Still grinding

[Content note: There will be drastic spoilers below, so if you're planning on watching the first season of Westworld, you probably want to stop here.]

I'm still watching Westworld. Slowly. Deliberately. Whenever I'm up late and no one else is around so that I don't have to explain why. Part of the problem is that, as you may recall, I was pretty bored watching the first two episodes of the series that so many have hailed as the best thing HBO has done since Game of Thrones. It had a couple very vague interesting points but seemed to be taking a long time to build up to where it was heading. Consequently, I watched the next three, up to episode 5, with the same kind of "can't look away from the car crash" detachment with which I viewed True Detective season 2 (of which we will never speak again.) But, 'lo and behold, episode 5 was actually interesting and the following two have been at least intriguing, since I can pretty much see where they're going, but it's morbidly fascinating to see just how much time they can waste to get there in the course of a 10 episode season.

One thing I'm struggling with is the macro picture. For all the mystery and drama surrounding the essential question of thinking beings subjected to abject slavery and manipulation, the show doesn't really ask that question in the macro sense because it's contained to the park. Unlike, say, Blade Runner or AMC's Humans, the hosts aren't integrated into the public which would force that question to be posed to society-at-large. It's "just" a sadistic amusement park... which does, however, pose the eternal question of just how much the havenots are used as mindless drones by the haves. This is exemplified most obviously when Theresa finds Charlotte screwing one of the hosts a short time after referring to them as "property" of the corporation. So they are touching on the basic morality of living beings used as slaves or less-than-slaves; more like tools. Also, I get that the board of directors' plan may be to bring the technology into the larger world and that's why they're trying to wrest it from Ford. That in itself would bring that essential question into society and perhaps that's where they're going with future seasons. But if so, they're going to have to venture way beyond the limits of "Westworld", which doesn't seem to be the point of the story. Also also, if it's taken us seven episodes to set up that essential conflict, I'm more disappointed than ever.

The other thing that's bothering me is style. The moment where Bernard is revealed to be a host was a decent BIG REVEAL moment, even if it had been fairly obvious for some time (Ford pays close attention to Bernard and always invites his opinion; Bernard has a deep insight into Dolores' perspective, almost as if he relates to it; etc.) I'm assuming it was enticing for the idiots that like to insist on the "Deckard was a replicant!" conspiracy theory in Blade Runner which, of course, invalidates most of the basic questions that that film was asking. Bernard's reveal doesn't because there is no special class of human to oppose the other humans. You can't draw contrasts between the hosts and the guests because the former get reprogrammed every day and the latter are aware that they're in an environment that essentially begs them to act inhumanly. There is no day-to-day existence that permeates the scene. Life's a stage, etc.

That makes the only special class of human Ed Harris' Man in Black, who has to be one of the most pointless characters in the entire series, to date. He's determined to find out the root secrets of the park's function. He apparently has no other discernible mission or motive. But it's also a complete sideshow. Is anyone actually interested in that aspect of the story? Does anyone see a point to it? Even if people find themselves intrigued by the mystery of either/both his mission or his dogged determination, is anyone actually entertained by seven straight episodes of Ed Harris doing the Sauron thing ("I am mean and angry... because I am mean and angry!!!") Or, for that matter, him being the implacable, motiveless villain who does little more than hie into the wilderness, muttering about a maze alongside confused hosts who somehow find themselves motivated to follow him? In my original review, I thought the character was a ham-handed homage to Yul Brynner's Gunslinger in the original film. Now I just think he's boring. The possibility remains that the MiB is another one of Ford's special constructs and he's so driven to find the secrets of Westworld because he's trying to meet his maker, a la Roy Batty. But if too many of the apparent humans in Westworld are actually hosts or if too many of the hosts are "special" like Bernard and Dolores, the shine starts to come off and we start drifting away from our macro questions into minutiae. Does this "special" host function differently than that "special" one? Who really is the Star-bellied Sneetch... or are we really all just people (Sneetches)?

It's clear that the showrunners have been stretching this thing out to build suspense for some kind of tempestuous wrap-up to the season. But until episode 5's revelations about Theresa's subterfuge, Maeve's awakening, and more detail on the origins of the park from Ford, I had no motivation to watch except to see what kind of ditch they could dig themselves into. Now I can see a couple avenues out and I'm interested in some of the larger plots that they've finally gotten around to presenting, but there's still so much dross attached (William and Dolores' romance or pretty much anything connected to William? Yawn.) that I've shifted from mild disinterest to annoyance. My first request of any series remains extant: Tell me a story. If you can't do that, I got not time for ya. Westworld seems like it's been trying to tell me a story, but it needs to try a lot harder in the last three episodes if I'm going to watch the subsequent seasons.