Westworld 4.1: Lean Mix

Westworld was back on HBO last night with the start of its fourth season, and I liked it.  It had a leaner feel and storyline than the previous season, which worked well with the meanness at large in every season.  Plus, it had a wallop of a surprise at the end.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Maeve is in great shape, forced out of some kind of retirement in the snowy woods because a team is out to kill her.  Like a hit woman or agent who hasn't lost her touch after all of these years, she disposes of them easily.  But of course there'll be more to come.  She needs to create her own team, and she starts with Caleb.  This almost could be a Liam Neeson movie were it not for the first three seasons.

Caleb is relatively happily married, and he has a daughter that looks like Maeve's daughter, but I assume she's not.  In contrast to Maeve's steely resolve, well-played as always by Thandiwe Newton, we have the mentally conflicted Caleb well played by Aaron Paul.  This part was a little trite, but, then again, the opening story with the Man in Black making like a mobster was even triter.

Not trite at all is Christina, once Delores, who is now in New York writing stories.  If she ends up writing a story about sentient AIs that would be ok with me.  Evan Rachel Wood is great, as always, and so far she's the most interesting character, storyline wise.

Which leads to that surprise at the end: Teddy's back!  Which I think is a fine move, not only because I'm sure we'll get a good story about how he ends up now in New York City, after -- how many years? we last saw him in Season 2 -- but because, hey, I like to see some true love in a story, and Westworld certainly needs some.

See you back here next week with my review of the next episode.

See also: Westworld 3.1: The Great Outside ... Westworld 3.2: Dolores' Enemies ... Westworld 3.3: Cyberpunk World ... Westworld 3.4: The Man in White and Multiple Doloreses ... Westworld 3.5: Ground Control ... Westworld 3.6: Family Group Therapy ... Westworld 3.7: M vs D ... Westworld Season 3 Finale: Redemption, Less or More

And see also Westworld 2.1: Maeve's Daughter ... Westworld 2.2: "Narcissus Narcosis" ... Westworld 2.3: The Raj and Guns of the South ... Westworld 2.4: Questions Pertaining to Immortality ... Westworld 2.5: Telepathic Control ... Westworld 2.6: The Dangling Conversation ... Westworld 2.7: Maeve vs. Dolores ... Westworld 2.8: The Wrong World ... Westworld 2.9: Fathers ... Westworld 2.10: The Realist World

And see also Westworld 1.1: Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick Served Up by Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, and J. J. Abrams ... Westworld 1.2: Who Is the Man in Black? ... Westworld 1.3: Julian Jaynes and Arnold ... Westworld 1.4: Vacation, Connie Francis, and Kurt Vonnegut ... Westworld 1.5: The Voice Inside Dolores ... Westworld 1.6: Programmed Unprogramming ... Westworld 1.7: The Story of the Story ... Westworld 1.8: Memories ... Westworld 1.9: Half-Truths and Old Friends ... Westworld Season 1 Finale: Answers and Questions 

They're coming out into the open, for the first time in centuries ....

Truth Be Told: An Excellent Telling

I saw Truth Be Told on Apple TV+ over the past few nights.  It received a lukewarm response from critics but was much enjoyed by the general public.  I'm with the general public on this one, not the myopic critics, what else is new.  I'm really glad it was renewed for a second season, which should be up sometime this year.

The eight-episode mini-series rings a bell on a bunch of levels: 

• It's a first-class whodunnit, with at least a handful of plausible suspects, and a resolution which is both surprising,  yet makes good sense in retrospect, or just want you want in this kind of murder mystery.
• Poppy is a reporter now podcaster, who revisits in her podcast a murder she reported on in The New York Times twenty years ago.  Truth Be Told offers a compelling tableau of the relationship of traditional and newer media, in particular the pressures that a podcaster faces.  This series is not the first to have a podcaster at the center of the narrative, but it's one of the best.
• Poppy is African-American, and Truth Be Told provides a well-furnished view of Black culture in America, ranging from family life to life in prison.
• The acting is really good.  Octavia Spencer is just right as Poppy, combining head and heart, and struggling to keep her marriage sound as she devotes increasing time to finding the killer.  Aaron Paul is great as the guy behind bars, whom Poppy is trying to exonerate and free -- I'd say this is his best performance since Breaking Bad (yeah, he was more effective in Truth Be Told than in Westworld). Lizzy Caplan is impressive as the Buhrman twins, convincingly portraying two different yet intersecting personalities.   And the other characters were well played.  Always good to see Mekhi Phifer (former detective helping Poppy) and Michael Beach (Poppy' husband) on the screen.

If I had to cite one problem with the narrative, it would be Poppy's tendency to immediately go to the next most-likely suspect, each time a suspect is eliminated.  I think Poppy is subtler and more intelligent than that.  But this is a relatively small quibble.  The series is based on a novel (Are You Sleeping by Karen Barber) which I haven't read, so I don't know where this problem originated, or who is responsible for all the sharp turns of events in the series which will keep you up late into the night.  Hats off to Nichelle D. Tramble, creator of this series.

And I'll see you back here later this year, with a review of the second season.

Westworld 3.1: The Great Outside

Westworld checked in with a fine cyberpunk third season last night, with an at once sharp and lush episode that had fine outings for two of the major original characters, introduced a new one or two, and brought back another original in a surprising coda.

Dolores is in better shape than ever, now out in the world, and doing her best to get an in with the AI brain that moves a lot of the world, by forging a relationship with Liam, the son of the man who may or may not control the AI company.   She's true to herself and talents, and offers more of the philosophic commentary which we first saw signs of last season.  She also intersects significantly with Aaron Paul's character Caleb, who pretty much saves her life.

Bernard's story is a little less, but nonetheless promising.  He's doing his best, and he's been doing for most of his host life, to live his life as a human.  But that doesn't include being beaten to a pulp, and it was good to see him rise up and exercise his rights, literally.

Liam is a good new character, as is Caleb, and I'd add Liam's minder with that great UK accent, whom Dolores replaces with a host double.   In previous seasons, that kind of replacement was a big deal, sometimes the biggest deal of the season, and it's a measure of how far and well Westworld has evolved that it happens just a little more than casually in this first episode.

And then there's Maeve, who continues to inhabit the surprising coda category in the narrative.  In this one, we find her in the third Nazi story I've seen on television in the past few days (the other two are Hunters, reviewed here, and The Plot Against America, which I'll review soon).  The tiny piece of this story we saw after the closing credits is the closest to what we saw last season, since it takes place in yet another theme park.  But I wouldn't be completely sure that it has the same creators as the earlier ones.

See you here next week.  One advantage of staying home in this time of the Coronavirus is you get a lot more time to watch television.  And it just occurred to me: hosts probably don't suffer the ravages of viruses, right?  The physical kind of virus, that is ... because AIs are prone to be infected by the digital kind.  There's some kind of odd parity in that.

See also Westworld 2.1: Maeve's Daughter ... Westworld 2.2: "Narcissus Narcosis" ... Westworld 2.3: The Raj and Guns of the South ... Westworld 2.4: Questions Pertaining to Immortality ... Westworld 2.5: Telepathic Control ... Westworld 2.6: The Dangling Conversation ... Westworld 2.7: Maeve vs. Dolores ... Westworld 2.8: The Wrong World ... Westworld 2.9: Fathers ... Westworld 2.10: The Realist World

And see also Westworld 1.1: Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick Served Up by Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, and J. J. Abrams ... Westworld 1.2: Who Is the Man in Black? ... Westworld 1.3: Julian Jaynes and Arnold ... Westworld 1.4: Vacation, Connie Francis, and Kurt Vonnegut ... Westworld 1.5: The Voice Inside Dolores ... Westworld 1.6: Programmed Unprogramming ... Westworld 1.7: The Story of the Story ... Westworld 1.8: Memories ... Westworld 1.9: Half-Truths and Old Friends ... Westworld Season 1 Finale: Answers and Questions 

El Camino: Flashbacks and Onward

El Camino, aptly described by IMDb as "a sequel of sorts, to Breaking Bad," is nothing but a success, unqualified.

The "of sorts" does amply to El Camino's status as a sequel, and one of the key reasons, perhaps the key reason, why it is so satisfying.  Walter (Bryan Cranston), Mike (Jonathan Banks), and Todd (Jesse Plemons), none of whom survived the original series, each appear in El Camino in flashback scenes that we haven't seen before in Breaking Bad.  Todd's was much better than Mike's, and Walter's was sheer magic, but all three in-and-of themselves make El Camino eminently worth watching.

Robert Forster, whose character Ed survived the original series, made a crucial and winning appearance in El Camino.   He was one of my favorite actors since the groundbreaking Medium Cool, and everything subsequent from Jackie Brown to even Heroes, and had the rare ability to be perfect in every disparate part he played.  In a tragic irony which somehow also is in line with Breaking Bad, Forster passed away on the day El Camino debuted on Netflix.  RIP, truly.

As for the story of El Camino, I don't want to give any of it away, so I won't talk about the plot.  But Aaron Paul does a fine job as Jesse Pinkman, who is appropriately a bit older and wiser and all-around more capable than he was in Breaking Bad.   The movie crackles with sarcasm and satire and all kinds of humor interspersed with bullets flying and other life-and-death situations, and is a good additional (very short) season to one of the most original and remarkable series ever on television.

Is there room for another sequel?   See the movie and decide.

See also my review of Breaking Bad: The Official Book



And see also Breaking Bad Final Episodes #1: Walt vs. Hank ... Breaking Bad Final Episodes #2: Skylar and Jesse ... Breaking Bad Final Episodes #3: The Ultimate Lie ... Breaking Bad Final Episodes #4: Old Yeller ... Breaking Bad Final Episode #5: Coordinates ... Breaking Bad Final Episode #6: The Knife and the Phone ...  Breaking Bad Penultimate: $10,000 for 2 Hours ... Breaking Bad Finale: "I Did It for Me"

Also: Talking about Walter White and Breaking Bad

And see also Breaking Bad Season 5 Premiere: Riveting Entropy ... Breaking Bad 5.3: Deal with the Devil ... Breaking Bad 5.7: Exit Mike ... Breaking Bad Final Half-Season Finale

And see also My Prediction about Breaking Bad ... Breaking Bad Season 4 Debuts ... Breaking Bad 4.2: Gun and Question ... Breaking Bad 4.11: Tightening Vice ... Breaking Bad 4.12: King vs. King ... Breaking Bad Season 4 Finale: Deceptive Flowers