Go WestWorld young man...

Ramblings Post #328
Good TV is hard to find. Don't get me wrong, there is some good stuff out there, but finding good stuff I actually want to watch is another. And since I've got other irons in the fire, sitting down for an hour to watch something , followed by the hour it takes me to get back into other thing mode, means I try not to sit down for that hour. Only so many hours in a day, and if I spend a good bit of it on TV, well, you see how that goes? So, good watchable TV is hard to find. And NO, I don't use on-demand. That would be worse. 

I just finished watching Westworld and now I'm mad. Partially because the story won't pick up again because the producers A) have other jobs and B) haven't written the script yet and partially because this has turned into a mystery show, where I'm supposed to watch four or five times making notes to get it all. At least there aren't secret messages embedded in the background I need to decode. Now, as much as we have lamented situations where we already knew the story ( i.e., Game of Thrones), it did mean that the production could move along without hiccups. But then we didn't have fresh well written stories, so the there is a trade-off here. Although a 16-month plus delay seems a little much if the program was designed from it's inception to be multi-year. Looking at you producers and HBO.

So, what did we learn from this season? Spoilers here, but you should have seen it by now. William and the Man in Black were the same guy in different timelines, but we knew that. Hopefully Logan was the critical failure 30 years ago. Delores is Wyatt. We got the master Ford giving one last fuck you to the Board with a circus of death as his new narrative. And it turns out Ford wasn't the bad guy. We found out that there is a Park 1 (Which may or may not be Westworld), which gives rise the idea of Park 2, Park 3 and so on. Some of the hosts are finally conscious, now in episode 10, and the maze really wasn't for the guests, but for the hosts to navigate. And finally, supposedly this was all just a prequel to the 'real story', which I understand starts in Season 2. Pfft.

Smashing. Not quite Lost, which just seemed to generate questions for questions sake, but still intriguing. Still, I have a few questions that I'm probably going to find the answers to on Reddit, but I'll post them here first just because I can. 

■ What was Ford building in the park? 

Theresa complained earlier that the mad master was using up a crap load of resources on his new narrative. But Ford's master plan included him not being there, and killing the board wouldn't have used up a quarter of the park. So what exactly was he building? A giant fort for when the people outside (police, government, etc.) come to take back the park? A new city for the hosts to inhabit? A facility to build more hosts, maybe a host army or even a replacement board ? I want to know! 

■ When can we visit Shogun World?

As the wacko duo blazed down through the corporate offices, they passed through SW, what I'm calling Shogun World. When can we go there? And why is it based specifically there, inside Westworld? I ask that becasue the Mesa HQ isn't centrally located, Sweetwater is. But HQ has to be close enough for the nightly swap outs. And no, I don't believe its located near Pariah, despite one theory. But it isn't anywhere near an edge, to join with a new space, so why locate the Shogun display there? Is it not ready yet? 

■ How much jail time should Felix get? 

The idea that Felix would get away with helping Mauve is absurd. There are witnesses, the people in the offices, who can place him with the rampaging hosts. Although I'm certain Ford hid their tinkering in the system when he allowed the Mauve augmentation and killed most of the video when he designed her escape, the wacko duo he was traveling with must have killed at least a dozen people, something that can't be hidden. Unless Ford planned to kill every human in the Park, anyway. Okay, I just didn't like Felix. At all. The proper term is 'simp.' 

Now, if Hopkins decides not to return, and it seems likely, could/would they re-cast and have his character return as a host...only much younger? Oooh, now there is intrigue. 

Good show. A little ponderous at times, and at others a little more mysterious than it ever had to be. A good story is a good story, it doesn't need tricks. So here's to hoping this doesn't become a trick show, one after the other, just a good show. 

Barkeep. A whiskey and soda. I'm just moseying around tonight.