The once mysterious show-as-a-puzzlebox has, four seasons in, become nothing but an endless MacGuffin hunt. How maddening for its seven remaining fans
American TV has a very weird and specific problem right now: every child exists on TV simply to reflect an adults’ trauma back at them, and nothing else. They droop around the house with a teddy bear asking weird, direct questions at bedtime about how, “Mommy … you seem sad.” Response: “I am, sweetie. [Crying, catching the cry, lowering to a whisper] I am.” I’ll admit I don’t interact with children very often (I am personally childless), but is this how they talk now? These scenes are unbearable, and there is a plague of them. This is just one of my many, many issues with the new series of Westworld (Monday, 9pm, Sky Atlantic).
I know, I’d forgotten about Westworld too. I recently rewatched that first glorious pilot episode on a plane, and I was reminded just what a spectacular piece of TV it really was: Anthony Hopkins quietly chilling while drinking whiskey with a robot, James Marsden’s heartbreaker eyes, Ed Harris’s musky villainy, that small-but-huge moment when Evan Rachel Wood figures it all out.
