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Westworld Season 2

mackavelli

By mackavelli
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Hank Scorpio
Hank Scorpio

Pretty sure the same thing would happen if my wife saw my browsing history. 

DougO
DougO

It's not keeping up that has become a challenge to me. It's just that I don't care enough about any of the characters or the overall plot to want to keep keeping up. There's no motivation. Regardless

Anton Chigurh
Anton Chigurh

Here’s a solid chronological timeline chart.

sidis

sidis 10016

Posted
Posted (edited)
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 by sidis
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wild_turkey

wild_turkey 3296

Posted
Posted (edited)
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 by wild_turkey
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idigTexas

idigTexas 2330

Posted
Posted
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. 

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LCHorn

LCHorn 2751

Posted
Posted
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.  

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bamachine

bamachine 1231

Posted
Posted
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.

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thrillhammer

thrillhammer 686

Posted
Posted
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.  

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heso

heso 2863

Posted
Posted (edited)

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 by heso
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RomaVicta

RomaVicta 30578

Posted
Posted

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.

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Dutchrudder

Dutchrudder 11243

Posted
Posted

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.

 

 

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DougO

DougO 5264

Posted
Posted
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.

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destroya

destroya 403

Posted
Posted

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.

 

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Knoxtnhorn

Knoxtnhorn 6306

Posted
Posted

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.)  

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Augustus

Augustus 3061

Posted
Posted
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.

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Augustus

Augustus 3061

Posted
Posted

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.

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HouTex

HouTex 1939

Posted
Posted
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.
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52-80

52-80 19377

Posted
Posted

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.  

 

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

Posted
Posted
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 

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irishtexan

irishtexan 11712

Posted
Posted
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.

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McCroskey

McCroskey 1510

Posted
Posted
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.

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Js1

Js1 87179

Posted
Posted
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?

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bschoolprof

bschoolprof 6341

Posted
Posted
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.  

 

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Buzzrock

Buzzrock 15136

Posted
Posted
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.
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sidis

sidis 10016

Posted
Posted
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...

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heso

heso 2863

Posted
Posted
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. 

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Patrick Bateman

Patrick Bateman 3966

Posted
Posted

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.  

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29225

Posted
Posted (edited)

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 by henrygandorf
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