Every week I'll be here to reveal and review some of my favorite moments from the internet. Whether it be binge-ing television shows, streaming sports or simply getting lost in a YouTube rabbit hole, I'm here to give you my top picks every Friday, as well as the perfect pairing to get into an optimal headspace for them.
This week, we're saying goodbye to our dear friend, satire.
Ready To Be Let Down: 'Westworld' Edition
Recommended Pairing: A Sioux City sasparilla and some sex-bots.
I was one of the few lucky Americans who "missed out" on going home for the Thanksgiving break. Instead of passing around stuffing while daydreaming about shoving a turkey leg down your AM Radio "fact-quoting" uncle's throat or trying to calmly explain what a meme is and why it isn't a respectable news source to your great aunt who just got onto Facebook, I made a rib roast and hosted a hodgepodge of fellow stragglers for dinner.
We still talked politics, sure, I mean we were drinking. So we argued, joked, swapped stories and anecdotes, then shook our heads at the sad irony of celebrating Thanksgiving while there was a showdown between "indians" and corporate interests.
After everyone was sufficiently stuffed, my girlfriend and I waved goodbye as our friends waddled out to their respective Ubers and Lyfts. Thanksgiving wasn't quite over yet, though.
The recently added second round of the great American holiday celebrating bingeing was just about to start — fire up your laptops.
Just a head's up – I'm going to talk Westworld on the next page, but real quick we need to talk about the Gilmore Girls.
Every single girl I am friends with on social media hyped this show up to the point where I was genuinely excited to plop down on the couch with my lady and rip through a year in the life of the Gilmore women.
I made it about 15 minutes into the first episode before I volunteered to start cleaning up the remnants of the evening's feast. I tried one last time to be a good boyfriend and snuggle up on the couch and take in some caffeine injected dialogue, but then there was a musical thing happening so I got permission to get up and spend the next hour or so reading up on all of the newest Westworld fan-theories on Reddit.
A few months back I was cautiously optimistic about Westworld based on the cast, crew, a love of the "so bad it's good" '70's film and a few leaked production details of an inordinate amount of filmed genitals. (HBO rules.)
It took me a few weeks before I had a chance to really sit down and give the show a shot.
Here's a pretty accurate depiction once the credits rolled.
I love this show. And I am doing everything in my power to try to temper my expectations for the finale, especially when you have the cast tweeting about how the finale is going to blow our minds right out of our assholes and JJ Abrams on talk shows hamming it up.
So many shows have amazing seasons up until the finale. I am terrified that roughly 90 minutes after I start the finale this Sunday, I'm going to be massively let down. Shows like this — shows that are tightly wound and meant to be slowly unraveled — have a tendency of having a truth in the middle that falls miles short of the promise of the build up.
This show feels different. God I hope so.
OK. Let's talk theories.
Westworld is the perfect show for the modern television watcher. It's a show that blends genres and some could argue mediums. It feels very much a show that is made of equal parts movie and video game.
It's a show so good that even when you get the payoff of some of your favorite theories playing out on the screen, the execution is so fantastic you don't feel cheated —
- Multiple time frames? Check.
- Bernard is a host? Check.
- William is the Man in Black? We'll see, but it looks that way to me. (Unless of course the Man in Black is the Man in Black talking to his friend in the train in the first episode as Teddy rides the train.)
It's also a show that has the perfect amount of intrigue and mystery to keep people talking for a week before cramming around their screens each Sunday, though I feel it's also a show perfectly crafted to live on for a long time as a go-to for multiple binge watchings. Hell, it might be a new day after Thanksgiving tradition.
So what do we want to know for the finale?
Here's my list:
- What is the top level of the pyramid that Ford mentions? Imagination, improvisation, self-interest...and could it be procreation? Could the maze we have seen over and over be a clue about the final step to become "real"?
There's already a ton of nods to another famous Michael Crichton work, Jurassic Park. Is Ford the first host to begin reproducing other hosts? Is Delores? Maeve?
Consider this:
That's my big leap right now is that we see that the hosts are reproducing.
Is that diamond under the figure a baby, a giant poop, or just a meaningless shape?
Some of the other little nagging bits I'm hoping to get some closure on are —
- Is Elsie really dead?
- What's up with the Ghost Nation? Will we learn a little more about the "natives" of Westworld any time soon or is that season two stuff?
- Are Felix and Sylvester idiots, pawns, hosts, or the collective Jar Jar Binks of this universe?
- Is this a good show or are we all getting caught up in the perfect amount of not enough information?
- Are we machines? Fuck.
'Til next week.
Wanna see more of my favorite innerwebs finds? You can read the full "Mike's Favorite Things on the Innerwebs" series right here.
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