Open Source Idiom posted:

Season 2 was filmed and in the can, finished, before the first episode of that season aired. There were no alterations mid season.

How many more times does this myth need to be debunked?

Eiba posted:

Season 2 was a lot of treading water. As noted, some great episodes, but it was basically just an epilogue for season 1, drawn out in a convoluted and ultimately meaningless tangle of a plot.

Season 1 was misleadingly non-linear to great effect. There was a reason for it and it worked. Season 2 was confusingly nonlinear just 'cause season 1 was and I guess that's our "thing" now.

Season 3 actually moves the story forward without any bullshit. There are twists, but they're driven by people doing things, not editing. Ultimately doesn't go forward exceptionally well, and hangs way too much emotional weight on action scenes that aren't especially impactful, but at least it's moving into new territory and exploring new ideas.

The best thing about season 3 is that it sets up a post-apocalyptic season 4, where robot cowboys fight in the burning wasteland of a ruined technological society. That's the good poo poo.

The creepiness of a fetishized historical period of lawlessness and violence, transitions directly into a contemporary period of lawlessness and violence. They remade the wild west using robots and it worked way too well.

Zzulu posted:

Most everything is bad compared to S1. It's up there with some of the greats

Open Source Idiom posted:

I don't really believe this, tbh. So much of Season 1 was about deferring the payoff the finale, which was crappy, or to the following season, which was poo poo.

There are a couple of good moments, but they're all in the first four episodes, and very few of them pay off or go anywhere.

There's the suggestion of a good show, but it's not, in itself, a good show. IMO.

Darko posted:

You need to give examples to what you're saying, because Season 1 was a nicely closed story about the evolution of a white hat to a black hat, and simultaneously an inventor fulfilling his dream.

TA Metis posted:

I miss Theresa almost as much as I miss bikelores.

Open Source Idiom posted:

Open Source Idiom posted:

And look, I think goons saw a fair bit of this at the time, but they trusted the show to be clearer about what it was actually trying to do and where it was going with its characters. I remember a fair few suggesting that the show had really important and interesting things to say about human consciousness (though the only conclusion I remember is Ford's painfully pat "pain is what makes us human" speech). Season Two didn't deliver; if anything, it just further committed to the sloppy plotting and confusing emotional arcs (and the terrible fight choreography). So I think there's a tendency to blame Season 2 for letting the air out of the tires, but I think the car was already running on empty by the time it got there.

socialsecurity posted:

Everything about "Wyatt" was a mistake due to it ruining whatever character Delores had.

TA Metis posted:

Not really getting a sense of who Dolores is and what she wants is this show's greatest flaw.

Big Taint posted:

Ya but isn't that just wyatt.bat? Or is she supposed to turn into the Big Bad and Maeve is the real hero?

Maeve is Neo, after all.

Big Taint posted:

Those posts provide me no comfort.

Open Source Idiom posted:

Okay, but I'm trusting you not to get angry with this one. I recognise that this opinion is probably unpopular, and it's long because I lost track of it. I'm really, really keen not to have a fight, and I'm saying this because if you read the following it's gonna probably be clear that I found some of this pretty frustrating and confronting.

The Delores reveals in the finale are confusing and ambiguous. The man she thought offered her an escape from the park (and from her serial rapist) ends up being the same serial rapist, and instead of the show living in this moment at all, it hands the character a couple of dream sequences and a really strange ending where her creator reveals that he deliberately tortured hundreds of sentient creatures for years in order to radicalise her against humanity. She's then puppeteered by him to complete the last stages in his master plan,

And you basically have no idea what she thinks about any of this. You completely lose track of what should be your main character. The pilot -- which is good -- is so so much about this poor woman's exploitation at the hands of her world, and her slow realisation as to exactly how she's been exploited, and the way that passivity and normalisation of her exploitation has been bred into her. The finale is a bunch of psychopaths telling her that she'd never have been able to appreciate how terrible her life is had they not inflicted that life on her, and she's completely passive about it all.

I'm not saying that good should have won or that evil shouldn't have triumphed. I'm saying that the show lost sight of the emotional arcs, and for some reason believed that anyone could remotely care about William or Ford. Both of those characters are given straight up conclusions in the finale in the way that most of the rest of the cast aren't.

(Maeve does have a pretty good arc, mainly because the show doesn't lose track of who she is or why we should be invested in her plot. She's been bred to radicalisation and psychopathy, but she stops herself from completely losing sight of her humanity in the process. It's sweet, if a little cliched, and makes up for some of the pointless wheel spinning that's been happening in that plot since about episode six.)

It's impossible to root for the Delores / William romance anyway, since he's such a weak and unheroic man. He's the kind of man who goes to a brothel the night before his wedding night, only to then suddenly get cold feet and fall in love with the first sex worker he encounters. He's cowed by his brother-in-law Logan (who's a sadistic poo poo who enjoys manipulating William for kicks) and has violent tendencies. The reveal in the finale -- which goes for about ten straight minutes -- doesn't deserve that weight. William was always going to let her down.

Additionally, as I mentioned above, there's a lot of wheel spinning in the back half. Some plots move forwards, but others just inch their around like a half squashed water bug:
- Delores gets captured by Wyatt's merry rando's and then escapes (made worse by the eventual suggestion that they're working for her!)
- Maeve, as said, spends a lot of time picking people up for her escape attempt, and pretending that it gives a poo poo about these characters (when it blatantly doesn't)
- She also spends way too much time repeated Ed Brubaker's safe cracking scene from the end of episode four (which, yes, was also very good).
- The Man In Black does a lot of the kind of running around you can film without needing to co-ordinate with the rest of the cast, and might as well be running in circles for all it tells us about him, the world or the overall plot.
- Tessa Thompson gets paid to sneer and waste everyone's time in a trailer for season 2 (again, made worse by the way the show wastes a very good actress on a terrible plot line).

And yeah, I get that you like the Bernard-is-a-robot reveal, and it's certainly well plotted. But, again, it then went on to provide us with some of the worst scenes in the show, as Bernard slowly wanders around feeling sorry for himself while providing us with some of the worst scenes on the show (in any season -- is there anyone out there who's genuinely compelled by this, compared, to say, Father's dilemma in Raised By Wolves?)

The murder of Theresa Cullen is a particularly lovely moment. It's a shock fridging of one of the show's few likeable and actively heroic characters, the only person who's really trying to do anything about Ford's (obvious) insanity. But the show, again, doesn't do anything with it, other than to hand Bernard some man pain. It should be a tragedy, but it's a soap opera twist.


And I know this is a side note, but I really wish the show had done more with the implication that the park's wilflife was also affected by Ford's... sentience virus? AI learning algoirthm?

Whatever the show was implying with the flies in the pilot (and the bison in season 2, IIRC?).

And look, I think goons saw a fair bit of this at the time, but they trusted the show to be clearer about what it was actually trying to do and where it was going with its characters. I remember a fair few suggesting that the show had really important and interesting things to say about human consciousness (though the only conclusion I remember is Ford's painfully pat "pain is what makes us human" speech). Season Two didn't deliver; if anything, it just further committed to the sloppy plotting and confusing emotional arcs (and the terrible fight choreography). So I think there's a tendency to blame Season 2 for letting the air out of the tires, but I think the car was already running on empty by the time it got there.

Mixed metaphor alert.

Cojawfee posted:

Even after watching Season 2 2-3 times, I still have no idea when exactly things happen and it still feels to me like some of those people shouldn't have been confused by the bodies in that lake because I think some of them were there when it happened.