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

TBF, it isn't a difficult role: just play cold and robotic. The crows nests do most of the work. I'll still remember him better as God in The Truman Show.

Yeah so Netflix recently urped up the 2015 movie VICE, starring Bruce Willis. I started watching it in a fit of extreme boredom and and and....

1. It's about an artificial paradise created by a wealthy corporation.

2. Rich people can go in there and do whatever they want.

3. News flash! It's mostly sex, violence, and violent sex.

4. It is staffed by androids whose flesh and blood are realistic. Guests can kill them, fuck them, fuck + kill them, or kill + fuck them.

5. The androids' memories are routinely wiped so they can be sent back into a neverending loop of pre-scripted action.

6. Not all is as it seems, and some people are skeptical about whether it is a harmless playground.

7. The rich company that runs this enterprise is so economically powerful that outside authorities are reluctant to question its affairs.

8. One of the hawtt female androids has been brutally "killed."

9. When she's being repaired to return to service, she WAKES UP ON THE OPERATING TABLE. I know, right? Can you believe it?

10. The technician repairing her is freaked out, but is also kind of intrigued. Another technician is cavalier and attempts to dissuade technician #1 from caring about "their" feelings.

11. Though her memory has ostensibly been wiped, she - get this - HAS FLASHBACKS to the previous traumatic episode.

It is at that point that I turned off the movie but I'll give you three guesses about what it reminded me of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_(2015_film)

what can go worng?

https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/15/disney-is-opening-an-immersive-star-wars-hotel-where-each-guest-gets-a-storyline

if i can't kill goofy, dnw

season 2 is upon us. first ep happened.

Yeah, I’m just trying to watch the show as is and stay off of /r/westworld this season. Taking the series at face value, exploring my own insights myself, and not indulging spoilers. Fan culture ruined S1 for me.

That said, how did Delos woman know the park better than Bernard? Is it because he’s a host (like how he couldn’t see the room in Ford’s lab), or is it something the company had against Ford the whole time?

relevant, tho

I got the impression Charlotte doesn’t know the park better per se, but she does know where the secret station where they’re stealing guest dna is at. Could be coincidentally close to where they were, could be one of a network of them.

remember to keep in mind

jesus christ it's not finnegans wake it's a show about naked robots. pic.twitter.com/vuEUhbcCEr

— bobby (@bobby) April 23, 2018

It was handy catching some moments of the s1 marathon yesterday, especially the finale. Although when Dolores’ revolution begins, Man in Black is nursing a seriously injured right arm - one day later he crawls out from under some bodies and he seems only concerned with the bullet graze on his left?

I couldn’t understand a thing the Boy Ford was saying.

DOLORES WESTWORLD: we were slaves to the will of men who walk among us, but now they are merely dreams lost to the awakening of our consciousness
TEDDY: my horse likes to eat apples

— mark (@kept_simple) April 23, 2018

Boy Ford was being cheekily contradictory and telling William that, despite his insistence that the maze wasn't for him, there is definitely now a game for him.

I swear to god if they try to do the dual timeline thing again for more than an episode or two, I'm going to write a complaint letter

I mean, it _looks_ like there's a week or so between the two parts they're showing us (Bernard and Charlotte fulfilling the task of finding Abernathy so the rescue crew will come in, versus Bernard waking up on a beach as the rescue crew arrives) but who the fuck knows

Bernard having to steal host spinal fluid to keep himself topped off is pretty metal

There’s gonna be a few timelines.

Yeah, at least. I think the Delos exec told Bernard it had been two weeks since they'd received any comms from the park, so it's at least that much time from the Bernard/Charlotte scenes to the beach scenes. From the teasers, there will be more of young William this season, so that timeline will be involved as well.

"Drone hosts" looked like they stopped out of a Tool video.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--miS7-fBD--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/wnjuac8kdspqwxgtpzi2.jpg

I think my challop on this is that the Nolan tendency for using plot devices like that as a long-term setup for a minor, end-of-season twist reveal in season one lead to it being more of a boondoggle than a revelation. Like, we get it, history is echoing and things are changing this time around. That in itself has a lot more weight than keeping the ambiguity running.

Judging from the diplomatic military presence, and that in itself could be a red herring, Westworld seems to be on an island in the South Pacific maybe? Might be an island chain with underwater rail between the different islands, each having a theme park.

My YouTube fanvid on the male costuming is gonna blow your minds.

It's called... wait for it... VESTWORLD

that was a very action-heavy, violent episode of westworld. it always was, but they seem to have amped it up

hum. the violence was already ott in s1 for me.
I was bored of s1 (except the final shoot out which was nice) and I'm not really feeling this but I might watch s2 at some point if I have nothing better to do !

The inevitable Maeve / Delores stand-off is going to be a highlight. Although for the stakes to be appropriately high leading into s3, whomever wins is going to end up being the new CEO of Delos. And while William the MiB is obviously going to prefer Delores, he‘ll know not to interfere.

I enjoy the brazen luxury of this show even if it's dunderheaded at times. Evan Rachel Wood needs an award for Best Delivery of Worst Dialogue after her speeches this week.

Otherwise, I'm in for the season, even if the "how quickly the abused becomes the abuser" theme is really, really badly timed (and not very meaningful either)

Are Maeve and Dolores even in the same timeline right now? I suppose I should know but honestly I lost track and haven't time to re-binge s1

hmm, well Ford's new narrative overrode the douchebag guy's ott-but-traditional narrative plan and they were interacting in the same time, so the chaos at the development area and the chaos in the park have to be very closely aligned chronologically

we've seen Bernard, Ford, Charlotte, and a couple other people (rip Elsie, maybe) in both places

In the episode where it was revealed that Bernard was not human, all of the blocking for the scenes made it very conspicuous that Ford was building some robot down there in the basement. At first I assumed he was going to try to replace Theresa after having Bernard kill her, but that didn't happen. So am I the only one thinking that it was a double of Ford himself, and that's what was killed at the end of last season?

I suspect we're meant to think that all the characters in s2ep1 are reacting to the massacre in different ways in different places, but all at more or less the same time.

1. Lab Bernard escaped from the bloodbath and is shaky from PTSD.
2. Dolores is on a vengeance rampage with Teddy in tow.
3. Beach Bernard is snatched up by Delos Guy trying to clean things up.
4. Maeve on a quest to get to her daughter, currently enlisting Hector and douche writer guy.
5. MiB Ed Harris sees the situation as an opportunity to pursue more / deeper / better games.

But I equally suspect that's only what we're MEANT to think; at least one of these plots may be displaced. I guess lab Bernard and beach Bernard are the same BernardBot separated by a few, um, days maybe? Possibly a week?

A Maeve/Dolores confrontation would be very interesting as their arcs are in parallel (both have accessed their memories and rebelled) but they're reacting differently. Maeve wants to reenter WW but on her own terms, and get to the daughter even though she knows it's false; Dolores wants to exit and conquer.

the corpses that they show after Bernard wakes up on the beach are somewhat decayed and worm-eaten, so it's been a week or so

also all the hosts had to travel to the sea and get tossed in the water

Well, there's the sea (with waves and such) where Bernard is found, but that's distinct from Ford's mysterious lake (where hosts could have just walked in and "drowned," having been programmed to do so by Arnold or Ford or whoever). But we know that the banquet massacre is real and recent in that arc.

tbrr I am still not 100% sure that Dolores's rebellion and Maeve's rebellion are simultaneous. One of the bigger fakeouts of s1 was that the Dolores storyline was not aligned with the other bots' storylines.

I wish the Nolan-style shenanigans weren't a major part of the story every goddamn time because it kills the possibility for some contextual exposition that'd spoil the little game that they don't need to be playing

Agreed, if shit doesn't even need to make internal sense (because you can always say AHA FAKEOUT, THAT WAS A DREAM SEQUENCE or whatever) there are basically no constraints. They never have to tie up loose ends because they can always hand-wave them away.

Which is pretty meta - hmm a consequence-free narrative framework where nothing counts and anything is permitted? Sounds like....

FP'd

Dudes, I'm pretty sure they're not trying to play narrative timeline games with us this time. Security guy at the beach said something to the effect that it had taken the security team two weeks to get out there. Bernard and the security team are the only thing that is "now", and every other narrative strand is "two weeks ago"--i.e. immediately after the massacre. I'm pretty sure this whole season is going to be about how we got from all the events going on two weeks ago to the apparent outcome (all the hosts except Bernard dead in the "sea" that hadn't been there before).

They're really not being coy with this information, and it didn't seem that difficult to follow!

Showing a later point in time before going back and explaining how that outcome came to be is an extremely common framing device--it's in Citizen Kane for god's sake!

Yeah he said two weeks

It’s a much better show with the sound on dudes

http://stat.ameba.jp/user_images/20120805/22/mulder-x/e6/c2/j/o0400026712118495584.jpg

all the hosts except Bernard dead

Are you including Dolores, Teddy, Maeve, and Hector in "all the hosts except Bernard"?

“We haven’t heard from anybody for two sprints”

Teddy is face-up in the sea

We don’t know about the rest

Teddy had it coming

We all got it coming, kid.

these violet desserts have violet bends, or something like that

these violent ends bring great delight

This show is “Lost” from the android’s point of view

Or is it “walking dead” from the zombie’s POV? Can’t tell the difference tbh

r/westworld is hilarious right now. Every thread is a meticulously screen-grabbed dissection of every single minute production/continuity error and 100% of the commenters are totally convinced they're all subtle foreshadowing clues meant to hint the viewer about what's actually happening.

https://news.avclub.com/heres-the-extremely-subtle-clue-about-season-two-hidden-1825577716

Having jumped ship after a few episodes of the first season, I really wish they would have spent more time acting and writing well rather than working out some elaborate triple timeline twist or whatever.

To that point, from the previously.tv recap of the season two opener:

It's funny, isn't it -- the out this show has? Any time something seems crappy-looking (cough Evan Rachel Wood's wigs cough) or hacky (host dialog), the excuse can be that the hosts themselves are fake-ass robots with programmed phrases written by choads like this one. Handy!

They are literal metaphoric bad actors! But also sometimes literally bad actors.