Westworld Season 3 Episode 5, Genre, Recap and Review

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So the film opens up at Picard Wineries. Not really, but we do get a backstory to the mega computer and our friend/enemy Serak. The computer was built to try to isolate flies in the ointment. As the show puts it, the computer was the ultimate statist institution. The modern Serak is talking to a head of state about some political dissidents. He is negotiating a truce between a dictator and the political dissidents. Serak tells the leader he will listen, or he will orchestrate a coup and the leaders whole family will die and Serak will be back in six weeks to talk to the new leader. He is the puppet master who is pulling the strings. With information comes money. With money comes power. Serak clearly has it all.

On Easter, there is a lot of talk about building a god. As the group set out to build the supercomputer they had to hire this great computer coder named Dempsey. The super computer is named Solomon. The new coder is not a believer. Right now the computer is accurately predicting the past, but is not predicting the future. He is ready to pull the plug on the entire project. Sirak is narrating these flash backs. The mastermind is Serak’s brother. The computer predicts some disturbances from Dempsy. It has highlighted Dolores’ activity.

Back in present-day Dolores and Caleb have Liam and are walking away from the party. They are trying to get access to the computer, but they need Liam’s help. He is uhmmmm less than helpful as he tries to turn Caleb. Liam has like google glass on and is able to see everyone’s life story on his glasses. He looks up Caleb and then stabs him with the drugs he got during the party that we saw last episode. Dolores gets Liam and a now VERY high Caleb and drags them up a flight of stairs. For Caleb, everything is black and white. Dolores’s automated motorcycle meets them. She checks something in the motorcycle and sends it off. She asks for a vehicle and then forces everyone inside it. Jesse (Caleb) is still very high.

While in the car Dolores continues to ask Liam for his private key. The vehicle alerts them that their vehicle has been commandeered because of an amber alert. Caleb tries to kick his way out. Another group of cars is cutting off their getaway. Again, she asks for his key. This time Liam gives it to her. The cars start to shoot at the vehicle. She hacks into the car with Liam’s key and tells it to get out of dodge. As they try and make their getaway Dolores gives Caleb some sort of grenade launcher. She is controlling the vehicle while Caleb shoots. He misses but she can control the grenade and eventually it makes its way back and blows up one of the two cars trailing them. She calls in her motorcycle who kamikazes the other car. Meanwhile, Caleb is tripping balls. A third car is heading their way. It stops and Dolores opens fire on it. Now there is an old fashioned shoot out. Just in the nick of time, Caleb’s crime friends show up to finish off the other car. They inform all of us that he is high on a drug called Genre, which is like five drips in one. Liam informs all of them that they can’t be in two places at once and that they will need to be to get access to the computer.

The security guard who is with Bernard hears from Dolores. She gives him Liam’s key and tells him to get Serak’s information. The head of security presses Bernard’s button and they head into the building. He is able to send the Serak file over to Dolores.

We get another cool cutaway to Caleb’s trip. They are in the subway and it’s very psychedelic. He picks out that they are being followed. It’s like the ultimate unreliable narrator though as we don’t know if it is real or not.

We are back in the flashback. Serak and his brother show the investor that the computer can predict the stock market. The computer stole money and then invested it to drive the market into particular patterns. Their investor started to drive outcomes only in his favor. They also realized that the computer always predicted that outliers ended the world. Serak’s brother became one of them.

Back on the subway. Liam talks about how allowing people to know their data would lead to chaos. The friends of Caleb want their data and he shares the computer prediction about them and their family (it ain’t pretty). Caleb talks about how when he was in the army the rats were so bad they had to make their own rat traps. He tells a story about rats swimming and hope. Specifically false hope. He tells Liam he would rather live in a world of chaos than a world controlled by Liam. Dolores is discussing something with the Security Guard. He mentions them being on the train. As they look around he seems to be broadcasting all of their data to their individual phones. The computer makes decisions for all of them. It knows everything. It knows they are unreliable, or if they have the trait for Alzheimer’s, or if they are depressed, or if they are good parents. Now everyone on the train has access to that data. Totally fucked. As they exit the train everyone is looking at their phones and reading their data profiles, including a brief cameo by a mask someone appears to be wearing to prevent the spread of some sort of infection. COVID even in the future.

Bernard mentions they all have role to play. Liam tells her he hopes she is happy that the people in the station will have their lives ruined. She tells him it’s not everyone in the station, its EVERYONE in the world. A pretty brilliant musical rendition of Major Tom scores society completely falling apart. Two individuals get out of a car and try to shoot Caleb. Dolores steps in front of the bullets and then kills the two shooters.

In the flashback Serak we see Dempsy their investor who eventually gets curious about what is going on with the computer. He walks into a building full of cells. This must be where the mentally unstable are. As we get lots of stereotypes regarding mental health. He stands outside of one of the cells and sees Serak with his brother who is in a cell. Serak mentions that the radiation has accelerated impulsive qualities in his brother that can’t be regulated. As long as the outliers exist the future cannot be predicted. Serak mentions he is trying to help those people. Dempsy says you are trying to change and control them.

Our security guard is talking to Bernard when Stubbs comes out of the elevator. He and Bernard quickly disarm the Security Guard and Bernard takes out his button and demands access to the computer. They all notice in the lobby Serak’s posse is coming to take them out. The security guard intercepts the group and they bring him to a conference room. Serak mentions the security guard (Martin is his name) is one of their biggest allies. Martin tells Serak he will get to the bottom of it and quickly blows up the room. Bernard and Stubbs hastily make their getaway.

Hey look it’s Caleb’s wharf. We get some really cool eighties dark synthesizer. It’s our first cue things are getting REAL. Dolores group discuss what to do with Liam. He tells them they are all criminals. He tells Caleb he is the worst of them because he doesn’t even know who he is. One of the criminals shoots Liam and tells him she does have a choice after all. Caleb tries to save Liam but cannot. The last thing Liam tells Caleb is “you did it”. Caleb is confused and concerned and wants to know who Liam thought he was. He turns to Dolores and asks who does he think I am.

Back on Serak’s airplane, we learn Dolores was looking for HIS file in the computer. In another flashback, Dempsey and Serak are in a car debating about the future of humanity. They get out and we learn that if they tell everyone all of the information then it ends with human extinction. Serak leads Dempsey out of the car and over a hill they see an airplane crash. They walk towards it and Serak kills Dempsey to prevent that future.

In an airplane carrier, Serak and Dolores discuss what they are prepared to do for their particular causes. Dolores is getting under his skin for sure. She tells him its time that everyone wakes up. Now Caleb and Dolores discuss whether it was right or wrong to tell people. They are both different but there is power in that difference.