Westworld

Alphableat

Alphableat

Only just finished the season the other night, and I’m not sure how I feel.

The first for episodes were all 5/5 affairs for me. Really fantastic post-park world building.

Episode 5 (Genre) was a complete fucking mess. The Serac backstory and Caleb’s trip shoehorned into a single episode just didn’t work; it was all over the place.

Episode 6 was back to being great, but then episode 7 and 8 were far, far too heavy on exposition and it felt like we were rushing towards the finish line. For a show famous for the intricacies of its plotting, so many plot details seemed to come out of nowhere and it was jarring. Even things like Solomon having a speaking voice - why not establish that by giving Rehoboam a voice earlier on in the season? Dolores turning to Caleb and telling him he ‘needs to lead’ was probably my biggest eye roll of the whole season. Absolutely no establishment that she had sought him out or that we were headed that way. It was nonsense.

Overall I still love the show, and on balance it was probably on a par with season two. It asks questions other shows don’t, and it does a mostly good job of knowing who its interesting characters are (Dolores, Maeve, Bernard)... or is able to take a less interesting character and make them interesting (hey Charlotte, you’re Dolores now).
 
Chris_P

Chris_P

Alphableat said:
Even things like Solomon having a speaking voice - why not establish that by giving Rehoboam a voice earlier on in the season? Dolores turning to Caleb and telling him he ‘needs to lead’ was probably my biggest eye roll of the whole season. Absolutely no establishment that she had sought him out or that we were headed that way. It was nonsense.
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I don't understand... Why should either of these things have been established beforehand? Casually showing us that Rehoboam could communicate with speech (and why wouldn't it, speech is an interface every other inferior machine in the show is using) would not allow for as much impact at the end when it was shown that Serac's lines were scripted. Likewise, showing Dolores planning to come across Caleb (which I am not entirely sure of?) would ruin the impact of how their relationship evolved as well as the impact of having Dolores tell him why she thinks he can lead at the end. So wouldn't both of those being spelled out at the start actually go against the way the show tends to unveil things when they reach a climax or even a resolution?
 
swim

swim

he / him
Serac being scripted this entire time was such an eye roll. What a way to immediately neuter your villain. This season was abysmal for me, it really just lacked the heart of Westworld and became just another sci-fi thriller.
 
johnoclock

johnoclock

I really missed the conventions, narrative and stylistic, of the western. I agree that it became a bit of a standard dystopian future thriller without them. It was still engaging, but a bit too removed from what attracted me to it in the first place. I miss the parks, basically.
 
Alphableat

Alphableat

Chris_P said:
I don't understand... Why should either of these things have been established beforehand? Casually showing us that Rehoboam could communicate with speech (and why wouldn't it, speech is an interface every other inferior machine in the show is using) would not allow for as much impact at the end when it was shown that Serac's lines were scripted. Likewise, showing Dolores planning to come across Caleb (which I am not entirely sure of?) would ruin the impact of how their relationship evolved as well as the impact of having Dolores tell him why she thinks he can lead at the end. So wouldn't both of those being spelled out at the start actually go against the way the show tends to unveil things when they reach a climax or even a resolution?
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Perhaps this is where we’ll just have to disagree - for me, surprise does not equate to impact. I’d be much more impressed with a twist like Serac being scripted if the seeds had been sown. But... they weren’t, so it felt jarring to me. Hearing Rehoboam converse (even a little voice over during those ‘INTERFERENCE’ graphics would have been enough) and Maeve experiencing some weird interference when talking with Serac until now might have made it feel like a more natural reveal. We had neither of these before this episode.

And the flashback to Caleb not abusing Dolores and other female hosts during his army training was how she decided to choose him, no?
 
Chris_P

Chris_P

Alphableat said:
And the flashback to Caleb not abusing Dolores and other female hosts during his army training was how she decided to choose him, no?
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Yes, that was definitely why she chose him, but I am not sure she had chosen him before meeting him in the city or if it was the factor for deciding to go with him after meeting him.

Thank you for your answer, I understand better now. I don't necessarily think these things made a considerable impact, only that whatever impact they made would have been diminished in any other case. However I do see your point, in the sense that, yes, the rest of the season would have probably felt more robust in retrospect with such elements throughout.
 
HorseTears

HorseTears

The production design, the set pieces, the action sequences, the [female] actors are so strong, that I came back for this third season. But, God, what a slog it became after the first couple of episodes. This show is all surface. There's nothing underneath. Just shiny, sleek, well designed obfuscation on top of obfuscation. It just feels like they make it all up as they go along and because of all the psychobabble and "magical science" nothing in this world has any real consequence or dramatic impact. Despite all the carnage, the stakes don't feel high at all because anything of consequence can be explained away through 2 minutes of overwritten exposition and flashbacks. I loved the first season, but this show is just a mess now.
 
kermit_the_frog

kermit_the_frog

It’s a typical Nolan “rubik’s cube masquerading as high art” isn’t it?

Which makes it no less enjoyable, just a bit annoying when it has pretensions of changing the way we think about things... when its only thought-provoking aspect is “what if robots were sentient and had the same motivations as humans?”

I mean, AI: Artificial Intelligence poses the same question in a 2 hour movie, rips my heart out and sets it on fire - Westworld has barely made me feel sad or sentimental in 3 whole seasons.

I hope Thandie, Evan and Tessa (and Jeffrey) are tied into full contracts... because they are the only reason I’m sticking with it...
 
P'NutButter

P'NutButter

I think I'm completely odd when it comes to fans of this show, I didn't think much of season 1 but I enjoyed season 2 and most of 3.

However, I genuinely felt offended that Aaron Paul became a main character in season 3 and Thandie felt like a guest star at times.
 
Gemini

Gemini

P'NutButter said:
I think I'm completely odd when it comes to fans of this show, I didn't think much of season 1 but I enjoyed season 2 and most of 3.

However, I genuinely felt offended that Aaron Paul became a main character in season 3 and Thandie felt like a guest star at times.
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Season 1 was probably one of the best seasons of television I have ever seen in my life. It checked all the boxes for me and was so exciting.
Season 2 totally lost me. I watched half and then lost interest and i'm so upset about it. I think I hated that they killed Anthony Hopkins off. And i'm just like "Okay, but what is Westworld about it if the Westworld park is closed and all the robots went crazy?". I didn't like the shogun world stuff, that's kind of when I stopped watching.
I'd love to get back into it sometime but I don't know.
 
SHYGUY

SHYGUY

Just finished season 3. First of all I hate Caleb, I really don’t like militarized plots that present a misfit (usually a heterosexual man) like a saving grace because he sees world differently thanks to the “horrors” he was seen. He’s backstory was lame and the reveal was not impactful, specially as they played the same scene for the fifth time in the same episode to reveal “what really happened” with his friend. I was rolling my eyes time after time as they revealed he was the good one, the one Dolores picked, the “leader” ugh. As if the new world would need a man like that to lead, give it to the women god damn it!

I love Maeve but her going through life thinking exclusively about her daughter (who doesn’t remember her?) while the literal demise of human race and the rise of her own are happening is never not a scream. She’s got to have bigger ambitions.

Bernard being 15 steps behind Dolores all the time just made it obvious he wasn’t going to confront her at the end, it was jarring watch him got to Arnold’s wife to chitchat when there was no time to lose, maybe I don’t know use 1 of 5 scenes about Caleb boring past to give the story more air to breathe?! He was drinking tea while the riots where happening on the streets literally.

Finally scream at me somehow thinking this was the last season and kinda being ok with that? I just found out there are going to be 6?!?! Lmao.

Good show, great locations, amazing women! Dolores, Maeve and Charlores where the highlights and what kept me going, I love the extraness their characters embody and I hope this isn’t the end for Dolores, I think they just need to give her a season and a half to rest, bring her back in the right moment, after either Charlotte or Maeve kill each other.
 
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SHYGUY

SHYGUY

Sorry for the double post but isn’t it a SCREAM that they only bring Clementine back time after time just to die?! It’s that her character trope?
 
Trinu 3.0

Trinu 3.0

I binged S3 this week and...

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Now who the fuck is this Caleb and why am I supposed to care or root for him? I swear to god I didn't skip his flashbacks because the remote was far from me. The idea of him being the center of the show from here on... a nightmare. Literally a nightmare. I don't even know if them meeting in that tunnel was planned or was just a happy chance or... uggg.

I have no idea what Bernard storyline was supposed to be. He was a butcher? Now he's covered in dust and wearing a funny tiara? Maeve spent the whole season squinting like she wanted to hear the neighbours' conversation? Dolores is destroyed and rebuilt 2467367246 times in an episode but now she's gone for good? I swear to god if Evan Rachel is gone I'm not watching this anymore.

At least the music slaps because Ramin is that binch

 
Gemini

Gemini

I always read what y'all have to say in this thread and still can't determine if this show is worth watching passed season 1. I did start season 2 but it was so different that I don't know if it's worth it continuing along. Might have to wait years for the series to run its course and then decide.
 
drewsky

drewsky

The one thing I don't like about the long wait between seasons is that I'll basically forget what happened in 1-3 and the show is entirely too long for me to want to rewatch every time. They need to drop 10-minute video summaries of every season like Marvel Legends.
 
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