Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Westworld Season 2

Westworld Season 2 was a big disappointment. After all the good work of season 1 setting up the characters and their motivations, season 2 failed to deliver on any of them with the possible exception of Dolores. There were a lot of twists and turns, most of which were gratuitous, as the hosts were free of their programmed loops. In the end, we are told people are programmed and have no free will... what a crock of shit: I expressed my free will by playing the show at 1.5x speed to waste less time.

Probably the biggest disappointment was the 'reveal' that the Delos corporation was logging all guest details in an attempt to reproduce the character and personality of all of them. This was presented as 'immortality'... another crock of shit. If your personality and Character are somehow placed inside a robot, you still die even if the robot carries on forever.

A more realistic angle would have been to blackmail the guests. A more ambitious angle would have been to replace influential guests with robots that were 'good enough' copies to pass for the original in the short run. Imagine how simple it would have been to make a George W. Bush 'host' and take over the executive branch. (I know that would not have worked because everyone knows it was really Dick in charge)

On so many levels this show fell short of what it could have been. Its almost as if the suits at HBO looked at the scripts and said, 'No way. This will get the sheeple thinking too much, water it down.' If the programmers were to use billboards and radio announcements to change the hosts behavior, it would be too close to the 1940s. If they used tv screens to do it, that would be too close to the 70s and 80s (I want my MTV!). If they used hand held networked computing devices to change people's behavior that would be too close to what they are actually doing now... Have you checked your facebook page recently? There may be a new update to your code waiting for you.