That’s some big-ass island, unless they took over Australia.
Make them out of garbage. Lots of garbage in China.
Plot twist: Its all a simulation in a malfunctioning host’s brain.
And so it begins
Pushed through ep 1 this morning. Didn’t grab me at all. More time shenanigans and pretty much everyone is an unreliable narrator due to robots and time shifts and a world that doesn’t make much sense. Bernard frustrated me to no end with his breakdown and was his cure something we’d seen before or at least foreshadowed? Delores’s monologue-ing made me smile, but only at its absurdity. I lean towards those that see this show one created by throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks. With a general vagueness holding everything together like silly-putty holding joints of the Round Table together.
Edited to blur a slight spoiler from Ep 1.
I don’t get the sequence from this episode at all, and its not just time-shifting, its like two parallel sequences with the same character.
Bernard is shown still in the firefight at the banquet, so it has to be happening immediately upon the end of last season. We follow him and a group of humans across country, then he and the woman into the bunker, etc. Meanwhile, we also see him wake up on a beach, and then travel around with Director of Operations Steve Jobs dude, again across country, and eventually back to the same beach? And either that scene is well in the future of all of the post-banquet events, or its an entirely different timeline. How did all the hosts get into the water, and how did Bernard get into the water? And when?
They clearly say that
the beach timeline is two weeks after the party massacre. And there are two beaches, the one Bernard wakes up in and the one with all the robots. I think.
It really isn’t that complicated so far.
1st story: Bernard two weeks after the massacre after he’s seemingly lost his memory
2nd story: Bernard and the Delos exec immediately after the party massacre
3rd story: Dolores and Teddy a day or more to two weeks after the massacre (probably the two weeks)
4th story: William immediately after the massacre
5th story: Maeve, Hector, and weaselly human guy immediately after the massacre
The “time shenanigans” are limited to the shift between Bernard right after the massacre and two weeks later, and so far, the shift is noted with that “wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa” noise and the black flicker. Of course future episodes might muck this up. I think I saw a preview bit with young William and his brother in-law, so that’s probably going to come up as a flashback or something.
I was actually hoping for the show to be robots musing about the nature of consciousness, if it had continued to do so in the manner of the pilot. I wanted Caprica without the teen angst, basically. But instead we got the timeline shifting silliness and a whole bunch of JJ Abrams-esque mystery chasing. I think the only way they can really salvage it narratively at this point is to go full on robot massacre - just balls out action for the rest of a short run. I was half hoping the season break would let them reset in that direction. Doesn’t seem like it after the first episode, though.
It might be easier to describe the woman that Bernard is wandering around with by her name: Tessa Thompson. (She was in Thor Ragnorak; HBO has a knack for signing actors before they break-out.) Especially since he’s walking around with a different Delos exec in the two-weeks-later timeline (the dude from Vikings).
This is a little off-topic, but did anyone else notice that one of the clean-up techs looked(and sounded) an awful lot like “Leo” from “A Way Out”? It was the same actor!
Not only that, but he’s also the older brother of Josef Fares, founder of developer Hazelight Studios and “A Way Out’s” director.
I hadn’t noticed that the security guy was a Hemsworth either. Damn., they are as bad as the Carradines.
Got a chuckle out of Maeve making the guy strip down like a piece of meat.
I had a really hard time following the first episode, mostly because it was confusing, and partly cause I was nodding off. I had to go to a website to get a detailed explanation of all the time jumping events.
I’ll give up if the rest of the season is this complex.
How did you get through season 1 then? It’s complex too with different timelines going on at once.
Season 1 is presented as one timeline then they jump out at the end and shout “gotcha it’s multiple timelines!”
Yeah, but there still were a silly number of cuts that induce wtfery even if they were hiding the timeline. That’s what got me suspicious.
There were constant hints that multiple timelines were involved, right from the first episodes, from wardrobe changes to quotes.
One of the things I like about this show is that the writers expect you to focus. People chatting with the spouse or scanning their phone are going to miss much of what’s happening.