Evan Rachel Wood returns as Dolores and gets to take the part where it was meant to go. Photo / Supplied
Evan Rachel Wood returns as Dolores and gets to take the part where it was meant to go. Photo / Supplied
Opinion by Karl Puschmann
Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
For a show set in a fun park the first season of Westworld was about as much fun as waiting for the bus on a wet Wednesday morning.
That's not to say it wasn't good. "It's pretty good," I said in my original, hot take review written after the first two episodes of season one. Eight weeks later, in my end-of-season wrap-up, I wrote, "Westworld was great viewing". At no point in either of those two critiques did I once use the word 'fun'.
As much as I enjoyed the show, Westworld largely remained a dour and joyless experience. It overcompensated for its ridiculous premise with grave-faced severity and a sombre intellect. Perhaps it was hoping its cold tone would mask its absurdities.
It didn't work. Despite enjoying it, my constant gripe was just how illogical Westworld's world was. The idea of a theme park populated by AI robots playing out interactive stories for punters to partake in was feasibly sound. That future really isn't too far away.
But the idea that the park's guests would be free to rain down unholy terror on these robots with impunity was less so.
Every episode it bugged me. Not on any moral grounds, those were being thoroughly explored in po-faced fashion week after week. No.
My suspension of disbelief was tested by the fact that Delos Destinations, the company that owns and operates Westworld, was totally cool with people going to their theme parks and blasting their expensive and intricate AI robots with shotguns and/or getting extremely, sometimes forcibly, intimate with them...
I mean, at Rainbow's End you're not even allowed to wave your hands outside of the log flume ride, but there guests are screwing or shooting their way around the park, no worries?
I'm no accountant but even I can see that the finances on constantly repairing robots that are getting massively damaged every day just don't add up.
However, three episodes into the show's second season (screening on SoHo / streaming on Neon) this pet peeve is peeving me not all. And I think it's because the show has loosened up considerably. Yes friends, it's true; Westworld is finally fun.
Jeffrey Wright stars in Westworld. Photo / Supplied
By not taking itself so seriously it's somehow much easier to overlook and roll with its inconsistencies and improbabilities. What's even more satisfying is that the show's ramped up without needing to dumb down.
If anything it's got more complex with the introduction of at least two more timelines. There's also a whole new location based on Colonial India and they've finally made good on the long tease of the Samurai-filled Shogun World.
With Westworld's various parks now all bleeding into each other following the thrilling, movie length robot uprising that closed the first season, there's clearly plenty more surprises to come.
So far things are moving fast and intensity levels remain high. In the last episode alone we had a Bengal tiger attack, a Samurai attack, a tribe of ferocious Native Americans attack, outlaws attack and the park's hi-tech guards attack the well defended fort of the park's lo-tech Old West gunmen.
With all this fussin' and a fightin' goin' on, there's also been a pleasing increase in pulp gore. The worst of it is generally saved for the robots. But as they are indistinguishable from the humans that's a mere technicality.
The best of it has gone to Ed Harris' gunslinging Man in Black whose mission to unravel the park's mysteries has seem him putting big bullet-shaped holes in the faces and bodies of any robots who attempt to stop him. The show's taken a newfound bloody delight in depicting these gun fights, often switching to the most gratuitous possible angle in which to show a bullet forcibly separating one half of a face from the other, for example.
That said, Evan Rachel Wood's increasingly ruthless robot liberator Dolores Abernathy has also enjoyed plenty of bloodsoaked savagery of her own as she rallies troops to her cause and convinces those otherwise disinclined to partake in her generous offer.
Where the first season moved at an austere pace that matched its solemn tone, the second season is a much more appropriate rollercoaster ride of twists, turns and bloodthirsty robot vs human violence.
