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battlestar-royco · 5 years

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Spill the tea on Westworld please!

I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for an ask about WW, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR INDULGING ME, ANON. So first, I’ll say what I absolutely love about this show: the first season was such a pleasure to watch from start to finish. It gave me a lot of hope for sci-fi television. For me, all the plot twists were almost flawlessly executed and spaced out. I loved the character arcs and the worldbuilding about hosts and the park. As always with HBO the production value and acting were also amazing.

As with any show, WW has its problematic elements too, namely the needless violence against women and the truly horrendous depiction of indigenous people as violent 2D stereotypes. And before season 2, I highly disagreed with the critics who made fun of the show’s overly confusing lore and flashbacks. Now I agree entirely. Season 2 from start to finish was trying to imitate the success of season 1 but without any of the passion, sense, or intrigue that made season 2 work so well.

SPOILERS for Westworld.

The spectacular elements of season 1 were really the three host arcs (Maeve, Dolores, and Bernard), the rising tension between all the humans, and the emotionally impactful reveals–William is the Man in Black; Bernard is a host created in Arnold’s image; Maeve is exercising her free will to find her daughter; Dolores is fused with the most reprehensible character in the Western park. You would think that all this lays the groundwork for exciting new character work and worldbuilding, right? NOPE. So many great storylines were either dropped or butchered in favor of action and… I don’t know? People talking in circles around each other?

The fact that Dolores is combined with Wyatt is just? Hardly ever addressed? As of 2.01, there’s no remnant of Dolores in her brain anymore. It’s just Wyatt. There’s no internal conflict, no effort from the true Dolores to be the kind and resilient conscious being she came to be at the end of season 1. Her main goal is to murder all humans by any means necessary and spout random Shakespearean and Biblical quotes while doing so. That is not a compelling or sympathetic goal and she feels like more of a theme-explainer than a character. Further, she has zero conflict with the other hosts except for Teddy in like the last three episodes of the season. The dynamic between Dolores, Angela, Clementine, and Teddy could have been so interesting. How do the other three all feel about Dolores’s abrupt change into Wyatt? Do they want to change her back? Do they like it? Do they contribute to her strategy? Why are they following her? Do any of them have differing goals or ideas about how to achieve their collective goal? Why are they all so willing to kill and die for their cause? Where did they get that grenade to blow up the Cradle, how did they figure out about the Cradle, how did they decide to blow it up, what authority do they have to blow it up and end immortality for all hosts, how did they decide WHO would blow it up, how did Angela feel about blowing it up considering that she knew it would be her final death and she couldn’t get resurrected once her host body was destroyed? There’s SO MUCH INTRIGUE AND COMPLEXITY that could have been developed, but for whatever reason, the writers decided to keep all the characters almost entirely static!

The Maeve/Shogun World plot was equally as mediocre/bad. Maeve was my favorite character in season 1, but she hardly did anything this season except walk around, watch people fight, and develop powers that had very little basis in the world and her character. Again, all the character development felt like it took a backseat to aesthetics. There was no purpose for Maeve to go to Shogun World other than for the writers to say “Hey look there are more worlds besides the western one!” Seriously, what was the point? There was never any indication that Maeve’s daughter would be there, and all the possibly interesting characters died (because we really needed more POC dying violently for no reason right) except for one who came along with Maeve and co just to get zero development. Plus it was kind of lazy of the writers to put the same set of characters from Westworld into Shogun World.

Bernard’s storyline was… alright I guess. At least he kind of got an arc. The way I discuss this plot will be hectic because the plot itself is hectic. Here we go: I was ecstatic for Elsie’s return, but she also got NO development. There was hardly any explanation as to why/how she survived. Why does she still work there? How did she get a job in Westworld and how did she hone her skills/interests to get there? Does she have family and do they know what happened to her or do they think she died? Does she care about any of the other hosts or humans within the park? How has her dynamic with Bernard changed since realizing he’s a host? So many unanswered questions. And the Ford resurrection was a contrived disaster. Honestly, the sci fi elements of this season as a whole were just ridiculous and boring IMO. What the fuck were those flashbacks with the weird white androids who all started killing humans with no dialogue? The stupid shots of host brains being squirted into little red balls? Why would Bernard be the only “human” host there? What’s the difference between humanoid hosts and the white ones? What’s the point of the white ones? In season 1, the non-linear narrative was an amazing device that wound all the plots together so perfectly and genuinely surprised the audience with the true identities of Dolores and William. In season 2, the flashbacks are a lazy device that try to imitate the success of season 1 but don’t do any of the character and plot work to merit anything but confusion and stupidity.

I was also disappointed with the human characters. Lee and Felix had the potential to be great human allies, and their friendship with Maeve could have been an opportunity for the writers to exemplify positive relationships between humans and hosts or the possibility for humans and hosts to work together. However, Felix was barely in the season and Lee’s death was entirely unearned because of the minimal character moments shown between him and the others around him. IMO, the corporate drama is the most interesting part of the human storyline. What happened between William and Logan before the series began and once William began to go black-hat? Why wasn’t Logan’s father introduced in season 1? How did he decide to make William the CEO instead of Logan, despite Logan being SO SURE in season 1 that he would inherit and that William was inferior? How did William meet Juliet and what was it like to return to her after all he experienced with Dolores? I really wanted to see all these things in season 2, but instead we got a random, disjointed, non-linear mixture of scenes that revealed very little.

The worldbuilding was so confusing and shallow. In season 1, there was the very purposeful decision to set almost the entire story within the Westworld park and the Delos headquarters. However, all the intrigue caused because of that decision dissipated because there is nothing interesting or new about the outside world. It’s unclear how far in the future their society is from ours, where in the world it takes place, how climate change and the government/economy has been impacted, who has access to the parks, how much space the parks take up, etc. Despite season 1 ending in a host-inflicted massacre, despite all the suspense built around the world outside of the park, despite the clear groundwork laid for corporate drama (corruption? embezzlement? money laundering? nepotism? exploitation? NONE OF THESE STAPLE CORPORATE DRAMA CONCEPTS ARE ADDRESSED IN SEASON 2), what actually happened was so underwhelming. Delos is a company in an industrialized capitalist society. What are they doing to maintain their public image? What about their sponsors? Is this a media sensation or are they keeping it under wraps? What is their plan if the hosts leave the park and wreak havoc on other humans? Is the government involved at all?

ANYWAY, I could seriously go on for another ten pages about how disappointed I was with season 2. TL;DR, the worldbuilding and characters made very little or boring progress, and the show tried too hard to be intellectual and clever while being lazy in all other aspects of writing.

#asks #anti westworld #sorry this took so long; this fake bitch tumblr deleted like 5 paragraphs of a draft i had saved #i also despise the man in black but they keep acting like his character is worth shit #like... just kill him off??! i do not care at all about this dusty misogynistic capitalist white man!!

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