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

the only sympathetic characters are the robots, and only then those robots who are gaining self-awareness, like bernard and particularly maeve. maeve is great.

Well the asshole level seems to be increased in order to oversell the idea that they treat it just like any other soul sucking occupation among other assholes, so as viewers we can relate to it and also be mystified by a future society that treats all this amazing miracle technology like its just part of their mundane day. "They are annoyed about the impossibly human heart stopping miracle androids not being handled correctly by a department at their company just like I'm annoyed at Jim for not sending me back the updated excel spreadsheet!! How crazy the future must be!!" idea beaten to death on this show.

I gathered that it's a little like being in Antarctica or on a ship or something - decently comfortable but isolating. They speak of "rotating out" and getting to see their homes and families every buncha months. This could lead to a familiarity-breeds-contempt thing where they just get on each other's nerves like college roommates do, which could up the hostility they show one another.

grunts who hate their jobs and are separated from family are a sci-fi staple

True, but then they also did it when the young executive lady showed up and sure enough gave Theresa the same kind of shit. The line went something like "I like you Theresa- well, not personally- but I like you as a manager here". Given this was the second of three total scenes these characters are ever going to be in together (unless there's a flashback), it seems there because the writers are relying a little too much on this one technique to keep the dialogue spicy? Just my opinion.

Also true.

xp

the best, forever

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h--XhfIcDnM/U1KlXNTehdI/AAAAAAAAFvw/xHEjKUbVfrM/s1600/alien+yaphet.png

this was excellent!

what the movie had that the tv series lacks is the fourth-wall breaking dude who practically did the bugs bunny "eh, ain't I a rascal?" routine

maeve breaks the 4th wall like three times in this ep! it was thrilling! things are getting freaky deaky.

i am almost positive that the writer douche is not actually british, but an american doing a british accent. which goes partway towards explaining why he's so bad. when you're not 100% with an accent it saps your focus and concentration so instead of doing a good job in the scene you're trying to get your mouth to make the right shapes.

i don't think tessa thompson is nearly as bad as you guys mare making her out to be. she has terrible dialogue to work with and i think she handles it credibly. you know who's bad, like super-bad, like i can't believe they didn't nip it in the bud and recast the part, is the beardy medical tech. MY GOD. all the scenes with him and maeve and leonardo nam are oddly stilted and static and frankly they've never nailed why exactly the two med techs are helping her in the first place. has she hypnotized them? it's dumb.

however despite all that this was great, my favorite episode since the beginning. maeve "hacking" westworld was awesome. teddy finally turning on ed harris was awesome. ed's story about his real life and his wife was awesome. dolores' hallucinations are super spooks. the return of logan is genuinely frightening. maeve's real and imagined backstories are awesome (though once again the westworld approach to QA feels pretty slipshod - in her former role maeve killed herself?? oh well no probs, let's give her a different role i'm sure she'll sort herself out). ford and bernard's little chat about what makes humans real was great. (what are the chances bernard DOESN'T end up killing ford at some point once he figures out what ford's made him do?)

the only thing i'm not really feeling is "the maze" which i'm sure will, irritatingly, get almost entirely pushed off to S2. i like shows that set up mysteries and then SOLVE THEM and then PUSH THROUGH to the next mystery. ah well.

luke hemsworth is the kind of dude who would coach your elementary school basketball class and wear gray snap-top coach shorts

these: http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/R-QAAOSw54xUXkER/s-l400.jpg

omg so I'm watching (ok I'm posting to ilx and its on) and we've just encountered an actual honest to god "ah ____ you disappoint me" in the wild! badness upon badness in this tv programme

God this show moves so slowly. Taking you up to the brink of something revelatory or a genuine explosion point but never actually there. The Man In Black's interminable life story that actually amounted to fuck all. Dolores reaching the place she'd been searching for...and then just getting some confusing flashbacks. Nothing explained, nothing happening.

Was sort of convinced by the multiple timeline theory but it feels way too late in the day to reveal that in a meaningful way? ie if it's revealed, the reaction will be "oh I guess they finally got there" rather than "BOMBSHELL!!!"

Basically feels like they didn't write enough plot and have had to stretch it out really thinly.

Super into Maeve rampaging and killing everyone though. Don't even care that the technicians' motives are inexplicable, I'm thankful for that if it gives us that one storyline that's actually exciting.

(Also thought Elsie's death got ridiculously short shrift given that, in lieu of Bernard being a human, she was the only human aware of dodgy goings-on and not invested in covering it up. Actually thought Bernard was flashing back to killing Theresa at first it was so brief.)

(I don't hate the Charlotte and Lee characters that much, they're silly and have bad dialogue but that campy silliness is a much-needed counterbalance to the vast swathes of NOTHING HAPPENING elsewhere - I think they're much more watchable than any Man In Black scene.)

also you guys referring to every character by the actor name rather than the character name is weird imo. Spent a lot of this thread wondering why you were calling Theresa Tessa

I don't know character or actor names because wgaf

I think bad brit writer is an actual English guy doing cringey performative Englishness for American audience, like the you're the worst guy

my god you're right.

writer is bad but not in the way that the show is bad, more like a genuine "how was this allowed to happen" kind of bad

him and the beardy surgeon who has SO MANY LINES WHY DO YOU KEEP WRITING LINES FOR HIM GAHHHHHH

btw my frame of reference for bad American television is quite small and mainly confined to PRISON BREAK but from that I learned the bad tv rule that if a character's exact moment of death is not shown onscreen that is a cast-iron guarantee that they will be shockingly revealed to still be alive later on

Didn't Prison Break decapitate someone then bring them back to life?

yesssssssss

"I saw your head in a box"
"you saw a head in a box"

also you guys referring to every character by the actor name rather than the character name is weird imo

I think people's inability to remember character names is symptomatic of the boring nature of the characters

Nothing about this show sticks really

I realized during this episode that I only learn character names after someone dies (or "dies"), because only then do other characters talk about them by name.

Man I was really enjoying this show til I read this thread

lex otm p much. especially re: dolores and the old town. william being like, "uh you're wigging out, we just walked like a week to get to this secret location in the expensive video game park, but let's leave w/o figuring out anything" so disappointing!

i really wish the show had gifted william with a double consciounsness -- having the time of his life in the technological marvel of the park that allows this experience of heroism and adventure, but getting increasingly enthralled with the beauty and persona of the dolores-bot that's in front of him. like, finding yourself moved by watching a robot lose its grip, even though you know what it is? wouldn't that be interesting? i can feel the show TRYING to tell that story, but, not really doing it.

or at least having a moment of self-loathing after catching feelings and boning a robot. like, get a grip genius.

xp lol happy to help

i think william's jealous of whoever "arnold" is, and the special connection dolores seems to have with him. so he's like fuck this place where i'm not the apple of your eye, 24/7

like, finding yourself moved by watching a robot lose its grip, even though you know what it is? wouldn't that be interesting? i can feel the show TRYING to tell that story, but, not really doing it.

except it sorta is? he's staying pure for logan's ritch bitch sister... except he's not.. except whoa wtf am i doing, get a grip william

many things in ep8 but it pretty much left me uninterested.
Agreed about the silly part with Dolores finally getting to the place she's been looking for... and then they just leave directly !
It also confirmed I really can't stand the terrible corporate evil bitch character. Almost enough to make me switch the thing off...
Actually, I'm "that" close to giving up on the serie...
At this point I think I mainly keep watching it because I've already invested too much time in it to give up now that the end of s1 is so close !
Also, couldn't Maeve be... Wyatt ? It's her claim about raising an army, her capacity to mess with the system, etc. that makes me wonder.
I have no idea if that would be possible/make sense with all the info we have so far (and I can't bother trying to think closely about it !).

Also, couldn't Maeve be... Wyatt ? It's her claim about raising an army, her capacity to mess with the system, etc. that makes me wonder.

― AlXTC from Paris, Thursday, November 24, 2016 10:51 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nice

i thought they already showed wyatt at some point. I fell asleep when they discussed that dude's (the guy who was in love with dolores) backstory in episode 3 or 4 though when all that was introduced and have been slightly confused ever since.

hum. it's true that we see the mass shooting by Wyatt and we might see it's a guy... Thinking of it, isn't it the same shooting Dolores remembered when she entered the village in ep8 ?

Yeah, they showed us a picture of Wyatt, I'm pretty sure. He's a former army officer who's pulled a Colonel Kurtz.

there's no way that dude is actually Wyatt

it's Dolores, Maeve or maybe even Teddy

i like the idea of it being maeve and her self awareness just being part of anthony hopkins scheme

i can't bring myself to watch this after the terrible jeff wright reveal. i tried to continue last night but couldn't. all the characters are dire and boring. most of the acting is awful too but maybe that's the script.

no shame in that, it is objectively terrible on many levels

Felt like this could be a really interesting and smart thing early on but has sadly revealed itself to... not be that. Will finish out the season. I'll check back in for S2 if people shout loud enough about it being actually good now.

Oh, FUN thing too. It's missing a lot of that.

Yeah, they showed us a picture of Wyatt, I'm pretty sure. He's a former army officer who's pulled a Colonel Kurtz.

yeah, they did say that at some point. So it wouldn't make sense if it turned out to be Maeve or Dolores, I guess...
And Teddy is supposed to have fought him so he should know.
but there's definitely something weird about Wyatt and his army. At first I thought they weren't hosts because they couldn't be shot by Teddy and other hosts. But then in ep8, Teddy actually killed one of the Wyatt guys so ... I don't know !

I can't even begin to give a shit about the Wyatt storyline or think of it as important

I mean what possible reason have we been given to be intrigued by it on any level beyond the show's own exposition

yeah, sure. but it's the same issue with all the plots in the show !
I don't even remember how it was introduced. It was simply a new story/villain that was uploaded in Teddy or Dolores'father, wasn't it ?

yeah, but while I feel invested in Maeve because of the pace with which her storyline is moving, her dialogue and Thandie Newton's performance, and the potential of where it can go, I don't have any reason to even speculate about Wyatt aside - the show has intimated that he is extremely important but it's not clear why this is or what the stakes are. Shooting up a bunch of hosts ≠ real stakes

ah of course, agreed the Wyatt story is seriously underdeveloped... even by the (low) standards of the show !
but the Maeve one has serious flaws too, especially since I still don't understand why the two tech guys decided/had to obey her in the first place when it seemed so easy to just fix the problem in a second...
Anyway, I suppose we all agree, at this point, this show is a mess (with some redeeming qualities) !

Tonight's big reveal:

the robots can pee

Yeah this episode was a decent workout for Jeffrey Wright but left me feeling a bit numb from all the obvious surprises

The Assassination of Bernarnold by the Coward Robert Ford

I can't believe that's the first mention of Ford's name in that context on this thread. So on-the-nose