Westworld 2016 2 2

[the_Thing ®]

I’m still not sure if I’m big on the Shogun World aspect. I hope they keep the old west theme as the main setting. From seeing next weeks preview, I forget his name, but I really like the actor who they showed as a Samurai.

[Bosco685]

4 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

I couldn't fully hear that last quote from Delos during the episode, so here's the full text of it since it sounded significant:

 

I was wondering that myself after watching last night's episode. Thanks for posting this.

[Pete Marino]

So, I think the cool thing they're going to show about Shogun world is that it's Westworld with another setting.  Unless I was missing what they were doing with the preview Maive is going to meet her asian doppleganger and they both say the same lines.

Spoiler

Has anything in the show been more telegraphed than the girl in Raj-world being the MiB's daughter?

 

[fantastic_four]

6 minutes ago, Pete Marino said:

Has anything in the show been more telegraphed than the girl in Raj-world being the MiB's daughter?

No, Nolan reveals most things far more slowly than he did with her.  But not everything has to be hidden or a complex puzzle, so it's a good thing.

[Pete Marino]

7 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

No, Nolan reveals most things far more slowly than he did with her.  But not everything has to be hidden or a complex puzzle, so it's a good thing.

Agreed, i'm glad this wasn't drawn out over 4 episodes.  But they could have been less obvious in this episode than they were in the recap for ep 4.  Basically, you could have watched the recap and not the episode and gotten all the major beats they played this week.  That said, i'm glad they're doing mid-season reveals that can help propel the story forward.

Now, who's the man in white that she was talking to before she met her hookup-boy-toy in episode 3?

[Foley]

19 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

It was, but then he explicitly told the Ford-controlled version of their daughter that he wasn't being noble.  But it did seem personal there, so I'm not sure I completely believe him.  It probably wasn't to save any of them, but they reminded him of something from his past and it inspired him to take the chance to make his escape.

I think we will end up being surprised by William in the end. I believe the "goal" of Ford's game is for William to redeem himself and become more like his younger self. 

We can already see that he has changed his mind about things he once believed in when he tells Delos that he no longer thinks people should have the ability to live forever. That, coupled with him saving the innocents from the Confederados (yeah he said he wasn't being noble, but I'm not buying it) are just the beginning IMO.

This would also make sense when taken with what Ford said to William through Lawrence's daughter, something along the lines of "If you're looking forward then you're looking in the wrong direction." I took this to mean something like "look back to the man you once were, and away from what you've become."

[fantastic_four]

4 hours ago, Foley said:

I think we will end up being surprised by William in the end. I believe the "goal" of Ford's game is for William to redeem himself and become more like his younger self. 

We can already see that he has changed his mind about things he once believed in when he tells Delos that he no longer thinks people should have the ability to live forever. That, coupled with him saving the innocents from the Confederados (yeah he said he wasn't being noble, but I'm not buying it) are just the beginning IMO.

This would also make sense when taken with what Ford said to William through Lawrence's daughter, something along the lines of "If you're looking forward then you're looking in the wrong direction." I took this to mean something like "look back to the man you once were, and away from what you've become."

What would ever motivate Ford to devote a huge chunk of his life to creating some limited form of redemption for William?  

[Rodey]

29 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

What would ever motivate Ford to devote a huge chunk of his life to creating some limited form of redemption for William?  

If anything, Ford is using William to help him stop Delos.  

Anyone else's brain hurt trying to figure out the Bernard timelines/scars/bandage/head bruise?

[Bosco685]

24 minutes ago, Rodey said:

If anything, Ford is using William to help him stop Delos.  

Anyone else's brain hurt trying to figure out the Bernard timelines/scars/bandage/head bruise?

[Foley]

48 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

What would ever motivate Ford to devote a huge chunk of his life to creating some limited form of redemption for William?  

I'm not sure. But why did Ford create a game specifically for William at all? Why does he continue to communicate only with William?

[Bosco685]

Just now, Foley said:

I'm not sure. But why did Ford create a game specifically for William at all? Why does he continue to communicate only with William?

Especially post-death via his special programming to continue the puzzle.

[kdoginohio]

i'm getting Godfather 2 feel to this season. flashbacks alongside contemporary scenes to explain the concept of westworld.

[Rodey]

ShogunWorld was cool, and that's about it. Wasn't a huge fan of this episode. 

[fantastic_four]

8 minutes ago, Rodey said:

ShogunWorld was cool, and that's about it. Wasn't a huge fan of this episode. 

No interest in how Maeve has suddenly gone all Neo from the Matrix and is able to control all the other androids around her?  That's one of the cooler developments of the season for me.

I also enjoyed Dolores giving Teddy the night of his life before she decided to effectively wipe out his entire personality afterwards.  COLD!  

I also enjoyed Shogun World more than I thought I would, and since that was almost the entire episode, I enjoyed the entire episode.

I need to re-watch the first scene of the episode again where they discovered there were a bunch of "empty vessel" hosts.  You would assume those were meant to contain the personas of real people, but I'm not sure if the scene revealed anything about who exactly was meant to be uploaded to the bodies.  Maybe it did and I missed it.  I also missed that apparently Teddy was one of the dead bodies on that table, which I suppose isn't a surprise since he appeared dead and floating in the water in the first episode of the season.

[Rodey]

14 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

No interest in how Maeve has suddenly gone all Neo from the Matrix and is able to control all the other androids around her?  That's one of the cooler developments of the season for me.

I also enjoyed Dolores giving Teddy the night of his life before she decided to effectively wipe out his entire personality afterwards.  COLD!  

I also enjoyed Shogun World more than I thought I would, and since that was almost the entire episode, I enjoyed the entire episode.

I need to re-watch the first scene of the episode again where they discovered there were a bunch of "empty vessel" hosts.  You would assume those were meant to contain the personas of real people, but I'm not sure if the scene revealed anything about who exactly was meant to be uploaded to the bodies.  Maybe it did and I missed it.  I also missed that apparently Teddy was one of the dead bodies on that table, which I suppose isn't a surprise since he appeared dead and floating in the water in the first episode of the season.

The whole Maeve/Neo thing is bizarre to me. It's like a huge jump in character. 

Dolores turning Teddy into a psycho (on reddit that have a post showing how his stats changed) is interesting after the good guy finally gets the girl.

In the beginning, Craddick is doing a voice over as the camera pans and zooms around Bernard/Arnold. What he says is very peculiar. 

[fantastic_four]

From another thread:

3 hours ago, tth2 said:

3 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

The biggest mystery related to it is which path the Man in Black is going down.  He could be a human trying to get to immortality or he could be a host headed for sapience...I still can't decide who he is and consequently which direction he's headed in.

  Hide contents

What do you mean?  He's the guy who owns the company that operates West World and owns the technology.

He's clearly not a host, unless the writers spring another deus ex machina on us just like they did with Arnold (also another total BS moment).  

Unless you know why Arnold allowed Dolores to kill him, why Ford allowed Dolores to kill him, or why William is continuing to play Ford's game with Ford taunting him via various hosts then I don't see any clear way to call which of the main characters started out as hosts but have become human or which started out as humans but are now hosts.  All I feel certain of is that the Nolans are attempting to show us that the line between human body and soul and artificial body and soul are arbitrary as they travel down a path of the humans becoming more artificial and the AI becoming more human.  I think William is human and has been throughout seasons one and two, but I'm not going to be shocked if it turns out he's a host.  Or that he was human but then died at some point and now he's in a host body.  He was a host in the original film, so it'd be a parallel plot twist to make him a host here, too.

Anybody have a guess why they showed Dolores running one of the same "fidelity" tests on Bernard/Arnold that William ran repeatedly on Delos?

Edited May 30, 2018 by fantastic_four

[Bosco685]

23 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

Anybody have a guess why they showed Dolores running one of the same "fidelity" tests on Bernard/Arnold that William ran repeatedly on Delos?

I took it as now she is the master and she was evaluating if Bernard was conforming to her memories how Arnold interacted with her. So the 'human' ensuring the machine was repeating its tasks consistently.

[fantastic_four]

16 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

41 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

Anybody have a guess why they showed Dolores running one of the same "fidelity" tests on Bernard/Arnold that William ran repeatedly on Delos?

I took it as now she is the master and she was evaluating if Bernard was conforming to her memories how Arnold interacted with her. So the 'human' ensuring the machine was repeating its tasks consistently.

When was that supposed to be--the past, or the future?  If it's the past where they were working on perfecting the technique of uploading a human consciousness into a host body, then Dolores isn't "woke" yet and she's just working on Bernard at probably Ford's direction.  But if it's the future, what the heck is she trying to do?  Is Bernard supposed to be Arnold v1.0 that doesn't work right in some more functional yet similar state to the way the James Delos copy didn't work, and she's working on Arnold v2.0 that hopefully works in some future where presumably she came out on top?  And if so, why?  Because he's her creator, I suppose, who seemed to sacrifice himself for her in season one?  Or is it something else?

Edited May 30, 2018 by fantastic_four

[Rodey]

2 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

When was that supposed to be--the past, or the future?  If it's the past where they were working on perfecting the technique of uploading a human consciousness into a host body, then Dolores isn't "woke" yet and she's just working on Bernard at probably Ford's direction.  But if it's the future, what the heck is she trying to do?  Is Bernard supposed to be Arnold v1.0 that doesn't work right in some more functional yet similar state to the way the James Delos copy didn't work, and she's working on Arnold v2.0 that hopefully works in some future where presumably she came out on top?  And if so, why?  Because he's her creator, I suppose, who seemed to sacrifice himself for her in season one?  Or is it something else?

We do know that the Dolores we see talking to Bernard is NOT Arnold pretending to be Dolores. Someone just asked Evan Rachel Wood on twitter and she said NOPE.  

Like you said, the interaction between Dolores and Bernard/Arnold all depends on when in time it is happening.  Of course, some people are speculating that Arnold was always a host an never human, and was created by Ford to figure out the whole dump someone's consciousness into a host body.  

(My head hurts)

[fantastic_four]

14 hours ago, Rodey said:

(My head hurts)

Nolan might be trying us to go so crazy in figuring out who's a human, who's a host, and who's on who's side that we just start thinking of humans and hosts as different sides of the same coin.  

One really interesting moment in Sunday's episode was when Bernard sat down to have his black brain ball removed, Elsie told him it would hurt, and he replied "Eh, it's all just a program anyway."  As if it were Arnold talking in some disconnected way about the host body he was in while still mentally identifying himself as a human who is separate from that body.  Really bizarre way to put it since presumably the pain is similarly if not exactly as intense as if it were to have happened to a human body.