Thandie Newton and Evan Rachel Wood have a sword-and-knife fight. If you take away nothing else from this episode of Westworld (“Passed Pawn”), let it be the sight of these two badass women kicking the living shit out of each other.

It’s the episode’s highlight — even if it’s never quite clear why they don’t work together instead of trying to tear each other apart. (It’s got something to do with Maeve’s alliance with Serac, and Dolores’ control of the key to the robot heaven called the Sublime … but these seem like problems that could be resolved over a cup of coffee rather than a rumble.) Sometimes you just want to see two talented, beautiful actors have a Matrix style knock-down drag-out fight, and on that count, this week’s installment did not disappoint.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Westworld for Rolling Stone.

Add it all up, and what do you get? An episode exciting and jam-packed enough to help us put some of our reservations about the course of the show aside, at least for the time being. Is it still a bit glib with the violence? Yes. Is Serac still a bit too much of a one-note supervillain? Yes. Did a gigantic riot-control robot pulp a bunch of redshirts as part of a war between beautiful murder androids? Yes. Does that last bit trump the rest?

Maybe it does, folks. Maybe it does.

I reviewed tonight’s episode of Westworld for Rolling Stone.

Look, sociopathic tech gurus are a dime a dozen, and it’s not a stretch to believe that Serac would orchestrate some extremely shady shenanigans in order to preserve their fortunes, further their visions for society etc. But getting their hands dirty directly by murking someone themselves? That’s a bit harder to swallow — the stuff of comic-book supervillains like Lex Luthor, not real-life oligarchs. It’s like watching a version of The Social Network in which Mark Zuckerberg beats the Winklevoss twins to death with his bare hands.

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It’s worth noting here that all of this might have gone down a bit more smoothly had his story been a gradual reveal from episode to episode. This installment is basically a data dump — literally and figuratively — in which his life story, raison d’être, and mad plans for the future are all delivered in big clunky chunks of exposition. Compare that to the mythic sweep and power of the comparable Akecheta spotlight episode from last season, and the Serac arc comes up short. Think about the leisurely pace with which the show got us up close and personal with Dolores, Maeve, Bernard, the Man in Black — a much better approach, no?

I reviewed this week’s episode of Westworld for Rolling Stone. It’s the first of the new batch that has left me wondering if there’s insufficient gas in the tank for the show’s latter-day switch to straightforward pulp.

It’s Doloreses all the way down.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Westworld for Rolling Stone.

The Delos corporation has created a monster. Yes, another one.

This particular robotic beast isn’t an eerily accurate android replica of humanity. It’s a towering riot-control robot, one that looks more like Optimus Prime or Robocop‘s ED-209 than Evan Rachel Wood. There are hundreds more just like it, just waiting for a buyer. But the host-pretending-to-be-Delos bigwig Charlotte Hale has other ideas. “I’m sure we can find some use for them,” she deadpans. Consider Chekov’s mantle-placed gun officially locked and loaded, humankind.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Westworld for Rolling Stone.