Watching Westworld - Season Two Wrap Up

Season two of Westworld is in the books. It was a bit of a rough, uneven experience for us, and we suspect from the vast amount of feedback we got this past week, a lot of you as well. But, the bones of Westworld are still sound, and the table is set for season three to be more expansive and interesting than the at time claustrophobic and confusing season two. We discuss our hopes and fears for next season, discuss some leading though on simulations, brain scans, and AI before considering lingering thoughts and questions from our fellow fans. By all accounts it’s going to be a long wait for next season, but we hope to see you back then!

Watching Westworld - 210 – The Passenger

Reasonable people may disagree, but for Jim and I, the finale of  HBO’s Westworld season two, “The Passenger” failed to justify an ultimately flawed and uneven 10.5 hours of television. We’re not ready to write the show off by any means, it’s too well constructed with too much talent for that. But we can’t help but think of it as a misstep that is going to justify a lot of fans decisions to give up on the show. Next week, we’ll be back to discuss our overall thoughts on the season, and what we hope for and expect coming into season three. Please send us feedback if you want to join in on that discussion!

Watching Westworld - 209 – Vanishing Point

This week’s episode of HBO’s Westworld, “Vanishing Point” does a excellent job of setting up next week’s finale. That finale has a lot riding on it, with seemingly endless permutations of possibilities of who’s a host, who’s a human, what’s real and what’s simulated that have to be coalesced down to a single possiblity. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, because if you watched this episode purely for it’s plot mechanics you missed out on a lot of wonderful writing and acting that lead to some amazing character development for most of the main cast, revealing brand new relationships we didn’t even know were there, giving more depth to the ones we had, and utterly shattering a few more. And yeah, there are just a ton of theories involving who is a host and what will happen in the Valley Beyond next episode! Can’t wait to discuss it all with you then!