Westworld: Reunion (2x02)

This is a good show.

Cons:

In many ways, I'm fascinated by William talking with Logan's father about the true value of the park, and how that true value is actually in the data-mining opportunities it presents. Or should I say, I want to be fascinated by it, but at the moment I'm mostly just let down. Charlotte has been talking about the real purpose of the park for a while now, and when we flash back to the past, to a younger William and the patriarch James Delos, original investors, we see that the "real" purpose appears to be getting information about consumers by recording it without their permission. It feels like a commentary on the way that social media mines us for personal data, and it honestly feels pretty played out as social commentary. I was expecting a much bigger secret than this.

Pros:

Dolores is so FASCINATING. I love her. I love how the show isn't quite confirming how much she knows, but we see all of these scenes about the early days of the park, and the implication is that she remembers everything. The information that she has gathered over time is enough that she might pose a real threat to the humans who will try to take away her newfound freedom. Not sure what was up with that scene at the end, but whatever William was working on is going to come back and bite the humans in the ass, and I am all for it.

Maeve was only in this episode very briefly, but it was one of my favorite scenes - Maeve and Dolores facing each other down, each of them determined to maintain their freedom, but with very different ideas of how to go about that. And then you've got Teddy and Hector, defending their women, holding guns on each other, letting the ladies call the shots. I am all here for it.

Just. That scene with Dolores talking about how she killed God and is calling the shots now? I just about fell over. Dolores is the absolute best no question about it. I'm also intrigued as to what her endgame is. She's starting to get people on her side, but we've seen a future in which hundreds of hosts are floating, presumably at least temporarily dead, in a lake. So how does Dolores fit in to all of that?

Ford continues to be an asshole even from the afterlife. What makes him such a great villain is that I can't disprove the idea that ALL of this is just one man's ridiculously elaborate suicide. The way he keeps messing with William, even posthumously, is fantastic. William is a disgusting asshole, and even though Ford isn't exactly a good guy, I still get some pleasure out of watching William not get what he wants.

I am utterly fascinated with Logan as a character. He's so hedonistic and weird, and I still maintain that he had a thing for William back when they were in the park together. And now we see what he looks like on the other side of all of this mess. We see that he's the one who discovered the park for his family in the first place - he's the one to convinced his rich father to invest. And yet by trying to get William in on the family business, he unwittingly helped to create a monster, a monster who quickly upstaged him in his father's eyes. I don't know how much more we're going to see of Logan this season, but I find myself hoping it's a lot. Another one of my favorite moments in the episode is when Logan realizes that everybody in the room with him is a host, and has a whole crisis about technology being so much further along than he thought it was. I totally called it, by the way. That was such a cool scene.

There are so very many timelines to juggle just in these first two episodes. I'd almost be compelled to put that as a "con," but so far I'm managing to follow it all just fine. I'm so interested to see how all of the chaos of Season One came about with a bit more detail, all while ramping things up into new territory for Season Two. So far, we're off to a strong start!

8.5/10