Maybe the hosts that are not involved in any storyline reboot while the others don’t. There has to be enough adventures for guests to start every single day, so hosts that get turned down like the treasure map guy simply reset and wait for more guests while the others continue on with their storylines. So Dolores runs her routine every day until someone tries to pick her up in town or comes rape her at night.
“What, and give up show business?!”
That was the main thing that bothered me. It seemed like a lot of time and effort had gone into stuff that wasn’t ever seen by the customers of the park.
In the bar fight in the movie, how do they prevent guests from beating each other up instead of just the robots?
Or do they? Is that just the risk the guests take?
When they sign the waver to get in, the guests just assume that any guest caused injury is just part of the deal.
The second episode clarified this a little bit - suggesting that the hosts were designed to function autonomously, i.e. when there were no guests around, because it helped them keep in “practice”, refining their interactive skills.
Of course, I’m a tad baffled by the little British boy - it looks like his function is to pretend to be a guest, and a bored guest at that. Maybe… he finds actual guests who may be bored and tries to reverse-psychology them into going exploring or something.
So anyway, it’s established that the bullets in Westworld hit hard enough to shatter glass bottles (and Ed Harris’s character is shooting special loads that can punch through an abode wall, it is implied, but there may be a story behind that), so the idea that the bullet harmlessly go “poof” when hitting a human makes no sense. Do the bullets have some kind of instant-sensing device that makes them self destruct if they touch a human?
The reaction of the techs when confronted by the Madam when she has a scalpel in her hand suggests knives are still potentially lethal. If a host in the park tries to stab a guest, does the blade instantly disintegrate like the bullets?
Further, if the nature of the park is the further one goes from the central town, the more “intense” the storylines get, I’d expect the level of scrutiny by park managers to be a lot higher because it sounds like the personal risks to the guests increases. Sooner or later, someone’s got to notice the oddness of Harris’s behaviour.
And if I was giving my big presentation and the boss flatly said “No” like that in front of everybody, I’d probably consider quitting on the spot.
They know all about Harris’ behaviour. There was a scene in Episode 2 when two of the technicians were watching Harris at his worst. One of them says to the other, “Shall I slow him down?”. His superior replies, “No, that guy can do anything he wants.” The implication is that Harris is someone very important.
It was interesting that a worker noticed the massive death toll inflicted by the Man in Black. Even more interesting was the response of the other guy: “That gentleman gets whatever he wants.” Apparently the Man in Black is something of a VIP (not surprising given his claim to have been visiting the park for 30 years).
I liked that Hopkins’ character says the reason people keep coming back to the park is because it can still surprise them with little details they never noticed before. The Man in Black seemed delighted to learn that the desperado had a family he had kept hidden. The possibility of continual discovery would be appealing to many people.
The park might spend a huge amount of time and energy making thousands of subtle details, character nuances, and hidden stories. Each individual detail might be missed by 95%+ of the visitors, but the 5% who notice are likely to be amazed at the level of immersion they feel. And each visitor will be different in which details she or he notices or misses - even if they miss most, they’ll likely stumble upon something different each time they visit.
What I’m wondering is if there is some kind of forum where past guests share stories and piece together the world. I imagine thread titles like:
**
“First time WW guest next week!!! So excited - which storylines are best for beginners?”
“Was anyone else totally amazed at the resolution of the Lost Treasure story? [SPOILERS!]”
“Visiting WW with children: Best family-friendly activities for kids?”
“What’s the most depraved thing you’ve done to a host? (Anonymous posting allowed)”
“List of all Known Storylines and Characters - Updated 10/9/2176”
**
Nonetheless, if he’s trying to hack the system in some way, somebody’ll catch on.
Or if they don’t, then it’s kind of a plot hole if the premise is that the guests are constantly monitored for safety and their effect on pre-existing narratives.
Good second episode. I like learning more about how the park is run. Dolores is showing hidden depths - that actress can do a lot just with a gaze or a furrowed brow. The scene of the arrival of the guests, and the slinky flirtation of the white-dressed hostess with the noob, was well done. Interesting, too, that the female exec and the Jeffrey Wright character are lovers.
Why didn’t the two panicky techs sound an alarm or trigger a lockdown when the whore woke up and grabbed a knife? Didn’t want to draw attention to their bungling?
I had the impression that that was supposed to be a young Anthony Hopkins. The founding WW programmer likes talking with a version of his younger self.
I’m struggling to like this. It’s just plodding along so slowly, it’s difficult to stay interested. It’s trying to be so moody that it’s putting me to sleep.
when I seen the movie it sounded like what would be called a LARP today. Now the series sounds like a live western mmorpg just with robots
The way they talk about it, it is definitely modeled after an MMORPG.
Either that, or maybe a robot based on his son who died young.
When the Man in Black (Ed Harris’s character) was talking to Lawrence (Clifton Collins, Jr’s character), he said something like, “I’ve been coming here for thirty years. Heck, I was practically born here.” I wonder about that. Perhaps he really was born there, in that he’s a “host”/robot?
Scalps seem to matter.
There is a secret map on the inside of one that Ed Harris’s MiB knew to look for.
Thandie Newton’s hooker flashed back to almost being scalped.
ETA: yes, this is a slow-to-unfold story. I suspect the first season will best be served by a binge-watch. Then once the pieces are defined and set in motion, the next seasons will have their own pace. This is sorta what happened with Game of Thrones - it didn’t all come together until the end of the first season, the unexpected death and everything getting put into motion.
I wonder if The Man in Black isn’t a guest that got clobbered in the “incident” 30 years ago and got patched up with robo-technology.
For those interested in such things, here’s a breakdown of Pa Abernathy’s Shakespeare quotes. Some very well-chosen excerpts there.
Also, apparently the repeated reference to a “deep and dreamless slumber” is borrowed from the Sherlock Holmes story “A Study in Scarlet”, and “A rose is a rose is a rose” is the aforementioned Gertrude Stein (riffing off Shakespeare’s Juliet, of course). AndDolores’ look is supposed to be evocative of Alice from “Alice in Wonderland”.
If what keeps guests safe from hosts attacks is special guns with human-sensing disintegrating bullets, I wonder if the gun Dolores dug up at the end there is a “normal” gun that someone smuggled into the park, one which will allow her to actually kill guests?
I thought the second episode was a bit worse than the first… more psychological wankery, less actual stuff happening. And the bit with the newly proposed plotline and the way Anthony Hopkins rejected it was just not the way actual humans act, or the way organizations are set up. If it’s a flat no due to such a fundamental objection, that would have happened months ago, before paying all the employees to create all those hosts, etc. Just irritating sloppiness in a show which is generally so good at so many little details.
Even player archetypes are there. There’s the newbie who wants to talk to every NPC. There’s the guy who’s been around the block a few times, who knows you don’t talk to a quest giver unless and until you’re ready to accept their quest. Then there’s the Man in Black, who’s so jaded that he’s looking for ways to break the game.
I thought the “born here” was possibly referring to how he discovered who he really was, his true nature, etc. due to the things he did in WW.