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Westworld - Live in Your World, Play in Ours - Sundays on HBO
- Thread starter RatskyWatsky
- Start date
newtypepilot
Member
I agree Maeve's subplot is just plain bad. It stands out like a sore thumb compared to rest of the story. They had to make the Asian butcher that stupid? And Maeve does all this without anyone noticing, not even Ford? How does QA not notice that Maeve was manipulating other hosts? We have sheriffs shooting each other in the heist which is pretty damn off-script, yet no one was alarmed?
I guess William being MiB is all but confirmed. And we hear his backstory. His wife killed herself because he was too obsessed with the park, iirc. So I guess Dolores betrays him?
and RIP Elsie? I don't understand how Bernard could've killed her though. Wasn't she on the phone with him prior? And why would Ford want to kill her?
I guess William being MiB is all but confirmed. And we hear his backstory. His wife killed herself because he was too obsessed with the park, iirc. So I guess Dolores betrays him?
and RIP Elsie? I don't understand how Bernard could've killed her though. Wasn't she on the phone with him prior? And why would Ford want to kill her?
Nazgul_Hunter
Member
They also promised an answer for why they were helping on episode 8 didn't they? There was none to be found.
No, the question was why they didn't just wipe her instead of helping her. The "answer" I suppose, is that to do a full reboot and format they would need to go up to Behavioral or whatever.
But I think this episode definitely does answer the larger question of why the techs are so dumb though. It's because the writing in general is pretty dumb.
Robot Pants
Member
Yea they've started to lose me with this episode. Maeve's whole storyline is killing it for me.
And of COURSE they choose Dolores old dad for the data upload. Out of hundreds. "Yea this one will do"
Not into it. I hope the show turns around
And of COURSE they choose Dolores old dad for the data upload. Out of hundreds. "Yea this one will do"
Not into it. I hope the show turns around
metalslimer
Member
Well I think the answer is more than he empathizes with her a lot. I don't have a problem with him helping her as much as how ridiculous it is some low level employee can somehow gain this much access in a place that secured.
Bernard and Ford were the interesting parts of this episode again.
Bernard and Ford were the interesting parts of this episode again.
So I mentioned earlier that the song Ford played to calm Maeve down is Debussy's Reverie. I think that's the same tune playing in Dolores' town flashback when the techs were teaching all the hosts to dance?
Citation required.
Citation required.
This was definitely the weakest episode so far. Which is unfortunate because it was getting better and better from Ep. 4 through Ep. 7, by leaps and bounds, and doubly unfortunate as a follow-up to last week's brilliance. Every show has weak episodes, so that doesn't bother me, it's just unfortunate where this one landed. Still though, it's my favorite thing on TV at the moment, by a large margin.
But with McLaren directing Ep. 9 and Ep. 10 being the finale, I expect there will be a major uptick next week.
But with McLaren directing Ep. 9 and Ep. 10 being the finale, I expect there will be a major uptick next week.
wesleyshark
Banned
Nolan himself is directing episode 10. Can't wait for that.
Cellbomber
Member
Don't think the Asian tech is necessarily dumb. He's more just fascinated with the situation and not worried what's happening or the outcome until it's went too far. Remember his fascination with that bird he was programming in his spare time. I feel he thinks the situation is just as harmless as the bird until his coworker got his throat cut.
As for not being discovered or found I don't think this department has much focus on them. Basically other areas of the park have more scrutiny and things going wrong where all of security is putting resources.
As for not being discovered or found I don't think this department has much focus on them. Basically other areas of the park have more scrutiny and things going wrong where all of security is putting resources.
It's also worth mentioning that episode 9 appears to be the only episode in the season not written by either Nolan or Joy. For all the other episodes they either wrote it together, or one of them co-wrote it with another writer. The next episode is credited to Dan Dietz & Katherine Lingenfelter, without Nolan or Joy attached. I wonder why.
In terms of the Maeve stuff - a show about a tremendous robot theme park for the uber rich where bullets know what they are shooting and you have to sign a contract where it says that they aren't responsible for self-cannibalism, the humans being dumb as hell is honestly the MOST believable thing that has happened so far.
The writing has basically given up entirely. Westworld spent a *lot* of its running time beating us over the head with its internal logic using the repetition of the story loops so it could subvert those loops interestingly, but none of its own rules are being followed.
From your example, Hector's arrival is initially built up as a significant, expensive climax for the audience, the guests, and the GMs. Each time it's shown accompanied by dramatic music and slow motion, and we see the GMs observing it carefully and Sizemore hanging on every word spoken in real time after applying a script revision.
That all makes sense initially since the body count for the Hector loop climax is huge and Sweetwater is inevitably torn to shreds. Earlier in the season that would have actually mattered. Note how much labor is established as being involved in repairing any given host. Techs question the department head about whether Man in Black should be allowed to kill a handful of hosts early on because of the presumed costs he's stacking up by doing so.
...But now, the scope of Westworld is not just hinted at, and finally shown to be vastly larger than Sweetwater with at least one other enormous settlement. That town of inhibition and excess, complete with golden orgy brothel, seems like it has random killing every five seconds regardless of any guest interaction. We see full blown military engagements occurring, too. Despite earlier complaints about some small-scale mayhem, no one at HQ bats an eye when they have to clean up Teddy mowing down an entire brigade with a gatling gun? The logistical complexity we've moved into for ramping up the stakes far, far exceeds the capacity ever demonstrated by HQ, which clearly responds to individual incidents one at a time. It's wildly inconsistent. We have maybe 100 underground floors, and endless halls filled with spare bodies, yet Sizemore only has funding to use 20 new hosts to build his hugely important Board-demanded narrative. The butchers are only surprised to be repairing Maeve multiple days in a row because she died so often, not because they have so many coworkers to split the work between. The scale of the world has opened up in the latest episodes to an enormous scale, all with casual and rampant brutality, but that simply doesn't make sense anymore.
I won't even bother touching on the absolute brain poison of the Butcher/Maeve subplot. I assume there will be some kind of cop-out involved like the guys being robots and Ford walking in with a chuckle and a wan smile in the final episode, but that won't improve it any. Let's just ignore it for now.
Bernardgate. Why does Bernard still have admin privileges with no oversight at all, in a surveillance environment so extreme that personal secrets are compromised on the regular between everyone who has department level access, after being fired for negligence determined to have endangered the entire park? This is a bit much. If we allow for absolute trust in him despite his firing and the obvious new motivation and opportunity to easily sabotage the park in any way he wants, which is fucking stupid, there would still be logs of every step that he took in covering his tracks, probably even more damning than the surveillance logs themselves being left intact. All we really have to work with is that he's a super-programmer robot who developed much of the AI routines and has been around forever and intentionally has Ford-based unfettered system access that no one else realizes.
Also, do we really get Elsie's disappearance explained in a random one second flashback that doesn't hold any narrative weight, right after going through all the existentially reflective motions about Bernard killing Theresa and asking Ford whether he's ever been told to kill anyone else before? Why does having retained knowledge of Elsie's murder after all not seem to matter to Bernard or the narrative, when we're told Bernard is "sensitive" and shown that he's a wreck about murdering Theresa, and the story continues emphasizing the looming threat of Bernard finding out about Theresa after the memory wipe and its potential consequences for his character? What the fuck about Elsie then?! Is it not a big deal if he killed his coworker and friend if he wasn't screwing her? :|
Let's move on from the subplot specifics, though, and get into the broader world-building issues. I don't know how much this has been touched upon in detail so I'll have at it.
The pilot establishes Asimov's Laws and takes great pleasure in all the money shots of flies walking on robot eyeballs. We have special guns that don't work on humans, and it asks for a far future sci-fi pass about how the guns still obey the laws of physics to splinter through wood and blow holes in hosts while only being able to lightly bruise players. Fair enough, but as the season progresses the show seems like it has concerns about any dramatic tension being possible within those constraints, and increasingly abandons them seemingly by necessity. It has a very "oh shit, we sure wrote ourselves into a corner" vibe to it; a strange problem to justify within a pre-planned storyline.
Man in Black is the only character on the show who seems to notice or care that knives don't have magical safeties built in, and that's really the core element that makes him legitimately intimidating: using a knife. Okay. The logic kind of breaks down on the spot there, but we initially aren't forced to think about it too much, since by and large everyone else is just playing Duck Hunt early on. In these last few episodes, though, melee combat with deadly weapons is being leaned on a hell of a lot for dramatic tension, in both timelines and by everyone.
To highlight this, in the establishing scene for Man in Black, Teddy has a showdown with him, shoots him, and recognizes that the bullets are definitely hitting but have no effect. In a twist for the audience that had been following Teddy's storyline through his eyes, he becomes overwhelmed with fear, standing there paralyzed by the realization of the god -- or devil -- in his presence. In another relatively early instance, Logan gets bored with maintaining roleplay during the bounty hunt climax and walks out of cover to casually absorb some bullets, to a similar reaction from the bounty target.
Oops, hold on, though, that's not very effective now that we actually want dramatic tension, so instead of hosts assuming that guns work on everyone and being shocked and confused by confirmation that "newcomers" are bulletproof, that's been ditched and hosts now fire off a few shots and then run straight to melee range to knock out or grab the players, and Wyatt's minotaurs carry axes and machetes and swing to kill.
???
You can't have it both ways. Is Westworld, barring the reverie glitch, actually safe at all for the players? If that's so, why would hosts have knives and axes and be seen swinging them with deadly force on players without breaching protocol, past and present? We have absolutely no reason to believe that they pull their swings at the last possible moment. To the contrary.
It's not just a problem with the way hosts work. This is an obscenely violent and fucked up theme park where "nothing is taboo," and murder and rape are happening by the truckload. Players are promised absolute safety in this horrific environment, we see them revel in the certainty of it as they go about their $40k/day well spent, and the GMs never express concern about player safety or believe themselves to be in harm's way either (except with the glitch). Human safety is ensured by three things: Westworld guns using selective physics, hosts having strict programming to never harm humans, and the GM oversight of all the fun and games. What the hell about human players harming *other* humans, though? We can forgive some of this through assumptions made about the orientation process before entering, but then we're shown the orientation process: left deliberately mysterious for total exhilaration. While that scene is from -30 timeline, we're not given any reason to believe it's different later.
Still, okay, let's remain as forgiving as possible here and assume guests sign a bunch of waivers and contracts and watch a bunch of classroom PSA videos about PVP etiquette. How can any of that possibly work in a roleplay-encouraged ultra-realistic insane rape and murder simulator where humans and robots are totally indistinguishable unless a human is shot or completely breaks character? The GMs have no illusions about what kind of place they're running, and the show's tone goes more down the path of horror than fantasy with each episode.
Incredibly depraved as it is, Sweetwater is still just the "newbie zone," where some pretense of humanity remains. A very small pretense. As we follow the narrative we realize Westworld is structured to desensitize players to that initial depravity and then use narrative quest hooks to lure players away from its confines to greater stakes, greater darkness, and greater opportunity for gratification, so how in the *hell* aren't situations constantly coming up where humans either mistake other humans for hosts and harm them, or cease caring about the human/robot distinction and harm anyone they come across thanks to their constantly reinforced psychopathy?
Keep in mind, humans don't have safety programming and everything other than guns work as they do in real life. Man in Black has spent 30 years coming to Westworld, but it's a first for him when Teddy springs into action and stops him from threatening Ford with his knife, and he doesn't shy away from threatening humans elsewhere. We can reasonably conclude hosts don't have an intervention function programmed in that normally activates if a human targets another human with deadly force in Westworld, only in the specific case when Ford is targeted.
Players don't even have a particularly good way of telling who's a fellow player or a host. I mean, if we're going there, given how unreliable command responses have become, *no one* does; the only effective test would be shooting them and seeing if they die from it or just get tickled. Under that insane premise, I'd probably shoot all my coworkers with a Westworld gun every day at HQ to confirm none of them are fuckin' Cylons, since this future tech and hyper-surveillance can't seem to identify the difference between hosts and humans by default. None of this is really a problem at the start, when we just assume it's all under control since they've been going through the motions for decades relatively successfully, but as events unfold all of this makes very little ongoing sense.
We have the reveal of a major GM figure being a Cylon, too, and around that point the Butchers explain that there isn't much of a biological difference visible at a glance between hosts and humans other than that under normal circumstances they can pull up a control interface for a typical host or use command phrases on them. Only the GMs know the command phrases or perhaps are even flagged with the power to use them, though. So, back to harm avoidance inside the park: where's the safe word for players to use with other players? This is never touched upon at all, and as mentioned Man in Black threatens to gut two human players who cramp his style, to zero consequence. We have no indication that it's free-for-all PVP to the death whatsoever, though; beyond the assurances of safety, humans have not harmed other humans on-screen at all, and a husband and wife bring their child to the park and mention not venturing too far into the wilderness only because it's not age appropriate, not because of any actual danger.
Is there a standard player-player interaction protocol we don't know about that's keeping all these folks happy and satisfied customers instead of everyone leaving with PTSD or in a body bag?
"Hey, buddy, sorry for breaking immersion and all, but I'm on vacation here too and not a robot, so, could you maybe take your penis out of me now and call a medical team for this hemorrhaging? Honest mistake, I know, consent issues sure are tricky in Rapeworld, ha-ha-ha." :| Or, "pause, pause, hold up on the beating me to death! Truce! I'm the CFO of Snapchat, not a murder puppet! Can you find my teeth and take this knife out of my gut?"
???
Imagine Interstellar if it still had its inhuman preachy characters and overbearing exposition dumps, but didn't bother with the years of effort put into its hard sci-fi world-building framework.
Well, no need to imagine it now.
From your example, Hector's arrival is initially built up as a significant, expensive climax for the audience, the guests, and the GMs. Each time it's shown accompanied by dramatic music and slow motion, and we see the GMs observing it carefully and Sizemore hanging on every word spoken in real time after applying a script revision.
That all makes sense initially since the body count for the Hector loop climax is huge and Sweetwater is inevitably torn to shreds. Earlier in the season that would have actually mattered. Note how much labor is established as being involved in repairing any given host. Techs question the department head about whether Man in Black should be allowed to kill a handful of hosts early on because of the presumed costs he's stacking up by doing so.
...But now, the scope of Westworld is not just hinted at, and finally shown to be vastly larger than Sweetwater with at least one other enormous settlement. That town of inhibition and excess, complete with golden orgy brothel, seems like it has random killing every five seconds regardless of any guest interaction. We see full blown military engagements occurring, too. Despite earlier complaints about some small-scale mayhem, no one at HQ bats an eye when they have to clean up Teddy mowing down an entire brigade with a gatling gun? The logistical complexity we've moved into for ramping up the stakes far, far exceeds the capacity ever demonstrated by HQ, which clearly responds to individual incidents one at a time. It's wildly inconsistent. We have maybe 100 underground floors, and endless halls filled with spare bodies, yet Sizemore only has funding to use 20 new hosts to build his hugely important Board-demanded narrative. The butchers are only surprised to be repairing Maeve multiple days in a row because she died so often, not because they have so many coworkers to split the work between. The scale of the world has opened up in the latest episodes to an enormous scale, all with casual and rampant brutality, but that simply doesn't make sense anymore.
I won't even bother touching on the absolute brain poison of the Butcher/Maeve subplot. I assume there will be some kind of cop-out involved like the guys being robots and Ford walking in with a chuckle and a wan smile in the final episode, but that won't improve it any. Let's just ignore it for now.
Bernardgate. Why does Bernard still have admin privileges with no oversight at all, in a surveillance environment so extreme that personal secrets are compromised on the regular between everyone who has department level access, after being fired for negligence determined to have endangered the entire park? This is a bit much. If we allow for absolute trust in him despite his firing and the obvious new motivation and opportunity to easily sabotage the park in any way he wants, which is fucking stupid, there would still be logs of every step that he took in covering his tracks, probably even more damning than the surveillance logs themselves being left intact. All we really have to work with is that he's a super-programmer robot who developed much of the AI routines and has been around forever and intentionally has Ford-based unfettered system access that no one else realizes.
Also, do we really get Elsie's disappearance explained in a random one second flashback that doesn't hold any narrative weight, right after going through all the existentially reflective motions about Bernard killing Theresa and asking Ford whether he's ever been told to kill anyone else before? Why does having retained knowledge of Elsie's murder after all not seem to matter to Bernard or the narrative, when we're told Bernard is "sensitive" and shown that he's a wreck about murdering Theresa, and the story continues emphasizing the looming threat of Bernard finding out about Theresa after the memory wipe and its potential consequences for his character? What the fuck about Elsie then?! Is it not a big deal if he killed his coworker and friend if he wasn't screwing her? :|
Let's move on from the subplot specifics, though, and get into the broader world-building issues. I don't know how much this has been touched upon in detail so I'll have at it.
The pilot establishes Asimov's Laws and takes great pleasure in all the money shots of flies walking on robot eyeballs. We have special guns that don't work on humans, and it asks for a far future sci-fi pass about how the guns still obey the laws of physics to splinter through wood and blow holes in hosts while only being able to lightly bruise players. Fair enough, but as the season progresses the show seems like it has concerns about any dramatic tension being possible within those constraints, and increasingly abandons them seemingly by necessity. It has a very "oh shit, we sure wrote ourselves into a corner" vibe to it; a strange problem to justify within a pre-planned storyline.
Man in Black is the only character on the show who seems to notice or care that knives don't have magical safeties built in, and that's really the core element that makes him legitimately intimidating: using a knife. Okay. The logic kind of breaks down on the spot there, but we initially aren't forced to think about it too much, since by and large everyone else is just playing Duck Hunt early on. In these last few episodes, though, melee combat with deadly weapons is being leaned on a hell of a lot for dramatic tension, in both timelines and by everyone.
To highlight this, in the establishing scene for Man in Black, Teddy has a showdown with him, shoots him, and recognizes that the bullets are definitely hitting but have no effect. In a twist for the audience that had been following Teddy's storyline through his eyes, he becomes overwhelmed with fear, standing there paralyzed by the realization of the god -- or devil -- in his presence. In another relatively early instance, Logan gets bored with maintaining roleplay during the bounty hunt climax and walks out of cover to casually absorb some bullets, to a similar reaction from the bounty target.
Oops, hold on, though, that's not very effective now that we actually want dramatic tension, so instead of hosts assuming that guns work on everyone and being shocked and confused by confirmation that "newcomers" are bulletproof, that's been ditched and hosts now fire off a few shots and then run straight to melee range to knock out or grab the players, and Wyatt's minotaurs carry axes and machetes and swing to kill.
???
You can't have it both ways. Is Westworld, barring the reverie glitch, actually safe at all for the players? If that's so, why would hosts have knives and axes and be seen swinging them with deadly force on players without breaching protocol, past and present? We have absolutely no reason to believe that they pull their swings at the last possible moment. To the contrary.
It's not just a problem with the way hosts work. This is an obscenely violent and fucked up theme park where "nothing is taboo," and murder and rape are happening by the truckload. Players are promised absolute safety in this horrific environment, we see them revel in the certainty of it as they go about their $40k/day well spent, and the GMs never express concern about player safety or believe themselves to be in harm's way either (except with the glitch). Human safety is ensured by three things: Westworld guns using selective physics, hosts having strict programming to never harm humans, and the GM oversight of all the fun and games. What the hell about human players harming *other* humans, though? We can forgive some of this through assumptions made about the orientation process before entering, but then we're shown the orientation process: left deliberately mysterious for total exhilaration. While that scene is from -30 timeline, we're not given any reason to believe it's different later.
Still, okay, let's remain as forgiving as possible here and assume guests sign a bunch of waivers and contracts and watch a bunch of classroom PSA videos about PVP etiquette. How can any of that possibly work in a roleplay-encouraged ultra-realistic insane rape and murder simulator where humans and robots are totally indistinguishable unless a human is shot or completely breaks character? The GMs have no illusions about what kind of place they're running, and the show's tone goes more down the path of horror than fantasy with each episode.
Incredibly depraved as it is, Sweetwater is still just the "newbie zone," where some pretense of humanity remains. A very small pretense. As we follow the narrative we realize Westworld is structured to desensitize players to that initial depravity and then use narrative quest hooks to lure players away from its confines to greater stakes, greater darkness, and greater opportunity for gratification, so how in the *hell* aren't situations constantly coming up where humans either mistake other humans for hosts and harm them, or cease caring about the human/robot distinction and harm anyone they come across thanks to their constantly reinforced psychopathy?
Keep in mind, humans don't have safety programming and everything other than guns work as they do in real life. Man in Black has spent 30 years coming to Westworld, but it's a first for him when Teddy springs into action and stops him from threatening Ford with his knife, and he doesn't shy away from threatening humans elsewhere. We can reasonably conclude hosts don't have an intervention function programmed in that normally activates if a human targets another human with deadly force in Westworld, only in the specific case when Ford is targeted.
Players don't even have a particularly good way of telling who's a fellow player or a host. I mean, if we're going there, given how unreliable command responses have become, *no one* does; the only effective test would be shooting them and seeing if they die from it or just get tickled. Under that insane premise, I'd probably shoot all my coworkers with a Westworld gun every day at HQ to confirm none of them are fuckin' Cylons, since this future tech and hyper-surveillance can't seem to identify the difference between hosts and humans by default. None of this is really a problem at the start, when we just assume it's all under control since they've been going through the motions for decades relatively successfully, but as events unfold all of this makes very little ongoing sense.
We have the reveal of a major GM figure being a Cylon, too, and around that point the Butchers explain that there isn't much of a biological difference visible at a glance between hosts and humans other than that under normal circumstances they can pull up a control interface for a typical host or use command phrases on them. Only the GMs know the command phrases or perhaps are even flagged with the power to use them, though. So, back to harm avoidance inside the park: where's the safe word for players to use with other players? This is never touched upon at all, and as mentioned Man in Black threatens to gut two human players who cramp his style, to zero consequence. We have no indication that it's free-for-all PVP to the death whatsoever, though; beyond the assurances of safety, humans have not harmed other humans on-screen at all, and a husband and wife bring their child to the park and mention not venturing too far into the wilderness only because it's not age appropriate, not because of any actual danger.
Is there a standard player-player interaction protocol we don't know about that's keeping all these folks happy and satisfied customers instead of everyone leaving with PTSD or in a body bag?
"Hey, buddy, sorry for breaking immersion and all, but I'm on vacation here too and not a robot, so, could you maybe take your penis out of me now and call a medical team for this hemorrhaging? Honest mistake, I know, consent issues sure are tricky in Rapeworld, ha-ha-ha." :| Or, "pause, pause, hold up on the beating me to death! Truce! I'm the CFO of Snapchat, not a murder puppet! Can you find my teeth and take this knife out of my gut?"
???
Imagine Interstellar if it still had its inhuman preachy characters and overbearing exposition dumps, but didn't bother with the years of effort put into its hard sci-fi world-building framework.
Well, no need to imagine it now.
LegendofDragoonLives
Member
Why is it hard for people to figure out that the Asian dude is thinking with his dick more than his brain? I really hope all these posts that don't get it are from women lol
elrechazado
Banned
He never gives a single indication that he's infatuated with her. The tall skinny white tech was the one raping corpses. Asian guy just looks confused and dumb and does whatever she says for reasons. Dumb beardywhite guy just says what the fuck, then repeatedly does the same thing because reasons.
LegendofDragoonLives
Member
You're right, he should just say it and make it as obvious as fucking possible. Then have gaffers bitch about obvious info dump. Every tv or movie topic on gaf sometimes is riddled with some gaffers come to just complain about dumb shit, it's hard to take it as serious discussion.
Loved the scene when he wakes up and realizes what he did as well. That might have been my favorite scene in the entire episode.Solo said:
arts&crafts
Member
I think that the "Butchers" are hosts. That could explain the asian one having doubts about his reality like maeve. Otherwise it makes no sense.
Also, how is Dolores having memories of the past if that timeline is in the past? I guess she still could have earlier memories but if the william scenes take place 30 years ago that is near the beginning of her "life".
Also, how is Dolores having memories of the past if that timeline is in the past? I guess she still could have earlier memories but if the william scenes take place 30 years ago that is near the beginning of her "life".
I think you have the wrong read on this. The character as he has been established isn't interested in her because she's a sexy woman at all. If he were there would be more tells and he would actually be interested in building a relationship with her. He's not. His interest in Maeve is foreshadowed by his interest in the bird. He's just curious about the programming and he sees himself as being a potential Behavioral Tech. That's all. It's really simplistic.
elrechazado
Banned
Show don't tell. I love when the explanation for something is apparently one that has zero expressed or implied evidence. And cut it with the gaf analysis - read a dozen articles and threads about the show and discerning viewers everywhere are pointing out this nonsense.
Besides, you completely missed the boat as pointed out above, on his actual motivation, then made a smug post about how we are all morons who can't see something that isnt there.
I agree with a lot of what you said. I just want to touch on how humans can distinguish other humans: my view and assumption has always been that all humans either carry a clear white hat or a pitch black hat. I've tried to look out for this throughout the series and I think I'm right. Perhaps it's part of the pre-visit training to never take off your hat in proximity to humans which you don't trust, else you might be mistaken for a host.
wesleyshark
Banned
That was a great scene... And the split second of Bernard starting to recall what he did with Elise... Jeffrey Wright is a joy to watch.
elrechazado
Banned
So I read about the Wyatt = Dolores theory. I'm convinced. The crux is that Teddy's memory of the Wyatt massacre is note for note with Dolores' memory of the church town massacre, and that in Ford's new story we actually haven't seen Dolores at all in the modern timeline. Would be interesting seeing teddy and MiB finally get to Wyatt and have it be Dolores.
Yeah, we have. In that first episode where he killed Teddy, raped Dolores, and handed her that can of food in town.
elrechazado
Banned
That's prior to Ford's new story, as I said.
YesNOnoNOYes
Member
wow evilore, thanks for that. you've kinda covered a lot of what i feel but in more wordswordswords.
Yes,
I know I may be stupid but I'm still hoping against this.... It seems awfully cheap if it does eventuate.
Yeah, that was weak as hell.
Oh, I hadn't thought about this actually, but you're right. It's weird that the Bernard character wouldn't break down in similar manners over Elsie's death if he did indeed murder her. ....Mmmm...
Yes, I was always wondering about humans v humans interactions in WestWorld, cuz it seems highly plausible that humans will find a way to fuck things up. But I stopped asking after a while cuz I feel like it's not the focus of this show. They dont wanna go far enough in the mechanics of the park for us to question humans v humans potential encounters. They want to tell a story about how a white hat became a black hat and how a robot gained sentience. So I rolled with it.
This was funny, though :>
Also, I accept your explanation that the park may have gotten super big in size and they are having a hard time monitoring everything. But, is it possible.. (and I am not tech-head here, so I may be wrong)... to set alarms that can be written to ping when something really out of note happens. For example, when suddenly two deputies shot at each other instead of at a band of bandits, there could be an alarm written for that to ping the attention of an overseer?
Anyway, appreciate all the wordswordswords. A lot of it echo my sentiment.
And yet, I may be naive enough to hang on for the ride. Even if the wheels are coming off a bit. Maybe next episode will be tidy(er).
Yes,
I know I may be stupid but I'm still hoping against this.... It seems awfully cheap if it does eventuate.
Yeah, that was weak as hell.
Oh, I hadn't thought about this actually, but you're right. It's weird that the Bernard character wouldn't break down in similar manners over Elsie's death if he did indeed murder her. ....Mmmm...
Yes, I was always wondering about humans v humans interactions in WestWorld, cuz it seems highly plausible that humans will find a way to fuck things up. But I stopped asking after a while cuz I feel like it's not the focus of this show. They dont wanna go far enough in the mechanics of the park for us to question humans v humans potential encounters. They want to tell a story about how a white hat became a black hat and how a robot gained sentience. So I rolled with it.
This was funny, though :>
Also, I accept your explanation that the park may have gotten super big in size and they are having a hard time monitoring everything. But, is it possible.. (and I am not tech-head here, so I may be wrong)... to set alarms that can be written to ping when something really out of note happens. For example, when suddenly two deputies shot at each other instead of at a band of bandits, there could be an alarm written for that to ping the attention of an overseer?
Anyway, appreciate all the wordswordswords. A lot of it echo my sentiment.
And yet, I may be naive enough to hang on for the ride. Even if the wheels are coming off a bit. Maybe next episode will be tidy(er).
A ploy in what sense? I think it's pretty clearly being set up as the HQ setpiece in the finale where Maeve and whoever she recruits works on breaking out, while the Dolores/William/MiB stuff will be the Park setpiece in the finale where the nature of the maze and the fate of Arnold is revealed. Maeve gets the scifi shootbangs, while the others get the wild west shootbangs.
elrechazado
Banned
People are hoping it's all part of Ford's plan, that the dumbass techs are hosts, etc, because that feels like it lessens the terrible writing that has allowed the show to eliminate its internal logic.
Does anyone really think that someone like Ford would allow himself to create a host that stupid? I don't think he has it in him.
Well maybe not a ploy per se, but it feels unatural that they are capable to pull this shit off without anyone noticing. I thought Ford could see what all the hosts could see? i think someone is letting this happen for whatever reason. Maybe just wishful thinking on my part. I think this part of the story is really weak. Such a shame though. the woman playing maeve is a good actress.
haha yup, thats pretty much how i feel.
Saren is Bad
Member
I personally think that Ford is behind it all. Or at least I hope so
BattleMonkey
Member
Greatest show ever! One episode later "this show is so stupid"
elrechazado
Banned
If he wants plausible deniability in order to create chaos maeve then maybe? I dunno I think it's all just bad writing.
Honestly though I don't think Ford being behind the Maeve stuff would make it any better. This subplot essentially boils down to either a) it's ford's doing or b) it's bad writing. Any plot in which the viewer must choose between believing it's either bad writing or competent writing is a badly written plot.
andythinkpad
Member
Sir Anthony Hopkins is the only person holding the show together.
Every time Meave shows up its "Oh boy it's those three morons again" time.
I get so annoyed by that new young executive, she is a totally wrong actress casted for that part. I can't tell if the actress is playing dumb stupid, or just has bad dialogue to work with. I actually like the British writer, at lease his personality and consistent with his overacting.
This is how the internet works. It would be an interesting experiment if a GAF TV show thread weren't open until all episodes had aired and we'd seen the full picture, but that's not realistic and as such you'll get "worst show ever" and "best show ever" remarks every week. It's the nature of social media and message forums.
The real reason why Bernard was free to walk around and haxx everything was because he was never fired in the first place.
The board of directors don't really have the power to fire whomever they please. Typically their responsibilities are fairly limited, relating to the hiring and firing of the CEO and broad strategic oversight. I don't know enough company law to state that its impossible for a board to be able to fire other employees as well, but I've certainly never heard of any having that power. It would be very strange, completely undermining the CEO who they hired to make those decisions.
More importantly, even if they could intervene over the head of their CEO - who I presume is Ford, so I suppose you could argue they wanted to undermine him - one single board member sure as fuck can't just use that power as they please. Board decisions need to be made at official board meetings and voted through by a majority.
The board of directors don't really have the power to fire whomever they please. Typically their responsibilities are fairly limited, relating to the hiring and firing of the CEO and broad strategic oversight. I don't know enough company law to state that its impossible for a board to be able to fire other employees as well, but I've certainly never heard of any having that power. It would be very strange, completely undermining the CEO who they hired to make those decisions.
More importantly, even if they could intervene over the head of their CEO - who I presume is Ford, so I suppose you could argue they wanted to undermine him - one single board member sure as fuck can't just use that power as they please. Board decisions need to be made at official board meetings and voted through by a majority.
Of course I realize this is all just nitpicking, but it still annoys me that movies and shows never seem to pay attention to how a business actually functions. Ties into the rest of the organization being completely nonsensical I suppose.
wesleyshark
Banned
I think this is an excellent show, overall. Perfect? No (but what show is?)
I don't think anyone is actually calling it either, ducky. Just in response that post I was just trying to say that's how media is consumed in 2016, for better or for worse. We watch an episode, rush online to critique it, spend a week analyzing it, then lather, rinse, repeat next week. The LOST threads were the best/worst example of this phenomenon. And then throw it all into the blender that is an anonymous message board, and you get a lot of black and white opinions and not much grey area.
yup. Cant really see how this maeve-plot can be saved. I pray for her plot to end this season.
Personally i think it would be alot more believable if one of the tech guys had an obsession with maeve before she started waking up. Like how that one girl kissed one of the hosts in the first episode. Would explain their actions better i think.
Now it just seems like a random mess where they get things done without a plan whatsoever( which is stupid considering how thight the security of the park is supposed to be). Feels rushed and half-baked to me.
arts&crafts
Member
I still enjoy this show immensely and it is still better than 90% of shows I watch, just the stupid Maeve subplot
Regardless of any glaring issues, I'm still enjoying the ride.
Recognizing other humans tho...that one is a bit more tricky unless they got some unseen future tech tagging humans and hosts, like in-park contacts or something. That could cover it, but it also feels like some kind of convient hand-waving. I am still, btw, under the assumption that everyone working in the park are hosts. Including all of the techs, QA, the butchers. Everyone outside of Ford.
I think he's behind all of the current insanity going on. As to the why, it's probably to stay 2 steps ahead of Delos as well as winning a long standing bet with Arnold over the direction Ford has taken the park in.
Future-GAF: The real park way better than what's depicted on the show, but it's still no Spaceworld.
Recognizing other humans tho...that one is a bit more tricky unless they got some unseen future tech tagging humans and hosts, like in-park contacts or something. That could cover it, but it also feels like some kind of convient hand-waving. I am still, btw, under the assumption that everyone working in the park are hosts. Including all of the techs, QA, the butchers. Everyone outside of Ford.
I think he's behind all of the current insanity going on. As to the why, it's probably to stay 2 steps ahead of Delos as well as winning a long standing bet with Arnold over the direction Ford has taken the park in.
Future-GAF: The real park way better than what's depicted on the show, but it's still no Spaceworld.