The New West
While watching “Westworld,” it can be less crucial to ask where you are and more important to wonder exactly WHEN you are.
This is true not simply for many a disoriented viewer of HBO’s scifi-heavy drama, but also for some of its robotic characters — the human-like android “hosts” who have existed in the show’s namesake sprawling and picturesque high-tech Old West theme park for decades. They can lose track of exactly which reality they’re experiencing at any given moment. And, again, we know the feeling.
If you liked to be challenged by the television you consume but have never entered “Westworld,” I’d highly recommend a binge. However, I wouldn’t try to consume all 19 of the released episodes before the second-season finale debuts at 9 p.m. today. It’s too dense a show for that, and your own code is bound to be scrambled.
Created and run by the wife-and-husband team Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan (brother of acclaimed director Chris Nolan and a frequent collaborator of his), “Westworld” debuted with a 10-episode first season in fall 2016. Uneven but sometimes spectacular, it boasted terrific performances from Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Ed Harris, James Marsden, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Jimmy Simpson and the great Anthony Hopkins (just so, so great), among others.
At the risk of spoiling things just a bit for those who’ve not yet watched, the show now and again has made us question whether a character we’ve always assumed to be human may in fact be a robot. More unusually, however, it has played with time in a way that’s led to some fun surprises, even if some Redditors, podcasters and other careful viewers solved its riddles before the big reveals.
Without saying whose characters survived the first season, this long-awaited second batch of episodes has offered more of the same. While the audience is now well aware of the writers’ time-jumping trickery, “Westword” is taking place at more moments than ever before, including decades before and two weeks AFTER the main timeline. See? It’s designed to disorient. In fact, some complain, understandably, that the show relies too heavily on such gimmickery, overcompensating for less-thanstellar storytelling. I see that argument — at the end of the day,
“Westworld” doesn’t offer the greatest tale ever spun— but I, for one, enjoy the gimmick immensely. I watch with a friend and have made a habit of saying sentences along the lines of, “OK, we’re at NOW now, right?” Or, “Wait, is this two weeks from now?”
Its last couple of episodes — the lauded “Kiksuya”” and the more recent “Vanishing Point” — largely eschewed this model. While much of their stories were told in flashbacks, they were easy to follow, at least as “Westworld” chapters go. Both filled in blanks in great need of being filled in and boasted top-notch performances and production artistry.
“Westworld” also has plenty to say about where modern society is heading with artificial intelligence, specifically about how we should treat the circuitry-laden beings we are likely to create — and what might come of, shall we say, inconsiderate behavior. (Westworld guests regularly have intimate relations with and/or kill the hosts, who are highly repairable.) This show is far from the first work of fiction to offer such a cautionary tale, of course, but it’s decent food for thought nonetheless.
However, in the second season, the writers also have delved into the world of data collection. Especially those Westworld guests who’ve not read the fine print may not understand just how much the Delos Inc., which owns and operates Westworld and its handful of sister parks, knows about them. Uh, it’s a lot.
While it’s not applesto-apples by any means, if you’ve followed certain recent news stories involving social media, it’s hard to watch “Westworld” and then feel great about engaging heavily within the online world of, oh, I don’t know, let’s say Facebook.
If you want go next level geeking out over “Westworld,” I highly recommend the recap podcast “Decoding Westworld,” in which hosts David Chen and fantastic Vanity Fair writer Joanna Robinson — she writes about each episode for VanityFair.com, as well — take a deep dive into what happened, what you may have missed and what you should be thinking about moving forward.
As Season Two concludes at 9 p.m. June 24, we should come to the much-teased “Valley Beyond” and “the door,” as well the just-introduced “forge.” And if “Westworld” has taught us anything, it’s that “these violent delights have violent ends,” so it’s hard to believe the 90-minute finale won’t be chock full of death and destruction, of one flavor or another.
I could be very wrong — and I hope I am — but I’m preparing to say goodbye to the Man in Black, portrayed so memorably by Harris. His tormenting and testing by Hopkins’ Robert Ford feels as though it is coming to an end.
“I think, perhaps, one final game,” Ford says in a flashback in “Vanishing Point” just after Harris’ character has left his presence.
It’s hard to guess what’s in store for other characters, including Wood’s god complex-carrying “Deathbringer” Dolores, Newton’s increasingly complex Maeve and Wright’s always fascinating Bernard.
Because I’m such a fan of Wright as an actor, I’m most invested in Bernard making it to an already-announced third season, but Wood, Newton and others also do simply outstanding work on this show. At times, the performances are amazing.
No, the same cannot always be said for the show, but it still qualifies as can’t miss fare.
I cannot wait for the finale. Where we’ll end up — WHEN we’ll end up — is anybody’s guess.