Wednesday, April 15, 2020

What I’m Watching: Westworld


Westworld: Season 3, Episode 5 “Genre” (B+)

I’m loving the very sleek version of the future that this season continues to feature, though it’s absolutely a departure from the more mechanical settings we saw in the first two seasons that served primarily to design worlds built to look like the past. I kept wondering whether we were going to discover that Serac’s brother was someone we had met before, but that’s not at all where this episode was headed. Instead, it was a parallel narrative to the one we know about what was happening with Westworld, which was the gradual collection of data to be able to analyze the human race. Serac was building something to predict the future, and this informative flashback-heavy hour was fascinating. Killing the elder Dempsey was something he knew he was going to do, and he’s just another casualty in the quest for more power on this show. Recognizing Bernard’s purpose just as Ashley arrived to save him, Martin sacrificed himself to weaken Serac at just the right moment when Dolores pressed the button to reveal to everyone what their destinies were as calculated by the machine. Ash being the one to kill Liam was significant because she may not have had a greater purpose, while Caleb is just as lost as any host desperately trying to figure out what’s real. Caleb’s genre trip was quite disorienting, and I don’t know if he has any idea what to make of Dolores stepping in front of him to take a few bullets and save his life. Serac is definitely a formidable foe for Dolores, complete with an extremely fancy watch and plane that, like Westworld, make him seem much more protected than he actually is.

No comments: