S03.E05: Genre

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

Just say no.

Airing Sunday, April 12, 2020.

 

[paigow]

ETA: Redundant

Edited April 13, 2020 by paigow

[patty1h]

After tonight's episode, this show has turned into "Dolores, Atomic Blond Terminator", directed by Michael Bay. Shoot shoot explode rocket launcher car chase cool blond heroine nerdy sidekick spy stuff futuristic technology foreign bad guy. I almost lost my dinner when they started playing "Love Story" and focused on Aaron Paul's character being enthralled with Dolores the bad ass. Next episodes with be a Maeve/Dolores cat and mouse game. The only slight suspense will be to see who survives. Bernard is just a background figure to me at this point.

I don't even try to pay attention when they try to explain the deal with that big ball. All of this hologram shit is giving me a headache, trying to figure out who is where and who is who. So Frenchy didn't get blown up by Scottish guy and Dolores and Frenchy didn't meet up in an airplane hanger. Oh, please.  And the music is getting obtrusive.

Edited April 13, 2020 by patty1h
It's Aaron Paul, not Adrian Paul

[AimingforYoko]

I guess it's not plagiarism if you crib from yourself, but man, Rehoboam's origin story made me think of Finch, Ingram and the Machine.

So Bernard is what, the failsafe?

[ShadowHunter]

I am glad we only have 3 episodes left. The real problem with this season is that I don't care. Maeve aside I don't care about the characters.

I hope Caleb turns on Delores. 

 

[Growsonwalls]

So that genre drug that Caleb was on ... it's pretty cool.

Otherwise the episode was a great example of effects without causes. All this stuff was happening constantly but we didn't learn anything about anyone other than Caleb is a good person. Which we already knew. 

Serac is just not as compelling of an Evil Genius as Ford. 

[AimingforYoko]

4 minutes ago, Growsonwalls said:

So that genre drug that Caleb was on ... it's pretty cool.

As far as drugs go, I've always been pretty square. But I'm also of the opinion that life would be way cooler with a soundtrack, sooo....

[mac123x]

Tonight on ForeheadWorld... a big mess of an episode.

Other than to allow the director to do some (allegedly) cool camera work, what was the point of having Caleb on drugs?  Oh, they got to play some genre-themed music I guess.  I recognized Flight of the Valkyries, Theme from Love Story, and Major Tom.  

Serac's narrating voice over was clumsy exposition.  Since he was dictating it to Rehoboam, who has all the information already, it was effectively As You Know exposition.  Lazy writing.  If they wanted to do flashbacks filling in Serac's character and motivation, they could have just done flashback scenes containing dialog between him and his brother, etc., and trust the audience is smart enough to keep up.  Maybe the actor playing the brother wasn't up to the task.

Speaking of actors, was that Serac's current actor de-aged, or did they get a look-alike to play him in the younger flashbacks?

I didn't understand Liam's death scene, interspersed with Caleb's PTSD.  "Who do you think I am?"  What?  Did Liam call him by a different name, or call him daddy or something?

21 minutes ago, patty1h said:

I almost lost my dinner when they started playing "Love Story" and focused on Adrian Paul's character being enthralled with Dolores the bad ass.

Yeah, I believe I said aloud "oh come on".  

21 minutes ago, patty1h said:

Shoot shoot explode rocket launcher car chase cool blond heroine nerdy sidekick spy stuff futuristic technology foreign bad guy.

And they were all from the Stormtrooper school of marksmanship.  Maybe 20 yards away spraying multiple machine guns at three stationary targets, and no one got hit.  Also, if the rocket launcher has homing capabilities, why did Caleb need to stand up (exposed to ineffectual gunfire) to aim the thing?  Point straight up and fire it from the comfort of the RideShare cabin.

 

Seriously though, as soon as I saw Dempsey Sr.'s enormous forehead, I couldn't stop focusing on it, like one of those pictures whose eyes follow you no matter what angle you're looking at it.

Edited April 13, 2020 by mac123x

[FemmyV]

I was happy with this episode. It stayed fairly linear, or at least easily trackable time-wise, and loved the music. Bowie and more Bowie? Yes, please.

Granted, things were way too easy for team Dolores in this episode, so I'm guessing next week will bring some huge setbacks (hi Maeve!).

Liam's end was surprisingly easy. I was half-expecting to see him get tied to a pier post.

 

30 minutes ago, patty1h said:

I almost lost my dinner when they started playing "Love Story" and focused on Aaron Paul's character being enthralled with Dolores the bad ass.

I thought that was comic relief and loved it.

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by FemmyV

[blueroses]

That was really tedious. But I want to see more of Keith Mars. 

[sugarbaker design]

14 minutes ago, mac123x said:

Oh, they got to play some genre-themed music I guess.  I recognized Flight of the Valkyries, Theme from Love Story, and Major Tom.  

Speaking of actors, was that Serac's current actor de-aged, or did they get a look-alike to play him in the younger flashbacks?

And The Shining!

The casting for Serac was amazing, he looked just like Vincent Cassel.  And those eyes.

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by sugarbaker design

[paigow]

Looks like they did a Treadstone test on Caleb..Kill the hooded man that ended up being his father...Or that was Genre?

[Quilt Fairy]

My God what a clusterfuck this season is.

 

[paigow]

43 minutes ago, AimingforYoko said:

So Bernard is what, the failsafe?

Dolores is Iron Man, making the sacrifice play to kill Thanos...Bernard is Captain America. 

Serac has no use for Maeve anymore since Dolores initiated The Purge

Edited April 13, 2020 by paigow

[brandygirl]

Caleb had a brief flash of the actor Enrico Colatoni while he was asking a dying Liam who he ( Caleb ) really is. As a Person of Interest fan I found this so intriguing. Could Caleb actually by this older man ?

[scrb]

Big giant orb has a file on everyone.

But why would everyone believe the mathematic projections of their future are accurate?

Everyone in the world had sad or tragic endings?  Sounds like the roles or scripts that the hosts had in WW.

Is releasing all that information going to improve their lives?  No it apparently made them angry and the result was vandalism, maybe a lot of domestic violence?

Did Dolores do that to sow chaos or for the benefit of the people?

 

They built the big giant orb in response to the world disintegrating, descending into chaos.  But how does the most super computer ever prevent wars and other destructive forces which caused the Serac brothers to build it?

The orb identified every destructive/dangerous individuals in the world and they locked those people up or sent them into wars to be cannon fodder?

That strategy doesn’t seem like it would scale unless the population is drastically a fraction of what it is now.  In our world, larger nations like the US can’t contact-trace infected individuals and the people they came in contact with during a viral pandemic.

So computing power is going to be able to track every person in the world and plot out their life paths?  

Yeah Nolan and Joy wants to make a grand statement about us giving away our privacy to make Big Brother a reality.  Or they just wrote some muddled plot which doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

[formerlyfreedom]

 

1 hour ago, blueroses said:

But I want to see more of Keith Mars. 

Me too!!!!

 

[thuganomics85]

Definitely felt like a mixture of Person of Interest (that Nolan connection!) and Mr. Robot, which had its moments, but I wasn't wild about.  I think it hurts that despite Vincent Cassel's talents, Serac really isn't wowing me as a antagonist, and I'm only interested in him whenever Maeve is drawn into his plotting.  Well, I did enjoy his henchwoman since it was Pom Klementieff, but then they had to go ahead and kill her tonight.  Boo!

But it looks like Dolores plan was to expose the machines calculations and predictions to the entire world, and watching society losing it once they find out that is predicted to be in store for them.  Kind of felt rush, but I do like the idea that the humans might be their own downfall, because that actually would happen, probably.  Really, a robot revolution in real life would be easy as hell at this point!

Sounds like Dolores actually does have some kind of plan for Bernard after-all?  Definitely not opposed to Jeffery Wright still being here, but I hope he factors in more soon.

Fare the well, Liam!

That drug Caleb was on was certainly something!  Curious to see where all of these flashbacks are heading: especially since it will apparently involve Enrico Colantoni!

Over halfway through the season, and it really has been a cakewalk for Dolores so far.  I wonder if she's going to keep dominating, or if something or someone will be a challenge for her finally.  Hopefully, a potential face-off with Maeve might spice things up!

[Growsonwalls]

Uh ... I don't think this is the case because Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton follow each other on IG and leave nice comments under each others' posts, but if I didn't know that I'd think that the lack of Dolores/Maeve scenes was a Julianna Marguiles/Archie Panjabi situation. 

I really want to see the two women square off in an epic Host vs. Host battle, but it hasn't happened.

Edited April 13, 2020 by Growsonwalls

[LoveLeigh]

What a hot mess. This show sure has lost it's way. Where are the hosts in the theme parks? They could have created so many interesting parks and so many interesting stories inside those parks so I am confused why they would be so invested in this "revenge" in some weird high tech world.

What happened to Nazi world? Will we see Vietnam world? What a disappointment. 

[mac123x]

2 hours ago, patty1h said:

I almost lost my dinner when they started playing "Love Story"

I'm probably overthinking this, but should we draw any conclusions from their choice for a "romance" song?  Not to spoil a 50 year old movie, but Love Story doesn't have a happy ending.  Calling it now, Dolores dies of Ali MacGraw's Disease.

[paigow]

51 minutes ago, scrb said:

They built the big giant orb in response to the world disintegrating, descending into chaos.  But how does the most super computer ever prevent wars and other destructive forces which caused the Serac brothers to build it?

Serac does not want to eliminate wars... he needs wars to plausibly eliminate outliers and other expendables.. 

[mac123x]

1 hour ago, mac123x said:

I didn't understand Liam's death scene, interspersed with Caleb's PTSD.  "Who do you think I am?"  What?  Did Liam call him by a different name, or call him daddy or something?

Oh oh, I just figured this one out -- Liam must have said "you have to save Martha!"

[paigow]

3 minutes ago, DakotaLavender said:

What happened to Nazi world?

It was a simulation built by Serac..Ford never created one in the real world...

[MrWhyt]

2 hours ago, patty1h said:

So Frenchy didn't get blown up by Scottish guy and Dolores and Frenchy didn't meet up in an airplane hanger.

no, they were communicating via the augmented reality system we've seen people use since the first episode of the season. It's a future version of face time.

[MVFrostsMyPie]

8 minutes ago, MrWhyt said:

no, they were communicating via the augmented reality system we've seen people use since the first episode of the season. It's a future version of face time.

Which I hope we don't actually use in the future because that means I'd have to wear something besides sweatpants and PJs on the bottom half when I do remote work. 

[paigow]

1 hour ago, scrb said:

Yeah Nolan and Joy wants to make a grand statement about us giving away our privacy to make Big Brother a reality.

Dr. Zola built an algorithm for HYDRA that does the same thing as Serac!!!! In a cave..With a box of scraps...

[MrWhyt]

5 minutes ago, MVFrostsMyPie said:

Which I hope we don't actually use in the future because that means I'd have to wear something besides sweatpants and PJs on the bottom half when I do remote work. 

pants are relics of the before times! the new world has freed us from their shackles!

[mac123x]

20 minutes ago, MVFrostsMyPie said:

Which I hope we don't actually use in the future because that means I'd have to wear something besides sweatpants and PJs on the bottom half when I do remote work. 

Hopefully it'd be like the clothing store that Dolores and Caleb went to, where you could put on a holographic suit over your sweats.

[RealReality]

3 hours ago, mac123x said:

Tonight on ForeheadWorld... a big mess of an episode.

Other than to allow the director to do some (allegedly) cool camera work, what was the point of having Caleb on drugs?  Oh, they got to play some genre-themed music I guess.  I recognized Flight of the Valkyries, Theme from Love Story, and Major Tom.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree the whole thing seems gratuitous and gimmicky.  

I think this show is gorgeous and I like the story and this season, I can understand a lot more which is nice.  I like the overarching theme.  

However.  this show should either end this season or next season.  First season, we met everyone in Westworld.  Second season, the struggle and some explanation of the game and the man in Black.  Third season, Delores escapes and fucks with humanity.  Robots. It just feels like this revolution is a perfect place to end the show. 

[Cthulhudrew]

Two things:

1) I feel like the "genre" drug was a pretty cheap ploy to insert some "dramatic" music to try and ratchet up the action sequences. Way too meta.

2) There were a lot of other "dramatic" moments that landed really flat for me, because I just don't feel like they actually put the time into developing this AI-Controlled-Human-Destiny plot.

20 hours ago, blueroses said:

That was really tedious. But I want to see more of Keith Mars. 

I think that was Carl Elias. 😋

[mrspidey]

6 hours ago, scrb said:

Big giant orb has a file on everyone.

But why would everyone believe the mathematic projections of their future are accurate?

Because the show has gone out of its way to show us how dependent these people are on algorithms. So if that Algorithm tells you, you're likely to commit suicide in X years, you believe it. 

You believe in the weather forecast, don't you?

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Inside the episode:

 

[paigow]

3 hours ago, mrspidey said:

You believe in the weather forecast, don't you?

Except Serac actually controls the weather...he can remove the President of Not!Brazil at any time 

[clack]

This season is standard science fiction of the ontological puzzle sub-genre, a la Philip K. Dick.

Is Caleb human, or has his consciousness been downloaded into a host? And whose consciousness, exactly? Has William been downloaded? What is Bernard's function? What is Dolores up to, really? Are there any surprises still to be revealed about the nature of Serac's AI? Etc.

The Genre drug conceit was kinda cool, but more than a little forced. Come to think of it, "kinda cool, but more than a little forced" characterizes this season as a whole.

[AimingforYoko]

Anybody have any thoughts on why the Serac brothers named their various iterations of the machine after Jewish kings?

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Rehoboam collecting data on everyone and calculating probabilities was reminding me of the machine on Person of Interest and then Enrico Colantoni showed up!

[skotnikov]

1 hour ago, clack said:

This season is standard science fiction of the ontological puzzle sub-genre, a la Philip K. Dick.

Ha ha I just wanted to write exactly the same, the first 2 seasons were still kinda Crichton, now it's Ph. K. Dick all the way.  

And since the next episode's promo  was "only 3 episodes left" I wonder wether it'll be the final season. Because honestly it's hard to imagine how this show can continue after this mess.  

Edited April 13, 2020 by skotnikov

[arachne]

It didn't ring true to me that Serac -- who has so much sophisticated tech stuff and hench-people at his disposal -- would kill off Daddy Dempsey in such a crude manner. 

Other than that, I'm just trying to ride with the whole thing. This week's show had its problems (see other posters) but IMO this season is not the hot mess that S2 was. 

[skotnikov]

34 minutes ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Rehoboam collecting data on everyone and calculating probabilities was reminding me of the machine on Person of Interest and then Enrico Colantoni showed up!

A bit of Minority Report also. 

[paigow]

11 minutes ago, arachne said:

It didn't ring true to me that Serac -- who has so much sophisticated tech stuff and hench-people at his disposal -- would kill off Daddy Dempsey in such a crude manner.

Serac has a bunch of incompetent henchmen that gets smaller every day....so if you want something done right....

[kokapetl]

So WestWorld is basically a spin-off of it’s own self. It was about theme park androids becoming self aware. Now it’s all about a Google-Facebook data mining supercomputer that predicts the future and also controls everyone’s lives. 

Brought to you by the Singapore Tourism Board. 
 

Edited April 13, 2020 by kokapetl

[paigow]

On 4/13/2020 at 11:16 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Rehoboam collecting data on everyone and calculating probabilities was reminding me of the machine on Person of Interest and then Enrico Colantoni showed up!

Compelling evidence that all writers are Lee Sizemore - environmentally friendly plot recyclers..

Edited April 16, 2020 by paigow

[kokapetl]

1 hour ago, AimingforYoko said:

Anybody have any thoughts on why the Serac brothers named their various iterations of the machine after Jewish kings?

Because the writers think it sounds cool. 

[paigow]

17 minutes ago, kokapetl said:

Because the writers think it sounds cool. 

Kings of England / France / Spain would require number with a name to be meaningful....

[Athena]

I missed Maeve. I kept hoping Serac had made her a new body and she'd reappear to inject some sort of excitement into this boring episode.

I haven't liked Dolores much since Season 1 and this new journey of hers is Wyatt 2.0 but in a better setting and with Aaron Paul instead. I just found everything in her subplot so tedious. To be honest, I started rooting for Serac this episode if only to make Dolores less smug. I have also liked Vincent Cassle's work for many years. His character is bad but at least it's more novel than the Dolores kind. 

[Head-Full-Of-Thi]

13 hours ago, mac123x said:

Oh oh, I just figured this one out -- Liam must have said "you have to save Martha!"

If you really didn't hear, he said something like "Get away from me, I know who you are. You caused all of this!" which is... Intriguing to say the least!

[Chris24601]

“You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can't justify your existence, if you're not pulling your weight in the social boat, if you're not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can't be of very much use to yourself.”

-George Bernard Shaw

Welcome to the Hell on Earth philosophy of the Fabian Socialists that ultimately led to eugenics, forced sterilizations and gas chambers in the mid-20th Century (and not just in Germany... look up the forced sterilizations done in the United States in the early 20th Century).

The roots of this same philosophy resulted in movements like the Weather Underground which estimated they’d have to execute 20-25% of the U.S. to bring about a communist utopia for the remaining 75-80%.

Serac is just the latest iteration of the “Utopia Justifies the Means” philosophy that’s murdered more people in a century than every religious war in history combined.

The only difference is he’s letting his machine do the culling through selective wars and setting up conditions to drive the “outliers” to suicide/overdose/death by violent crime.

Most monstrous in the data releases we saw was the machine’s algorithms arranging for a young child to drug overdose as a teenager simply to remove someone it felt wouldn’t be a productive enough adult.

Makes you wonder a bit about Logan’s end. Did the system decide he wasn’t worth helping because William’s inheriting Delos would better for the algorithm?

I get that many people don’t particularly like Dolores, but if the primary thrust of her plan was what we saw... revealing to the masses what the system had REALLY charted for their lives and letting the chips fall where they may... I can’t really argue with her actions so far.

My hunch is that, with Dolores taking Delos private, her plan is ultimately to pull something of a Noah’s arc. Delos owns an isolated island with facilities to build new Hosts and she’s used the criminal underworld to gather up the materials needed for it under the radar.

Set off the flood by revealing the truth then retreating to Westworld to wait out the chaos is not only strategically sound; it also gives Dolores a distinct moral high ground relative to Serac as she’s not actively murdering people and the winners of Serac’s algorithm lottery pretty much deserve to be kicked in the teeth by those the system has designated as losers.

One final point about where the series is going... I’ve seen several remarks about how the show has deviated by leaving the park; but part of the series upon which this one is based centered on the robots who escaped the park secretly trying to gain control of the human world. So really this is truer to the series than seeing humans visit various parks is (that was just the set up of the first film).

[tennisgurl]

For an episode with so much Delores, this was decent enough, in that it was pretty understandable and seems to be moving towards some kind of actual point beyond vague philosophy about choice and data mining and dehumanization and stuff while we all sit around waiting for the next twist. The ideas, especially with the giant super computer that predicts how people act and using it to control the world for the Greater Good, while not exactly anything new (yeah, I saw Person of Interest too guys) is at least a consistent theme, unlike last season where most of the shows theme seemed to be "hacking people up is cool!" and I did enjoy the at times over the top musical and directorial choices. Especially while Caleb was tripping and was starring at Delores all wide eyed, it was kind of hilarious in ways that this show so rarely is, and I am at least mostly sure it was on purpose. Loved the Bowie music, and some of the more stylistic choices worked alright for me in creating a mood. Of course, there really arent many people left around that I really like or root for (really just Maeve, Bernard, and Caleb more or less) or even just find interesting, so its kind of hard for me to get enraged, even when I can see the show is doing things right from a technical perspective. 

I miss the parks, which were basically the whole point of the show, but at least they are using the robot uprising stuff to tie into the "evil rich people control the poor people/undesirables" stuff to make it seem like this season isn't a total reboot. Delores leaves the park, where she is forced to follow a scripted existence made by powerful people who control her fate that leaves her abused and thrown away, only to find that the human world is much the same, with abused people being forced to follow a pre-written script against their will until they are thrown away. Everyone is just following the same crappy scripts the robots were. 

That all being said, this just isn't all that exciting, and its honestly not as deep as it thinks it is. Leaving the parks, while understandable, has really robbed the show of what made it special, what made it stand out. Most of my favorite things about this show, like the contrast between the old world stuff and the futuristic stuff, dealing with slavery and dehumanization, the large cast of characters all interacting, getting lost in a fantasy, the metafictional stuff with the way people treat their own creations and how stories are written and for what purpose, none of that is really here anymore. While season two certainly had its moments, it was also pretty messy and kind of lost what its purpose was, and this season seems to be on track to do the same, but without the gimmicks that made it stay at least somewhat interesting. 

I did like the bit where they were talking about the little spaces where people can find autonomy and where the machine cant predict how people will act, and they go against what the system and the data said about them and show change and unpredictability. It reminded me of the second episode this season where Meave realized that she was in a simulation because the Lee they created wasn't the Lee that she knew, because the algorithm assumed he helped her for selfish reasons, as the algorithm didn't take into account his ability to grow as a person and do something because it was the right thing to do.  

The Genre drug actually seems pretty cool.

Edited April 13, 2020 by tennisgurl

[Head-Full-Of-Thi]

* Ok so first of all I would like to give a proper farewell to the true BAMF Liam Dempsey Jr. He proved this episode he's more than a spoiled rich kid. He's very intelligent, he knows how Rehoboam works and he fully supports it and believes it helps humanity. And even when he went out, instead of begging for his life he used his last seconds to throw one last shade at all of his kidnappers.

It's a shame that Serac didn't let him get more involved with Rehoboam. In the scene with him as a kid you could see the fascination in his eyes. In a way his story is similar to Caleb's, he has the capability and desire to do something great but Serac and Rehoboam boxed him into being nothing more than the pretty face of Insight. Kinda tragic.

* Kodus to anyone who guessed there's more to Caleb. I really can't wait to read theories from people who will watch all those half second clips we got there and try to piece out the truth.

* Also kodus to anyone who called eugenics. Tbh Serac seems to me as a bit of a hypocrite there. He says the final straw that made him lock up his brother was that he planned to kill Dempsey, but then later he killed him himself. Maybe the reason that the brother's behaviour was unpredicted was because he reached the right conclusion before Serac or even the supercomputer did? And could it be that concern for the human race wasn't the only reason Serac wanted to remove him from the equation? After all he was shown to be smarter than him and the true brain behind the invention.

* The Genre drug thing was... I never thought Westworld would do something this cringy. We were this close to get a musical episode (which if we're already going to this territory than I'm kinda upset we didn't).

The one good thing about it was Amused Guy's comment about how the fifth genre is a bitch, and I was on edge during the entire episode until it was revealed that it's just reality...

* Not sure about how neatly things were solved this episode... It's only the 5th ep and Dolores already has a huge win. It makes me think it might be the simulation.

* The thing I'm most excited about is the trailer for next episode. It seems like all the seemingly unrelated things that happened this season are finally coming together and I can't wait to see how!