Westworld is a science fiction series with the first season at 10 episodes long. Each episode is around one hour in length, although the final episode is more like 1.5 hours long. It is set in a world where it is a wild west themed amusement park. The difference being is that it is designed for role play where guests come in, dressed in wild west attire, and do whatever they like. The park is inhabited by sophisticated and life-like androids. The technology and the park has evolved to the point where these androids are near indistinguishable from humans based on appearance and mannerisms. However, their personalities and actions are scripted with freedom for improvisation.
The main attraction in the theme park are these android "hosts" and their part in what the creators call "narratives". Narratives are storyline quests that guests can participate in. While the androids can harm and kill other androids, they cannot harm the guests. On the flipside, guests can harm androids, whether it be killing them, hurting them, or doing whatever it is they desire. Guests take this to their full advantage, often becoming violent and murdering androids for the fun of it, rape them, pillage them. They do things that are not acceptable and yet it is encouraged in this park attraction. One thing that isn't explained too well is how the guns can kill androids yet does not damage to guests at all.
All this leads to an interesting train of thought where the androids suffer cruelty and unspeakable horrors, with some of them beginning to retain these memories and malfunction. The series has a creepy and existential type of tone to it that lends to the intrigue of the premise. Throughout it all, it is hinted that there is something deeper within this theme park, hence the subtitle "the maze". The chilling music that often plays fits this tone perfectly. The technology of this world is very advanced. We're shown the process of how the androids are made and how the park functions. From everything such as how the androids are patched up after they have been shot to death to diagnosing problems. It is somewhat unnerving to see these lifelike humans show their machine origins, it's fascinating.
You don't get a sense of scale of the park until around halfway into the season. At that point, it finally shows us another town and just how big this park it. The amount of detailing put into the park is astounding since all the animals are artificial as well. It's interesting to see how many of the androids are programmed and their personalities in order to interact with each other. The series follows a few different characters. The original creator of the androids is also the CEO of the company that runs the park. Nevertheless, even he is at the mercy of the board and need to keep profits up and keep the guests happy. That being said, he has his own idea of how to run things.
The other notable character that comes to the forefront is the man in black who seems to be trying to find something, something that is hidden. He travels the whole park and does all sorts of things in order to gain one step closer to his goal. Unfortunately, we do not know what his goal is and the whole season teases this. All the characters start to have their own agendas and it becomes hard to discern what their motivations are and what they are aiming towards. You really don't know what to think of some of the characters once their true personalities are revealed. This lends to plenty of interesting and engaging scenes.
The pacing is slow for most of the series and remains at that pace. There is a significant twist in the second half which flips your understanding of the concept. It leads to question what makes a human human. The characters start to get confused in regards to the android as they blur the lines between machine and human. Unfortunately, as great as the concept was, the plot gets messier as the season progresses. Characters tat you are supposed to sympathize with end up becoming annoying and melodramatic. The ending is thematically coherent but it doesn't do much in terms of satisfaction from all the mystique that it had raised. The season has a bloated final episode that killed all the interest and makes it hard to keep your attention. The mixture and intersection of all the viewpoints aims to be clever but ends up becoming clutter.
Overall, the first season of Westworld starts off strong with a great premise but lets it down with slow pacing and filler-like scenes. The narrative ended up being too fractured with its ambition. Ultimately, it felt like the plot didn't really go as far as you would like or expect, and the second half felt completely different to what it had started with.
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