HBO's Westworld VII: Abort?.Retry.Fail

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

No, Bernard wasn't in Ford's memory, Bernard was in the Cradle where all the memories of all the hosts were backed up. The memory of the house would be there, at the very least, from Dolores' back-ups. She lived there for years with Bernard. And Bernard's memories would have been backed up as well, so his memories of the house are there too. And I assume Ford had his own memories of the house, he would have been there with Arnold many times. And all his memories are now in the Cradle too.

"Bernard: This house...it's so familiar.

Ford:  It ought to be. This is the home Arnold was building for his family. He created it here first. He created everything here.

Bernard:  This is where you created me.

Ford:  I could hardly let you take those first teetering steps in the real world, Bernard. We refined you here, tested you, for many years."

Now, you are making the argument this means it was all done in the Cradle, which would mean that Dolores' control unit would have been removed from her head for years so she could live in the Cradle with Barnard's control unit. 

But in my interpretation she wasn't - she was doing her routine in Westworld. She had her day job, and, I suspect, at the end of the day went to the house to be with Bernard. The house seems to be just a short walk from the town.

Once Bernard was perfected, he went to the 'real world', working alongside humans who never suspected a damn thing. And Dolores then acquired a family farm where she lived with mum and dad. Bernard wasn't ready for the 'real world', working side by side with humans, for a long time, so he was hidden in the perfect place, Arnold's own house. Westworld, after all, is not the real world.

Also, Ford does say 'we'. He certainly didn't have a control unit to rip out of his head to work with Dolores and Bernard in the Cradle.

And if this is all too much to read, sorry.    Just defending my position!

 

 

 

For what it's worth they wouldn't have needed to remove her control unit. Her backup was already in the cradle. They could just make another copy of her brain and have it live with Bernard in the virtual house for years while physical Dolores is still out and about. 

While ford didn't have a control unit, I assume there was some kinda VR setup that let people access the cradle. Like for when they were testing narratives and stuff. 

[Fragile Bird]

6 hours ago, RumHam said:

For what it's worth they wouldn't have needed to remove her control unit. Her backup was already in the cradle. They could just make another copy of her brain and have it live with Bernard in the virtual house for years while physical Dolores is still out and about. 

While ford didn't have a control unit, I assume there was some kinda VR setup that let people access the cradle. Like for when they were testing narratives and stuff. 

*shrugs*

We disagree, then.

[dbunting]

This episode felt a lot better, seemed like things moved forward quite a bit.

I wish they had just killed William and Maeve, or don't shoot them at all. Throughout the show we see the cast majority (don't want to say all then have a perfectionist point one out) of people/hosts die from a single gun shot wound, realistic or not that's how it happens. Now we have these two take multiple shots each and likely see them live, hell William took 4 I think. Just be consistent.  

[Astromech]

8 hours ago, dbunting said:

This episode felt a lot better, seemed like things moved forward quite a bit.

I wish they had just killed William and Maeve, or don't shoot them at all. Throughout the show we see the cast majority (don't want to say all then have a perfectionist point one out) of people/hosts die from a single gun shot wound, realistic or not that's how it happens. Now we have these two take multiple shots each and likely see them live, hell William took 4 I think. Just be consistent.  

The plot armor is obvious. I was anticipating William's daughter saving him there.

[RumHam]

8 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

*shrugs*

We disagree, then.

Yeah. Like I said I've gotta watch it again. It's possible my preconceptions about what The Cradle was (from an article I read summing up some of the ARG stuff) colored my understanding of it. Either way I don't think this plot point is meant to be ambiguous.  

[dooog]

On 6/5/2018 at 7:27 PM, red snow said:

That's the key difference (and mistake) this season. They think we want to be confused and guessing about the show but not at the price of the story. Last year it made narrative sense (it could work as one or two stories) whereas I think you'd need a map to try and work out what's going on when this year. I guess they might get points for meta trickery if we're supposed to feel like the charaters trying to get to the centre of a maze.

Completely agree it is a mistake. This season has been slow and convoluted and much of that is down to the multiple timelines. It just feels as if they hit a home run with the audience in S1 and didn't have the stones to continue the story without using the exact same winning formula.

Unfortunately it's yet another of a very long list of shows that fails to live up to an excellent opening season.

[red snow]

3 hours ago, dooog said:

Completely agree it is a mistake. This season has been slow and convoluted and much of that is down to the multiple timelines. It just feels as if they hit a home run with the audience in S1 and didn't have the stones to continue the story without using the exact same winning formula.

Unfortunately it's yet another of a very long list of shows that fails to live up to an excellent opening season.

They seem to have forgotten that a lot/most people watched season 1 not knowing/scoffing at the idea there were two timelines at play. I think people were more interested at the idea of the plight of the hosts and their slow awakening and who was/wasn't a host. They seem to have dropped both of these by not really having any "who is a host " story and by making the hosts go on (understandable) killing sprees which makes it a bit harder to feel for their plight. I guess there are still all the hosts who seem to be being controlled by Maeve and Delores who I feel a little bad for eg Teddy.

It's not the worst second season I've seen and I think there's room to salvage the season even with the remaining episodes and definitely with a third season where they've been given time to really think about what they want to do. Season 3 of "True Detective" will hopefully show that it's better to give the creative talent more time between seasons. The same good be true of Westworld.

The idea that the park was repetitive so that they could study the humans in order to turn humans into immortal digital life was a nice revelation (and not one I'd thoroughly considered) so the show is still doing some good things. This idea is fun as it gives yet another motive behind MiB essentially living there as he's trying to achieve said immortality still. It's also fun because it's flawed - is MiB the real William? or would people digitised based on how they play a game render a different shade of the person. These are things I have more fun pondering than when Bernard A is in comparison to Bernard D

[Cas Stark]

Last week's ratings went up a bit.  Maybe it will finish a little stronger.  I hope so.

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/daily-ratings/sunday-cable-ratings-june-3-2018/

[Spring Bass]

Those are just the TV ratings, though. A show like Westworld probably draws much of its viewership from streaming services rather than TV watching. 

[DMC]

On 6/3/2018 at 11:27 PM, Nictarion said:

That episode was insane. I feel like more happened in this one than the entire season leading up to it. Great stuff. 

My first thought at the conclusion of the episode was "well, they finally started the season."  The Delos episode was great and I suppose the Shogun excursion was necessary, but this season would have lent itself well to being only 7-8 episodes.

On 6/4/2018 at 6:09 AM, Mark Antony said:

Not gonna lie I thought Man in Black was toast. Guy got shot like four fucking times. Surprised he survived. 

I think he got shot more than four times.  Probably more than 50 Cent.

On 6/4/2018 at 8:09 AM, HelenaExMachina said:

There were a few moments I wasn’t too pleased by because it felt a little too forced/difficult to suspend disbelief. William surviving all those gunshots for example. The Cradle explosion...why on Earth, after seeing the massacre upstairs, would he not just straight up shoot her? I mean it made for a good scene but it was a bit meh with the set up.

Pretty sure people speculated Arnold’s house had been built in the park which, if I understood properly, turned out to be correct? So is the park built on what was once a city? Or am I completely off here?

have to disagree with MA though, I loved Hale. As a character, obviously. As a person she’s a stone cold sociopath. It’s...chilling the way she says “analysis” and seems more robotic/emotionless than Bernard!

Trailer for next week...

  Reveal hidden contents

Hmmm. Curious choice, could be interesting but worried it will break the momentum they built up this episode. I mean they left Maeve on deaths door and they want to take an interlude with a new character? Hopefully it works though, I e known shows to pull off these kind of interludes before with huge success (*cough* the cut wife)

 

The bolded is straight up plot contrivance.  At least it gave Angela a decent send off.  I was excited/anticipating them actually, ya know, building on her character.  Same with Clem.  Alas.

As for speculating about Arnold's house being built in the park - I kindof sorta called that one.  That place did not look like a house made in reality.  It was very Inception-y when it was first introduced in the second (?) ep of the season.

And yeah, I love Hale's character.  Tessa Thompson is pure awesomeness.  As for the trailer:

Spoiler

Really excited that it looks like we'll be getting a digression into the history of Ghost Nation.  Not only is it pretty much the only question they haven't really addressed yet (in terms of their behavior), that should set up Maeve's storyline (at least) for the last two episodes.

 

On 6/4/2018 at 10:26 AM, Fragile Bird said:

Both Maeve and MiB should be dead, either from the gunshots or from bleeding out. We live in a world where kids murder kids with AR-15s, and if you read the story I linked from the emergency room doctor in the gun thread, those guns have bullets that basically implode any organs they touch because of the velocity of the bullets. I’m sure the modern guns of the future are more deadly. MiB was at least shot by what was likely still old technology, but geez, he was shot so many times.

Well, that's the trick isn't it?  I agree with the consensus that William should be dead, but there's is a case to be made for why he isn't.  Ford may have "turned off" the switch that allowed guests to be shot at the same velocity as hosts, but who's to say he didn't modify it when it came to shooting William -- or was even in control of the hosts that shot William at that exact time.  I expect his daughter will show up and super-cauterize his wounds like they've already established as a convenience.

On 6/4/2018 at 10:38 AM, Cas Stark said:

I love that Sizemore saved Maeve.

Me too!  This is something I called, albeit in conversations with my brother and not on here.

On 6/4/2018 at 1:14 PM, Cas Stark said:

I have to wonder, ever so slightly if Ed Harris IS a host, because he really should have died.  And the show is better than using such a cheap tactic as 'looks dead' but isn't twice in the same scene.  

This is an intuitive inference, but I really hope not.

On 6/4/2018 at 4:14 PM, Corvinus said:

We don't know how much of Ford is in Bernard. Considering that Bernard is also in there, maybe a successfully copied part of Ford's brain is in there only. Ford said that the human mind was the last analog piece that still needed to be digitized. 

I don't think Ford's "brain," or whatever you want to call it, is successfully copied.  Otherwise, why not just put it in a host he obviously could have built beforehand?  I think Ford's "brain" is using Bernard to get to the Valley Beyond temporarily because he knew (or perhaps even orchestrated) the Cradle was about to go kaboom.  What happens once Bernard gets to the Valley Beyond and Ford's aims therein?  Fuck if I know.

On 6/4/2018 at 7:37 PM, karaddin said:

Ford isn't in a body of his own though - he's not generally directly controlling the body, he's not feeling it's sensory input and thinking its his own body. I see hiding in the back of a host as different to being reborn in a host body.

Yep, exactly.

On 6/4/2018 at 10:44 PM, Pony Empress Jace said:

People don't die immediately from pretty much any wound unless you disable the brain or heart. Even the most gruesome injuries to an major artery will leave you living long enough to scream and cry for a few seconds.

Right.

On 6/6/2018 at 1:13 AM, Fragile Bird said:

The thought occurs that the Delos Corporation is basically just the natural extension and progression of a real life company - Facebook. Or it's ilk.

Facebook, and others, are sucking in great swaths of personal information on billions of people in the world. Westworld is where all that could lead! It's a morality play!

Indeed.  The allegorical facet is actually getting a little too on the nose.

On 6/6/2018 at 6:16 PM, Astromech said:

The plot armor is obvious. I was anticipating William's daughter saving him there.

Stay tuned!

[DMC]

While I absolutely loved Sunday's episode in a vacuum, it did disappointment me in a broader sense.  I was a huge fan of the Sarah Connor Chronicles show, and a big part of why is because they were developing a storyline in which the robots had conflicting interests.  That is what I had hoped this second season would explore - once the hosts gained sentience, they would be cast into the all-too theoretical "state of nature" that is the foundation of liberal political philosophy from Hobbes to Locke to Rousseau and is a perpetually interesting question.  Like Ford says in the first season, we ate the neanderthals.  But how, and why?  I think this is, full stop, the most interesting question robot sci-fi can possibly address.  It's also why I really like Prometheus while most feel differently.

And, while they're clearly going for that with the Dolores v Maeve dynamic, this episode almost went out of its way to streamline the concept to purely a juxtaposition between the two.  I hoped this season would be focused on fleshing out the characters and motivation of other hosts so we could have a more nuanced examination.  Instead, we now have:

• Angela, almost certainly completely dead
• Zombie Clementine, probably completely dead
• Teddy, functionally eradicated
• Abernathy, eviscerated 
• Bernard, compromised - at least for now
• Lawrence, ? - love how he was apparently 'woke,' but have no idea if he made it out of that skirmish
• The Confederado played by Jonathan Tucker - could have been another interesting character, but instead goes kaboom.  What is this, Michael Bay?

I'm growing concerned that instead of widening the view as is routinely done as a series progresses, they're actually narrowing down characters to the point I'm not going to care about anything after the third season.  Although I suppose if the ratings are as big of an issue as we've speculated here (for the record it picked up Sunday, and I expect it will continue to as we head to the finale), that's a blessing in disguise.

[Cas Stark]

I was disappointed we didn't get something more with Angela, especially when they did the flashbacks with her.  This was a missed opportunity

I think they are going to do something more with Teddy.  And Bernard.

I still find new Dolores/Wyatt extremely unsympathetic, and I'm sorry if Evan Rachael Wood is mad about that.

I'd like to see more development with Maeve and Sizemore.

And, are we really not getting any more Gus Fring??????

My not very surprising prediction is we will find that Ghost Nation has been more awake for longer than anyone else, but no one paid attention because their role was so flat in the park narrative.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Cas Stark said:

And, are we really not getting any more Gus Fring??????

For serial.

1 minute ago, Cas Stark said:

My not very surprising prediction is we will find that Ghost Nation has been more awake for longer than anyone else, but no one paid attention because their role was so flat in the park narrative.

Yeah that doesn't seem much of a prediction, more so an observation of their behavior thus far.  The hope is we find out why and how.

[RumHam]

They probably shouldn't reveal that those weren't the only backups of the host's minds, but when you think about it it'd be really dumb to keep only one backup and have it be on site. 

[DMC]

21 minutes ago, RumHam said:

but when you think about it it'd be really dumb to keep only one backup and have it be on site. 

LOL, good point.  But that seems to be the driving premise - or even McGuffin - for this entire season, no?

[Cas Stark]

48 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

LOL, good point.  But that seems to be the driving premise - or even McGuffin - for this entire season, no?

And last season, Charlotte ranted repeatedly about how Ford kept all the data housed on site so Delos Corp couldn't access it.  They had repeatedly tried to get it away from him but always failed.  We just didn't know the whole story on what the 'data' encompassed...host memories, general tech, tech for immortality, James Delos, guest DNA and Facebook , Google,  other guest data.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

They probably shouldn't reveal that those weren't the only backups of the host's minds, but when you think about it it'd be really dumb to keep only one backup and have it be on site. 

 

47 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

LOL, good point.  But that seems to be the driving premise - or even McGuffin - for this entire season, no?

Wouldn't it be all about control? Why would you want a back-up off-site in this situation? Well, other than the fact it would be sensible. But also, that bank of super-computers is massive.

[Fragile Bird]

1 minute ago, Cas Stark said:

And last season, Charlotte ranted repeatedly about how Ford kept all the data housed on site so Delos Corp couldn't access it.  They had repeatedly tried to get it away from him but always failed.  We just didn't know the whole story on what the 'data' encompassed...host memories, general tech, tech for immortality, James Delos, guest DNA and Facebook , Google,  other guest data.

Lol, I was just about to hit the post button when this popped up.

I will repeat, that bank of super computers was massive. What kind of back-up could possible be in Abernathy's control unit? Surely it must be a tiny part of the data. A very critical part of the data.

 

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Why would you want a back-up off-site in this situation?

The more important question is why wouldn't you want a backup off-site in such a situation?

[Cas Stark]

4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Lol, I was just about to hit the post button when this popped up.

I will repeat, that bank of super computers was massive. What kind of back-up could possible be in Abernathy's control unit? Surely it must be a tiny part of the data. A very critical part of the data.

 

Probably the immortality part, maybe also the basic codes on creating the hosts.