Robots Who Read Recaps

Westworld’s second season is even more meta.

- Matt Zoller Seitz

HBO’S SCIENCE-FICTION puzzler Westworld is the most humorless drama on TV right now, the most narratively complicated (sometimes overcomplicated), the most self-aware, and one of the most lavishly produced. In a medium that rarely suffers a dearth of programs satisfying one or more of those criteria, that’s an accomplishment—however dubious in certain ways— and the sheer ambition of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s feat compels a wary respect. Where most so-called prestige dramas pride themselves on building narratives that are layered with meaning, Westworld seems to assume that the layering itself provides all the meaning we could want or need. It’s constantly explaining itself to us, analyzing itself, deconstructing itself, to the point where recapping it seems as pointless as pushing the down button for an elevator that’s already one floor away. The show’s relationship with its fans is as compelling as anything happening on the screen and often feels like an extension of it. Not since Lost, the granddaddy of modern TV Easter-egg hunts, have the show runners of a major drama tried so hard to outsmart and outplay their fan base, much of which treats the series as a game to be mastered or a puzzle to be solved. Viewer reaction was inevitable considering the kind of show Westworld is: the TV-drama equivalent of a magician who explains the trick he’s about to do, by way of setting up another trick, all the while daring you to see both tricks, plus anything else he’s got up his sleeve.

The culmination (so far) was Nolan’s trolling of Redditors during an “Ask Me Anything” appearance a week before the series’ return: Annoyed by fans’ preemptive disclosure of major plot twists during season one, he promised to spoil all the major developments of season two in advance, then released what amounted to a cryptic extended trailer