A Post In the Machine

"Westworld," "Slow Horses," "The Rhythm Section," "The Protege," "No Time To Die," plus things even more random than that list.

There was a time, as a professional television critic — I say that because you may look at the list in the headline and think, why are you watching most of those — where I really liked “Westworld.” In fact, I sent it good vibes, encouraged it and wanted it to keep working.

That was season one. And I liked season two as well, while others didn’t so much. Yes, it struggled, but I wanted to see where the creative ambition — and there was plenty in “Westworld” — would take the series. I was invested. And when the hint was that they would bust out into the real world, well, sure, I was lured in again for season three.

That was a mistake.

Season three didn’t truly work on a number of levels. No point in being ultra negative. Which of course brings us to season four. I was flipping through my streaming apps and, well look at that, they had not only completed the fourth season when I didn’t care and wasn’t paying attention, but a few episodes were already available. So I watched the first one.

This was my reaction:

Yeah, no thanks.

Ooof. I watched that, in all honesty, thinking, “Well, let’s hope this is good.” Meaning, I wanted it to be intriguing and pull me in again. I wasn’t looking to pile on. But what it seemed like, as I sat through the entirety of it, was a show empty on ideas, tired, with the principals somewhere close to six or maybe more years into what was a big swing and maybe now not feeling it so much themselves?

I don’t know. It certainly felt to me like they didn’t feel it. Like everybody had a lot of money and the HBO hit machine needed to keep going but their minds were on something more interesting to them, something alluring that was distracting them from doing their best work.

Could be wrong. Spent more than an hour deciding I probably wasn’t. Unlikely to go back.

I should probably reiterate something here that you’ve heard me say before (well, you read the words I wrote, technically): This Substack doesn’t exist for me to to beat up on bad things. I already did that. It exists to discover (and rediscover) all the quality work that’s out there, in television, film, music, pretty much any part of the culture.

But I also said that despite not wanting to be cruel, as I sometimes was when being a critic was my full-time job, I would also explore in this Substack what doesn’t work and why. And, maybe to a lesser extent, take some detours into the wisdom or rationality of diving into, say, the culture of entertainment rather than the culture of quality.