This is the least of many ironies.
Its not the future.
Westworld is a themed resort, an ersatz Frontierland produced with meticulous verisimilitude, populated with near-human Tomorrowland automatons.
Credit: John P. Johnson/HBO
ItsThe Big Valley, cast with a bonanza of uncanny valley actors.
That should leave a mark except it doesnt.
Someone get her a better agent!
Westworld provides countless choose-your-own-adventure options.
A hulking gunslinger rudely bumps into you.
Do you brush him off or challenge him to a duel?
A one-eyed geezer falls in the mud.
Do you offer him a hand or ignore him?
But Westworld stands for all kinds of Dream Factory products and periods, past and present.
There are intimations inWestworldthat once upon a time, the showrunners were interested in provoking similar uplift and improvement.
In its best possible form, this miraculous sandbox isFantasy Islandstuck in oater mode.
Regardless, modern day Westworld is aDeadwoodof moral ambiguity.
with no code at all.
Many of them, mostly men, choose wanton nihilism.
What happens in Westworld, stays in Westworld.
And soWestworldasks us to recognize ourselves in its story.
He rapes, he slaughters, he takes a veritable slave.
(Your first clue: No name = obliterated identity.)
By the end of episode 4 (the last made available for review), you might feel differently.
Who will he be and what will we think of him by episode 10?
Westworldis stories within stories, shows within shows, genres within genres.
Natch, the board of directors, obsessed with boundless growth and shareholder dividends, is nervous.
An agent of quality control (Sidse Babett Knudsen) prowls these behind-the-scenes levels.
Shes the visiting studio exec policing the on-location talent, making sure the budget is responsibly spent.
Is this the American West?
Could we be on another planet?)
Hopkins doesnt have a lot of scenes inWestworld, but they have high impact.
(I love the beat when he seals himself back in his bodybag.)
Its more than just Are We Meant to Play God?
Maybe its because they have the tech down to a literal science.
Maybe they feel threatened by their creations.
How far does the meta go on this show?
What should those shows look like?
More of the lucrative same or something bold and risky?
How to continue making sophisticated adult entertainment without getting formulaic or exploitative with the TV-MA?
Turns out Westworld itself is at a similar turning point.
The guests arent looking for a story that tells them who they are.
They alreadyknowwho they are, says Ford.
Theyre here because they want a glimpse of who they could be.
He finishes by saying Sizemores story is more about him than those wholl experience it.
Fords murky words can be interpreted many ways.
But can we go back?
Arent the old ways naive and flawed?
(Im not trying to suggest HBO is publicly working out its own issues in this show.
But Im one of them.)
Its appears that this upgrade might be making robots glitch with memories they shouldnt possess and reality-questioning self-awareness.
What happens if it spreads?
Will the actors revolt?
Thats one way to redeem a world of retrograde story.
Yet hes fascinated and moved by this outbreak of identity crisis, and it might be triggering his own.
Does he want to solve this systemic breakdown or let it run its course?
If Lowe doesnt have his own hidden motives and cloaked dimensions, Wright does a fantastic job suggesting otherwise.
Westworldis a beautifully shot blockbuster production, and wants you to know it.
Theres panoramic landscape photography and tracking shots of main street busyness.
like The Rolling Stones Paint It Black and Radioheads No Surprises.
The storytelling is so layered, so dense, so self-reflexive, it can be opaque and overwhelming.
I confess that the glib bloodshed of the first two episodes left me cold.
There are shoot-outs, rogue killing sprees, scalpings, stabbings, and sexual assaults.
One criticism ofWestworldis that it wants to have it all ways.
It asks questions about entertaining with violence, but make no mistake, itisviolent entertainment.
For me, the ambition and quality of the meta earned the excess and made the familiarity interesting.
Westworldis bunches of sci-fi things weve already seen, fromBlade RunnertoDollhouse.
This didnt bother me, and the derivativeness and redundancies work for it.
Its also far from the first show that has functioned as critical or snarky comment on entertainment.
Current examples includeUnREAL,Mr.
Robot, BoJack Horseman, and countless satirical comedies and genre parodies.
I tend to be fascinated by it and tickled by it.
He suggested one way it could do that is by giving us shows that parody TV.
And soWestworldcould reveal itself to be an empty exercise in self-reflection.
(Its a big reason why it took me so long to come around onGame of Thrones.
I resented this manipulation for years.)
Still, at the risk of affirming the strategy, Im invested in Dolores and Maeve.
And Wood and Newton are killer apps.
Change is difficult, maybe impossible.
Can we cut deeper?
Can we do better?
MaybeWestworldhas answers to these questions.
State-of-the-art TV about state of the art escapism,Westworldis an amazing mirror maze that must be traversed.A-
