Westworld: Season Two (Review)
Westworld
2018 HBO
Season Two
Score: 6/10
Westworld's sophomore slump began in the penultimate episode of its first season. Up until that moment, the first season had been an elaborate, perfectly constructed machine, and since then, it's been leaking oil, mechanical arms flailing aimlessly.
The show began as an exploration of what wealthy humans would do if allowed in a law-free wild west theme park full of androids...and what those androids would do after years and years of memory wipes could no longer clear their minds of what those humans had done to them. The first season ended at the moment that one of the androids truly gained consciousness beyond its programming. Then all hell broke loose.
The first season of the show is tightly structured--it's full of twists and turns, but until that ninth episode, those twists and turns don't hinder character development or story. With all bets off in the second season, there really is no structure, as the park falls into bloody chaos.
Westworld has always played around with interwoven, separate timelines, but the second season does it to a point of distraction, til things are needlessly convoluted. I can make an episode of TV where I'm driving in my car, then cut to when I was leaving, then cut to me eating a box of cookies alone at my house, then cut to me picking a box of cookies off a store shelf, then cut to me walking into the store to buy the cookies, then cut to my wife asking me to buy cookies, then cut to me tossing an empty cookie box in the trash. All I did was create a confusing way of telling the story of the time my wife asked me to get cookies, then I went out and got them, brought them home, and ate them all myself. I do not need to randomly bounce around in time to make that story compelling. It's either compelling, or it's not. Unless you have a specific reason for telling a story that way, ala Pulp Fiction's gracenotes, then don't tell a story that way.
What results are characters acting out of character, or more bluntly, characters ceasing to be characters, and simply becoming plot contrivances...to a senseless plot. I understand that a creature first gaining consciousness may be unsure of what it is, but a full season of no one acting human, even the humans, is wearying, and in this case, does not generally feel intentional.
What a shame, as the show still looks beautiful, still showcases incredible performances, still features a wonderful score, and still features electrifying moments. Really, if one were to turn off their brain, which would be a shame to do during a program that seems to intend to ask such big questions, and just view the entire season as a badass action movie, with cool futuristic vehicles and weapons, and a weaponized robotic buffalo stampede, Westworld: Season Two is pretty enjoyable.
However, as characters walk in slow-motion during the finale's final moments, saying things like "I know what I have to do," it's pretty clear the writers don't. Here's hoping for a junior comeback.
Comments
Love that description of the storyline issue, too. It's like the story version of JJ Abrams's love affair with lens flares: stop doing it so much, it's not that amazing, really! ;)
--Neal
I think the first nine episodes of season one were good enough that this show could go on for two or three more seasons, and season two would just be a brief negative blip, but I'm not sure if these showrunners actually know what they're doing, and maybe just captured lightning in a bottle for that first season.
The shows with good, solid arcs planned out are really the best, because otherwise you have to start doing weird character actions when things go on for longer than you had thought it would. I know TV has its issues with how seasons are picked up, but that's pretty much where the issues show up, that I've noticed.
Feel is such a tricky thing in a show, too. I can get digging a show for that. The first series of Broadchurch is amazing for that reason (the British ITV show with David Tennant and Olivia Coleman). It's haunting and lyrical, the music working perfectly in synch with the writing, acting, and filming. The following two series were kind of able to do it again, but not nearly as well, partially due to writing again, as things were just not so perfectly developed for characters and the scenes they were in--what they needed them for in Series 1 didn't keep working in new settings, I guess. Where the following series work is when they're not pushing characters in weird directions.
Still, it's kind of nice that shows like this are out there and trying out different things. Hopefully pushes everyone to up their game, though the "Hey, we're HBO!" chip seems to never want to go away. :(
I remember when Heroes launched during Lost's third season, and a bunch of folks flipped to it, almost to spite the previous show. The thing is, Lost, even with plot shenanigans, never went against its characters, and if anything, went in the directions it did as a result of who they were. Heroes swiftly derailed, and I remember very clearly reading an interview with its showrunner where he admitted that he never planned ahead, and couldn't understand how other showrunners did so. It's pretty easy dude...write it...then film it.
Broadchurch is sort of the poster boy for "Should have just done one season."That's a great example. That first season is spectacular, nearly perfect, and everything is tied in a bow at the end. Then a second season exists so there can be...more of that? I mean, the two lawyers were incredible in that second season, but those two performances didn't justify its existence. I did enjoy the third season a bit more, as it did spend most of its time on a new mystery that felt organic to the leads, but the best thing that show could have done if it had to stay on was just follow Tennant and Colman from mystery-to-mystery Midsomer Murders style and give-up trying to tie it all back to the initial case. Just explore their relationship.
And finally, the wacky things is, Westworld's second season kind of drops the "Hey, we're on HBO" chip, at least in the nudity department, as they've already sucked the viewer in...but there's nothing to replace it yet. Hope they get that spark in the third season, or I have a feeling HBO will start to lose patience. The irony is, when Game of Thrones stopped being so in-your-face with its content, it actually became a better show, as much of that newfound modesty sprang from confidence.
I think I agree that in hindsight, Broadchurch's other seasons would have benefited more from just focusing on Tennant and Coleman, or at least feeling more free to let go of the first series's original side characters more. Paul's character (? the father of the boy murdered in series 1) just feels like he's perpetually spinning his wheels over what happened, which just got too much and too old after awhile. People do indeed get stuck like that, but fiction needs to balance that with the need for character change. It felt like it was juggling too many different storylines (a bit like one of my favorite fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, eventually started doing). It's odd, too, as it was supposedly conceived as a three series atoryline, but it didn't feel like the following two did anything completely necessary, other than Tenant's character being able to work through that other old case hanging over him.