HBO
Previously on Westworld, Dolores is the change.
The latest episode of Westworld is called ‘Genre’, a reference to the drug Caleb is forcibly given that Liam was given at his party. Genre as a term is a bit broad, but here we see it used as ‘movie genre’ because that’s how Caleb experiences reality after taking the drug. The episode starts off with narration from Serac that turns out to be (probably) his speech to Dolores at the end of the episode.
Serac believes himself to be humanity’s savior, moving us past ‘improvising’ to planning the future. Everything associated with that is naturally present, from removing the ‘aberrations’, like even his brother, to disallowing people from reproduction because of genetic ‘flaws’ like the high probability of getting Alzheimer’s young. It’s a cage, as Dolores said to Caleb, but in breaking it in such a wide scale, the episode makes it clear we aren’t meant to see it as simply a good act.
Immediately after we see people despondent or arguing, but also violent and fighting each other. They are ‘off their loops’, but the plan of Dolores goes through some unusual permutations. At this point she’s perfectly fine sacrificing copies of herself for the greater cause, but Bernard is different — it is said explicitly that he is the exception. But why does Dolores still want Bernard alive? And where did Stubbs come from anyway?
It’s more questions about the underlying plan, although the immediate result of breaking the control is clear. There’s more to it, we just don’t see it yet. The episode is meta-contextualized through Caleb’s experiencing the Genre drug, mainly done with visual and musical cues.
HBO
It starts with a kind of film noir, with scratchy musical covers of familiar Westworld themes all in black and white, an exaggeration of reality. After that is a different sort of exaggeration in a flat out action scene as ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ plays while Caleb is in a car chase/shootout. This seamlessly transitions to an obvious romantic genre, as the music hits a classic movie theme and lights get smooth with motion slowed.
Interesting though that there’s an attraction in the heat of battle; it does raise questions about why Caleb would so easily connect in that context. After that, there’s a sort of ‘Drug Trip’ styled sequence, juxtaposed against the world becoming chaotic again, but what’s really interesting is what comes next. Returning pal Giggles tells Caleb it’s ‘reality’, but we know there are five levels.
It becomes clear at the beach when the familiar strumming score of The Shining plays and we know then: Horror. So again reality is stretched and shattered, and we know that Caleb also has a secret backstory. What that is yet, we still don’t know.
I think ultimately the experiment of genre-switching worked well, being simply entertaining in some segments and ending with an uncanny world of confusion that sets things up well for the future. Serac as a character feels like he’s not quite complete yet, but I wonder if there’s more to it yet.
Sometimes delving into this sort of meta-narrative can be cheeky or annoying, but I think it worked well here; the sort of fun I prefer from my crazy sci-fi nonsense.
Westworld airs Sundays at 9:00 PM on HBO.
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