***** WESTWORLD Season 2 (HBO) Official *****

256,041 Views | 2472 Replies | Last: 5 yr ago by bearamedic99
Bunk Moreland
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mazag08 said:

Bunk Moreland said:

haven't watched anything more than E1 of season 2. Just wasn't feeling it. Hopped on to see if i could get a sense of how the season is going and just scanning the last 2 pages not trying to read anything specific...doesn't sound like it's a "must" anytime soon for me.

Too bad.
You followed the last two pages.. where a couple of people started melting down after the pre conceived notions didnt come to light.

This season has been pretty damn epic, and for those of us that dont care to nitpick the color of the 43rd whisker to the left of Williams's mole, its been an extremely fun ride thats shaping up for a great finale.

Feel free to make your judgements from two pages of the thread though. You'll be the one missing out.

No worries. My judgments on how much of a priority I would make it to watch this season as it was released was based off what was imo a subpar first episode. That also means I'm not going to go read 55 pages of posts and theories and explosion gifs and theories going sideways and arguing over details etc to better help form my opinion.

So a quick scan based off the most recent discussion is about as much as I need to go right now. No big deal either way. As I said earlier, I'll get around to it and most likely toward the end of the summer...but do I need to do it now or else? I don't happen to think so.

Not life or death. Just a good (or somewhat good) TV show. Plus, we've got Yellowstone starting this week and I'm all amped up for that.
bobinator
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AG
So I have a timeline question.

When his wife accesses the card that Ford gave him, we see the clip from S1E1 of the MIB dragging Dolores into the barn.

On one hand, I suppose we can say that maybe he's done this several times in exactly the same way, but in that episode he seems to act like it's been a while since he's seen Dolores. We also see a clip of him handing that can to Dolores but lord knows how many times he's done that.

I guess it doesn't really matter, but I had always assumed that all of the MIB scenes in the park that we've seen were all from one trip, but that may not be the case.
AgEng06
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His wife mentions something about his "annual" or "yearly" trip to the park, so I assumed the profile was built over time and several visits.
bobinator
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I agree that's definitely the case, I was just surprised that one of the clips on the screen was of something that I thought had happened during this last trip to the park.
AgEng06
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Ah, gotcha. I see what you're saying. Basically he has been in the park since that occurred, however long that has been.
G Martin 87
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Teddy Perkins said:

Regarding the scanning of the necks. The scanner is scanning for restraint ordinance. So humans don't have the restraint ordinance. But a host that was deliberately not given a restraint ordinance would also pass this check. Basically, just because William passes this test doesn't mean he isn't a host. Credit to reddit.


The scanner is actually scanning for "restraint ordnance", which is a different word. Assuming that the prop designers for the show didn't misspell "ordinance", it could mean that security is checking for restraints on the use of weapons. In other words, a host.
JJxvi
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I have no idea since this is the first time I've actually seen it, but I'm just gonna assume that Geostorm is immensely more enjoyable by assuming Ed Harris' character is William in like Weather World as I'm doing now.
BenFiasco14
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I have no ****ing clue what's going on.

I'll keep watching this crap though
amg405
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mazag08 said:

Bunk Moreland said:

haven't watched anything more than E1 of season 2. Just wasn't feeling it. Hopped on to see if i could get a sense of how the season is going and just scanning the last 2 pages not trying to read anything specific...doesn't sound like it's a "must" anytime soon for me.

Too bad.
You followed the last two pages.. where a couple of people started melting down after the pre conceived notions didnt come to light.

This season has been pretty damn epic, and for those of us that dont care to nitpick the color of the 43rd whisker to the left of Williams's mole, its been an extremely fun ride thats shaping up for a great finale.

Feel free to make your judgements from two pages of the thread though. You'll be the one missing out.


I actually could not agree more. Other than Bernard's storyline being a bit overly convoluted with respect to timelines, this season has been great. It's been especially good in episodes 8 and 9 and it looks like 10 will be great as well. It is well worth the watch.
amg405
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Bunk Moreland said:

mazag08 said:

Bunk Moreland said:

haven't watched anything more than E1 of season 2. Just wasn't feeling it. Hopped on to see if i could get a sense of how the season is going and just scanning the last 2 pages not trying to read anything specific...doesn't sound like it's a "must" anytime soon for me.

Too bad.
You followed the last two pages.. where a couple of people started melting down after the pre conceived notions didnt come to light.

This season has been pretty damn epic, and for those of us that dont care to nitpick the color of the 43rd whisker to the left of Williams's mole, its been an extremely fun ride thats shaping up for a great finale.

Feel free to make your judgements from two pages of the thread though. You'll be the one missing out.

No worries. My judgments on how much of a priority I would make it to watch this season as it was released was based off what was imo a subpar first episode. That also means I'm not going to go read 55 pages of posts and theories and explosion gifs and theories going sideways and arguing over details etc to better help form my opinion.

So a quick scan based off the most recent discussion is about as much as I need to go right now. No big deal either way. As I said earlier, I'll get around to it and most likely toward the end of the summer...but do I need to do it now or else? I don't happen to think so.

Not life or death. Just a good (or somewhat good) TV show. Plus, we've got Yellowstone starting this week and I'm all amped up for that.


It does drag just a bit early in the season, especially relative to how the show usually progresses. But push through it.
bobinator
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Yeah, I mean a lot of the stuff we're talking about it just nitpicking the show because there's not much else to talk about after a while. There's only so many "THIS IS AWESOME" posts you can make.

In fact in my opinion this show is so good for so much of the time, that the moments where it slips up a bit stand out a lot more than they would on an otherwise mediocre show.
bobinator
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JJxvi said:

I have no idea since this is the first time I've actually seen it, but I'm just gonna assume that Geostorm is immensely more enjoyable by assuming Ed Harris' character is William in like Weather World as I'm doing now.
What becomes the best Ed Harris movie if you view as if he's participating in a world where he's the only human?

Enemy at the Gates becomes a way less dark movie.
JJxvi
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Snowpiercer is actually just season 5 of West World
bobinator
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I would have been much more of a risk taker in Apollo World but I respect his commitment to the narrative.
Gap
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Westworld viewership is down this year. It started fantastically with E1 S2 being 5% higher than the much promoted and anticipated debut last year and after E2, they were up 13% cumulatively compared to S1. From that point, the declines in viewership have been significant. E9 on Sunday was 25% below the same episode from S1. Overall, viewership for S2 is down 11%.
Brian Earl Spilner
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It's really strange. It's been a great season, and usually show like this gain in popularity, not lose it.

Gotta hope the trend reverses in S3 or it may be the last season.
bobinator
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I know a couple of people that have stopped watching it simply because it's too hard to follow what's happening if you're just a casual viewer. Which, yeah, I totally get.

I think in their quest to make this show the biggest Reddit-able theory show of all time they've alienated people.
Joseph Parrish
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The time jumps are hard enough for the for the regular audience to follow. Can't imagine how confused I'd be as a casual viewer. I actually hope they do much less of that next season. It doesn't seem quite possible to tie everything together with just one more episode. We'll se if they can pull it off though.
Belton Ag
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The show has gotten more cerebral, I really think that turns off a huge chunk of viewers. There's also way less titillation this season which probably puts off a certain percentage of male viewership.
TCTTS
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mhayden
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Viewership is down because the storyline is a mess.
Complete Idiot
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Ford Mustang (easy one)

bobinator
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We'll see how the finale wraps up the season. If it has an ending that makes the rest of the season come together in a great way then they might see a lot of people binge the show this summer once all the episodes are out.

I've said that I wouldn't want to binge this show because the theories and stuff are half the fun for me, but if you're just a casual viewer this show would probably be way easier to follow this season if you were watching several episodes at once.
mhayden
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That's the thing though -- having a convoluted storyline for 9 episodes that is cleared up in the 90 minute finale doesn't lend itself to high viewership. Something like that would actually work better on Netflix where you can binge it from the get-go.

And that's IF things are cleared up in the finale, which I think is highly doubtful.

Season 1 left you guessing on how certain things were going to play out and how certain characters fit in, but it was never confusing.

If you want to play the "who is human and who isn't?" game, OK. If you want to play the alternate timelines game, OK. If you want to play the "what is the big mystery game?", OK... But if you want to do all 3 in 10 episodes complete with a couple of single character/setting based episodes and flashbacks? Good luck.

They put too much on their plate and the storyline has suffered because of it.
M.C. Swag
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Brian Earl Spilner said:

It's really strange. It's been a great season, and usually show like this gain in popularity, not lose it.

Gotta hope the trend reverses in S3 or it may be the last season.
I think it's been a disaster and the frenetic timelines is the least of the issues. S3 will certainly need to deliver or it will be done.
TCTTS
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I honestly don't think it's nearly as complicated/confusing as you're making it out to be. Nearly every episode has followed almost the exact same structure:

- The first and last couple minutes of each episode are set in the present.

- The rest of each episode flashes back to fill in the two-week gap between the season one finale and the present.

I guess I can understand getting a little confused sometimes with what, exactly, is happening in the present, but even that is pretty straightforward because:

- No matter what is happening in that timeline, it's always apparent that both Charlotte and Strand need something from Bernard; either help locating Abernathy or help figuring out what happened to The Valley Beyond.

And I think this structure is going to end up playing a key role in the finale in that the reveal of what happened at/to The Valley of Beyond is going to have shocking consequences for the present timeline, to the point where the present timeline HAD to a hinge on that mystery, or the gut-punch/surprise/result would have been lost, and if in chronological order, would basically see the entire present day timeline take up the finale, which would have been anti-climactic.

And honestly, tough sh*t for those who either can't follow or don't have time for refreshers/research. Not EVERY show needs to appeal to the masses. I LOVE how "complicated"/"messy" it is. It's storytelling on a scale far beyond anything we've ever seen on television before, and it makes me giddy that a show is even attempting something so audacious, even if they do stumble from time to time.
TCTTS
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I totally get not being into it. If it's not your thing, that's fine. But calling something this bold a "disaster" is just dumb.
M.C. Swag
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TCTTS said:

I totally get not being into it. If it's not your thing, that's fine. But calling something this bold a "disaster" is just dumb.
I totally get disagreeing with my opinion. If it's your thing, that's fine. But calling my opinion dumb seems pretty arrogant.
mhayden
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Quote:

And honestly, tough sh*t for those who either can't follow or don't have time for refreshers/research.

Quote:

E9 on Sunday was 25% below the same episode from S1. Overall, viewership for S2 is down 11%.


You can say tough **** all you'd like, but if ratings continue to drop then you aren't going to continue getting the show passed S3.

And spare me the it's not complicated/confusing. Go read the 56 pages of this thread and after almost every episode you have 2 pages of "I think this is what is happening" that an episode or two later is nullified. Now you've got people that are convinced the final episode of the season is going to tie everything together.

That's not the mark of a well written/told story.

The acting is solid, the concept is intriguing and it's been a fun ride -- it's one of the very few shows I watch regularly... but to try and act like the storyline and pacing aren't significantly worse than S1 is silly.
TCTTS
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Whether or not something is a "disaster" isn't an opinion. A "disaster" is quantifiable. Your like or dislike of something is an opinion. The ratings may be down, but this season is objectively not a "disaster."
Brian Earl Spilner
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Even though I agree with you in this case, you probably need to stop trying to pass off opinions as objective fact. You seem to do it a lot, especially when it comes to the Star Wars franchise, and it rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

His opinion is that it's a disaster.
DannyDuberstein
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bobinator said:

I know a couple of people that have stopped watching it simply because it's too hard to follow what's happening if you're just a casual viewer. Which, yeah, I totally get.

I think in their quest to make this show the biggest Reddit-able theory show of all time they've alienated people.
This is the issue. Many of us think it's awesome because we're spending time outside of the show discussing and digesting it. Some of what you may have missed you pick up on. But for Joe Viewer that doesn't spend a minute on this thing outside of watching the episodes, the storyline is kind of a mess and it's zero surprise to me that many are giving up on it.
Brian Earl Spilner
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Quote:

That's not the mark of a well written/told story.
I'll disagree strongly on this one.

It's easy to to get lost/confused at times, but I think this is intended to be this way. What's great is that the story is so intricately written and told, that all the twists and turns are easily identifiable upon rewatching episodes. Nothing is done without very careful setup throughout the season.

I think they know exactly what they're doing, and I love being a few steps behind the writers a lot of the time.
M.C. Swag
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TCTTS said:

Whether or not something is a "disaster" isn't an opinion. A "disaster" is quantifiable. Your like or dislike of something is an opinion. The ratings may be down, but this season is objectively not a "disaster."
......oh i'm sorry, I didn't realize that my chosen adjective comes with a quantifiable definition. If you would be so kind as to provide these metric thresholds so that I can properly describe MY thoughts, I'd be happy to do so.

- Disaster
- Trainwreck (does this differ from car wreck?)
- Failure
- Fiasco
- Bad (or Awful)


TIA
TCTTS
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Honestly, I don't know if I even want this show to go past a third season. Unless they have something radically different in mind, they've just about exhausted the Westworld-as-a-park storyline.

What I'm betting happens is we get a 10-episode third season, the ratings dip a bit more, and then we get a truncated, five-or-six episode fourth season to wrap everything up.

And what I'm trying to say it that's perfectly fine.

Why does this have to be some kind of huge hit for the masses?

Why does it have to be easier to follow?

There are those of us who LOVE the structure, so why is it such a problem that a show exists to service the many fans like me and others here who enjoy unwrapping the box and putting the puzzle pieces together?
 
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