1x06 The Adversary

[8.1/10] I think I’ve figured out my rubric for when I’m interested in what Westworld has going on, and when I’m liable to be bored. The more the show is focused on the park -- whether it’s the hosts making sense of their reality, or the guests exploring and growing immersed in it -- the more I’m on board. Those scenes tend to lean into what makes the show engrossing -- thought experiments about identity and sentience and moral questions about how we behave when there’s no rules.

But when the show is focused on the back end of Westworld -- in the form of corporate conspiracies and middle-manager backstabbing -- the more I’m ready to tune out. I’ve realized that none of the characters who are pulling the strings of the park really interest me.

Sizemore is a garden variety shitheel and his antics are as dull as they are intended to be outrageous. A cliched botched encounter with a romantic target-turned-surprise boss does nothing to help either him or Tessa Thompson’s introduction to the show. Theresa continues to be a stock character with a bad performance, between her run-of-the-mill, steely-but-wounded break-up with Bernard to her reheated pep talk to Sizemore. All the runaround and would-be palace intrigue of who’s going to be in charge of Westworld is a non-starter.

I also can’t be bothered to care about what conspiracy Elsie is uncovering, whether that means Theresa herself messing around with the programming of some off-the-books hosts or a mysterious third party posing as Arnold. The whole thing plays out like something from the usual conspiracy thriller textbook, with Elsie going alone to a creepy hideout, being attacked a hidden assailant, and getting stymied and put in danger just when she’s about to uncover the truth. It’s generic pablum and a big waste of time.

Even the two characters who gets the most focus and give the best performances in the “behind the scenes” portion of the show, have grown fairly dull by this point in the season. Ford is a less a character than a bundle of mysteries and cryptic hints at this point. As I’ve said in prior write-ups, Hopkins is a pro and can spin some of this straw into gold. But Ford is a character without weight at this point, there mostly to deliver exposition and throw out the occasionally navel-gazing bit of foreshadowing.

Sure, it’s mildly interesting to learn that those kids that various people have run into on the property are actually robotic versions of his younger self, and that the oft-spoken-of Arnold made host incarnations of Ford’s entire family, which Ford maintains both to preserve a connection to Arnold and to his past. But what does it amount to?

It amounts to another vague story beat to suggest that there’s something amiss with what Ford’s doing, without really delivering any answers and just having Hopkins skulk around and try to carry these scenes on his back. Even Bernard, who has his fingers in the most pies of the behind-the-scenes storylines, has reverted to being something of a cipher, with a nebulous desire to protect Theresa and the lingering pain of his dead son to motivate him, but a pretty dull progression on a scene-to-scene basis.
It’s hard to pinpoint what the pathology of all these back end stories and characters is. It may just be that, even in the context of a futuristic theme park, this half of the show comes off like a generic high-powered office drama. The characters aren’t sketched out well enough, or given anything but generic personas and motivations, to keep up the intrigue, and unlike the park-focused characters and storylines, it’s harder for that part of the show to rely on the coolest elements of Westworld’s premise.

Those are, namely, the twin concepts of robots becoming more complex while slowly gaining sentience and the exploration of the soul when human beings are given the chance to let their best or worst impulses run wild.

Theoretically, The Man in Black should suffer from the same problems without any of the benefits his fellow park-dwellers benefit from. He’s as much a bundle of mysteries as Ford is, and there’s not exactly a battle for his soul going on right now. But he has a few things in his favor.

First, he has a supreme competence and mastery of this world that marks him as unique relative to other characters. Second, he has the benefit of Ed Harris getting to put on a clinic as memorable blackhats go. And third and most important, he has a clear goal. We may not know much about the fabled Maze just yet, but we know that TMiB wants to find it, that he’s been in the game for a long time, and he’s searching for something deeper, something more meaningful, out of this experience. That makes him compelling, even when he’s mired in the same less-than-lucid mysteries the show seems to be promising.

But even he can’t match the glory that is Maeve’s story here, which is pretty handily the best thing the show’s managed so far. For one thing, it pulls the trigger on something the show’s been hinting at for a while now -- one of the hosts realizing what they are and where they come from.

The sequence where Lutz takes Maeve through the facility, set to the Vitamin String Quarter’s version of “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” is one of the most affecting in the show. The combination of the look on Thandie Newton’s face as Maeve witnesses the surreal sights of her entire world, her comrades and her being, in a state of being under construction, and her dreams being broadcast as ads, is tremendous.

But Maeve is able to take it all in relative stride, however much a shock it must be to literally meet your makers (or at least re-makers) and change who you are with a push of a button. There’s nice touches galore, like Maeve overloading when she reads her own speech patterns, or knowing how to manipulate Lutz’s jerkass workmate into keeping his big mouth shut.

There is something charming and capable about Maeve, one where she uses her skills to know what a person wants to finally get what she wants. The prospect of a host remaking themselves, of knowing what the real story is, and having some kind of plan, is the most exciting thing Westworld has offered since its inception.

When the show focuses on stories like those, which lean into the moral and spiritual awakening of these mechanical people, of the thorny moral questions about control and what makes us who we are, and about the animating idea of a place where people can let loose, for better or for ill, it is an engrossing, even thought-provoking show. When it focuses on a pack of pencil-pushers and clashing co-workers, it becomes like any other show, and leaves me wishing Westworld would stop with the office politics and get back to Westworld.