I did not expect Dolores to become Robot Hitler, but I suppose that's the point of her storyline...I do wonder if we're supposed to sympathize with robo-Hitleress when she goes on about how they look like us, but they are not us and must be exterminated?
#thatsthejoke. Her wholesome appearance and diction is meant to be at odds with her character development, that's the subversion of expectations. As for Teddy, he is the audience. We like Dolores, sympathize with her, have even been rooting for her to achieve awareness.....but we're not sure how to feel about where this is going. Teddy may be boring and possibly just a slave to his programming, kind of powerless in the story since all he does is follow Dolores around or do things because of his programming imperative toward her. But I like him nonetheless because he's....legitimately conflicted. In a world full of suffering characters, he's the most long suffering of them all. Shit you can relate to him waaaaayyy more than most of the humans because they're all kind of pieces of shit. Well, the ones that are still alive anyways.
Maeve is pretty boring to watch right now for me.
At least someone else said it. Most of Maeve's arc has been boring to me. Her awakening was cool. Shocking and visceral. You were rooting for her. But once she had a plan things started to go off the rails for me. All these ridiculous scenes where she got to show off her superiority over dopey characters. Maybe it's just her exquisite accent making it all seem a little too smug, but at times I felt like I was being subjected to some writer or GM's pet NPC and being forced to watch their shenanigans. And recovering children plots have never done much for me. Not in FO4, not here.
The man in black is the only really fun storyline that I enjoyed watching, harkening back to the characters in the films. I just hope that they actually kill him, instead of letting his fan popularity turn him into a walking singularity of plot armour whose purpose is to look cool and do cool things.
Ugh, that would be awful. He's cool but I don't think he does enough to bear the weight of that plot armor. And the show has dropped that "these violent delights have violent ends" line about half a dozen times now in the series, twice in last episode. Would be a pretty big violation of that principle if he just keeps going on and on. I guess I trust the writers of the show enough not to do that....maybe. He's certainly got the pretext for just sticking around indefinitely now. As long as there are things to kill in the park that will try to kill him, he's happy?
Meta Bernard
I didn't catch the people on the beach changing. I kept paying attention to the woman in the dress but did notice she seemed to get shot multiple times, which I thought was weird. Sure it's possible they're warping perspectives even further, since they were so good at in the first season. We will see. What Bernard is going through looks on the surface like what Dolores went through before she fully woke up. They've both seemingly been tampered with or pre-programmed by Arnold or whoever is doing stuff behind the scenes.
I guess at this point I'm less engaged with the characters of the show and more engaged with how they execute on their story. I felt S2 would be a wrap up more than an expansion of WW. Most of the things I found interesting in S1, like the Maze or what it might be like to have an artificial consciousness, have played out and I've had my fill. So I'm a little with LW in that I'm not very attached to most of these characters and so watching just to see bad shit happen to them in the end isn't a great motivator to stay engaged with the show.
Although seriously, where's my Armitage?