I don't think that's accurate at all with regards to the context in the show. Ford is not the CEO of Delos. His official position is "Park Director". He is in charge of the operations of Westworld. Westworld is owned by Delos Corporation. Hale is an executive director on the board who is here representing the entire board, including the CEO of Delos. So yes, she does have executive power to fire people who are Delos employees, if she is making an official inspection of the park operations on behalf of the entire board.
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Westworld - Live in Your World, Play in Ours - Sundays on HBO
- Thread starter RatskyWatsky
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I don't think that's accurate at all with regards to the context in the show. Ford is not the CEO of Delos. His official position is "Park Director". He is in charge of the operations of Westworld. Westworld is owned by Delos Corporation. Hale is an executive director on the board who is here representing the entire board, including the CEO of Delos. So yes, she does have executive power to fire people who are Delos employees, if she is making an official inspection of the park operations on behalf of the entire board.
Calling out one plotline as bad doesnt mean you think the whole show is bad. I love game of thrones, but having read the books the show could be alot better. A couple of cringe worthy moments from GoT to serve as an example:
ramsays 20 good men. Made no sense whatsoever.
Stannis attacking winterfell with an army smaller than the one stationed inside...(stannis in general is just bad on the show).
Dorne. Everything about dorne.
Could go on and on really
Stannis attacking winterfell with an army smaller than the one stationed inside...(stannis in general is just bad on the show).
Dorne. Everything about dorne.
Could go on and on really
I think the rest of the show is really good. However i think its a shame they spend so much time on this maeve-plot as its weak.
Then the conflict the board is supposedly having doesn't really make sense. I assumed that Westworld was a public company and Delos was a major shareholder or some such. If it's just a subsidiary, well for one thing then it wouldn't make sense to even talk of a board, instead of just calling Hale an executive, but also Ford would not be able to block them from doing anything without being imprisoned.
It makes far more sense for there to be an actual board, who want different things from what Ford wants but maybe Ford is protected by certain key shareholders or board members like Ed Harris, than this stupidity.
wesleyshark
Banned
Yep couldn't get the app to work on my Xbox either. Roommate used his phone to cast it and it worked fine.
I think the idea is that Delos is a public company, and Westworld is Delos' most valuable component. I do agree that Ford is likely to be protected by someone who either is or was on the board, or possibly even Delos' CEO. It seems that in recent years there has been a change in the balance of power. At least that's what the show is trying to present. I doubt they have all the details ironed out anyway, considering how weak the writing is on the basic security of the place.
Kinda how I feel about it. His 'she's awake!' 'Really alive!' stuff basically tells us he's gone the route of believing the AI could gain sentience.
But it would be much better if it was just him and cut the other tech entirety I think. They did a poor job emphasizing the blackmail keeping him in place.
Worst part of the show, but it's still very entertaining and that dips into great in some scenes. Plus the execution of the AI/Robot/morality themes is still pretty excellent for me.
While I agree with the other complaints (dear god this episode was bad), this one never really seemed all that bad to me, and kind of makes sense assuming you ignore some details. If you want to build a hyper-realistic western theme park with all the danger and excitement, you need to have an illusion of danger. Guns that can't actually hurt you don't really cut it for repeat visitors so those guests would need something else, something more real.
It makes a whole lot of sense to have it both ways. People who just want to be invulnerable gods fucking and murdering everything that moves can do that, while people who want something more dangerous can get that too. The show is also pretty good at showing that hosts actions regarding this differ depending on area, and that you need to travel further away from the start to get to the more dangerous spots. In the starting town, hosts always seem to only use guns (or did I miss a scene where that's not the case?). The only areas where we've seen hosts punching people were at the very outskirts of the park, and the guests seemed aware of the dangers there.
But what I actually like about this part is that what guests presumably wanted mimics what people want from movies and videogames. In the early episodes we've had people complaining how there's no tension since the main characters can't be hurt. In the discussion on gaming side people said that Westworld would suck as a video game since it has no fail states. So it makes sense that Westworld guests would mimic this complaints, and that the Westworld management would try to please those guests by including danger and the possibility of failure (like getting knocked out, for instance). Again, this would only be limited to select areas of the park, and the guests would have to know of the dangers beforehand, but that does seem to be the case in the show, as far as we've been shown. Just like the viewers need dramatic tension, so would the guests, I'd imagine. I'd like it if the show spent more time exploring this instead of just dragging out the whole William/Dolores/MiB thing for way too long.
There are some details you kind of need to ignore though. We have reasons to believe hosts pull their punches (in his "dramatic" backstory dump the MiB mentions that Teddy can't leave a permenant mark on him), but how can you knock someone out without risking permanent injury? Sci-fi magic I guess. And then there are the axes, knives and arrows. Believing that hosts will always miss on purpose doesn't work since it eliminates the sense of danger they are supposed to add in the first place, and even then every slash has the potential danger of instantly killing a guest if they make a mistake. Hopefully it will actually lead to something, since the only host that was seen directly attacking guests like this was related to Ford's new story line, which he keeps referring to as something completely different. I kind of doubt it though, since this episode made me feel very doubtful they will be able to tie everything up.
The biggest problem is that no one in management has been shown caring about this. Events like the scene where Teddy massacres an entire camp, or where the train William is one gets ambushed that leads into the Ghost Nation attack should be a really major deal considering how many hosts (and explosions) are involved in them but they are never even mentioned. It's like such events are a common occurrence but given how dangerous they are that shouldn't actually be the case at all.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
In general terms, sure, the show could have inserted a convenient sci-fi convention for how guests tell who other guests are, like an AR designation. I think regardless of the script of any one episode however, the show is falling back on some basic premises stated by the showrunners; primarily that the hosts are secret lifeguards and are programmed to observe and intervene with human guests if real danger begins to take shape.
A good example may have been Teddy at the table with the MiB and Ford. The moment the MiB seemed a real danger, Teddy broke character and grabbed him. Normally, guests are never supposed to go anywhere without a host character with them as part of a quest or storyline. From there one might assume if a guest actually tried to knife someone, the nearest host would tackle them and grab the knife. We've also already seen that within this setting, the ability to repair the human body is significant. A handheld device knit the body shop guy's artery back together. It's been established that the further a guest goes from Sweetwater the rougher things get. So the potential for real human injury would be anticipated and guests are warned. And for better or worse, the MiB is a special exception to a lot of conventions. It's been stated on-camera "that gentleman gets whatever he wants".
As far as the number of bodies resulting from big battles and events, to be honest, I'm not bothered by it. One can fridge logic almost anything away, such as pointing out how the body shop actually does seem to receive a truckload of damaged bodies every day and is always busy. Ultimately though, there's going to be limits to how much detail and scale can be shown on a TV show budget, and a lot of stuff will be hand waved in service of getting through the story.
If everyone is a host it wouldn't explain Elsie - a regular programmer and not a person sent in from the outside from the board, like Teressa. It could be that a majority of the people working there are hosts however, at least the grunt laborers such as the body shop staff.
Management doesn't know about the foolish butcher shop boys, and the one guy is not supposed to have the tablet and thus not be capable of adjusting settings in hosts. His obnoxious friend got furious when he saw the kid had swiped a utility tablet. People are complaining about the body shop plot, but I kind of think it's both funny and typical that such a complex and self-assured operation would be brought down by two guys in the mail room. This is not so different from real life.
A good example may have been Teddy at the table with the MiB and Ford. The moment the MiB seemed a real danger, Teddy broke character and grabbed him. Normally, guests are never supposed to go anywhere without a host character with them as part of a quest or storyline. From there one might assume if a guest actually tried to knife someone, the nearest host would tackle them and grab the knife. We've also already seen that within this setting, the ability to repair the human body is significant. A handheld device knit the body shop guy's artery back together. It's been established that the further a guest goes from Sweetwater the rougher things get. So the potential for real human injury would be anticipated and guests are warned. And for better or worse, the MiB is a special exception to a lot of conventions. It's been stated on-camera "that gentleman gets whatever he wants".
As far as the number of bodies resulting from big battles and events, to be honest, I'm not bothered by it. One can fridge logic almost anything away, such as pointing out how the body shop actually does seem to receive a truckload of damaged bodies every day and is always busy. Ultimately though, there's going to be limits to how much detail and scale can be shown on a TV show budget, and a lot of stuff will be hand waved in service of getting through the story.
If everyone is a host it wouldn't explain Elsie - a regular programmer and not a person sent in from the outside from the board, like Teressa. It could be that a majority of the people working there are hosts however, at least the grunt laborers such as the body shop staff.
Management doesn't know about the foolish butcher shop boys, and the one guy is not supposed to have the tablet and thus not be capable of adjusting settings in hosts. His obnoxious friend got furious when he saw the kid had swiped a utility tablet. People are complaining about the body shop plot, but I kind of think it's both funny and typical that such a complex and self-assured operation would be brought down by two guys in the mail room. This is not so different from real life.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
This I agree though. The show's editing and pacing tries to juggle a lot of balls with varying degrees of success and unless there's something more, that may be the worst thing for me so far.
At this point, that's the only possible explanation for the baffling lack of security everywhere. Something like: oh yeah, there's no passwords on any computer and no access controls to anything and nobody seems to care about what other people are doing, but it's okay since everyone is a host anyway and they'd never do things they aren't supposed to. It's still a pretty bad explanation since it relies on yet another "he was a host all along" twist, but it's better than the alternative of "one of the most advanced and dangerous project in the world can't even get the most basic security right and no one seems to terribly mind".
I get the Maeve/Butcher complaints...it feels very farcical. Maybe there's an out through Ford, but that's likely wishful thinking.
The other complaints though? In regards to Bernard, it has been made explicitedly clear that Ford has a phenomenal amount of control; it's not hard to suspend belief that through Ford, Bernard can go and do whatever he wishes undisturbed. Obviously he's then reinstated, so it's a mute point by then.
I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the staff, bar QA (who seem very Delos company people) are hosts for Ford, or at least the prominent positions anyway.
I'll suspend belief until the finale...then we can rip it apart once we've been given a season's worth of material to digest. Maybe there's answers coming...maybe not.
Until then, I'm looking forward to seeing the conclusion of the various plot lines. There's enough intrigue in all of them IMO.
The other complaints though? In regards to Bernard, it has been made explicitedly clear that Ford has a phenomenal amount of control; it's not hard to suspend belief that through Ford, Bernard can go and do whatever he wishes undisturbed. Obviously he's then reinstated, so it's a mute point by then.
I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the staff, bar QA (who seem very Delos company people) are hosts for Ford, or at least the prominent positions anyway.
I'll suspend belief until the finale...then we can rip it apart once we've been given a season's worth of material to digest. Maybe there's answers coming...maybe not.
Until then, I'm looking forward to seeing the conclusion of the various plot lines. There's enough intrigue in all of them IMO.
We're talking about a facility that should have cameras everywhere and where nearly everything is monitored. So somehow the butchers got ahold of secret clearance and are able to do things like remove bombs without raising any sort of flags. It's pure incompetence to the highest degree. This is a place where they have superhuman AIs running around.
There's no safeguards or checks on any of this.
I could call it hackfraud bullshit by incompetent writers and directors but that might upset people.
Maybe there are multiple Bernards. At this point, I wouldn't even be surprised if that was the case.
andythinkpad
Member
Ford the park director is a metaphor for Hopkins the actor; Lee the British Writer is a metaphor for Jonathan Nolan; Hale the corporate executive is a metaphor for HBO.
I guess they're all on cloud servers.
dead souls
Member
Hey there, some of us were hating this show before it was cool to.
That's all this show has ever been--a huge budget and some good/great actors (Hopkins, Wright, Harris, Wood, Newton) being wasted. It is nice that more people are starting to realize it.
So you're saying in season 2 Hopkins is going to tell HBO to fuck off, and take over writing the series while Nolan goes take a literal piss in a meeting room somewhere?
Grizzlyjin
Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
There are no rules and none of the narrators can be trusted. I'm expecting more asspulls of a similar nature
andythinkpad
Member
The showrunners don't possibly have answers to these questions. The only solution is answer only half of the questions while introduce 3 more questions in the finale.
It does put the audience on par with the Hosts in regards to processing events in time in a non-linear and unorganized fashion.
But I'm still not a fan.
andythinkpad
Member
Nah Ford/Hopkins won't return or only give a cameo, Westworld/Westworld the show collapse. I will put 10 dollars down on the piss. Twitter piss.
Jinfash
needs 2 extra inches
Ugh, no? I don't even know to respond to this.
It's a few scenes later, so why wouldn't there be a time jump?
It was literally one scene later. The only scene in between the phone call and her getting grabbed is Ford having a conversation with young Robert.
Buttonbasher
Member
This episode was fantastic for people interested in the lore.
I don't understand the 180 on the show either. It's better than ever now that they're starting to confirm a lot of peoples theories. Excellent show.
I don't understand the 180 on the show either. It's better than ever now that they're starting to confirm a lot of peoples theories. Excellent show.
I think they'll at least answer who Arnold is, and leave a hint at what he's planning.
I also think they'll showcase Ford's new narrative.
And I think William's journey will reach a conclusion, leaving the park a changed man. The MiB will stumble upon a better idea of Arnold and his maze, and we will probably get a confirmation of MiB being William.
I also think Dolores will conclude her journey of self-discovery.
They've said previously that this is very much a prequel...so I'm expecting S1 to introduce the characters, and world-build the different motivations. Delos, Ford, the Hosts...all will be a stick of dynamite, with the S1 finale lighting the fuse for S2.
They don't need to answer it all, but we at least need a new status quo established for our major characters going into the next season.
Grizzlyjin
Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
I was really keyed into this show until Episode 6. The last 3 episodes have been a major disappointment compared to what came before. There are good moments sprinkled around but it pales to what the show was doing in its initial episodes.
Don't worry, it'll flip flop again next week.
There's one scene between the phone call and Bernard arriving to strangle Elsie. At the time of the phone call, Bernard is right outside of Theresa's room. So the audience has to assume he ran all the way to Elsie's side of the park and was able to sneak in without her noticing before she was able to finish whatever download/analysis she was doing.
Look on the bright side. All those people we came in week after week saying "this show is much more straightforward and simpler than you all think, everyone is reaching and over-speculating with these theories!" are now gone. I wonder if they dropped the show or just have nothing left to say about it.
No I think it's suggested that Ford didn't have anything to do with this but Arnold is also able to take control of hosts.
No I think it's suggested that Ford didn't have anything to do with this but Arnold is also able to take control of hosts.
20cent
Banned
Leaving the Maeve's ridiculous story aside, so....
Ford doesn't want Delos or whoever else to take the data from the hosts, Elsie found out that someone was doing this (logs indicating it was Theresa) from the satellite transmitter she found so Ford made Bernard kill her....okaaaaay? Or Ford is covering his tracks for data he doesn't want to see going out, going out?
Doesn't make sense to me.
Ford doesn't want Delos or whoever else to take the data from the hosts, Elsie found out that someone was doing this (logs indicating it was Theresa) from the satellite transmitter she found so Ford made Bernard kill her....okaaaaay? Or Ford is covering his tracks for data he doesn't want to see going out, going out?
Doesn't make sense to me.
DancingCactus77
Member
If MIB is the CEO of Delos, he must know about the dad and instructed Charlotte to pick him to upload the data?
It's also worth pointing out that Bernard would have needed the command from Ford and the scene inbetween the call and the strangling was Ford with someone else. So either before or after Ford has his conversation with the boy, he has to give the command to Bernard to strangle Elsie.
It's bullshit.
It's bullshit.
Teletraan1
Banned
Until I see the whole season I can't say that something is stupid or doesn't make sense, I won't attack writing for things that I don't have the imagination to suss out myself. In a world where Bernard can't see a door, Delores can't see a picture and anyone could be a host complaining about nobody noticing Maeve and the Butchers or security protocols seems short sighted at best. This episode was the weakest by far but after watching 5 seasons of filler shit like TWD it didn't even phase me, yet there are a lot of monocles out of joint in here.
GarthVaderUK
Banned
Maybe I'm wrong but the board wasn't actually trying to fire Bernard, were they? Wasn't it a plan from whatsherface and Theresa to try to guilt-trip Ford to fall on his sword as the revelries were his, or even maybe have Bernard point the blame towards Ford to save himself? I'm not surprised they wouldn't escort Bernard out on the spot if firing him wasn't their true intention, though obviously things didn't go as planned.
D
Deleted member 22576
Unconfirmed Member
Wow this show is sloppy but I really dig it.
Grizzlyjin
Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
I was so very wrong about this show. It was like a splash of cold water. It's always been dishonest, from Teddy's introduction that has just been the game. But before it felt like that type of deception was in service to the show subverting expectations. Teddy isn't the square jawed hero of the show, hes part of the game. The Man in Black isn't a rogue robot, he's a overzealous gamer. Watching the pilot, I honestly thought they'd avoid going down the list of hack writing tropes for robot shows...but nope, it's just working its way down the list now. So now we still have deception but it's now to justify reveals that are boilerplate in a robot narrative.