Westworld Review: Genre (Season 3 Episode 5)

Engerraund Serac comes into focus on the entertaining Westworld Season 3 Episode 5, “Genre,” as Caleb goes on a little trip with dangerous friends.

The episode serves as another unraveling to show its bigger picture. There’s still some things that are being held back, but there’s a sense of fun and commitment that inspires a good deal of confidence as the season starts to make its intentions clear.

Serac finally makes more sense. He’s been somewhat nebulous on purpose, but this episode helps establish him as the most dangerous kind of villain: the one who thinks he’s doing the right thing. He intends to stop the event that ceases humanity, building his entire life to do so; but as a great irony, he’s the catalyst to that very event by allowing that compiling and predictive tool to be hacked into by Delores.

It’s a classic scenario, but one that’s tied to human emotion. His bond with his brother adds some humanity to Serac, who has been just as distant as a host up to now. He may see himself as impenetrable and unstoppable, but there’s a hesitation to him because he relies on the notion that he knows everything. He may be trusting to his AI system too much, a fatal flaw that he ironically uses against Liam Dempsey, Sr. on the jet runway.

Tying the anomaly circle that breaks up most scenes to being an object Serac is using to see the damage done to the algorithm is a fascinating image. Based on that final scene, it’s nearly corrupted by a third. Are the moves Delores is making completely untethering the likelihood of the algorithm, or is this the infection she may be creating in humanity? It’s not clear yet.

Delores mentions Serac’s brother to him as she gets ready to board a jet. Given how Dempsey, Sr. used a jet to get to the remote location of Serac’s brother, the immediate thought is that she’s going to make things personal by paying his brother a visit. But the issue is that the hold she has on Caleb is starting to show signs of wear, and answers will be needed to keep him on track.

The component that becomes the most intriguing aspect of the episode is Caleb working through Genre, the drug Liam injects him with. Its varying styles impacting him as they escape Serac’s men and unleash the truth is a swelling success in substance quite literally informing style, with the black-and-white noir, the pop infusion of overexposed lights, to hints of romance, to finally utter horror.

Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and the Main Theme of The Shining (based on Dies Irae but composed by Chuck Cirino) make for the best music choices on the episode, the former creating a sense of chaos that evokes its most famous use during Apocalypse Now, but it’s the foreboding of the latter that leaves a much larger lasting impression.

The image of the lone man standing at the edge of the water, his life completely changed, is such a haunting thing to place against this score, especially when it’s an awakening moment for Caleb, as well. The Shining is about how the past is impossible to let go of, and the scene that follows the music choice is as big a sign as any that Caleb faces that exact dilemma.

Liam mentions over and over as he dies that Caleb is the worst of them all, but it’s not clear if he means his past or his predetermined future. The way the scene flickers the past in appears to frame it as the past, but it’s possible he means in an overall sense. Maybe Delores and her campaign isn’t the thing to fear the most, but what Caleb is capable of at her side.

Westworld smartly makes Caleb’s perspective of unlocking reality to everyone a double-edged weapon: everyone is free to take their lives into their own hands, but much like the world the season has been building, the physical unlocking is freeing, but the emotional unlocking only draws people deeper inward as they realize their lives are nothing more than algorithms and lies to box them in forever.

It’s making him question the endgame of this new world order, while also questioning Delores and himself. He knows she’s not entirely human once she absorbs the bullets meant for him, but also that his own memories may not be exactly as he remembers. Genre starts to unsnap that narrative, and shows great character actor Enrico Colantoni as a potential source for the real truth of Caleb’s past.

Outside of Serac and Caleb, Bernard has been too much on the sidelines so far. But the way Conells speaks of him and treats him before sacrificing himself, he will play into the endgame, thankfully. Delores has some use for him still, and while it may not be clear what that is yet, it’s interesting that despite the main narrative pushes being Serac and Caleb, Delores and Bernard are the two powers that will close out the show’s ideas.

It’s also nice to see that Stubbs survived his sizeable fall. The original cast members have been through hell this season, but at least they’re (mostly) still standing. It’s a shame that Tommy Flanagan may not continue on the show after Conells’ sacrifice, as he’s been a fantastic addition.

Westworld Season 3 Episode 5, “Genre,” cleverly ties greed and conscience together as incompatible by using style over substance as a literal weapon. The dual themes help to become one and the same through showing the collapse of normalcy when someone’s need for more is challenged by their morals.

Liam’s father chose greed until his conscience could take no more, and now Caleb faces a similar challenge. Delores has set off a chain of events that she has faced herself, but done so on such a scale that the ramifications could be catastrophic. Caleb can see that it will affect others to a greater degree than himself, but it’s potentially too late.

Now it becomes a question of how far he is willing to go to follow Delores. He will need answers to know for sure, but it’s a fantastic set-up, that information is the darkest weapon. Delores has successfully weaponized it, but the cost may be too great.

 

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Westworld airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.

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