When is it the right time to start asking questions? We all have that friend that can’t ever just watch something. Whether you’ve already seen it not they’ll barrage you with questions and story second guesses: “Who’s she?”, “Why is he doing that?”... “Are they really all lesbian vampire robots from the future but he’s their father and it’s all a dream on an island?”. There are times when you lovingly envision bludgeoning said friend to death with the broken fragments of your coffee table but every now and they come out with something that completely stuns you.
They put forward a question or an idea that utterly blows your mind and takes the viewing experience into an entirely new level. Letting yourself question where a show is going to what big twist is around the corner, can be the most enjoyable part of being a fan but at the same time, sometimes you’ve just got to sit back and enjoy the ride before looking where it’s going. After Westworld’s debut last week questions were everywhere about where the show is heading, whether or not we’ll see other worlds like in the movie etc. By all means, let your mind go off on an imaginative canter but don’t go galloping towards elaborate just predictions yet because, as this episode shows, this mystery deserves to be savoured.
Chestnut – The Operations Team notice behaviour anomalies in salon Madame Maeve that they struggle to explain while the veteran guest Logan introduces his work colleague Will to the Park’s experience. The Man in Black searches for a mystery, and Director Ford rejects a new Indian massacring narrative in favour of his own project.
In many ways, last week’s opener skipped a chapter or two by starting us within in park’s illusion so it’s nice to see this episode give us a fresh perspective on how guests go from being super rich in the real world to living it up in the Old West. This comes via the nervous first timer Will (Jimmi Simpson – House of Cards). The entrance station looks stunning with its similar white design themes to the operations centre. It immediately presents the feeling of luxury; that from their moment of arrival, their every desire will be indulged. While that message is expressed in a very literal sense by his orientation host Angela (a cameo from Talluah Riley), her initial questioning is also curious in the way it forms a rudimentary psyche evaluation.
The pair even make some good remarks about the blurred lines of fantasy and reality that drives the experience, “Are you real?...... Well if you can’t tell, does it matter?”. It’s just like Cipher eating that state in The Matrix; for some, ignorance is bliss. We even have Will’s veteran counterpart Logan (Ben Barnes – Prince Caspian) hammer the message home with a quick re-zip of his flies to imply that he wasted little time in firing off a few rounds. Will looks to represent the idea of getting lost in the fantasy. He begins hesitant and mildly skeptical but as things progress, he seems more attracted to it even if he doesn’t fancy shooting everything in sight just yet.
In what presumably will be a pattern going forward, the larger cast pool is utilised for a rotating spotlight among its host/artificial members. Whereas last week, Delores took centre stage; this episode, she plays a much smaller role as we focus on Thandie Newton’s Maeve and her developing glitch issues (possibly triggered by Dolores uttering the Shakespeare quote, “these violent delights have violent ends”). This still carries the key theme of AI evolution and self-awareness by teasing the ideas hosts figuring out their part in the game. Although one of the programmers very rashly sums it up well, “Imagine how ****ed we’d be if these poor assholes ever remember what the guests do to them”.
Some of the best material here comes from the various facility members evaluating her as an object rather than as a person (even more poignant when her character is a prostitute). That she’s adapted or modified based on the subjective responses of guests to her seductions. Or best of all when two technicians find themselves in a dicey situation with her and can’t even remember her name. Some of these don’t go quite as smoothly though. While Maeve’s night time stroll of discovery packs some outstanding imagery, other scenes of her assessment and diagnosis mid-episode feel more stalling, like things are deliberately being slowed down rather than progressing naturally.
The story of Ed Harris’ yet unnamed “Man in Black” is taking on a very interesting direction as he searches an elusive deepest level of the game known as The Maze. He’s on the prairie version of a video game secret hunt as the clues to its location reveal themselves under unusual and otherwise impossible circumstances. The initial impression is that you’d need to be someone as sick and amoral as this 30-year game veteran to find it, which immediately makes us wonder just what kind of insanity he’ll find there.
The ominous message of, “The Maze isn’t meant for you” implies there will be some play on expectations. Although his best moment comes in a reflective appreciation of game construction and architecture, “The real world is chaos, it’s an accident but in here every detail adds up to something”. In an artificially created world, can anything truly occur naturally? This is echoed well by Anthony Hopkins’ Ford (who unsurprisingly is proving an utter delight on screen) when he dismisses so the called, “blood and tits” aspects to the experience for the subtleties and the details that keep the guests coming back. They don’t come to rape and massacre, they come to escape and discover.
The mystery of the show continues to be key and in that sense, it’s great. Whether it’s the dreams of past encounters seeping their way back to their hosts or wondering just what Ford’s new narrative (involving the ruined church) is. The continued miss-treatment and certain characters like James Marsden’s Teddy is instilling great sympathy towards to the hosts which will really pay off when that day of reckoning comes. This show’s potential is massive as long as it keeps itself in check, and we have a lot of good Sunday nights ahead of us.