Westworld

Terial said:

That still does not answer the choking part. that host was not stopping

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I don't think any kind of real pressure was being applied. I think he was going along with it to get William to break out of his shell and get into it. When the choking stopped he showed no ill effects and was in fact able to speak and wasn't even gasping for breath. In fact he was excited for what William just did.

ZyyzYzzy said:

Fair enough. It just seems to contradict how they introduced everything in regards to the hosts. Like not even waving hand to get a fly to move, yet they can deck someone in the head. At this point with the inconsistencies and what appears to be bad cinematography (ie train scebe with coffin) and timelines, I'm just hoping it doesn't end up being a complete shit show.

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The whole fly bit was just to illustrate to the audience that Delores was no longer bound by her programming. Why would a host bother to wave a fly away unless it was programmed to be annoyed by the fly crawling on its "skin"? I let a lot of this kind of stuff go, because we are dealing with television AI, not true AI.

IT'S REAL!

Side note, when I'm holding down shift to type in caps, I hate apostrophes. They always turn into quotes.

I'm beginning to love this show more for the debate between episodes than the content itself. Remember, this is the guy that wrote the screenplays for Memento and The Prestige - both movies that fucked with time and perception quite heavily. In fact, the key phrase from The Prestige was:

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't.

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This was the initial Teddy introduction.

The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back.

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This is where we are, trying to figure out what is real based on all the things we've seen and are dissecting. Is William the MiB? Are we seeing Delores retrace her steps? What's going on with Maev and here awakening? You get the point..

That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".

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We're not there yet, but this is the big payoff that everyone is expecting. I truly hope we get this. I will be very disappointed if we don't get something amazing at the end of this journey. If we do, this could go down as a master class on how to fuck with your audience in the episodic medium. The debate itself has been amazing to watch unfold and I have to imagine they are all sitting there giggling with glee seeing it happen.

I like your description and comparison to the movie. It makes a lot of sense.

ZyyzYzzy said:

Fair enough. It just seems to contradict how they introduced everything in regards to the hosts. Like not even waving hand to get a fly to move, yet they can deck someone in the head. At this point with the inconsistencies and what appears to be bad cinematography (ie train scebe with coffin) and timelines, I'm just hoping it doesn't end up being a complete shit show.

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You've got to remember that each host, depending on it's position on the map, basically as a different set of abilities. Soldier guys are obviously trained to fight, whereas little ol' damsel Delores isn't supposed to do anything but die or be saved. Remember the woodcutter? All those guys were in a loop because none of them were allowed to even TOUCH an axe to chop wood, but the other guy was. I'm sure all the people out farther in the park can fuck your shit up. You can even see some hosts in Sweetwater can't do anything but lazily tackle you and kind of wrestle for your gun.

It's like civilian NPC's in towns. Some will never fight back, some will just run away, but if you stop attacking "Fish Monger Alvin" and start attacking "General AssKick McLordington" you're going to get your shit rocked.

OU Ariakas said:

Any chance that William and his brother in law are actually the newest, most self aware hosts at the park maybe even unbeknownst to the company? It would be a trip to start or end an episode with Ford talking to one of those two in a diagnostic room.

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Now THAT would be fucked up.

Leadsalad said:

Well, other than the train scene with the disappearing William and Latino crime boss dude, I think it's all bull still. Ford basically kidnaps her from the street parade in front of William and asks her how long ago her last contact with Arnold was, "Last contact was 34 years, 42 days, 7 hours."

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In that scene, I thought she passed out at the parade, and then the scene with Ford was completely separate. Not that she was kidnapped and then taken back to the town to continue on with William.

Xevy said:

You've got to remember that each host, depending on it's position on the map, basically as a different set of abilities. Soldier guys are obviously trained to fight, whereas little ol' damsel Delores isn't supposed to do anything but die or be saved. Remember the woodcutter? All those guys were in a loop because none of them were allowed to even TOUCH an axe to chop wood, but the other guy was. I'm sure all the people out farther in the park can fuck your shit up. You can even see some hosts in Sweetwater can't do anything but lazily tackle you and kind of wrestle for your gun.

It's like civilian NPC's in towns. Some will never fight back, some will just run away, but if you stop attacking "Fish Monger Alvin" and start attacking "General AssKick McLordington" you're going to get your shit rocked.

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If they really are scenes from 30 years in the past, maybe stuff like "x character doesn't have weapons privileges" is a new rule because of fucked up shit like hosts choking guests?

I'm also disappointed this got a 2nd season. For some reason I thought this was like a one off mini series? It allows it to avoid all the traps of shows like LOST where there's no real conclusion. If we're getting 2 seasons, I worry that we're not getting any answers...and fuck that.

You hear Ford's voice saying the sleep command and her looking around and then passing out.

It depends if 5 is a set number, it may be okay. They have have a A->B-->C route with the story. LOST was just like, "Let's make this weird series. Oh shit, it got picked up. Let's continue it! Oh, it needs to have an ending and a point to it? WOOPS LOL!" I'm sure if they made a deal with these guys they have a set story arc overall. Like: Season 1 Robot Sentience, Season 2Robot Sentience being distributed, Season 3 Robot resistance army building, Season 4 "War", Season 5 Conclusion.

I think the hosts being able to injure guests has to do with what they said about the further you go from town, the more dangerous the park gets. Although the hosts probably can't kill someone, they can be more violent in the more rare loops, as most of the guests will never discover these rare "Easter eggs." Obviously finding these rare loops in the park wouldn't be very exciting for the more adventurous guests (who are all probably regulars) if there was zero sense of actual danger. The guests who venture out that far are the ones like Logan and the MIB who are bored to death with the regular run of the mill quests and adventures and are looking for something more dangerous and rare. That's why Logan tells William to ignore the drunk in town who was going to bother him with a treasure map (which he did, and Logan put his knife through his hand), and why Logan at first was annoyed with William for bringing him on the excursion with the bounty hunter.

etchazz said:

I think the hosts being able to injure guests has to do with what they said about the further you go from town, the more dangerous the park gets. Although the hosts probably can't kill someone, they can be more violent in the more rare loops, as most of the guests will never discover these rare "Easter eggs." Obviously finding these rare loops in the park wouldn't be very exciting for the more adventurous guests (who are all probably regulars) if there was zero sense of actual danger. The guests who venture out that far are the ones like Logan and the MIB who are bored to death with the regular run of the mill quests and adventures and are looking for something more dangerous and rare. That's why Logan tells William to ignore the drunk in town who was going to bother him with a treasure map (which he did, and Logan put his knife through his hand), and why Logan at first was annoyed with William for bringing him on the excursion with the bounty hunter.

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I completely agree with this. Logan is the high level main who finally convinced his coworker friend to give the game a shot, and remembers how dull the low level game is in comparison now that he's run through it with his main and alts. I also believe this is where the rebellion will be noticed. A robot who already has some limited ability to attack guests, will take it way past the limit and it will alert the park monitors to something going down. I know all of you bring up Memento, Prestige, and Lost as examples of these people's writing, but I'm here because of Person of Interest which remained really grounded throughout and did an awesome job of building up and moving into the next chapter. I am hoping they use some of that as they take this story through 5 (or more) seasons. You can only get so weird before it all just falls apart and just gets dumb. Just a 10 episode mini series? Yeah cool, let's go on the mindfuck train. Anything more? And it exponentially gets harder to keep on the rails.

After seeing William wield the same knife in the preview for the next episode, I definitely think he's the MiB. However, I think that's taking liberties with the show's own logic. Didn't they establish that androids didn't behave quite so naturally 30 years ago?

consensus said:

Yep...I read it was planned for 5 seasons... Immediately, Lost came to mind.... And it never ends well....

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Why wouldn't "The Wire" come to mind? That was always planned to have 5 seasons, and they made that series work great. If they have a stop point in mind, then they can hit it. Similar to Game of Thrones. That was inititally supposed to have 7 seasons, but due to production costs, it was more benefitial for them (to finish the story) to have a slightly longer 7th season, and split it in half by having 2 "short" seasons. This show seems to be planned out ahead of time, instead of flying off the rails. Let's see if season 2 proves this before we jump to conclusions.

PS - The actress that plays Dolores is fucking crazy. She looks like a completely different person.