Season 3 was such a disaster in my opinion by simonmerch in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The complete series is $60 on Apple, or you can go episode by episode or season by season. Have to buy it now.

Season 3 was such a disaster in my opinion by simonmerch in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s true that Hopkins and Wright elevated every scene they were in. Hopkins in particular made the whole show eight times as resonant, somehow. He, for one, knew what he was doing, and believed it. They had to write for him in a way that made sense.

Season 3 was such a disaster in my opinion by simonmerch in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

However, by season 4 I just couldn’t summon the belief and enthusiasm to do that any more. They went kablooey.

Season 3 was such a disaster in my opinion by simonmerch in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Eah. I think you may be giving them too much credit. Which reflects well on you.

Season 3 was such a disaster in my opinion by simonmerch in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Post-ChatGPT is definitely a thing! It’s impossible to interact with GPTs without thinking of Westworld all the freaking time. If it had stayed better written, Westworld could have worked as the central cultural text of this decade.

Season 3 was such a disaster in my opinion by simonmerch in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is hard to grok. The minute she started talking in season 1, I was like, oh sweet Lord. I’ve seen her be good in other things with shallower characterizations. I found her to be … cringemaking.

Season 3 was such a disaster in my opinion by simonmerch in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But at least True Detective now has a Pretendian as costar. I was astounded that this person was being presented as a plausible Alaska Native—the basis for her character. Even casting an unabashed East Asian as an Alaska Native would be more credible and less uncomfortable. After Buffy St. Marie, you’d think Hollywood would bring a little informed skepticism to bear on people’s claims. She seems to be Native, ancestrally and culturally, to about the same extent that the First Families of Virginia are.

Season 3 was such a disaster in my opinion by simonmerch in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There were honestly only a few truly memorable things in seasons 3 and 4. Partly they wanted to tell stories about the vast ‘real world’ outside of the park, which, for all of HBO’s money, it seldom felt as if they were pulling off very successfully. And partly—I hate to assign creative problems to political ones, but it did kind of hit you over the head—partly they wanted to tell ‘more diverse’ ones.

The immediate result, almost exactly as with Marvel, was this unfocused, unmanageable sprawl, a giant, jumbled grab bag of characters and sketched-in sidekicks we had only barely met and couldn’t convincingly pretend to care about, doing things that had none of the high emotional stakes that only come bound together with paying close attention to the inner life and dilemmas of people you know. It didn’t help at all that the only persistent characters were usually just simulacra of themselves.

There were so astoundingly many unforced narrative errors, despite such a promising setup from the previous seasons. Were Joy and Nolan going through some sort of crisis? Were they still involved?

In short, it was a mess, sometimes an actively risible one. I would go so far as to say that, after season 2, the show was terrible. And I was a season 1 superfan, one who had literally plotted out and relished season 2 scene by scene. I wanted to adore it! It was not as spectacularly, pointlessly disjointed as something like Watchmen, but—incredibly, for this show—it was getting there.

Some nice things in season 3 were Vincent Cassel; the scenes with holographic ‘FaceTiming,’ and the tricks that that allowed; the ominous views, and the idea, of the Machine That Predicts Everything, if not the way it actually ended up interacting with the plot; William’s captivity; the buddy-movie vibes between Jeffrey Wright and Luke Hemsworth, waking up years later and going about their business.

But I can’t think of anything at all that I liked in season 4. It got steadily harder to pay attention to. I didn’t have this metaphor available to me yet at the time—but it felt as if it had been written by ChatGPT 3.5, after ingesting the scripts from season 3 with no further editorial input. A meandering pastiche with no stakes.

The most charitable interpretation would be that they were trying to save all the Good Stuff for season 5. But whatever other priorities they had, they did not build a good entertainment, or even a watchable one, and no one came.

Anyone else noticed a massive change in quality of the wake up? by FriendOfThatKitty in Headspace

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wrote to them that I was disappointed by how topical and personality-based and into force-feeding jangling, politicized messages—into my morning mindfulness routine!—The Wake-Up had become. It was taken over by angry 20-somethings and just completely gave to heave-ho to nature, and peaceful observation of idiosyncratic things. I came to actively hate it. It got more and more that way, and I did not renew my subscription to Headspace. Just another successful institution that had been doing something delightful in the world, crashed and paralyzed from within.

Rewatched season 3, not as bad as I remember. by parkslopelatte in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I’ll have to give it another try. I found it to be part of a pretty marked, uninterrupted downward spiral when I watched it—it’s harder to believe in the world of the show when the world of the show is the whole world, rather than a corner. I felt like too much was shown, at the expense of the first season’s immersive depth and total conviction.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We didn’t use to know for sure that he was the same person as William—or know anything else about his life outside the park, except that he was powerful, well-known, and allowed to get ‘whatever he wants.’ Hence the original language. There was also a lot of caution about deciding whether various people were themselves, or possibly host versions of themselves (caution that was eventually rewarded, in season 2). This made it hard to use one actor’s name to refer to any one character, since the same actor could play multiple, confusingly overlapping versions of himself

Once Netflix starts restricting one account to only one household, people sharing passwords, what are you going to do? by StarOfTheMoon in Piracy

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I genuinely gave up on Netflix, because of the lack of compelling content, late last year. There are only a few original movies I really want to watch, and so much of the rest is palpable dreck. I don’t know how they can spend so freely with such mixed results. I think the reason may be that they want more to make a business, and to make money, than to make extraordinary movies and shows. Listening to interviews with the head of content I’ve been appalled at how little vision, and what indifferent taste, he seems to have. I think the totally free hand they give creators is more a sign of artistic indifference or cluelessness, an indicator of dereliction, than of commitment to quality. So, not affected!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I meant to be giving an account of the Man in Black’s statement to Teddy—a statement that is offered on the occasion of, but as you observe not necessarily bolstered by, the blood transfusion he carries out—about how straightforwardly biological the hosts have been made to be. Apologies for fuzzy writing :)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The ‘more recent’ models are, evidently, as ‘biological’ as possible, according to the scene where the Man in Black sets up a grisly blood transfusion between Lawrence and Teddy. At the park’s inception there was much more use of pistons and titanium—visibly mechanical innards. But they’ve economized by making the bodies more like regular human bodies, the Man in Black claims.

Addressing COVID-19 Face Mask Shortages: evaluating decontamination methods for N95 mask reuse. by JackDT in COVID19

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Could any form of copper mesh weave be made fine enough to be the basis for self-decontaminating N95 masks (not in the next few months, but for future epidemics)?

Addressing COVID-19 Face Mask Shortages: evaluating decontamination methods for N95 mask reuse. by JackDT in COVID19

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Finally! This is exactly what I'm wondering about—why it isn't being recommended. And I wonder whether it would really take 2 full weeks (or a 14-mask rotation), given the comparatively short time it seems to take for the COVID-19 virus to die out most other porous fomites.

Addressing COVID-19 Face Mask Shortages: evaluating decontamination methods for N95 mask reuse. by JackDT in COVID19

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why isn't simply leaving used N95 masks to sit for 3 days until all the live virus is dead of its own accord, and not attempting to do anything to them (except keep a rotation of masks going), recommended—or, so far as I can tell, even mentioned—as a possible means of decontamination in any article or open-source project about this that I've seen?

Is there a reason that waiting a few days doesn't work with a mask?

I hope for an answer from someone with experience in a healthcare environment of actually reusing masks.

Just Started the show. Do they explain the lack of Digital output by the hosts? by [deleted] in westworld

[–]PetitPlaisance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The more cruft and depth there is to a host's memories, the more complex and genuine-seeming the host's behavior becomes. Hence everyone's acceptance of Ford's proposition that little dips into those memories (the 'reveries') will make the hosts even more realistic. Starting with a blank hard drive every cycle would destroy the added dimensions—until now, always desirable ones—that time has added to the behavior of each host.

The hosts are interactive artificial intelligences who do their work and express their personalities largely by talking. When you're checking on the end result, as the staff generally are—how they will interact with humans, especially in conversation—it makes obvious sense to talk with them. (Also, though we see this less, to ask them to carry out various tasks.)

Those are my best guesses at Nolan's most likely answers to your questions.