Westworld - Hopkins, robots, six-guns

I’m pretty sure the hosts are all mechanical, it’s just a question of the sophistication of the mechanics and the simulated human layer on top. If you think about it, it would be much more difficult to fully replicate all the many, many interlocking systems that make up the human body than to make a convincing surface level fake, and not actually desirable because a lot of things the human body does are either useless or counterproductive for hosts.

I’m also reasonably sure that the hosts only “die” because they’re scripted to when they take an injury that would be fatal if they were human and that’s why Dolores can just reboot them back to life. I imagine it would be possible if sufficiently determined to damage them to a degree where they simply couldn’t function anymore, and we may yet see that happen this season. But I’d also imagine it wouldn’t be easy because, after all, they’re designed to be abused quite severely.

Yeah, the utter dumbness of that scene killed my interest in sticking with season two. I showed up to see a robot uprising massacre. I showed up to see robot Talulah Riley, robot Ingrid Berdal, robot Thandie Newton, robot Stephen Ogg, robot Jeffrey Wright, and so forth going all Yul Brenner on the guests. This last episode’s intro with a robot tiger was promising. I want more stuff like that!

But if Westworld is going to rely on utter dumbess like that fort battle, I might as well just rewatch the last few seasons of Walking Dead. Also, I can’t take it seriously when it’s trying to turn Wood Evans Rachel Wood Evans’ oooh-so-serious little missy into some god-like badass. Finally, I have no patience for whatever Lost-esque nonsense it’s trying to draw out whatever Mystery is hidden inside some random character actor.

-Tom

Bookmarking this post for the comedic value when we’re in the Westworld season seven thread wondering why we’re still watching.

Well that shed a lot of light on Delos Inc.

Man, Bernard is a goddamn mess, isn’t he?

Also, I hope that if I’m ever tied in a cave and given protein bars and a bucket for days, I still look that clean.

So, Delos was working on immortality-through-robot-body, as speculated, but we’re meant to believe unsuccessfully. (I’m a bit confused why they would burn everything each time, that seems unnecessarily wasteful.) But given the active presence of Ford’s meddling in the park still, I’m wondering if Ford didn’t figure it out, possibly in a distributed capacity, and isn’t really dead as such. I mean, I doubt we’ll see any more of Anthony Hopkins, but that seemed to be Ford speaking directly through Lawrence’s kid, for example.

Also, who else would be making Bernard go and murder the immortality lab staff? Who else even knows Bernard is a host? (besides Elsie, now, who obviously didn’t do that).

Whom did Ford have Bernard make one last human/AI brain before he trashed the lab?

That was one bonkers episode. Quite a vision of hell. Major reveals!

My theory is that Ford made a copy of himself, and that copy is who was killed at the party. I believe Ford is still alive, in hiding, and pulling the strings of it all.

That’s a solid theory. Ford was printing a new host in the basement of the house where Bernard killed Theresa, and AFAIK it’s never been answered which host it was. Chekov’s gun.

If it wasn’t for Hanzee in Fargo I probably wouldn’t have realized the leader of the scary Native American tribe is the guy from the flashback demo of the hosts earlier this season.

I liked seeing the schlubby tourist guy with his wife from the first season.

By the way, Humans, aka the good Westworld, is starting its third season this Thursday in the UK and June 5 in the US.

Thanks for the heads-up. I love that show.

Shogun World!

So, uh… How do the swords and arrows know not to kill humans normally?

We’ve been wondering this about knives since season one. Basically you just have to believe this show is magic.

There wasn’t anything in this episode like that. Just some of the typical “close calls” that happen in many shows/movies.

It doesn’t matter what is or isn’t in the episode, it’s impossible to imagine parks built on the possibility of violence where the only safeguard for the guests is some kind of magic gun technology that stops them from hurting humans, and then further apply that explanation to just about any other kind of weapon.

How do you prevent human-on-human violence, accidental or otherwise? It’s implied the guests often don’t know if they’re dealing with hosts or other guests, and even if they could identify humans and never tried to hurt them, how do you put something like a bow and arrow in the hands of a guest and prevent the eventual accidents?

The “smart” guns that fire harmless ammo at humans is a barely believable explanation on its own, and you just can’t extrapolate that out to other weapons with even a shred of plausibility. This was brought up with things like knives and explosives in season one, and there is no satisfactory answer. It’s just magic you ignore.

Which is a shame, because it could have been explained woth rubber bullets and knives and told that the hosts bodies react to them like real bulleta/knives.

The human guy with Maeve clearly says that shogun world was made for guests who found Westworld “to tame” which could mean a higher threat and portential harm. Also it’s been stated that the parks safety measures have been turned off.