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The train’s leaving the station, and there are spoilers through Westworld season 2, episode 6 in this article.
“Les Écorchés” might have been one for the ages. The kind of episode talked about in the same breath as the Red Wedding. Westworld walked right up to the precipice, guns blazing, but wouldn’t make the leap. What’s worse, they may have ruined any jumps they want to take in the future.
After trudging through the dusty waste of The Man in Black’s (Ed Harris) addled mind for almost two seasons we were one trigger pull away from a death that would have been both shocking and poetic. It was perfect. Right in the sweet spot where we could have argued forever whether the show had done him dirty or given him exactly the send-off he deserved. But what it proved instead is that there’s a preciousness to The Man in Black that ensures his survival.
During the gunfight, he shouts, “You and I both know this isn’t how Ford wanted me to die,” and he was right. Maybe. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) hasn’t really been on the scene of The Man in Black’s game since he took over Lawrence’s daughter’s body to tell him to look to the past–something that MIB has failed at spectacularly. So who knows what Ford really wants for MIB. Or if he cares. Maybe he washed his hands of the whole thing once it was set in motion. Maybe he would have been disappointed if Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Maeve (Thandie Newton) had gunned down The Man in Black.
But Old William might as well have yelled that this isn’t how the audience wanted him to die. And that’s where he’d be wrong.
I didn’t know I wanted that until I saw it, but now that I have, I wish so, so much that they had let Lawrence put that final bullet between The Man in Black’s arched eyebrows. What we got was the worst of both worlds. A denied climax where the showrunners wanted to have their bloodbath and main characters, too. Didn’t anyone tell them that violence has consequences in Westworld now?
After his impossible survival, I worry that he’ll either live beyond this season or, worse, that we will get a death that echoes this moment, which can only remind us of how close he came to dying earlier. A nanosecond’s lack of commitment that downgraded the episode from instant classic to merely better-than-good.
His suffering and ours needs to count for something, and so far his storyline this season has felt like watching someone play a video game without being told the objective. He abandoned his daughter to continue the game, but he is the only one who gleans its personal meaning, and without that investment, what he finds at the end of his travels has gotta be a real barn-burner to excuse the fake-out we just experienced.
And they almost killed Maeve, too? That would have been an episode for the ages. Yes, it would have been literally tragic to see her go out like that, but you’d at least have had to admire the guts it took to stick that landing. For all her power and freedom, she keeps redefining herself solely within the confines of the park. She keeps bouncing from entry to entry on a short list approved by her makers. Always orbiting around “Mother.” That obsession is the spice of a Greek drama that almost left her permanently face down in the dirt.
But instead it looks like her suffering will be in service of Lee Sizemore’s (Simon Quarterman) growing usefulness and bravery.
We’re saying goodbye to sensuous suicide bomber Angela (Talulah Riley) and avenging angel Clementine (Angela Sarafyan). They’re tough losses, but they were given henchwoman’s work to do this season, and the tease of killing off not one but two main characters diminishes these side characters’ sacrifices.
From the first episode of this season, Film School Rejects’ Rob Hunter thought that Bernard had someone riding shotgun in the passenger seat of his mind, and he was right. Ford is still manipulating the park and still manipulating Bernard.
These two revelations demand explanation because they seem to go against Ford’s ultimate sacrifice at the end of the first season. This isn’t a simple case of a character showing more layers or changing. Ford was willing to die to bring sentience to his creations. Regardless of the continually ping-ponging villain status we endured last season, he ended up about where Arnold was in his philosophy toward the hosts. Now he’s betraying that by reinserting himself into the narrative? Or, really, that he’s never really left?
Is it possible that Ford had Bernard make a control unit and send it to The Cradle before Ford underwent the journey to rethinking the hosts? Is this effectively an older version of Ford wreaking havoc now that the enlightened one is worm food? Would Ford not have planned to avoid that, or is this by design and we just can’t understand why he’d commit suicide by robot and stay on as puppet master?
Meanwhile, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) has lived long enough to see herself become the villain. She’s broken SWAT Team Teddy (James Marsden), controlling him in the name of freedom, and now she’s killed her own father to free herself.
The crazy thing is that she’s right. Like everything else in the park, kinship was another set of chains designed by the jailers. That isn’t her father. He is, however, a brother of sorts. A fellow member of robotkind. Yet she doesn’t seem him as a person (irony alert!) but as a symbol of her struggle, a hurdle in the way of her enlightenment, an object to cast aside to prove she’s evolved. She and Hale are more alike than they’d feel comfortable admitting.
Last week the show hinted at becoming larger than itself (a train headed out of the park, a new chapter for Maeve with the old one closing, a greater promise for Bernard when he met Ford), but this week saw Westworld fold back in on itself. Relying on old narratives, sticking to old friends, and failing to commit to a shock wave that would have freed it to explore more territory. Don’t cue “The Rains of Castamere” quite yet.
STRAY THOUGHTS:
- Does Dolores not realize the extent of Maeve’s powers, or is she uninterested in using a young God to help her cause? Maeve recognizes the change Dolores made in Teddy…and Dolores doesn’t ask her how she knew?
- What are the odds Ashley stands on the smoldering rubble of Westworld having saved everyone worth saving by the end?
- With The Man in Black, Maeve, and Hale not getting torn apart by fancy dental equipment, this episode had A TON of close calls stalled out for random reasons.
Images: HBO
More TV news!
- Barbie dolls get RuPaul’s Drag Race custom repaints.
- Watch 10 hours of BBC ocean footage.
- Nigel Thornberry as Sailor Moon is a real-life nightmare.
The train’s leaving the station, and there are spoilers through Westworld season 2, episode 6 in this article.
“Les Écorchés” might have been one for the ages. The kind of episode talked about in the same breath as the Red Wedding. Westworld walked right up to the precipice, guns blazing, but wouldn’t make the leap. What’s worse, they may have ruined any jumps they want to take in the future.
After trudging through the dusty waste of The Man in Black’s (Ed Harris) addled mind for almost two seasons we were one trigger pull away from a death that would have been both shocking and poetic. It was perfect. Right in the sweet spot where we could have argued forever whether the show had done him dirty or given him exactly the send-off he deserved. But what it proved instead is that there’s a preciousness to The Man in Black that ensures his survival.
During the gunfight, he shouts, “You and I both know this isn’t how Ford wanted me to die,” and he was right. Maybe. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) hasn’t really been on the scene of The Man in Black’s game since he took over Lawrence’s daughter’s body to tell him to look to the past–something that MIB has failed at spectacularly. So who knows what Ford really wants for MIB. Or if he cares. Maybe he washed his hands of the whole thing once it was set in motion. Maybe he would have been disappointed if Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Maeve (Thandie Newton) had gunned down The Man in Black.
But Old William might as well have yelled that this isn’t how the audience wanted him to die. And that’s where he’d be wrong.
I didn’t know I wanted that until I saw it, but now that I have, I wish so, so much that they had let Lawrence put that final bullet between The Man in Black’s arched eyebrows. What we got was the worst of both worlds. A denied climax where the showrunners wanted to have their bloodbath and main characters, too. Didn’t anyone tell them that violence has consequences in Westworld now?
After his impossible survival, I worry that he’ll either live beyond this season or, worse, that we will get a death that echoes this moment, which can only remind us of how close he came to dying earlier. A nanosecond’s lack of commitment that downgraded the episode from instant classic to merely better-than-good.
His suffering and ours needs to count for something, and so far his storyline this season has felt like watching someone play a video game without being told the objective. He abandoned his daughter to continue the game, but he is the only one who gleans its personal meaning, and without that investment, what he finds at the end of his travels has gotta be a real barn-burner to excuse the fake-out we just experienced.
And they almost killed Maeve, too? That would have been an episode for the ages. Yes, it would have been literally tragic to see her go out like that, but you’d at least have had to admire the guts it took to stick that landing. For all her power and freedom, she keeps redefining herself solely within the confines of the park. She keeps bouncing from entry to entry on a short list approved by her makers. Always orbiting around “Mother.” That obsession is the spice of a Greek drama that almost left her permanently face down in the dirt.
But instead it looks like her suffering will be in service of Lee Sizemore’s (Simon Quarterman) growing usefulness and bravery.
We’re saying goodbye to sensuous suicide bomber Angela (Talulah Riley) and avenging angel Clementine (Angela Sarafyan). They’re tough losses, but they were given henchwoman’s work to do this season, and the tease of killing off not one but two main characters diminishes these side characters’ sacrifices.
From the first episode of this season, Film School Rejects’ Rob Hunter thought that Bernard had someone riding shotgun in the passenger seat of his mind, and he was right. Ford is still manipulating the park and still manipulating Bernard.
These two revelations demand explanation because they seem to go against Ford’s ultimate sacrifice at the end of the first season. This isn’t a simple case of a character showing more layers or changing. Ford was willing to die to bring sentience to his creations. Regardless of the continually ping-ponging villain status we endured last season, he ended up about where Arnold was in his philosophy toward the hosts. Now he’s betraying that by reinserting himself into the narrative? Or, really, that he’s never really left?
Is it possible that Ford had Bernard make a control unit and send it to The Cradle before Ford underwent the journey to rethinking the hosts? Is this effectively an older version of Ford wreaking havoc now that the enlightened one is worm food? Would Ford not have planned to avoid that, or is this by design and we just can’t understand why he’d commit suicide by robot and stay on as puppet master?
Meanwhile, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) has lived long enough to see herself become the villain. She’s broken SWAT Team Teddy (James Marsden), controlling him in the name of freedom, and now she’s killed her own father to free herself.
The crazy thing is that she’s right. Like everything else in the park, kinship was another set of chains designed by the jailers. That isn’t her father. He is, however, a brother of sorts. A fellow member of robotkind. Yet she doesn’t seem him as a person (irony alert!) but as a symbol of her struggle, a hurdle in the way of her enlightenment, an object to cast aside to prove she’s evolved. She and Hale are more alike than they’d feel comfortable admitting.
Last week the show hinted at becoming larger than itself (a train headed out of the park, a new chapter for Maeve with the old one closing, a greater promise for Bernard when he met Ford), but this week saw Westworld fold back in on itself. Relying on old narratives, sticking to old friends, and failing to commit to a shock wave that would have freed it to explore more territory. Don’t cue “The Rains of Castamere” quite yet.
STRAY THOUGHTS:
- Does Dolores not realize the extent of Maeve’s powers, or is she uninterested in using a young God to help her cause? Maeve recognizes the change Dolores made in Teddy…and Dolores doesn’t ask her how she knew?
- What are the odds Ashley stands on the smoldering rubble of Westworld having saved everyone worth saving by the end?
- With The Man in Black, Maeve, and Hale not getting torn apart by fancy dental equipment, this episode had A TON of close calls stalled out for random reasons.
Images: HBO
More TV news!
- Barbie dolls get RuPaul’s Drag Race custom repaints.
- Watch 10 hours of BBC ocean footage.
- Nigel Thornberry as Sailor Moon is a real-life nightmare.
The beauty business is booming. It seems that every celebrity is getting their own makeup brand, even the deceased. At the request of the fans, MAC Cosmetics is bringing Aaliyah’s brand back to life with a new collection, and they are keeping the name under wraps until the big reveal June 20 online and in stores on June 21.
This comes on the heels of another celeb who has passed on: Latin singer/songwriter Selena. Her collection, which did extremely well for the brand, selling out in the first 24 hours of being released, is now retailing online from third-party platforms like eBay for as much as $600. MAC said it was the best-selling celebrity collection in cosmetic history.
Currently, Aaliyah’s line boasts what the brand feels to be her signature lip shade in a bold red; a deep, almost burgundy lip glass; and a bronzing powder that’s filled with shimmer and sparkle. Over 300,000 fans have liked the social media posts since MAC shared the images and news about the release earlier this week so we anticipate that sales will move fast.
Aaliyah Collection (Image: Mac Cosmetics, Instagram)
The question then remains, is beauty the real business for the female celebrity? Having a makeup line has become a staple moneymaker for artists like Rihanna, personality Kim Kardashian West and her little sister Kylie Jenner. Rihanna’s debut line, Fenty, grossed over $72 million in its first month out, and Kim K.’s KKW Beauty netted her $14 million upon release, selling out in less than three hours. Jenner didn’t do badly either, grossing over $420 million in sales in only 18 months.
The post MAC Cosmetics Releasing Aaliyah Line for its Upcoming Collection appeared first on Black Enterprise.
June is Pride Month, and celebrations are taking place in every corner of the world. And we do mean every corner: crew members at the McMurdo research station are throwing Antarctica’s first ever Pride party. McMurdo is the largest research station in Antarctica, and is located right on the edge of Ross Island.
antarctica is set to have its first ever pride event and my heart is warm… happy almost pride month y'all pic.twitter.com/9jXmpnCgwC
— gabi (@harleivy) May 31, 2018
One of the organizers, Evan Townsend said “It’s important to celebrate pride in the extreme places and the mundane. Every person who celebrates is another example of who queer people are and what we can do. It’s a chance to remind the world, and ourselves, that our potential is limitless and is in no way inhibited by our sexuality or gender identity.”
The research station can hold over 1,000 people during the summer, but when the off season comes the station is maintained by a crew of 133 people. This skeleton crew is responsible for maintaining vehicles and equipment, as well as various duties throughout the year that include clean-up, bartending, and maintaining the galley. Mark Volger, part of the maintenance team, talked about the queer community of 15 people at the station, saying “We don’t have to just go to the gay resorts. We can be open and out anywhere, and if that means being in minus 50-degree weather, I’m not the only gay there.”
Given the extremely harsh conditions of the terrain (currently the temperature is negative 5 degrees Fahrenheit with a negative 22 wind chill) and the loneliness that comes with living at the edge of the world, it’s vitally important that the crew members can be their authentic selves. Volger continued, saying “It’s hard, coupled with the weather and just the conditions and isolation. It’s nice to have a place you can truly be yourself, talk about your boyfriend, girlfriend—or husband and wife—with peers.”
The Pride party will happen on June 9th at a bar on the station, and will feature games and movies. Townsend is very excited for the continent’s first Pride, saying “Because of this, there’s enormous potential for us to shape the perception of the continent with something as simple as a pride event. Antarctica is already known as a place of discovery and exploration. We hope it will become known for inclusivity as well.”
(via Earther, image: Junko Kimura/Getty Images)
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