Westworld is "Resurrection TV," a trend where death on television doesn't matter

Slate

"Welcome to Resurrection TV, where death, bizarrely, stops mattering, and everyone involved, including the viewers, must sort out what does," says Lili Loofbourow. "Plot suffers in Resurrection TV, which tends to avoid linear cause and effect in favor of unreliable narrators, sly edits, and shifty camerawork. But other narrative approaches become possible as a result, and while the list of failures is long, the successes are gloriously inventive. Shows carving excellence out of this wobbly premise include abduction-drama The Leftovers and afterlife-comedy The Good Place, with Westworld emerging as a brilliant contender. My claim is this: While all three of these shows could be (and are) watched as 'Puzzle TV'—that is, shows that reward an obsessive, hermeneutical search for secret codes that might 'solve' the series—they are ultimately more interested in the long weird hangover of deathlessness, its possibilities as well as miseries."