So now we have come to the end of Westworld season 3. I never know what to make of this show. Because I like it. But yet, its kinda,, bad. Plus, no one that I know watches it. And that one person who does, cannot grasp what is going on,, or is a month or three behind,  so trying to talk about it is useless.

But like I said, I do like it. The overall story and general theme is great.

For those who might not know what Westworld is..The HBO series and original movie plots revolves around a future-ish vacation park, where the guests interact with lifelike robots/androids.. To playout storied scenarios. But because everything is robots and computer driven, the guests can literally do anything to the lifelike “hosts”. Murder, rape, bank robberies…  it’s all very possible in Westworld. But of course something goes wrong with the system and the Hosts start fighting back.

Anyhow. The first season of the series was pretty gripping. We get a better look at the beginnings of the park and its founders, while following the subtle changes in the Hosts that lead to the mentioned security failure.  

What the series added that the original movies only slightly eluded to was much more of the behind the scenes, dark corporate side of things. And that bit made the darker twist possible.

Throw in a sizable bit of sleight of hand moving timelines and you got a couple of story points that are quietly coming at you from different ends of that timeline that are all moving towards a finale that neatly ties up those ends and sets up the whole series to move forward perfectly. At this point, the show was really in its groove.

Then season two came along.

The set up of the first season really had season two pointed in a great direction. But instead of running with the fantastic plot, the show decided to run with the other thing it was known for,, the jumping around on the timeline thing. 

That alone wouldn’t be so bad, but doing it just to confuse people, did just that. It was so all over the place, with little explanation. It became too confusing to half of the people trying to follow along. 

And for those who did manage to keep things mostly sorted, it became quite clear that the confusion was done on purpose, with no reason other than to mess with them.

To be fair, the second season story was actually pretty good.. if you laid it out in direct order, without all the fluff and misdirection. But by itself,, very short.

So by keeping the audience turned this way and that way by uselessly bouncing forward and backward, not knowing what the hell was happening, it allowed the short plot to be spread out for the length of the season, but then never really tying things up as good as season one.

But it did more or less open the door for season three. I say more or less because it really felt like they were also leaving the door open to fade away and not return.

But season three did return.

I haven’t mentioned the acting in the two previous seasons. We all know Westworld has won many awards in its first two seasons for both acting and support actors.

So just to say it… I don’t see why. 

The weakest link of Westworld for me has always been its pooracting. Some of its great don’t get me wrong. Ed Harris, Hopkins, Wright, Tessa Thompson.. Great! Even Evan Rachel Wood has moments, but she mostly provides nothing. But probably the worst of the bunch is Maeve, Thandie Newton. She ruins any immersion happening. And every season the acting seems to get worse and worse. To the point that I’m starting to think that its part of their gimmick.

Ok before getting to season three lets pull a few things together here. 

Season two took a pretty hard nose dive with the confusion of the time jumping. May have lost a few people along the way.

They took one of the poorest actors, made her mostly the focus, plus very unrealistically and comically immortal. (Maeve) 

Ok ok,, season three. Some where before work started on season 3, someone in the board room must have said,, “you what we need to do,, I think we need to stop this time jumping thing. I think we are confusing people a little too much” 

GREAT! Good idea. I couldn’t agree more. Just tell the story, let it happen in real time and stop using that gimmick.  I 100% agree..

But then he continues…. “And also, we should look at getting a new, more horrific actor to take a new up front role so the audience can forget at how badly acted Maeve is. Lets call Aaron Paul!”

Are you kidding? Who the hell though this was a good idea? If the idea was to make me cringe and mostly ignore a main character, then casting Aaron was the best choice. Im gonna say this casting choice is one of the worst moves of this series.

As far as the meat of season three goes.. What happened to the plot writing?  Was the writing all along that bad that only the forced misdirections made it bearable? Seems that way. Now that we have a straight foreword moving plot where one can focus on it.. there is nothing. Just… nothing.

Sure there are a few groovy action scenes and a few, oddly out of place plot point tie ups that only felt like time fillers rather than development. But for the most part, season three was a rushed mess that felt like it was being made up as they went.

Every episode left me thinking it was just one of those filler episodes to try to explain something, and next weeks episode would be back to being great!

Except none of that happened. Ever. 

When I saw that the next weeks episode was the season finale, I literally said to my self.. “How can it be the finale? Nothing happened yet!”

The finale came around. It happened. I watched it. And I immediately thought. This entire season could have been just this one episode. Nearly nothing that happened in the previous nine episodes made any difference. 

We all kinda thought we knew how it would turn out,, and thats exactly how it did. We didn’t need nine hours of filler to get there.

Anyone who had watched both of previous seasons, only needs to watch season three finale and they would be perfectly caught up.

No other way to say it. Season three was a complete and utter waste of time.

The one good thing is that there is going to be at least a season 4. And the only direction that it can go is up. 

This franchise had so much potential at one time, its just too bad that they went for gimmicky tactics, and that started its downfall. The story they had, that they used could have carried it, but sadly everything else around it crumbled and took it all down.

Timelapsed Scifi