HBO premiered the long in production "Westworld" television show last Sunday (October 2nd), and the internet has gone nuts. The AV Club, IO9, EW, Time, all the usual suspects who love any HBO show predictably gave "Westworld" high marks. These are the same critics that loved "Vinyl", "John from Cincinnati", and "The Newsroom", so take their advice with caution. Critics at Vox, the Washington Post, and the New York Times were not as praiseworthy, but still found round about ways to find value in watching week to week. Similar to when Apple announces a new product, the zealots overtly praise and everyone else highlight what is good while trying to explain away what is bad. HBO is the Apple of television, and "Westworld" is its Apple Pencil.
Here at SeedSing, we did not receive the first four episodes of "Westworld" like the outlets mentioned. We can only review the show based on the pilot episode "The Original". The first fifteen minutes were amazing. In this introduction we are introduced to James Marsden Teddy Flood. Flood is waking up on a train completing its journey to the old west theme park of the future. As the audience, we know that Flood s heading to a theme park, so no explanation is needed. The false vistas of the old west and the town of Sweetwater look incredible. "Westworld" has the best set design and cinematographers in television. Flood passes a few archetypes of the American old west, the potential of a mid town dual, the sheriff's posse assembling to take out the outlaw, the prostitutes offering their special services. Teddy Flood has no interest in any of these things, he is here to meet back up with a girl.
The girl is Dolores Abernathy, played expertly by Evan Rachel Wood. It is quite obvious that Dolores is one of the androids, or "hosts" as they are called by the staff. Teddy seems to be playing out a romantic story line with Dolores, and "Westworld" kicks off with a little bit of hope.
That hope does not last long once we get back to the Abernathy ranch. Outlaws have killed Dolores's mother and father. The outlaws drink milk, like all creepy people do. Teddy draws his pistol and guns down the outlaws, playing out the story to be the hero. Then we get a glimpse of the unnamed, dressed in all black, Ed Harris character. Harris is not a good man, and Teddy Flood has his weapon ready to take the evil man down. Here the story takes a turn, Harris is seemingly a guest and Teddy Flood is revealed to be a host. Hosts cannot kill the guests. The Westworld park exists to allow people to live out their fantasies, no matter how depraved, with the hosts as the guests tools. Harris kills Teddy and takes Dolores to barn so he can rape her. "Westworld" had our attention after this great opening.
Once we get an inside look at the behind the scenes brains behind the park, "Westworld" goes off the rails. Jeffery Wright's Bernard Lowe and Luke Hemsworth's Stubbs was ok, and the brief scenes with Anthony Hopkins's Dr. Robert Ford were pretty good, but the scenes with Sidse Babett Knudsen and Simon Quaterman were downright terrible. They may be good actors, but every time Knudsen and Quaterman were on screen, I almost turned off the television. Their dialogue was awful, and their delivery was even worse. No amount of pretty scenery can make up for cringe inducing moments "Westworld" devoted to Knudsens's corporate stooge Theresa Cullen and Quaterman's guest experience writer Lee Sizemore.
"Westworld" gives us these terrible performances because it is trying so damn hard to be an edgy HBO show. Gratuitous lesbian kiss with no meaning, check. Copious amounts of violence and unnecessary nudity, well of course they have it. Liberal use of the "f" word, hey it's HBO. We are by no means against these things, when there is a point. Outside of the violence, none of these other HBO show staples had any purpose other than to be shocking. "Game of Thrones" did not win multiple Emmy's because of nudity, but the creators behind "Westworld" seem to think that is part of the recipe. It was distracting and took away from the show when one has to question why someone is nude, and how many times can Quarterman say the "f" word until it is a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb? The promising beginning of "Westworld" was completely undone by the distracting need for the show to be an "HBO show".
The bad performances and distracting edginess is not even the worse part of "The Original". The music of the show will make you miss key plot points. Many other writers have praised "Westworld" for using modern tunes like "Black Hole Sun" and "Paint it Black" rearranged as being played on an old 19th century player piano, but it was a bad choice. The music is recognizable enough to make the audience have to play name that tune while the show is trying to move the story forward. It is once again a directorial choice that was made to be edgy, and it turned out being bad.
The entire pretension of "Westworld" is also fairly weak. With the great opening scene, and the awfulness that followed, it is obvious that the show wants you to side with the hosts. Every single guest that was shown in "The Original" is a terrible human being who only wants to do terrible things. We are led to believe that the Westworld park is meant to be like a modern open world video game. It seems that the creators spent ten minutes on Xbox live and learned that anyone who plays a video game is a monster. "Westworld" gives inner life to the random NPCs (non player characters) and wants you to care about their dreams. It is an intriguing idea, but when the humans are just blank evil archetypes, the metaphor gets a little lost. Again a great idea ruined by terrible execution.
Many of the other reviews for "Westworld" urge the audience to wait the show out until the fourth episode. That is not the deal television makes with its audience. A great show should have a pilot episode that asks the audience to come back. We talked about some of these great pilots that captured our minds, for better or worse. The new "Battlestar Galactica" , another show based off of an old cheesy seventies piece of entertainment, started with a miniseries to gauge the audience's interest. If we needed four hours of "Westworld" to get involved, then producers JJ Abrams, Jonathan Nolan, and Lisa Joy Nolan should have made a miniseries first. A bad pilot can turn may people away from the next few episodes that will explain things. At least the miniseries would give people some closure after the first terrible hour.
Every year Apple unveils the newest and greatest thing mankind has ever known. Supposed tech journalist sites like The Verge, CNET, Ars Technica, and many others will give non-stop praise to anything Apple in hopes of clicks and recognition that never comes from Cupertino. In reality, many times Apple will release a new adequate piece of equipment, and sometimes they hit a huge home run. Every once in a while Apple will release something just flat out dumb. The Apple Pencil is such an item. There was no need for it. It was poorly executed, in that what good is it when Apple has been telling how great your fingers are for doing things. It was a copy of things done better before. It looked pretty, but had nothing to make it essential. The zealots fell for it, everyone else quickly forgot. "Westworld" is the Apple Pencil of television.
RD
RD Kulik is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He talks a big game but may end up giving "Westworld" a few more episodes. It is really pretty like his Apple Pencil.
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