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Westworld season 2 HBO April 2018 spoilers discussion (1 Viewer)

Adam Lenhardt

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Loved the cold open, with the retro future aesthetic. Delos's observation cell could have come straight out of Logan's Run or, well, Futureworld. Once William handed him the folded up transcript, I had a good idea what was afoot. It seems like there's new dark secrets hidden away in every nook and cranny.

Elsie lives! And she was left right where Ford wanted her. A reminder that it's not just the hosts that are following Ford's script.

Having watched old William in the first season, it's fascinating to contrast his behavior this season. Now that the bumpers have been taken off the lanes, he's playing a very different game.

It was interesting intercutting between Bernard switching back and forth between his actual personality and Ford's automaton, and Lawrence's daughter with William in the village, switching from Ford's messenger back to Lawrence's daughter. Jeffrey Wright is one of the finest actors working today, and this talented young actress holds her own: the posture, the accent, the tone change completely between the two roles, from forceful calm directness with a modern American accent to a scared Mexican child who has just witnessed some horrific events. There's a shot on her face when she transitions from messenger mode to back into character and is eerily good, how the emotion and life seep back into her expression. On the other hand, it raises interesting production realities for this concept: the hosts aren't supposed to age, but here's Lawrence's daughter looking roughly a year old than when we encountered her in the first season. I figured they'd get around this issue by not making child characters important to the plot. But here with Lawrence's daughter and then elsewhere with Maeve's daughter, that's not the case. Will the show build in an explanation as time goes on, or does it just want us to suspend our disbelief?

My speculation last week was correct. The fact that the character was introduced one week and her true identity was revealed the next week points to that being one puzzle where Nolan and Co. are more interested in the "why" than the "what". When William was flashing back prior to intervening on behalf of Lawrence and his family, it looked like someone had attempted suicide by slitting their wrists. As the "previously on" helpfully reminded us, William's wife killed herself by overdosing on pills. So I'm guessing it was Emily that tried to kill herself that way.
 

Hollywoodaholic

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Good episode. So Delos was the initial failed attempt to replant consciousness in a host body modeled after the real Delos? Which definitely supports the idea that it might be Ford's script to have all the humans replaced by host consciousness, and why they are able to discard the host bodies in the lake.

Got such a LOST vibe from that opening scene and also the vinyl record playing.
 

Dave Scarpa

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I'm leaning on dropping this i don't really care for any of the characters, maybe the ed Harris character is the most interesting, but this season has really lost me
 

Walter Kittel

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Good episode. So Delos was the initial failed attempt to replant consciousness in a host body modeled after the real Delos? Which definitely supports the idea that it might be Ford's script to have all the humans replaced by host consciousness, and why they are able to discard the host bodies in the lake.

Got such a LOST vibe from that opening scene and also the vinyl record playing.

Yes, the opening sequence was very much like LOST from the repetition of the scene through the episode which recalls the routines that Desmond employed in the bunker to the use of a recognizable pop classic as an opening hook; like Juliet listening to Petula Clark's Downtown amongst others in episodes of Lost.

We haven't spent much time with Grace, but considering her fearlessness and her embracing of the Delos environments the revelation at the end of the episode wasn't too shocking. She is clearly cut from the same cloth as her father at least in those respects.

The episode contained some nice visual reinforcement. The blood in the white liquid recalls the cream in the coffee and both patterns recall those observed in chaos study; also the use of fire as a termination mechanism linked into James Delos' repeated invocation of the devil in his dealings with William.

- Walter.
 

Walter Kittel

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One other comment about Sunday's episode. I really enjoyed the concept of Bernard's memory losing its linear cohesion and the use of this construct as a means to tell a fragmented narrative.

- Walter.
 

Walter Kittel

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Thinking a little bit more about the episode today. Seeing William interact with the simulacrum (which is kind of what it was) of James Delos over the years we understand more about the Man In Black's motivations with regards to 'wanting to burn it all down'.

One of the things I like about how the series is written is how scenes work to reinforce themes in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle ways). We see William comparing himself to Death when confronting the nitroglycerine dude (can't recall the character's name :) ). Anyway... It works within that scene as a threat but it also ties back into the idea that William identifies with Death in that he has become convinced that everything has its time and then must pass on; and he sees himself as an agent of that condition, or concept.

- Walter.
 

Francois Caron

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On the other hand, it raises interesting production realities for this concept: the hosts aren't supposed to age, but here's Lawrence's daughter looking roughly a year old than when we encountered her in the first season. I figured they'd get around this issue by not making child characters important to the plot. But here with Lawrence's daughter and then elsewhere with Maeve's daughter, that's not the case. Will the show build in an explanation as time goes on, or does it just want us to suspend our disbelief?
I can suspend my disbelief for this. You can't stop a human being from growing up and growing old over time. Some compromises are necessary.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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I can suspend my disbelief for this. You can't stop a human being from growing up and growing old over time. Some compromises are necessary.
The way I'm justifying it to myself is that, except for the CPU in their skull and their bones, the bulk of the hosts are organic matter. Presumably when the park was operating normally, they would swap out the organic matter as hosts got injured or damaged and they would stay effectively immortal. But now that the maintenance is not being performed, it makes sense that the organic matter would age.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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Loved the bit when they enter the village in Shogun World and realize it's exactly the same as Sweetwater in terms of characters and plots, and then we get another instrumentation of "Paint It Black", this time with Japanese instruments, to further drive the point home. The interplay between the various dopelgangers was fun, first with Clementine and new Clementine (Lili Simmons, who is less available this year due to her commitments to "Ray Donovon" and "The Purge") and later with the Shogun World iterations.

It'll be interesting to see just how far they take things with Maeve's newfound ability to issue nonverbal commands to the other hosts.

I'm very confused by Bernard's subplot, which is all over the place chronologically -- which, given his current inability to index memories, is probably how he experiences things too.

Something tells me that Dolores's abrupt reconfiguration of Teddy will come back to haunt her. She's doing what Ford did.
 

Francois Caron

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The lighting in this episode was simply astounding! These were all night shots, and yet you still saw enough to know exactly what was going on during this very intense episode along with having time to appreciate the incredibly well done sets and costumes!

Maeve is now a Jedi master! All she needs is a light sabre! Is there a Star Wars World in this park? :D
 

Sam Posten

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Second favorite episode ever for me. Right behind the one with the Nitro Heist.

I'm so incredibly frustrated with FIOS tho. @Francois Caron is beaming at how good it was for him, mine was a macro blocked square pixel mess =(
 

Adam Lenhardt

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The opening scene with an Arnold-and-Delores conversation being revealed to a Delores-and-Bernard recreation was interesting, with us first getting a glimpse of where she started and then seeing just how far she'd come by the end of the scene.

The train explosion was a nice way to sync up Bernard/Elsie's storyline with Charlotte/Ashley's story line.

The return appearance at the end was very surprising:
I knew Anthony Hopkins was still voicing the young Robert Ford in flashbacks, and we all suspected that the control unit he pocketed was Ford, but I didn't think we'd see actually see him in front of the camera again after his one-and-done contract for the first season.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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The show did a really good job keeping us in the dark about the fact that Anthony Hopkins would be back as a series regular this year.
 

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This show is really dropping the ball on any coherent narrative and just going back and forth with speechifying gobbledygook (and they needed to bring Hopkins back for that?). The Shogun world side trip was essentially meaningless other than a diversion, and added nothing to the overall story. Bernard... well, we're done with his perplexed looks. A lot of action without any real suspense or give a shit. What happened here?

At least when LOST went off on one of their tangent character storylines, there was an INTERESTING story within that diversion that had a beginning, middle and end, even if the overall mythology of the series failed to deliver. This show is just now randomly cutting between all these timelines and areas and, frankly, there's no one to give a crap about. Maeve was vulnerable, then she wasn't, but in control of other hosts, but then not again, but now she's vulnerable mother, but then she's not the mother this time. I wish they would make up their minds where they want to go with this whole thing instead of spinning around in circles. Or at least focus on side stories that are complete within themselves.

It's a mess. The showrunners have a acute case of overthinkingitis.
 
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Josh Steinberg

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The show did a really good job keeping us in the dark about the fact that Anthony Hopkins would be back as a series regular this year.

I wonder if the change from writing and shooting one episode at a time in the first season, to writing the entire season first and then block shooting the entire thing, made it more attractive for Hopkins to return. Instead of being tied to the production for an entire year, this would have allowed Hopkins to come in and shoot all of his scenes at once, over a much shorter period of time. I have no idea how much he'll appear in the remaining episodes but I'm guessing this was a better deal for him.

It's a mess. The showrunners have a acute case of overthinkingitis.

I don't know that I'd go that far myself, but I think it's clearly "big picture" storytelling and the shift from writing and shooting one episode at a time, like conventional shows, to moving to writing the entire season first before shooting any of it, has subtlety changed the show. While the first season was clearly serialized, the episodes from the first season seemed to me to have more of a structure that would repeat from episode to episode. This new season, by contrast, feels more like a single work broken into pieces than individual episodes of a show that add up to a complete story in the end. I think I liked the first season more as a viewer experiencing it one week at a time. While I'm still enjoying the show this year, it almost feels like we're spending more time covering less story. But because of the difference in writing and shooting technique, to me, it feels almost impossible to rate the episodes individually; I feel like I'll need to see how the whole season plays out before I can really judge how I feel about it. And that, in a sense, is a disappointment - I wish it felt more like watching serialized TV episodes than like watching a long movie.
 

Hollywoodaholic

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Yes, I feel the same way. They probably should have made the entire season available at once like Netflix because, in the end, it may all come together and make for a story that makes sense and plays better IN RETROSPECT or in total. But episode to episode the pieces just lay there building my frustration that I'm not as interested in the overall concept or agenda anymore (we were data mining the guests not the hosts), as I am in just good old-fashioned entertain me NOW storytelling with a character that will surprise me.

And how is William still alive after being blasted three times? Plus he was ancient to begin with. He must have some host parts. (They really have no idea what to do with him at this point, other than roaming around creating mischief, maybe they should just let him die).
 
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Walter Kittel

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Yeah, if William isn't a host and manages to survive multiple gunshots to the limbs and torso; I'm calling shenanigans. Curious to see where the show goes with that element. Is someone going to rescue William? And even if he does get assistance, surviving those types of injuries seems implausible at best. I guess we'll see.

Maybe he will be reunited with Grace and she will witness his death?

- Walter.
 

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