Sizemore’s an arrogant man who expects that this new story, which he’s dubbed “Odyssey on Red River” will catapult him to the inner echelons of the secretive board of directors who oversee Westworld. But he’s shocked when Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), the park’s founder, shuts him down with a blunt “No.” “What is the point of it?” Ford demands of Sizemore. “You have a couple of cheap thrills, sudden surprises, but it’s not enough….Titillation. Horror. Elation. They’re parlor tricks.”

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“Westworld” has been in development for more than three years, and I can’t imagine that HBO designed a visually lush, morally austere spectacle as an act of criticism. But this bitter exchange between Sizemore and Ford crystallizes a set of questions spiraling through this story, and through our conversations about television itself, like a maze: What do we really want from our entertainments? What happens when the initial excitements of sex and violence begin to pale, leaving a queasy feeling behind? What happens when we try to bottle up other people’s traumas for our own convenience and enjoyment?

Like any good game, “Westworld” operates on multiple levels, and it can do so because of its outstanding cast.

On the first level there are the people who operate the park, writing stories, designing, maintaining and debriefing the “hosts,” and trying to wrangle corporate pressures. In addition to Ford and Sizemore, the Westworld employees include Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), a sensitive behaviorist mourning the death of his son, Elsie Hughes (Shannon Woodward), Bernard’s protege, Theresa Cullen (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a corporate honcho, and Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), who works in park security.

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The second level are the androids, including Dolores Abernathy (an astonishing Evan Rachel Wood), who is programmed to believe she is a rancher’s daughter, Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton), a brothel proprietor, Hector Escaton (Rodrigo Santoro), a bandit who, fabulously, has been named for the end of the world, and Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.), a wanted man who is discovered by precisely the wrong person.

And the third level is the players, among them William (Jimmi Simpson), a decent man brought to the park by his boorish soon-to-be-brother-in-law Logan (Ben Barnes), and the Man in Black (Ed Harris), a long-time visitor who is growing bored with the routine depravities Westworld has on offer.

From a business perspective, “Westworld” has been positioned as HBO’s successor to “Game of Thrones.” I understand why the network would frame “Westworld” this way: it needs another big, sophisticated series that millions of people will subscribe to HBO in order to see once “Game of Thrones” has gone off the air.

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But they’re radically different stories. Where “Game of Thrones” expanded, seemingly infinitely, “Westworld” is set in a constrained world, both in the park itself, which is large, but not without boundaries, and the facility from which Bernard, Theresa and Dr. Ford oversee the park. “Game of Thrones” is often emotionally operatic, while “Westworld” can feel formal and restrained. Where “Game of Thrones” had mysteries, like the source of the white walkers, “Westworld” has philosophical questions. And where “Game of Thrones” initially foregrounded its sexposition before growing into a more nuanced exploration of the effects of trauma, particularly the harm done by rape, trauma is one of the subjects of “Westworld” from the beginning, in a way that sometimes seems to critique certain ways of watching “Game of Thrones,” or any of the other violent anti-hero shows.

A consistent theme in “Westworld,” through the four episodes I saw prior to the show’s premiere, is that the players who enter the game only to commit murders or have sex that would be forbidden to them in the outside world are appreciating the park on its least-sophisticated level.

“Look at that! I just shot him through the neck. Her too!” yelps a first-time visitor in the first episode. “Get a photographer, I want to get a picture of this.” His trophy-taking seems cheap; he’s shooting people who, after all, can’t shoot back. Logan revels in being rude to the hosts, sometimes even shooting them at whim, behavior that disgusts William, and wears on us, too. Ultimately, William goads Logan into leaving Sweetwater, the town that’s the entry point to the rest of Westworld, by pointing out that Logan has spent their entire visit drinking and consorting with prostitutes rather than chasing the adventure he used as the park’s selling point.

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The Man in Black is the ultimately expression of this idea.

“Is that any way to treat an old friend. I’ve been coming here for 30 years, but you still don’t remember me, do you? They gave you a little more pluck, Dolores. Absolutely charming,” he tells her, when he raids her family’s homestead. “I didn’t pay all this money because I want it easy. I want you to fight.”

He’s Ramsay Bolton at sixty, finally bored with the chase, Milton’s Satan sitting alone in a cold and empty hall. And while he’s a compelling and hyper-competent figure, “Westworld” is carefully-calibrated enough not to be wholly seduced by him, at least not yet.

It helps that “Westworld” puts so much emphasis on the experiences of the “hosts,” and the ugliness inherent in the way so many guests and Westworld employees treat them. “If she doesn’t get her numbers up, she’ll be decommissioned,” one tech comments of Maeve, who has begun to experience moments that mean she’s having trouble booking customers at her brothel. In another scene, when William rescues Clementine Pennyfeather (Angela Sarafyan) from a shoot-out, he’s struck by her fear. “That’s why they exist, man,” Logan says, scoffing at him. “So we can feel this.” Watching the hosts go through their loops over and over again becomes increasingly bittersweet as we come to anticipate the rape and murder that follow every tender gesture and every joke.

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Ford may encourage Bernard not to become overly invested in the hosts, but “Westworld” seems firmly in agreement with the idea that even if the hosts don’t actually feel pain, or shame, or fear, there’s a moral quality to the way humans decide to treat them. “Imagine how [f—–] we’d be if these poor [a——-] ever remembered what the guests do to them?” Elsie asks bitterly at one point. Whether she intends it or not, her observation serves as a warning that some traumas may be even stronger than the computer code that’s intended to override them.

I don’t know how “Westworld” will resolve these questions, or what the Man in Black and William will find in the outer reaches of the park. But I appreciate how it complicates the players’ experiences of what Logan calls “Guns and tits and things like that. Mindless [s—] that I usually enjoy,” in turn, how it complicates prestige television viewers’ relationships with shows that feature the same elements.