Cancelled
HBO has announced there will be no
Season 5 for Westworld. It has always been a costly program to produce and the network’s new management has a mission to slash and the network’s budget.
On one hand, it’s a logical and understandable decision. Ratings have been dropping since Season 3 as viewers mewl that the show is “too hard to understand and the characters aren’t like me.”
On the other hand: At the dawn of commercial broadcast TV, CBS was called “the Tiffany Network. If you wanted guaranteed class, you watched CBS. With the advent of cable (and satellite) TV, we were offered the opportunity of enjoying programming and that flourished by subscription and not by ratings. Viewers with specialized values not shared by the mass market could have our needs met. I have always thought of HBO as being the contemporary Tiffany Network. I feel cheated out of the implicit contract I have with HBO for over 20 years. I feel unappreciated by the new management. I understand the reason for pulling the plug, but it is a simplistic, short-sighted choice that may well bring consequences to the new, 2-dimensional HBO management that will bight them in their collective ass.
I learned how to be happy with 2 seasons of Counterpart. I’ll find a way to be happy with 4 seasons of Westworld.