Amph Westworld series by J.J. Abrams and Johnathan Nolan

Just wanted to pat myself on the back for guessing something right. You can see the name Arnold Weber on a door in Episode 9.

 

It's funny you said this as the showrunners said season 1 is the prelude and now the real fun begins.

 

Well that answered just about every question except one:

Spoiler

Where are Elsie and Stubbs? Now that we know Ford had been planning this rise of the machines thing, I can't believe he would have Bernard kill Elsie. Same for Stubbs. Theresa had to die because she was trying to shut him down before he was ready. But Elsie could be hidden away. Stubbs likely was taken wherever she is.

Not happy about waiting until 2018 to learn that answer.

 

Post Anthropocene Park/Dawn of the planet of the robo-apes. stupid show is stupid.

 

Not spoiler tagging this since it happened an episode or two back now.

Elsie is most likely dead. Bern/Arnold likely killed her, which was revealed in a memory flashback, under Ford's direction. Stubbs I'm pretty sure is also dead when the Native American hosts came up on him and weren't responding to his commands, he is not as mighty as Thor obviously. Pretty much, if you got close or caught wind of what Ford was doing/planning you ended up dead.

 

I don't understand Ford's angle here. Was the Delores bit scripted by Ford, or by her own volition?

 

This is essentially my issue with the finale

"So Delores reached the center of the maze... wait... What? SHE'S FRACKING WYATT!??! Well now that's suspect. So did Wyatt's old program manifest here under Ford's manipulation... or was this really her decision?"

 

IT's kinda hard to jump on the band wagon that at some point these robots are doing things on their own when in fact we find out each time that everything they do is planned.

At no point does it seem the question of if the Host are ever conscious is actually answered. They're still doing what they are told. Even Dolores. Even Maev.

Good episode though. Good series. Very silly though.

 

Anyone else get the idea that Michael Crichton went to Disneyland once and just HATED it?

 

I've seen people selling it that Dolores is conscious because she actually talked to herself, like how Ford described how Arnold had envisioned it and she chose to follow the script that Ford had laid out. I guess I can see that considered her mannerisms seem to be a mix between that of the Wyatt narrative and the Dolores narrative, and since Arnold gave her the ability to kill her the once that ability my extension.

Maeve is the one that I can't buy as being awakened. I can see her having a moment where she had to "remember" that caused her to get off the train, but I'm not sold on her being awakened since everything up to that point had been effectively a narrative.

 

Yeah, the way Delores contributed to Ford's speech left me wondering if he planned that or if that was her making a conscious decision. And if the former, why?

MIB definitely seemed amused if not actually happy with the last act, though. Or at least, I think he looked pleasantly surprised.

Like others have criticized, the duo helping Maev is just so ridiculous, especially if, as suggested here, only makes sense if you suspend disbelief for the sake of the humor value. I don't find any humor value in that scenario. They both know that Maev is dangerous to humans but continue to help her with no benefit for themselves. Either one of them could have put a stop to her several times over. Any human blood spilled in relation to Maev is on their hands.

 

Given that Ford gave the gun to Delores and knew that she was behind him with it, I'd say for certain that he knew what she would do - also her acting in the scene has a cold detachment and thus implies that she's not entirely herself (much like in the scene with Arnold killing, the two are clearly similar).

The guards were utterly awful, and seemed incapable of firing their guns. They sort of hang a lantern on it with a line of dialogue from the girl, but it annoyed me immensely. My favourite bit was the relevation of the Samurai World, as I'd love to visit that park!

 

Yeah, the security personnel clearly practiced at the Imperial Storm Trooper firing ranges.

 

This show has some could-be-clever ideas, some good acting, looks pretty, and is a sci-fi show, so I'll probably watch next season. But man, it starts to fall apart when you think about it. (Half-assed list of random thoughts follows.)

The setting, for one. Yes, there's a certain amount of suspension of disbelief involved, obviously. That's fine. But world-building is important, and there are many non-plot-related questions they haven't really bothered to answer.

1. Where the **** is this place? There's no way it's on Earth. It's too big... unless everyone's shrunk, which I initially considered and found hilarious. Is it on another planet? Is it a gigantic space station?
2. How was it constructed? Again, the scale of it dwarfs anything that humans have ever built, including entire cities. They portray it as some pet project by just two guys with rich investors behind them. That doesn't explain how the logistics were handled. The construction of one park (apparently there are at least two?) alone would be a monumental undertaking.

As mentioned, Ford's motivations and actions don't make much, if any, sense.

1. Why kill himself? Arnold did it because he thought the park couldn't go on without him. Obviously that's not a concern for Ford. If it's a Host "copy" of Ford, why put on that show for people he apparently planned to kill?
2. If Ford initially realized that Arnold was correct at the time of his partner's death, why subject the hosts to decades of torment and pretend he didn't care? (He still didn't seem to care very much, really.)
3. He says he believed suffering is the key to consciousness. That's bull****. Suffering is part of life and the human condition, but it has nothing to do with self-awareness. What he allowed was just sadistic.
4. The Hosts didn't rise up by themselves anyway. He programmed every step of the way. So what's the point? Why didn't he do it earlier? Is it just out of spite for being pushed out? Then why all that **** about realizing Arnold was correct about them?
5. How does he reprogram the Hosts as "Arnold"? Why?

William/"The Man in Black"

-He turns "evil" for no reason. None. He realizes that a fake setting is fake. Quite a character arc there. Yawn. I was hoping the McPoyle part of the story would be something other than an empty origin.

The show's attitude toward humanity generally.

-Everyone is a monster. Everyone but Arnold and maybe Felix. Visitors' "true nature" is raping and murdering living, thinking beings. This isn't equivalent to a c. 2016 videogame where the so-called AI has five different places you can shoot it and will suffer a graphical glitch because AAA devs don't bother with QA anymore. The Hosts clearly suffer-- even though they're "programmed" to do so, we are too. Why haven't enough people noticed this? Why isn't there a moral movement against Westworld and the other parks?

The convoluted editing and plotting.

-I get that it was to set up "twists" and "reveals." I'm tired of those, for one thing. There were at least three different timeframes being shown with no explanation for it until, like, the eighth episode. It's easy to guess there was something up (the same Hosts being in completely different places and with different people, for example), but I felt it was still unnecessarily confusing. It pretty much requires a rewatch to be able to fully follow the basic plot, and I don't think that's a good thing.

The technicians and "QA"

1. Why aren't they all Hosts themselves? If Ford could build and control Bernard to make him as good as the technician after whom he was modeled, why didn't he do the same thing with others?
2. Why is security so ineffective every step of the way? Yes, Ford played a part in sabotage, but he didn't make the technicians and security grossly incompetent and, for example, shoot like Stormtroopers.
3. Why is Ford so comfortable with compelling Hosts to murder people who are just trying to do the jobs they were hired to do?

Food, water, shelter, sleep, hygiene, medical care, criminal justice

1. How do the guests have constant access to any of those things? It's never explained. They can't even eat the fauna because they're robots. This is where the show is asking too much of the audience. I'm supposed to believe that William was able to trek around an arid landscape with no prior experience and come out of it physically fine? This is beyond my limit for suspension of disbelief, I think.
2. How did William get away with kidnapping, beating, and severely abusing his brother-in-law?

The "rules" for the Hosts

-They say the guests "can't die." There's a lot of room for interpretation in that, isn't there? We see people being virtually invincible when dealing with Hosts, but we also see William's brother-in-law restrained and beaten by them. What's the deal? Why would that be a fun experience for anyone? If the Hosts can cause some physical damage, couldn't that theoretically kill a guest?

The technological advancement of the Hosts

-They were stiff, whirring Pirates of the Caribbean decorations at first, such as proto-Delores and the piano player in Ford's office. Why were they able to achieve self-awareness all the way back then? Why aren't they at a higher level in the "present"?

The other park(s)

-Why didn't Arnold and Ford care about those Hosts too? Are they robo-racist?

Finally, Westworld is boring.

-The park, I mean. Full of tired cliches and uncompelling "narratives." Why would anyone go back to that place? I guess that's why the show made every human a monster, because that's all there really is to do.

 

Is Ford really dead though? he was making a new host in the secret room two episodes ago....

 

I'm 50/50 on it, but only because I can't imagine Hopkins wanting to do a TV series for five years. (Has he had a gig like that before?) The show does make a point of Delores being unable to shoot a human no matter how violent and supposedly out of control she gets (due to Arnold, presumably), and Ford really had no reason to kill himself.

 

If ford made a version of himself that could last forever, it would be interesting.

 

I have a hard time thinking Ford let himself be killed. But they left his fate, among many other things, open ended which gives us so many possibilities for season two. Seeing Anthony Hopkins continue to play him would be a treat. I love this show.

 

Yeah I think they could

Guy, I can respond to some of your questions later. But I will make a general point that some of them, such as "where do the guests get their food" are what is commonly known in television writing as "shoe leather". They don't take the time to explain these things because this is a drama, not a book. Time is your most precious commodity in drama. It's the thing you manipulate to get the audience to experience the story on your terms, unlike a book. TV writers don't like to spend it on pure logic questions that 99% of the audience will never ask, and if they do, it shouldn't really ruin the experience.

It's one of the reasons that from a pure world-building standpoint, books are better suited to sci fi and fantasy. But these are the types of things that aren't salient to the dramatic impetus of a show (or other types of drama, such as plays).

The dramatic form is mostly about storytelling and character exploration through action. And while it's part of my job to bring up logic questions like this, and I do because I'm a logic person, most of the time the answer is going to be, "that's shoe leather. That's not important to the story." You can call it lazy, but there's a fine line between building the world in a logical way and spending time on things that don't contribute to the story. In drama, if a scene doesn't progress either the plot or characters, it's usually cut.

So while I understand this complaint, and there are certainly other shows with terrible and inconsistent world building, I think some of these things can be forgiven in this case. This show at least has a concept of world building and rules, which inferior sci fi shows don't seem to get.

I too thought at one point, "I wonder where William got food and water out there." But then I thought, "well there seem to be streams all over. And I don't know, maybe they gave the guests small nutrient pills. It's the far future most likely." I mean, to be fair, this is essentially how even JRR Following solved the issue of sustainance in LOTR

I think the writers here probably wagered that this particular shoe leather would be more of a problem if they brought it up and gave it a hand-waive answer like this than if they just didn't mention it. How many people here thought about it before you brought it up? Also, in my experience TV writers of today underestimate the factor of online discussions. Most of them have never ever participated in something like that, and film and TV writers still write things with the underlying assumption that people are going to watch things the way they do: watch it once, maybe twice, discuss at work. Not rewind it, break it down, and collectively share theories until every tiny element is broken down. To be honest, I think overanalysis of shows and films online often hurts the viewing experience.

I was already certain that he was an Arnold copy (as I expressed here many times). But when I saw that name on the door, I thought to myself, "wow, Tony was right!" Good job.

This was something I thought was a misstep for most of the season. But with the reveal that Maev's rebellion was all part of the plan, I think it's actually almost certain that Ford carefully selected who the employees to help her would be. He probably has psych profiles on everyone there.

Felix is extremely sympathetic, and Ford knew that. His partner not only had a secret, but is the kind of guy who would put his own self-preservation above the well-being of his fellow workers.

I admit that, short of one or both of those guys being hosts themselves (which is possible), this is still the shakiest part of the whole season, though. It does require suspension of disbelief.



Final note: while I think it's probably better if Ford proper is dead (as to why he did it, easy, atonement), I think they did want to leave the door open to possibly having that have been a host copy for public show. And I agree they almost certainly wanted to keep Hopkins in the show in some way if possible, but weren't sure if that would happen (and still may not be).


EDIT: Oh yeah, I can't believe people seem shocked by the Dolores is Wyatt thing. I realize now that I didn't post this now, but my brother and I have been talking or probably the last two weeks about how we thought that's what they would find out. Because Teddy had such a strong link to that story, and because (and this is a super TV worker thing to think) because the guy playing him in Teddy's memories was some dude I've never seen before and who had no lines So it was almost certainly going to turn out to be a host we knew, and Dolores was really the only fit.

 

solojones I will say that there have been sci-fi shows in the past with plenty of world-building.

 

And there have been sci fi shows in the past with more world-building than actual dramatic storytelling That, too, can be a hindrance.

There has to be a balance. I'm not saying Westworld has by any means done it perfectly, or that it's the best show at it. I think BSG probably has the best balance of world-building and drama. But that was also for story reasons: much of the plotting revolved around where they were going, how they were going to stay alive, and an examination of their culture's history. Those are elements referred to as "story engines". Because again, drama is efficient. Westworld so far has no story reason for explaining to us how the guests eat

If at some point that becomes a question the answer to which can be a story engine (say, some humans are now trapped after the uprising and they actually do need food to survive, or alternately don't need it because of some pill or other science thing and that makes it easier for them to survive)... then you can tell that story and that piece of the world. Otherwise, that really is shoe leather. And I'm saying this as someone whose job it is to point out all possible logic bumps and research questions and yada yada.

 

it felt very Zardoz .

I'm still not sure what Ed Harris is looking for .

.

 

Danger. Real risk. He can't die in Westworld really. A few hosts might be able to hurt him, but none can really kill him. He is an adrenaline junkie. He keeps talking about the game and the stories. What he wanted was essentially a real high risk stakes game. So now, the hosts can kill guests. Now it is "real" and William finally gets what he wants. The whole reason he sought the maze out was to free the hosts so they could do whatever they wanted: good or bad and pose a true challenge to him. Now, they can't be predictable. Now anyone could be anything. Some are harmless and some are threats. But William can't be sure who he can trust and who he must kill. The ultimate challenge mode for the ultimate gamer.