Why Isn't WESTWORLD Better Deep Dive

People love Westworld. It's by far my most requested video, and it seems like everyone has been waiting on Bated Breath for the show to return after a longer than usual hiatus. But I don't really get the hype. Don't get me wrong, I think Westworld is good, but I don't think it's great. I've kept the analysis on my channel positive by design. That's because I respect anyone who's made a TV show. It's something I've never done, and the sheer amount of work, passion, and ambition necessary to pull it off is, frankly, something I admire. But I do think Westworld is worth diving into. Being the heir apparent to Game of Thrones is the show most present in pop culture, even if I have more critique than praise. Because more than anything else, Westworld frustrates the hell out of me. So that's what I want to look at today, why Westworld doesn't quite work for me, and what's holding it back. I'm going to be covering the first season in a lot of detail, so spoilers ahead. Also, Westworld is kind of the definition of adult content, so look out for sex and violence. I'm Jackson, and this is Ideas of Play. First things first, here's a quick recap of season one. The show centers around a park called Westworld, which is inhabited by androids called hosts, who exist to enrich the world for the paying customers. You can do anything you want in Westworld, and to its hosts, and stand largely immune to repercussions. Within the park, there are a few story threads. There's Ford, the park's architect, who's building a new narrative for the park and plotting a robot rebellion. There's Maeve, a host who becomes self-aware and plots her escape from the park. There's William, a guest who falls in love with the host Dolores. And there's the Man in Black, a park regular obsessed with finding a mysterious maze that will unlock more of the game, and turns out to be William himself, just many years later. It's hard to miss the things Westworld has going for it as a show. It looks amazing, and sports a stellar cast across the board. The premise is inherently interesting, and the show isn't afraid to dive into deep philosophical questions. At times, the storytelling is brilliantly intricate. Dolores' story, for example, takes place across three different timelines, and is stitched together by living dreams and memories as she relives her past experiences. This not only gets Dolores where she needs to be, but also shows us a lot about how she experiences the world. The idea of the maze itself is well done, a simple but effective metaphor for consciousness coming from within, rather than something that's achieved. But despite all of this, I can't help but feel the result is less than some of its parts. Westworld wants to present itself as a show about big ideas, but it isn't able to focus those ideas through its story. Think of the ideas and message it wants to show us as a far-off constellation, and the show itself as a telescope. From a distance, the stars are abstract, but through the telescope, we can see the nuances and details. But if that telescope is out of focus, or shaky, or there are broken mechanisms, we don't see what we're supposed to. For me, this problem with focus comes from two main reasons. There are too many ideas, and there are too many empty characters. Let's start with the ideas. As I mentioned before, delving into big philosophical ideas is a strength of Westworld, and it's clear number one priority. The show introduces a lot of interesting angles on creator versus creation, consciousness, control, and just what it means to be human. These are some seriously big ideas, that could each command entire seasons to exploring. Each one comes with a whole bundle of related ideas and questions, and Westworld is interested in bringing them up, just not exploring them all. For example, one of the most fascinating ideas that the show brushes up against is the idea of memory. The idea is introduced as a law of Westworld, and something that we see the hosts experience as they become aware of their loops. We don't really explore how that memory is so important, until we get this comment from Felix, a technician who discovers Maeve's self-awareness. Your mind isn't like ours. When we remember things, the details are hazy, imperfect. But you recall memories perfectly. You relive them. Now, I love this idea, because it provides a key difference between the humans and the hosts. Our imperfect memories make up a large part of who we are as humans. Memories shape perceptions of the world, and the fact that ours are more subjective than those of the hosts means our perceptions of the world must be fundamentally different as well. It's a fascinating angle to explore in one of the big ideas of the show, and one that could tie into another, just what it means to be human. But we never come back to this idea. It's just meant to explain away the living dreams and memories that the hosts experience, rather than to explore that idea. Now, I think this idea of the difference between memories is a missed opportunity for something truly profound. But the show totally could have just not introduced these ideas at all, and kept its focus on the bigger idea of consciousness. The show wants to get me thinking, and I do get to thinking, but about these tangential ideas that aren't really followed through on, rather than staying focused on the ones that are. It's like pointing that telescope to show us a neighboring group of stars for five seconds, without explaining that they're related. And it's not the only example either. In the fourth episode, Maeve starts to remember the technicians who repair the hosts. She even sees a host carrying a figurine of one around, before she's told that it's part of the natives' religion. What does it mean? Don't waste your breath, lady. That thing's part of their so-called religion. Ain't none of them's gonna tell you nothing about that. Again, the host creating their own religion around their mysterious overlords is a compelling idea, especially when it goes so far as to compel hosts to build idols of those gods. But this idea is largely marginalized, and we never see that image of the technicians after the fourth episode. We do get two quick returns to the idea. Teddy explains the maze as a Native American myth in this monologue. The maze is an old Native myth. The maze itself is the sum of a man's life. And Maeve uses the same language to convince Hector to join her cause at the end of the season. I want you to see exactly what the gods have in store for you. But how did so many hosts even come into contact with the world behind the park? Is the religion something they created in order to make sense of the strange things they've experienced? Or is it something they were given as a sort of fail-safe in case their memories aren't wiped? I can't help but wonder what this says about religion in our own world, and how it might be a coping mechanism for the unexplainable. But here I go again, thinking about all the things Westworld isn't spending actual time on. Or how about in the first episode, when Ford makes a comment about how humanity has learned to cure all disease? We can cure any disease. Do you know what that means? It means that we are done. That this is as good as we're gonna get. Now I think that's an incredibly bleak idea, but one that's still fascinating and worth exploring. It might also explain why Ford chose a Western theme for his park, clinging to a time where there was one more frontier to conquer. But we don't explore that idea. In fact, it's the only time Ford brings up any fact about the outside world, in any context. It would have been fine to stay focused on life inside the park, as the show clearly wants to do throughout the first season, but introducing this idea doesn't do that. On their own, each of these ideas is interesting and compelling. But when they're all introduced and left unexplored, they pull my focus in different directions, and obscure the ideas and themes that the show actually wants to spend the bulk of its time on. And if you're thinking that I'm just getting stuck on all the wrong things, that's kind of my point. If I can make an entire video exploring the stuff Westworld doesn't want to focus on, there's probably room to tighten up around the things that are worth focusing on. Still, an abundance of ideas can totally work in a show, but it's harder, and it requires an even more powerful storytelling device. Character. Unfortunately, most of Westworld's characters are empty, lacking motivation, agency, or both. The programmers of the park constantly tell us how important it is for hosts to have a backstory. Backstories do more than amuse guests, they anchor the host. It's a shorthand for explaining what each host's motivation is. But Westworld as a show doesn't go far enough in doing this for its own characters. Take, for example, the biggest grievance I have about the show. Felix. Who the hell is this character? Seriously. After meeting Maeve, he helps her escape the park, choosing to let a robot loose in society, and letting her murder literally dozens of actual humans. But I have no idea why he decides to betray the human race. What's worse, Maeve's entire plotline revolves around him. At any point he could refuse to repair her, destroy her, or report the issue to a superior. Maeve even burns her body to ash, in order to get a new one that won't explode when she leaves the park. What if Felix, or his partner, who really hates Maeve, just decided not to put her back together? Why is Felix so intent on destroying the park? This is so stupid. What's his freaking deal? His actions make so little sense that he even starts to question if he's a host, which is at least some kind of explanation, but even that isn't true. Oh, for ****'s sake. You're not one of us. You're one of them. And William is nearly as frustrating. It's unclear what makes this man snap and don the black hat. He tells us it's because he saw Dolores and she didn't remember him. You were nothing, if not true. But he's clearly starting to go off the deep end before that, slaughtering hundreds of hosts, and strapping his brother-in-law naked to a horse in order to take his company from him. But he rails against the park for the first half of the season, and then flips all of a sudden. It's that good, huh? There is no such thing as heroes or villains. It's just, it's just a giant circle jerk. I think that philosophy says way more about you than it does about the world. It's a sick game and I don't want to be a part of it. Help me. Now, no more pretending. Even after he becomes the Man in Black, his character's motivations remain largely undeveloped. In one scene, he tells Teddy that, in the real world, his wife died and his daughter blames him for it, calling him a monster. She said if I stacked up all my good deeds, just an elegant wall I built to hide what's inside from everyone, and from myself. He chose to test that theory by murdering a mother and a child, but feels nothing because they couldn't fight back. Now, I think this is genuinely good motivation. It humanizes the Man in Black as someone trying to punish himself for something he feels responsible for. But even though it's explained to us, we never see the Man in Black as a tortured soul. In fact, he legitimately enjoys everything the park provides. If he's hoping to get the hosts to fight back so that he can be punished, he doesn't seem like someone who actually wants to be punished. And if that's not why he's doing this, what is his motivation? Is he really just a simple adrenaline junkie? Likewise, the motivation for the entire park remains a mystery. We know very little about the world outside Westworld. Is there a reason this incredible technology is only being used to roleplay sex and violence? Why is that all anyone wants to experience here? And why did Ford develop his technology for this purpose? Just as important as motivation is agency. What characters choose to do, given what they want. Here, Westworld runs into a fundamental challenge in its story. The hosts are controlled by programming, and have no actual agency over their own lives. The hosts are the ones who are free. Free, here, under my control. Dolores, for example, is our main character in the story. But there's a reason I didn't mention her in the recap of the show. She never actually does anything. Sure, things happen to her, but she never makes decisions. For all Williams' talk about her being different, She's not like the others. She never rises above the role of Damsel in Distress with him. At the end of the season, she discovers the center of the maze of her own consciousness, and is able to kill Ford. Except, that isn't her choice. It's spurred on by the music that Ford uses to control the hosts. But just because something is a challenge, doesn't mean it's a problem. In fact, this design element can just as easily be a feature as a bug. It's a great space to explore the idea of agency by programming, and one that the show does very well in Maeve's plot. Nobody makes me do something I don't want to, sweetheart. Yeah, but it's part of your character. You're hard to get. Even when you say no to the guests, it's because you were made to. We discover that her programming has been altered to make her escape the park, a decision she thought was her own. This throws all of her decisions into question. Is she running away because she wants to, or because she was told to? Is her choice to return to the park part of that narrative, or the beginning of a new one? But none of those questions are brought up around Dolores. Instead, we learn about the maze through her, and that's a really cool metaphor for consciousness. But there's a reason we don't ever hear about the maze with Maeve. We don't really care about how they become conscious, because honestly, that's pretty obvious right from the start of the series. What we do care about is what characters choose to do with that information, and why. Bernard has even worse agency, unable to do anything Ford hasn't directed him to. He brought me here to show me this. No, he brought you here because I asked him to. Compare this to Battlestar Galactica, another show with robots who don't know they're robots. On that show, when characters find out that they're Cylons, it changes their identity and forces them to make a choice of who they want to be. But Westworld takes the wrong lessons from Battlestar, focusing just on the drama of the reveal that Bernard is a host, and missing the second half of that equation. The result is a reveal that doesn't give Bernard a choice to make, but robs him of the ability to make any choices at all. Westworld revels in twists and reveals like this, ones that feel big and dramatic, but ultimately focus on the wrong parts of the story. We spend hours watching Dolores lose her mind in perplexing ways, with the reveal being that her story has been told through multiple timelines. By holding that information back until the last minute, I end up focusing on trying to decode what happened when, instead of what's actually important here, that her loop brings her to the center of the maze again and again, where she becomes conscious. Had the show let us know from the beginning that Big D's story is taking place over multiple timelines, I think I could have actually focused on why the story was being presented that way, and what the parallels between those timelines were. Westworld is good. I feel like I didn't say that enough. Westworld is good, and there are seeds of greatness in it, but it's unfocused, opting for twists that feel big and dramatic, but end up distracting from the point. It introduces tangents, and doesn't use its characters to anchor our experience, or funnel the ideas that truly matter. And again, those ideas in Westworld are great, and there's a lot of interesting things to be said about them. I just hope that in Season 2, Westworld focuses a bit more on its characters, to point us at the right ones, and a little less on the flash that distracts us. Thank you so much for watching. If you like this video, please like, share, and subscribe. 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