Three suggestions for HBO's 'Westworld' in Season 3
"Westworld," HBO's mystery about realistic theme-park robots ("hosts") rising up against their creators, ended its superior second season last Sunday with more twists and more questions. The reactions from viewers and critics were mixed; prominent TV writer Alan Sepinwall says he's done with the show, while prolific pop-culture podcaster Joanna Robinson wrote no less than four enthusiastic post-mortem pieces about the finale for Vanity Fair.
News about the show's ratings wasn't mixed, though. They were down - 16 percent, going by Nielsen's numbers - not an encouraging fact for an expensive show meant to fill the long void between the final two seasons of HBO's increasingly popular worldwide sensation, "Game of Thrones."
I love "Westworld" just the way it is, confusing time shifts and all, but I also want it to be on the air as long as possible. Here are three suggestions for showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy as they prepare a Season 3 in which their main host protagonists, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), have escaped the theme park:
• Narrow the focus. Season 2 juggled a big storyline and an even bigger cast, but its best episode - 2x08, "Kiksuya" - spent its entire, enthralling hour centered on one character: Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon), the leader of the park's war-painted Ghost Nation tribe, who we learn was the first host to realize his artificial life was a lie. In tone, structure and audience, "Westworld" is the closest thing modern TV has to Damon Lindelof's "Lost." Perhaps Nolan and Joy should lean all the way into that comparison and have each episode center on just one character.
• Make Maeve the villain. Thandie Newton's robotic madam was on the verge of escaping to the real world in Season 1's finale before the memory of her daughter pulled her back into the park. Now, she's made her peace with losing her and gotten gunned down ... but she'll be back, resurrected by the park's army of technicians. Given Maeve's penchant for lethal force and her ability to command hosts with her mind, the company may want to repurpose her as their very own Terminator, hunting down Dolores and Bernard in the real world.
• Ditch the park entirely. Dolores and her ilk spent two seasons trying to escape Westworld, and now they have. The show should escape it, too, even if that means we lose the gorgeous vistas of Castle Valley, Utah. It's time for "Westworld" to evolve past its original programming, and show us just what kind of society would give rise to a fantasy world where guests will pay thousands (millions?) to murder robots for sport.
Diamond in the rough
Your kids have probably seen "Aladdin" on Disney Channel or your DVD player, but chances are they haven't seen the 1992 animated classic on the big screen. The Oscar winner featuring Robin Williams will play 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 3, at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., Chicago. Tickets are $11 for adults, $8 for kids and $9 for seniors, and are available at musicboxtheatre.com.
But wait, there's more: "Aladdin," with its legendary, game-changing vocal performance by the comedy legend, is the first of a five-week series at the Music Box called Tuesdays With Robin Williams. The schedule includes 1993's "Mrs. Doubtfire" on July 10; Terry Gilliam's "The Fisher King," for which Williams was nominated for the best-actor Oscar, on July 17; the dark, adults-only comedy "World's Greatest Dad" on July 24; and the original 1995 incarnation of "Jumanji" on July 31.
• Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald multiplatform editor who inexplicably loved "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle." Follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.