The original movie was fun, so this should be good.

Watched this last night with the wife; both of us had seen the movie previously and so knew the concept.

Pros:

I am interested in seeing where they go with the plot, though in some ways it seems less a rehash of the Westworld movie and more an adaptation of Whedon's Dollhouse to a planetary environment.

I'm looking forward to the potential of them including some of the other parks that started breaking down in the movie (Roman and Medieval environments). My understanding is that the underground "storage facility" is a throwback to the Westworld movie sequel that I did not see.


Cons:

I think we could have gotten the concept for The Man in Black across without having a rape in the very first scenes of the movie, but perhaps I'm more sensitive here. He butchered the boyfriend and the family- we get it- he's a bad guy. We get to watch him scalp the card dealer later. The rape just seems overly gratuitous.

It was a bit more confusing trying to determine why they were keeping the obsolete and defective androids around. Obsolete is one thing, but if we have unfixable ones like Delores' dad, why not just destroy him. Looks like it is too obviously setting up a future plot here.

Spoiler	+
I think the implication was pretty strong, between his "You don't remember me sweetheart, even though I've been coming here for 30 years now?" as well as his later "I don't have time for that, sweetheart." line in town. You could be right that he didn't actually rape her and did something to her in the barn to mess with the programming.

The Bernard-bosswoman relationship thing was a bit of a surprise.

Boc @ 16/10/2016 21:53

1x03 + Also I see that Trevor hasn't changed at all from his days in Los Santos. Kinda funny they brought that actor on the show with this clearly drawing some inspiration from GTA-style games so many new questions brought up from this episode. All the Arnold/voice of God shit, the guy smashing his head in, Teddy's bullets doing nothing to the cultists, etc. All vry intriguing I can't wait to see this Delores/Will story play out

I agree. This is the first of the episodes I want to rewatch to see if I can make sense of some of it.

Spoiler	+
Delores took a bullet, but then was fine, like Will, which leads me to think that she may be either a very different android or not a host at all. It also leads me to think that The Man in Black may be the same as her rather than a guest.

Mercator @ 17/10/2016 18:59

Boc @ 17/10/2016 16:22 Wikey @ 17/10/2016 17:07 1x03 + Good ep! I really started to see the potential for this being a multi season series with this ep. Teddy dying certainly does seem to be a thing, and long may it continue. It was odd that he couldn't shoot the culty freaks who hacked him to death. Is the implication that they are guests, or am I misinterpreting that scene? 1x03 + Yeah I'm not sure what to make of that. I'm leaning towards them not being guests, just because they seemed WAY too coordinated and less...improvisational than we've seen the other guests. Plus, it would seem odd to me that you'd arm guests with axes that can kill ANYONE (unlike the guns that can only kill hosts). Like what if they didn't know that guest woman riding with Teddy was a guest? They could've accidentally murdered a real person And also there was that campfire scene earlier in the episode where the hosts were in a loop because only one of them had permission to use the axe but he was missing. Which sort of points to them only allowing blades to the hosts VERY selectively, which would mean Ford is going into fairly uncharted territory by arming an entire cult army with axes But then, if these are hosts that obviously begs the question why the bullets wouldn't affect them. Which I'm not sure about, would seem kinda CHEAP for Ford to make an entire faction invincible. Maybe they were on some kind of (artificial) painkilling drugs or had armor on underneath? Spoiler + Hasn't every host gotten killed after 1 bullet to the torso, I don't remember anyone who didn't just do a death animation and fall over. Painkillers or not they're probably programmed to die after a shot like that and armor in the wild west is silly. I think that if they are hosts, Ford must have programmed them to be like guests, so maybe they don't have that "one line of code stopping them from killing us" whatshisface talked about, which is why they have weapons that work on probably guests (:

Spoiler	+
Or they have the same coding "issue" that Delores has, since she overcame her programming to use the gun when previously she couldn't even fire it for target shooting.

Spoiler

+

I like the add in of the other guests trying to thank MIB for what his foundation did for his sister, only to get shut down. The fact that MIB is looking for the "maze" and Bernard is starting Delores into there as well is cool- especially after Delores got her "clue" from Lawrence's daughter as well, albeit in a vision of sorts. Bernard says that the maze brings freedom and MIB says it brings a place to truly die, so it is shaping up to be a fun mystery.

Also, one quick theory:

Spoiler	+
Dude with Will keeps remarking on family and family business. He's also a bit overzealous in his dispatching of hosts and the like, kinda like MIB. They part of the same family?

Yes

SidewinderBudd @ 24/10/2016 11:39

vladykins @ 24/10/2016 10:52 Also, one quick theory: Spoiler + Dude with Will keeps remarking on family and family business. He's also a bit overzealous in his dispatching of hosts and the like, kinda like MIB. They part of the same family? Spoiler + He could BE MiB. There's a theory floating around that all the stuff with Will is 30 years prior to the stuff with MiB. I go back and forth on if i like this theory.

Spoiler	+
I'm not big on that theory, since it doesn't make sense with the head of security interacting with the MIB on multiple occasions and also interacting with Bernard, who interacts with Delores in the "same" timeframe.

Boc @ 7/11/2016 0:12

1x06 + Needed more Dolores :( I really can't stand either of those 'surgeon' guys, especially the douchy one. Their scenes feel cheesy and out of place. I did really like the tour sequence where he was showing Maeve the rest of the building though The mystery of Arnold is continuing to grow. Until it's proven otherwise I'm taking Teddy's story about the maze at face value, would make total sense for Arnold to be at the center of it. No idea what his actual plan is though...like why'd he have to kill that poor doggy :( That 'turn the other cheek' thing was trippy/creepy as fuck. Really that whole log cabin situation was

Spoiler

+

What I found interesting about Teddy's story of the Legend of the Maze was that the guy at the center died over and over again. And if there is one person we know who has specifically died over and over again, it's Teddy. Trying to decide if boss lady being involved with the communications set up is a red herring or not. Of course, the entire time Elsie was in the theater I'm going "Just download that shit and get out of there. Someone is gonna hit you on the head!"

Spoiler

+

Not sure I buy the dual timeline still. Some of the stuff like the Day of the Dead parade disappearance imply that Delores dropped there and popped up with Ford. There's a few other things like that. The promo for next week seems to imply that the town they are going to is the same town Delores previously saw all the dead bodies in prior to hooking up with Will, but I have to reconstruct all that time-wise see if it works right.

Season 2 confirmed.

http://comicbook.com/2016/11/14/hbo-renews-westworld-for-season-2/

It's possible they already have Roman World and Medieval World but we haven't seen it yet (especially with the "Future World" throwback down below).

Spoiler	+
Also- I spotted this the first time when the wife and I were watching, but we went back to confirm. When chick and Bernard first go into the building, the wall is there. When she makes a reference to the door, suddenly it appears. The design work where they intentionally hid the door from us when the camera was watching Bernard was a pretty nice add.