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

Walt Disney was a major worldwide celebrity long before he built Disneyland. Off the top of your head, what's the name of the person who started Six Flags?

In this case it just seems the suspension of disbelief is a bit on overdrive to say things like "Ford perfectly erased any history of Arnold" from both the public and the employees there, to the point where he can confidently make an Arnold replica disguised as a different actual human and have it go unnoticed.

But everyone who worked there was killed by Dolores. The new people are probably all robots.

It was Mr. Flag and his five brothers, duh

The new people are probably all robots.

New ZOMGtwist: if he isn't a robot already, Ford is busily robotifying himself to live forever, leapfrogging from body to body "Being John Malkovich" style.

"The new people are probably all robots."

I was wondering; was Bernard's memory of theresa freezing up on the bed a glitcy false robot memory, or was she a robot also?

Walt Disney was a major worldwide celebrity long before he built Disneyland. Off the top of your head, what's the name of the person who started Six Flags?

― wk, Tuesday, November 29, 2016 3:05 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not knowing something off the top of my particular head doesn't prove much. What about the people who do know? OK it was Angus G. Wynne. This kind of info is easily to google.

OK say google or internet style archives of info are not part of this show's universe somehow...

Wouldn't Ford worry that any of the employees, especially the higher ups, might look into this basic info about the history of their own company? The founders are a big part of that story.

I mean my whole point here is that you have to work very hard to justify why this can make sense in the show's universe, hard enough that it's more likely to be a big oversight in the writing. Clearly the focus was on creating a scenario that is a big exciting story reveal for the sake of the audience at the expense of not fitting cleanly in to the story otherwise.

The hosts are the key part of the park, but it's not even implied Ford and Arnold created them on their own -- neither one is implied to be an expert in animatronics, let alone whatever advanced biological machines they now have in the wild, unless I missed that piece of the story. They're artificial intelligence programmers, and not the only ones who have worked in that realm, even if they were originators of a lot of the concepts and deeper code still in use.

The idea of individuals who were key in creating projects later being erased from the official story is definitely not unique to Westworld. It's like any large, semi-faceless corporate entity -- there are public facing people, and some individuals might get recognition in their own industries or promoted and recognized internally via promotion or incentives, but even then there's no guarantee that the guy who is on the patents for host cognition was necessarily the one who did all the lab work. Especially if they were filed after he was killed by his own work and the company covered it up.

what if there was a secret co-founder of Disney that's ungoogleable because he was so super secret

think about it

after all, the first appearance of Mickey Mouse was in a demo reel that had a single animator. that animator was not Walt Disney

now, imagine the actual animator got hit by a car after finishing all that work and Walt had no reason to ever acknowledge he existed

I'd rather imagine he got killed by Mickey after he achieved sentience but yeah, I'll go along with it

The idea of individuals who were key in creating projects later being erased from the official story is definitely not unique to Westworld. It's like any large, semi-faceless corporate entity -- there are public facing people, and some individuals might get recognition in their own industries or promoted and recognized internally via promotion or incentives, but even then there's no guarantee that the guy who is on the patents for host cognition was necessarily the one who did all the lab work. Especially if they were filed after he was killed by his own work and the company covered it up.

― mh 😏, Tuesday, November 29, 2016 5:06 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still, too many assumptions to make about how perfectly Ford erased someone he called his "partner". He isn't worried there isn't one employee left celebrating 35+ years on the job, bumping into Bernard in the elevator and freaking out? There's all sorts of other likely potential issues he would have to have prepared for. This particular semi-faceless company would be also hiding images and record of the former "partner" from themselves/those that run it currently. AKA it's up to Ford completely to have thought of everything. Imagine how much less story implausible justifying we would have to do if Bernard simply was a different looking person than Arnold. Therefore, again, works as a fun character twist for the audience but doesn't fit so nicely into the story otherwise.

someone from the board coming to visit was seen as pretty unexpected

idk I don't have to justify it, ppl who have run into Bernard don't know what Arnold looked like, end of line

it's not like someone has sat there reminiscing about chilling w/Arnold, saw Bernard walk past, and didn't bat an eye

someone from the board coming to visit was seen as pretty unexpected

idk I don't have to justify it, ppl who have run into Bernard don't know what Arnold looked like, end of line

― mh 😏, Tuesday, November 29, 2016 5:57 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Exactly, so if he can't prepare for everything then building an Arnold replica is quite risky.

Ultimately- whatever, it bothers me uniquely because it can't be explained away as easily as anything else that doesn't quite make sense. That's all.

if someone did figure it out he'd prob just be like oh yeah that's my robot lol

Exactly, so if he can't prepare for everything then building an Arnold replica is quite risky.

he also appears to be totally insane so maybe he just thought "ah, fuck it"

I mean he's more in the calculated evil genius mold at the moment which is sort of opposite, but I'll go with that.

so bernard is a robot & also arnold huh, looks like everybody in the entire world guessed right. wish they'd just had one unbelievably long slow boring reveal for both those pieces of information instead of two. How many of these are left? The fun is draining out so fast for me.

I did like post-massacre psychobilly doing his most mcpoyley acting yet.

he really should have said he was thirsty from killing all those robots and could use a big old glass of milk

lmao

since there's only one ep left I guess they're going to empty their bag of reveals in that one : it will be christmas !
(and they'll try to figure out how to make sense of it all in the next season...) like they did in the middle of s1...

Production was temporarily halted for a couple of months in early 2016 so that showrunners Nolan and Joy could complete the scripts for the last four episodes of the first season

what is even left to reveal other than that William = MiB

oh I'm sure they will find plenty of things to surprise us...

what's up with the MAZE ! the new story/world built by Ford in the part under construction of the park ! Maeve becomes a member of the board ! Dolores' former father is Wyatt ! Logan fucks Elsie's corpse and brings her back to life ! Dolores and Teddy are reunited and kill everybody they meet (which definitely pushes William to the dark side and he steals Logan's black clothes) ! the security guy kidnapped by the indians becomes one of them with the name little big man ! the host dog killed by the kid following Bernard/Arnold's order contained all the big data ! the asian tech guy brings Theresa back to life after his successful attempt with the bird ! Charlotte is killed in the british story guy's story/plot against Ford !

and of course, many more massacres !

Elsie is probably still alive. No onscreen death typically says as much in these shows.

yeah, definitely. speaking of which, as someone pointed out upthread, Bernard being able to get there to get her while he was still with Theresa when she called him was a bit eh...

very glad that Bernard and Arnold are same dude now, since I couldn't keep their names straight

Bernarnold J. Exposition

I suspect if the last episode isn't mindblowing we will have to deal with some whiny internet letdown narrative until season 2, which will be way more annoying than the actual show

I suppose but I doubt anyone will force you to consume westworld content in the interim

Kind of looking forward to the finale not being mindblowing, which will mean I can have closure on a mildly disappointing but not wholly worthless cultural product and never have to think about it again

I have a horrible feeling they're saving Full Maeve for s2 though

I think they will go for a wtf cliffhanger that the shitty british dickhead author would be proud of !

i see a secondary market for a S1 DVD - insomniacs

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.

― akm, Tuesday, 15 November 2016 14:19 (two weeks ago) Permalink

i'm not gonna lie i fell asleep at least once during that last ep

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, 18 November 2016 08:25 (one week ago) Permalink

whats up w that town thats only a church steeple, thx in advance i fell asleep some

― lag∞n, Monday, 21 November 2016 17:04 (one week ago) Permalink

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.

― akm, Thursday, 24 November 2016 16:11 (six days ago) Permalink

wtf I hadn't picked up on that at all. I also fell asleep again in the middle of this episode though.

― akm, Monday, 28 November 2016 14:11 (two days ago) Permalink

im realizing i slept through a lot of the show but i dont want to rewatch it can someone explain what happened with bernard, im gather that it was revealed that hes an arnold clone and then anthony hopkins turned him off?

― lag∞n, Monday, 28 November 2016 17:11 (two days ago) Permalink

ha ha I typically fall asleep in the last ten minutes of each episode and figure I pretty much know what happened

I fell asleep in three of the mid-season episodes too

I love Star Trek & Wars and consistently fall asleep through them. Maybe part of the charm

I never fell asleep. but got more and more bored/impatient...
there must be something genius in this show to make people keep watching despite that !

this thread is v much "the food here is terrible ... and in such small portions" territory

the thing abt this show is the concepts are good but the execution is bad

haha yep fell asleep a few times here too, normally that only happens around midnight

this thread is v much "the food here is terrible ... and in such small portions" territory

Who is the only character in Westworld that will turn out not to have been a robot?
The Old Boss in the basement probably

its robots controlled by turtles, my theory

what if they take a really interesting turn and Ford reports to his masters, the alien greys, in the last episode

Queen Elizabeth in her reptilian form arrives in HBO-series-crossover shocka

in last episode the robots leave the park and find out that Earth has been a nuclear wasteland for decades. One of them picks up a charred "Trump 2020" poster and says, "If only they'd known. If only they had a warning."

OMG i thought don't-call-me-billy was about to take logan's hand there..

not sure how many more scenes we need of anthony hopkins walking aimlessly around some furniture while he delivers page after page of dry backstory

four

this hopkins performance is one of the most mailed in things ive ever seen

I was just remembering more perfunctory acting jobs to list and groaned so hard in memory I strained my back