Westworld HBO series

[Sidewinder]

Anyone watching season 4?

They've really bounced back this season, it has been excellent.

 

[Asta]

Anyone watching season 4?

They've really bounced back this season, it has been excellent.

Yes, I wasn't prepared for it to be so good after the series felt like it lost its way for a bit.

I feel like I need to go back and watch the last season again in the context of the new one.

 

[Sidewinder]

Yes, I wasn't prepared for it to be so good after the series felt like it lost its way for a bit.

I feel like I need to go back and watch the last season again in the context of the new one.

Yes, I think I need to do a rewatch of the entire show at some point. With all the gaps between seasons, it has really been stretched out.

 

[DeadLeaves]

Anyone watching season 4?

They've really bounced back this season, it has been excellent.

I noticed S4 was up, but I didn't make past Ep 4..? last season. I'll have to put it back on the list & get up to the new episodes then. Probably have to start the season again though.

 

[ScoutingForToys]

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 ass, 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.

Oh boy that sounds terrible.
I watched the first season, which was great. Season 2 was a major downgrade but still watchable. I only made it 2 or 3 episodes into season 3. Awful stuff.

 

[Victοr]

Oh boy that sounds terrible.
I watched the first season, which was great. Season 2 was a major downgrade but still watchable. I only made it 2 or 3 episodes into season 3. Awful stuff.

It's a 2 year old post, granted, so I can't remember if it was that bad, or even worse. I actually did finish S3 because of Cassell (well, speedrun it really), but I didn't even tune in for S4. Maybe it got better. Maybe it got worse. I don't know. Maybe someone who's still watching (if anyone is still watching) has a more relevant opinion on it.

 

[R_R_X]

It's a 2 year old post, granted, so I can't remember if it was that bad, or even worse. I actually did finish S3 because of Cassell (well, speedrun it really), but I didn't even tune in for S4. Maybe it got better. Maybe it got worse. I don't know. Maybe someone who's still watching (if anyone is still watching) has a more relevant opinion on it.

As someone who doesn't even remember the majority of season 3 because of how bad it was I'm really enjoying season 4, feels like a return to what made the show great in seasons 1 and 2.

 

[Victοr]

As someone who doesn't even remember the majority of season 3 because of how bad it was I'm really enjoying season 4, feels like a return to what made the show great in seasons 1 and 2.

I read up a bit on it. Apparently there are robot flies now that mind control humans, and the robot overlords keep them around because of reasons, and Jesse "Yo *****" is the MC and he's got a wife and kid, and Tessa Thompson is still at the centre of everything and I literally couldn't care less about any of that, so... Yeah, it's unlikely for me to come back. Thanks for the heads up though.

 

[slynger]

For what started out as an amazing series in season 1 and then sprinkled some various highlights in the second and third, this show has officially lost itself. It had a cool main story with several interesting subplots, but then they couldn't decide what they wanted to do with each plot and to me, it can no longer decide what it truly is.

 

[R_R_X]

I read up a bit on it. Apparently there are robot flies now that mind control humans, and the robot overlords keep them around because of reasons, and Jesse "Yo *****" is the MC and he's got a wife and kid, and Tessa Thompson is still at the centre of everything and I literally couldn't care less about any of that, so... Yeah, it's unlikely for me to come back. Thanks for the heads up though.

There's more to it than that tbh, if you enjoyed the first couple of seasons and didn't care for the third then you should find this new season to be a vast improvement, Aaron paul has actually been pretty good this season and his character finally has some purpose and they're giving everyone moments to shine, the thing I like about this season is that it has that mistery factor that kept me hooked on the earlier seasons but then again I don't think anything that came after season 1 has managed to live up to it, I also miss the actual westworld and western vibes.

 

[Otomofan]

It's evident that they never planned for anything beyond the first season. Not a serious plan, anyway. The first season was beautifully shot and had an insane budget. It told a compelling and fun story with some twists and turns, and was essentially wrapped up by the end.

Within minutes of the season 2 premiere you can tell that had no clue where to take the story and were obviously making it up as it went along. Like LOST before them, they just dug themselves deeper and deeper into a pit.

As soon as it stopped being about tourists and robots at Westworld, it stopped being interesting in any way.

 

[greatlakes6]

It's evident that they never planned for anything beyond the first season. Not a serious plan, anyway. The first season was beautifully shot and had an insane budget. It told a compelling and fun story with some twists and turns, and was essentially wrapped up by the end.

Within minutes of the season 2 premiere you can tell that had no clue where to take the story and were obviously making it up as it went along. Like LOST before them, they just dug themselves deeper and deeper into a pit.

As soon as it stopped being about tourists and robots at Westworld, it stopped being interesting in any way.

Totally agree!

 

[Sweet Rabbit]

Is it bad that I don’t care about coming back to this show?

 

[slynger]

Is it bad that I don’t care about coming back to this show?

nope - couple episodes into this season and I was out. Really wish they could have kept their focus.

 

[Victοr]

There's more to it than that tbh, if you enjoyed the first couple of seasons and didn't care for the third then you should find this new season to be a vast improvement, Aaron paul has actually been pretty good this season and his character finally has some purpose and they're giving everyone moments to shine, the thing I like about this season is that it has that mistery factor that kept me hooked on the earlier seasons but then again I don't think anything that came after season 1 has managed to live up to it, I also miss the actual westworld and western vibes.

Eh, I was never an ultra-huge fan of the show, so even if it's an improvement over S3, I'm not interested to see how it all unfolds. I find all the Hollywood cliches about "muh consciousness" laughable at this point, so I don't appreciate them getting high on their own fumes and trying to go for a "deep" take. I think Nolan did just fine exploring emerging machine consciousness in "Person Of Interest". It got canned before its time, but I didn't see anything in WW that made me think he had more left in the tank. WW is just HBO anime, but worse. To me anyhow.

 

[Johnny Utah]

I fast forwarded through this entire episode.

 

[R_R_X]

Eh, I was never an ultra-huge fan of the show, so even if it's an improvement over S3, I'm not interested to see how it all unfolds. I find all the Hollywood cliches about "muh consciousness" laughable at this point, so I don't appreciate them getting high on their own fumes and trying to go for a "deep" take. I think Nolan did just fine exploring emerging machine consciousness in "Person Of Interest". It got canned before its time, but I didn't see anything in WW that made me think he had more left in the tank. WW is just HBO anime, but worse. To me anyhow.

I only really enjoyed the first season, the second one was too convoluted and messy and the third one was just a mess, that said I dig the sci-fi themes and aspects of the fourth season and that's why I'm enjoying it but I wouldn't say I'm deeply invested in it, it's a show I watch a day or two after the new episode comes out to eat something to and get ready for the day, not something I watch religiously like Better Call Saul or other shows that have finished for a while that I hold in high regards, I guess it comes down to Westworld aligning more with some of my interests at this point than the majority of the recycled garbage out there like all the Disney/streaming crap and being preferabel to put on than some random youtube videos, I mean I also like The Boys but I'm not actually invested in it, I don't think many shows will ever reach the heights of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Black Sails, Hannibal and perhaps the first four seasons of Dexter, at least for me, the only recent shows I've actually been invested aside from Better Call Saul were three miniseries, The Terror, Chernobyl and Midnight Mass.
Oh and Ramin Djwadi's soundtrack is amazing as always, it's kind of sad he seems to score big phenomenon shows that wither into nothing.

 

[Wor-Gar]

I'm on the fence with this season. It seems so obvious -- robots turning humans into robots to create a paradise -- that I don't see where the show has to go to surprise me. They already did their good ol' time gag again (competing storylines that are really happening in two different times). And the Man in Black has gone multiple like The Matrix's Smith. Just seems like a lot of redressed ideas played over... but it's not poetry.

I still think the show missed its mark to have Battle for the Planet of the Robots as Season 2. In today's dual culture brimming on Civil War, what could be better than robots seeking freedom and waging war against their "owners"?

Mind games only work a couple times... War is forever.

 

[Victοr]

I only really enjoyed the first season, the second one was too convoluted and messy and the third one was just a mess, that said I dig the sci-fi themes and aspects of the fourth season and that's why I'm enjoying it but I wouldn't say I'm deeply invested in it, it's a show I watch a day or two after the new episode comes out to eat something to and get ready for the day, not something I watch religiously like Better Call Saul or other shows that have finished for a while that I hold in high regards, I guess it comes down to Westworld aligning more with some of my interests at this point than the majority of the recycled garbage out there like all the Disney/streaming crap and being preferabel to put on than some random youtube videos, I mean I also like The Boys but I'm not actually invested in it, I don't think many shows will ever reach the heights of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Black Sails, Hannibal and perhaps the first four seasons of Dexter, at least for me, the only recent shows I've actually been invested aside from Better Call Saul were three miniseries, The Terror, Chernobyl and Midnight Mass.
Oh and Ramin Djwadi's soundtrack is amazing as always, it's kind of sad he seems to score big phenomenon shows that wither into nothing.

I hear you. I love all those shows you mentioned, bar Dexter which I've never watched, and I think Black Sails is the very definition of an underrated gem. As for current shows, I'm following BCS which is ending anyhow, and Nathan Fielder's new one, "The Rehearsal". Apple's "Black Bird" is a really good miniseries, but it's ending this week. I can't think of anything else. I'm waiting for things like Succession, Servant and Barry to come back but that's more or less it. I definitely think the era of peak prestige tv like when things such as True Detective, Mad Men and whatever else were all running concurrently, is over. There's some okay/good stuff here and there, but those heights are gone.

I'm on the fence with this season. It seems so obvious -- robots turning humans into robots to create a paradise -- that I don't see where the show has to go to surprise me. They already did their good ol' time gag again (competing storylines that are really happening in two different times). And the Man in Black has gone multiple like The Matrix's Smith. Just seems like a lot of redressed ideas played over... but it's not poetry.

I still think the show missed its mark to have Battle for the Planet of the Robots as Season 2. In today's dual culture brimming on Civil War, what could be better than robots seeking freedom and waging war against their "owners"?

Mind games only work a couple times... War is forever.

Just once I'd like to see a movie/show/etc where dumbass writers don't bend over for the machines and stand up for humans. At least there's always DUNE...

 

[Wor-Gar]

Just once I'd like to see a movie/show/etc where dumbass writers don't bend over for the machines and stand up for humans. At least there's always DUNE...

Isn't Terminator still bad machines vs good humans mostly, aside from the traitorous T-800 in T2 that set the stage for all machine-traitors to follow.