S03.01: Parce Domine

[Dame sans merci]

6 hours ago, BrooklynRat said:

I found it utterly boring and painful because it seemed like I was just watching some random show i knew nothing about and didn’t care to. With the exception of 3 familiar faces, this show had no relationship to the two seasons I already invested in of a very particular show. 

 

Also, are the writers clueless?  Are they unaware of the popularity of Maeve and company? No mention of them whatsoever. 

 

I may sit out future episodes unless some of the discussion here indicates they might be worth it  can’t believe this is what we waited almost 2 years for.

 

Did you see the post-credit scene? Maeve wasn't completely AWOL...

[WatchrTina]

The recap of this episode by Alt-Shift-X is up!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrMRLI4_bKY

 

On 3/18/2020 at 5:24 AM, Dame sans merci said:

Remember at the end of last season Dolores left the park in Charlotte's body, but then switched back to her own. So somebody else is inside Charlotte's body now - we have no clue who yet! We know that one of the mystery mind-marbles was Bernard, but the rest are still unknown.

I love Westworld and I'm willing to do a hefty dose of willful suspension of disbelief to immerse myself in this story but I have to hand-wave like CRAZY to accept the idea that a 'bot from the park is successfully masquerading as Charlotte.  We know they've been trying to copy human minds but so far they have been unsuccessful.  So the brain-ball now residing in the Charlotte body belongs to a 'bot that has lived its life (in a constantly repeating loop) inside the park.  How could he/she possibly successfully masquerade as Charlotte?  How would a 'bot with that kind of "life" experience understand things like corporate structures and be competent to pull a power move at a board of directors meeting?

At the end of last season I raised the same issue and speculated that the Charlotte-bot would come up with some plausible excuse to distance herself from the people who knew the real Charlotte.  Nope. The Charlotte-bot is in the thick of things, with a body driven by the brain-ball of . . .  someone we've probably never met before.  That bugs me.  Mind you, I'm in for this ride.  But that particular conceit  -- park-raised bots successfully replacing /  impersonating "real" people out in the "real" world -- is difficult to swallow given the world-building they did in the first two seasons.

 

On 3/18/2020 at 5:24 AM, Dame sans merci said:

Some people think that Dolores is likely to have taken the pearls of her host comrades - Angela, etc - to take control of those bodies, but i'm of the opinion that she could have downloaded the human minds from the Forge and 'tweaked' them to match her needs (similar to what she did with Bernard).

Bernard is a unique being in that he is based on a real person (Arnold) and was created though a focused and time-consuming process by the guy who invented Westworld (Doctor Ford, played by Anthony Hopkins).  I know Dolores was a participant in that process -- Ford used her to help fidelity-test Bernard -- but I scoff at the idea that Dolores is capable of doing the same thing.  She simply doesn't have the time or the resources to do that (build up a replica for a real person from scratch).  I aIso don't think she has the capability to transfer the life experiences of a real person into a bot-brain-ball and then "tweak" them because -- as we saw repeatedly last season -- that transferring of data doesn't work -- the 'bot goes insane.

 

[paigow]

22 hours ago, WatchrTina said:

How would a 'bot with that kind of "life" experience understand things like corporate structures and be competent to pull a power move at a board of directors meeting?

Somehow, Ford controls Charlotte. He could navigate boardroom politics with a dictatorial manner not that different from human Charlotte... 

Edited March 22, 2020 by paigow

[WatchrTina]

10 hours ago, paigow said:

Somehow, Ford controls Charlotte. He could navigate boardroom politics with a dictatorial manner not that different from human Charlotte... 

I just rewatched the last two episodes of Season 2 and that makes me appreciate this theory.  I had forgotten the role that subconscious Ford had played on various characters including Maeve, Bernard, and (I think) Dolores in season 2. So the idea that Ford is now guiding whatever 'bot consciousness is now driving the Charlotte body is an idea I can get behind.

Oooooh, do you think Charlotte might be PURE Ford?  That would totally explain her aptitude with corporate politics.

On 3/20/2020 at 7:58 PM, Cthulhudrew said:

There was an outfit change between both Dolores and Liam when their flyer landed and he showed her the super AI. Different timelines? Or are we supposed to just think they both stopped off to change clothes on the way downstairs?

Okay I just watched for a 3rd time (this is how I practice social distancing).  I think the scene where he shows her the Big Giant Brain Ball (and she's wearing the red dress with the black jacket) is simply a different day vs. the prior scene in the flyer (white dress with black accent lines). I think it just demonstrates that they've been spending lots of time together.  

A few of other random thoughts from my 3rd viewing.

1. There is exactly ONE laugh in the whole episode -- when Dolores' riderless motorcycle takes out the last bad guy in the park.
2. When Dolores is lurching away after the gunfight in the park she looks JUST like a zombie in Night of the Living Dead (with that off-balance, stiff-legged walk.)
3. Previously I had wondered what Caleb was going to think when he figures out Dolores is a 'bot.  NOW I'm wondering how Dolores is going to react when she realizes that Caleb played a role (albeit unwittingly) in the plot to kill her. 

[BrooklynRat]

17 hours ago, Dame sans merci said:

Did you see the post-credit scene? Maeve wasn't completely AWOL...

Right but missing from the entire long, drawn out episode. There was just no reprieve from the tedious new story with at least well-liked characters. 

 

The setting of the park could have provided endless story possibilities, eventually leading to the uprising. Rather they hurried that up and tore us right out of the park into a completely new setting and story line. We could have been perfectly entertained for several seasons by the back stories and experiences of the individual hosts like they did with Aketcha. And I would have loved a philosophical exploration of what it means to be a person—at what point should we consider an AI to have become a sentient being, if ever.  Instead after the time and expense of all the world building, we’re left with some basic bad-guys-in-business show set in the future while Man in the High Castle-West World edition takes place back on the island. They are going to have to do some SERIOUS explaining for it to make any sense that Maeve would ever be the least bit satisfied or cooperative going back to being a parkbot playing make believe. 

Edited March 22, 2020 by BrooklynRat
Spelling

[dr pepper]

On 3/15/2020 at 9:49 PM, mac123x said:

All I got out of his SEVERAL scenes in the underworld is that he's a low level lowlife and he doesn't do "personals;" whatever that means.

It seemed clear to me: a personal is a crime that targets people, such as murder, kidnapping, or beating. He thinks of himself as having a code, he only steals or damages property. What did perturb me, however is that this future, even if it's just 25 years ahead, still has atms with enough cash to be worth robbing.

On 3/17/2020 at 6:00 AM, HeadFullOfThings said:

Who is posing as Charlotte?? I'm dying to know already!

Please let it be Clementine.

15 hours ago, BrooklynRat said:

And I would have loved a philosophical exploration of what it means to be a person

Maybe we'll get some scenes from Hellasworld.

[enchantingmonkey]

22 hours ago, WatchrTina said:

How would a 'bot with that kind of "life" experience understand things like corporate structures and be competent to pull a power move at a board of directors meeting?

I would have loved it if she walked into that meeting, sat down and said, "This doesn't look like anything to me."

[WatchrTina]

8 hours ago, BrooklynRat said:

They are going to have to do some SERIOUS explaining for it to make any sense that Maeve would ever be the least bit satisfied or cooperative going back to being a parkbot playing make believe. 

When last we saw Maeve she'd been shot while use her super-powers to freeze the 'bots being driven mad by the trojan-horse rage-virus delivered by Clementine.  Now she's awakened to find she's been placed into a new role in an new narrative in the park.  I presume that the techs who placed her there either:

1. Didn't know she was special in any way and just recycled her the same way they recycled all the 'bots who failed to make it through the "door" to the valley beyond; OR
2. Those two "woke" techs from last season (Felix and Sylvester) patched Maeve up and deliberately placed her in a role where she'd have some agency do what she wanted --- or at least would stand a chance of passing as just an ordinary 'bot until she figures out her next more.

If it's option 1 there was no question of Maeve "cooperating" (she was unconscious) or any expectation that she would be "satisfied" with her new role since that's not something they think a 'bot is even capable of.

If it's option 2 (and I hope it is because that means we might see Felix and Sylvester again) then again, they don't expect Maeve to be "satisfied" with her new role.  It's just a place for her to hide.

[Quilt Fairy]

15 hours ago, BrooklynRat said:

The setting of the park could have provided endless story possibilities, eventually leading to the uprising. Rather they hurried that up and tore us right out of the park into a completely new setting and story line. We could have been perfectly entertained for several seasons by the back stories and experiences of the individual hosts like they did with Aketcha.

Thank you.  I couldn't agree with this more and I've thought it for some time.  A season 2  build-up to the uprising as more and more hosts become "woke" would have been entirely logical and could have been extremely satisfying. 

As for this episode,  if it's not in and about Westworld, it shouldn't be called Westworld.  The mythic appeal of the Old West (even if that mythos is ultimately fictitious) is why I watch the show.  A glimpse of the outside world is fine, but a whole season of it would be quite a letdown for me, especially after the long wait for this season. 

[numbnut]

On 3/17/2020 at 1:42 PM, heavysnaxx said:

The emotional landscape is really limited/flattened out and I can't tell if that's intentional or not-great characterization. I get it - Dolores is not supposed to be human but the humans don't seem real to me, either. Caleb included.

I totally think Caleb is a host who died when he was shot in the head. What I don't know is if the show wants me to think that by giving Caleb similarities to Bernard (the Francis touchstone mirrors Bernard's loss of his son; Caleb died in the same manner as Arnold). Now my question is: who created Caleb and for what purpose?

Edited March 25, 2020 by numbnut

[Joimiaroxeu]

That guy Gerry's house was spectacular.

So Evan Rachel Wood is going to do a fashion show this season, huh? The production values have gone up a lot too.

OMG, Maeve is even more stunning. Nazi World?

Quote

The dome trailers in the Scandinavian background were so pleasing for the eye.

Yeah, I want one of those.

[AudienceofOne]

Thematically, this episode was good. Really good. If we accept that Westworld is just humanity in a microcosm then the idea that the real world is just Westword but kind of bigger, more complex, and messier is a good one. Thematically it worked - we even have actual human beings freaking out over the idea it might all be a simulation and various people speculating that life is a rigged game.

So far, so Westworld. Even without the Westworld.

But... and it's a big but... the execution was meh. Caleb declaring he "wanted someone real" before Dolores literally fell into his arms? Nazis? Clumsy dialogue about building supercomputers to replace God? 

Maybe this is a simulation written by a hack writer.

[blackwing]

I just started watching the season, and I found it irritating that more than half of the episode focused on this new character Caleb.  I've never seen Aaron Paul in anything before (to me he looks like a fatter older version of the actor who played Iceman in the original X-Men series) and I guess I don't understand the hype about him.  I was annoyed that we were basically dropped midstream into his "story" and have to spend all this time figuring out who he is or what he is doing.

No idea why we wasted so much time on him, and some of the scenes just seemed pointless.  Like when he went into that bar/club with the naked performance artists (?) and the naked guy who was on drugs and screaming at a screen that showed what looked to be his POV of getting attacked by a wolf?  What was that all about?

I wanted to see Maeve and more of the familiar characters.  Like did they ever confirm that all of the humans in Westworld are dead?  The English guy?  The head of security, I forget his name, Least Famous Hemsworth Brother?  I loved seeing the outside world and all the future technology but I really want to see Westworld.  And no, to me it doesn't count that Maeve was in a post-credits scene.  Thandie Newton is the only one in the cast that has won a major acting award for this show, so that says to me that she should be featured prominently.

Is James Marsden not on the show this season?  I realise that Teddy died in Season 2, but Teddy has died many times.