‘Westworld’ 1.01 “The Original” Review: Violent Delights, Violent Ends

• Welcome to Westworld

The basic problem of most robots-run-amok stories is that the process of getting to a mecha-uprising is a long and laborious one. The robots can’t just “wake up” one day and know everything (well, they can if its a movie, but that’s my point). In long-form storytelling, they have to reckon with their forced delusion. Humans are awful at doing this and, consequently, robots should be and are as well.

Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) is one of the oldest “hosts” of Westworld. She’s a country and daddy’s girl who rides into town, meeting several of the guests (termed “newcomers”) who visit the Western town at the center of her virtual reality.

The show has fun with its premise and in its interactions between hosts and newcomers. Hosts are incapable of hurting any living thing, even the flies that wander the town and creepily crawl all over their unaffected faces. One of the inherent strengths of this show is the multiple layers to any interaction. There’s the flashback that begins the episode and the different realities occupied by the robot hosts (the protagonists) and the human overseers/guests (the antagonists). It displays this to full effect introducing the show’s villain, the Man in Black (Ed Harris).

It’s a surprisingly arch role for Harris (who THR reports may only have a two-year contract for the show, possibly indicating the length of his involvement), one with little initial shading. The aftercredits featurette on the scene implies this is intentional on the part of the writers and the character himself, who is emblematic of the POV shift from film-to-TV, going from a human-killing robot to robot-killing human. He’s a 30-year veteran of Westworld who actively seeks to fill the role of a Western evildoer, adding another meta-layer to the character motivations.