17 Comments

I think BoJack Horseman was an excellent showcase for Paul's talents.

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I've never stopped watching 'Westworld,' but I have realized at a certain point that it constitutes what I like to call a "bright star series."

Typically, such a show starts off with a potential premise that could last 4-5 seasons, which it burns through in 2 seasons. Consequently, its first 2 seasons are recognized as good-to-great, then the third becomes a bit of a mess. Subsequently, in Season 4, a bright star show manages to rebound and solidify its new direction. What happens after that is a bit more unpredictable.

Shows that follow this schema include 'Homeland,' 'Dexter,' 'Nip/Tuck,' and 'Arrow,' all of which exhausted their premises way too quickly. Good-to-great S1 and S2, a messy S3, then a rebound S4. Based on this, I more or less knew that S4 of 'Westworld' would be better than S3 and I tweeted about this back in June.

Anyway, it's nice to see that the show is indeed having a qualitative and critical resurgence. I thought S2 was actually the show operating at the very peak of its powers with confident 'I don't care what you think' storytelling resulting in stellar hour after stellar hour. S3 was messy but underrated. Indeed, it was probably still the best S3 out of the five bright star programs mentioned here. The parts that worked worked extremely well and it had a pretty good finale.

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First, I'd be totally down for a discord.

I'm married to a completionist and I'm pro-jump in-and-read-wiki-if-you're-lost. I totally agree it's just less stressful that way. I'm very comfortable feeling lost on the show as long as I'm generally entertained. (Hell, that was mostly my GoT watching experience for all 8 seasons.) This really annoys my partner--she gets mad when I hop in for half an episode of The Good Wife/Fight (or Outlander, whatever War of the Roses show Starz always seems to have) and enjoy it well enough but don't really care if I catch the next one. If I had to guess, this will be the cause of a great marital discord in the future but I enjoy it a lot more. I get to check out a lot more TV, see what makes it work and if I really get into a show I'll go back and watch the rest. (I've done this a few times and it makes the slog a lot easier to get through.)

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Has Westworld been renewed for another season? They seem to be running out of ideas (and characters), but whatever conclusion they are heading to Sunday doesn't feel like it is intended to be THE conclusion.

I've mostly enjoyed this season for its tighter structure but I still think they have stretched the premise pretty thin. Elite humans exploit hosts, elite host exploit humans. Shadowy cabals pull the strings, strings snap, sudden violence. It's always the same loops.

Surely there are more interesting stories to be told in this world. How about flash forward to a time when humans and host each acknowledge the other's sentience and are trying to coexist? You could still have bad guys on both sides trying to muck things up, but a different set of stakes would be a welcome change.

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I only started Westworld last year - until then literally no one had ever told me it was by the creator if Person of Interest which as a fake-out cop-show was 10 times better than it had any right to be. I had had some hints about Man in Black mysteries and confusing timelines just by virtue of existing on the internet but not much more. I read AVclub reviews after certain confusing episodes and I specifically remember the reviewer there saying multiple times " I guess this will be less frustrating if you watch it on one go" and that lined up perfectly with my experience. From the episodes you missed, there were some great "showcase" episodes for actors, but overall plot never seemed quite that important when the next episode was right there - especially compared to just being able to enjoy Thandiwe Newton's work.

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Myles: First of all, it's a great honor to be name-checked on one of my favorite newsletters. Thanks!

And I agree with a lot of what you've written here. Honestly, Season 3 of the show so completely obliterated my expectations for quality that by approaching Season 4 with a "Anything that might be decent here is worth investigating" attitude has helped me to enjoy it greatly.

Glad you are on board for the finale! Can't wait to get hurt again by this show failing to stick the landing!

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Aaron Paul was good in Dual, a recent movie, which stars Karen Gillan as a woman who gets cloned after learning she has a terminal illness. It's very funny and a little sad.

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I haven't checked out Westworld due to middling reviews and frankly not having enough time or energy to watch more than a couple of shows on top of everything else our media overlords are trying to foist on us. Looking at the Wikipedia article, it looks like ratings cratered after the 5th episode of season 2, rebounded a bit, then crashed for S3. Were these particularly bad episodes?

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