Clementine Was Done Dirty

August 15, 2022

Well, Shat Crew.
I’m going to try and do what you guys have done the last few weeks and try and see the beauty in a few things from this finale before I start, because…man, I honestly really did not like this episode. First, I absolutely loved hearing the words “Fucking Camper” uttered by Ed Harris. I laughed my damn head off at it. I’m not gonna lie, if Call of Duty doesn’t make a Westworld tie-in level and Host in Black playable character who can utter those words when killing camping players, they’ll have missed a perfect DLC opportunity for Modern Warfare II. I loved seeing Sweetwater again. And especially knowing that it had to be digitally reinserted into the shot, since the actual set used for Sweetwater burned down a few years ago, that was an excellent computer generated image. And I loved the general cinematography.

Now that I have said that, let me say a few things I did not like about this finale episode, and a few plot holes. Halores swing back to good seemed far too quick, and unwarranted to boot. Maeve was supposed to be the weapon that would help defeat Halores and Host in Black, was built up for a few episodes, but she was killed off and never mentioned again. The whole thing felt rushed, and if I’m honest, it felt almost more like a series finale, than a season finale. Almost as if the showrunners worried they may not get the show renewed, and tried to make an end in case. In my opinion, it almost felt like Game of Thrones ending level disappointing. It was like an Olympic pole vaulter perfectly executing everything except the landing.

But, as the title of my email states, all of those pale in comparison to the exact moment I checked out of the episode. I fully admit, I don’t really ever get upset over a fictional characters’ death, or even over a show really. The last time was the ending of Lost (Lord, I’m still ticked over that). I got a bit bummed seeing Stubbs axed tonight, though I had an idea it was coming due to Bernard earlier. No, the moment I got actually angry and checked out of the show mentally was the ending that Clementine suffered. I physically got up from my couch and shouted “What the ever-loving FUCK, dude?!”

Clementine has been one of my favorite characters since season 1. And she’s had to deal with being someone else’s puppet since day one. The humans in the park, Serac in the real world, you name it. And then wr move on to Season 4. She had killed Musashi, and disappeared. We saw her living among the humans, smiling at the flower she was given by a young girl. She was at peace. And she had seemingly learned that not all the humans were like those who visited Delos Destinations. She didn’t want to control them, or kill them. For the first time in her life, she was free. And then Host in Black killed and reprogrammed her when she refused to divulge Maeve’s location. And she spent almost three decades, again a puppet, with a reprogrammed personality. And the season had set up a perfect character arc for her.

In one of the previous episodes, when she spoke to Halores, she specifically and deliberately mentioned that she had never interacted or spoke to an outlier before. The show practically put a damn magnifying glass over that line as if to say, “Don’t forget about this line, it may come in handy later!” It was clearly setting up that an interaction with an outlier could revert her to her previous personality, her good side. Now, Caleb wouldn’t work, because, well, he’s a host, so he wouldn’t have the same effect on her that he would’ve as a human. But Frankie? Frankie could. And then, Clementine could have been a force in the final battle at the Hoover Dam, using her previous virus build against HIB. Or hell, even kept an eye on the Dam to maintain it and the Sublime and help the surviving outliers, since it will only last without maintenance for 100 years, as said by the cartel member in episode 1.

But, no. They already had criminally underused her. And subsequently underused the actress playing her, Angela Sarafyan. She demonstrated her acting range and dexterity this episode, proving she should not be sidelined. She plays a villain spectacularly. And the character arc I mentioned above would have helped extend that range even more, by giving her the chance to swing back to the good side. But again, no. She just goes straight evil, straight Terminator, no finishing character arc, no redemption. She’s just mindlessly killed off by Frankie with some stupid one liner that was beyond cliche. I’ll be completely honest, maybe I’m now officially a host sympathizer here, but I stopped caring about Frankie and her plight the second she pulled that trigger. I would rather have had Clem live than her and Caleb.

And what makes it worse is, if there is a final season, the Clementine in the Sublime won’t actually be Clem. It’ll be a memory of her by Dolores, as all the others. She won’t have the memories of living among the humans, knowing there were good ones out there. She won’t know about all the struggles she went through to be free, and how it felt to be so. It’s back to square one for a memory version of her. Both Clementine the character and Angela Sarafyan the actress were underused, and then thrown away, along with all the other characters and their journeys to that point.

Just….Nolan and Joy….come on, man. What the ever loving hell was this fuck doll made out of monkey shit? So many characters were done dirty this season. Bernard, Stubbs, Maeve. But, in my opinion, Clem was the one who was done the dirtiest, relegated to eye candy, a bodyguard, and a killing machine, and nothing more. And that is messed up beyond measure.

I’ll be honest, short of getting Anthony Hopkins back or making the biggest and best character arc for Clem possible, I’m not sure if Season 5 can truly get me into it after this. But you guys have been so entertaining and fun to listen to, that even if I don’t choose to watch it, if it’s made, I’ll still listen to your podcasts about it, since you always make my weeks listening to what you guys think and extrapolate from your watches. So, thank you so much for making this season so much more enjoyable to watch. It’s been a hell of a ride, even if the ending went from riding over the waves, to diving straight down into the Mariana Trench.

Yours sincerely,
Joey G.

P.S., Personally, I think Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” would have been a better and more fitting song for Host in Black to have been listening to while driving in his Dodge Power Ram than Johnny Cash.

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