Westworld Wednesday: All Good Things

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this an?d wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show (Seriously, there are spoilers in this).

Westworld was a heck of a ride in its second season. It certainly wasn't for everyone; there was no shortage of people who tired of the twists and turns and time jumps (and people who didn't get it and blame the show shut up DESR you said you wouldn't go there). But we live in what has been termed the 'golden age of television', and Westworld is emblematic of that. Back in the, uh, Bronze Age? of TV, it was a pain to rewatch a show. You had to set a VCR (remember those? Quaint) and/or be there to watch the show in person, sit through a gajilllion years of commercials.

You know what? We're calling those the Dark Ages now.

Point is, a show like Westworld didn't - couldn't - exist back then*. It is a show that benefits from rewatching; while some shows get boring once you know once the mysteries are revealed, but with Westworld, it's actually better once you know. There are details and layers, to say nothing of the fact that upon a rewatch, you see how much of it is foreshadowed from the word go.

So, maybe not for everyone, but I (obviously) loved it, and loved writing this series of essays/ramblings about the themes. For all the great day-in, day-out aspects of Westworld, like plot and acting or whatever, it's those themes that set it above. The ability to weave manifold concepts through each episode is really unparalleled. From family, to religion, to the afterlife, to mortality and a whole bunch in between, for my money, Season Two had it all.

Too much praise? Maybe, but anytime a show makes me consider the afterlife more than a very conservative religious upbringing, I have to give it credit.

It had some weak points - what was up with Maeve suddenly being the favorite child? - but overall, my largest concern going into season two was that all the momentum was gone, that the twists wouldn't land, that the magic would be gone. I think they did a great job with it, telling the story from Bernard's perspective, where the twists and turns of time made sense with his warped memory.

I wish I had a grand conclusion for this, but really, like with the show, I hope you enjoyed the ride, and if you want to read (or reread) any of the Westworld Wednesday's, you can do so here.

See you next season.

-DESR


*Babylon 5 notwithstanding

Westworld Wednesday: Cages and Chains

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show (Seriously, there are spoilers in this).

From the moment we met Ake in the eighth episode of season two, it was pretty clear he was doomed. No one is allowed happy endings in Westworld, right? Human or host, the loop is usually pretty bleak. Elsie tries to sort-of help Bernard, and is killed offhand. Hale then meets the same fate, at her half-replica's hand. William and Emily... oof. Ford and Arnold both sacrificed their lives in pursuit of their ideals. Delores watches the man she loves(-ish) kill himself in front of her.

It's not a happy show, is my point.

Life isn't always happy, either, to be sure. There are definitely those debating if the finale was good or not, and there is certainly merit to those discussions. But Ake, of all people in this damned show, deserves some happiness. Kiksuya is my favorite episode of the run, masterfully adding depth to the world; depth that The Raj and Shogun world didn't add, no matter how cool they looked. The happiness and truth which eluded Ake (and his tribe(s)) felt like it would also condemn him to the same loops as despair as pretty much everyone else in the show.

Gladly, that was not the case.

Narrative-wise, it's even better than just rewarding a B character in the host afterlife - Delores, pre-death, is having none of it. She views it as another cage - and maybe it is. It certainly achieves the human goal of, ya know, stopping the hosts from murdering them all. Cages are funny things, though. A caged bird may not be able to fly very far, but it's also safe from predators. Perhaps that is (post-death) Delores' thought, as she shifts where The Sublime is stored to somewhere humans can't find it. 

Sometimes we tend to put ourselves in cages - as not-Logan says, we're pretty simple. William is a case in point here - he became so attached an idea that a fake game meant something (and, as is the folly of our species, selfishly assumed it meant something for him) that his drive for it killed his wife and daughter (probably). We see this in very different ways with Ford and Arnold/Bernard, although those are equally - if not more - lethal. Ford is obsessed with their wooden puppets becoming real boys and girls, which Arnold was with his idea of the Maze, in the end both meeting their ends at Delores' hand. And also by their own. You know what I mean.

One of the keys to good fiction is the characters having choices, and I love how that was a major theme of this season. William's journey is about his decent from escapism to depravity and obsession, but along the way, he's given multitudinous chances to alter his trajectory, yet takes none of them. Delores, on the other hand, does - at least slightly; showing mercy to the souls arrived at their heaven.

It's still a cage, in its way, but if we get to pick our cages, may as well be a nice one.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories (which should be on YOUR summer reading list). You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office
tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore.

Westworld Wednesday: Some People's Children

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show (Seriously, there are spoilers in this).

Happier times! ...ish

No family is perfect. Hopefully makes you feel better about your family, because these people take the normal, everyday idiosyncrasies that make Thanksgiving slightly awkward and dials it up to 11.

There has been a theory making the rounds since William didn't murder Lawrence and his family (this time) that this is a sign of good in him. While he is definitely a complex character, Vanishing Point put any thoughts of that to rest, along with his wife and daughter. It's that wife, the un-subtly named Juliet, and their daughter Emily, that I want to talk about.

Juliet, though never seen in the flesh in Season One, appears in a photo that drives much of the plot. We see the bookend to Vanishing Point, the beginnings of William's detachment from the real world, and from Juliet, before he even marries her. The start of the darkness within him, reflected in the change in his headwear in Season One. In Season Two, we do see glimpses of good, but that's really all they are - a small amount of light shining through the cracks.

But if Westworld is all about living out fantasy without consequence, if the Hosts are really just unfeeling robots, are his actions that bad? That's the question at the heart of the character; he visits violence and evil on things put there for that express purpose, so are they really evil?

But let's step back here, because Vanishing Point does something that a lot of fiction does, that is a sort of played-out evil. The dead wife/mother/child of our straight, white, male protagonist (SWMP), her death serving as his motivation and reason he is generally surly, with lots of demons in his tortured soul. Granted, there's a reason this gets used a lot- seeing/having your family murdered/dead of cancer/whatever would definitely mess me up, and I am already grouchy most of the time. But seriously, fiction is full of dead families in the service of backstory.

Juilet is dead, more or less from the get-go (although time is pretty subjective in the show), and the reveal of her death comes before we actually know it was her, just that he had the run-of-the-mill Dead Wife Backstory (DWB). Eventually, we find that it is the very same woman from the photo, the one William fell in love with, then subsequently out of love with in favor of Delores, yet married after his transformation in order to get deeper into the Delos Corporation. Still a DWB, but at least it has some depth to it.

I wonder if it was by design, or if they retconned it in Season Two (Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan never invite me to their parties), but it's given added depth by the exploration of what lead to her suicide, alongside the reappearance (for William) of his daughter. This is the part of the DWB where some new damsel in distress needs the SWMP to emerge from his gloom and save her, after which they live happily ever after, or something.

Only Emily is no damsel in distress, but rather, her quest is to get her father to face some manner of justice for what he truly is. There is no redemption arc here, no breaking William from his shell. Just him answering the question of if what he did in fantasy mattered in reality, as he grasp on reality is either severed or ignored.

So if you are going to off a family in the service of story, make it really matter to the story.

It would be really nice if I could end it there, and say Westworld nails it and breaks the mold of so many pieces of entertainment that slaughter women and kids for backstory, but we spent a really big part of Season One with Arnold/Bernard's family having been killed offscreen. Maeve both experiences her daughter dying, dying alongside her (at the hands of William), AND has her daughter being actually alive. Lawrence ultimately awakens and tries to kill William because William killed his family (at least once).

Maybe in the ever-increasing body count of Westworld it doesn't matter; it's not even ineffective. At least it all serves to pain the picture of the Man in Black as evil and twisted, rather than a brooding anti-hero.

So next time you're annoyed with your family, just be glad they weren't killed off in the service of your backstory.

-DESR

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Westworld Wednesday: The Geometry of Spirit

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show.

I've always been a word person, of sorts. Etymology and meaning fascinate me, a theme you've probably noticed in this little series, how words and concepts are used. The other thing I do (and considerably more profitable) is my day job as an engineer. I always liked lines just as much as I liked words. My mom has this bird I drew when I was a little kid, except it looks like it has been drawn by an untalented Escher, all straight lines, sitting on a branch comprised of straight lines, one wing extended as if you had just asked the bird for directions.

All of this is to say the pictures in my head get weird sometimes.

For all the characters in Westworld, perhaps even for us in the real world, you can draw lines out of our lives, a simple progression from point A to point Z, or whatever. How much do people change over their lives, which is to say, does that line veer, zag, curve much? Or can we draw a more or less straight line between our birth and death of who we are?

Consistency in performance such as this can be termed fidelity, a concept introduced back around the time we meet zombie-James Delos. William tests him for fidelity, which has a glorious B definition (which I assume most of you know, but):

the degree to which an electronic device (such as a record player, radio, or television) accurately reproduces its effect (such as sound or picture)

Double entendres will get you everywhere with me, Westworld. There's the obvious connection, that a piece of machinery is meant to reproduce something - in this case, you know, a human being. But there's the other kind of fidelity in play as well - that line people follow, the integral faithfulness to who we are.

We see Ford following his path, ostensibly to give the hosts free will, but on different terms, since he gives and takes it as he sees fit. All of this, good or ill, is pretty faithful to who he is. People can change though - right?

Teddy does, but not of his own volition. He goes from mild and gentle to violent and calculating - interestingly, though, he's still himself. Maybe it's just the looks and mannerisms - his own reveries, the small details that make us up as much as our dominant traits and motivations. Unfortunately, we likely know his ultimate fate. 

Get it? FLOOD! Classic.

Barring some other reveal, that is the end for the ironically-named Teddy Flood, after the Cradle was destroyed, leaving the Hosts with no backups, no second chances. As Ford points out, the Hosts want to be us; we want to be them - nearly immortal, with infinite second chances. 

As humans, we don't have that luxury. Certainly, there are no shortage of beliefs in our own "valley beyond", but insofar as we have confirmation, this is it, our one life, a straight line from our own cradle to whatever lies beyond.

It should be lived with fidelity.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Westworld Wednesday: The Things we Carry

Welcome back to Westworld Wednesday, a series of essays/ramblings about the themes & philosophies of Westworld. NOTE: while we deal more with themes here, rather than plot, the emphasis is not on what happened this week; HOWEVER, if you are reading this and wish to avoid spoilers, you should be current on the show.

Delores remembers, and her interview takes a different turn.

If you asked someone what makes them them, or I asked you what makes you you, a fairly common response is likely to be 'memories'. From an early age, our memories shape a lot of who we are, our identities, what makes us tick.

What if those memories mean nothing?

In one (extremely nihilistic) manner, that's the case. After we're gone, so are whatever memories we have. Whatever is waiting on the other side, the stuff on this side of the great beyond ceases to be. That pill is tough enough to swallow- but what if your memories were a lie?

Westworld explores both ends of this spectrum, and a whole bunch in between. What about the emotions we attach to them? Are they real? Maeve is on a whole quest because of a memory of a daughter who has a memory of a mother who is Not Maeve. Maeve is accompanied by a outlaw who has a memory of a person he loved, but doesn't, technically, exist, so him and Maeve fall in love, which is just an emotion and makes as much sense as holding hands. Which is to say, none at all. Her Shogun-World counterpart, meanwhile, takes a page from Mary Shelly's real-life playbook, and carries her pseudo-daughter's heart around with her, delivering it to a final resting place at her home.

But those are made-up, silly things, narratives written by a simpering idiot because of his own lost love, so they're not real, right? But all our emotions are just chemical reactions, so are they really so different?

Teddy, meanwhile, has his emotional responses straight-up rewritten by Delores to better serve her purpose, and in a snap, gone is kind, compassionate Teddy, and in walks cold, calculating Teddy, who casually tosses a doomed man a pistol and single bullet, advising him to use it quickly. It seems he still has his memories, knowing full well what Delores did to him, but they mean nothing to him now - he's a changed man. Not is the way we may say it, where a traumatic event - which becomes a memory - may change us, but with the push of a button, he is literally a new person. 

But what of humanity? 'Phase Space' closes with a familiar face, one that you knew had to show up again, but what about his memories? What makes him him? Because everything that processed those memories organically was repurposed as impromptu gala decoration at the end of season one. Meanwhile, Bernard, he of the infinitely troubled memories, what with the dead son and manipulation by Ford, including the murder of his lover and imprisonment of his coworker, is recycled Arnold, along with many of those memories. But they aren't his, so whose are they?

It's a funny thing, this age we live in, where these are the questions we ask - are our memories real? What truly belongs to us? Who, in fact, are we? - perhaps they were asked before our age, but this is the first time we have to consider the implications of the answers. What's scary about Westworld, Terminator, etc, is not that they are far-fetched, but that they are close to home.

And what's closer than our memories? If what makes us isn't ours, who are we?

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore. 

Westworld Wednesday: The Devils are Here

Welcome to Westworld Wednesday, your one and only source for me rambling about Westworld! I don't have a format, exactly, in mind for this - it's not a recap, because, well, watch the damn show. It's more of a discussion piece. Westworld is certainly my favorite show on TV right now, because it's so much more than the sum of its parts. And oh, what parts does it have. Let's jump in.

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. -Revelation 21:8, KJV

We pick up right where Season 1 left off, with lots of violence and cryptic messages. My biggest question coming into this season was how they would keep the tension up, not just the omnipresent threat of violence that is the hallmark of so many HBO shows, but the mystery and disorienting time jumps.

Turns out, pretty well. If you watch a show about what Disneyland would be like with robots, sex and homicide, you sort of ask... why? How does this place stay in business? And why on earth would you use robots that can pass for human for... that? Season one did an outstanding job of tying up a lot of loose ends, while setting the stage for a robot uprising, and I am very impressed that they decided to nosedive into much deeper questions.

The first season spends a lot of time asking what it means, exactly, to be human, or sentient, anyway. It's a fascinating topic, and Westworld (for my money, anyway) does this better than nearly anything out there. Frankenstein does it best, of course, the original and the best, and that examination lies at the heart of so much science fiction.

But it's very hard to examine what it means to be human without examining what it means to be god, lowercase g. But there is always a price for tampering with capital G God's domain, if such a thing exists. Shades of Jurassic Park show up, the question of could and should, and one has to wonder if capital G God asked such things, if indeed he exists.

And you thought Facebook was bad

Interestingly, some of the hosts do believe in god, or God, but in either case, he is a fiction programmed in to them, as old William explains to his old friend(?) Lawrence. Meanwhile, Delores has taken it upon herself to introduce her Lancelot, Teddy, to their true Gods - or, at least, creators after, as she states, she killed God.

His reaction is rather similar to my own experiences with religion, but that's neither here nor there. What is relevant is that he is less than impressed with the reality - that what gods may be are not superior to him, physically or morally. In fact, in many cases, quite the opposite.

But Delores wages a crusade to purge and punish the gods for their many failings, while William seeks penance? Absolution? But it comes not from a higher power, but from his own creation. He is not the creator of the hosts themselves - those are sins Arnold and Robert have already paid for - but he is the one who made the park what it is, gave it purpose and meaning beyond simple indulgence of vice. So many questions are asked - what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be god? The heart of this season lies at how we use whatever agency we have, and who we are as people, whatever form that may take. One thing is abundantly clear in the early going, though - there are truly no gods in Westworld.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories (which should be on YOUR summer reading list). You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office
tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore.