This season of The West is atrocious

They need new writers.

The current season of The West is a disappointing mishmash of bad writing, wooden acting and implausible plot lines.

Critics have known the show has been in decline for years although have been reluctant to say openly.

But with cancellation rumours growing it is difficult to see how it can survive. If the current season is any measure they simply don’t have the writers even if the producers hadn’t lost their minds.

The plot thickens

The West has always been known for its compelling plots. Epoch-defining inventions, new technologies and globe-spanning empires. Even grand moral crusades no one else would consider such as ending slavery or elevating women to equal status.

Just some of the storylines they said would never work and yet we were glued to our screens as they unfolded.

Unfortunately, more recent seasons have shown none of the flair of the past.

The latest drama is the threat of another plague. It is difficult to know how this got the go ahead so soon after the Covid storyline.

The original pandemic idea got off to a roaring start since it was then a novel idea. But as the drama unfolded the plot became increasingly contrived. The writers became carried away and eventually struggled to get out of the hole they had dug themselves.

It ended in absurdity with obvious conflicts between the original lockdown plot and the later mask and vaccine subplots.

It was almost as if different teams of writers were competing with each other instead of cooperating on the story arc, exactly the kind of mistake audiences are increasingly complaining about.

The latest version is a species-jumping virus and is already facing criticism for lazy writing and reheating ideas from last time. Audiences are unimpressed. Time will tell if they can pull it off again.

The second plot they seem to be exploring is even more implausible, war with China.

After the last few seasons mired in the Ukraine storyline it beggars belief the writers went in this direction.

There were rumours of production overruns and expensive reshoots as the Ukraine storyline dragged on. We will never know the full extent of their production woes but tough decisions were clearly made as well as a shakeup of the production team.

Critics had warned wars were rarely popular. People like the drama of course, but audiences quickly get bored. None of this stopped the producers and the writers dutifully did as asked.

Now it is China.

Many are saying this is just a sign the producers have been there too long. It is time for another clear out.

At least war is exciting. But after numerous attempts to sell immigration storylines they are trying it again despite its unpopularity.

Previous attempts to promote immigration plots failed to resonate with audiences although it has always been popular with a small, loud minority.

Most found it too farfetched, millions of young foreign men just wandering into Western nations as if no one would stop them. The critics had a field day.

But this season they are going with climate migration. People moving around because of the weather.

This is partly to shore up their failing climate plot. It was obvious several seasons ago this long running theme, a strong favourite with the showrunners, was no longer popular.

The younger audience members liked the more extreme aspects as they added much needed drama and fun. But older audiences had seen it all before.

Many felt the show jumped the shark when the writers had psychologically disturbed characters glueing themselves to roads and throwing around paint in art galleries. They were accused of making light of mental illness. Perhaps this new twist may breathe some life into the storyline.

They’ve managed to get decades of material from it so it is not surprising the writers are giving it one more spin by combining it with the less popular mass immigration.

While initial audience reactions are lukewarm this could be the one to watch this season. If they can pull this off it could change The West forever.

Paper thin characters

Audiences can generally accommodate an average storyline, but they are less forgiving about poor characters.

It is here the writers have attracted the most criticism.

This season they were going for a rerun of a few years back. The sleazeball politician and the crass businessman going head-to-head.

Trump, the most popular character in recent years, has made his predicted return. Back by popular demand.

They wrote the billionaire showman out of the series for a few years. Although audiences loved the character it was obvious the producers felt he dominated the show and removed him to make room for others.

Now he is back, although more muted this time. The producers clearly learned their lesson and have toned down the rhetoric. No talk of mass deportations this time.

Bizarrely, instead of the slick career politician we expected, the producers decided Biden should be played as an aging hasbeen in mental decline.

It was an odd choice, although won praise from the Alzheimer Society for the accuracy of his portrayal. But it didn’t go down well with audiences. Many criticized the acting as too wooden and staged. It was obvious the actor read from a prompt. This forced the producers to replace him mid-season, an unusual move.

His replacement, the minor diversity character Harris, is not popular with audiences. Her uneven acting and poor delivery have received a lot of criticism.

This is made even more obvious by the businessman’s more confident performance. He is an everyman character despite being a billionaire, and the casting was spot on; distinct, bombastic and masculine. Quite a contrast to the more confused Harris who seems lost in the show. They struggled for years to find anything for her to do and audiences were indifferent whenever she was onscreen.

The producers have come under scrutiny for other casting choices. Even the French and Canadian leaders have been in the spotlight despite their minor roles.

Both parts are played by gay men, despite the characters themselves being straight and married. Hardcore fans of the show have hammered this decision as neither actor quite pulls it off, with female audiences especially unimpressed with the Canadian, Trudeau.

I can feel his effeminacy in everything he does, so said one female critic from the Vancouver Sun. They aren’t buying it, and it is damaging the show’s credibility further when they fail in these casting choices.

The recent use of Indian actors for some of the leading British characters also drew widespread criticism. The scenes last season where the British Prime Minister was negotiating with the Indian Prime Minister confused audiences leading to complaints. What were the casting directors thinking?

Although these main characters are spared the vitriol aimed at the villains. Bill Gates, the awkward weirdo tech billionaire they last featured during the Covid storyline, has made a reappearance thanks to the emerging bird virus plot.

Universally reviled by audiences it is the one area the writers seem to be getting right. Female audience members routinely admit to being creeped out by the aging computer geek. His oddly stilted delivery and adolescent energy keep those same women hooked to their screens as they enjoy a well-acted ickfest.

The Gates character always delivers and it is obvious the producers like him as he is sometimes everywhere. The teaser trailer last year where they had him threatening to release genetically modified mosquito swarms was exactly the kind of mad scientist insanity we rarely see any more on our screens. Totally implausible pseudo-science but great fun to watch.

It is apparent some of the writers excel at these kinds of occasional madcap ideas like forcing the world to eat fake meat or the chaos of banning personal transport.

No such luck for the international villain Klaus Schwab. He has featured before and the standing joke online is they took every B-movie villain and mixed them with a paranoid schizophrenic to make their star turn, a bad guy so stereotypically bad he is borderline good.

His occasional appearances are meant to be sinister, but always come across as comedy gold. And who green lit that accent? It is almost impossible to keep a straight face while he delivers his lines. All he needs is a shark tank to kill off his rivals.

But he is not plausible, and that is the tragedy of wheeling him back out after years of watching his acting deteriorate along with the more bizarre plots and lines he had to deliver.

As one British critic put it, after his rants about synthetic food, restricting fuel sources and terrifying diseases, what is next? Banning money and locking us in our own homes while they take over the world? Schwab demonstrates the dangers of over-the-top writing. Where do you go next?

Mediocre world building

We expect the producers to challenge us with thrilling storylines like killer viruses or world wars. We could say the same for quirky characters too. They may not always work, but the well-written ones are often remembered fondly even while they were trashed at the time.

Who can forget Bush 2 and his sidekick, Cheney? They were hated, but they got the audiences watching. Every outlandish thing they did had people talking.

They even had them invading defenceless countries as we found ourselves cheering on mindless destruction like drugged sheep.

The conquest of Fallujah was a memorable point in the story arc; the cinematography alone hauntingly beautiful. Who can forget the images of orphaned toddlers playing in the rubble, their parents buried beneath them? No wonder it won so many awards.

It was compelling writing when the show was at its peak. In those days the writers understood where the boundaries were. Today many criticize the show’s producers for their willingness to ignore the society they operate in.

Have the writers never seen past shows?

The most blatant is the convenient plot device of using propaganda and mass hypnosis to shape public opinion. Real writing is hard so why bother when you can just conjure up automatic obedience when you need it?

This was the main complaint during the Covid storyline, the way characters just mindlessly followed along with bizarre government diktats. No one believed it. Educated Westerners would hardly be likely to take mystery drug cocktails in a parking lot for a free donut. It was absurd.

We live in functioning democracies. The Anglosphere is based on the British system, the mother of all parliaments. The progenitors of Magna Carta. We lead the world in freedom and liberty. No one can buy the notion strong systems of representation could be so completely hijacked. This isn’t North Korea.

Many of our cultural norms are absent too, as if the writers live in some fantasy bubble. No intact families, women not having children while screaming for abortions. All the kids are gay or confused. The men act like teenage girls. None of it is realistic.

The scale of gayness is a case in point. It was fine at first. The audience liked it. But the writers just took it too far. Plenty bought the rainbow merchandise too, an obvious money spinner for the show.

It began to go off the rails with the kids and the drag queens. The network definitely got complaints. And then the gender-bending children themselves. The boys castrated by their own mothers was too much. Just bad writing. Too extreme for ordinary viewers and too far from normality to be plausible.

But it was pushed over a cliff when the writers demonized white European culture. Focusing on slavery and cherry-picking moments from history as if the writers were amateurs. Early on critics pointed out the obvious bias. Where were they getting these writers? Did none of them read history? How could they make so much of slavery and not mention that we were the only people to end it while we had to hang African warlords who wanted to perpetuate it?

Then it was diversity everywhere. Some say it happened because the migration storylines fell flat so they had to do something to make it seem like it was working. But the sudden flood of people of non-European descent absolutely everywhere annoyed even minority viewers. Was The West suddenly majority non-white? Was every sexy blonde woman married to a black man?

People keep asking where all the white actors have went. Are they all on the dole? It looked wrong, European and North American settings with ethnic doctors and nuclear physicists everywhere in contrast to reality.

Writing is hard. Keeping it consistent and within the bounds of the world already built is harder still. Just one more sign the quality of the show is not what it once was.

The writers have lost their minds

There are some signs of common sense. They dropped the alien invasion plotline. Test audiences laughed it out of the room, not in keeping with the seriousness of the show.

They had several attempts at new plague stories. The most absurd was the monkeypox, clearly an effort to shore up their failing gay rainbow storylines as audiences were by then becoming bored. An obvious attempt to elicit sympathy. But as one female critic said the gay writers pushed hard in the show to normalize their sexual practices. They can’t complain when they are then dropped in favour of more exciting stories now they are considered old news and are of declining interest to audiences.

Although they are still pushing the childless women and career boss babes. That had already ran its course a few years back. All those scenes of unmarried suicidal women in nice apartments, expensive clothes with enviable lifestyles, alone, staring down the barrel at four or five decades of their nicely decorated empty apartment with no kids or husbands to console them.

The complaints were brutal. The network could barely cope. They lost many female viewers who never came back. Although it was the obviousness that people remember. The sponsorship from the cat food-boxed wine industrial complex was just too blatant to hide.

And of course they are still pushing the climate storylines although as noted they are now tying it into some kind of refugee crisis. Time will tell if it works. All the early signs are audiences are already bored and don’t really connect with dangerous young men fleeing rain storms.

We have to conclude this season of The West is characterized by poor writing, confusing plotlines, weak characters and a general sense of tiredness. None of it works as it once did. The show can’t have long to run now.

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Critics score: 2/5

Weak writing, poor character development and atrocious world building mar an otherwise brave attempt to continue the adventures of the long-running show. The replacement of the producers must be imminent.