching on my own, but I'm not sure about that, either.I try to stick with these shows to some extent, riding the creative ups and downs, because lots of shows take some time to find their rhythm, whether it's a season or a couple of seasons. Some shows start out with a bang then fade. Some start out so-so then improve. Tracking the ebb and flow becomes part of the viewing process, but when pervasive issues don't go away and when I start to believe either the show has no interest in fixing them, or doesn't how to fix them, or compounds them through lazy shortcuts, that's usually when I question my investment.

I was heartened by WestWorld, which passed one of my arbitrary personal tests: that is, it explicitly addressed a question I asked my wife early on, namely, why do the robots interact and make small talk, etc., when no-one is watching them? I love when stuff like that happens, because it shows they're asking these questions themselves. On the other hand, so many issues. Why would they want guests massacring dozens of robots when one assumes they're expensive to fix and replace? How can a guest tell a robot from a person and avoiding hurting them or being hurt by them? Why, of all the scenarios, the wild west, if it's mostly just about killing or having sex with people and you can do that anywhere? And wouldn't you have to be some sort of serious psychopath to want to pay big money to do that at all? Why is there only one writer on staff, and a jerk-writer, at that? So many questions. No doubt some will be answered and some will be revealed as more serious flaws. Or not!

(Also, I like to fucking nitpick, it's fucking fun, fuck!)

Sometimes I get bummed out that these high profile shows can't keep it together and think, alas, all is lost (or all is "Lost" haha), but then I see Better Call Saul (as good as anything), or Veep (consistently funny), or whatever, and I regain hope. That book came out recently listing the best TV shows ever made, and I know Deadwood was up there. I thought it was a masterpiece at the time but was worried about revising it, lest it not live up. But I started at the beginning again and, yep, still good. Makes me want to rewatch The Shield and Battlestar Galactica, too (problems with the latter aside).

on one hand i understand everyone's criticisms of the show - the hammy acting, the melodramatic story beats, the lazy expository dialogue

otoh i still love watching it so fuck all ya'all giddyup

first season of deadwood is still fire