Is Westworld all it could be?
I’m new here. I have been listening to the podcasts of different shows for a long time. I recently heard good things about Westworld, so I decided to check it out. I binged both seasons over the past three weeks. Season one hooked me. Season two lost me, or at least cooled me off to the show. There are so many great things this show could have become, as evidenced by S02/E08 (Kiksuya). Instead, season two for the most part resulted in a conflation of pretentious and often confounding concepts that often dismissed the central premise the series was building, which is that sentient beings suffer real consequences for their actions. Through more thoughtful character development and less Die Hard style gun battles, Westworld could have truly become the think piece it set out to be. Instead, at the end of season two I feel a disappointment because the series fell so short of achieving its potential. Was season two a transitional season that provided the groundwork for the show’s true purpose, or just a demonstration of uninspired writing that is hoping to get over on non-linear pseudo-intellectualism to mask its shortcomings? In short, is Westworld all it could be?
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The longer version: Fundamentally, Westworld can't ever just get down to it and tell a proper, compelling story, because it's far too concerned with being clever. It is desperate for you to think it's clever, and as a result it paradoxically ends up being far less clever than it could be. It gets in its own way with pointless timeline fuckery and obfuscation, and with stuff like, say, Anthony Hopkins constantly spouting meaningless pseudo-intellectual soundbites about ~the true nature of man~, with the fact that Anthony Hopkins is the one delivering them your only distraction from the fact that there's no actual substance there.
I don't know. Both seasons of this show have entertained me, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were all that good, and season 2 was definitely a step down from season 1. There have been a few standout episodes this time around ("Kiksuya" being the obvious example) that demonstrate what the show could be if its priorities were in a different place, but I don't think Nolan and Joy realize that. Some stories under some creators work well if they're told in a confusing and non-linear manner, but this isn't one of those situations, and if they keep trying to force a square peg into a round hole, it's just going to lead to more disappointing seasons in the future.
I find it really hard to articulate why I hated this show. One thing I will say is, if the only reason the identity of a character in a story is a mystery is because the writers are omitting the scenes where people say his name, I think there's a serious problem with the story.
In fact, the show is great at times. Every show has it’s issues, especially when it’s under the microscope. GoT has many, many issues as well (catch a zombie plan, anyone?) Overall, I enjoyed Westworld. The show is beautiful to look at, the music is great, and the acting is way above average (see Emmy nominations again). I guess the annoying parts just don’t annoy me as much as it does others.
was better and more entertaining than Season 2 of Westworld and that gets crapped on regularly, never mind getting nominated for an Emmy.