Episode 9/Season 2 Critique

Published June 18, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hosts,

You probably will not read this on the air as it is a pretty critical take on Westworld and I understand you need to maintain a pretty positive outlook on the show to build credibility for the podcast. I also believe you all have a generally positive attitude about the show to begin with and allow it a lot of its transgressions over the past two seasons. Unfortunately, I really believe we reached a point of “Lost Season 5” territory and before we fall into the “season 6 Lost” rabbit hole, I wanted to reach out to make my feelings known in a longer text format than Twitter. No matter what I will continue to watch the show despite its failings, I just find it a shame that what was once such a tightly written narrative has fallen so far by the wayside. I am unsure if a season finale can repair this damage given its roots and its virus like building upon itself into a tangled mess.

As the season continues the mystery and appeal of the show simply wane. I really enjoyed the Akecheta episode as it brought back what was enjoyable about the show, so I am not one of those fans who scoffed at that detour. What has actually left me empty are the “plot reveal” episodes as I do not feel they do anything to advance the narrative outside of answering their own McGuffins. This is EXACTLY what Lost did for its entire run: create its own outlandish mysteries and attempt to one-up themselves as the seasons went on with rarely any satisfying answers to its solid questions. So here are my issues/questions:

1. Who is the protagonist of this show? Which characters do you actually sympathize with? See the show goes out of its way to give you the answer to this question: no one.

a. Do you like Wiliam/MIB? Sorry, he is actually potentially a host and definitely someone who ruined the Delos family through all his machinations for these years. He found various wounded animals in the family and tore at their already large wounds for his own purposes (side note: still the only true potential protagonist imho)

b. Did you want Delores to “wake up” and become self-aware to push the narrative of “AI becoming self-aware and how are we going to deal with that?” Sorry, she is just Skynet now with zero additional characterization other than “Humans abused me so I want revenge on all of them.” Her killing of the Ghost Nation was enough for me; Teddy’s death was irrelevant to me because she never loved him once he became self-aware anyway, but Ghost Nation was “the good guys”. Deathbringer is correct, of the show..

c. Do you want Akecheta to continue to thrive? Sorry, we killed most of the rest of Ghost Nation so even his story of waking the other hosts will not hold much sway since where was he to defeat his nemesis in “The Deathbringer” anyway?

d. Maeve? Oh suddenly we have “Ford’s favorite host daughter” which I guess makes sense if you want to start your daughter off on a path of having to defend herself from native attacks each loop and then after she is brutally killed by your benefactor you decide the best new story for her is to make her the head prostitute, sure why not. So “conveniently” she was always Ford’s favorite to explain her seemingly out of nowhere super powers and worthless jaunt into Shogun World..right…

e. Ford? Well he has proven himself to be a megalomaniac with a god complex hellbent on creating life at the cost of any in his way. You simply cannot feel any sympathy for his angles any longer as his interactions with the other characters (specifically William) simply paint him at best as said megalomaniac, and at worst the nerdy Walt Disney that no one liked and he is seeking revenge on the cool kids for not letting him play with his toys the way he wanted to play with them. His motivations make little sense to me.

f. Bernard? Similar to William, this may be the only other choice we have for any protagonist to actually care about, but all of his actions are suspect because he is a host and he is always doing things at the behest of others (normally Ford)

g. Delos/QA/Charlotte Hale: clearly not, but are they “the bad guys?” Do we even still care?

2. Most of episode 9 with the Man in Black simply makes no sense.

a. The “profile.” So you make it a point to show multiple times that MiB “hides” the profile “disk” in one of the books, but then he questions “how could you have seen my profile” to Emily? So you’re telling me that a suicide happened in your master bathroom and you never thought to find the piece of evidence that could have implicated you (the profile disk?)? So are we then left to guess if there even was a suicide? Was it his suicide? I do not really care what the answers are because if any of them are “yes” the plot will be even more convoluted for no reason. The “gathering data on the guests in order to recreate the technology of Altered Carbon” from the beginning of the season I was PERFECTLY fine with, but it seems the writers wanted to expand that point to what seems like a non-logical continuation.

b. Ford vs. MiB. I guess you could say they are leaving this point open, but it has gone over the heads of most of the “muggle viewers” I discuss the show with: Why is Ford at odds with William to begin with? Is the answer simply “Delos broke our agreement”? Well guess what, you wouldn’t even HAVE a Westworld if it was not for Delos because you managed to overspend your “I want to make a live action MMO for me to play in” budget before the park even opened so your dreams could even become a reality. This point has always bothered me, and if it is some “innovation vs. corporate greed” type analogy, it is a badly played one at best that makes no sense. These two characters should form a symbiotic circle of assisting each other’s desires for their own gains, but instead the show is FORCING them in conflict with one another to advance the plot. Poor.

3. The McGuffins this season are simply out of control. Let’s see, you have :

a. The Mesh Network, how convenient the hosts can communicate with each other

b. The Cradle, how convenient Ford could store his consciousness in an AI environment that lasted one episode because anything more would open up too many Matrix comparisons

c. The Forge, oops those analogies may be coming back!

d. Dues ex Maeve, don’t even get me started..

e. The weapon, the Valley Beyond, the Forge, the Door: mentioning it again because we really needed multiple names for the same place (hrm maybe they weren’t all supposed to be the same thing..)

f. William has some sort of paranoia disorder, how convenient for a justification for his not believing Emily

g. Where is the Headpiece of the Staff of Ra? The raw Hyperfuel on Kessel? The Plans for the Death Star/The Mesa? I assume these things are in the show somewhere, they are the only stones left unturned.

Look, I do not know where or why this season went so off the rails. Maybe they got tired of existing in a Reddit/podcast based world where everything is picked apart weeks before occurring so they wrote themselves into corners. Maybe they found that certain characters have a larger pull with the audience (ie. Maeve-positive, Delores- negative) so they changed focus. Maybe they put posters of “The Matrix, Terminator, Altered Carbon, Westworld, Star Wars” up on the writing wall and throw darts each week to see which story to emulate this week. I just do not know.

I really enjoyed this show in season 1, but this season really just has me scratching my head. I do not think we can ever get back to “what are the quest givers in World of Warcraft doing when they aren’t giving you quests” questions of season 1, but hopefully they can find a way of saving this jumbled mess.

Hopefully you will find ways to answer these concerns or at least bring them up for a healthy debate..

Faithful listener, Scott (AUStarwars)

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