I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I finally finished Season 2. And that was....a very mixed bag.
Spoilers to follow obviously, but I'm assuming most have seen S2 by now.
I won't lie, I'm disappointed after how good Season 1 was. Season 2 was a strange beast to me, because it didn't falter in the big picture ideas of the story they set out, it faltered in the execution, when it's typically the reverse in shows I feel hit a speedbump.
Overall, the season was very uneven. The entire reasoning for Bernard to scramble his memories and thus the non-linear storytelling was very weak. Whereas this motif in Season 1 was very natural and organic to the story, here it simply felt like they were doing this out of some kind of obligation to maintain a level of mystery. A way to have a forced "what's going on?" feeling. And there really was no point to it. Everyone who knew Bernard was a host was dead by the time he put his plan into action, so the scrambling of his memories in order to keep them "safe" was purposeless. Sure, they eventually discover he's a host...but if he hadn't scrambled his memories and simply acted normal, he could have lead them to the valley right away, and had Dolores clean them up without all the fumbling around. The others only found out he was a host because he scrambled his memories. Again, pointless.
After that, there were a lot of poor smaller choices that built up into very frustrating viewing experience, and they all boil down to the same thing: inconsistency. I'm pretty good at suspension of disbelief, I'll accept just about anything, as long as it makes sense within the world you set up. Mauve being able to control other hosts I can buy. She's been granted godmode access essentially. Mauve not using this power at specific points...basically for no other reason than to heighten the drama, I find to be extremely lazy writing. In the Shogun world, when the Shogun's army enters the town...why does Mauve not walk out and control them all via voice command? She's already found out she can do this as long as she speaks their language. No reason is given. I'll let it slide that it apparently takes a moment of great stress for her to mentally control other hosts...though that is rather cliched. But still, at least they kind of provided a reason for that.
Later, at the end of the series, why does Mauve require a pick me up speech from Ford to do something she's been capable of the entire time? ...Basically because the writers need to stretch her story line. In the last episode, when Clementine is spreading her murder virus...why doesn't Mauve just mentally instruct the hosts to disregard this protocol the second it starts happening? Why doesn't she instruct Clementine to turn around and ride away? Again, no reason is given.
And what frustrates me the most, is that you could give an easy explanation for why these things happen. Establish that it's difficult for Mauve to control large groups of hosts. Establish that she can't override Clementine's virus, etc. But by not doing this, it just comes off as very cheap, lazy writing. Because it was.
Secondly, a smaller issue, but still grating, is Dolores' sudden, "bullets can't kill me" schtick at the end. It's never explained why essentially she, out of all the other "woken" hosts, can keep pushing through bullet wounds that are clearly fatal to all other woken hosts. And further, they don't explain why a bullet to the brain does "kill" them, when we clearly see that the encasing for what is their brain is bullet proof. Why can Dolores get hit with four of five shots to the torso, but two or three shots to the torso take down Mauve?
Outside that, there were a number of small, dumb moments to get to key events. Robot seduction to the blow up the cradle...look, I don't care how horny you are, and how hot the robot woman is, if you've seen this thing just gunning down your friends, you're not going to let it get close to you for some nookie.
It's little moments like this that really cheapen the over all experience. Which is a shame, because many of the main themes in this season were very well done. The Shakespearian tragedy of William and his daughter, revealing that West World is a giant experiment for humanity's search for immortality, the question of becoming the thing that you hate, the pro-choice/pro-control set up between Dolores and Mauve etc. All of these were very strong thematic ideas. And some of the individual episodes, especially the ones that focused on these themes, were great.
Which makes it all the more frustrating when the entire season is bogged down with moments of lazy to bad writing and cliched tropes. I'm torn on if I'll bother with Season 3. On one hand I'm intrigued by the new status quo that is established. On the other, there's too much good TV out there to bother with this show if it continues on the quality level Season 2 dipped to.
