S04.E08: Que Será, Será

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

Like what I’ve done with the place?

Season four finale, airing Sunday, August 14, 2022.

[RachelKM]

What the fuck was that? That isn't rhetorical. I have no idea what I just watched. But in the end it felt like this season was nearly 8 hours of prologue for a show I also don't want to watch.

Seriously? 3 decades of show time and 8 hours of ours to get Delores to the Sublime... which she had in her control last season? I've held my fire because 1) I don't enjoy being negative and 2) I was willing to let it play out... well, it played out.  Fuuuuuck that was boring and dumb. 

Edited August 15, 2022 by RachelKM
Because I forgot the 7 years in between.

[Quilt Fairy]

8 minutes ago, RachelKM said:

Fuuuuuck that was boring and dumb. 

Agreed. 

Well, we'll always have Season 1. 

[Msample]

That sure felt like a series finale.

[mjc570]

20 minutes ago, Msample said:

That sure felt like a series finale.

if only.

[aghst]

I guess it sets up the final season — “one last loop around the bend.”  Get it?

Bernard’s gambit was to convince Hale to stop host William from destroying everything including the Sublime and giving Christina/Dolores “one final test” to see if humans and hosts deserved to survive or be extinguished.

So season 5 would be running the WW park again to see if they treat each other better, not rape and kill each other?

Would be circular!

It’s as if they’re gods, setting up a game to see if the species deserves to survive, which is kind of an offensive notion.

Hale is locked out of the system so she can’t stop the tones making everyone homicidal.  How about just destroying the tower and not trying to control the humans any more?

Well then there would be no reason to bring back the series, assuming WBD renews it.

If the show comes back they will find a way to bring back the most popular characters, assuming the whole cast wants to return.  After all, Dolores will rebuild WW as a simulation and it doesn’t matter which hosts were killed.  Even the pearls which were crushed to dust, there are copies somewhere.

OTOH if they feature just Dolores, Teddy, Frankie in S5, then they’d really be messing up, finishing the series without other more popular characters.

[BlackberryJam]

Bummer about Stubbs. I’m fine with S5 if Caleb is gone forever.

Bring back Hector and Armistice! Maeve and Angela! 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

Okay, I've been fairly positive about this season, and a lot of criticisms so far have been off the mark, but this episode has a lot to legitimately criticize.

First of all, the idea that the surviving humans are all doomed. The humans who were affected by the tone should be 99% wiped out by each other shortly afterward, and those stragglers that remain won't be numerous or organized enough to pose that kind of threat to communities of outliers or Hosts. And by the way, contrary to what Halores and Clementine said, human outliers and surviving Hosts totally would choose to cooperate with each other in a situation like this; human beings have made strange bedfellows before in a war or a crisis and we've seen mixed groups gather around Maeve in this very show.

Then, simulations of what humans are like based on Dolores's memories still won't actually be humans, so their passing or failing a test won't prove anything. At best, she'll have created a new and better form of life that passes the test where real humans didn't pass the real history/might not have passed this new test, which while nice in it's own way, doesn't do humanity any good. And at worst, she'll have created a version that doesn't pass the test because her impression of humanity was too cynical.

Head Teddy saying that the humans are not like Hosts and will never change is abrupt and uncalled for, given that the major problems this season (the tyrannical system and the murder spree tone) were both the doing of Hosts, not humans. The humans who actually controlled or visited Westworld and did bad things are all long dead at this point and were always just a particular collection of humans. And Clementine, a Host not a human, was apparently unable to overcome whatever changes Halores had made to her programming after she was captured, unless we're supposed to believe that she wanted all along to be a psycho instead of a nice girl who was Maeve's friend.

But the test is redundant because Dolores already came to the conclusion that human beings could change and were worth saving in Season 3 based on her interactions with Caleb. So what Teddy is saying is something she already proved wasn't true a season ago.

Resurrecting Maeve had no point. All she did other than saving Frankie from Host Jay (which could have been by another character) was tussle with Halores in a short battle that she lost and which was unnecessary because Host William was the real threat - which again, as I said in last episode's thread, makes it foolish for Bernard not to have focused on taking William out before he could set off the tone; there is no reason given for why that couldn't have been prevented and why there was no scenario where the world didn't end, we're just supposed to take his word for it despite the solution seeming obvious. At no point did Maeve serve as a weapon like Bernard claimed.

The fact that there was no usual post-credits scene doesn't bode well for the creators' hopes of a renewal.

The post-credits scene from Season 2 remains anomalous, because there's no time interval or reason that Halores would have been putting Host William through a fidelity test since he was never meant to be an exact copy, and it was implied to be taking place in what used to be where the parks were located (if "the system has been gone a long time", it must have been in that place at one point).

Edited August 15, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[enchantingmonkey]

This show is so weird how it can feel rooted in the mysteries of human nature, and then turn into tedious fight scenes and sentimental nonsense.  I was so bored with this finale that I FF to the end to see if there was a big reveal that made me want to go back and watch it all, and there wasn't.  But I went back and watched it all, anyways.  

Why not just float off with Frankie into the sunset, Caleb?  Not a big fan of these two characters but I thought it would have been more powerful to have him go off with her knowing he would die soon, rather than the teary Goodbye Scene on the dock.  

For as much as I love Clementine, I had no idea why she suddenly gave a damn about Frankie, Caleb and Stubbs.  It seemed like they just wanted to give Angela Sarafyan something Bad-Ass to do.  

I get how every iteration of William is just going to want to burn the world to the ground but his story in this finale wasn't compelling in any way for me.

Oddly, as one who mostly dislikes everything Tessa Thompson has done in previous seasons, I kinda enjoyed her as a Mustache-Twirling villain this season, and I felt the teeniest bit of sympathy for her as she crushed her pearl there in her mechanical form.

Wasn't Bernard/Arnold's encouragement of Dolores to "remember" the whole reason we got into all of this trouble in the first place?  That's all I could think about when Dolores was saying something about remembering.  Another loop, indeed.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

10 minutes ago, enchantingmonkey said:

Why not just float off with Frankie into the sunset, Caleb?  Not a big fan of these two characters but I thought it would have been more powerful to have him go off with her knowing he would die soon, rather than the teary Goodbye Scene on the dock. 

That part makes perfect sense. Better for your child not to have to see you flounder and die. It sucks to lose Caleb, though. I think they should have eventually gotten around the problem with making perfect Host copies of humans. It's only a problem for plot reasons anyway, there's no actual science that dictates it wouldn't work, and he was always an outlier.

10 minutes ago, enchantingmonkey said:

For as much as I love Clementine, I had no idea why she suddenly gave a damn about Frankie, Caleb and Stubbs.  It seemed like they just wanted to give Angela Sarafyan something Bad-Ass to do. 

She wanted to know where the outlier community they were fleeing to was. The real question is how she knew the three of them would be in that store. And what on earth she'd do with herself and what would be "out there for [her]" hiding out there alone for the rest of time (assuming that her not planning on cohabitating means she'd kill them all and live in the ruins).

Edited August 15, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[enchantingmonkey]

1 minute ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

That part makes perfect sense. Better for your child not to have to see you flounder and die

Sure, but I have family members who were with other family members as they breathed their last breath, and found it to be a profound experience.  So I could argue that he cheated her out of an opportunity to be with him for his final moments.  

7 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

She wanted to know where the outlier community they were fleeing to was.

But why?  She was basically a zombie for Hale most of the season.  I can't remember the Show demonstrating that she had motivations of her own, and that she was working to untether herself from Hale's influence.  The one scene that does stand out was Clementine explaining that she preferred to stay away from the outliers.  Maybe she was lying to Hale but it didn't feel like that in the moment.  

[PurpleTentacle]

2 hours ago, RachelKM said:

What the fuck was that?

My post was going to be "Ummm what?!" but I think you put it perfectly.

Putting aside how dumb and up its own ass this season was: Why is the sublime now Westworld? Why does Dolores have to play a game there? I thought the sublime was pretty nice? Now all of a sudden it isn't because William said so? And she has to put the humans she remembers through a final test? Why? She has learned all about humanity she could, countless times before. Is it so the showrunners can milk this for one more season, even though the udder was already dry after season 1? Nah, couldn't be.

Why would physical humans be unable to recover? Not enough genetic diversity left? Were there really so few outliers? We made it through genetic bottlenecks with only a few hundred individuals left in our evolution before.

Also "the next world" will only be there for a time. Specifically the time that dam keeps producing power without anybody servicing the turbines. Which won't be that long. I guess at least time moves faster in the sublime, but that still won't be that many years. Certainly not the about one billion years earth still has left and it's not like they could ever move to a new planet, like physical humans might. Also will time still move faster once you add millions or billions of humans? That's going to take a lot of processing power and the more processing power it takes, the slower the simulation will run. That all seems rather depressing of a prospect, even if Dolores' final game plays out well.

Other than that it really bugged me how easily pearls were destroyed this season. Before they were pretty much indestructable in their white plastic shells. Did they just not bother to pearls in the protective shells anymore? Sure seemed that way with William's and Hale's pearl at the end there. But why? That's just dumb.

Edited August 15, 2022 by PurpleTentacle

[nilyank]

So Delores carries Teddy everywhere with her, but she doesn't listen to him whe he asks her to go find him in the Sublime. She rather play another game and go through another loop. 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

27 minutes ago, enchantingmonkey said:

Sure, but I have family members who were with other family members as they breathed their last breath, and found it to be a profound experience.  So I could argue that he cheated her out of an opportunity to be with him for his final moments. 

That's one interpretation. But he wanted to keep his dignity and say goodbye before that happened, and she understood that, which fits both their character types. It's not a plot hole, it's who they are. If you'd choose to do things differently, that's because you're not them, not a weakness in the writing on that point.

26 minutes ago, PurpleTentacle said:

Putting aside how dumb and up its own ass this season was: Why is the sublime now Westworld?

Dolores is running a simulation based on Westworld in her own personal world of the Sublime. The other Hosts in there still have their own worlds. There's no limit to how many environments can exist in different corners of the Sublime.

27 minutes ago, enchantingmonkey said:

But why?  She was basically a zombie for Hale most of the season.  I can't remember the Show demonstrating that she had motivations of her own, and that she was working to untether herself from Hale's influence. 

That's another question, and a good one. What exactly what going on Clementine's head after she was repurposed was never made clear, or even why she was repurposed instead of killed, or what happened to Maeve's other friends (meaning Hanaryo? Armistice?) after Halores's side "tracked them all down" as Host William said to Maeve.

For that matter, why did Maeve and Caleb and the other soldiers who fought with them manage to take out all of Rehoboam's forces in a society-changing rebellion but were apparently content to leave Delos Corporation and William alone for seven years?

Edited August 15, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[LoveLeigh]

In a country where we want to stop gun violence, all they do is show killing with guns.

The big mistake was going too deep into and elaborating on that part of the movie where the "hosts" rebel and fight back. 

They should have returned to the original premise: theme parks where guests pay a lot of money to live out their fantasies. They could have had back stories for the "hosts" but this is too far off from the main season 1. 

It's hard to follow and is like LOST where the writers kept creating subplots that they knew would never be fully explained. 

Edited August 15, 2022 by LoveLeigh

[thuganomics85]

So, other than Christina/Dolores, pretty much everyone is dead more or less, right?  Granted, again, with this show, they can easily either bring them back or at least have the main cast return in some form, but that's totally a bummer to put it mildly.  And it just feels disappointing to have a finale where your heavy-hitters like Thandiwe Newton and Jeffrey Wright are barely in it.  Yeah, yeah, they are storyline reasons for that, but I'm still bummed.

Speaking of being bummed out, can't believe Stubbs went out like that.  I figured something was going to happen, but I wanted him to at least get an epic send-off and not just get dropped by Clementine with ease.  Even her getting taken out with a quickness after didn't help things.  Still can't believe Stubbs and Luke Hemsworth were actually some of the highlights this season.

Should have known Charlotte would have a back-up plan and take on "William" for the final battle.  Tessa Thompson was rocking that outfit.  Certainly helped that she seemed to be channeling her Valkyrie persona for the big throw down!

Fun seeing Jonathan Tucker and Steven Ogg show up for some brief cameos.  Kind of funny both went out the same way: talking shit and then getting hit.  Hard.

In the end, it looks like Earth is pretty much doomed and it's now going to be all about Dolores in the Sublime and... recreating Westworld?

Yeah, I'm going to need to stew on this a bit.  First impressions is that this was better than last season and half of season two, but this show is clearly never going to go back to the highs of the first season.  The production value and acting is top notch, but the writing and storylines have been... spotty at best.  If it still holds true that they have a "five season plan", I'll be fine with it getting another one to finish telling their story, but at this rate, I don't know if will ever really be satisfactory.  Or if it will happen.  Years ago, I figured it would be close to a sure thing, but HBO/Warner Brothers clearly seems to be in a cost cutting mood now thanks to the recent merger, and I have to imagine this is expensive, and they aren't making up for it with ratings or awards anymore.  I guess we'll see!

[Noneofyourbusiness]

Despite being set outside the parks, this season has felt smaller than Seasons 1 and 2. Not just in terms of the expansiveness of the setting but of inhabitation: this show has a bad habit of introducing interesting characters and then if not killing them off like Elsie and Sizemore then having them disappear without an explanation, like Felix, Sylvester, Akane, Armistice and Ash (Lena Waithe).

21 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Should have known Charlotte would have a back-up plan and take on "William" for the final battle.  Tessa Thompson was rocking that outfit.  Certainly helped that she seemed to be channeling her Valkyrie persona for the big throw down!

Now here's what seems like a truly ludicrous prediction: Bernard knowing that William would hit him and Maeve straight in the pearl but hit Halores left enough of center for her pearl to be intact. Bernard would have to know the exact angle William would approach and shoot from (which also depends on where in the pool Maeve and Halores would be standing), not to mention that William wouldn't take care to finish the job.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[arc]

some notes for non-gamers:

* that host in the Hawaiian (?) shirt at the start of the episode is played by Steven Ogg, who's already played a host on Westworld before. But he's also famously the voice actor and likeness for Trevor from GTA V, which is one of the open-world games that inspired Nolan and Joy's take on Westworld. Trevor is a reckless lunatic. And this version of the host looked a lot more like Trevor than he did in past seasons, even though back then the show was also trying to evoke Trevor.

* MIB calls the young sniper a "camper", which is a gaming term from multiplayer shooters for players who "camp" near where people will be, usually spawn locations where players "respawn", because this is a low-risk, high-reward way to play the game. It is also considered unsporting.

I guess we have to handwave that MIB's crazy murder orgy command emphasized head wounds so hosts would be in as much danger as humans. In Halores' normal system, were hosts as safe as humans were in the Delos parks? Did damaged hosts just get spiffed up or placed in a newly printed body?

Hmm, I had been thinking last episode that MIB's headshot on Halores miiiight have been at an angle that would miss the pearl. Sloppiness on his part? A deliberate miss? Latent old habits from formerly being a human, and thinking any headshot is good enough?

Speaking of which, since Stubbs brought it up, how has host William survived for decades while most other humans-turned-hosts collapse within days because the body rejects the mind or whatever? Is it because he's not really William, he's another Dolores? But then why is he so much like William? Just because he had to play the role? Then whatever happened to the host version of William who showed up in the s2 post credits scene? Is that going to be retconned out?

It was one thing for MIB to adopt Westworld-appropriate attire while in the park, but he sure likes to wear it outside too. Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates would wear Star Trek cosplay in daily life.

Putting an OG Dolores pearl underneath the live 3D map of NYC somehow reminds me of the famous loonie under the ice at the 2002 Olympic games.

I'm glad Frankie and Caleb talked about Uwade. It always bugs me a LOT when shows or movies get so tunnel visioned about a parent-child dynamic that they forget there are other people they've lost who are super important to them.

Oh shit, I thought Clementine was taken off the board so she could safely return for season five. I was not expecting her at the supermarket. What a shame. And what a shame she turned into a dollar store Terminator.

Why didn't Halores' upgraded super-robot body have better aim? Did Bernard tell her to save the killshot for the second gun he hid?

Also, it shouldn't have been possible for William to set off a slow motion self destruct for the server farms. Why would the server farm architects have ever built in a "turn off the cooling systems" command? Then again, why didn't William just blow the whole place up instead of turning on a self-destruct so slow that it could be undone many minutes later?

Why does everything have to be a game with these people? I feel like the unintended message of this series -- and also Jurassic Park -- is that game designers (or theme park designers) shouldn't be bringing weird new life into the world.

Also, it wasn't till the final moments that I remembered the show has a visual shorthand for scenes in the Sublime: a wider aspect ratio. I went back and checked ep 7, and sure enough, Bernard and Maeve's first spin through the dam was letterboxed. If I had noticed, I would have immediately understood that scene was a simulation, but I'm often pretty blind to aspect ratio changes.

Last thing, given the episode title, I was low-key worried Serac from s3 would make a reappearance. Glad he didn't. Kinda sad they didn't or couldn't get Anthony Hopkins back though, as long as they were running it back with so many lines from s1.

5 hours ago, enchantingmonkey said:

For as much as I love Clementine, I had no idea why she suddenly gave a damn about Frankie, Caleb and Stubbs.

She wanted to find a safe space, and figured the outliers' secret refuge would count. I dunno, you'd think controlled humanity would wipe itself out entirely within a week. She could have holed up at the tower and waited them out. It's not like she even needs to eat or drink.

5 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

The real question is how she knew the three of them would be in that store.

I think she said she'd been tracking Caleb or even hacking into his video feed. And she confronted them at the store because she didn't want to rely on that secret surveillance given that host Caleb might die at any moment.

5 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

Specifically the time that dam keeps producing power without anybody servicing the turbines.

Halores or Dolores said sentient life on Earth had essentially ended, not including the straggling outliers who'd eventually die off*, but maybe Hoover Dam of the future has some non-sentient drones who can handle basic maintenance.

* like most of y'all, I don't believe William's plan would have killed off all of humanity, much less the hosts left in the real world.

4 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

So, other than Christina/Dolores, pretty much everyone is dead more or less, right? 

Teddy and Akecheta and Maeve's daughter are legitimately in the Sublime, plus many other unnamed hosts. But yes, I think Teddy and Dolores are the only series regular characters who've survived into the Sublime.

[Haleth]

Oh, good God.  Seriously?  I've been a semi luke warm defender of the show but that was just garbage.  It's obvious the writers have no clue what is happening either.  Not a bit of the dialog for Hale or Christina/Dolores made a lick of sense.  They both (especially Christina) talked and talked and talked about a new world and a test but neither said anything specific about what she meant.  You know why?  Because the writers don't know either.

If humanity has destroyed itself, what's the point?  The hosts are still machines.  The Sublime isn't real.  Humans can't go there.

I groaned when Hale woke up.  Gah, thought we were rid of her last week.  And now she's the hero who gave Dolores the chance to start over again.  Uh, why?

Was Stephen Ogg in the original season?  I was surprised to see him and more surprised when he was immediately killed.  After that I was looking for Lawrence.  Guess the actor wasn't available.

5 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Bernard would have to know the exact angle William would approach and shoot from

That reminds me.  For super computers William and Hale were pretty poor shots in their shoot out.  William could hit a hole in one consistently in golf but couldn't hit Hale?  And Bernard was counting on that and Dolores to run one more test to save humanity and the hosts?

The show strayed way too far from the original premise and self destructed.

[paigow]

William beat Hale to Hoover Dam???? Truck & Horse > Jet... WTF

[Tachi Rocinante]

1 hour ago, arc said:

some notes for non-gamers:

* that host in the Hawaiian (?) shirt at the start of the episode is played by Steven Ogg, who's already played a host on Westworld before. But he's also famously the voice actor and likeness for Trevor from GTA V, which is one of the open-world games that inspired Nolan and Joy's take on Westworld. Trevor is a reckless lunatic. And this version of the host looked a lot more like Trevor than he did in past seasons, even though back then the show was also trying to evoke Trevor.

* MIB calls the young sniper a "camper", which is a gaming term from multiplayer shooters for players who "camp" near where people will be, usually spawn locations where players "respawn", because this is a low-risk, high-reward way to play the game. It is also considered unsporting.

Ogg was also good in Snowpiercer

The way Ed Harris spat out "fucking camper" was absolutely perfect, as if he has played shooting games before.

[Quilt Fairy]

28 minutes ago, Haleth said:

After that I was looking for Lawrence.  Guess the actor wasn't available.

Wasn't he one of the two guys that shot up the truck William was driving in?  I thought the guy on the driver's side looked like him. 

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, paigow said:

William beat Hale to Hoover Dam???? Truck & Horse > Jet... WTF

That struck me as odd too. But I suppose it's possible that William was ambushed pretty close to Hoover Dam and thus had a relatively short horse ride to get there, as opposed to Hale having to fly there from New York. When Hale asks to be shown William, he's halfway across what is presumably a map of the U.S. The hosts in the area she is then shown seem quite a distance away. So then more time needs to pass for those hosts to "cut him off at the pass," which means he gets even closer to his goal before being forced to switch to horse.

A bigger issue is why William drove all that way in the first place when he presumably could have commandeered a jet or something faster, other than "because then we wouldn't have had the ambush scene or William doing some horse riding."

Edited August 15, 2022 by Chicago Redshirt

[Tachi Rocinante]

1 hour ago, Quilt Fairy said:

Wasn't he one of the two guys that shot up the truck William was driving in?  I thought the guy on the driver's side looked like him. 

Not sure about Lawrence, but the one was definitely Johnathan Tucker, who has appeared in earlier seasons. 

We really need one more "Mo-ther-FUCK-er" for the road from Lawrence, though. 

Also, Big Reset Button = pure laziness.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

33 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

A bigger issue is why William drove all that way in the first place when he presumably could have commandeered a jet or something faster, other than "because then we wouldn't have had the ambush scene or William doing some horse riding."

He'd say you have no appreciation for a beautiful machine. ;)

[BloomsburyRez]

8 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

it will happen.  Years ago, I figured it would be close to a sure thing, but HBO/Warner Brothers clearly seems to be in a cost cutting mood now thanks to the recent merger, and I have to imagine this is expensive, and they aren't making up for it with ratings or awards anymore.  I guess we'll see!

Sigh, I had so much hope for this at the beginning of the season, and yes the storyline did echo season one through the end with Delores awakening but so much wasted potential! This show has to be so expensive to produce both effects and cast salary as it employed so many actors who either already commanded a high salary or had their profile increase since initial season one contracts. I think the execs are obviously going to watch how House of the Dragon does since while also expensive on the technical end it seems to follow the GoT model of having one or two moderately known actors then relying on young unknowns. It also seems like HBO is really going more towards the limited run series of about six episodes where one or two A listers star and usually have a producer credit which then garners several award nominations/wins. 

[paigow]

1 hour ago, Tachi Rocinante said:

Not sure about Lawrence, but the one was definitely Johnathan Tucker, who has appeared in earlier seasons. 

Lawrence is not listed as an episode character - based on IMDb, 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

In retrospect, it adds a dimension to Host William telling Halores that living as William has made them functionally the same and if she can't tell the difference then there isn't one, if he's also talking about her becoming Hale. But if that was the writers' thinking, then I feel like they didn't do enough to get it across.

[BlackberryJam]

So much exposition with so little real explanation. Doltina (Because that’s how I feel about her right now. DOLT) learns nothing is real, everything is her memory and imagination so she wants to…PLAY A GAME? Is the game Global Thermonuclear War?

The production values are so high that I want to watch, but the story is so bad that I don’t care.

Edited August 15, 2022 by BlackberryJam

[RachelKM]

6 hours ago, Haleth said:

That reminds me.  For super computers William and Hale were pretty poor shots in their shoot out.  William could hit a hole in one consistently in golf but couldn't hit Hale?  

OMG, I was so stunned by how mind-numbingly nonsensical that finale, and ultimately the season, was that I forgot to mention this. I had precisely the same thought. The show had MIBot hitting holes in one as a tell for the audience and then suddenly he and Hale both have the aim of Stormtroopers with hand tremors.  It was so glaring it took me right out of the scene. 

Speaking MIBot, I realize relentlessness and misanthropic nihilism were the MIBs thing (seriously Hale, why did you need him? And why didn't he have a fail safe in him?). But this episode he felt a little like a parody of himself. If that had been intentional (and not the final episode), it could have been an interesting commentary on AI's interpretation of irrational human behavior. As it was, he was just fucking annoying.  

Edited August 15, 2022 by RachelKM

[MollyB]

10 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Speaking of being bummed out, can't believe Stubbs went out like that. 

Yeah, WTF!  I was just getting to love this character and he gets iced.  Double piss off that "C" shows up after he gets killed with an Oppsie! I DID have one more bullet.  She had a clean shot the first time and her daddy taught her how to shoot straight so she waited to take out the bsc Clementine?!!  Booooooo!

Also-shallow note-but the peplum on Christina/Dolores/Little Mary on the Prairie dress was distracting to me.  I don't remember it being a part of her wardrobe in Season One.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

15 minutes ago, MollyB said:

Yeah, WTF!  I was just getting to love this character and he gets iced.

And I was hoping for his assumption that the way Bernard was acting meant he was going to die to be subverted (not least because Bernard himself died), or Bernard to just be wrong, but no. It was face value. See, writers, that's the sort of thing where the story actually does benefit from a twist.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[Mr. R0b0t]

This whole season was a bad fever dream clusterfuck.

[CarpeFelis]

14 minutes ago, MollyB said:

Also-shallow note-but the peplum on Christina/Dolores/Little Mary on the Prairie dress was distracting to me.  I don't remember it being a part of her wardrobe in Season One.

Peplum or bustle? I didn’t remember Dolores’ dress having such a big bustle on it. On another fashion note: anyone know what Hale’s sling pack was? It sort of resembles this Rag & Bone bag, but that doesn’t have the stitching on the strap that we see on Hale’s bag.

Up until now we were always shown that if the pearl was removed from a host, the host was dead. So how did Hale remove her own pearl and crush it? What was controlling her body once the pearl was removed? Seems like a retcon just for dramatic effect.

Why does Dolores say all sentient life on earth is dead? The outliers don’t count? All the animals are dead?

[mjc570]

2 hours ago, BlackberryJam said:

The production values are so high that I want to watch, but the story is so bad that I don’t care.

Exactly!

[Msample]

Another bummer from this episode was not even single scene with Maeve. Yeah I know she died last ep but that’s never stopped them before. 

I think between the very high production costs and the new ownership at HBO this show is toast .

[aghst]

4 hours ago, MollyB said:

Also-shallow note-but the peplum on Christina/Dolores/Little Mary on the Prairie dress was distracting to me.  I don't remember it being a part of her wardrobe in Season One.

3 hours ago, CarpeFelis said:

Peplum or bustle? I didn’t remember Dolores’ dress having such a big bustle on it. On another fashion note: anyone know what Hale’s sling pack was? It sort of resembles this Rag & Bone bag, but that doesn’t have the stitching on the strap that we see on Hale’s bag.

When Christina and Dolores were in the same shot, Dolores' dress made it appeared she had some junk in the trunk.

So that's a bustle?

[RachelKM]

42 minutes ago, aghst said:

When Christina and Dolores were in the same shot, Dolores' dress made it appeared she had some junk in the trunk.

So that's a bustle?

Yes, a bustle is a device used to extend the back of a dress outward at the waist .  They were particularly popular in the late 1800s through the first decade of the 1900s.  They were made of everything from a pillow like bustle pad that attached around the waist and sat on the bum, to a ruff than rested there, to full cage like things. 

I did note that Delores's seemed more preannounced than I recalled it being in Season 1.

[LoveLeigh]

I think we have gone full circle. Dolores arrives back in town at the beginning and her story will play out with a different end. She gets a do over... a story she herself has written.  

[aghst]

They could wrap it up in a 2-2.5 hour movie.

[skotnikov]

I wish I could unsee it. After the first season, s04 was an insult to audience's intellectual capacities. The whole season was basically a pointless stupid nonsense. 

I really do hope it's the end.  

[Noneofyourbusiness]

19 minutes ago, skotnikov said:

I wish I could unsee it. After the first season, s04 was an insult to audience's intellectual capacities. The whole season was basically a pointless stupid nonsense. 

I really do hope it's the end.  

Not the whole season, but it didn't go in the interesting directions it could have.

On an unrelated note, the first thing I thought when I saw the episode's title was that it should be "Que Serac, Serac".

Edited August 15, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[nilyank]

2 hours ago, aghst said:

When Christina and Dolores were in the same shot, Dolores' dress made it appeared she had some junk in the trunk.

So that's a bustle?

Delores is not as smart as she thinks. She chooses to wear an uncomfortable bustle over her more current and comfortable clothing.

[snickers]

29 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

On an unrelated note, the first thing I thought when I saw the episode's title was that it should be "Que Serac, Serac".

😄

This show lost me at the end of episode 7, when host William went full on William

I was so disappointed, because I was really liking the season up until that point, but I too was like, "seriously, this is our ending?"

I was hoping for some closure with the hosts, either they all go to transcend or go to the sublime, was hoping for a delores/teddy reunion in the sublime myself

and did they actually explain what the "transcendence" was for the hosts?

if this show gets renewed for a 5th season i'll be a little perturbed considering they gave the ax to Raised by Wolves which had real potential for its 3rd season, this show just keeps getting more boring and more confusing

My ranks for the seasons go 1, 3, 2 then 4....season 2 was just too dragged out and I liked season 3 for the change though I missed seeing the original hosts.....

[WaltersHair]

I really, really was unhappy with this season and episode. Others here have expressed it well.

I have one question though. How could Frankie leave a host that was a replica of her dad on the dock? He wasn't a danger to them unless I missed something and helped her to get to the boat when she didn't have a chance otherwise? Give him a dignified end instead of leaving him to elements to rot?

I guess I liked Caleb more than most.

[hurrrz]

This is such a letdown. I think this show does a lot right in terms of designs and visuals, but jeez. The book. The frickin book makes no sense. And it's so convoluted.

[paigow]

4 minutes ago, WaltersHair said:

How could Frankie leave a host that was a replica of her dad on the dock?

He was a beacon that would expose their location... so he had to stay away

[WaltersHair]

5 minutes ago, paigow said:

He was a beacon that would expose their location... so he had to stay away

I guess I can accept that. Damn.

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, WaltersHair said:

I really, really was unhappy with this season and episode. Others here have expressed it well.

I have one question though. How could Frankie leave a host that was a replica of her dad on the dock? He wasn't a danger to them unless I missed something and helped her to get to the boat when she didn't have a chance otherwise? Give him a dignified end instead of leaving him to elements to rot?

It's not really as though the Hosts don't know or couldn't figure out where the outliers are -- the JayHost went to at least one location that Frankie's set of outliers had gone to, and it seems sort of silly that the Hosts would not have been able to find communities of outliers if they put their minds and machines to it. 

One of the things I'm not clear on: did Frankie always know that Caleb was just a Host? Or did she only figure it out when he told her at the very end that he was not her dad?

Because I don't think there's much of a reason to be sentimental about a replica of one's dad "dying" or begging him to come with her. And common sense should have told her that there was no way that her dad looked to be a person in his 50s or 60s, which he would have had to be if he were "real." And yet, her reaction to the notion that her dad died a long time ago was pretty muted if this was news to her and she just hoped against hope that somehow her actual dad had survived all this time without noticeable aging. 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

2 hours ago, WaltersHair said:

I have one question though. How could Frankie leave a host that was a replica of her dad on the dock? He wasn't a danger to them unless I missed something and helped her to get to the boat when she didn't have a chance otherwise? Give him a dignified end instead of leaving him to elements to rot?

I think he wanted a dignified end by not having her see him degenerate. Having her shoot him would arguably be a dignified end, yes, but also traumatizing for her. I can see why he wouldn't want her to have to do that.

2 hours ago, snickers said:

😄

This show lost me at the end of episode 7, when host William went full on William

To be honest, I never found William going from nice guy to sociopath believable. Sociopaths just aren't that good at hiding it, and wouldn't emphasize with and point out Dolores's personhood the way William clearly did at first.