Westworld Season 2

[PilotsError 2,280]

25 minutes ago, sidis said:

no they didn't.  she was just a projection in the mib monte carlo exercise.

It doesn't' matter if she was real or a projection, they brought her back.

[sidis 9,713]

8 minutes ago, PilotsError said:

It doesn't' matter if she was real or a projection, they brought her back.

jesus christ, no they didn't.  he has been condemned to an eternity of living the same loop over and over.  william's consciousness has essentially been placed in a simulation by halores in which he gets to relive the days following skynet becoming self-aware thousands of times...into eternity.  the side effect being continued study of human behavior and whether or not...like logan...the simulation points to the same ending every time.  the projection of the daughter is just how the system communicates with him.

i mean, i guess if you are saying that the same actress is on screen the "she's been brought back" but that's fairly silly.

as a side note, the post-credits scene with harris was very black mirror-ish.

Edited June 25, 2018 by sidis

[PilotsError 2,280]

i mean, i guess if you are saying that the same actress is on screen the "she's been brought back" but that's fairly silly.

 

Yes, that's what we're saying.  There's no finality to a character's death.  We're going to see them again, in some form or fashion.

[PilotsError 2,280]

So much Walking Dead in this show.  William wants to kill Delores, KNOWS she can't be killed except for a head shot, and proceeds to shoot her five times in the torso.  Rick and Negan.

[wild_turkey 3,150]

2 hours ago, PilotsError said:

It doesn't' matter if she was real or a projection, they brought her back.

 

2 hours ago, sidis said:

jesus christ, no they didn't. 

I kinda see both sides of it and I fall somewhere in the middle. Emily the human is permanently dead but the system contains MiB's digitally recreated consciousness and contains a projection of Emily that communicates with MiB. In a sense, the character Emily continues to exist in the show, although we know it isn't actually Emily that we are seeing.

My bigger problem is when Bernard, Dolores, etc are "killed" and then immediately back "alive". Bernard has been shot in the head. Bernard is still with us. Dolores has been shot in the head. Dolores is still with us, same as she ever was. Their deaths are silly and pointless.

Furthermore, human characters like Emily, Ford, etc. could be brought back in host form whenever it suits the plot. They could easily make it where their consciousness gets uploaded into a new-and-improved host body like they were attempting with Delos. That was the purpose of the Forge. Even though the Forge is destroyed, this show has opened the can of worms where anything digital could magically have a backup that we didn't know about yet. Maybe there was a Forge 2.0 that Ford or Bernard had tucked away for a rainy day. It's madness. 

Why should I care if any of these characters die again, knowing they can be resurrected at any moment? It's a stupid game to play with the audience. Game of Thrones toed this line when they killed SPOILER but they made it clear that was a one time thing that wouldn't happen again. It was fine in that situation, but if GoT repeatedly killed and resurrected people (Hello, Ned Stark!) viewers would be equally annoyed.

Edited June 25, 2018 by wild_turkey

[idigTexas 2,258]

5 hours ago, LCHorn said:

I'm still not getting the whole "Maeve, you were always my favorite", speech from Ford and it's place in the narrative.  She's discarded at the end, her arc resolved, and it's clear the focus has always been on Dolores/Bernard/William. 

I could be wrong, but the way the scene was filmed, I got the impression that Maeve was going to be the first recovery project that the two techs tackle. 

[LCHorn 2,582]

2 hours ago, idigTexas said:

I could be wrong, but the way the scene was filmed, I got the impression that Maeve was going to be the first recovery project that the two techs tackle. 

I agree, that’s the correct read on the scene; the problem is that where is there for her story to go?  A good storyteller, if they thought of her as a “favorite”, would have done more foreshadowing.  

[bamachine 1,230]

44 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

I agree, that’s the correct read on the scene; the problem is that where is there for her story to go?  A good storyteller, if they thought of her as a “favorite”, would have done more foreshadowing.  

Well, he expected her to leave the park, on the train. He did not expect her to turn around and go on her "save the daughter" quest for an entire season. So whatever he had planned for her fell apart at that deviation from what he programmed. He even brings that up. Dolores is more of a dual creation, by first Arnold(Bernard) and then by Ford. I think Maeve was a Ford solo project. Thereby proving that without Arnold building the foundation, Maeve crumbled in upon herself.

[HoustonFrog 368]

I thought the final episode was good but season 2 was overall meh. Maeve's story was straight awful/waste of time. 

I thought the Bernard/Ford/Arnold/Dolores story was still very strong. 

Could take or leave MIB storyline. 

[Buzzrock 14,867]

So much Walking Dead in this show.  William wants to kill Delores, KNOWS she can't be killed except for a head shot, and proceeds to shoot her five times in the torso.  Rick and Negan.

Except in TWD every shot is a head shot.

[thrillhammer 683]

5 hours ago, HoustonFrog said:

I thought the final episode was good but season 2 was overall meh. Maeve's story was straight awful/waste of time. 

I thought the Bernard/Ford/Arnold/Dolores story was still very strong. 

Could take or leave MIB storyline. 

season 1 was so exciting and new every episode.  this season, not so much.  i was in fact ready for it to be over about 5 episodes ago.  kind of a beatdown with all the flashbacks and timeline confusion, and whose consciousness is in whose body.  it was exhausting to keep up with.   maeve's story was boring.  shogunworld and safariworld were total deadend plots that came out of nowhere and went nowhere so were essentially pointless.  

[Buzzrock 14,867]

And nobody ever runs out of ammo ever, nor has to reload in TWD. 

Someone on tos once complained about how tv and movie guns have no recoil. And now that’s all I see in almost every Hollywood shooting scene.

[bschoolprof 6,232]

Curly Bill for me on this show. I cut the finale off halfway through. The writers have mindfucked themselves into believing this is interesting or going somewhere.

[Red Five 40,593]

I stuck it out to the end and I wish I hadn’t. Season 1 was an A- and season 2 was a D.

[heso 2,748]

Y’all mother fuckers need Jesus. The story wasn’t hard to follow. 

i do agree with the point about completely eliminating the finality of death taking a lot of the punch out of certain death scenes. The teddy scene being the most egregious.

Another problem I had was MIB being a headshot ace from 200 yards away on horseback but then never firing one above Dolores’ neck before he blew his hand off. 

My biggest fear of this season was that we’d they’d go crazy with the marble swapping and we’d be constantly guessing whose mind was in which body. Thankfuly they left that alone except for the one case. 

Overall not as good as season 1. Overall still very enjoyable. 

Edited June 28, 2018 by heso

[DougO 5,239]

It wasn't True Detective 2 shitty, but it was bad enough that I won't invest my time in it any longer...unless I end up getting it for free somehow and there's not a game on.

[Mac8111 2,103]

Lol what did I just watch 

This x 100

[RomaVicta 29,756]

Y'all have covered it pretty well starting with Doug-O at the top of the page.

I'll just add that part of the problem with some of us not following the plot(s) is that the story is not good enough to invite me to think about it. The last two episodes were basically drawn out lectures about free will and freedom that could have been written by a couple of bright college freshmen.

The filmmakers are so sure that we are hanging onto to every word and empathizing so profoundly with each cliche act of self-sacrifice that they didn't bother to make the show interesting. They're not smart enough to enlighten me about life. This is what I mean about a show falling in love with itself. TWD is another prime example. They think the audience is enthralled just to be in the same room as the characters in the show. 

The characters are so diminished by the end of the season that, as stated above, I don't really care much about any of them. Bernard's constant befuddled passivity and Dolores' unexplained mercilessness to her own kind reduced them to two dimensions. Maeve is the most wasted asset in the show. Her cunning and grasp of what is going on is melted by schmaltz that the creators of the show insist on constantly vomiting on us. 

The music was oppressive and sappy as well.

Big disappointment overall.

[Dutchrudder 11,103]

Finally got around to finishing this season and it was just as boring and pointless as I expected. This whole season was a tiresome slog through a needlessly convoluted narrative that said something so simple in the most unnecessarily complex ways. It's like when someone writes an essay using a thesaurus to find big vocabulary words to make a simple point, when a short sentence would suffice.

 

None of the out of sync storylines were necessary, none of the characters were particularly interesting, and some of them just didn't make sense. I don't know how someone could enjoy that season without being a Host.

 

 

[DougO 5,239]

11 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

The characters are so diminished by the end of the season that, as stated above, I don't really care much about any of them. Bernard's constant befuddled passivity and Dolores' unexplained mercilessness to her own kind reduced them to two dimensions. Maeve is the most wasted asset in the show. Her cunning and grasp of what is going on is melted by schmaltz that the creators of the show insist on constantly vomiting on us. 

 

 

All of it, but especially this part is perfectly described. "Bufuddled passivity"...very much like my own feelings about this show by the last couple  of episodes. I'm just not content any longer knowing somebody else is pulling the strings and I'm just being manipulated.

[destroya 366]

What everyone else says.  

It's never good when the most notable aspect about a show is a convoluted narrative structure as opposed to its plot, themes, characters etc.  Decent enough but disappointing that it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been.

 

[52-80 19,066]

i was in it for the tits.

[txhorns 2,407]

The only way to save this show is to have Delores, Emily, Elsie and Hale all nude in an hour long orgy with each other for every episode next season.

[Knoxtnhorn 5,928]

Good to see some of the posts on here.  I was out of town and had to watch the last 3 episodes last night.  I was worried that I wasn't "getting it".

To add to some of the other complaints, it sure seemed convenient that so many characters randomly crossed paths all over a gigantic park/world which, as MIB said, "You could wander for months and not see another person".  (Or something like that.)  

[Celery Man 20,874]

It’s not that it’s impossible to follow the convoluted timeline. It’s just difficult when you stop giving a shit and the show airs Sunday nights.

[irishtexan 11,442]

I think the problem with the show is that it's fucking stupid and boring. 

[Turkleton 145]

7 minutes ago, irishtexan said:

I think the problem with the show is that it's fucking stupid and boring. 

Not at first, but yeah, it got that way.

[elfenix 34,168]

Didn't computer-Logan tell Bernard they'd done this a shit ton of times?

[Augustus 3,061]

On 6/25/2018 at 2:15 PM, sidis said:

jesus christ, no they didn't.  he has been condemned to an eternity of living the same loop over and over.  william's consciousness has essentially been placed in a simulation by halores in which he gets to relive the days following skynet becoming self-aware thousands of times...into eternity.  the side effect being continued study of human behavior and whether or not...like logan...the simulation points to the same ending every time.  the projection of the daughter is just how the system communicates with him.

i mean, i guess if you are saying that the same actress is on screen the "she's been brought back" but that's fairly silly.

as a side note, the post-credits scene with harris was very black mirror-ish.

They made it pretty clear that the post-credit interaction between MIB and his daughter was not a "simulation."

For one thing, the screen wasn't in letterbox format.  Secondly, his daughter told him quite clearly they were not in a simulation.

Which leaves only the possibility they were two hosts, I suppose.  Not a big deal, I guess, but it wasn't happening in the matrix.

[Augustus 3,061]

The thing that disappointed me about the immortality potential for humans that they played up so much is the fact that they weren't actually downloading anybody's consciousness into a computer program/machine, they were just making copies that could replicate them accurately.

Why do I care if after I'm dead, they can fire up a machine that imitates me perfectly, even if it's self conscious and thinks it's really me?

It'd be great if I wanted to murder somebody and replace them with a copy, but for a guy like Delos or Ford, the host "minds" weren't their actual minds.

[HouTex 1,847]

The thing that disappointed me about the immortality potential for humans that they played up so much is the fact that they weren't actually downloading anybody's consciousness into a computer program/machine, they were just making copies that could replicate them accurately.
Why do I care if after I'm dead, they can fire up a machine that imitates me perfectly, even if it's self conscious and thinks it's really me?
It'd be great if I wanted to murder somebody and replace them with a copy, but for a guy like Delos or Ford, the host "minds" weren't their actual minds.

Agree mostly. But the theme the bozo writers were exploring is whether life is simply memories that can be replicated and placed in a new body (host) or even given to/experienced by hosts that were never human. They seem to assume that such memories and thoughts would equate to a consciousness or a living thing. That's basically the story and it's pretty simple and the writers did their best to screw it up with all the time line bullshit and dead-end storylines. I'm out for season 3.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,965]

Somebody mentioned the theory that they had to change the story to keep from copying Bladerunner 2049. They obviously had no problem copying its tediously slow pacing in the last episode.

[52-80 19,066]

The show has its moments, and showed immense potential like in S04 when they kept the narrative tight and focused.  

Then they got too clever and went (memento^matrix) on everyone, with silly goosechases like that entirely wasteful samurai world bullshit.  

 

[Guest Lobo]

1 hour ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Somebody mentioned the theory that they had to change the story to keep from copying Bladerunner 2049. They obviously had no problem copying its tediously slow pacing in the last episode.

I'm actually half serious when I say that they're also copying, in a way, another Anthony Hopkins movie--Freejack.  In it, on the 'spiritual switchboard', a dying human's memories/soul/humanity can be stored and transferred into a 'host body', in this case the great speed racer Emilio Estevez.  I think Mick Jagger is like the Stubbs character 

[irishtexan 11,442]

4 hours ago, Augustus said:

They made it pretty clear that the post-credit interaction between MIB and his daughter was not a "simulation."

For one thing, the screen wasn't in letterbox format.  Secondly, his daughter told him quite clearly they were not in a simulation.

Which leaves only the possibility they were two hosts, I suppose.  Not a big deal, I guess, but it wasn't happening in the matrix.

That this observation even exists tells you how stupid this show is. Jesus Christ. What a disaster.

[lateshow 1,303]

I haven't started season 2 yet. But am I to believe that this show has turned to shit? If so, I'm bailing before I even start s2. 

[McCroskey 1,493]

On 6/26/2018 at 6:00 PM, Buzzrock said:

 

Someone on tos once complained about how tv and movie guns have no recoil. And now that’s all I see in almost every Hollywood shooting scene.

 

If we are going down that route, every character on this show would be deaf as FUCK after all of the shooting they engage in regularly, oftentimes indoors.

[Js1 85,056]

5 hours ago, Augustus said:

They made it pretty clear that the post-credit interaction between MIB and his daughter was not a "simulation."

For one thing, the screen wasn't in letterbox format.  Secondly, his daughter told him quite clearly they were not in a simulation.

Which leaves only the possibility they were two hosts, I suppose.  Not a big deal, I guess, but it wasn't happening in the matrix.

Was it just me/my tv or did future Emily look....weird.

Was she a projection-like hologram?

[bschoolprof 6,232]

6 hours ago, Augustus said:

The thing that disappointed me about the immortality potential for humans that they played up so much is the fact that they weren't actually downloading anybody's consciousness into a computer program/machine, they were just making copies that could replicate them accurately.

Why do I care if after I'm dead, they can fire up a machine that imitates me perfectly, even if it's self conscious and thinks it's really me?

It'd be great if I wanted to murder somebody and replace them with a copy, but for a guy like Delos or Ford, the host "minds" weren't their actual minds.

I had the same thought and posted this upthread several pages back.  Here:

On 6/5/2018 at 9:58 AM, bschoolprof said:

I need some help following along.

...

4) So is Ford's consciousness really his or just a computer imitation?   If it's just an imitation, I don't see how this is living on or why it's important to even imitate the old consciousness.  They could reprogram my fake consciousness and it would never know the difference.  

 

[52-80 19,066]

1 hour ago, lateshow said:

I haven't started season 2 yet. But am I to believe that this show has turned to shit? If so, I'm bailing before I even start s2. 

trying to make sense of S2 plot like...

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,356]

Season 2 went full fucking Aggy: It started okay then turned into a disaster at the end.

[Buzzrock 14,867]

I haven't started season 2 yet. But am I to believe that this show has turned to shit? If so, I'm bailing before I even start s2. 

Unfortunately it has a couple of really good episodes. Also unfortunately it seems to have lost its way.

It might work better if you binge it. I’d say it’s worth it for the MiB episode and maybe the Indian episode.

[pops 6,972]

3 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Season 2 went full fucking Aggy: It started okay then turned into a disaster at the end.

Full on October Aggy for the whole fucking season. 

[PilotsError 2,280]

Unfortunately it has a couple of really good episodes. Also unfortunately it seems to have lost its way.

It might work better if you binge it. I’d say it’s worth it for the MiB episode and maybe the Indian episode.

The delos episode was good too

[sidis 9,713]

On 6/29/2018 at 3:26 AM, Augustus said:

They made it pretty clear that the post-credit interaction between MIB and his daughter was not a "simulation."

For one thing, the screen wasn't in letterbox format.  Secondly, his daughter told him quite clearly they were not in a simulation.

Which leaves only the possibility they were two hosts, I suppose.  Not a big deal, I guess, but it wasn't happening in the matrix.

Sure, if you ignore the fact that the show’s writers and creators said precisely that it was. But whatever...

[heso 2,748]

On 6/29/2018 at 10:45 AM, lateshow said:

I haven't started season 2 yet. But am I to believe that this show has turned to shit? If so, I'm bailing before I even start s2. 

I thought most of season was very solid. With several episodes being among the best of the series. 

The last two episodes, especially the finale, went off the rails a bit. 

In typical surly fashion, anything less than ‘slams and goes hard’ is full on aggy sucking shit through a straw. 

The hate in this thread probably already tained your eye towards being over critical, but I really enjoyed 90% of the season. 

[Finkle_Is_Einhorn 35]

To all the people who couldn't follow Season 2

 

[Patrick Bateman 3,903]

Finished it up last night.... Intentionally avoided the thread because I was constantly behind.  I didn't have much issue following the timelines nor what conceptually going on although I did have to double check a couple of times against interviews because the plot points were pretty fucking lame and was hoping I was missing something.

Overall, season 2 was utterly disappointing and a lot of it was very boring.  The characters bored me (confused Bernard is particularly annoying) and a lot of talented performers were pretty much wasted.  Shogun World, which should have badass, was nothing more than an annoying distraction.  There's still a lot of the show which is way above average but when you start looking at the costumes or art direction or tech to defend a show, you've already lost...... If you can't be great, at least don't be boring..... The show failed.

Read an article about how the ratings were down 30% for season over season finale.  Yikes.  They also haven't written season 3 although they've mapped it out.  Hmmm....

Ultimately, I'll probably DVR and see how season 3 is going but no longer compelled to watch the show.  

[henrygandorf 29,174]

finally watched this last night.  waiting a week to watch a finale pretty much nutshells my feelings about this season, as do many of the posters here, but here's what i'll add. 

it wasn't that the story was hard to follow.  it was that the story was hard to want to follow.  i had little motivation - mostly because of what has been said constantly already - no protagonist, no one to care about, and no finality from deaths.

it was clear that they told the story out of order, my guess is for two reasons - (1) it makes it more interesting (in their minds) and (2) they avoid having to further the present story, because they didn't have enough story to tell.

i don't give a shit if "questions got answered".  i was fine with not knowing/caring.  

when a show has this type of backlash, it's either our fault or their fault.  the fact that they had articles prepared and smarmy quotes and explanations all geared up and ready is their way of saying "if you didn't like it or didn't get it, then it's because you're not sophisticated enough to follow along."  reminds me of veena sud's attitude following s1 of the killing.

Edited July 2, 2018 by henrygandorf

[CooterBrown 17,875]

I gave up like 3 episodes in. Does Hale or the daughter ever get naked? I’ll just delete it from the DVR if they don’t.