The show just devolved to "stronk womyn" and "dude, it's like, smaaaaaaart cuz, like, it's got some cliche monologues and ****". I watched the first two episodes of S3 when they aired, but didn't keep up. I tried watching Ep.3, but it's just... bad. You just have those "epic female badasses" running around punching things, some smug quips, Bernard doing nothing of importance, "nods" like the D&D cameo and... it's just not a good show on any sort of metric. It's not "cerebral", it doesn't have interesting characters and the action's not good enough. I suppose the world's "A E S T H E T I C S" are cool, but it's just a generic "near future" type. And sure, I can hear you; "you haven't actually pointed out why it's not smart". Honestly? I can't remember anything bar vague comments on consciousness that've been made a hundred other times across various media, the standard whispering of "prestige tv" and... that's it, really.
Look, I don't mind [current year] trends (most of them anyhow; there are some that are instant turn-offs) if the show/game/comic/whatever is good. I kept up with Mr. Robot, and would count it in my Top 10, and it was mostly a show about a quasi-Occupy group of lesbians and schizos going up against a gay Chinese crossdresser whose sole motivation was getting revenge for the death of his boyfriend. But it was a good show despite following characters that I normally wouldn't care for. I'm still keeping up with Billions, for example. And yeah, sure, it's pozzed. You've got a Russian mobster respecting "gender pronouns", a hardass capital shark referring to a "genderfluid" pansexual as "they/them" even when she's not in the room, and said genderfluid pansexual also being a supergenius autist, with a diverse team of lesbians and "indepentent women" propping her up. Meanwhile everyone slightly to the right is a caricature (albeit an enjoyable one, though it might just be Clancy Brown), everyone curses and tries to one-up the other in "quirkiness". Yet, the show's still enjoyable in a fast food way. The characters feel real and are entertaining, the struggles are fun, the dialogue is snappy, it's all around a good way to kill an hour.
Compared to that, Westworld is Nolan rehashing his Person Of Interest ideas, mixing it up with whatever robo-themed thing he consumed recently, adding a dash of Deus Ex and dressing it up with "stronk black woman beats up Nazees five times in a single season". It's just not for me. The actors/actresses are bland, the story's been told over and over again, there's just nothing there to be invested in. The MIB was enough even after they offed Hopkins, and Bernard had some potential. Hell, even Dolores could have had a cool hook. But nope, we're following Tessa Thomson's bland ***, Maeve and her party, Jesse's friends from the Future-Hood, Bernard moping around, ERW doing her "best" impression of being a "bad-azz robo-god", some tech pansy, and fedora-tipper Ed Harris. It's just not engaging.
I'm pretty much out of shows to watch, since throughout the last 5 years or so I've finished everything from the older years that I wanted to. I've gone through Sopranos, Mad Men, LOST, Boardwalk Empire, minis like Patrick Melrose and Generation Kill, stuff like Deadwood; I'm done. I've got the UK HoC, The Prisoner, and that's it. As it stands, I'm keeping up with BCS, Billions, Barry, Succession and maybe one or two that escape me (plus I'm waiting for Dark to release the 3rd season so that I can watch it all at once). My point is that I might "keep up" with WW as background noise simply because I need to watch/hear something with lunch and/or dinner to wind down for an hour. But like GoT, it's just killing time and it's a show that'll be forgotten the next week after it concludes. Then again, I could just finish Spartacus. Or just watch some anime; I never did get around to watching FMA03 back in the day... **** it, I'm out, I'll just watch some 00s anime.
