The recent episode was fine, but the samurai duel at the begining was a great example of some of the new seasons big issues.
-the fight has no stakes because we aren't familiar with either of it's participants, the outcome is fairly obvious, and because we know the Shogun world detour is coming to an end.
-Maive's "powers" come and go as the writers please, and increase and decrease in functionality depending on the need of the plot.
-maive's own motivation in that scene to let them "decide their fate" is undercut by her having forced a man to kill himself just like 2 minutes earlier.
And then sure enough we are out of it just a moment after. And it's hard to say that any event in Shogun world made much of a difference.
Episode opens with blunt exposition from Dolores and Bernard, later we watch as she begins to experience regret about what she did to Teddy.... But it's like, she's the hard bitch that cornered him in a room with a rotting cow carcass right after fucking him. So that whole arc is now a break neck roller coaster with no pacing at all
is it possible that they final outcome is that the hosts and ford go out into the world Lawnmower Man / Her style? No physical bodies.
This last episode was probably the most beautiful of the entire series.
Last night's episode was amazing and quite moving, I must say.
I think I got a pretty good idea where the Man In Black story will go next week.
Best episode of the series I think.
That show really works when it can combine the philosophical themes about identity and consciousness with an emotional plot and performance. Whenever they try and shoot action sequences the shows falls flat.
My reaction after the final fade to black:
"NOOOOO!"
Only then I realized this was actually the end, and it was great, and I want more!
that episode re-energized me for this show. Great storytelling. Probably the best epsiode of the whole series. Less murdering 80 people indiscriminately every episode, poor skirmish tactics by trained humans against robots, Charlotte Hale, Professor X Thandie Newton & Dolores, and more of this.
Happy Father's Day
I just lost my shit when I figured out that it was Jeffery Wright in Basquiat, which is one of my all time favorite movies.
Boom. For real!
Wait... why did I think it ended with Episode 8? :-) Bring it on tonite, yay! :-)
The past few episodes, their styles and executions, have been some of the best and most artful in the series so far IMO. I'm still at a loss as to how they'll bridge the timeline gaps..?
Also, come on, NIN fans, check that Vanishing Point tagline:
"Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything."
I was kind of bummed that my theory that Spoiler: William is a host got shot down. I thought THAT would be Spoiler: the reason he put the gun to his head
But now I do see an elegance in the Spoiler: hosts becoming human through suffering while William is headed, I think, to becoming NOT human, also through suffering.
Also, regarding the east of eden connection, it was pretty dope that Spoiler: Ford actually said the ancient word: Timshell, which was the last word of a dying character in that book
That Akecheta episode was fucking fantastic. I was engrossed the entire time and also waiting for some back story from his character for quite some time. Cannot believe season is just about over already.
The stake are high now. Something I was thinking about. I am unsure if there was some reason for this or if was just a bit off a sloppy plot that requires suspension of disbelief.
Spoiler: What was Ford's intention behind giving William the card with his file on it? Did he just assume that it would somehow end up being seen by someone? Did he do it to remind William that he knows who he really is? Why did William not remember that he left it in a book and that he never saw it again?
Also those 2 angles of Ed Harris when William is talking to his daughter where his face looks maniacal and way scary?!?!
My wife and I started watching this on Sunday and watched the pilot/premier that night and then episodes 2 and 3 last night. While we're both intrigued, we still feel extremely "WTF" about everything. They're (extremely) slowly explaining what's going on and the fact the show has such high reviews and praise from so many makes me think at some point it's all going to snap and make sense, but they sure are taking their sweet time with it while continuing to recycle the same scenes over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
When do things finally get explained and make sense? Or is this just how the show is with only a little more being revealed each time the same scenes/stories play out?
S2E9 spoilers.
Spoiler: In his own words, Robert is playing "one more game" with William. We can assume this is a long one which in some way involves the Forge. My guess is, Robert knew William's family would find the profile card (maybe he had a word with Juliet at the party), and one way or another William would lose them. The Forge almost certainly contains a host version of Emily, at the very least, so the natural next step would be to seek out a version of her that hasn't seen the profile, and doesn't know what happened to her mother.
Re. the second point, about leaving the profile card tucked in the book, remember that Juliet's suicide was IMMEDIATELY before the start of the first season. It's the reason he's in the park. So the card hasn't been there for long.
They couldn't commit to killing anyone except the most interesting 2 characters in the season. Cool
Last edited by Wretchedest; 06-20-2018 at 09:28 PM.
Fair enough. It's not even big things though--at least, they don't seem like they should be to me--it's things like: is the park VR/real/combination of the two? How do they keep taking hosts out of the game to talk with them (which tells me it's real) while they're interacting with others or in the middle of quests/adventures without it disrupting the narrative of the guests? For instance, Delores is often pulled away and in the episodes we've been watching (4 and 5 last night), she was on some long, drawn-out adventure with MacPoyle (can't remember his name in the show but I can't seem him as anyone other than the incestuous human trash he played in Sunny anyway) but was taken back to talk with various people at least twice during that. So a) how is he not aware of this and b) how is it not interrupting his time in the park/game?
When does the global park timeline start over? They kept showing Delores waking up and that whole scene where she's out front of the store and that can of condensed milk falls and rolls away over and over again...but when does it restart and what causes it to restart? How does it restarting affect hosts that are in the middle of other activities--like the aforementioned quest with MacPoyle that Delores was on?
Are people constantly joining/leaving the park? If so: how does that affect timeline restarts/host respawning and if this is in fact super/hyper-reality and not VR, how can multiple groups do the same things within the game without stepping on each other's toes since it's not like an MMO where larger activities (dungeons, raids, etc.) are instanced and unique to you/your group?
I'm not confused so much about the plot. I get it. The AI is becoming self-aware, someone has slipped malicious code into them somehow and is activating it, etc...I just don't understand how the world works at a fundamental level and I spend most of the episodes wondering, "HOW THE FUCK IS THIS HAPPENING?" rather than getting immersed in the story. :-/
If these things are all answered, awesome. But at the moment, there's just too much confusion and too many questions for me to buy it because I don't understand how the park/game works.
Without spoiling anything, it gradually becomes more apparent that you're seeing different time periods inter-cut together. The park is entirely real, with safeguards in place to protect guests, but whenever the Hosts die they can be physically patched up in the workshop, and put discretely back at the start of their 'loop' on the following day. VR exists there too, but it seems to be very limited in comparison to the park itself, and only very junior staff who can't afford the real thing ever use it.
It doesn't. The daily loops are meant to be self-contained, with or without the presence of other Hosts. The dialogue that the Hosts say on their loops is scripted, but they also have the capacity to improvise.
There is enough going on at any one time to keep guests occupied with whatever they want to do. The town of Sweetwater itself is just the starting point, the world it exists within is vast. The programmers of the park are keeping an eye on how the various guest interactions affect the pre-scripted narratives, and if things go awry they can end a narrative early or send things on a different direction by directly reprogramming Host behaviour.
I truly appreciate that background info, botley! That really helped clear things up and put them into perspective. I don't know why I was struggling so much with the character loops...I guess it was not knowing if the park was real or virtual, but knowing their loops are self-contained and trigger with the start of each new day made everything click.
We're up through episode 8 now and in conjunction with your info, the additional bits revealed in episodes 6, 7, 8 and helped clarify (and WTF) a ton of things. I'm loving this show!
Holy shit... I'm glad I didn't turn it off after the credits rolled. Was completely distracted until I heard it come back on. What a fucking finale.
Pretty much me from middle to end.
Last edited by Self.Destructive.Pattern; 06-24-2018 at 10:31 PM.
The finale had some really cool moments and pushed things forward majorly, but man the amount of circular, repetitious dialogue, actions and constant murder (coupled with convenient perfect shooting ability...or terrible ability depending on whats needed for the plot) gets really tiresome. I'm sticking with it b/c the scope of this show sis still so impressive, but I have no one to root for and it makes the show less enjoyable for me than it could be.
I think S2 was just as good (and more enjoyable) than S1 for me. The show was being told in two circles this season-- the scope has been incredibly ambitious, the direction and tone have been slightly better this season, IMO, and the themes and concepts grappled with have only gotten deeper to the value of immortality, nature of consciousness, nature of time perception, free will, ethics of personal data collection, etc. Sure, yes, S1 had more straightforward protagonist/antagonist balance with twists, but I've loved S2 for what they're attempting and about 80% of what they actually pull off.
Oh my dear god, I thought the finale was utterly INCREDIBLE.
For me, I thought this season wasn't as good as S1 until last night.
now, I think it MIGHT be better.
My only problem with season 2 is that it feels like the whole thing was sometmes just not that exciting and sort of filling time until the incredible ending.
I seriously feel like they could have made this two movies instead of a series.
Don't get me wrong though: I loved every episode.
Also, last night:
I was crying my eyes out during Maeve's thing.
Edit: four 90 minute episodes is the way I would have done it. The first one sets up the main story. The second and third are the Samurai World story and the Ghost Nation dude 's story and are almost standalone: remove any advancement of the main narrative and use that time to flesh out the stand alone stories.
And then, the finale.
Last edited by elevenism; 06-25-2018 at 02:18 PM.