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

ok only halfway through, but the guest who escaped from the other park running from a tiger is totally William’s daughter, right

Yes

This episode was pretty great imo

we’re going to find out that Bernard has an Arnold layer, at least the skills, below his surface programming, I think

was so hyped to see Elsie back

sounds like the long term investor pitch was maybe immortality, but I suspect it got pivoted to abducting guests and inserting their doubles back into the real world at some point

possibly for AI training a bunch of guests were actually host androids who were dupes of guests, hence the tremor problems

this is finally good again

"You wanted me to play your game, and I'm gonna play it to the bone" was very bad, though.

i think ford had clementine bring me here for a reason

you've got to admit that hiding your secret transhuman tech lab in the middle of a rich people's vacation resort that you own and operate is a pretty Bond Villain move

"You wanted me to play your game, and I'm gonna play it to the bone"

i'm stealing this for everyday use.

I'm gonna edit this column to the bone!

You wanted me to convert simple HTML to BBcode, and I'm gonna convert it to the bone

Finding out that a character that Bernard was heavily implied to have murdered was actually just imprisoned in a cave with a bucket and some protein bars was a bit of an eye-roller.

Plus the Elsie character seems dropped in from some other, lesser, show. SyFy original Mary Sue

Hrm. I think Elsie is fun and I'm glad to see her.

I don't remember when/how she found out BernardBot was a bot.

She just found out in the most recent episode! So even as he was manhandling her into a cave she didn't suspect?

Elsie's awesome and shannon woodward is adorable fuiud

elsie a bot

NOOOOOOOOOOO

I just assumed BernBot was programmed at some point not to kill her, for whatever purposes.

I had to listen to a guy mansplain this show to a woman at a camping trip this weekend and it was fucking painful. I just kept my mouth shut.

Ford spared Elsie because while she knew too much, she wouldn't be able to stop him, and he didn't hate her guts the way he apparently did Theresa. And also you can't kill your audience surrogate?

The song Madame Akane danced to was a little OTT.

what was that a cover of?

https://youtu.be/__DEAK3AinM

oh jfc I feel so dumb

OK so I stuck around for Shogun World and managed to disappoint myself because the show will never 100% become Bene Gesserit Maeve and the Seven Samurai.

near the beginning of the ep, when the bald security dude is back at HQ he looks down at a body - is that elsie? with chopped-off hair, holding a big knife?

I don't know who that was but none of the recappers have picked up on it. Again, my money is on them not killing off the audience surrogate(s). Teddy is always never not doomed, but Felix and Elsie and Stubbs are our people.

Eve Batey @ previosuly.tv has the best hypothesis for how Maeve's jedi powers work.

also the link she includes to the page about the actual bluetongue virus (http://www.thecattlesite.com/diseaseinfo/245/bluetongue-btv/) validates that Teddy's suggestion was the right one all along and pops abernathy is just a sadist / firebug

Control Strategy

The strategy is to contain the outbreak and minimise trade impact by:

• -*using a combination of quarantine and movement controls to prevent spread
• -*treatments and husbandry procedures to control vectors, reduce transmission and protect susceptible animals
• -*tracing and surveillance to determine the extent of virus and vector distribution
• -*zoning to define infected and disease-free areas.

There is no justification for stamping out but some animals may need to be destroyed for welfare reasons. It is not possible to eradicate the bluetongue vectors.

shogun wolrd is 1000x better than westworld

in other words, elvis telecom otm

the host-to-host network was pretty obviously the thing Maeve is using because she's a host communicating with/controlling other hosts?

also I have no idea why a virus that was 90% backstory and not infecting real animals needs delving into. it's a metaphor about killing the weak before they get sick and infect the strong. teddy's gotta get strong real fast or he's heading to the dustbin of history

shogun world having a lot of stories photocopied from westworld was a nice reverse on seven samurai/magnificent seven

teddy's gotta get strong real fast or he's heading to the dustbin of history

And he winds up that way anyway! Dolores’ idea of strength is completely sociopathic.

nah, he's still weak

she's talking about unrepentant killing any host she thinks won't be of use in battle, and Teddy's letting people go

she might be sociopathic but she has a damn ethos

I think Teddy's still just tryna find ways of advocating that the two of them just go off and do cuddly homesteadin' while Westworld burns

this show is so shapeless and boring. they have no idea where they're going or why, do they

they have no idea where they're going or why, do they

I have the opposite fear: that they DO know where they're going. They have it all mapped out. It will take years to get there. And it'll turn out to be some mind-gnawingly boring and/or nonsensical bullshit. Basically the Lost model.

If they were really just making it up as they went along, that would at least allow for the possibility of something fun and/or interesting happening by sheer accident.

aren't they going ... west

the idea that there are a bunch of robots who are now aware of their state, but still only have the narrow language and characterological reactions of their stereotypical programming to apprehend it, is really interesting! the show seems only barely aware that's what it's about or something.

they should make Bernard go back to glitching and do a full-on Michael Crichton story crossover: he becomes The Terminal Man and goes into occasional violent fugues

They set the stuff with Maeve in the ep where Bernard uses a host to locate Abernathy, so I thought something like this might be coming.

mh did you watch the last episode? Or are you rob bricken?

I don’t get hating on this show for being too much like Lost or for “not going anywhere” - if you don’t care about the characters just say so, otherwise you’re just saying this television is like television like some kind of Goldilocks who has no business in a house for bears

Sad thing is that it is so rare for science fiction on TV to get a decent budget and chance to do something different, you want it to be good but thing is that many probably know a handful of science fiction books/comics that would be better than what you got dealt.

I fell asleep late on the long first episode and saw all of season 1. Westworld was mostly mediocre and bit too soap opera. The only episode that I thought held up on it's own as a good tv show was the one when Maeve realized she wasn't crazy and figured out what the drawings meant.

Don't think Westworld has any hold on Lost, that show had quite a few good episodes that were very well done, it's just that the overall arc came up a bit flat. The whole buildup on the hatch was really great.

Westworld probably would have worked better as a long movie. There just is not enough really there to care about figuring out the secrets.

I guess what I meant to get at is that the violent fugues need fucking

Maeve not being able to use English commands on Japanese-speaking hosts might also explain how & why the Ghost Nation seem immune to the psychopath bug that’s spreading over the mesh network, and are still protecting guests (albeit by rounding them up, presumably as their storyline demands)

man I hate teddy. I can't wait until he's dead. that story line is so goddamned boring. More Maeve killing things and people and robots.

didn't even occur to me that the ghost nation was protecting guests.

Why were they interested in Sizemore?

I don’t get hating on this show for being too much like Lost or for “not going anywhere” - if you don’t care about the characters just say so

I'll say it. I think the entire Dolores storyline including her, Teddy, and whatever goddamn robo-consciousness the show is trying to portray is 100% inert junk with zero stakes at all.