Westworld: Season 3

Westworld doesn't need to be alienating to be good; it still is. But it may need to be alienating to be Westworld... In becoming a totally fine action serial, Westworld has taken a significant step back from being great

Westworld is an artfully produced trip through topical and imagined wormholes, and the fact that it loses its way as often as its characters lose their minds is at once apropos and frustrating.

It's a beautifully shot show, featuring some of TV's most ambitious special effects, but you could take nearly every dialogue-lite scene and turn it into a commercial for perfume or some luxury automobile.

I just miss the old Westworld, really: an imperfect but sweeping series with a shivery kind of poetry at its heart. That lyricism, the show's philosophical murmur, is largely drowned out in Season 3.

The writers play with all the metaphorical possibilities of sex toys and punching bags gaining consciousness, and the dystopian technology-ruled future Nolan and Joy draw for us feels creepily plausible.

Like Maeve says, none of it matters, because none of it feels real... As a result, everything looks cool, but rings hollow.

Even at its most pompous and silly, Westworld remains a thrill a second, and ironically, given that it loves a Big Question, it's best enjoyed when not thinking too deeply about the answer.

The show's production remains sleek and eye-catching, however, and its ideas at least superficially intriguing, as long as the stellar cast can hold onto your attention.

It's the most frustratingly not-quite-there show on TV: structurally bold, visually arresting, often brilliantly acted, show-off-ily erudite... and woefully predisposed to turn subtext into text.

Westworld is always stylish, but at moments like that, it's inspired.

Westworld needed real humanity, unprogrammed and flawed, and Paul's performance is a saving grace in this respect.

It all looks amazing, at times like Blade Runner and at others like a really expensive hotel in Dubai, but I'm constantly struggling to properly get on top of where we are, or why.