"You Can't Play God Without Being Acquainted With The Devil..."
Losing ten minutes from the running time of the premiere episode, "Chestnut" continues the impressive nature of HBO's latest series, channelling more of the original film than previously by placing us in the company of Logan (Ben Barnes) and William (House of Card's Jimmi Simpson), with the former being a regular visitor who takes advantage of the world's lavish luxuries and the latter seemingly being cautious of the world in which he is new to. The similarities between the duo of Logan and William this week harked back to the pairing of Richard Benjamin and James Brolin in the original 1973 film and whilst our beloved "heroes" came to a sticky end in the original Westworld, Nolan surely is intelligent enough to simply not allow these characters to arrive at the same conclusion and therefore limit the point at which Westworld can indeed enforce a sense of drama. Much like Game of Thrones, it seems the main theme of a series like Westworld is indeed death, greed and a sense of power in a world in which you can do anything you please. It's not so much the quest for the Iron Throne, but the quest for the artificial throne, particularly when it comes to Ed Harris's sadistic Man in Black.
Continuing his search for the ambiguous maze, Harris's character's murderous rampage finally came to the attention of the suits up at the head offices of Westworld and whilst murdering an entire town and ripping the head off an android would almost certainly result in some form of intervention, our twisted gunslinger was simply accepted by the game-makers; "that gentleman can do whatever he wants" was the precise words. Who is The Man in Black then exactly? Judging by his ever-increasing stay in Westworld, I can imagine he can only be regarded as a banker for easy cash, something of which the financial department can only be thankful for. Adding to the increasing number of conflicted androids, this week's episode focused primarily on Thandie Newton's pleasure model who, much like Delores last week, begins to remember parts of her scripted history, history that also leads back to the murderous nature of The Man in Black. We all know the endgame of Westworld and where these slight malfunctions will inevitably lead, yet the introduction of The Man in Black's storyline and the overall bigger picture regarding the existence of Westworld means "Chestnut" is another impressive cog in the wheel of HBO's latest sci-fi gem.
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