There's some part of me as a
television viewer that has always been drawn, moth-like, to a mythology based
series. And really, more than most people, I should know better by now. I
devoted more than a decade of my life to X-Files,
even though the longer the series was on the air, the more worn the
narrative thread got. And I defended Lost
to the last, even though it kept giving us more question than answers up to
the very last second. I've watched at least half a dozen other mythos based
series try to mine that same story with even less success than they did. So
when Westworld debuted on HBO nearly
two years, I was very reluctant to get involved. It came from the wellspring of
J.J. Abrams, who brought us that crazy island in the first place, and it seemed
to just offer fewer revelations than it actually promised to give.. But
considering that millions jumped on board Season 1, the incredible starpower
connected to it, and over 20 Emmy nominations last year, I figured I needed to
at least watch a few episodes of Season 2 before I dismissed it outright.
Unless you were one of the host
robots whose mind gets erased and rebooted, Westworld
originated from a cult 70s movie series. In Season 1, Westworld, one of
many theme parks owned by the Delos corporation, began
to malfunctions. The hosts began to act without the controls and safeties that
had worked flawlessly for thirty years. These included Dolores, a sweetheart
homesteader (Evan Rachel Wood), Teddy, a would-be gunslinger (James Marsden)
and Maeve (Thandie Newton), a brothel owner. Operated on by Bernard (Jeffrey
Wright) and Ford (Anthony Hopkins), it was eventually revealed that Ford, the
designer of the park who was about to be fired, had begun to start 'a new
narrative'. To wit, the total revolt of the hosts and their overthrow of the
park. The series climaxed with Dolores putting a bullet in the back of Ford's
head.
As Season 2 progresses, the chaos
has, if anything, only amplified. Dolores has become a cold-blooded killer,
willing to slaughter anyone, human or host, who gets in the way of her search
for freedom. One can empathize to an extent, considering that for more than
thirty years people have been using her for sex and murder, but the
ruthlessness in her has gotten to the point that Teddy, the man (?) who loves
her has begun to doubt her in a key moment. Maeve has reunited with some of her
fellow companions with the vague admonition of finding the daughter that she
had in an earlier incarnation. Bernard, who we learned late last season was
nothing more than the robot incarnation of Ford's initial partners, has been
trying to play both sides, but its clear that there is some level of
malfunction in him that can't be easily corrected. Meanwhile, the corporation
is in the process of trying to take back the park from the robots, viewing this
as a financial matter, and its also become clear that the flaw in Westworld is
spreading throughout the parts, one of which bares the resemblance of a safari.
And I haven't even gotten to the Man In Black (Ed Harris) , a man who has spent
thirty years going through the park over and over like a gamer searching for
Easter eggs - and has finally found one.
All of this is very well done,
acted and written. Yet I can't escape the premonition that much like so many
other mythology series, there may be, in the long run, no 'there' there. We
still don't know when or where this park is, we keep getting fewer and answers
and more questions with each episodes,
and every episodes seems to include some kind of time shift that makes things
more confusing. (It also doesn't assuage my doubts that one of the hosts is
played by Rodrigo Santoro, and anyone who watched Lost knows just what happened last time he was in an Abrams based
series.) Even when X-Files was at is
worst, it could fall back to something lighter in MOTW's. And Lost, for all its faults, made up for
them by having some of the most well drawn characters in the history of medium.
Westworld still doesn't seem to have
much of a 'new narrative'.
Now, I'm willing to give the show a
fair amount of rope, mainly because I'm a huge fan of the cast. I've been in awe of Evan Rachel Wood and
Thandie Newton for more than twenty years, and their work as two completely
different liberated hosts is fascinated. Jeffrey Wright has always been a good
actor, and he seems more conflicted than anyone else in the cast. And of
course, Harris has always been one of the greatest actors in history, and he
bites into this role with the ferocity of wolf eating a T-Bone.
I'll give it a chance because I've
learned enough about mythology based series to know its about the journey, not
the destination. But that doesn't change the fact that at some point Westworld, as Hugo 'Hurley' Reyes might
say, should give us 'some frigging answers!"
My score:3.75 stars.
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