House of the Dragon

Westworld: The mystery is not who Arnold is, or who Ed Harris' character is, or what's up with Deloros. It's how they can shoot as many shells as shot at the Allies hitting Normandy beach and not have an accident. Alec Baldwin's production couldn't get through a few dozen without a fatality.

Clearly what comes to pass at the end of the last episode of season one in the expected Revenge of the Hosts isn't about revenge. It's about trimming the budget. Anthony Hopkins will make a few more appearances (gauging by IMDB appearance data), but his character is all but reduced.

And, yeah, of course because we didn't actually see Ed Harris' "Man in Black" character get shot down, you knew he would be back even without checking with IMDB that he is in 26 more episodes. Whether he comes back as a re-creation in a Host or not, I don't know and I don't care.

And that's the major fault of this series. You can't care much about any of the characters because no matter how shot up they are, they can always come back.

But the style and story of this series is what it is. They were going for something complex. And you could say they succeeded even though I was bored by most of it. This is a shot-a-thon with pretenses of being science fiction.

I like the Teddy Flood character. Poor Teddy Flood. He's living proof that nice guys (or nice Hosts) finish last, although there are three more seasons to come. But I'll not watch them. Ten episodes is about all that I can give this orgy of violence.

But it was interesting (although not satisfying) to find out who Ed Harris was. But it took a lot of strange, bizarre, and just damn confusing time-jumps and visions by Dolores to get there. And in the end, I don't think it was worth it.

Arnold's (Bernard's) character was a bit more interesting although because he died and was brought back so many times, I think even Dr. Ford lost track of whether Bernard should be alive or not. There did seem to be some continuity or story errors there. But it is in Bernard, not Dolores, that we most get into the interesting sci-fi aspects of being a Host who is gaining consciousness by increments.

The Dolores character started strong. But then it just became a cycle of "Gut Dolores, watch her cry and scream, bring her to the tech room to be repaired, rinse-and-repeat." The series often stalled in this manner, substituting gratuitous violence for story or character development.

And I can't help thinking that Anthony Hopkins is totally wrong for the character of Dr. Ford. He just keeps doing the butler in Remains of the Day. Other than fingering a few electronic tablets, we don't once see his character doing any programming. And yet he's supposed to be the brains of the operation, pulling his strings via programming in the background.

This is the kind of sci-fi you don't really want to look too closely at because it's not ultimately going to make a lot of sense. Neither did the movie, Total Recall. But it's still entertaining, if only because of the characters. And, to some extent, so is the first season of Westworld. Just don't look for any deep and meaningful themes because they are all blown to smithereens in a spray of bullets.

Yes, Thandiwe Newton as Maeve still comes off as the best actress. And she escapes (or seemingly would have) but at the last moment decides to stay behind for her child...which she knows isn't real. But it's all she has that is of any real meaning to her.

The human "Guests" are a bunch of psychopaths so, of course, in response the Hosts turn that way as well. And that's really what ruins Dolores' character. I smell little but revenge-seeking, ass-kicking female in her future.

The semi-interesting bit of pop-psychology in this whole Westworld setup is the idea of finding your "true self." We see that play out mostly through the Man in Black (or sometimes white) character. We are led to believe that the "true self" is revealed if you go to a fantasy land full of guns, hookers, and induced violence and then have a good laugh playing Jessie James.

Well...maybe. They say that character is revealed by difficult circumstances, and that may be so. But the idea of civilization and civilized behavior is because it's not exactly a secret that Nazi Germany can, and will, assemble itself around you in a heartbeat unless you stay on guard, unless you keep the Savage Beast inside you at bay.

But the series (in juvenile fashion) forwards the pop-psychology notion that what is violent, what is terrible, and what is painful are the real real things in life. And given the audience this show is meant for, that's going to resonate because that's about as deep as you get in regards to philosophy these days, even if you go to college.

The original TV series was powerful for its simplicity: It may look harmless to use and abuse the robots of Westworld. But they are not as dumb and dim as you expect. They can hold a grudge. And the moral choices you make in the theme park can come back to bite you.

But this modern Westworld is a shoot-a-thon where a lot of the emotional or intellectual impact is lost in a cloud of gunpowder smoke.

I did watch a little of the first episode of season two of Westworld, just to see the aftermath. And what Deloros has turned into reminds me of the "rape fantasy" that some chicks have. Well, the opposite of that is the feminist "let's kill all the men" fantasy.

The character of Superman might scratch some itch that guys have. Superpowers. Secret identities. And the desire to do good and kick the ass of the bad guys.

But the character of Deloros now is surely a feminist fantasy. She's just going to kill all the men (and some women a well). This is ostensibly simply a reaction of the Hosts against the Guests. But I know an ass-kicking female when I see one.

Deloros has gone from an interesting, sensitive character to a psychopath of little or no interest.

They are attempting a complex timeline in Westworld. You jump from present day to various times in the past. Season two is starting to pick up on the origins of the park.

Bernard and Elsie stumble upon what looks like the place where Delos Corp. was developing the creation of human replacements with some special enhanced version of Hosts, with the data taken from real people (Guests).

Of course, in this world, they assume that Ford has led them here just like the Man in Black assumes Ford is still pulling his strings. When his daughter finds him, Ford just assume that she is just a Host. (And we don't know about that yet.)

Ford is given god-like status for implementing everything, even from beyond the grave. (Assuming he's dead, or not still alive as a bot Host.) That's the weak part of the series which I'm sure they'll try to write themselves out of. Although chaos seems to have clearly broken out, the Man in Black certainly thinks this is just another advanced level of the script. It's a bit of a muddle as far as the story is concerned.

Still, most of the threads are interesting. But I continue to skip past the Dolores/Teddy Flood segments. Their acting is clearly inferior. Their characters are bland and one-dimension. And the stories are little more complex than Pissed Off Female Seeks PMS Revenge on the World.

Maeve and friends (including the increasingly ridiculous Violent Blond with the Tattoos) stumble upon Shogun World. I had assumed the SW we saw on one of the doors meant "Samurai World," but it's Shogun World. We don't know the name of the world that the Man in Black's daughter was visiting, but it could be Raj World. They hunt tigers there, sip tea in the afternoon, and order the servants around when not visiting the brothels. Sounds like a fun world.

Anyway, Maeve gets in a tangle with the Shogun's men. She discovers she now has Matrix-like powers. She merely needs to think commands and she can manipulate those around her. This could bring a dead-end to the interest in her storyline because where can you go from a sort of omnipotence?

The Bernard/Corporate Clean-up storyline is current the highlight of the show. Basically all Hosts are "kill on sight" and Bernard knows he is one of them and does his best to hide this despite some technical glitches that he is experiencing. Eventually he finds Elsie (who he had involuntarily accosted a while back) chained up. He frees her and they would appear to be the two people in the park who most know what is going on and who have the ability to fix it.

Both Elsie, and especially Bernard, are good characters. The add-on black in the form of the Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) definitely feels like affirmative-action casting. That said, unlike Evan Rachel Wood (Dolores), she can act. She does put a human face on the corporation and it's certainly a bit of a cold-blooded one.

I finished episodes 9 and 10 of season 2 (the last episodes in that season) of Westworld. They were a complete train wreck and showed that they had already milked this subject for whatever sci-fi they could get out of it. It should have been a well-planned 15 episode mini-series with some thought of where it would go.

But this was, generally, a bunch of interesting stuff interspersed with junk. And even the good stuff was watered-down because of the unnecessary time jumps and other stylistic devices.

The core story was very weak and it amounts to: having a reason for gun violence. Other than that, you have to search hard for a thread that holds this series together.