I don't know if Covid interrupted their schedule at all, but this season started out stellar and ended in a flailing mess that was more of an ad for season 4 than a resolution of season 3. Disappointing*
*I'll still take this over most stuff that airs on TV, but something got weird in production or that writer's room, because the last few episodes were just all over the place.
I don't know if Covid interrupted their schedule at all, but this season started out stellar and ended in a flailing mess that was more of an ad for season 4 than a resolution of season 3. Disappointing*
*I'll still take this over most stuff that airs on TV, but something got weird in production or that writer's room, because the last few episodes were just all over the place.
The whole season was finished with production before the plague hit I think.
It definitely felt a little filler series, like it was all just there to explain how everything wraps up directly at the end of last season and how we got to the after credits scene from last season, and setting up the characters/actors so they can mostly all be there for the story after that scene. I'm actually kinda fine with the breakneck pace to conclusion in the latter half of the season because of that.
I do not believe they actually killed off William, slit throat and leaving him there to bleed out seems like an easy writing loophole to bring back the silent white knight in the third act next season.
I do not believe they actually killed off William, slit throat and leaving him there to bleed out seems like an easy writing loophole to bring back the silent white knight in the third act next season.
I really hope not, I like the basic disillusionment of it. William consistently thinks he's the hero of the story, that he's gonna save someone or set someone free, but he isn't. He's a fucked up asshole that doesn't really ever have a firm grasp of the reality he's in. Like William's whole arch from his first scene, has been him trying to figure out who he is, and constantly being fuckin wrong about it because he lies to himself about who he is and why. When faced with introspection or reflection he just fuckin bounces right the fuck off of it because actually addressing and learning from his past is just totally fuckin beyond him. Anything trying to force him to reflect or introspect is some kind of trick or trap and he'll kill everything and anything to not have to do that. I like the idea that his character's only progressed to understanding what he is in death and recreation as an invulnerable kill bot. Like as soon as he's got immortality he goes full MiB because that's who he totally wants to be, but couldn't be in the real world because that's a dangerous fuckin life to lead when you can actually fuckin die. I really don't want him getting any kind of redemption arch, and I hope they've moved past trying to give him one. William's a bad guy, always has been, he just constantly lies to himself about that and tries to find some way that he isn't actually.
This season is getting a lot of love here, but I really was not feeling it. The Shadowrun-ness of it all was cool, but overall I felt this was a much weaker show than Westworld S1.
Agreed. I felt like they did WAY less with the setting than they could have. Ultimately felt like the showrunners want an action oriented show, but they are trying to have their cake and eat it by cramming some pretty shallow philosophy in the last episode.
Maybe it’ll all come together in the last season, but I just felt totally uninterested in this finale.
I agree somewhat. I enjoyed this season but S3's world didn't feel like the same world that Ford existed in and hinted at in S1. At times there were scenes where it felt like they completely gave up on the futuristic aesthetic.
It also feels like they diverted from the Westworld theme completely and segued into closing off Person of Interests story.
This season is getting a lot of love here, but I really was not feeling it. The Shadowrun-ness of it all was cool, but overall I felt this was a much weaker show than Westworld S1.
Agreed. I felt like they did WAY less with the setting than they could have. Ultimately felt like the showrunners want an action oriented show, but they are trying to have their cake and eat it by cramming some pretty shallow philosophy in the last episode.
Maybe it’ll all come together in the last season, but I just felt totally uninterested in this finale.
I agree somewhat. I enjoyed this season but S3's world didn't feel like the same world that Ford existed in and hinted at in S1. At times there were scenes where it felt like they completely gave up on the futuristic aesthetic.
It also feels like they diverted from the Westworld theme completely and segued into closing off Person of Interests story.
While I loved PoI, this clearly feels like westworld if you think about season 1
It's a mirror. The earth is a westworld park for humans, and by breaking it down, there's a chance to free some, instead of having all 'live on' in captivity as almost the same empty shells Delos hosts were.
As for person of interest, it's not a direct continuation
(super heavy PoI spoilers)
Rehoboam is neither like Harold's machine, nor like Samaritan.
It's a reflection of its parents, the two brothers, and both are very different people from Harold and Nathan, who built the machine in PoI (and also very different from the people who built Samaritan)
Maybe if Harold was much less of a functional person, and Nathan much more of an asshole, but still with brotherly love.
Still. In PoI, the machine is much more an offspring of its creators. In westworld, Rehoboam feels more like a caged ghost of Serrac's brothers, which makes "the ghost in the machine" take on a whole different meaning.
Basically it makes much sense that Rehoboam helped getting killed, since it probably craved the released of death since its inception, but still had the core directive of protecting humanity.
With what it did now, it basically created an uncertain world that only works without itself in it - so a reason for its own death AND a reason it could see those core directives fulfilled, allowing it to die.
I am guessing this is the case. He ran all the simulations and all ended with humanity crashing and burning so the way forward is to do something different which is likely some kind of future with hosts and humans together.
I am guessing this is the case. He ran all the simulations and all ended with humanity crashing and burning so the way forward is to do something different which is likely some kind of future with hosts and humans together.
I am guessing this is the case. He ran all the simulations and all ended with humanity crashing and burning so the way forward is to do something different which is likely some kind of future with hosts and humans together.
i think the whole deal withthe outliers is that it cant plan around them so Im not sure the inferrence is valid.
Idk all of this was really sloppy writing
Styrofoam Sammich on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
The Outliers stuff is always going to be a bit awkward. At best it's Psycho Pass, at worst it's every awful YA dystopian fiction.
I am guessing this is the case. He ran all the simulations and all ended with humanity crashing and burning so the way forward is to do something different which is likely some kind of future with hosts and humans together.
The way it seemed was that the machine produced strategies and then told serac how to implement them with serac accessing the machine to browse the possible future's and choose which one to set the machine towards so the machine could give live updates to serac in order for him to precisely guide all his human level interactions in order to service the future he wanted. Like serac and the machine seemed to have a moderately symbiotic relationship where serac had a higher level of access to the machine than everyone else and could kinda look through the strategies and choose the strategy getting used, picking which endpoint to move towards. Like he gave over a bunch of his will to the machine cause he knew he was less informed than it, but still had moments of agency where he could change its path, or pick a new strategy in response to unpredictable events like an earthquake or a storm, or a bunch of robots accidentally being a bunch of sentient human like creatures it had no way to predict or control.
The big indicator that everything is off script is the change of the ring image.
The spikes are divergences from the strategy.
I do not believe they actually killed off William, slit throat and leaving him there to bleed out seems like an easy writing loophole to bring back the silent white knight in the third act next season.
I really hope not, I like the basic disillusionment of it. William consistently thinks he's the hero of the story, that he's gonna save someone or set someone free, but he isn't. He's a fucked up asshole that doesn't really ever have a firm grasp of the reality he's in. Like William's whole arch from his first scene, has been him trying to figure out who he is, and constantly being fuckin wrong about it because he lies to himself about who he is and why. When faced with introspection or reflection he just fuckin bounces right the fuck off of it because actually addressing and learning from his past is just totally fuckin beyond him. Anything trying to force him to reflect or introspect is some kind of trick or trap and he'll kill everything and anything to not have to do that. I like the idea that his character's only progressed to understanding what he is in death and recreation as an invulnerable kill bot. Like as soon as he's got immortality he goes full MiB because that's who he totally wants to be, but couldn't be in the real world because that's a dangerous fuckin life to lead when you can actually fuckin die. I really don't want him getting any kind of redemption arch, and I hope they've moved past trying to give him one. William's a bad guy, always has been, he just constantly lies to himself about that and tries to find some way that he isn't actually.
Agreed. I saw someone complaining that William seemed like an idiot in the after credits scene and it's... he is an idiot! He's always been a violent thug who resorts to violence to solve things. Of course he strapped on his "i'm the hero here" hat and marched in guns blazing, it's what he's always fucking done.
Like, the entire of his story in S1 is being told "Not For You" "WHAAAAAAT?!" *violence ensues* "Not For you" "WHAAAAAT!?" *violence*. What's his reaction to Ford going "No, really, not for you" "Time to gut you and see what you really are!" - because heaven forbid someone actually tell him no or that his internal narrative be wrong.
I am guessing this is the case. He ran all the simulations and all ended with humanity crashing and burning so the way forward is to do something different which is likely some kind of future with hosts and humans together.
The way it seemed was that the machine produced strategies and then told serac how to implement them with serac accessing the machine to browse the possible future's and choose which one to set the machine towards so the machine could give live updates to serac in order for him to precisely guide all his human level interactions in order to service the future he wanted. Like serac and the machine seemed to have a moderately symbiotic relationship where serac had a higher level of access to the machine than everyone else and could kinda look through the strategies and choose the strategy getting used, picking which endpoint to move towards. Like he gave over a bunch of his will to the machine cause he knew he was less informed than it, but still had moments of agency where he could change its path, or pick a new strategy in response to unpredictable events like an earthquake or a storm, or a bunch of robots accidentally being a bunch of sentient human like creatures it had no way to predict or control.
The big indicator that everything is off script is the change of the ring image.
The spikes are divergences from the strategy.
I mean, no.. Serrac
was just a meat puppet. He wasn't even a host, he parroted what Rehoboham told him to say.
He said he had agency, but that was probably also Rehoboham speaking, telling him to say so. The moment it stopped talking, all he said was "talk to me"
An idea/aesop I've seen in a couple of other places:
the hidden peril of an "infallible" future-projecting device or entity, one that tells you what the outcome will be and/or the "right" choice to make in any situation, is that one eventually becomes utterly dependent on it to make even the most trivial decisions. Acceptance of uncertainty and risk (even of nothing more than disappointment), willingness to "guess", "have faith" or "take a chance and see what happens", are replaced by "better ask first and make sure." The endpoint is paralysis: unable to do anything without consulting the oracle, the coin, etc etc.
I am guessing this is the case. He ran all the simulations and all ended with humanity crashing and burning so the way forward is to do something different which is likely some kind of future with hosts and humans together.
The way it seemed was that the machine produced strategies and then told serac how to implement them with serac accessing the machine to browse the possible future's and choose which one to set the machine towards so the machine could give live updates to serac in order for him to precisely guide all his human level interactions in order to service the future he wanted. Like serac and the machine seemed to have a moderately symbiotic relationship where serac had a higher level of access to the machine than everyone else and could kinda look through the strategies and choose the strategy getting used, picking which endpoint to move towards. Like he gave over a bunch of his will to the machine cause he knew he was less informed than it, but still had moments of agency where he could change its path, or pick a new strategy in response to unpredictable events like an earthquake or a storm, or a bunch of robots accidentally being a bunch of sentient human like creatures it had no way to predict or control.
The big indicator that everything is off script is the change of the ring image.
The spikes are divergences from the strategy.
I mean, no.. Serrac
was just a meat puppet. He wasn't even a host, he parroted what Rehoboham told him to say.
He said he had agency, but that was probably also Rehoboham speaking, telling him to say so. The moment it stopped talking, all he said was "talk to me"
Serrac
I feel like there was cool story in there where we find out that Serrac was just a helper and his brother was the only genius. At night he secretly talks to Rehobo. At some point Rehobo gets wind that the older brother is going to try to take him off line and start sweet talking Serac, ultimately convincing him to ice his brother.
I am guessing this is the case. He ran all the simulations and all ended with humanity crashing and burning so the way forward is to do something different which is likely some kind of future with hosts and humans together.
The way it seemed was that the machine produced strategies and then told serac how to implement them with serac accessing the machine to browse the possible future's and choose which one to set the machine towards so the machine could give live updates to serac in order for him to precisely guide all his human level interactions in order to service the future he wanted. Like serac and the machine seemed to have a moderately symbiotic relationship where serac had a higher level of access to the machine than everyone else and could kinda look through the strategies and choose the strategy getting used, picking which endpoint to move towards. Like he gave over a bunch of his will to the machine cause he knew he was less informed than it, but still had moments of agency where he could change its path, or pick a new strategy in response to unpredictable events like an earthquake or a storm, or a bunch of robots accidentally being a bunch of sentient human like creatures it had no way to predict or control.
The big indicator that everything is off script is the change of the ring image.
The spikes are divergences from the strategy.
I mean, no.. Serrac
was just a meat puppet. He wasn't even a host, he parroted what Rehoboham told him to say.
He said he had agency, but that was probably also Rehoboham speaking, telling him to say so. The moment it stopped talking, all he said was "talk to me"
Serrac
I feel like there was cool story in there where we find out that Serrac was just a helper and his brother was the only genius. At night he secretly talks to Rehobo. At some point Rehobo gets wind that the older brother is going to try to take him off line and start sweet talking Serac, ultimately convincing him to ice his brother.
Yes, this! It would have contrasted well with
Caleb being a person who “makes choices”
Speaking of which, that fake out with his military buddies and dolores... woof. Caleb knows how it ended, but it’s weirdly presented as a remorseful flashback for him when he’s talking about Dolores’ looks. There’s not really a great reason for him to be sad there... it’s only presented that way to trick us. Which makes the reveal baffling, because it kind of seems like he wanted to go Black Hat now.
Everyone was stupid to some degree the entire damn season. Horrible writing top to bottom. It looks good, nice setting, but hopefully all the writers are replaced next season.
You know those RPGs that start off with really personal stakes that mean something, since you love the characters and the setting and it just kinda hits ya? But then they feel they have to raise the stakes to world-threatening levels and the characters aren't as important anymore and the importance of the original setting fades into the background, and sure the scale is much bigger but it really feels like it lost something along the way?
I felt like that show flubbed it too, but at least it was trying to wrestle with complicated questions, it just turns out that satisfying narrative answers about the fundamental nature of existence are kind of hard to deliver.
I want to love Westworld. The writers can genuinely spin up some interesting ideas, they’re just so bad at engaging with them.
The trick is, the show has always been like this. That first season has atrocious dialogue, a lot of wooden scenes that don’t play quite right, abandoned threads and pointless mystery. BUT, that first season had two crutches that it couldn’t rely on if it was going to continue as a series:
1. The in-world park designers/writers were presented as hacks. Like, copying and pasting plot elements, being childishly fascinated with sex and blood. They had a diagetic explanation for why everybody (hosts, at least) sounded like an idiot: they were written by idiots. So you got scenes of robots playing out an awkward script written by a childish pervert without a human in sight and as a viewer you can think, “Yeah, that actually makes sense.” It lets you pretend that the bad writing was a choice.
2. The first season ended as if it never had to come back and explain anything, because the most important arcs were closed. William goes from being a naive wannabe good guy to a bored sadist, Dolores goes from robot to self-aware. Passing in the night on opposite paths, it’s clumsy but it works.
And ever since they’ve had to abandon both. The park’s writers are no longer in control, so there’s no reason for the hosts to sound as stupid as they frequently sound (and you can’t ignore that the humans also talk nonsense any more). The show is HBO’s attempt at another blockbuster, so characters can never really wrap up. Every single episode since the end of season 1 has just made it clearer that the first season succeeding in any way was a matter of extreme luck.
"Dolores was written with a poetic sensibility", and it's not like she's suddenly someone else than the person she had to pretend to be, only with some agency
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
I finished it last night, I liked it
Don't really know what else to say about it since everyone is slagging it
Interested to see what happens in later seasons given the end of this one
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
That post credits scene eh?
either we're getting a big ol timeskip for S4, or Bernie is written out for the duration.
Wonder if it matches up with the timeskip fidelity test scene for William from the end of S2.
...also gotta admit I loved how irrelevant William was by the end. "I'm gonna save the fucking world"
Nah, man. You're barely an NPC in this story at this point. Just like the Maze wasn't for you. Goodbye, doofus.
the drug trip episode was a big disappointment. They struggled to commit the bit and the whole thing felt disjointed for it.
it suffered quite a bit in my view with how badly it compared to the nostalgia episode of Watchmen, which is maybe one of the best hours of TV i've ever seen
then westworld was like ok the music and camera will change!
the drug trip episode was a big disappointment. They struggled to commit the bit and the whole thing felt disjointed for it.
it suffered quite a bit in my view with how badly it compared to the nostalgia episode of Watchmen, which is maybe one of the best hours of TV i've ever seen
then westworld was like ok the music and camera will change!
Worse, Westworld was like, “Ok, the music and camera will change sometimes! And for some reason we think Trainspotting is a genre, and that referencing Danny Boyle in a drug trip sequence will make us look better rather than worse! And that playing Flight of the Valkyries is synonymous with action, even though it’s really more of a Heart of Darkness thing, and I’m not sure we meant to do that? What’s the title of this episode again? Whatever, wouldn’t it be wild if X was a robot?”
It’s all so damned inconsistent. Like genuinely interesting people were forced to script an episode while being forbidden from taking notes.
Edit: I’d be a lot less hard on the show if it wasn’t constantly on the edge of being better.
Wait y'all get that the music is actually happening for caleb through that entire sequence right? It's a designer drug of the future that fucks with your AR implants. All the upsides of a programmed trip that pulls from your brain with no real big crash on it.
Like half the trip is stuff pulled from caleb's brain as a reaction to what's happening around him.
Wait y'all get that the music is actually happening for caleb through that entire sequence right? It's a designer drug of the future that fucks with your AR implants. All the upsides of a programmed trip that pulls from your brain with no real big crash on it.
Like half the trip is stuff pulled from caleb's brain as a reaction to what's happening around him.
I understood that, it just seemed like the connections were incredibly inconsistent. I liked the visuals of the noir section and the club section, and I got a laugh out of the romance beat, but they weren’t really used for any greater purpose.
If they had kept the commitment from the noir section, changing visuals, music, and the appearance of the extras, I would be more on board. But sometimes you get visuals, sometimes you get music. Sometimes it’s a clear parody of a genre (romance), sometimes you just play opera music because that’s what happens in action movies? Sometimes? In the 90s?
And often the effects of the drug just... disappeared. Sometimes Caleb was in the scene and there was no genre-change, sometimes there was.
I try not to do this, but I think the whole episode should have been from Caleb’s POV. You develop a narrative that takes you through your selected genres (noir mystery, Caleb as a hard-nosed detective or damsel in distress type), and you switch as the environment and character actions justify a shift in mood. Maybe that club dance Danny Boyle style gets used during the riot, when it would actually be interesting, instead of when Caleb goes underground, I guess because the genre of music was once referred to as underground.
It’s a little microcosm if my feelings about the series as a whole: they had a really fun idea, but they were incapable of coming up with enough to justify using it. Then they used it anyway, because the show is sloppy as fuck and cares more about appearing deep and looking cool than actually being either of those things.
Wait y'all get that the music is actually happening for caleb through that entire sequence right? It's a designer drug of the future that fucks with your AR implants. All the upsides of a programmed trip that pulls from your brain with no real big crash on it.
Like half the trip is stuff pulled from caleb's brain as a reaction to what's happening around him.
I understood that, it just seemed like the connections were incredibly inconsistent. I liked the visuals of the noir section and the club section, and I got a laugh out of the romance beat, but they weren’t really used for any greater purpose.
If they had kept the commitment from the noir section, changing visuals, music, and the appearance of the extras, I would be more on board. But sometimes you get visuals, sometimes you get music. Sometimes it’s a clear parody of a genre (romance), sometimes you just play opera music because that’s what happens in action movies? Sometimes? In the 90s?
And often the effects of the drug just... disappeared. Sometimes Caleb was in the scene and there was no genre-change, sometimes there was.
I try not to do this, but I think the whole episode should have been from Caleb’s POV. You develop a narrative that takes you through your selected genres (noir mystery, Caleb as a hard-nosed detective or damsel in distress type), and you switch as the environment and character actions justify a shift in mood. Maybe that club dance Danny Boyle style gets used during the riot, when it would actually be interesting, instead of when Caleb goes underground, I guess because the genre of music was once referred to as underground.
It’s a little microcosm if my feelings about the series as a whole: they had a really fun idea, but they were incapable of coming up with enough to justify using it. Then they used it anyway, because the show is sloppy as fuck and cares more about appearing deep and looking cool than actually being either of those things.
The whole time I was watching the trip it just seemed like what primo future drugs should do. The drugs were cycling through genres as caleb gets hit with stimuli, and I'm not sure if he's pulling the genre or it's a pre ordained sequence. If he's grabbing the genres or if the drugs are. It seemed less of a storytelling device and more of a thing that's happening to Caleb to show off just how crazy the future drugs are and just how much they can warp your reality through the implants. It also seemingly starts prepping caleb to regain his memories he lost in the crazy pharmacological AR reprogramming he underwent in the outliers program.
I can definitely agree it's a little hard to follow who's PoV we're following, and thusly what's happening in the high, in the episode because it's alternating between quite a few characters in multiple locations in multiple timelines with at least 5 of them sharing a space where only one of them is high as shit. But hard to follow scene progressions are kindof this show's bread and butter.
We really only see 4 to maybe 6 genres throughout the episode: The suspense, The action, The love, The psychedelic. Night clubbing is by iggy pop, having an iggy pop reference in a drug episode is kindof gratuitous but not really that unexpected. There's a reason reason train spotting made an iggy pop reference, though that story did have more right to an iggy pop reference since iggy pops main drug was heroine and not crazy future drugs. Though Bowie cowrote that song so a whole festival of drugs to choose from. Also it's a song about walking the night like ghosts (which is what he characters are doing). Honestly even keeping the train spotting reference the entire spiel about choice that bookends that film seems rather relevant. Then after cutting away for a while we get a small taste of whatever flashbacks he's having on the train before the rats in the bucket bit, and then seemingly as the drip fades he gets a little bit of Bowie over reality before the shooters seemingly shatter the last of his high. It's kinda hard to tell if the Bowie is part of the drip or not, and I think that's on purpose. The song from the end of the episode on the beach is apparently a horror reference to the shining so that might actually be the end of the high.
As for the genre cutting out in the shootout that is seemingly just your standard shoving down a high because you've got enough adrenaline to do so kind of deal.
The genre is used less as a way to deliver story and more to show, rather than just tell, just how crazy the drugs are in this future.
the problem with the drug episode is they kept pulling us out of it. You had a good idea.
Do the whole episode like that. Stop pulling your punches
Westworld rarely spends the whole episode in one point of view or even in the same timeline and the trip and extraction job they're doing isn't really enough to make a whole episode out of without the stuff that's happening to other people across time and space that aren't high as shit and that gives you the actual story progression for the episode.
It's unfortunate that everyone's essentially trying to compare it to the nostalgia episode of watchmen because it's not really even trying to be that episode. The drugs aren't the most important part of the episode, or more precisely the exact effects of the drug Caleb is on isn't really the focus of the episode, unraveling some mystery for watcher and characters alike. As they are in the nostalgia episode of watchmen.
It's mostly the after effects of the drug that are in any way important in this series. The drugs, while active, are actually detracting from the character's ability to comprehend their surroundings or properly engage with it on an emotional level. It keeps outright manipulating Caleb's whole cognition and emotional response. While literally everyone else is having their whole life revealed to them Caleb's busy being high as shit and remaining uninformed of what really happened to him. Just kinda stumbling through the collapse of society. Like he has been since the outliers program. All of the important stuff is happening outside Caleb's cognition and the drug trip, to all the characters that aren't high as shit. For the entire episode Caleb's kinda on an almost useless ride, right up until the end of that last act.
The whole point is that genre, and the whole digital pharmcology thing, is kindof terrifying. It's the first descent into just how cyberpunk horror show their reality is (you know outside the sentient robots stuff we're just used to at this point). Genre is an amazing party drug for sure. I'd call it a pretty perfect one myself, but I could also see losing my whole fuckin life to wandering around on it or the other digital pharmcology stuff letting the implant round out my worst parts. Which in a grander look is what happened to Caleb, and seemingly a bunch of the rest of humanity considering just how many of these types of drugs everyone is doing throughout the whole season from the very first scenes on. The crazy digital pharmcology is a thing we're supposed to finally get a slight peek into the effects of and think, "well that's kinda fuckin terrifying as far as how much it can alter your perceptions".
Pretty sure It also gives us a key to why Caleb didn't use the digital pharmcology stuff anymore, and originally had his implants turned off, because his reprogramming was apparently pretty delicate, and introducing something like genre pretty immediately started to break down that reprogramming. It isn't until the genre is wearing off that Caleb starts to remember the stuff that got him brainwashed in the first place.
Paying attention to the whole trip would be kindof a waste of an episode, it's just a stupid drug trip specifically designed to be a rich guy's dumb party. It's a distraction. That's the whole point. The really important stuff is pretty specifically everything that isn't the drug trip. Yeah watching the entirety of Caleb's drug trip probably would have had some fun visuals and musical cues, but it wouldn't have been a useful episode at all because the entire point is that the drugs are a distraction, and that Caleb didn't do those kinds of drugs for a specific reason (because it would break his brain washing).
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I'm still very interested in where this all is going. Even if some of the ways it got there this season were slightly dumb.
*I'll still take this over most stuff that airs on TV, but something got weird in production or that writer's room, because the last few episodes were just all over the place.
The whole season was finished with production before the plague hit I think.
It definitely felt a little filler series, like it was all just there to explain how everything wraps up directly at the end of last season and how we got to the after credits scene from last season, and setting up the characters/actors so they can mostly all be there for the story after that scene. I'm actually kinda fine with the breakneck pace to conclusion in the latter half of the season because of that.
Basically took a look at humanity and noped the fuck out of there
I agree somewhat. I enjoyed this season but S3's world didn't feel like the same world that Ford existed in and hinted at in S1. At times there were scenes where it felt like they completely gave up on the futuristic aesthetic.
It also feels like they diverted from the Westworld theme completely and segued into closing off Person of Interests story.
While I loved PoI, this clearly feels like westworld if you think about season 1
As for person of interest, it's not a direct continuation
(super heavy PoI spoilers)
It's a reflection of its parents, the two brothers, and both are very different people from Harold and Nathan, who built the machine in PoI (and also very different from the people who built Samaritan)
Maybe if Harold was much less of a functional person, and Nathan much more of an asshole, but still with brotherly love.
Still. In PoI, the machine is much more an offspring of its creators. In westworld, Rehoboam feels more like a caged ghost of Serrac's brothers, which makes "the ghost in the machine" take on a whole different meaning.
Basically it makes much sense that Rehoboam helped getting killed, since it probably craved the released of death since its inception, but still had the core directive of protecting humanity.
With what it did now, it basically created an uncertain world that only works without itself in it - so a reason for its own death AND a reason it could see those core directives fulfilled, allowing it to die.
WINNER: NONE
WINNER: NONE
Idk all of this was really sloppy writing
The big indicator that everything is off script is the change of the ring image.
The spikes are divergences from the strategy.
Like, the entire of his story in S1 is being told "Not For You" "WHAAAAAAT?!" *violence ensues* "Not For you" "WHAAAAAT!?" *violence*. What's his reaction to Ford going "No, really, not for you" "Time to gut you and see what you really are!" - because heaven forbid someone actually tell him no or that his internal narrative be wrong.
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I mean, no.. Serrac
He said he had agency, but that was probably also Rehoboham speaking, telling him to say so. The moment it stopped talking, all he said was "talk to me"
Serrac
Yes, this! It would have contrasted well with
Caleb being a person who “makes choices”
Yeah.
I felt like that show flubbed it too, but at least it was trying to wrestle with complicated questions, it just turns out that satisfying narrative answers about the fundamental nature of existence are kind of hard to deliver.
I want to love Westworld. The writers can genuinely spin up some interesting ideas, they’re just so bad at engaging with them.
The trick is, the show has always been like this. That first season has atrocious dialogue, a lot of wooden scenes that don’t play quite right, abandoned threads and pointless mystery. BUT, that first season had two crutches that it couldn’t rely on if it was going to continue as a series:
1. The in-world park designers/writers were presented as hacks. Like, copying and pasting plot elements, being childishly fascinated with sex and blood. They had a diagetic explanation for why everybody (hosts, at least) sounded like an idiot: they were written by idiots. So you got scenes of robots playing out an awkward script written by a childish pervert without a human in sight and as a viewer you can think, “Yeah, that actually makes sense.” It lets you pretend that the bad writing was a choice.
2. The first season ended as if it never had to come back and explain anything, because the most important arcs were closed. William goes from being a naive wannabe good guy to a bored sadist, Dolores goes from robot to self-aware. Passing in the night on opposite paths, it’s clumsy but it works.
And ever since they’ve had to abandon both. The park’s writers are no longer in control, so there’s no reason for the hosts to sound as stupid as they frequently sound (and you can’t ignore that the humans also talk nonsense any more). The show is HBO’s attempt at another blockbuster, so characters can never really wrap up. Every single episode since the end of season 1 has just made it clearer that the first season succeeding in any way was a matter of extreme luck.
"Dolores was written with a poetic sensibility", and it's not like she's suddenly someone else than the person she had to pretend to be, only with some agency
Don't really know what else to say about it since everyone is slagging it
Interested to see what happens in later seasons given the end of this one
Wonder if it matches up with the timeskip fidelity test scene for William from the end of S2.
...also gotta admit I loved how irrelevant William was by the end. "I'm gonna save the fucking world"
Nah, man. You're barely an NPC in this story at this point. Just like the Maze wasn't for you. Goodbye, doofus.
Yeah, I liked it too. I think it's cursed with "middle season", so it'll be great, or bad, depending on what comes after
https://imgur.com/gallery/ZIppARI
What looks like "errors" at first turn out to be real life coordinates relating to the show
it suffered quite a bit in my view with how badly it compared to the nostalgia episode of Watchmen, which is maybe one of the best hours of TV i've ever seen
then westworld was like ok the music and camera will change!
Worse, Westworld was like, “Ok, the music and camera will change sometimes! And for some reason we think Trainspotting is a genre, and that referencing Danny Boyle in a drug trip sequence will make us look better rather than worse! And that playing Flight of the Valkyries is synonymous with action, even though it’s really more of a Heart of Darkness thing, and I’m not sure we meant to do that? What’s the title of this episode again? Whatever, wouldn’t it be wild if X was a robot?”
It’s all so damned inconsistent. Like genuinely interesting people were forced to script an episode while being forbidden from taking notes.
Edit: I’d be a lot less hard on the show if it wasn’t constantly on the edge of being better.
Like half the trip is stuff pulled from caleb's brain as a reaction to what's happening around him.
it is still full of actors I love doing a good job and it's very visually appealing and badass.
If they had kept the commitment from the noir section, changing visuals, music, and the appearance of the extras, I would be more on board. But sometimes you get visuals, sometimes you get music. Sometimes it’s a clear parody of a genre (romance), sometimes you just play opera music because that’s what happens in action movies? Sometimes? In the 90s?
And often the effects of the drug just... disappeared. Sometimes Caleb was in the scene and there was no genre-change, sometimes there was.
I try not to do this, but I think the whole episode should have been from Caleb’s POV. You develop a narrative that takes you through your selected genres (noir mystery, Caleb as a hard-nosed detective or damsel in distress type), and you switch as the environment and character actions justify a shift in mood. Maybe that club dance Danny Boyle style gets used during the riot, when it would actually be interesting, instead of when Caleb goes underground, I guess because the genre of music was once referred to as underground.
It’s a little microcosm if my feelings about the series as a whole: they had a really fun idea, but they were incapable of coming up with enough to justify using it. Then they used it anyway, because the show is sloppy as fuck and cares more about appearing deep and looking cool than actually being either of those things.
I can definitely agree it's a little hard to follow who's PoV we're following, and thusly what's happening in the high, in the episode because it's alternating between quite a few characters in multiple locations in multiple timelines with at least 5 of them sharing a space where only one of them is high as shit. But hard to follow scene progressions are kindof this show's bread and butter.
We really only see 4 to maybe 6 genres throughout the episode: The suspense, The action, The love, The psychedelic. Night clubbing is by iggy pop, having an iggy pop reference in a drug episode is kindof gratuitous but not really that unexpected. There's a reason reason train spotting made an iggy pop reference, though that story did have more right to an iggy pop reference since iggy pops main drug was heroine and not crazy future drugs. Though Bowie cowrote that song so a whole festival of drugs to choose from. Also it's a song about walking the night like ghosts (which is what he characters are doing). Honestly even keeping the train spotting reference the entire spiel about choice that bookends that film seems rather relevant. Then after cutting away for a while we get a small taste of whatever flashbacks he's having on the train before the rats in the bucket bit, and then seemingly as the drip fades he gets a little bit of Bowie over reality before the shooters seemingly shatter the last of his high. It's kinda hard to tell if the Bowie is part of the drip or not, and I think that's on purpose. The song from the end of the episode on the beach is apparently a horror reference to the shining so that might actually be the end of the high.
As for the genre cutting out in the shootout that is seemingly just your standard shoving down a high because you've got enough adrenaline to do so kind of deal.
The genre is used less as a way to deliver story and more to show, rather than just tell, just how crazy the drugs are in this future.
Do the whole episode like that. Stop pulling your punches
It's unfortunate that everyone's essentially trying to compare it to the nostalgia episode of watchmen because it's not really even trying to be that episode. The drugs aren't the most important part of the episode, or more precisely the exact effects of the drug Caleb is on isn't really the focus of the episode, unraveling some mystery for watcher and characters alike. As they are in the nostalgia episode of watchmen.
It's mostly the after effects of the drug that are in any way important in this series. The drugs, while active, are actually detracting from the character's ability to comprehend their surroundings or properly engage with it on an emotional level. It keeps outright manipulating Caleb's whole cognition and emotional response. While literally everyone else is having their whole life revealed to them Caleb's busy being high as shit and remaining uninformed of what really happened to him. Just kinda stumbling through the collapse of society. Like he has been since the outliers program. All of the important stuff is happening outside Caleb's cognition and the drug trip, to all the characters that aren't high as shit. For the entire episode Caleb's kinda on an almost useless ride, right up until the end of that last act.
The whole point is that genre, and the whole digital pharmcology thing, is kindof terrifying. It's the first descent into just how cyberpunk horror show their reality is (you know outside the sentient robots stuff we're just used to at this point). Genre is an amazing party drug for sure. I'd call it a pretty perfect one myself, but I could also see losing my whole fuckin life to wandering around on it or the other digital pharmcology stuff letting the implant round out my worst parts. Which in a grander look is what happened to Caleb, and seemingly a bunch of the rest of humanity considering just how many of these types of drugs everyone is doing throughout the whole season from the very first scenes on. The crazy digital pharmcology is a thing we're supposed to finally get a slight peek into the effects of and think, "well that's kinda fuckin terrifying as far as how much it can alter your perceptions".
Pretty sure It also gives us a key to why Caleb didn't use the digital pharmcology stuff anymore, and originally had his implants turned off, because his reprogramming was apparently pretty delicate, and introducing something like genre pretty immediately started to break down that reprogramming. It isn't until the genre is wearing off that Caleb starts to remember the stuff that got him brainwashed in the first place.
Paying attention to the whole trip would be kindof a waste of an episode, it's just a stupid drug trip specifically designed to be a rich guy's dumb party. It's a distraction. That's the whole point. The really important stuff is pretty specifically everything that isn't the drug trip. Yeah watching the entirety of Caleb's drug trip probably would have had some fun visuals and musical cues, but it wouldn't have been a useful episode at all because the entire point is that the drugs are a distraction, and that Caleb didn't do those kinds of drugs for a specific reason (because it would break his brain washing).
Also, attemtping to kill Halores was a fucking dumb idea by just about any standard and exists solely to set her up as a villain going forward.
Which, y'know, could be cool, but there was probably a better way to do it that's not coming to me atm.
Would've liked to see a teensy bit more of Rehoboam's world, but I'm also interested in seeing what comes next.