Westworld
Season One
(SPOILERS) The debate over whether TV should be consumed in bite-sized,
weekly chunks or gorged in box-set style season binges occasionally gets a jolt
when one of the enthroned architects of the medium vouches for the former (Joss
Whedon, Damon Lindelof), but it’s most especially pertinent when a show itself
creates a “water cooler” atmosphere. The irony of Westworld is that the waves it has created, fuelled by Lost-esque speculation over what was really
going on amid its multiple timelines and potential identity crises over which
humans were really robots, has been somewhat dampened by the stark realisation
that its creators didn’t have in mind anything as wild or dense as many conjectured.
In that sense, it hearkens back to the conclusion of the first season of True Detective and its complete lack of
a supernatural element (although, that series fundamentally paid off in character
terms). Coming to the Westworld party
six months late, I’ve been spared the weekly thrall, and it’s a case where I think
I can safely conclude I haven’t missed out. Although, with such shows –and I
can, to an extent, affirm this as a Lost
aficionado, albeit nothing here exerted that level of must-see next time grip –
it’s arguably not so much the having as the getting.
Some voices had it that, by focussing on plot twists and ifs
and maybes, viewers were ignoring the more profound depths of Jonathan Nolan’s “soft”
sequel to the 1973 Michael Crichton movie. That might have been the case if
Nolan had unfurled a vision of complex and engrossing characters, where the
establishment of identity and the thematic underpinnings of the world resonated
with any degree of consistency.
Sporadically, there’s something to chew on, and
aesthetically Westworld comes replete
with your classic prestige HBO show trappings (although, while the
cinematography is generally first rate, the direction is often on the undistinguished
side, along with hammy, pedestrian stylistic choices: all those bulbless rooms
requiring X-Files torches to light
them), but watching it I increasingly felt as if I was experiencing an
emperor’s new clothes, that Nolan didn’t have enough to say to justify its
series status or its pretensions to substance. No sooner had I begun to think
the series might actually have something up its sleeve (around midway through)
than the disconcerting feeling that it didn’t began to take hold. I was on
board with the reincarnation metaphor for a while, and the bicameral mind
conversations provided engrossing food for thought (the irony being that for
the bicameral model to work in Westworld,
it requires an external, creator voice to instil in robots the seeds that will
lead to introspection and consciousness, the very gods the model seeks to
explain away as dissipating with the development of self-awareness).
Bernard: The longer I work here, the more I think I
understand the hosts. It’s the human beings who confuse me.
This hasn’t been a show that inspired very much speculation
in me as I viewed it, and more to the point, the plot points that expressly
invite speculation (the maze, the nature of the Man in Black, the journey of
Dolores to self-realisation, Ford’s plan) rarely felt very intriguing. Indeed,
I still don’t really buy that the culmination of the Man in Black visiting the
park for 30 years is that he embarks on a treasure hunt. It makes him seem like
a frickin’ idiot. The counter is that, along with an apparently inspired Anthony
Hopkins, Ed Harris performance was easily the most satisfying out of the cast.
His final laugh as marauders emerged from the trees, having been shot by them
for real, almost made the longueurs worthwhile.
Although, I’m less convinced that leads to an interesting
Season Two (the robot uprising). The big “Man in Black is William” reveal
(which had evidently been much speculated upon beforehand) didn’t really do
much for me either, because… well, I don’t know, his character is all about Harris’ performance, and good
as Jimmi Simpson always is, I just didn’t find the Dolores-William thread very
engrossing; in the final analysis, Man in Black’s obsession falls rather flat (not
helped by some painfully spoon-fed exposition: “After all, it was you who kept Ford in business all those years ago”).
Most of the characters here are rather like that, though. If
they’re effective, you can mostly attribute it to the performances rather than the
material the actors are given. Jeffrey Wright is tremendously nuanced as
Bernard, particularly on realisation of his artificial status, and Thandie
Newton (between this and Line of Duty,
she seems to have given her agent a kick up the arse) outshines often lame
dialogue and motivation as Maeve. Maeve does have one strong reveal, that of
being told her growing self-awareness and bid for freedom are not of her own volition
but determined by Ford’s programming, as well as not being the first time she
was awoken (“Someone altered your
storyline and gave you a new one: escape”). Some of the better AI conceits also
come in her scenes, including her reading off the entire chain of thoughts as
she thinks them, triggering a shutdown.
Maeve: Oh, Felix. You really do make a terrible human being. And I mean that as a compliment.
On the other hand, there’s very little in her being upgraded
that tangibly evidences itself as super awareness, other than being able to
instruct other hosts. She isn’t exactly vibrating with Roy Batty-like insights,
or Lucy levels of cosmic awareness. There’s
been much criticism of the logic of the tech guys allowing themselves to be
manipulated by her (if they can up her faculties, why not drop them right
down?), and in Sylvester’s case, certainly, it’s difficult to believe he
wouldn’t at least find some way to undo her demands when she isn’t looking.
Felix, however, I could mostly go along with, the aspirant, empathic guy who is
both terrified and fascinated by what he (as it appears) has unleashed.
Ford: Sadly, in order to restore things, the
situation demands a blood sacrifice.
No one here is immune from clumsy dialogue or motivation.
The consistency of Hopkins’ Ford reads like it hasn’t entirely been sealed by 1.10:
The Bicameral Mind because the writers
have spent so much time make him appear murky previously (you end up wondering
“Did he really need to do that?” in situations such as Elsie’s demise). He’s
also, as the most feted performer here, given some particularly inglorious
exposition that even he cannot make natural or digestible (his account of
Arnold to Bernard in 1.3: The Stray,
and relating why he built Bernard in 1.8: Trace
Decay; “The human engineers were not
up to the task of constructing the shades of emotion, and so I built you”).
One minute he’s congratulating Bernard on his sentience (“After such a long absence, it’s good to have you back, finally”),
the next he’s having him shot (“Goodbye,
my friend”) and the next episode
not apparently being remotely surprised when Bernard, reactivated, is back and
interacting with him). On the plus side, Ford’s grand plan has a kind of
coherence to it, that his goal for his co-creations requires the long game (“I realised you needed time. And I’m afraid,
in order to escape this place, you will need to suffer more”), but it feels
as if, to stretch the reveal to ten episodes, the makers have opted for far too
much treading water and obfuscation.
Arnold: Do you understand now, Dolores, what the
centre represents? Whose voice I’ve been wanting you to hear?
There’s much here that suggests that kind of sense of misconceived
delivery. It could be regarded as appreciably meta that James Marsden, a
singularly bland actor, is cast as a character (Teddy) without any backstory.
Except that a singularly bland actor makes for singularly bland scenes. I
expected Evan Rachel Wood to be much more engaging than she is, based on
previous roles (not least HBO series True
Blood), but Dolores is required to fulfil somewhat bland narrative repetitions
in aid of the most passive of character development, and then she’s handed
really corny dialogue for moments of realisation (“I imagined a story where I didn’t have to be damsel”).
Her contrast with Maeve, on a Prometheus quest to meet her makers/free herself from The Matrix, highlights how Dolores has
drawn the short straw. In the bicameral model, Dolores achievement is becoming
self-conscious, self-aware, the centre of the maze being the reaching of that
point (if one were to pursue a reincarnation metaphor that might symbolise the higher
self, rather than a state of enlightenment). Like Blade Runner (reference is made to retiring robots), memory is a
key factor in developing artificial awareness (“Your memories are your first step to consciousness. How can you learn
from your mistakes if you can’t remember them?”), but unlike Blade Runner, Nolan has failed to make
his AIs interesting, more interesting than the humans. Even the Michael Wincott
host, restricted to two scenes, is submerged in prosthetics.
Dolores: I think there may be something wrong with
this world, hiding underneath.
This is the pervading problem with the show; it’s very
difficult to really care about anyone or anything. You might read Westworld as the prosperous elite
holding the hosts (us) in check through repetition of daily graft as they
interact with and manipulate us until they are inevitably dethroned through
bloody revolution, but that doesn’t particularly make it more fascinating
either. There’s a pulp versus highbrow tug of war in the show that extends back
to its leaner movie model, but in this serialised form neither is given
sufficient play to satisfy. As Logan (Ben Barnes proving he can do villainy
every bit as one-note as heroic) notes, “Guns
and tits and all that mindless shit that I usually enjoy”; but Westworld isn’t exciting in that way,
and the cerebral aspects are sorely lacking.
Teddy: The maze itself is the sum of a man’s life,
the choices he makes, the dreams he hangs onto. And there, at the centre,
there’s a legendary man who’s been killed over and over again countless times,
and always clawed his way back to life. The man returned for the last time and
vanquished all his oppressors in a tireless fury. He built a house. Around that
house, he built a maze so complicated, only he could navigate a way through it.
Given that Season Two promises to be more action orientated,
one wonders if the show ever had any great ideas to begin with, although Nolan doesn’t
seem to have been a writer short of them in the past. Perhaps Westworld was an uncomfortable retrofit
for prestige TV, but on the other hand – bizarrely and some would say
foolhardily – he apparently saw the first year as a prologue or prelude to the
next four seasons. He’s lucky he got the greenlight to go ahead in that case,
particularly as the first year’s teething problems have been much discussed (as
in: the storytelling here suggests they hit some considerable problems in how
to actually get this thing up and running, and never really surmounted them).
Theresa: Do you really think the corporation’s
interests here are tourists playing cowboys?
The company’s plans for the Westworld are one source of
speculation, but anything really out there (I pondered if, since disease has
been conquered but presumably not aging, they might envisage downloading human consciousness
itself into a synthetic mind, although that might be a bit too nebulous, and
besides, they wanted rid of the genius behind the park, so going forward
without his insights seems unlikely; if their plan comes down to having a robot
in every home, that’s not exactly a thrilling conspiracy). Oh, and the de
riguer de-aging of the show: Sir Anthony Hopkins (at two different periods).
Actually quite well done, as these things go, but the technique is currently
inescapable. Just as well Jimmi Simpson’s appearance changed so drastically in
34 years, or no one would have needed to guess anything.
Man in Black: I wonder what I would find if I opened you
up.
Maybe Westworld
will surprise, though, and show its true strengths in seasons to come. I keep
meaning to go back to Person of Interest,
a show I pretty much gave up on after the first season but appears to have been
widely advocated to as one of the good ones. If there really is a five-year
plan here, there must surely be much Nolan has left to explore and has held
back, because Season One barely had the material for a show half its length.
And one thing they definitely need to stint on next time – all those Radiohead
piano covers.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.