HBO SERIES : WESTWORLD SEASON 3 REVIEW
Westworld breathtaking technical mastery, and pairs it with so many compelling, laudable performances
Is there a show as lavishly produced, beautifully acted, and mindlessly silly as Westworld? A prestige series so enamored by its own aesthetics and intelligence, it buries those traits under a veneer of needlessly overwrought plotting? I mean, if you’ve ever wanted to see a show masturbate to the thought of itself, look no farther than Westworld‘s ridiculously try-hard second season, ten episodes so infatuated with their own assumed profundity, they have no sense of coherency to anyone not taking detailed notes of the proceedings. There’s mysterious, and then there’s the timeline of Westworld season two, the most incoherently self-indulgent narrative exercise in recent memory – one that ends up in a rather intriguing place, appearing to trade in a futuristic cowboy hat for a full embrace of dystopian science fiction, one where human androids exact their vengeance on an unknowing population who spent decades preying on them.
The opening hours of Westworld‘s third season, finds fertile new ground introducing Caleb (Aaron Paul) into the post-Westworld mix, a war veteran-turned-closet mercenary, desperately seeking relief from the overwhelming monotony of his post-military life. His character’s introduction mirrors that of Dolores in the series pilot: a person going through the depressing, oppressive routines of their lives, until a glitch in the system offers a glimpse of reality, a world beyond the suffering of the past and the whims of the one percenters. Given that Caleb is the first half-decent human we’ve met outside the park, it’s an easy avenue to find some humanity in the increasingly unhinged tale of DNA robbery, privacy breaches, and the unnecessary, constant drama of whether any given character is, or isn’t, a robot. Caleb is flesh and blood, a man haunted by his past (which often takes the form of a deceased friend, as his virtual therapist of sorts) – and one kidnapped by the future, coerced by a driven Dolores to help her exact revenge on the ones who locked them in their respective ‘cages’ (a turn of phrase Westworld remains very fond of).
For a show that regularly displays breathtaking technical mastery, and pairs it with so many compelling, laudable performances, there’s an inescapable feeling of emptiness accompanying every shocking death or big plot reveal on Westworld. Whatever moral or philosophic pretext was offered in early episodes, has faded away into a very cynical “robots and humans both suck” central narrative, that makes it hard to find anyone worth investing in, beyond poor Bernard (himself spending the first half of the season making a MacGuffin robot kill switch device.
Yes, it is fun to see Dolores and Maeve exact their revenge on the human world – but beyond those superficial thrills, what does the world of technocratic politics and AI clone armies really have to offer? Westworld‘s third season hasn’t offered a coherent answer – and as it builds towards the violent ends of its violent delights, I’ve never felt less invested in HBO’s signature science fiction series.
Rating :
⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3 out 5
