Westworld: The Absence of Field (3x03)

Ehhhh. Not as interesting to me as the first two episodes of the season.

Cons:

Are we really doing the whole "government surveillance Big Brother" thing? That feels so uninspired to me. We have Caleb and Dolores at the diner, where Dolores knows all of the details about Caleb's worst memory. The big plan? Dolores is going to disrupt the data flow from Incite. I guess the machine is called Rehoboam. So this is Dolores' main goal. She doesn't like government surveillance and she wants to stop it. I guess I like that her motivations are so straight-forward, but I feel like this story is such a cliche.

Also, we get all of this evidence that Dolores knows everything about Caleb's life, and then there's that moment where she says that "most people are easy to read, but you surprised me." I hated that, because I feel like she has the profile on him, and the answer to the question of why he didn't turn her in is pretty easy to understand. He's a struggling veteran with PTSD and a problem with authority. She just said that his path is likely leading him to suicide in a decade or so. It therefore doesn't make sense for her to be "surprised" by his decision to keep his mouth shut when a bunch of angry authority figures dangle him off of a cliff. It kind of undercuts her whole point.


They really could have picked a more creative song for Charlotte to be singing to her kid, than "You are My Sunshine." This is a nitpick, and kind of a mean one. Tessa Thompson did a wonderful job with the performance, but come on. That song is the most cliche thing they could have chosen. There was nothing meaningful or fresh about Charlotte's parting message to her son.

We have this shadowy figure Serac, who is apparently the richest man in the world but nobody's heard of him. Just like with the whole Big Brother plot, this feels too... simplistic and overplayed. I could be proven wrong, but for now I'm not that interested in him, beyond how he influences the characters I do care about.

Pros:

I will say, Tessa Thompson's performance during this whole episode is great. We know that she's not playing Charlotte, but instead a host that Dolores rescued from the park. We don't know which one. It kind of seems like Teddy? But we don't have confirmation on that, unless I missed something obvious. So she's playing a host who is pretending to be Charlotte, and I loved watching her react and respond to various scenarios, as she has to pretend to know what Charlotte would know, without knowing it. You could see the calculations running in her mind a mile a minute.

Also, the Dolores and "Charlotte" dynamic is fascinating. Dolores is clearly using her for what she wants, but there's this blatantly proprietary claim there: "you're mine, you know that, don't you?" And that image of them spooning together in the bed was chilling. I'm not sure I believe Dolores is really capable of caring for another person at this point.

Also, while I have some problems with the surveillance plot, I really do love Aaron Paul. Caleb is an interesting character to me so far, and I like the way he and Dolores have connected. I don't necessarily want them to go anywhere romantic with it, but let's be real, they probably will. Still, these two wildly different people - one with all the answers, one with none - make an interesting duo and I'm definitely on board to follow their story.

This is a short review, but I'm tired and I want to be done writing it, so... there you have it. Not as excited about the season as I was, but I'm definitely still along for the ride.

7/10