Westworld: Well Enough Alone (4x02)

Ooooh we're going back to the park, hell yeah!

Cons:

Let's just get there faster, though, shall we? I'm sorry, but this show was at its best when it was a little more contained, so I'm super eager to get back into the confines of a fucked up park scenario as quickly as possible. There were a lot of things about this episode that mostly just made me yawn. The stuff with Christina in particular just seems kind of unmotivated and meandering? I want to care more, I want to move this along a little quicker, it's really just not doing much for me.

It's been a while so I feel like I'm kind of confused on the specifics here, but basically Dolores (using Charlotte's body) is controlling a host version of William, making him the face of Delos and an enforcer, along with Clementine, or a copy of the original Clementine, in order to take over the world? While keeping human William alive and in stasis? I don't know, maybe it's just me, but just typing that out kind of left me confused and exhausted and annoyed. William was such an interesting character for a while, and now this show is pretty much literally dragging his corpse around far past the time when he should have exited the proceedings. At least, that's how I feel.

Like, most specifically, we've got William threatening the Vice President of the United States, replacing him with a host. We've got a California senator and his wife, similarly replaced. So now we're just in some invasion of the body snatchers territory, which is fine, but maybe a little stale, while at the same time being too convoluted? I don't know. Dolores/Charlotte's evil plan just doesn't hold my attention the way I wish it did!

Pros:

To my surprise and delight, I did thoroughly enjoy the bulk of this episode, particularly all the time spent with Maeve and Caleb. They have an interesting energy onscreen together. Everything, from their intense fight with the host senator and his wife, to the horrific tragedy of finding the real Mrs. Whitney, to their journey to the "opera" and the secret train and getting geared up, stepping out into the new Westworld park, themed to the 1920's... all of it had a fluidity and intrigue to it. There's something so appealing about watching two people who are both good at what they do, working together seamlessly to infiltrate and spy and save the day. I just liked watching all of them, and if we can keep the focus on them, inside the park, and not spend as much time with Dolores, William, all that jazz, I think I'd be happier moving forward.

Like I said, the thing I'm most excited about is spending time in the park, so here's hoping that next week's episode will give us a lot of that, and we can keep the attention where I most want it to be! Sorry this review is so short; I think in order to write longer stuff about this show I'd have to pay attention to it better.

7.5/10