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

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

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

― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, November 14, 2016 11:15 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yes. they made such a meal of it too, never has my policy of reading a book during boring speeches been more appreciated than with hopkins at the end of this

going along with the general consensus here, it's funny how this keeps you watching without giving a shit about any of it. like, in another show the trick of not featuring a main protagonist for a whole episode (dolores last time, ed harris this time) would be tantalizing but I find it hard to imagine anyone being like "omg what's going on with the train thing I need to know". They could never go back to the man in black quest and I'd miss ed harris but that's about it

lol if you thought Simon Quarterman's crappy writer was bad just wait till you see Tessa Thompson's mean girl

― El Tomboto, Monday, November 14, 2016 2:38 AM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm too, eeeesh

Ed Harris really has developed a malevolent scrotum of a face, hasn't he?

I just watched the latest ep. it's better than the previous one but still disappointing somehow (although there were BIG things happening).
The Bernard/host thing was totally expected but I was surprised they killed Theresa already.
Since they also "killed" Bernard, in a way, they lost two main characters in one episode !
also, the new management woman is terrible as a intelligent/ruthless/sexy/powerful caricature.
and I don't really like the Maeve storyline. Actually, as said by many in this thread, I don't really care about any character (maybe Dolores, a little) but I still enjoy the show, although with diminishing returns (which makes me wonder about how long they can sustain this).
Thinking about it, I wonder if my initial enjoyment didn't come from my binge watching of the first 5 eps in a row. all the novelty and information might have made it better than it is since watching the two latest episodes on their own was quite disappointing...

Think there have been too many big things happening too quickly, would have preferred them to set out the internal logic with a few more stories set in the BAU westworld than unravelling straight away. Does make you wonder how they'd manage to keep it together the past 30-odd years. Saying that, still enjoying the ride for now.

Yeah, for a show about the western world, there's not a lot set in the west in the latest eps. It feels like most of the show is about the company politics/mysteries now. Maybe that's one of the things I miss.

yeah i love the concept of this show, and it felt to me like someone involved had almost certainly been to see punchdrunk's immersive theatre shows in nyc or london - too many similarities to be a coincidence. that piqued my interest a bit but ultimately the characters aren't strong enough. the rebellion by the maeve character doesn't actually interest or please me - i don't want the characters to escape, i want them to go on a journey in their world, the allure of the robot world to the humans is probably more interesting than the reverse.

her name is maeve, who knew

Starting to feel like the reveal about Bernard is just the bodysnatcher version of "black dude dies first"

I mean, I struggle to see how it makes the character more interesting. Unless we have a season 2 of Jeffrey Wright in aged makeup, playing Arnold. Hope not/hope so?

oh and it's supposed to be forbidden for the staff to have intercourse with the hosts but I guess the new management woman is above the rules !
(Theresa also but she didn't know she was doing a host...)

what was his character before? he had chats with dolores, was sleeping with borgen, acted like a robot... maybe he will do stuff now

regarding Bernard, there's also the question that a host is not supposed to be able to understand/know about the real world and the westworld. so how can he work and deal with other hosts knowing they're just hosts, not humans ?
and if it's possible for him, then it's no big deal if Maeve and other hosts can understand the divide between reality and the park...

he can know about robots, he's not supposed to know that he is a robot

hum. it seemed the hosts weren't supposed to be able to understand there was another reality and therefore that robots existed at all.

Well that's surely because they are "hosts" in a realistic Wild West theme park, this one has been designed (secretly) for a different purpose

ie Bernard is only being asked to accept one "reality", he doesn't live in the fake one

No guys all robots are programmed to think they are Cowboys there is no other way

Is this not tied in with what Maeve asked to have turned up. The thing that allows one to grasp how concepts interrelate?

yeah, I suppose.
and regarding Maeve, that means she can never be "switched of" now, right ?
like when the guys came in the saloon to take her friend.