Which watch watched which Watchmen?

[Paul le Fou]

I just started the TV series the other night, and got two episodes in. I'd been meaning to watch it since it came out, but I finally pulled it up and I'm wondering why I slept on it so long. Remains to be seen how things pan out, but so far I'm really intrigued. On the one hand, I keep looking for parallels to the original comic, but also keep trying to pull myself back and let it do its thing as a new work. I have theories about Horse-Riding Man - one quickly formed, one that may have replaced it in episode 2 - and one about Wheelchair Man.

It strikes me as a very politically odd show so far. I'm definitely having a kneejerk reaction against the whole angle it appears to take so far where Police are innocent victims that need to be protected and are put upon by unfair regulations, but it also wears very strong racial politics on its sleeve, and the original comic was a critique of vigilantism and fascism, so I'm withholding judgment until I see how more of it plays out.

All the mask imagery is coming across very differently in the age of COVID though, I can tell you that.

 

[Dracula]

The moment where someone says the line "Masks save lives" made us just about fall out of our seats.

But stick with it. I think you'll like where it goes. This was one of my favorite TV shows I've seen in years, and I'm generally really down on stuff that tries to piggyback off of Watchmen.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

It strikes me as a very politically odd show so far. I'm definitely having a kneejerk reaction against the whole angle it appears to take so far where Police are innocent victims that need to be protected and are put upon by unfair regulations, but it also wears very strong racial politics on its sleeve, and the original comic was a critique of vigilantism and fascism, so I'm withholding judgment until I see how more of it plays out.

Without spoiling anything, just keep watching as you are and keep being critical. Watchmen's politics are both very poignant and extremely relative to what's going on in America right now, and not everything is at it seems right now only two episodes deep.

 

[Lakupo]

Just joining the chorus saying to keep going. The series is telling a complete story, and it nails it.

We watched it in June, because I heard it was "topical", and pretty quickly I was like "holy crap this is way beyond just 'topical'"...

 

[Jeanie]

Just a reminder for anyone watching, the Tulsa Massacre was a real thing that happened.

 

[krelbel]

Best show I saw since Leftovers, another Lindelof joint. (never saw Lost)

 

[Rascally Badger]

I have a hard time wrapping my head around Lindelof doing good writing after watching any movie he's credited as screenwriter on.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I have a hard time wrapping my head around Lindelof doing good writing after watching any movie he's credited as screenwriter on.

Yeah, it's weird. But it makes sense. It's not like he wrote Watchmen by himself. From what I've seen, it looks like he employed a big writer's room full of diverse voices, and empowered them to write the show while being more of an editor/guide-person than a writer for the show.

 

[Sprite]

i was pretty darn cynical about this show but man did it win me over. It’s one of the most compelling bits of speculative fiction and alternate history I’ve come across. Turning masked vigilantes into just straight-up cops seems like such an obvious idea in retrospect. It also does a great job of slowly leaning into its comic bookness and pulling you in with it.

By chance, I was listening to the podcast Behind the Bastard’s mini series about the history of cops in the US while watching this show, and they make great accidental companion pieces. It’s pretty chilling how actual masked vigilante justice in this country has been the domain of the Klan.

 

[Paul le Fou]

And finished! Yep, I'd say that was Pretty Good. Don't worry, I was at no risk of not sticking with it - I pretty much needed to know what happened by the end of episode 1. Overall, it really did feel very Watchmen. Feels like there are a lot of little references and things worth diving into. Overall the characters felt like Watchmen characters without feeling like just a retread - Looking Glass in particular, despite definitely being a Rorshach-esque figure, felt like a perfectly natural fit in the universe. Also, Jeremy Irons is just a slightly less goofy Christopher Lloyd (in face and voice alike) and I cannot be convinced otherwise.

Spoiler: A couple reactions and impressions w/ spoilers

I called who Will was in episode 2, and the way they folded it into everything made it seem hard to believe that Hooded Justice being black wasn't part of the character from the very beginning, though I know the comic didn't actually seem to leave it as an open question. I do wonder though about the effect of having almost all of that flashback in b&w so we never actually saw Will as HJ in red and purple - I think it would have been kinda hard to sell?

All the Dr. Manhattan stuff was really cool to watch and follow unfold all of a sudden. Like, the whole season was ultimately centered on him, but he didn't even show up until, what, the last episode (well, the second-last episode in flashback). But of course it was unfolding all along. The whole "killing him" thing was...not sure how I feel about it, because his getting zapped by the cannon would have been extremely easy to avoid, so it felt a little forced. Of course, there was the egg and all, so he may have planned it all along? And he can be in multiple places at once, and it seems like he could have done more outside the cage if he was able to transport them to Karnak through the senator slurry, and, and, and... Anyway. It raises questions.

Didn't realize this until after it ended, but Lady Trieu followed in her father's suit, taking on the name of a semi-mythical historical figure. And was also a semi-benevolent-seeming figure that ended up ultimately being the villain, too. Also, the statue reveal was just a great moment.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

All the Dr. Manhattan stuff was really cool to watch and follow unfold all of a sudden. Like, the whole season was ultimately centered on him, but he didn't even show up until, what, the last episode (well, the second-last episode in flashback). But of course it was unfolding all along. The whole "killing him" thing was...not sure how I feel about it, because his getting zapped by the cannon would have been extremely easy to avoid, so it felt a little forced. Of course, there was the egg and all, so he may have planned it all along? And he can be in multiple places at once, and it seems like he could have done more outside the cage if he was able to transport them to Karnak through the senator slurry, and, and, and... Anyway. It raises questions.

I really liked this too, but I didn't have as hard of a time reconciling it. In fact, it made perfect sense to me.

Spoiler

Dr Manhattan's whole shtick is about him being detached from reality to the point where he sees himself as a passive entity observing the universe with no agency despite his unlimited power and still having free will. And the way he went out seemed perfectly in line with that. Where he sees his destiny as something immutable so he just... lets it happen. I really like the way Will Reeves eulogizes him at the end. As a good man, but considering what he could do, that he really ought to have done more. It's a kind of fascinating problem that both humanizes and condemns him as a 'hero' - he could have done all of the things that Trudeau said she wanted to do, but didn't.

Meanwhile, it's kind of a fascinating look at what it would mean to be a god too. Because he creates a paradise with an Adam and an Eve, and it's absolutely perfect, and he doesn't leave them with a fruit of knowledge either. And he eventually just leaves because it's... boring. It lacks spirit and soul, and the whole venture just feels artificial and wrong. And I think that says a lot of interesting things about god.

I think my biggest complaint about the show, is how it handled the Vietnam stuff.

Spoiler

The fact that the US fully colonized Vietnam in the Watchmen universe is just a disposable line in the original comic, but the ramifications here in this sequel-ish show are better explored, but not fully realized. They're still an after thought and not a primary focus. They're like the Soviet Union to the original comic - something that intellectually we know exists and informs a lot of the plot, but is a place that for all intents and purposes is not properly recognized in the story as an actual place full of actual people. When we see Vietnamese in the show, they're: Terrorists, tyranical police, nasty sweatshop foreman, and megalomaniacal villains. There is barely an acknowledgement of the plight of the Vietnamese, in almost the same ways that the show highlights how Blackness is scrubbed from history. It's kinda made even worse when if you read the Peteypedia stuff, it's another disposable line how America has now colonized not just Vietnam, but pretty much the entirety of South East Asia/Oceania. It's just kinda frustrating because they came so close to doing a decent job and then just dropped the ball. And it's disappointing to see that and know even in something as good as Watchmen, that we Asians just don't fit into everybody else's neat little binary view of race in this society. That we're unseen except for all the ugly parts, and we are easily brushed aside when the convenience of others can be served. We are invisible. If you just think and extrapolate for a few seconds, you realize that in the world of Watchmen, a full 1/4th of the population of the US would be Vietnamese. America would have as many Asians as we have Black and Hispanic people combined, and we'd be really close to being a minority-majority country as a result. And yet, Asians are invisible in the show, you see them nowhere and they comprise no major characters aside from the villain. It's regrettable and shortsighted.

 

[John]

Rolling Stone just dropped a video interview with Lindelof, Reznor, and Ross, talking about the soundtrack. Even if you don't care about the soundtrack or the individuals, you should skip ahead to 24:00 in the video, and watch from there. It's a nice coda to the Peteypedia entries and the additional "lore" in the vinyl record inserts.

Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Damon Lindelof on Scoring 'Watchmen'

Emmy-nominated 'Watchmen' composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross talk score with show creator Damon Lindelof.

www.rollingstone.com

 

[Destil]

My wife and I just finished this and it was great.

 

[Dracula]

Hell yeah it was!

 

[Felicia]

I, too, have now watched the Watchmen. I really liked it, and though it often had a dark tone, it felt as if there was often a certain dark humor to it as well. Some spoilery thoughts:

Spoiler

At the beginning of the first episode, during the Tulsa Massacre, I was thinking "hey, is this an allegorical take on Superman's origin story?" And sure enough, in "This Extraordinary Being", it's spelled out when William Reeves (a reference to George Reeves and/or Christopher Reeve?) reads the first issue of Action Comics. So just as Superman was the first superhero that inspired the creation of all the others in our world, Hooded Justice is the first superhero in the Watchmen universe.

The whole Hooded Justice retcon is just amazing well executed, accounting for every detail of his depiction in the comic that I can think of. My favorite is probably in one of the Peteypedia documents that explains that his line in this panel...

...is supposed to be said in a sarcastic voice. And it really works.

I'm actually kind of curious about what would have happened if Trieu's plan had worked. The implication from the comic is that the only reason Jon managed to pull himself together after the accident was because he had a special mind, as a watchmaker's son he knew how to look at things and put the pieces together. Trieu was obviously intelligent, but did she have that particular intelligence, or would she have transformed into some sort of horrible creature, or simply not been able to pull herself together at all? And would she become just as deatched from reality as Manhattan became, or would she go crazy in some other way?

While I did appreciate the "American Hero Story" bits, I do wish we'd have a few more mentions of pirates. The concept of pirate comics becoming big instead of superhero comics when actual superheroes appeared is one of my favorite pieces of nerdy worldbuilding in the graphic novel. But maybe it would have been too nerdy for a TV audience?

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I'm actually kind of curious about what would have happened if Trieu's plan had worked. The implication from the comic is that the only reason Jon managed to pull himself together after the accident was because he had a special mind, as a watchmaker's son he knew how to look at things and put the pieces together. Trieu was obviously intelligent, but did she have that particular intelligence, or would she have transformed into some sort of horrible creature, or simply not been able to pull herself together at all? And would she become just as deatched from reality as Manhattan became, or would she go crazy in some other way?

Being a watchmaker's son was only his origin story and explained why he was predisposed towards the sciences/being an analytical mind. I think his years of being a theoretical physicist was more important to him being able to pull himself back together than simply guy likes watches. Trieu meanwhile is a hyper genius, way more intelligent than Manhattan was as a human. I have no doubt she could manage to harness Dr Manhattan's powers.

While I did appreciate the "American Hero Story" bits, I do wish we'd have a few more mentions of pirates. The concept of pirate comics becoming big instead of superhero comics when actual superheroes appeared is one of my favorite pieces of nerdy worldbuilding in the graphic novel. But maybe it would have been too nerdy for a TV audience?

I'm fine without its inclusion. Media IRL goes through phases/cycles. You go from Westerns being really popular for a decade or two, to Sci-Fi, to Counter Terrorism action heroics, to Super Heroes. Pirates weren't gonna be in vogue forever before something else came along.

 

[Felicia]

I dunno, I've always liked the thought of Jon's mind being unique in some way, that him stepping into the Intrinsic Field Experiment was a "thermodynamic miracle" that couldn't be succesfully replicated (it is mentioned in the comic that people did try to replicate the incident to create more Dr. Mahattans, but it always failed, most likely due to the fact that the people they tried it on couldn't pull themselves together). But yeah, it does seem likely that Trieu would be clever enough to do it.

It does make me wonder if Adrian ever considered trying the experiment on himself back in the day, him being super-intelligent as well.

Speaking of Adrian, I did think it was a little strange that he would make a recording explaining his whole squid plan to the president. I got the impression that he was always going to manipulate the world from the shadows, not actually telling anyone about where the squid came from. Though I do like that his grand post-squid plans mostly failed. That seems to be the common idea in the Watchmen sequels we've seen so far (the TV series and the Doomsday Clock comic).

 

[Felicia]

Another clever thing I noticed about the TV series: In the comic it's suggested that in the alternate-history 1980s technology has advanced further than it had in real life, due to the presence of Dr. Manhattan. This would logically mean that technology should be even more advanced in the alternate 2019. But to make sure that the series is still set in a world somewhat similar to ours and not in a completely sci-fi future, they came up with the concept that the squid incident made everyone afraid of technology, so computers etc. were all thrown away and only reintroduced many years later. The extra materials for example suggests that computer games were an illegal, underground form of entertainment for many years.