In Review: Westworld (S3 – E1) Parce Domine

Synopsis: Taking residence in neo-Los Angeles, Dolores develops a relationship with Caleb, and comes to learn how artificial beings are treated in the real world.

The Story

Delores is exploring the world while trying to establish her foothold and find out who is running the system of control. To that end, she is engaging in a bit of corporate espionage into a big tech company called insight, which has a program that collects data and works out algorithms. When things go wrong and she gets caught she manages to replace Insights head of security with one of her old host gang members, probably Teddy. At this point, she meets Caleb who is apparently a former soldier who is down on his luck. It seems that Caleb is also a host.

Elsewhere Bernard has been working at a slaughterhouse and has been trying to hide from the authorities, but when two of his workmates recognize him and try to bring him down so they can get some reward. All bets are off. Now bernard must find a new place to hide.

The Acting

This first episode of the season introduces Aaron Paul who plays Caleb. A man who seemingly fought in a war and is now being treated pretty badly by society at large because perhaps he isn’t human enough. Either way, Aaron Paul is given a pretty complex character to play and we learn quite a bit about him in this first episode. During the day he works in whatever construction job he can get. In the evenings he logs into a phone app for illegal work to help make ends meet. I think Caleb is likely going to be an interesting new addition to the cast and I look forward to seeing how he plays off of Evan Rachel Wood’s Deloras in the coming episodes.

Overall

This opening episode did a fairly decent job of setting things up for the coming weeks. I really liked how Caleb was introduced and how he didn’t meet Deloras to the final moments of the episode. I’m also hoping that this season doesn’t give us glimpses of past and present like in the previous two seasons and actually tells us the story as it is happening. My brain needs a rest from all this fancy time-lapsed stuff. I really loved the futuristic motorcycle that Deloras rides. I so got to have one of those.

We didn’t get to see too much of Maeve in this episode, but judging by the teaser. We’ll get to see her in a new role in next week’s show.