Westworld Season 2

Review : Westworld (Season 2)

Aired On : HBO (2016-)

My Rating : 6 out of 10

NOTE : This is a review of Season 2 of Westworld. If you have not watched Season 1, this review may contain spoilers for Season 1. You can read the Season 1 review here.

To be honest, I wasn’t eagerly looking forward to the Season 2 of Westworld at all. In Season 1, all the discussions about the true nature of consciousness, followed by the bloodbath at the end,  gave a clear indication of where things will lead up in the second season. Yes, I was a bit curious as to how the writers would take it there, and I was worried that they will mess it up like Matrix did.

I was right about worrying, but wrong about the reasons. If I have to characterize what went wrong, I would say this. The writers forgot a simple and eternal adage - Everything is good in moderation.

Now, you can say that about Season 1 as well, where the mayhem, the degenerate behavior and the technical mumbo jumbo, all were definitely overdone. But there were many other pluses. The visuals were stunning. There was a neat trick that eventually got revealed - the multiple timelines. There was a payoff - how these timelines came together. There were interesting twists - as to who is human and who is the robot. And you could root for someone - in my case - the robots.

Season 1 was definitely smart. In spite of the minuses, we can all agree that it was a well made series that challenged your gray cells. 

Now take all those tricks and multiply them by some large number, and all of a sudden the positives become negatives. This season in its attempt to multiply the smartness, just ends being a confusing mess. I have no problem admitting it that I couldn’t keep track of the many timelines and how the presentation interweaves them. Honestly, I just gave up and didn’t care. I am sure I am not alone, and I can wager a bet that I am in the majority.

Many movies are structurally difficult to follow by design. The right amount of difficulty keeps the interest high. Long long time ago, I remember being awed by Memento. I had to watch it again to make sure that I understood it. It was worth the effort. But, there is no way I am going to watch a ten hour series all over again to make sure I got it. No, I will just give up. I don’t have that much time.

The overwhelming and confusing mixing of multiple stories in multiple timelines is not the only problem here. Some of the twists - like who is human, and who created whom - are so outlandish, that they feel forced, just to shock you. I am not sure if these make sense in the big picture, maybe they do. But I really don’t care. Some of the storylines are long and boring. They add little value. There is a setting in the style of Japanese Samurai era. In the beginning the visuals and the parallels with another prominent storyline are very interesting. But it overstays its welcome, and drags to a point where I was seriously considering fast forwarding the whole thing.

As you can imagine, I was very frustrated with this season. I most likely will give Season 3 a try, but if the writers oversaturate the script with the same techniques, I may give up on this series forever. Stunning visuals and good acting is not enough to justify spending so much time.

So my recommendation is to watch this season, with the hope that season 3 would not repeat these same mistakes. This is absolutely correctly rated as TV-MA and not for kids.