PhoenixRising

The OP is still Under Construction (or something)

PhoenixRising

Thanks for the new title, Nina. And I hope you can get rest when you need it.

OMG, that show is still on the air? And why did they fire the actress? Are they recasting or are they just getting rid of the character altogether? I really hope that show gets cancelled because it's a total insult to the original.

Nikki K

Thanks for the new thread, Alex!

It seems like they are getting rid of the character altogether which I think is a huge mistake. At first I was skeptical about the casting but I think Nathalie Kelley did Linda Evans proud as Crystal and was one of the few good casting choices. Plus that storyline with Sammy Jo and his mother/Crystal's sister Iris (Elena Tovar) re-appearing was one of the few that I found truly interesting.

Re-casting is possible I guess, last we saw Crystal she was stuck in a fire that Claudia had accidentally set. So I suppose they could hire somebody else and say she had plastic surgery or something.

I think the show is still on air because they sold it to Netflix and non-U.S. countries are interested in acquiring the rights to it through Netflix or something?

All that being said, no idea why why fired Nathalie – there was an interview and she seemed as shocked as everybody else. And the whole thing s an insult to the original. It starts with having it set in Atlanta instead of Denver.

BL.Arinna_1982

PhoenixRising

I knew Arinna would start shipping Bruce/Selina! Thanks for the gif, Arinna!


You're welcome, Nina!

So they're just getting rid of Crystal? Okay, this show really has to go. I don't know if recasting will help, but I'm not really interested anyway. And I think that's a dumb reason to keep a show on the air, because of Netflix. So the actress herself doesn't know why she got fired? And yeah, how can you have Dynasty set in Atlanta and not Denver?

I'm gonna reply to your OT post on this thread, Nina, like I promised I'd do before.

Well, I disagree on that. William didn't want to go to Westworld, he was taken there by his creepy future brother in law mostly because he wanted to get in good with the family. Logan was the one who financed Westworld after he was pitched by Angela. Second, William didn't forget about his fiancé(they weren't married yet). While Logan was indulging himself with the prostitutes at Maeve's brothel, William was resisting Clementine's advances, telling her that he "had someone real waiting for him." And let's not forget that according to Logan, William's future wife, Juliet, had also been to the park before and had indulged herself with some of the host cowboys. It wasn't until William met Dolores that he instantly felt something different about her and fell in love with her. And while I know that you and I both feel the same about this particular subject, I'd mention Claire Randall and her forgetting all about her husband, Frank, after she fell in love with Jamie Fraser, yet Outlander has quite a fan following. I'm not saying two wrongs make a right, but I often got attacked by many Claire/Jamie fans when I questioned if they'd feel the same way if the roles were gender-reversed, and in the case of William, they are. Third, William was appalled by Logan's cruelty towards the hosts, even chastising him for stabbing that prospector in the hand when he came up to them in the saloon. He seems far too sympathetic to the hosts to have any sociopathic tendencies.

Finally, I don't think that William was chasing the "damsel in distress" stereotype. The reason William fell in love with Dolores in the first place is because he began to feel that she was different from all the other hosts, and that she was somehow real. William didn't finally succumb to his feelings for her until some time after she had saved him from Lawrence's men, and told him that she had decided to write a story where she wasn't the damsel in distress. William had told Logan several times that he felt that Dolores was different while Logan kept demeaning him and putting him down, calling him delusional. Even after Logan cut Dolores open with a knife to show William her insides, he still didn't give up on her. What finally did break William was not him not getting his just reward, it was his belief that the woman he knew never even existed and that everything she did was part of Ford's storyline. When William finally found Dolores back in Sweetwater there was a brief moment of recognition, like he was sure that she'd remember him. But when she turned to that other guest who had picked up that can she dropped, it was as if the Dolores he met was gone and he no longer existed anymore because her program had been reset and she was back on her narrative. It's one thing to get dumped or cheated on, but to have the woman you love not remember you at all, as if everything she felt for you didn't exist? Yeah, I can see how that would mess someone up. Maeve went through the same thing when her daughter didn't remember her and ended up having a new mother.

What I don't buy is the reasons for William going full on Man In Black with very little explanation other than a "stain" or a "darkness." And Dolores going crazy because of her Wyatt program makes about as much sense. She's gonna kill all of humanity because of what those rich Delos people did? Especially when everything that had happened to her and the other hosts was all due to Ford and Arnold, two men who acted like God and ended up getting killed for it? And I really cannot buy William doing such a 180 like that, because if it were me, I'd never had stopped trying to get Dolores to remember me. I'd be like James Garner's/Ryan Gosling's character in The Notebook, always repeating to his wife who is suffering from Alzheimer's the story of how they met in the hopes that she'd remember him. And no matter how broken I was, I wouldn't torture and kill Dolores repeatedly like that. That's because I am like young William. I am the dreamy kid who grew up living in the world of books and stories; the romantic who was looking for someone like Dolores to fall in love with. Dolores may seem like a delicate flower on the outside, but she's all Alpha female on the inside. I saw that and I think William could see that as well.

This is why I feel that the writing was inconsistent and contrived. The reason for young William and Dolores becoming Man In Black William and Wyatt-Dolores seems to be "because we say so" according to the writers. But it's not earned, and there's nothing really leading up to it. They're shoehorning those characters we saw in season 1 into their narrative rather than developing the characters in a way that it makes sense. And this is Jonathan Nolan, and I know this guy. He cares more about his puzzle box storytelling and surprised twist endings than story and character logic. It worked in Memento and The Dark Knight, but not so much in The Dark Knight Rises and especially The Prestige.

I don't know if you saw The Prestige, so I'll avoid spoilers.

BL.Arinna_1982

Nikki K

Yeah, I actually thought that Nathalie Kelley did really well as Crystal, her and the fact that they had her sister alive (unlike in the original), plus her nephew (counter-part to Sammy Jo) were probably the only interesting parts of the show apart from the butler. I like Nicolette Sheridan but Alexis Carrington Colby she is not. And yeah.. wtf (and I hardly ever swear) with Atlanta??? I mean no, just no. I also find it tired from a perspective of where a show is set –*I mean the whole Denver area has so much going for it. I know so many people who moved there not just because of jobs but also because of quality of living. Beautiful scenary too with the mountains so close...

Look, I don't want to get into a discussion about 'Westworld'; I know you enjoy talking about it and there is nothing wrong with that but I'm really over the show and it's hard for me to type on the phone atm. Plus I'm really not into William and Dolores. So only so much... I see the Outlander comparison and honestly, I find it just as wrong here. Now, I haven't watched s2 so I don't know if we get to meet William's wife but the thing is – unlike William if what Logan says is even true and we only have his word for it, do we know how she viewed the hosts? Let's say she engaged in some romantic plot but she didn't see them as anything other than hosts that makes the experience different from Wiillam's. So again, I haven't watched s2 – and I don't know if his wife ever went back to the part after their marriage. I'd think of that as wrong. I'm sorry. I think William going there and obsessing over Dolores while he has a wife on the outside wrong. It's even worse than on Outlander because he just could have stayed away and home. He wasn't stuck in the park.

And I'm sorry, but I disagree Dolores was very much from the get go portrayed as a damsel in distress which appealed to William initially. Of course when people kept telliing him that she was just a host he didn't want to believe it. And while that may have been true (she was a specially programmed host), he could have not known that, it was just something he wished for and decided to take any indication that he was right as proof.

PhoenixRising

Thanks for the gif, Arinna! I can't wait for more BatCat!

Wait, so there's no Sammy Jo on the new Dynasty, Nina? Instead Crystal has a nephew? And I think they cast Nicolette Sheridan because she was on Knots Landing, but you're right, Dynasty was way different and she's no Joan Collins. Alexis needs to be British after that performance. And don't ask me why they moved it to Atlanta. You're right, Denver was the location of the 80's show for a reason, just like Dallas, I guess. It's the CW so I just assume the move to Atlanta was for some stupid reason. Riverdale is the only show on that network with any brains, and even that show got dumb in season 2.

Okay, Nina. I'll lay off the Westworld talk. Season 2 is over anyway. To answer your question, William's wife started becoming afraid of the hosts as time went on. According to his daughter, Emily, Juliet was never convinced that the hosts couldn't harm them, so she eventually stopped going to the park. But yes, William and Juliet did return to the park after they were married because they took Emily there with them when she was just a child, to The Raj, which was based on late 19th Century or early 20th Century India. Emily mentioned that it was her favorite park and that she loved the host elephants, although they terrified Juliet.

And yes, Dolores was portrayed as a damsel in distress at the beginning, but after she joined up with William and Logan she ditched the prairie dress, got a pair of trousers and a gun belt, and escaped with William on that train with El Lazo into Ghost Nation territory, so she'd transformed quite a bit prior to their love scene. But as I've said, the writers really seemed to care more about misdirection and multiple timelines as opposed to having things make sense. And yeah, William could've stayed away from Westworld after that, but he kept going back because he had lost himself in that world and no longer felt connected to the real world, although again, I felt that his reasons were not suitably explained by the writers, whether it was his love for Dolores, or him becoming a gaming addict, or him searching for a deeper meaning, they just didn't seem to care about having anything make sense. So I get what you mean, and I just think that the writers unnecessarily damaged Dolores and William to make some point about humanity and consciousness and whether humans truly have free will. Just seems like lazy writing to me. Anyway, season 2 is over and I'm done with talking about that show now. I probably won't watch season 3 as Westworld has really disappointed me.

BL.Arinna_1982

PhoenixRising

Awww, that's a great gif, Arinna!

BL.Arinna_1982

I know, right?



"Keep thinking what you're thinking!"

PhoenixRising

Awww, thanks for that one, Arinna.

BL.Arinna_1982

You are very welcome, Alex!

PhoenixRising

OMG, that one's even better!

Nikki K

Alex - Well, I don't mind that Crystal has a nephew, who by the way is also called Sammy Jo. It seems fitting in the sense that Steven on the original 'Dynasty' was obviously always fighting his homosexuality because Blake disapproved so he married Crystal's niece but that's not really a plot you can pull in 2018. And yes, I suspect that's why they cast Nicolette as well. I mean she is from Sussex, is she not? But she doesn't play Alexis as British which is doubly disappointing, idek. The Shapiros said they had no attachment to Denver so they didn't care that Atlanta was picked for the re-boot but really, I think it's a mistake. After all, even in the re-boot the company Blake runs is all about Energy and while I concede that in 2018 that doesn't exclusively mean oil, I'd think it would have grown from a company that was probably founded on that at some point and then made other acquisitions. The Carringtions are still shown as this traditionalist family, so I would expect them to not uproot the main seat of their company but leave that where they started out -- and you can't argue that even today Colorado has more oil and gas than Georgia.

See, the feeling I got from Black Hat was that it was a gaming addiction justified by the search for a deeper meaning. Him going back to the park and getting involved with Dolores -- still the same kind of wrong as Claire/Jaime.

I'm not sure... is Rory/Jess really a guilty pleasure? She did break up with Dean before she got with Jess, didn't she? Personally I was always into Rory/Tristan. I never watched the four episode revival, I heard they tried to do some strange thing with Paris and Tristan with a different actor than Chad Michael Murray? That's like... aww, please don't hurt my good memories of season 1, please.




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