YOU ARE NEVER BUGGING ME, I LOVE TO TALK ABOUT STUFF I LOVE.

So.  Westworld.  First off: have you seen Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse?  If no, proceed and read this pitch.  If yes, second question: did you like it?  If no, you won’t like Westworld.  If yes, don’t even BOTHER with this pitch, just watch the show.

A quick disclaimer: Westworld is a brand spanking new show on HBO based on the 1973 movie of the same name and, HBO being HBO, they do what they fucking want, so this show…like, it’s a really good show, I really like it, but if you can imagine a trigger warning, it’s probably attached to this show.  Sex, murder, rape, blood, gore, etc.  This show is FUCKED UP.  Ergo, the cut.

The basic idea behind Westworld, which is the name of the vast amusement part where the entire show takes place, is that it’s a perfect simulacrum of the Old West, populated by ‘hosts.’  The hosts are hyper-realistic androids, indistinguishable from humans and wholeheartedly believing that they’re real, who go about set routines until the guests interrupt one of their loops.  Then, the host interacts with the guest in exactly the same way a real human would–with one major caveat.  A host can’t hurt a human, ever.  

Now, here’s where the fucked up bit comes in.  The guests, safe from harm at the hands of the hosts, can do whatever they want.  Entering the park, you get to pick: black hat, or white hat.  White hats play bounty hunter, rescue maidens and farmboys, flirt with danger without ever crossing the line.  Black hats murder, torture, steal, rape–whatever strikes their fancy.  And then at the end of the day the park resets, the dead hosts are taken away and repaired and resurrected with no memory of what’s happened to them, and sent back out into the park.

SO THAT’S THE SETTING.  Now we get into the part we all actually give a shit about, the plot and the characters.  Who has two thumbs and is ALWAYS up for a non-sentient-beings-gaining-free-will plot?  THIS BITCH RIGHT HERE.  And thus far that’s what I know about the plot.  There’s a guy in black doing murder, there’s some behind-the-scenes scheming from the folks in charge, there’s a lot of “that host should NOT BE DOING THAT fuck someone do something.”  There’s a maze that’s apparently the center of what will be the wider plot.  Look, guys, there’s like five episodes of this so far, I do not know the wider plot.

Whatever.

DOLORES, our main character, is a host who’s programmed as the daughter of a farm hand, the most reliable host in the park, the one who never glitches or has issues.  Um…except for how she totally does.  The thing is, she doesn’t glitch the same way the other hosts do–sometimes, when Behavior introduces a new code for something (like Reveries, which are gestures prompted by memories) the hosts glitch and have flashbacks to previous programming, or lose functioning altogether, or, memorably, whack themselves repeatedly in the head with a large rock.  Dolores glitches by asking programmers questions like “Have I done something wrong?  If I haven’t, have you done something wrong?”  She’s amazing, 10/10 would go to war for.  Or with.  

As long as we’re on the subject of characters I give all the fucks about, I also would 100% let Maeve step on me.  Maeve is a host who’s programmed as the madam of a brothel above the town saloon, and she begins to glitch pretty intensely back to, say, being on an operating table and seeing terrifying beings wearing white hazmat suits above her.  And she GETS SHIT DONE about it.  She is A FUCKING DELIGHT, I love her.  Also I want her and the bank robber to bang because that would be some good shit.  

Other major characters include Teddy, a host programmed as a gunslinger in Dolores’ loop, her long-lost love (he never gets a happy ending, that’s like the Rules I guess); Bernard, the guy in charge of Behavior, the department responsible for programming the hosts; Logan and William, a pair of guests in the park (black hat and white hat respectively) who get swept up in Dolores’ latest massive glitch; the Man in Black, a complete psychopath on the hunt for a deeper meaning in the park and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake; and Dr. Ford, the mysterious creator of the park.

TL;DR: DO YOU LIKE SUPER FUCKED UP NARRATIVES ABOUT GAINING FREE WILL AND MAKING TERRIBLE CHOICES?  WESTWORLD IS FOR YOU.

Also, like, motherfuck, the latest episode has Dolores pull some crazy shit and someone asks “How did you do that” and she stares at the people she just killed and says, “You said people come here to change the stories of their lives.  I imagined a story where I didn’t have to be the damsel.”  

And like, fuck me.  If that’s not enough of a pitch for you, I don’t know what is.