Westworld Season 4 - Anybody watching?

[SleeplessinSoCal]

Given all that's happened in our dystopian world and theirs, hard to say which is more disquieting.

I have to read recaps to know exactly what has happened. I gather there are at least 3 timeliness by episode 4. But why Dolores is Christina and who the heck Teddy is now is far beyond my comprehension.

[genxlib]

1. Just started it last night

We had to do a significant recap before we started the new season.

That is one of those shows that challenges you. But there is such a fine line between challenging and annoying that the jury is still out. I thought the first season was great. The second and third seemed a little untethered and there were times that I nearly gave up.

The multiple time lines makes it hard to follow but that isn't the only challenge. They keep putting different personalites into different bodies so it is very difficult to track who is who.

We shall see.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

4. last night's was a real turning point.

But still don't ask me to explain it. If not for the recaps I'd only catch 15% of what they're trying to say.

I'm dedicated now despite my hesitancy. They are saying something serious but to all the wrong people.

Wonder how many still watching...

[FarPoint]

2. I gave up on Westworld...

It's like an LSD trip.

[RipVanWinkle]

7. So did I, after Season 2.

I couldn't follow it anymore. Too messy.

[Aristus]

3. I started to lose interest when it stopped being about the park.

Mrs. Aristus dropped out, but I'm still hanging in there. Haven't started S4 yet.

But there is a reason the film "Futureworld" was not as popular as the 1973 "Westworld" film. It was the park that was fascinating, not the corporate and political tangles both "Futureworld" and the "Westworld" series are.

[genxlib]

5. I agree

That was one of the major reasons that Season 1 was better than subsequent seasons.

The park works as an allegory for how easy it is to lose your humanity with the lack of consequences that should be part of real life. That includes the actual danger of being in high stress situations and the actual outcomes of killing/raping/rampaging/etc. Turns out most people are psychopaths when they don't have consequences.

Then they reinvented the storyline to be about freewill which still worked better in the park because the manipulation was still overriding no matter what the hosts thought they were doing.

Breaking out into the free world just makes it seems like an extended revenge story.

But we are trying to see it through. Mostly on the strength of the cast.

[Backseat Driver]

6. The Driver and I, the Backseat Driver, are watching.

I enjoy the puzzlements of it all, but like Lost, I'm lost to explain what's happening. I get that there's a developing new park with compartmentalized worlds offerred, an old park still with secrets, and a real world at large. Is Maeve still pining for her daughter; what the H happened to Delores, and how many iterations of Bill are there? Anyone's best guesses are likely not what's really happening, so it's a mental workout to be sure. Who, of viewers, could have imagined? - like reading James Joyce?

[SleeplessinSoCal]

8. You expressed my sentiments exactly.

[Emile]

9. After season one I gave up on it. Bring back DEADWOOD!

[SleeplessinSoCal]

10. a very good summation of the series so far...

Westworld’ Season 4 Gets Lost Within the Maze: TV Review

In the new season of “Westworld,” Evan Rachel Wood’s character describes the concept of the NPC — in video game parlance, the “non-player-characters,” the electronic background figures who exist to serve the person in control. Going by Dolores, Wood’s character once lived such a fate herself, as a sentient “host” at a theme park; having long since freed her mind, she’s now known as Christina, living in an American city, working at a video game company where she’s the one telling stories.

Well, stories on the margins, at least.

Much more at: https://variety.com/2022/tv/reviews/westworld-season-4-review-1235299707/

[SleeplessinSoCal]

11. Writing a Metaphor

Creator of Westworld Michael Crichton wrote metaphor in all his works. Odd that he was a global warming denialist given where Westworld has ventured. One thing I'm sure of is Lisa Joy is a deep thinker. And she must enlist any and all information available to write on this spectacular scale over time. My question now is, is SHE (Joy) Christina struggling to write Westworld for HBO? Talk about a metaphor...

Even though Christina is nominally a new character — albeit one played by a familiar face — there is a sense in which she has always been central to Westworld. In publicity for the first season, series co-creator Jonathan Nolan conceded that Andrew Wyeth’s 1948 painting Christina’s World had been a major touchstone for the character of Dolores. Now, in a very real way, Westworld is Christina’s World. There is something unusual and interesting about the seeming mundanity of Christina’s life...

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/westworld-season-4-episode-4-review-generation-loss-fiction-reality-christina/

[SleeplessinSoCal]

12. I watched the whole thing!

And I found it truly engrossing. Also an excellent science fiction for today.

Also, Ed Harris needs to get himself another gig to change this image I have that has overtaken all his other roles.

Loved the finale.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

13. and if there is a moral or an overriding message it is....

"Survival of the fittest" sucks when used as a weapon in a civil society.

[uponit7771]

14. k&r,