HBO's WESTWORLD: Was It What We Expected?

Well, despite several attempts by HBO to make the 75-minute pilot of Westworld perfect, I am not sure they hit the mark. But I must admit, this was the longest 75 minutes of my life.

Update: Either after you read this review or maybe just skip it altogether, and check out my latest TV review on the series. I made a quick appraisal after only watching one episode with this review.

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I remember the fun that the original movie was, but this was not. This is very very serious. The premiere throws at us just about every character and situational detail that viewers might need to come away knowing exactly what is happening in the story.

And a lot is happening. An awful lot.

We're shown how involved and dedicated the human scientists are at creating the most life-like experience that a park attendee could experience. This life-like experience includes programing and upgrading core code, improving the nuances of the androids personalities and interactions.

The entire design of the park is that after each day, the robots memories are wiped clean, ready to start the next day anew. Or so the scientits think.

But as we're shown through multiple examples, the bots are having issues with latent and confusing snippets of memories from past lives and past builds.  A past build would be a bot being a ranch hand today, the sheriff 10 years ago, a religious fanatic even farther back than that. And yet, suddenly, fragments of these personalities are starting to emerge during diagnostic testing.

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To be honest, the premiere was a lot more complicated than aniticipated. We had more details about the park and the underpinnings of the park than the guests, unlike the original 1973 film.


If you like in-depth detail to the stories, you'll love this episode. But you will probably be completely confused as to where the rogue black cowboy, played by Ed Harris, comes in play. THe moment we see him, and throughout the episode, he's already seemingly gone rogue. But very little else gets explained about him.

I guess the detailed minutia of the episode felt a bit askew and possibly that feeling came with the production issues that grew from the show. At one point production had halted and then HBO added more creators of their own choosing to join J Nolan. This is why the show had been filming since 2014.

A statement or question in the episode asks if you have ever questioned the nature of your reality. I did during this show. And at this point, I'm not sure the show will survive the season, trying to drag out this systemic failure that leads to the same problems we saw in the 1973 movie.

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