Watching any good TV?

[The Shoemaker]

I started this year by jumping on the Westworld train. I actually subscribed to HBO for this month so hopefully I'll be able to check out a few other shows.

I'm 5 episodes in so far. The first couple episodes I was intrigued by the world, but not necessarily the characters. The characters and mystery is starting to draw me in now. There's a lot building up here and I'm wondering if the show is going to be able to deliver on its conclusion, just because of how many things are at play. Reminds me a bit of Lost which is nice.

Question about Westworld

Spoiler

I assumed in the beginning guests weren't allowed in the park at night as that's when they wipe the hosts memory, retrieve and fix the hosts ect. But clearly that's not the case. If a host is with a guest for a couple days, when do they go back onto their loop? Does it affect the other stories not having these hosts available? Because it doesn't seem like an unusual thing to spend an all nighter with these hosts considering some of the stories.

I assumed hosts memories were wiped every night, but I guess they are just wiped every time they die or have had a lot of trauma (or when the guests are done with them)? If guests are allowed in whenever, I wonder when the staff go to retrieve the dead hosts as I would imagine it would break the immersion to see someone collect a body.

My last question I'm thinking has an answer elsewhere, but when Dolores goes on a journey with Logan and William, she spends a couple nights with them, and inbetween we see scenes of her being interrogated by the Westworld staff. How can she be in two places at once, or are we assuming there's a time gap?

[Kong Wen]

Shoe's spoiler questions about Westworld:

Spoiler

I assumed in the beginning guests weren't allowed in the park at night as that's when they wipe the hosts memory, retrieve and fix the hosts ect. But clearly that's not the case. If a host is with a guest for a couple days, when do they go back onto their loop? Does it affect the other stories not having these hosts available? Because it doesn't seem like an unusual thing to spend an all nighter with these hosts considering some of the stories.

I assumed hosts memories were wiped every night, but I guess they are just wiped every time they die or have had a lot of trauma (or when the guests are done with them)? If guests are allowed in whenever, I wonder when the staff go to retrieve the dead hosts as I would imagine it would break the immersion to see someone collect a body.

My last question I'm thinking has an answer elsewhere, but when Dolores goes on a journey with Logan and William, she spends a couple nights with them, and inbetween we see scenes of her being interrogated by the Westworld staff. How can she be in two places at once, or are we assuming there's a time gap?

Kong's spoiler response about Westworld:

Spoiler

Guests get to hang out there as they like, for the most part. Hosts aren't wiped daily, but pretty much any time they're taken out of the action, or when they get to the end of their normal loops (some loops are longer than a day, for obvious reasons—adventure, etc. The park staff also has to be somewhat opportunistic with maintenance, hauling bodies away for repair and memory wipes whenever they get a chance. They have a pretty good system for making it work, since guests seldom just sit around the same place day in and day out—park visits are too expensive to waste time! The park also seems to have quite deep contingency plans for storylines, as they comment several times on reshuffling storylines to accommodate host movement.

As for Dolores, we're not entirely sure yet whether the park is just adeptly sneaking her out during some downtime when Logan and William aren't busy with her, or whether her interviews are taking place separately.

[The Shoemaker]

Shit... I didn't know if it could do it, but the Westworld finale delivered on all fronts. Everything came together. Now the only thing I doubt is whether they will be able to top season 1...

[Kong Wen]

Shit... I didn't know if it could do it, but the Westworld finale delivered on all fronts. Everything came together. Now the only thing I doubt is whether they will be able to top season 1...

I think it depends on a couple of things:

Westworld spoilers:

Spoiler

First, Anthony Hopkins carried so much of the drama on his back in the first season. Whether he's coming back or not, they'll need something to maintain that momentum. Second, they need a big narrative arc that doesn't just feel like "now for some minor cleanup storylines in the fallout of the first season"—they need an antagonist, a mystery, something to keep the narrative and suspense going that doesn't just feel peripheral or secondary. It's certainly possible that they'll be able to do this, especially with Maeve going back into what will surely be an unrecognizable park, and Stubbs, as far as we know, captured by potentially unknown players?

[The Shoemaker]

Shit... I didn't know if it could do it, but the Westworld finale delivered on all fronts. Everything came together. Now the only thing I doubt is whether they will be able to top season 1...

I think it depends on a couple of things:

Westworld spoilers:

Spoiler

First, Anthony Hopkins carried so much of the drama on his back in the first season. Whether he's coming back or not, they'll need something to maintain that momentum. Second, they need a big narrative arc that doesn't just feel like "now for some minor cleanup storylines in the fallout of the first season"—they need an antagonist, a mystery, something to keep the narrative and suspense going that doesn't just feel peripheral or secondary. It's certainly possible that they'll be able to do this, especially with Maeve going back into what will surely be an unrecognizable park, and Stubbs, as far as we know, captured by potentially unknown players?

Spoiler

Definitely, Hopkins was the essence of the show. He was the one with all the answers, always several steps ahead of everyone else. He gave us nearly all the answers in the finale, they need to build up something new that feels like it has been a part of the show since the beginning. I can almost see the show having a tonal shift depending on the direction of season 2.

Also a possibility - people are speculating when we saw the Samurai people that it indicates that there are other parks than just West World. I wonder how that could come into play.

[The Shoemaker]

Over the last week I've binged Silicon Valley seasons 1-3

This is a great show. It has a story that keeps me continuously interested, while consistently being hilarious. I don't think the third season was as funny as the first two, but I was still very engaged. I think my favorite episode was the one with the Schrödinger's cat theme where their business finally became a success due to the

Spoiler

museum guy falling off a cliff and drinking his own urine.

Pumped for season 4.

[The Shoemaker]

Haven't been watching too much, but over the last month or so I've been watching a bit of Mr. D on Netflix. Reminds me a bit of The Office, the main character in particular is pretty close to Michael Scott. It doesn't hit the same highs, but it passes the time!

Started watching Shameless (US) today, I'm on the 5th episode and I'm really liking it. The family dynamic is really endearing.

[Kong Wen]

Besides re-watching Game of Thrones seasons 5 & 6 with my brother-in-law, who was just getting caught up on the series, I haven't really followed much in the way of TV this year.

Mrs. Kong and I watched The OA on Netflix, which had an interesting setup but then kind of lost steam about halfway through the season as you started anticipating plot points but then had to wait for the show to actually get there and deliver.

I also watched Iron Fist so I would be all caught up for The Defenders this summer. People complained about the pace of the show, but I didn't really mind it. I did think Danny Rand's character was kind of a flake... like the whole show was about him shirking his sacred duty, but resolving that never seemed to become part of his arc. He just kept doing it. Maybe it'll get picked up in The Defenders. Also, as with almost all of the Marflix shows, I didn't really like the ending. It was abrupt/perfunctory, and kind of unsatisfying, and opened up way more questions than it answered. Gotta keep the ball rolling, I guess.

Finally, I watched One Punch Man, after hearing people raving about it and assuring me that it's not typical animu trash. It was nicely stylistic, and they managed to keep the main characters on a relatively narrow path of likability.

Oh, I also watched the latest season of Call the Midwife with Mrs. Kong, because you give and you take. It's basically 1950s-'60s BBC historical drama... kind of similar in feel to Downton Abbey, similarly contextualized by big social issues but similarly adept in engaging with them rather lightly. And it's about nuns and babies in poor East London rather than rich folk.

[The Shoemaker]

GLOW just released on Netflix today, wasn't doing anything this morning so I watched the first 5 episodes, it's not bad! Its character driven, and they manage to relate the characters wrestling personas to the actual characters themselves.

[Kong Wen]

I started watching Band of Brothers a couple weeks ago after spaghetti on Wednesday nights. It's a 10-episode mini-series, so I should be able to finish just around the time the next Game of Thrones season comes out.

After that, the next thing I'm looking forward to is Defenders.