Westworld season 2 episodes 7 and 8

I wrote my thoughts of first five episodes earlier. I ranted about sixth episode in Twitter. I felt like writing about it but not enough to write post about it. It was mostly how what I wrote about first five episodes was going to worse direction. After watching seventh and eighth episode I felt like writing another post. It was weird plainly filler episode was way better than story wise important episode.

Seventh episode showed how there are no stakes in the series. I was shocked when they killed William and Maeve. They would have died from those bullets if they weren't important characters. But because they are they won't die until their story arcs are concluded. They will survive anything until there is big reveal for their story arcs. This killed all tension from their story arcs. It is just waiting for the mysteries to be solved.

Episode showed problem with all the time jumping Westworld does. There was no tension in scene with Dolores and Charlotte. We knew Charlotte would survive without any harm because we had seen her in future without any injuries. So why should we care what happens to Charlotte if we know nothing will happen to her?

Bernard being exposed have same problem. It happens in future. We don't know what happens to him. But because we know series won't kill any one with main story arc we know he will survive somehow until the season finale at least. It is just waiting to get to season finale. Even Anthony Hopkins couldn't save the episode. Ford controlling Bernard could lead to something but it was weird for Ford telling he gave free will to hosts and then taking it away. Talk about hosts recording guests for fidelity sounded nonsense.

Eighth episode was actually good one. It was clearly filler before last two episodes but it showed what Westworld could be. It didn't have too much jumping. There wasn't anything new to main story arcs or concepts series has introduced. It was interesting to see how things have happened from perspective of someone displayed as mindless savage in previous episodes. We have seen hosts waking up before. This time it was without jumping and other distractions. Not building mysteries. Just a story which stood on its own.

I will watch last two episodes back to back. I can't think of anything which would make this season as good as first one. I doubt last two episodes will give anything as good as eighth did. It will be more of what seventh episode had.