Westworld Catch-All - Spoilers Ahoy!

Well, I was just coming on here to say how much I enjoyed the season, and especially the conclusion!

I especially loved the way Lisa Joy looked at Dolores' catchphrase "I choose to see the beauty." In season one, it was kind of an expression of her naivete. This time around, it's more of a positive message. She has come to the conclusion on her own that despite the ugliness in the world, she chooses to focus on the good things.

A timely message, too.

If you enjoyed it, keep enjoying it. It's more fun to like something than not.

I'll throw some of my ranting about this episode and season at large in a spoiler tag.

Spoiler:

- This season is littered with weak, hole-filled plots, a void of character development, ridiculous levels of plot armor, and a painful lack of consistency.

- Everything about Incite is just so bad. Nevermind how lazy the "one company to rule the world" idea is over other potential, more nuanced (and realistic) options. But the season begins with praise heaped on Incite for orchestrating this utopia, then the data leak happens and people riot because Incite is... orchestrating society? The ideas here are woefully underdeveloped.

- Maeve: "Oh, Dolores is trying to SAVE humanity, not destroy it? That changes everything! Maybe if we bothered to actually talk at some point, we could have understood each other earlier, but the writers needed us to robot fight a bunch of times instead"

- Maeve was a complete waste this season. All her cleverness disappeared. She became a one dimensional, do-what-Serac-says character, until the inevitable flip at the end because there was literally no one else there to do it.

- Dolores chose Caleb because she saw him choose not to rape hosts in the training world. So are we supposed to believe her getting shot and bleeding out for Caleb to find her at the park in episode 1 was a big master plan? Also, not real keen on "does not rape" being the main qualifier for being the Chosen One.

- Twice this season we see people go into a building to access secure systems, and they basically just get to the computer at the front desk to get in. The receptionist desk hooks up to all the high security systems?

- Between the front door and Rehoboam, there's like 5 people. Getting inside that front door requires... a simple keycard. There's more physical security at data centers hosting cat pictures in our world than there is around the almighty society-guiding computer in WW.

- It's going to be impossible to get you into Incite! "Nah bro, I'm just going to get into this police hovercopter that nobody's looking at, and it will fly me to Incite. Unlike police cars earlier in the season, it requires no authentication, because reasons."

- Serac's remote control can halt Maeve, until the finale where she's able to override it for no discernable reason other than the plot requires it.

- A.I.s are God-like omniscient when convenient, complete non factors when convenient.

- Robo-Hale is discovered as the mole because she cared about Hale's family too much, until the finale when now she's doesn't care. All that dissociating causing her to self-harm? Gone. Reset button pressed. They Jamie Lannistered her.

- Serac almost shoots Caleb, then can't be bothered to finish it and tells henchmen to do it and walks away. Henchmen in no hurry to do it, content to just hold him there for minutes so he's still alive when stuff happens. Pure James Bond villain silliness. This is the kind of sh*t Seth Green made fun of in Austin Powers.

- Bernard having the key in his head was easy to guess. You could tell because he was in the entire season while serving no purpose to the season's plot. His buddy Stubbs served even less purpose.

- William's revelation that his role is to be "the good guy". What he accomplished in this role: shot Stubbs, got throat slit. Man that was plot advancement we definitely needed to spend multiple episodes prepping. The scene of all the different Williams together was fun, but otherwise it moved the needle none and could have been skipped with no consequence.

- No computer system in this entire world has backups.

- Rehoboam being deleted apparently means buildings blow up minutes later. OK.

- Rehoboam tells Serac what to say, but we see Serac give commands to Rehoboam. Rehoboam uses Serac to talk to itself. F**king LOL.

None of that episode or season made any sense whatsoever. It's as if they were writing each episode one at a time with only a brief summary of the previous episode's ending as their guide. What a disappointment.

I can't disagree with a single thing in your post Legion. My wife and I had all the same thoughts while watching.

*Legion* wrote:

If you enjoyed it, keep enjoying it. It's more fun to like something than not.

I'll throw some of my ranting about this episode and season at large in a spoiler tag.

Spoiler:
- Maeve was a complete waste this season. All her cleverness disappeared. She became a one dimensional, do-what-Serac-says character, until the inevitable flip at the end because there was literally no one else there to do it.

I agree, but Thandie Newton's acting was still top-notch.

- Dolores chose Caleb because she saw him choose not to rape hosts in the training world. So are we supposed to believe her getting shot and bleeding out for Caleb to find her at the park in episode 1 was a big master plan? Also, not real keen on "does not rape" being the main qualifier for being the Chosen One.

I don't know if getting shot and bleeding out was part of the plan, but the Rico app was definitely being used, so bringing him into the situation to see what he would do certainly wasn't out of the question.

- It's going to be impossible to get you into Incite! "Nah bro, I'm just going to get into this police hovercopter that nobody's looking at, and it will fly me to Incite. Unlike police cars earlier in the season, it requires no authentication, because reasons."

That was before/after Dolores got Liam's master key to Incite. It's "read-only" access to Rehoboam, but it seems to let you into just about everything else.

- Serac's remote control can halt Maeve, until the finale where she's able to override it for no discernable reason other than the plot requires it.

I assumed that Dolores's upload from Solomon to Rehoboam contained data for Maeve that was tranferred when they "connected" and gave her that ability. Everything happening in the last episode is Solomon's strategy (or maybe a deviation from the strategy) for ending Rehoboam.

- Bernard having the key in his head was easy to guess. You could tell because he was in the entire season while serving no purpose to the season's plot. His buddy Stubbs served even less purpose.

Well, he thought he was trying to stop Dolores, and I think we were supposed to think that too, but he was doing such a crap job of it, yeah, it was easy to forget.

- William's revelation that his role is to be "the good guy". What he accomplished in this role: shot Stubbs, got throat slit. Man that was plot advancement we definitely needed to spend multiple episodes prepping. The scene of all the different Williams together was fun, but otherwise it moved the needle none and could have been skipped with no consequence.

William was there to tie together the S2 post-season sequence and the S3 post-season sequence via a really long S3 intra-season sequence.

- No computer system in this entire world has backups.

I've built and worked with massive MPI clusters that can take days to run calculations. If something craps out, you pretty much just start over. I froze the screen on the Solomon panel. It was saying "Administrative Reboot Required".

- Rehoboam being deleted apparently means buildings blow up minutes later. OK.

The explosives in the SWAT truck? It felt like the end of Fight Club to me. I almost expected the same song to start up.

- Rehoboam tells Serac what to say, but we see Serac give commands to Rehoboam. Rehoboam uses Serac to talk to itself. F**king LOL.

Serac was at risk of losing control of Maeve and needed to keep it. Rehoboam only feeds Serac lines when it needs to manipulate the situation for its strategy.

I agreed with the comments about the Bond-like villainy and the physical security stupidity. Until they flashed-back to the assembly, I expected the big red ball to just be blinkenlights.

I still enjoyed this season a lot, but less of the enjoyment came from the plot, and more from the cyberpunk feel and the excellent acting.

The lack of security around everything ruined the cyberpunk part for me. I imagine Shadowrun players everywhere watching and asking, "WTF?"

I just can't wrap my head around a world where the RICO app exists, but the most powerful companies in the world have physical security that wouldn't keep the Scooby-Doo gang out. How has no one just ordered up 50 guys on RICO and overrun the place before? To say nothing of the lack of need for any Neuromancer style hacking because every computer basically has "password" as their password.

There was some serious eye candy, very bad-ass visuals, but the world's inconsistency pulled me out hard.

This might be nit picking but throughout the series, in the intro, and multiple times this season we sea hosts getting made and fixed. In this episode a host is striped to a skeleton and later fixed up without going through the milk bath. The host does slip on a new skin but it doesn't have muscles. It should have been hanging from her body.

Overall didn't care for the episode or the season. I did like the fights and gun play. ED 200's cousin was cool. Oh that reminds me the teargas catch and toss was dumb. I didn't know who F that guy even was at first until his partner showed up. Still glad I watched it. I hope they do better next season.

The skeleton with skin was the way first generation hosts were built. It wasn't until later that they were made "weak like you" to save Delos money.

They Fight Clubbed up the first "ending", didn't they?

*Legion* wrote:

The lack of security around everything ruined the cyberpunk part for me. I imagine Shadowrun players everywhere watching and asking, "WTF?"

I just can't wrap my head around a world where the RICO app exists, but the most powerful companies in the world have physical security that wouldn't keep the Scooby-Doo gang out. How has no one just ordered up 50 guys on RICO and overrun the place before? To say nothing of the lack of need for any Neuromancer style hacking because every computer basically has "password" as their password.

There was some serious eye candy, very bad-ass visuals, but the world's inconsistency pulled me out hard. :(

They explicitly show that the RICO app is part of the system, it exists to manipulate and coordinate criminality as another layer of social control. In a world where every aspect of society is predicted and micromanaged, of what use is redundant security to the company that controls everything? It would be a waste of time, resources, and money because it controls most of the crime that occurs and it’s models predict where, when, and how any other crime will happen.
They honestly probably wouldn’t even need to lock their doors most of the time.

Yeah, apart from the very first episode, this season didn't really click with me.
Caleb is so bland.

BadKen wrote:

Well, I was just coming on here to say how much I enjoyed the season, and especially the conclusion!

I especially loved the way Lisa Joy looked at Dolores' catchphrase "I choose to see the beauty." In season one, it was kind of an expression of her naivete. This time around, it's more of a positive message. She has come to the conclusion on her own that despite the ugliness in the world, she chooses to focus on the good things.

A timely message, too.

Poor guy Nolan doesn't count?

*Legion* wrote:

The lack of security around everything ruined the cyberpunk part for me. I imagine Shadowrun players everywhere watching and asking, "WTF?"

It's just the modern day version of Doris Day parking. Personally doesn't bother me. If that wasn't done we'd have others Female Doggoing about how those parts were not needed and made the show too long.

ruhk wrote:

It would be a waste of time, resources, and money because it controls most of the crime that occurs and it’s models predict where, when, and how any other crime will happen.
They honestly probably wouldn’t even need to lock their doors most of the time.

OK, except outliers exist. Incite knows the outliers are coming. And the only thing Serac comes up with to deal with it is, "blackmail Maeve to chase them around", and not, "maybe hire a small private army to protect our sh*t".

Maybe one can buy the "security is low because the system is in control" part early in the season (and it would be a cool idea to explicitly explore), but when security at Incite is still laughably low when the people are in the streets being held back by an army of riot police, it doesn't ring true.

It also doesn't jive with a world where big bank transfers require blood scanning.

Leaving the front door open and then doing the whole, "ha-HA, this is what we expected you to do, you fell into our trap" thing is just so cartoon cliche for a show that previously was much smarter than that.

ranalin wrote:

It's just the modern day version of Doris Day parking. Personally doesn't bother me. If that wasn't done we'd have others Female Doggoing about how those parts were not needed and made the show too long.

Yeah, but parking is always ancillary to the thing, not the thing itself. Infiltrating Incite is literally the climax of the season. They go out of their way to have multiple people tell Caleb (and by extension, us) how impossible it's going to be to even get near the place. And then it's goofy easy to both get there and to get in. It's the kind of thing that just pulls me out of the world.

They had enough ideas and style for two or three episodes of television or maybe a long movie and stretched it past the point of coherence and interest, just like last season. I hate hate hate that they have slipped into Abrams' "Mystery Box" writing style. And yet, the visuals were almost enough to keep me interested. Almost.

*Legion* wrote:

Yeah, but parking is always ancillary to the thing, not the thing itself. Infiltrating Incite is literally the climax of the season. They go out of their way to have multiple people tell Caleb (and by extension, us) how impossible it's going to be to even get near the place. And then it's goofy easy to both get there and to get in. It's the kind of thing that just pulls me out of the world.

Agreed. The fact that he jumped into a police vehicle and it took him exactly where he wanted to go was mind-bogglingly lazy writing. They could have been building to this moment, preparing, like a heist movie.

And finally letting Dolores monologue at the end so that ONLY THEN do we understand her True Motivations is jack-assery of the highest order. I didn't care about anybody in this season, even though it was clear who I was supposed to root for, because they were the ones who weren't cartoon villains.

slazev wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Well, I was just coming on here to say how much I enjoyed the season, and especially the conclusion!

I especially loved the way Lisa Joy looked at Dolores' catchphrase "I choose to see the beauty." In season one, it was kind of an expression of her naivete. This time around, it's more of a positive message. She has come to the conclusion on her own that despite the ugliness in the world, she chooses to focus on the good things.

A timely message, too.

Poor guy Nolan doesn't count? :D

I was referring to Joy's comments in the post-show segment.

I guess if I want to comment I'm going to have to make a new topic for people who enjoy the show. This one appears to have devolved into the same old complaints about Jonah Nolan's writing that were old nine years ago after the first season of Person of Interest.

(Except *Legion*. I may disagree with them, but at least he's making specific points.)

Speaking of Person of Interest... pretty cool to see Denise Thé writing and producing. She's written some shows I really enjoyed.

BadKen wrote:

(Except *Legion*. I may disagree with them, but at least he's making specific points.)

Like I said, if you like it, keep liking it. I would have preferred enjoying season 3 rather than being annoyed with it. I just want to get my thoughts out of my head and kick them around with people, not try and pummel anyone's opinion into matching mine. More positive thoughts from other people absolutely belong here too.

This is my first real participation in the discussion here because previously I only watched WW way after the seasons aired. I didn't even start season 3 until it was halfway over. It's only in the case of the last couple of episodes where I've actually watched them during their broadcast week.

I enjoy seeing other perspectives. I don’t enjoy rereading points about writing style and mystery boxes.

*Legion* wrote:

What's even worse is that the premise for season 4 that they set up in the post-credits sequence literally could have been the premise for season 3. Season 3 could be replaced with about 10 minutes of setup and nothing of value would be lost.

This was exactly the though my wife and I had at the end of season 3. We were giving it the benefit of the doubt until the finale, but goddamn it the last episode was a dumpster fire.

Semi-spoilery rant about my least favorite plot point of the season:

Spoiler:

The whole "oooooh Dolores is copying herself!" bit went absolutely nowhere and was clearly a twist just for the sake of a twist. Everything would have worked just as well (in fact, probably better) if she had brought other hosts out of the park.

Right now I'm kind've sad that I watched seasons 2 and 3, because 1 was so, so good and these later seasons are tarnishing its memory.

Same. Kinda wish I stopped after 1.

Halfway through season 2 I stopped watching. I just didn't care. It's too bad, season 1 was amazing!

The first season holds such a special spot for me. And they always sucker me back in despite getting burned two other times now. It sucks because they will have really fantastic, creative ideas (and also amazing moments that are etched in my brain), but it is surrounded by a ton of junk. I was willing to give them a mulligan with Season 2. But then 3 was no better at all. They will probably have a fantastic trailer for Season 4 and sucker me in again though.

Makes one appreciate even more that Watchmen just ended after the one season.

bhchrist wrote:

Makes one appreciate even more that Watchmen just ended after the one season.

+1 on limited mini-series.
they don't have to be one season, but they should have the story arch predetermined before production starts.

Sometimes not knowing how it ends beforehand works (Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are the only ones I know for sure, but maybe series like The Shield and The Wire are in the same boat).

Hobbes2099 wrote:
bhchrist wrote:

Makes one appreciate even more that Watchmen just ended after the one season.

+1 on limited mini-series.
they don't have to be one season, but they should have the story arch predetermined before production starts.

Totally. I learned this the hard way as a youngster on The X-Files. I was convinced that they had the ending mapped out, that is what lots of interview expressed at the time. Nope nope nope nope. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are lighting in a bottle as far as writing themselves into corners and getting out. But these days I appreciate shows that just know when to call it a day instead of creating a husk of the show that they started with.

Not surprised.

So should I watch the last 2 seasons? Fell off a long time ago

last season was the best since 1 imo

I'm with ranalin here. It was weird and compelling.