Remember all the way back to last week, when Watchmen outdid itself in the exploration of inherited trauma? The answers to certain questions helped us all feel we understood the direction of the show a little bit better. Well, “An Almost Religious Awe” arrives and proves we knew nothing. Doctor Manhattan makes a skull-cracking reveal, Veidt might be living in a statue, we finally learn Angela’s backstory, and there are only four hours left until the Millennium Clock strikes. Let’s not waste any more time.
In the same way that William Reeves’ (Louis Gossett Jr.) life imitated Superman’s journey, Angela Abar’s (Regina King) life looks remarkably similar to that other DC icon, Batman. Bruce Wayne, of course, saw his parents murdered in an alley. The play or movie—depending on which Batman adaptation you’re watching—titled The Mask of Zorro impacted the costume Bruce would later put on to fight crime. Angela’s parents never saw the film Sister Night that would inspire her uniform; they were killed in a terrorist attack in Vietnam. Like Bruce, Angela learned to bury her pain.
Luckily, Grandma June found a young Angela (Faithe Herman) in Vietnam not long after. She whisked her away from the Miss Hannigan villain running the orphanage, to the Burgers and Borscht fast-food chain for a Russian style lunch. Grandma June curses and listens like a pro. She supports her granddaughter’s choice to become a police officer, even if just holding the badge brings up painful memories of William and her son leaving forever. The cycle of generational trauma continues. But then, in a story darker than Bruce Wayne’s, Angela’s rescuer dies of a heart attack before they even leave the country.
While recuperating from the Nostalgia overdose, Angela’s mind keeps flashing back and forth between William’s memories and her own. Lady Trieu (Hong Chau) warns Angela that if she sees William, she won’t be able to tell where she stops and he begins. A side effect of taking all of William’s Nostalgia at once is that Angela’s emotions begin to control her. She cries and shakes behind Trieu’s lock and key. But keeping Angela in one place proves impossible. She eventually breaks into William’s room. Instead of Will, she discovers an elephant. Supposedly, an elephant never forgets—perhaps that’s why they’re able to remove the memory-inducing drugs from Angela’s system? According to Trieu, Angela’s been under for a couple of days. It makes you wonder what else Trieu did to Angela in that time. Also, Will spoke a lot about making great sacrifices in episode four. At the time, I thought Angela uncovering his memories concerned him most. Now I’m wondering what other obligations to the final plan William’s made.
Laurie (Jean Smart) confronts Mrs. Crawford about her husband’s potential involvement with the Seventh Kavalry. In her advanced years, Laurie’s cockiness has grown into a shield. She casually set up shop in Judd’s office before the squad laid him to rest. She snuck a gun into his funeral. Laurie even managed to leave the FBI in Washington, D.C. so she could investigate the murder of a police chief practically by herself. To be fair, the former masked vigilante’s skills measured up; or, they did until that damn trap door. I know Laurie thought she was in her bag during that interrogation, but as soon as anyone pulls out a device and starts clicking in your general direction, that’s a sign to move. I expected more from Silk Spectre and The Comedian’s kid. Though, she did just leave Petey (Dustin Ingram) with a bunch of dead bodies without bothering to call in the crime.
Crawford takes Laurie to meet Keene at the Seventh Kavalry HQ in an abandoned J.C. Penney. The portal that terrified Looking Glass in episode five now terrifies me. The plan Lindelof’s been building to has burst wide open, and it’s scarier than anything I could imagine. The white supremacists want to turn one of their own into a god, and then place that god in the office of the president. Remember, the eight-year term limit no longer applies since Nixon won Vietnam and had the rules changed. For nearly thirty years, Robert Redford sat in the big chair. A terrorist organization could easily push the country into a monarchy, and away from democracy.
Now we get to the largest reveal of the night. Doctor Manhattan has lived undercover as Cal for nearly a decade. In the Watchmen comic series, it’s hinted that certain segments of the Vietnamese population viewed Manhattan as a god after the war. Some soldiers surrendered directly to him. It’s another moment in the Watchmen television series that seems obvious only after it’s revealed. Of course, power-hungry men would hear the story of Jon Osterman and seek to repeat his accident on themselves. Failing means sacrificing the most precious possession, life. Winning holds the same consequence.
A very brief history of Jon for those of you who don’t know. All the way back in episode two, Veidt gave us a flawed, but a mostly accurate play about how Jon transformed into Doctor Manhattan. But having it all can’t fill the void an emotionally abusive parent leaves in a child’s heart. Jon’s father gave up watchmaking when Albert Einstein revealed time was irrelevant, and after he saw the atom bomb fall. Later, his son would become a walking atom bomb capable of seeing the future, but powerless to stop it. Like a genie, Manhattan may be all powerful, but he’s confined to the rules of his condition.
As Manhattan’s powers grew, the intense knowledgeable being struggled to tell the difference between a dead being and a still-living person. At any given moment, both bodies have the same number of atoms. On a universal scale, nothing changed. The last person on Earth he cared about was Laurie. She left him for Dan (owl guy currently in prison) as she sought a life different than her mother. In their final act together, the exes confronted Adrian Veidt on 11/3. They were a few minutes too late to stop the squid drop. After killing Rorschach at the deranged man’s request, Manhattan says he’ll return to Mars and create some life of his own. The man who has everything wants a settled life.
Previously we saw Topher (Dylan Schombing) building the same castle Manhattan constructed on Mars. Did Manhattan created life after all? Also, the only video evidence of Manhattan on Mars appears to be from his ’85 visit to the planet. Based on this episode’s opening scene, Angela’s about ten years old in 1985. The video that plays in the story speaks of the cancer scare and the Blue Wave, which saw people all over the world turn away from technology after Veidt constructed a rumor that the advances in technology created by Manhattan had killed many of his former co-workers. When did Angela and Manhattan meet? Did he ever go back to Mars, or had he purposely set up a misdirect?
Clues of Manhattan’s secret identity have been scattered throughout the series so far. I also have a strong desire to go back and scrutinize every interaction between Laurie and Angela. Angela must know about Manhattan and Laurie’s fifteen-year relationship. The shade she threw Laurie takes on a much richer meaning. The fact that they’re so similar should have been a clue. I watched this episode with a group of friends. As the mystery unraveled, someone shouted, “Look at Cal’s chiseled jawline! Obviously, he’s Manhattan.” If we look to the DC canon of heroes for similarities, Manhattan feels a lot like Martian Manhunter. J’onn J’onzz fled Mars from persecution. In some versions of his story, J’onn chooses to live as a Black man in America. He’s highly intelligent, measured in his speech, and often seen as a peacekeeper amongst the superheroes. This America needs a peacekeeper.
David Bowie’s “Life On Mars” plays as Angela informs Jon that they’re in trouble. The song critiques art as a form of escape. A girl wants to go to the movies. Her parents tell her, no, but she goes anyway. But when the credits roll, she’s disappointed because the reflection was something she’s already experienced in her waking life. I’ll be interested to see how Manhattan returns to his waking life, after these years of carefree entertainment.
Stray observations
- My heart, Cal, reads Earnest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Oh my god, he cannot die.
- One of the most obvious questions this week is who is Trieu’s dad. We know she cloned her mother, but she said her father would be here. Veidt used to have an army of brainwashed Vietnamese servants working for him. Given his disregard for human life, maybe he procreated during that time and abandoned his child? But Trieu also said that her mother asked her never to leave Vietnam. If The Comedian were her father, she’d be Laurie’s half sister. But he’s dead, so how would he be at the launch of the clock? This is a head scratcher.
- Here’s the big prediction: Veidt’s in the statue, not on a moon of Jupiter. The cut from the absurd courtroom scene, to the pained and old statue of Veidt, would suggest these places are the same. The oldest we’ve seen Veidt comes from the 1988 video he sent to future president Robert Redford. How would anyone know what he looks like now?
- Also, for the first time, Veidt feels remorse. Don’t Mr. Phillips (Tom Mison) and Mrs. Crookshanks (Sara Vickers) share a striking resemblance? I wonder if this is a da Vinci thing where he’s been forced to imagine his masculine and feminine self, the part he loves and the part he hates, at war with himself in an endless loop. Crookshanks’ wink, the adorable pigs, none of it feels real.
344 Comments
As soon as Trieu said Manhattan was in Tulsa, we all knew it was Cal, right?Ozzy is definitely frozen in carbonite as that statue, just as he is also Trieu’s father.
Lots of reviewers have said that making Hooded Justice black was a change from the comics…even though it really isn’t because everything that we knew about HJ was speculation.But what would be a change from the comics is giving Veidt a love child. Veidt buys things, and he clones things, and occasionally he kills things. But he doesn’t have sex with things. I would even say it’s an important and deliberate distinction between Ozymandias and horny ol’ Dr. Manhattan.
Who said it was a “love” child? It could easily have been a genetically engineered child with a perfect mate who was left copious video diaries from Veidt to do exactly what she is doing – Veidt-as-Harry-Seldon does seem to be a path the show is exploring.
He could’ve donated the material another way.
You could say it, but you’d be wrong. Go listen to her speech to Angela again.
You could say it, but you’d be wrong. Go listen to her speech to Angela again.
Technically what we see in the books is speculation, but it’s supposed to be accurate speculation. And Hollis Mason says that Hooded Justice expressed sympathy with the Nazis, which is totally incompatible with Will being him.
Veidt’s sexuality is not portrayed in the comic, but that doesn’t rule out that he has a sexuality.
And Hollis Mason says that Hooded Justice expressed sympathy with the Nazis, which is totally incompatible with Will being him.Eh. Pretending to be a Nazi sympathizer so that the world leaves him alone is, to me, a believable explanation of this semi-retcon. Especially since this is Watchmen, and Will essentially performing a self-destructive “minstrel show” to hide his identity is in line with the deconstructive nature of the original.Besides, Hooded Justice is extremely vague in the comics – he has at least three different origin stories suggested and no one knows what happened to him. The only sure thing is that he’s gay and Sally was his beard.
That seems like a real stretch. There’s plenty of other ways to get people to respect your secret ID and they don’t involve expressing support for white supremacists. It seems particularly OOC for Will, whose whole raison d’etre as a superhero is fighting white supremacist conspiracies.
Is it a stretch, really? By pretending to be a Nazi sympathizer he’s essentially out of their radar and there is some delicious irony in it. I see this as some BlacKKKlansman-style trolling, but also a dig at the show’s comic book roots.Will pretending to be a Nazi sympathizer, or at least allowing people to believe this, to hide his identity is a very “superhero comic book” twist – I was reminded of the whole “Captain America is secretly from HYDRA” story. Except in that case, it felt horrific due to the story failing to really tackle the implications and themes behind that reveal. Here I think it’s properly horrifying in an understated way, especially when coupled with other aspects of his life.Will already was shown to be compromising heavily. He had a beard, a wife at home, he had to project a certain visage (this reveal casts his behavior during his intervention in Sally’s rape in the comics in a different light) and he also had to cover up his homosexuality while engaging in a romance with Metropolis, who was both racist and a self-hating gay who practically condemned The Sillhouette to death to cover for himself (he did vote her out of the Minutemen for being a lesbian). He had to live several horrifying lies to do his thing and in the end none of it was worth it. In light of all that, I think putting him in the shoes of “pretend Nazi” just hammers how tragic his entire character is and fits with how the original Watchmen dressed down its characters and robbed them and their superheroics of any pathos.I gotta say, though, that I’m not black and not even American, so I feel like I’m not entirely able to relate to some of the concerns regarding this interpretation – it’s much easier for me to look at this clinically.
We do know that Will kept that piece of WWI German propaganda that his father sent with him, which might have led him to have certain sympathies, even if those were ultimately misplaced.
The “Watch over this boy” letter Will had after the massacre is written on the back of Nazi propaganda dropped during the war. Possibly he sees their point about the treatment of black Americans and sympathizes?
It’s not Nazi propaganda, it’s WWI Imperial German propaganda. And I doubt that’s going to make him ignore the blatant white supremacy of the Nazis.
It was German, but not Nazi. WW1, not 2.
Wasn’t that WWI German propaganda (at least in the context of the story)? Will is meant to be 106 years old, so if his father was in a World War, it would have been I, not II (unless they jimmied with that part of the timeline too and I missed it, but doesn’t adult Will read a headline about Hitler?)
And Hollis Mason says that Hooded Justice expressed sympathy with the Nazis, which is totally incompatible with Will being him.Is it? HJ kept a piece of WWI German propaganda telling black Americans that they would never be treated as equals by their white countrymen, that they would have improved stations in Germany.
When did it ever say Veidt was sexless?
It’s definitely not explicit, and I am 100% just inferring. But the comics are pretty explicit about the preferences and affairs of everyone except Veidt. All we really get is Rorschach wondering if Veidt is gay.What we do know is that Veidt didn’t have much attachment to his parents, and he likes to thinks of himself as entirely self-made. It doesn’t seem like he would put a lot of value into passing his genetic material on to an heir. So maybe Trieu is Veidt’s kid? Or maybe she’s Blake’s kid, or even Manhattan’s kid? Of those 3 Veidt feels the least likely to me, because it’s just not his thing.(I will leave it open that maybe this was all a huge plot of his, and he was doing a V for Vendetta thing to shape Trieu as a worthy heir by forcing her to go through what he went through).
Sure but he does put a lot of weight on social engineering, and maybe he “figured out” that a child with the combination of his genetic material and…someone else’s would be needed for his vision of humanity (remember, we’re already meant to accept that he engineered the presidency change down to the exact individual years in advance).
You can have a child, and not have sex with things. Its like the fan rebuttal that “wasn’t he gay?” skipping over the basic fundamentals of how babies aren’t always made with heteronormitave sex…
Well, I think the gave away the game with the casting. One does not cast Jeremy Irons as a thing that does not fuck
Okay, that is fair.
“Squirtloaf makes a good point” sure isn’t a thing I thought I’d ever type. Thanks internet!
The only way HJ isnt a change from the comics is if we ignore the prequel Minutemen. The comedian kills HJ in that.
We should definitely ignore the uniformly awful prequel comics.
Honestly my first thought was Manhattan was Angela & Cal’s strange boy child (w/ his crystal palace model and other general disconnectedness), but Cal makes more sense overall. Great reveal either way!I feel like people are reading too much into the fade transition cut to the statue. By that same logic, the courtroom could just as easily be inside Angela’s head based on the stain glass eyes fade! I like the idea of him being on Europa more, but who knows with this wacky show…I definitely think Veidt is Lady Trieu’s father as opposed the Eddie Blake. Her intelligence seems on par with Veidt’s for sure and her comment about her father being there for the Millenium clock wouldn’t make sense with Eddie as she wouldn’t have been able to obtain his memories for the clone baby due to when he died timeline-wise.
Is it possible that their kids, while they say they’re adopted…are actually just the kids of Jon Osterman and Angela?
Hmmm, good one! I’d say at very least the strange boy child has good odds for that. Although the magnet castle could just be a red herring of sorts.
Aren’t their kids pretty firmly established as being the children of her dead partner? I don’t think it’s explicitly stated but the ages and genders match up and Topher’s demenor and conversations with Angela don’t really make a great deal of sense outside of that.
Yeah, my first thought was Topher, too. Cal surprised me. But I’d also bet money that the kid is Manhattan too. Everyone seems to forget how much he liked to divide himself into different beings, doing different things.All the stuff with Veidt is happening in the past. It’s not that people think he’s living the courtroom drama (at least I don’t think that’s what people are thinking) while being frozen as a statue. What we’re thinking is that the entire bizarre Europa experience ends with Veidt being transmuted into a statue.
Topher! That’s his name. Think I blocked it out because it’s such a ridiculous name/abbreviation of a name.. hahaYou could very well be right about double Manhattans though. Or at least he’s a Manhattan Jr.In the stray observations, Jonelle said he was in the statue and I saw another site that said that too.. I guess “in” could have various contexts though, so I digress.. I do think you are correct that being statuefied became his end punishment and Lady Trieu fished him out of the crash on the farm earlier in the season.
I was thinking the thing crashing from space had to be one of Veidt’s old tachyon satellites, and that Trieu wanted it for her time device, but I can definitely see the argument for it being the statue. I’ve never liked my theory because it depends on Trieu not being able to make her own tachyon generator, and I don’t know why that would be the case.And like I was saying in my main comment, the problem with Topher being the child of Manhattan and Angela is that it doesn’t explain why he’d know the castle design. If he is Manhattan, on the other hand, that finally makes sense.
Isn’t this the same castle we see Manhattan building in the news clip from Mars? I assume that the design is pretty common knowledge.Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mars castle is the pattern you get when you buy the floaty building blocks thing.
The basic shape of it? Sure. But that model he’s building isn’t basic. Go pause and look at it. It’s a perfect copy, right down to windows and minute details. That’s not a model you could make from just seeing that video clip. It’s the model of someone who, for whatever reason, knows that structure.
Or her mother’s for that matter.And now I kinda wanna see a version of this show where Topher is Manhattan
I just immediately thought about his aggressively logical explanation of death to the kids.
Yeah, in hindsight that was a very Manhattanesque speech
Cal or their kid are the only possibilities that make sense after Trieu notes her non-reaction. Since she made a point of mentioning his amnesia and the kid got no screen time this week…
As soon as Trieu said Manhattan was in Tulsa, we all knew it was Cal, right?Yeah, that’s about when it clicked for me. Amnesia, all of Trieu’s strange questions about Cal—it was just too neat. I didn’t forsee it being a skull-cracking moment (Is Cal an actual real person that is inhabited by Manhattan? Ugh.); I just figure that he’d just change appearance.
Is Cal an actual real person that is inhabited by Manhattan? Ugh.That’s my guess. The real Cal was in a car accident and Manhattan took over his body. Or, now that I’m writing this, Angela and Manhattan were in love so Angela started a relationship with real Cal just so she could stage an accident that would give Manhattan a human body.
Lot’s of Easter Eggs, especially with the death talk, feeling like he knew Laurie, Laurie thinking he’s hot, his name, etc.But the bright blue Volvo was my giveaway. Volvos just don’t come in that color.
And of course the nun vigilante being literally married to a god.
There’s a thought “married to god” like a real nun. I did not think of that.
Was Cal’s Volvo actually Manhattan-blue? Wow, totally missed that! Or I may have just wrote it off in the moment as an in-universe color wink like all the yellow.
wait, his name? How does that connect back to Dr. Manhattan?
I definitely suspected Cal, though I thought it would’ve been absolutely hilarious if Manhattan was really Red Scare.My only quibble was that this was really the first time we heard about Cal’s “accident” and amnesia, right? In fact, this was basically the only info we’ve ever gotten on Cal, isn’t it? We’ve literally gotten more info on Red Scare (always hungry/fast metabolism). The whole amnesia thing kind of gave away the game, so while it seemed shoe-horned in in this ep, mentioning it any earlier would’ve just given it away I think.
It took me a bit too long to realize that. I was cycling through who it could be and wasn’t coming up with good options. I totally forgot about Cal until Angela was getting into the elevator.
I dunno, we already had a red herring with the telescope fade to the Moon, then we see that he’s not on that moon, so I think it’s another similar sort of thing, perhaps on the campus somewhere else. My initial theory might prove true at this point, that he’s inside the top of the Millenium Clock somehow.
I think the episode did a great job directing the audience towards that conclusion, starting with the focus Lady Trieu put on Cal’s amnesia towards the beginning. When Trieu confirms Manhattan is in Tulsa disguised as a human, the second half of the puzzle falls into place.
So how do you justify his corpse-message a couple episodes ago? If he’s a statue, that seems like an awkward time-filler.Or my mind is about to be blown. I’m willing to accept either at this point from a show this incredible.
Nevermind. I read a theory below that explains it perfectly, and my mind is adequately blown.I love this comments thread.
The corpse message is in flashback – somehow Trieu receives it and arranges/knows when and where Veidt will crash to earth in statue form.
That scene might take place years in the past. Considering that he’s blowing out a new anniversary candle in each scene, leading us to assume that years are passing in between, and since the scene where Trieu buys the land where the thing falls from the sky isn’t dated in any particular way, I think we can probably draw some conclusions. All that’s left would be for him to be sentenced following the “trial” to being bronzed and then launched back to Earth. Something like, “You want to leave this world so badly?! Allow us to assist! We live to serve, after all!”. I can see it. Then again, knowing this show, it could be something completely different. That’s my guess, though.
Agreed, as soon as I knew that Manhattan was in play I shouted “Cal!!” at my TV. I definitely think Veidt is in the statute; less sure about Veidt being Trieu’s father, but if her father is going to be at the tower unveiling it seems unfreezing him from a statute would be the easiest way to make that happen.
In hindsight, Laurie sure does bring up Cal a lot every time she talks to Angela in previous episodes.
I feel some mild panic at the sheer amount of stuff that needs to be wrapped up in two episodes. I sincerely hope Lindeloff keeps his promise and this really is a self-contained season, but there is so much left to wrap up. I’m honestly in awe at how much has been casually set up and immediately paid off in such a short space of time. The Jeremy Irons scenes alone justify this entire series. And he’s not even the best actor in this show.
From an interview with Lindelof (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/watchmen-season-1-episode-7-an-almost-religious-awe-explained-1258567):> “Considering episode seven’s ending, it would appear we have some explaining to do,” Lindelof tells The Hollywood Reporter about the ending of “An Almost Religious Awe,” in a quick interview conducted over e-mail. “I’m answering these questions before it airs, but if I were watching the show, I’d be starting to panic that we can’t possibly bring this all together in just two more episodes. So, uh…don’t panic?” I’m also kind of wondering how they can possibly wrap this up… But gonna trust that there’s a plan, for now!
If he’d gone straight from Lost to this, I would be deeply cynical. But he made The Leftovers and that was a show that made me a lifelong fan. Thus far he’s paid off that trust. I don’t think everything will get completely resolved (“Think I’ll just, let the mystery be!”) But I’m excited to see how this ends.
Oh I get that reference! Nice.
Yes. Lindelof earned my trust with The Leftovers, and I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt now.
Depends if we count his movie scripts. Those….leave something to be desired.
They sure do—though I’ve heard with those big studio movies it’s pretty hard to find out who did rewrites, etc (and the names are often not credited due to union rules) whereas usually a showrunner has much more control over the final scripts on his show.
I think I agree. Having started The Leftovers after the series had already ended, I was pretty stunned by just how self-contained the first season was, and yet then how amazingly good the second season was. And of course if the second season weren’t such a…“departure” we wouldn’t have met Regina King’s character in Jarden.
I really love that a lot of the leftovers DNA is present in watchmen. Getting King back was a genius move. Watchmen also shares the amazing world building that Leftovers created.
I’m looking forward to starting Leftovers after Watchmen ends.
Definitely stick with it throughout the first season. The first season isn’t bad, but isn’t perfect. Regina King shows up in a major role in season 2, so that’ll be a cool watchmen thing to look forward to.
Agreed, but of course season one of Leftovers basically followed the rough outline of Tom Perrotta’s novel (and he co-wrote the pilot) who remained as a consultant and I believe a writer on an episode in season 2 and 3 as well as co-writing with Lindelof again the series finale, so obviously gave some help to Lindelof in constructing the “post book” stuff. But your point definitely stands.
I see what you did there!
Lindelof is proud of the fact the he likes the “ambiguity” he pushes into his shows. He’s more interested in throwing stuff out there than answering anything. Most of the time I get the feeling he doesn’t even have the answers himself, which makes his “questions” that much more random and meaningless. I regularly avoided his shows until they end just to see if he pulls that (and he usually does).I have less than no hope that he’ll tie up anything satisfactorily in this otherwise stellar series. What we’ll be left with is a lot of head-scratching, wtf discussions that he’ll pretend was his intent all along rather than actually knowing how to end anything in a reasonable way.This is his first show I’ve given a chance since Lost, and so help me, if he pulls that crap with this, I will never watch anything he makes again.
Great review! This show goes well above and beyond the source material.
Also props to internet sleuths for figure out the twist early: the dildo’s name is Excalibur ——-> Literally for the Ex of Cal Abar.
Phew, I need to lie down.
Joelle, Thank you so much. I don’t feel like I’ve finished watching the episode until I’ve read your recap. This is the most excited I’ve been about a tv show in real time since I don’t know when. Just wanted to say thank you.
Joelle isn’t a seamstress, she’s a DESIGNER and you can’t rush her processthe review will be ready when it’s ready, but when it’s ready, it will be perfect
Except for the massive typos
Hard agree
Seconded. Joelle’s reviews are outstanding. They’re as good as anything that the AV Club put out in its prime.
Agreed. Not going to name anybody but these are exactly the kind of reviews that made me an AV Club reader in the first place. Sadly there have been very few such in the past couple of years until these Watchmen reviews.
They help put the show in context, makes you think and you end up learning new things. Fantastic read!
Y’all are gonna make me cry before I go on camera. I love ya. Thanks so much for reading. The TV Club has quickly become my happy place. It’s a joy to write for you guys.
You do have a real way with breaking down the motifs and subtext that i would otherwise totally miss.
All jokes aside, reading all the critics reviews, you find/touch on things that are going past the heads of literally everyone else.
Your reviews remind me of when I was watching Lost. That was my first experience with discussing a show online after each episode. Jeff Jensen was fantastic in not only recapping the episode, but discussing what things meant and where it might be going. And throwing in some history that not all viewers might know. Reading your reviews too me back to that. I missed this kind of review/recap. Thanks for doing it.
Joelle puts in the work. It’s obvious and it’s heads and shoulders above most other reviews. Bravo.
Great review! This show goes well above and beyond the source material.
Also props to internet sleuths for figure out the twist early: the dildo’s name is Excalibur ——-> Literally for the Ex of Cal Abar.
Phew, I need to lie down.
Great review! This show goes well above and beyond the source material.
Also props to internet sleuths for figure out the twist early: the dildo’s name is Excalibur ——-> Literally for the Ex of Cal Abar.
Phew, I need to lie down.
I don’t know if Viedt is in the statue. The stain glass were Angela’s eyes first so is the courthouse in Angela’s head?
It’s certainly a theory. But the show (and comic) love that type of mirroring, so I don’t think it’s a slamdunk.
I think everybody’s reading way too much into some nifty little editing flourishes.
It’s certainly plusable. Adrian’s line about thinking wherever he is would “Be a paradise but it’s actually a prison” has been nagging at me since he uttered it.
For the smartest man on Earth the idea of living inside his own brilliant mind would certainly be an appealing idea, at least at first.
I’m starting to think it’s something with the Millenium Clock again. That was my initial theory before the Jupiter moon reveal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a little extra trickery there. Maybe it’s all inside there, something of Veidt’s own creation that Trieu inherited, or something of her own creation.
Yes, the courhouse in Angela’s head. But they’re in her head because she’s remembering them now: didn’t Trieu switch her feed to another line right before the Ozymandias scene? And if Ozymandias is in the statue, perhaps that feed was coming directly from Ozymandias.
If Viedt is in the statue, Lindelof has some explaining left to do. Regardless of what Lady Trieu said and whether that relates to Adrian, I’m not sure why the smartest man in the world would be launching bodies and creating SOS messages with them on Europa, if it was all an illusion and just for show. Remember the satellite going by as he celebrated?Unless there’s a really creative explanation, that would be some terrible storytelling and a cheap misdirect. I’m hoping whatever the case is, it’s satisfying, because I’ve liked this a lot until now, and I want that to still be the case in the end. Lindelof stick the landing!
Well, if anyone in the world has a history of being Mr. Cheap Misdirect, it’s Lindelof..
ehhhh…..I just think this show is in love with match cuts. They’re all over the place, and often brilliant.
Great review! This show goes well above and beyond the source material.
Also props to internet sleuths for figure out the twist early: the dildo’s name is Excalibur ——-> Literally for the Ex of Cal Abar.
Phew, I need to lie down.
What’s wrong with Kinja? Tried posting via Safari, Chrome and Opera and nearly pulled my hair out.
Holy shit! “Ex of Cal Abar”.. The coded messages in this show go DEEP… quite literally in this scenario! Bahahaha
Also, out of Latin, Ex Cal Abar -> out of Cal Abar.
Everything. Everything is wrong with Kinja. I still haven’t gotten back into commenting on the “A/V Club” (the only thing still the same about it is the domain name) since they switched over from Discus. I miss the community!And I miss it all the more now that there is a fantastic new show being reviewed by an exemplary writer! [Now to see if this publishes.]
That must be what they are doing and it just makes me mad (but also kind of awed).
But is Abar actually Cal’s last name? Angela’s dad’s name was ‘Abar’ in the Vietnam scenes — it was right on his shirt.
Who says he didn’t take Angela’s name when they married?
The end credits lullaby-ish cover of “Life on Mars” is honestly one of the best versions of the song I’ve ever heard and I am so hoping it gets released.
I’m at work and can’t compare the two at this moment, but the cover from the episode last night sounds similar to a cover I heard on Girls by Aurora. It’s very pretty and lullaby-ish.
@Box. The cover of Life on Mars was a nice illustration of how not to cover an iconic song. Elevator music for sure. It did fit the sadness and theme of the scene but outside of that context just.. .No.
Having opinions is so neat.
I think it was just a remix, really. The piano sounded to me like it was from the original track but with some speed ramping going on. The other instrumentation sounded very Trent Reznor (and Atticus Ross, I suppose). Plus with NIN and Bowie having toured together (and NIN doing the single remix of “I’m Afraid of Americans”), I suspect Reznor and Ross have a decent enough relationship with the Bowie estate to be able to get access to the original masters to make a new remix for the show. I could be wrong, of course, but those are my initial thoughts.
If I am remembering right, they both had a good laugh upon realizing that Reznor had unconsciously plagiarized Bowie’s “Crystal Japan” when he recorded “A Warm Place.”
I’m a big fan of the Yann Tiersen/Neil Hannon version:
My very favourite version.
Where does this notion that John Osterman had an abusive childhood keep coming from?A couple of panels where his father throws the watch parts off of a fire escape?
He off-handedly mentions that his father died assuming he got vaporized in the lab experiment. “I never bother to correct their mistake”It’s certainly a stretch to assume he had an abusive childhood, but clearly something was horribly wrong with his relationship with his father. I always just see it that his father bullied Jon into pursuing a career in science no matter what the cost to his son. Jon would have probably been content to be a scientist but quietly resented his father for controlling his life.
I just wondered if I’d missed something along the way.
Could just be a general estrangement. *shrug* I haven’t spoken to my father since college, but that doesn’t mean I was abused. I wasn’t. But my mom wasn’t standing over my shoulder every week making sure I called him, so I didn’t. And he’s never bothered to try to contact me either. These things happen.
My dad didn’t abuse me either. That didn’t stop the overwhelming feeling of disappointment I felt from him most of the time.
Exactly. Unhappy, maybe, but compared to most other capes’ childhoods, he got off easy.
So why did Trieu hook Angela up to an elephant? Was that supposed to be a joke?
I think that was just Lindelof being unable to contain his Lindelofness.
Because an elephant never forgets! (Yes.)
Because an elephant never forgets! (Yes.)
Agreed re Lindeloff adding a polar bear for shock’s sake, but found it a bit more justified in that elephants have excellent memories and Lady Trieu is storing her grandfather’s memories in the elephant’s mind.Which begs the question, where is is her grandfather?
Also worth noting is that the real life Lady Trieu rode elephants in 3rd century Vietnam.
An elephant never forgets.
If you take the tutorial Angela receives on the cleansing process at face value, then you’d need a large source of CSF to wash out the Nostalgia. So much that it would be ridiculous to transplant it from another human. But maybe an animal the size of an elephant could produce enough to make the process work.That said, why not just use artificial CSF, which is already a standard solution used to maintain neural tissue for research purposes? Lady Trieu doesn’t seem the type for poetic flourishes. And why inject it into Angela’s bloodstream instead of directly into her spinal canal? The whole thing feels very much like a certain polar bear.
Well, if she’s A. Abar and her husband is C. Abar, it makes sense she’d be compatible with spinal fluid from B. Abar.
This is by far my favourite fan-theory from now on.
In the Peteypedia entries, it explains that Lady Trieu’s mother wrote a best-selling book about parenting her called “Elephant Mother”, sort of an alternate-universe version of the “Tiger Mother” idea I assume. So Lady Trieu may get a perverse pleasure in rebuilding her mother’s memory using an elephant?
That would help explain her company’s logo.
Oh damn!
Well, and also…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Tri%E1%BB%87u
Oh damn!
Veidt was on Europa. We’ve been following him in the past. He sent a distress signal that said “Save me daughter” that was for Trieu. On Europa, Veidt was gilded (“guilty!”) and became a statue. Trieu somehow retrieved him, and that statue was in the ship we saw crashing into the farm that she purchased. She set the statue up, and is either in the process of taking the memories from it and putting it into a clone, or will somehow reverse the process to make Veidt human again. I’d also guess that Veidt had a hand in setting up the Cal identity for Dr. Manhattan in exchange for being sent to paradise. It’s how he knows that Manhattan isn’t going to be back to check on the life he’s created.
Ah, well done! Very much like your timeline of events. I’m not sure why it hadn’t occurred to me that the Veidt events were all in the past and that was him crash-landing on the farm. Totally makes sense.Did the message for sure say “Save me daughter”? Ionly remember seeing “Save me D” and not knowing what the rest said. I think you’re spot on though either way!
The ‘Save Me D’ was terrific, since it could apply to a few characters (when I first saw it, I immediately thought Dreiberg/Knight Owl, you know, before DL said, “No Knight Owl”), and if it does wind up being a cut off ‘Daughter’ that at least held back that reveal till later (even if it seems kind of conspicuous when you really analyze it).
Good! So who is the sewer slider??
Obviously Petey
Hope so!
Oh yeah, I forgot about that guy!
Agree it was Viedt crash-landing on the Clark’s farm, and he’s definitely in that statue. Interesting to consider how it happened, with all the referencing of thermo-dynamic miracles (‘like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold’). But what was that wink the prosecutor gave him? (Sidebar: Sara Vickers is painfully cute!)Some other theories:1. During the White Knight attack, Angela is last seen on her back, helpless, with a gunman standing over her. Her last words are ‘Cal’. Next thing, she’s awake, unharmed in her hospital bed. It would seem that Manhattan had some failsafe to wake him up if Angela was in mortal danger, and made his presence known against the Kavalry. This is how Angela survives, and why she is recruited by Judd—to keep Manhattan close.2. I still think something is off about Judd’s story. Clearly his wife is all-in with Keene’s plan, but something feels un-Watchmen about Judd being a cut-and-dried villain in a good vs. evil plot.3. Also, there is something unquestionably sinister about Trieu’s plot. Angela was hooked up to the elephant (elephants never forget). This clearly implies that Trieu was ‘harvesting’ Angela’s memories into the elephant. Why?
4. In case y’all forgot, Petey is 100% lube man. C’mon, he’s skinny, he’s surveilling Angela, and he’s clearly obsessed with ‘costumed adventurers’. I definitely see him doing something goofily heroic and dying for it. And even though I predicted it, it will be so sad/satisfying to watch.I suspected that LG was still alive, and yay! Just like Kovacs, Wade has a gift for siege warfare. And now he’s got a Rorschach mask.
I think Trieu is taking a page from a couple of villains in the Berlanti-verse and it going to wipe people’s me memories. IIRC her speech at the clock activation had a line about people holding on to painful memories.
My theory is Trieu is committed to saving Ozzy (her father) but Ozzy actually wants to steal Manhattan’s powers, not just be back on Earth to die and be cloned.
I think even if he worded it horribly wrong that Judd really meant he was trying to help before he got murdered.
“And now he’s got a Rorshach mask.” <— this is a damn good catch!
There was a one off Spiderman villain that used a synthetic lubricant that was nearly frictionless. Webs wouldn’t stick to him and he skated across the ground. There were a lot of those in the 90’s though, and mostly one offs.Way better suit, even by 90’s hero standards. This lube man just looks like a joke ad for trojan condoms.
I suspect it was Judd under that last Rorschach mask.
I think Veidt definitely had something to do with the creation of “Cal.” This week’s Peteypedia entries include a document from Cal’s hospital record, which mentions they received his employment record from Pyramid Global Construction. Veidt owns Pyramid, so at the very least he helped falsify Cal’s record.
Very good. This would also fit with the timeline of Cal since he and Angela have presumably been together for more than four years and Manhattan seems to be the only one who could have put him on Europa.
I’m pretty sure Ozzy’s plan is to prevent the 7K from stealing Manhattan’s powers…by stealing them first.
I think you broke my brain. Thank you?
I guessed Ganymede since it’s the closest to Jupiter but Europa has water ice for sure.
sad!prediction: Angela’s grandfather says she’s going to hate him when the millennium clock thing is over, and he knows dr. manhattan is Cal, and his whole life is oriented around foiling the 7k/Cyclops conspiracy, HJ is gonna kill (or try to kill) Cal so that the 7k can’t get their hands on him 🙁 once again sacrificing his family relationship in the pursuit of justicelol!prediction: a mysterious, bug eyed, silver lubed gentleman will slide in and rescue Laurie from the JC Penney and this gentleman is Dale Peteyalso, looking glass!!! killed!! all the racists!! good!
I think Looking Glass is already in the Penney warehouse. When Petey was at his bunker telling Laurie about all the dead guys, one of those dead guys had no mask. So my theory (hope) is Petey and LG tag teaming to save Laurie.
Honestly the fact that Looking Glass fought back against them all was my favorite thing of the episode. I really want to see more of him
yeah it was an awesome reminder that even though he is deeply damaged/sensitive, he’s a “Mask” for a reason: like Angela, Red Scare and Pirate Jenny, LG kicks. ass.
My wife guessed Lube Man is Petey-he shows up in the next scene and he’s got the right build.
Veidt being stuck in a statue is a bit of stretch isn’t it? You would have to disregard all of his escape attempts. Also how else would you explain the SOS and satellite orbiting the planet?
Veidt may be all flashbacks to when he was on Europa. He was then gilded and brought to Earth by Lady Trieu when her satellite spotted the message in dead clones. Or something like that.
Well last we saw Veidt The Warden had just arrested him. Last episode indicated that he had been on trial for a year Earth time. Likely all the scenes with Veidt are a flashback.
Every time we check in with Veidt, a year has passed. That’s why he keeps getting birthday cakes and the trial lasts 365 days. This all happened in the past.
Of course he’s not “in the statue.”
But, since cloning is Lady Trieu’s bag, some genetic material that would allow her to clone him could have been sent back in a capsule (the farm) and that’s what she was referring to (and the statue could be made from the capsule) when she said her parents would be at the clock ceremony.
Someone had a good theory elsewhere in the comments. Veidt get’s statued as punishment for trying to escape. The Europa scenes are in the past and Trieu manages to rescue him but can’t, yet, undo the statuification.
Who told you Veidt’s timeline is the same as Angela’s timeline?
We expressively know that they are not on the same timeline, through the show itself and Lindelof’s telling us so on the podcast.
I can’t help but wonder now if Angela’s children are Manhattan clones. The floating magnets, after all…..Also, Looking Glass is clearly undercover at JC Penny now, right? I’m also glad that they said Nite Owl is NOT in this season. There’s already a lot going on, and only 2 hours to finish it up. And next week looks to be at least half an episode of fill-in-the-blanks-Manhattan-non-linear-time.Man, this show is still playing out better than I expected or hoped. I’m probably early, because they need to stick the landing, but I am just going to say that I believe than Alan Moore would have grudgingly appreciated what they have done here.
Definitely on Looking Glass – one of the 7K in his shelter was missing his mask, so got to figure he’s wearing it.
Oh good call on Looking Glass since one guys did not have a mask on. So I’m guessing he’ll help Laurie out somehow.
I know Moore will never watch it and even if hell does freeze over and he sees it, he’d probably be too angry to engage with it properly. But I do hope he’d appreciate how much love and respect the show has for his work, even while it’s boldly creating it’s own unique narrative.
TV is a nickname and nicknames are for friends and television is no friend of his.
I don’t think they’re Manhattan clones. Judd tells Angela that Topher got his sisters and hid in the closet. I don’t think Angela and Cal having kids was planned.
The Wizard of Northampton grudgingly appreciating someone successfully expanding on his work? HAH! Next you’ll be telling me he’s going to vote in an election!
He doesn’t vote? That’s just fucking stupid. Really makes me lose respect for him.
anarchists usually don’t vote.
That doesn’t make it not stupid.
The Wizard of Northampton grudgingly appreciating someone successfully expanding on his work? HAH! Next you’ll be telling me he’s going to vote in an election!
“if Angela’s children are Manhattan clones.”Those aren’t her kids; they are her former partner’s, who was allegedly killed in the White Night.
I was going to point out the same thing. Is it possible Cal/Jon/Manhattan helped the kid build the castle? Also, as far as magnets go, Triu seems like she would have invented a toy like that — she’s quite good with magnets!
Does Moore watch TV or Movies?
but I am just going to say that I believe than Alan Moore would have grudgingly appreciated what they have done here.Predictably and non surprisingly, he’s not. Lindelof claims he reached out to Moore and Moore refused. And “that he’s not thrilled.” Hence why Moore’s name is not on the credits which is probably enraging him further.
He never wants his name on credits. He lets his artists get the royalties.
Not really. He wanted Watchmen to be a one off, standalone, but Gibbons and DC wasn’t having it, so they offered him a pile of money and he refused, so they took his refusal to loophole him out of the rights to it. He doesn’t like or let anyone do Watchmen sequels or collect royalties from it, but he can’t legally do anything about it, so he complains and fumes about it constantly.
The rights wouldn’t revert back to them unless the Watchmen property was unprofitable. That has never happened, ergo, the rights remain with DC. His issue with DC is that he believes they are unethical and violate the spirit of the contract, if not the written agreement. By withholding his name from credits and not watching, he exercises what little control he has. Gibbons, he just wants to get paid whatever he can, as he should.
Again, he deliberately exercised the total control he had because he doesn’t like the idea of prequels, sequels, films, TV shows, etc, etc, for Watchmen or any of his work, especially done by anyone else not him, which is what DC and Gibbons wants to do. So to your points, he doesn’t let artists collect royalties, and he most likely hates this show like he hates anything anyone else does of his stuff.
He absolutely lets his artists collect royalties. And they get his share. Look it up.
I did. And the thing you’re missing here is that he doesn’t so much “let them” he can’t really do anything about it, and more than anything, he just doesn’t really care they do because he doesn’t care about Watchmen anymore. Or rather he cares enough to be perpetually angry that he feels that people are butchering his precious work.
In December 2001, Moore further explained his opposition, citing how a reader can take the time to absorb the character backgrounds, by having the option of turning back the pages so that they can connect elements they had just read to past elements, but that film forces you to watch the story at 24 frames per second.[73] Moore’s opposition to the film adaptation crystallized after the 2003 film version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was released, and he intends to give any resulting royalties from Watchmen to the comic’s artist, Dave Gibbons.[4] In Moore’s opinion, Hayter’s script was the closest anyone could get to the original comic, but added that he would not be going to see the film when completed. Moore said, “My book is a comic book. Not a movie, not a novel. A comic book. It’s been made in a certain way, and designed to be read a certain way: in an armchair, nice and cozy next to a fire, with a steaming cup of coffee.”[4]
Where did you even get this from and how is this even relevant to anything we’ve been talking about or saying?Especially when that contradicts this which really backs up everything i’ve been saying: http://www.seraphemera.org/seraphemera_books/AlanMoore_Page1.html“I was then offered by an increasingly frantic-sounding Dave Gibbons an unspecified but really, really large sum of money to just give my blessing for them to do these sequels and prequels… and that he had been offered something in the region of a quarter of a million dollars to oversee the project — that it would be handled by the top talent in the industry, to which I said some quite intemperate things… So yeah, I was angry and I said some things which I still stand behind. And, that was the end of it. And, that was the end of my friendship with Dave Gibbons………..And, indeed, that was the reason why I broke off all contact with Dave Gibbons.”
I don’t want to use “creators.” I feel that the industry employees who are actually working upon this book—I had only heard of about three of them—but I’m certainly not interested in seeing any of their work. But, I’m unlikely to because I don’t read comics anymore and they’re never going to do anything outside of comics……I know a way that they could have sorted out their continuity. I could have gotten rid of all of their problems for them. It would have been really simple. But, like I say, they unfortunately alienated me. I mean, Watchmen had been a dead issue for a number of years, as far as I was concerned……. So, if DC want to soil themselves in public and kill the reputations of a number of otherwise possibly halfway-decent writers and artists, then I’m certainly not going to stop them. That’s basically my position. I mean, I certainly shan’t be taking legal action against these comics because it’s pretty much stitched up. If they’ve got clauses in the contract that say that they can actually get an attorney to sign contracts—that the comics company has got power of attorney—then there’s not much chance.And also, of course, they’re a huge corporation. They’ve got lots of lawyers and infinite amounts of money that they can keep people in court. They can keep me, and my descendants, in court fruitlessly for decades. And, I wouldn’t wish that upon my kids or grandkids.”
I think you’re both right:(a) Historically, Moore has given his share of movie rights money to the other creators involved, as President Zod wrote. (He even went so far as to have some of his share on the CONSTANTINE movie go to Rick Veitch and Jamie Delano , even though their part in the character’s creation was less direct that Moore/Bissette/Totleben.) Moore’s name appeared on some of the early film adaptations, but has lately been left off.(b) Moore angrily turned down the money DC offered to give his blessing to the BEFORE WATCHMEN projects, as you write. And ended his friendship with Gibbons. It seems like he would not have redirected those funds to Gibbons in that case, but I’m not aware of the specifics, nor if it affected how monies from the HBO show are distributed. (c) Moore continues to accept royalties from the publication of the actual comics he wrote, as far as I’ve read.
Historically, Moore has given his share of movie rights money to the other creators involved, as President Zod wrote. This is where you’re both wrong. As you can see from the interview I pasted, its not like he willingly accepts and happily gives away rights and royalties, he just winds up not having a choice when they happen because he, in hindsight, accidentally signed the rights away to all his works and doesn’t feel like suing and fighting to get them back and deal with the legal mumbo jumbo of royalties and rights and all that. So he just lets it happen, but if it were up to him, it wouldn’t, because he’s very much against prequels, sequels, adaptions, and etc. Moore still gets rather small royalties from the original Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta, but that’s it. He gets really nothing from everything else including the HBO show, movies, and etc, because again, he disapproves of them all and let them control the rights to everything, and also why his name is off the credits for Watchmen film and show.
Your quote is from an interview about the BEFORE WATCHMEN comics. Moore was being offered money to, basically, be a good soldier like Gibbons and endorse the books being done by other creators.It’s correct that Moore does not control his DC-published work, but he absolutely does have some small profit participation when the material is optioned for film and TV, like nearly all post-1980 DC Comics. He chooses to have his share given to the artists involved: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/movies/the-vendetta-behind-v-for-vendetta.html“. . . he has refused to allow any more movies to be made from work he controls. In the case of work whose rights he does not control, he has refused credits on any film adaptations, and has given his share of option money and royalties to the artists who illustrated the original comic books. That position is so radical that though his colleagues say they respect his position, few in the film industry can understand it.” Moore’s name not appearing on the various shows (and certain comics, like Marvel’s MIRACLEMAN reprints) is by his choice, not an onerous contract.
(And Moore still co-owns FROM HELL and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN with with Eddie Campbell and Kevin O’Neill, respectively. He no doubt regrets allowing those films to be made, but that was his and the artists’ choice at the time. Nothing to do with DC Comics.)
. he has refused to allow any more movies to be made from work he controls. In the case of work whose rights he does not control, he has refused credits on any film adaptations, and has given his share of option money and royalties to the artists who illustrated the original comic books. That position is so radical that though his colleagues say they respect his position, few in the film industry can understand it.”I’m not sure how this changes everything i’ve been saying as i’ve been repeating this to you and Zod repeatedly as it seems that you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point. Saying yet again, and really for the last time, he is adamantly against TV/film/sequel/prequel adaptations of his work, especially Watchmen, which he wanted to be a one off standalone comic and not be made into any film, TV show, or other comics, which is what DC and Gibbons wanted to do, and gives away royalties and money because he has no choice or any say in the matter since he lost total control over his work and as I quoted from him and told you before, he can’t be bothered with lawsuits and fighting the corporations for getting control back of his work and how royalties and money gets paid out.Also, and saying yet again, Moore’s name not appearing on the various shows is not only his choice, but also due to legal reasons, he does not own the rights to Watchmen anymore, DC does who have designated Gibbons as the proprietor. He also lost the rights to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when Americas Best Comics got bought out by DC and From Hell when Top Shelf got bought out by IDW who in turn, sold the rights to Fox (now Disney) to make the movie, as Miraclemen is 100% also owned by Marvel. Why would they put his name on credits for newer properties longer owns?
Moore’s name wasn’t on the film either. He vehemently objects to his works being adapted any more. “From Hell” the film really was from hell! “ League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” was just as bad (though I didn’t love the comic the way I did “From Hell” so I cared less, but I’m sure Moore was mortified). “V for Vendetta” has been the only really good film to come from one of Moore’s books, and it was changed a lot from its source. But, because he doesn’t own the rights, the only thing Moore can do to protest is refuse to put his name on anything anymore… and curse the production (it would scare the crap out of me to be cursed by Alan Moore!). I’m pretty sure Lindelof reached out to Moore **before** starting the project and that is when Moore “wasn’t thrilled” (though he’s probably still not, no matter how good it is).That’s my general understanding, but you can (and I) can read all about the exact facts on this newfangled Internet research device.
Not putting Moore’s name on the credits is a sign of them somewhat respecting his wishes.You’ve always refused to put your name to film adaptions of your work. I know this is going to be hard to put a figure on, but how much money do you think you’ve turned down, for taking a moral standpoint on this?Well, they asked me if they could give me a huge amount of money to bring out these Watchmen prequel comics – which they were going to do anyway – and that was probably a couple of million dollars. I should imagine with all of the films it would be another few million? In a way it’s really empowering to do that.You can’t buy that kind of empowerment. To just know that as far as you are aware, you have not got a price; that there is not an amount of money large enough to make you compromise even a tiny bit of principle that, as it turned out, would make no practical difference anyway. I’d advise everyone to do it, otherwise you’re going to end up mastered by money and that’s not a thing you want ruling your life. Money’s fine if it enables you to enjoy your life and to be useful to other people. But as something that is a means to an end, no, it’s useless.
No its not. His wishes was to leave Watchmen (and the rest of his work for that matter) as a stand alone, one off, and no prequels, sequels, films, TV shows, and etc, but DC and Dave Gibbons wasn’t having that, so they took his refusal as a way to loophole him out of the rights to it. If anyone really respected his wishes, there would be no TV show to begin with.
‘would have’? dude’s not dead. He just endorsed the Labour Party in our elections here even.
“But he’s dead, so how would he be at the launch of the clock?”
Well, her mother’s dead, too. Couldn’t it just be a clone with a memory kickstart like her? My money’s on Veidt, but that’s a solid alternative guess.
Well presumably her father is someone important, so it’s either Veidt or the Comedian, and it’d be really weird to have a Comedian clone sitting in a basement somewhere that just pops into the story out of nowhere, although maybe that’s a minor reveal later and it’s just so Trieu can torture him in some way as punishment for raping her mother, or let her now young mother enact that punishment somehow. But the fact that none of that has been mentioned so far seems to go against the structure of the show so far.
Topher might be a Comedian clone.
Maybe, but considering how the show has been structured so far, it seems like we’d get more references to him throughout. He is the only big player in the original story that hasn’t gotten any attention though.
I’m loving this show, and digging it even more as the pieces are falling into place. The sole exception is the Ozymandias storyline; while I’m sure it will tie into the rest of the story somehow before the end, it’s been painfully dull and annoying to sit through so far. This episode’s interlude with the pigs has me wondering what the point of any of it is. I don’t care if he turns out to be Lady Trieu’s father. He seems like an example of “I’m here because I was in the comic book.” They should have kept him offscreen like Dan Dreiberg instead of forcing us to sit through seven hours of setup for a fart joke.
The Ozymandias storyline is (likely) the Tale of the Black Freighter for this show. Completely unrelated (and unconnected) to the main story, but in the final issue/episode it will explain how it is related.
Did anyone think Angela’s Grandpa’s memories where being downloaded to the elephant like it was a giant flash drive because elephants have great memory?Did anyone see the twist coming? I had a hunch but I loved after bashing Cal’s skull in (yikes the sound effects) with the hammer and removing his cerebral cock ring and her face started glowing blue I just thought that was inspired. Did that closing instrumental of Life on Mars thrill and then in your head you mouthed “Take a look at that lawman beating up the wrong guy” and realize this was beyond inspired?This show…………..
Angela’s grandpa’s memories aren’t being downloaded. They’re being wiped. But you’re right about the elephant… except it’s downloading Angela’s memories.
If Veidt really is trapped in his own head, using the song “Life on Mars” is doubly apt considering the BBC series about a similar idea.
“Cerebral Cock Ring”. guess I just found my next username.
I saw the twist ending but only after they flagged up Cal *so much* this episode, so not that long beforehand. In retrospect, I guess Blake’s thirst for Cal (she mentioned like three times that he was hot) was kind of foreshadowing it.
And the dildo, Excalibur, which is a hint because Laurie’s EX is CAL ABAR
some say the memories are being wiped but they definitely said something about them being siphoned INTO a live host. so yes, the elephant is to hold Will’s memories. (LT doesn’t want them to go back to Will).
The lead up to the head bashing scene unnerved me because it was ominous and she did it so well. Brought flashbacks of a couple of “we have to talk” moments.Also, the scene in Saigon when Angela is about to head to the airport with her grandmother broke my heart. The little girl is so cute and she looked so happy and then it instantly turns to shit again.
This show is fucking lit.On this episode alone. This one hour episode you could write an entire book about the symbolism and themes. Why can’t it just be Sunday already? Beautiful show.
If the show goes off the rails, it starts with this episode. I still very much enjoyed it, but I can’t tell if it’s due to the audacity or the quality.That said, even if the ending whiffs, I’ll consider this a fantastic season of television for all the ideas it introduced and the thoughtful way they were handled.
You could basically play episode 5 in isolation and Tim Blake Nelson alone would justify the series existing. The show has far more to offer than just that, but even if this show falls apart by the end, I’ll be absolutely happy with it.
Last week’s episode is a high water mark for superhero mythos to me, and anything else this show does or doesn’t do, won’t effect what an astonishing hour of television it was.
The Nostalgia OD episode was intense. I had to wait a few days to rewatch it.
I try not to let big plot twists factor into my assessment of a show’s episode, but I loved this one, and it very nicely thematically bookends the last one. Instead of a black character—with little power given his race and time—passing off as a white man wearing a mask, here we have an infinitely powerful blue giant passing off as a much less powerful black man in regular human form. You wonder why Manhattan came to do this. Sure, he fell in love with Angela, but maybe he had a big change of heart and decided to experience human empathy in the starkest way he could—by being in the skin of an African-American living in a country that stil doesn’t value them. The same coldness towards humanity Manhattan felt and exhibited once, he now experiences in daily life, by being a looked-down-upon color in a white supremacist world. Instead of being exalted, he’s ignored, looked at with suspicion, and hated. That’s quite the self-punishment and reversal of thinking. And of trying for grace. Plus, Cal is constantly reading classic literature, another way Manhattan could be trying to experience empathy and the range of good and bad humanity.
I think there’s a figurative elephant in the room, too.
The amount of trauma/loss Angela has experienced . . . my god!
I know, it was almost comical when the grandmother croaked, like oi here’s another tragedy!
And she’s lost her family life what with splitting Cal’s head open to wake up Dr. Manhattan. Also the impending betrayal by Grandpa Will.
And all her grandpas own trauma. I’d go on a lifelong bender.
Aren’t enough therapists in the great Los Angeles area to treat all her trauma.
That’s some good pun-ning.
Every character on this show is a bunch of damage walking around in a big coat pretending to be a person.
I know. When the grandma keeled over it was just too much.
I had to watch the ending and the preview for next week a few times, I haven’t had the excitement for the end of an episode like that in so long. Since like Fringe was on, or even Lost maybe. This show man…
Off topic- With this show being an alternative timeline and being very focused on the evils of white supremacists along with the improvements on equality yet persistent problems. The idea of David Benioff and DB Weiss making Confederate seems even more ridiculous and unnecessary. Them being the showrunners for that project is even worse, not in regards anyone’s opinion of how they handled GOT. Just that if anyone is going to attempt that project maybe it shouldn’t be them for a variety of reasons. This show makes my thankful that was cancelled.
The level of production and narrative confidence this show has blows apart anything Benioff and Weiss ever created (disregarding all the legitimately great GRRM content). Pretty much everything HBO has done all year has been incredible. They were geniuses for using the empty hype of the final season of GOT to launch countless quality products. HBO doesn’t need something as ridiculous as Confederate anymore and honestly, thank God for that.
You just caused me to imagine of B&W showrunning Watchmen. What a fucking tone-deaf disaster that would be.
I’m torn between wanting another season of this and wanting it to end. So far it has been almost perfect, I’m not sure how you top that.Apparently it’s supposed to be just one season, but…..
Why would anyone fear a white supremacist becoming like Dr. Manhattan? It’s not like Osterman was an emotionally distant person before the accident. The universal perspective was a consequence of what he became. It seems to me that there would be no reason to expect a significant difference now. I would think that the intrinsic field generator might therefore be the ultimate cure for racism.As a corollary, maybe there have been many successful recreations of the accident, but all of the other beings of ultimate power said “fuck it” and left Earth forever.
I would still very much fear a white supremacist becoming like Dr. Manhattan. Especially a set in his ways conspiring arrogant person. Dr Manhattan did win Vietnam and claim it for the US. At the very least error in the side of caution on that one.
I think the point is, regardless of a person’s attitude going in, the differences between and concerns of humans become inconsequential to a being like Manhattan. In fact, New Manhattan probably wouldn’t be too keen on ruling earth, either.
Or killing them all.
It took Old Manhattan a couple of decades of jungle-burning, war-fighting attachment to his old loyalties before he lost interest. New Manhattan could be held on to for just as long.
I’m dubious about the whole “recreate Dr. Manhattan” plan. The success of Osterman’s recovery from the accident depended as much on his knowledge of nuclear physics as it did on his training in re-assembling complex mechanical devices. Has the 7th Cavalry been hiding a nuclear physicist in its ranks all season?
The best reason to be dubious of the plan is that in 50 years the accident hasn’t been repeated. Like most power-imbuing accidents in comics, it’s as much magic as science.
I’m dubious about the whole “recreate Dr. Manhattan” plan.They aren’t going to recreate Dr. Manhattan, but capture the original one and somehow steal his powers. They wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to produce a new Dr. Manhattan the same way the original one was born, but the new method seems to be a more serious threat.
Osterman’s emotions were blunted but he was still operating in his original context of an 1960s Cold War government scientist. He remained loyal to the US and at the very least willing to aid them in their fight against the Soviets. A Manhattan-ized white supremacist would presumably still be operating from the perspective of white supremacy, just not as angry and vituperative about it. But while Manhattan isn’t angry, we’ve also seen that he’s usually indifferent, at best, about other people being killed.
Could, very easily see a white supremacist Manhattan-type going “actually… they ALL suck” and go full on ‘wipe out a shit ton of people’ in a Skynet way.
The 7K have not thought this through. If one of them becomes a racist Dr. Manhattan, he’d be a blue supremacist. “All grayscales look alike to me”
As much as he has become post human, Jon still falls in love, has desires, etc. So yes, a Nazi Dr Manhattan is absolutely terrifying.
In retrospect, Cal’s speech about death and his very mild affect were nice subtle pieces of foreboding.
The white supremacists want to turn one of their own into a god, and then place that god in the office of the president. The chief’s widow seemed to suggest that the presidency was small potatoes now, so their original (extremely vague) plan to make Keene the president seems like it’s fallen by the wayside in favour of copying Manhattan’s powers.
I feel like the sheer quality of this series so far is making people immune to its (rare) creaky moments. For the first time, I started to sense that the wheels were beginning to buckle under the weight of that quality; the show hasn’t gone off the rails (and I don’t think it will) but it’s wobbling a bit. Veidt’s trial is clearly meant to be absurd and a waste of time, but having him fart and then the pigs was…to quote Laurie: “I’m tired of all the silliness”. Was this actually a meta comment on the episode itself? Oh god my brain.All the Laurie stuff was excellent, though. Of course Judd’s wife was in on it. Of course Cyclops is now the Seventh Kavalry. Of course the senator wants to…give himself Dr. Manhattan’s powers!!!
At the end, the camera lingers for a moment on a SK member sitting in the back of the vehicle: evidently Looking Glass, infiltrating the group. But wouldn’t it set alarm bells off when the ones sent to kill him don’t report in? Unless he pretended to be one of them and did exactly that…And lastly, I don’t buy Veidt is in the statue. That doesn’t make any sense at all; if you’re going to fool him into thinking he’s trapped in a verdant paradise, why then also make him think he’s trapped on a different planet/moon? Purely to give him some weird motivation to try and escape? It’s a layer too far. And as to how anyone knows what he looks like: he’s only been in “exile” for a few years, hasn’t he? Or maybe ten? I’m sure images of him before he ‘went into exile’ exist.
Of course the senator wants to…give himself Dr. Manhattan’s powers!!
Way off topic, but every time I see Joe Keene I yell at the tv, “Not great, Bob!!” Hands down the best line in Mad Men
I’ve had a perverse hope all season they’d throw that in as a absurdist Easter Egg. And this would have been the episode:
Senator Keene prances in, and tosses out a mock sincere “How ya doin’, Agent Blake?” She spits back, in a glorious conflagration of Kartheiser and Smart, “Not great, Joe!”
YES!
Remember when Trieu shows up on the farm right after something crashes from space? That’s how she rescued Ozzy her father, from Europa. Ozzy had to be frozen in Carbonite for the trip.
Don’t Mr. Phillips (Tom Mison) and Mrs. Crookshanks (Sara Vickers) share a striking resemblance? I wonder if this is a da Vinci thing where he’s been forced to imagine his masculine and feminine self… The way this show is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were clones of Veidt’s completely unremarkable parents. The idea of him constantly birthing them and then killing them would be suitably weird.(but of course they could be something else entirely)
Or do they look like Jon Osterman (since he seems to be their creator) and Tom Mison is playing Dr. Manhattan as well?
That’s definitely a possibility. The question is where does Mrs. Crookshanks come from?Gender is a fluid construct and all, but from everything we’ve seen of Jon he seems pretty male & hetrosexual. In the comics if he had wanted to have sex with himself (or a female expression of himself) he could have. But that’s what his various young girlfriends were for.30 years have passed, so maybe he’s loosened up a bit?I just don’t love the idea that Mr. Phillips is an exact copy of Jon, while Mrs. Crookshanks is Jon with some chormosonal tweaks. It seems unbalanced.
…and thinking about it just a bit more, I guess I don’t like the idea of female-Jon-clone because of his talk with Laurie about how each individual human is a thermodynamic miracle.If the whole universe has to come together to produce a Laurie or Jon, then he can’t really just create a lady version of himself, because there are an infinite number of non-Jon Jons.
One of them *did* fix the watch.
I was thinking she might be a re-creation of Osterman’s first girlfriend whose name escapes me. The one who was dying of cancer.
Jenny Slater, and yeah, she’s got the look.Although whoever they are, the other question is why either of them are british.
In that perverse play, she does play Jenny Slater. Which is probably a coincidence, but maybe a clue.
Ok so normally I don’t rag on typos, but 2 of them are super annoyingIt’s JC “PENNEY,” and “For ‘WHOM‘ the Bell Tolls.”There’s a couple more, but those two stuck out
Thanks Andy.
As a seasonal employee in high school I’d be remiss not to mention the very important periods you’re missing in J. C. Penney.
Aw, and just after they tried to reinvent themselves, too.
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/business/JC-Penneys-opens-new-concept-store-at-North-East-Mall-in-Hurst—564217551.html
It’s also “Ernest.”
There’s a couple more?
Not my profession, but yes, that was wrong.
You can frame this post as trying to (pedantically) help buy the fact you also took time to post in a separate thread full of comments praising the reviewer in order to shit on her (“Apart from all the typos” ) shows that you may, in fact, just be a bit of a cunt.
If you’re gonna come for me and call me a cunt, scroll the fuck down and see that I also praised her. Effusely.Kindly go fuck yourself.
I have to say Lindelof writes amazing female characters (the leftovers as well). I hate when shows write female characters as “hey look their tough AND their girl”. He writes them just as tough.
Dr. Manhattan is based on DC’s Captain Atom.
DC Comics had purchased the Charlton Comics characters (Captain Atom, The Question, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker) back in the early 1980s and the editorial decision was made to not use them in a close-ended limited series for Moore and Gibbons. So they developed their own versions (Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach, Nite Owl, Comedian) for WATCHMEN (1986-87). Also the Charlton characters were assigned their own Earth in the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (1985-86) crossover and when the multiverse was destroyed and the remnants were combined into one Earth, the Charlton characters now co-exist with the main DC continuity (similar to Quality Comics characters like Plastic Man and Uncle Sam on Earth X), and Fawcett Comics characters like Captain Marvel-Billy Batson, the wizard Shazam, and Black Adam on Earth S).
OK people are not getting the elephant thing. Yes, the elephant is a hard drive of sorts.But it’s not absorbing HJ’s memories from Angela. You see tubes going in different directions. Angela’s memories are being copied. Is this how Trieu figure out Manhattan’s identity? Or did she already know?
I agree, I think the statute is where Adrian is actually in, and he is in some sort of simulation. I became more convinced of this as I let go of another theory that the Gatekeeper was Nite Owl basically doing what I expect will be Oliver Queen’s end, he has to be similarly imprisoned with the Anti Monitor though his situation is more pleasant that the bad guy. But as we got some close ups on him as judge this week, it seems like its Tom Mison too, only more in the Ichabod Crane mode than the other Mr. Phillipps. I’m not sure if he is Treiu’s father or not, it feels like that is more another bomb to drop and it being Adrian almost seems more predictable.I marathoned this, so I feel like I will need to go back once its done to watch carefully, like early on to really pay attention to the white washed story the public tells versus when it becomes the truth. But also to watch for more of the Dr. Manhattan clues. I know we won’t lose the actor (the preview sounds like he plays Dr. Manhattan too), but I hope they explain how it all happened because there is a part of me that thinks they unnecessarily wanted the hammer shot because it seems like there were more practical ways to do this even ten years ago. Like if there were a remote or something where Cal collapses and looks back up at her with the eyes.
This is the first review I’ve seen that even mentions “Life on Mars” at the end, kudos!Oh, Veidt is 100% dreaming.
God, the literal elephant in the room shows up. That ep was like 7 or 8 great reveals in a row.Just watched Shazam for the first time on Saturday (on HBO) and that little girl who plays Darla there & young Angela on Watchmen is my new favorite actress of the year.
Ok, if you didn’t think “I bet that statue is Veidt.” the first time we saw it, I don’t know how to help you, and I definitely would not hire you to work at my detective agency. Especially when Trieu declares “He IS old!” You think the smartest woman in the world doesn’t know what tense she’s using when she speaks?The new material on peteypedia confirms what was (I assume) pretty obvious to anyone who read the comic books – the Comedian is Lady Trieu’s father. It was not a consensual relationship. Blake and his soldiers raped and marauded their way through her mother’s village, apparently.That scene with Laurie was so whack. That was the first time the show has ever felt contrived and inauthentic to me. If someone points something at you and activates it, you stop sitting around. Especially Laurie. She’s had a life full of weird gadgets. FFS she went out with a mad scientist for years, then replaced him with a full on gadget dude. That scene made no sense at all.The kid. Topher. I also thought, at first, that he was the real callback to Manhattan’s “Life, I think I’ll go create some.” exchange from the comic book. And that may be the case. But that doesn’t really explain why he knew that castle. What would explain it, though, is Manhattan’s penchant for self duplication. I think he’s hiding as more than one human. I think Topher is Manhattan too. We just assumed those magnet toys were supposed to be floating because the Watchmen world is kind of sci-fi, but now that scene is looking very different to me.The real Lady Trieu was a Vietnamese rebel in the 3rd century. I don’t know if she actually rode elephants, or the mythology that grew around her brought the elephants in later, but she is famously depicted riding an elephant.That final scene was great, but also kind of dumb and weird. Bash in Cal’s skull and rip a token out of his brain? Jesus. They couldn’t have just set it up so he’d change back if she said “banana” thirty times in a row or something? If that “hammer me to death and dig a thing out of my crushed head” idea was the plan they settled on, I’d hate to see the ones they discarded.
Wonderful review! I watched the episode this morning before work, now I can’t wait to get home to watch it again. Nicely done!
In the comic the Doomsday Clock is countdown that everyone on earth knows about.
Does anyone know what the score is with the Millenium clock in terms of the general populous?
Do people know that something is happening 4 hours beyond Trieu and co. If not then why are Kavelry working to the same deadline.
Is it not possible/likely that the Kavelry’s grand plan are part of Trieu’s grand plan.
Well, everything’s gone a bit wacky, hasn’t it?
It’s amazing how effective that little mini-prologue about Dr. M was about suggesting what in retrospect should be an obvious question: Wouldn’t there be people falling all over themselves to jump in an intrinsic field subtractor for the prospect of godlike powers? How unique was Osterman, physicist and watchmaker, in being able to put himself back together as more than he was?I guess we’re about to find out.
I was struck by how this episode evoked Dr. Manhattan’s chapter in the comic – the way that Angela, tripping balls, seems to perceive time (at least the big moments of her life and her grandfather’s) as occurring all at once.
Second, if Lady Trieu is actually the child of the woman the comedian shot, perhaps Manhattan saved her; she considers Dr. M her “father” because she’d rather not give that distinction to the man who tried to kill her mom.
That scene in the comic, when the Comedian chides M for failing to intervene, could conceivably end with Manhattan saving their lives. Given that much of the show seems to be about how trauma is inherited and inescapable, that would certainly be thematically significant.
Final note: Manhattan can duplicate himself. It’s possible he was Cal and also on the moon and also innumerable other people.
Also, as someone pointed out to me last week, focusing more on the woman the comedian shot takes her from being a passive victim of the point that the comedian was making to Manhattan to a more active character in the development of Lady Trieu.
EXCELLENT review/recap. Thank you.
The review is fantastic, Joelle, thank you. And the comments and speculation are also top notch and will have me thinking all week. … but can we just talk for a second about how adorable the little actress is that plays young Angela?!
Did anyone else read Laurie’s mistake as internalized sexism? She didn’t take Mrs. Crawford seriously because she’s “just a housewife.”
But she’s not just a housewife. She worked on Keene’s campaign before and likely would again when he decides to run for president. She’s in politics.
You’re right. I think I was just trying to make it be a more interesting kind of mistake.
I’m thinking all the Saturn Veidt stuff is actually in the past, and that meteor we saw in the opening earlier in the episode was him returning to earth having already escaped Saturn land. (Only to likely be captured by Trieu).
Speculating on spoilers below:To me, it stands to reason that Veidt is Trieu’s father. She’d be doing the same process with her father as her mother if he had passed recently and there is no evidence of that.Was it not telegraphed in her speech? When she went over all of her accomplishments and how young she was for each? Veidt was the smartest man on Earth, would it not stand to reason that his daughter would be the same? The land she purchased, was acquire for what landed on it. Would that not be Veidt having escaped and returned to Earth? There is no other source of a meteor or other cosmic body that is ever mentioned that correlates. Did Trieu also not boast about creating the first spacecraft which could have been used to rescue him?Veidts timeline has been shown in 1 year increments, that timeline is separate from the events on Earth. He’s the smartest man alive, so he’d be able to win that court case. He wanted to lose, he wants to be thrown out of paradise so he can be rescued. He’s probably recuperating or otherwise being reconstructed from the escape.As for the clock, my guess is that it is intended to wipe out the memories of all human beings and was part of Veidts original plans for a utopia. That too was telegraphed in Trieu’s speech.Lastly, did no one notice the Lady Trieu logo on all the equipment the 7th K were using? She’s helping them destroy Veidt’s captor, Dr.Manhatan and the only one with enough power to stop the clock, presumably. I don’t think Trieu has any intention of helping the 7th K, just using them for this purpose. This would also explain Trieu’s concerns over Will’s participation. If they are going to hurt Angela by harming the man she loves Will may not want to participate.
Finally, I hope Lady Trieu’s accomplishments are truly her own, and not inherited plans/tech from Veidt or his company. I like her character a lot.
Veidt felt something close to remorse in the comic. It was one of the big changes that the movie made. In comic he was the one to ask if he made the right decision in the end, as if the weight of what he had done was a real thing to him for just a moment. But he may not be capable of emotions in the same way as an average person is. He still killed millions to push his vision for the future and doesn’t seem to be bothered much by the act.Not too crazy about them using Manhattan as a character. I think he would have worked better showing how he was now a symbol, maybe moving towards religions icon. Having him not only back on Earth but dating again feels like a retread. Even worse that he left for higher things and got pulled back into the dating pool by someone that looked good in a mask. He’s virtually a god, but has the libido of a 20 year old.I wonder if they got the concept of seeing the future but being unable to avoid it from Dune. I remember a quote about the spacing guild basing all their decisions off what they divined in the future and stagnating because they never took risks. It was also a part of the mini-series on SyFy, “to know the future is to be trapped by it”.Also not too crazy about them using the Klan as the big bad. They just don’t come across as believable when portrayed as James Bond villains.But this is Lindelof, I am going to wait until the last episode to see how this all pulls together in the end.
The Tralfamadorians of Slaughter-House Five seem like the closest to Dr. Manhattan and somehow I can’t believe I missed that for the last 25 years. I have never read Dune, but it does pre-date Slaughter-House Five by a few years. I wonder if there was an idea of time as being frozen and unchangeable going in the zeitgeist.
I know the Cyclops Cult predated Dr. Manhattan (per Will’s memories as a young police officer), but I can’t help but to think of the blue circle in the middle of Dr. Manhattan forehead and make the connection that he could be nicknamed a cyclops. Maybe that’s what the modern day 7th Kavelry’s goal is and their use of the cyclops symbolism . . . they want to turn Keene into another cyclops/Dr. Manhattan.
The 7k single eye imagery also pretty directly mirrors the single eye of Veidt’s alien squid, though it’s hard to know what to make of the connection, since presumably Adrian wasn’t referencing a hate group.
Ozy also has the single eye on his costume.
The circle is an abstracted Hydrogen atom, the most abundant chemical substance in the Universe. Atomic number 1.
The oldest we’ve seen Veidt comes from the 1988 video he sent to future president Robert Redford. How would anyone know what he looks like now?He only disappeared 5 or so years prior to the show, so the public would know what he looks like as an old man.
Before this episode, I was wondering if they’d be able to successfully tie together all the threads in the few episodes they have left. But now it’s like “My God, slow down, dude!”
Didn’t realize until late in this ep that Mr. Phillips and the Game Warden were played by the same actor. Meaning the warden is just another clone? Or maybe the original?
A few observations. The title is taken from the comic, where it’s said that the NVA soldiers often wanted to surrender to Dr Manhattan personally and held him in “an almost religious awe”.The bit with Judd’s widow having difficulty getting her trap door to work is one of the funniest things this season of tv.
In the Watchmen comic there’s a subversion of the typical villain trope when Ozymandias says “Do you seriously think I’d explain my plan if there was the slightest possibility of you affecting it’s outcome? I did it thirty five minutes ago.” In this ep we get Mrs Crawford subverting Laurie’s monologuing by abruptly confessing
The abrupt confession, flaky remote, and half assed trap door was the most Get Smart thing I’ve seen in decades.
Baby Yoda and Dr. Manhattan are both on TV in 2019. What a time to be alive.For once, I’m at a loss for snark. This is amazing television and I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Another prediction:It’s pretty clear now that the game Lindelof’s playing is to get the surviving original Watchmen back together. Right now, Laurie, Dr Manhattan, and Ozymandias are on a collision course. The only one left we haven’t seen yet is Nite Owl. He’ll be showing up sometime in the last two episodes.Also, Ozymandias is a wild card. His failure to destroy Dr Manhattan in the comic was his biggest failure in life. That’s got to be eating away at him. Assuming that Lady Trieu is actually trying to save Dr Manhattan (questionable: she says she is, but she might be lying), then when Ozymandias shows up at the Millennium clock, he might join with the 7K to destroy Manhattan. Either that, or Trieu wants Dr Manhattan dead, and Ozymandias is part of her plan to make that happen.
Nite Owl is not showing up this season.
I actually think Ozy already has some connection with the 7K, via Cyclops. If Ozy was actually a member, maybe that’s why he gave the squid only one eye.
They did such a great job a few eps back with Looking Glass and who he is, I’ve been a stickler about getting to know Angela on a character level too, beyond ‘she’s a cop’ and ‘she’s a masked vigilante.’ She’s the main character, but so much about what informs her is tied exclusively to her past, and so much of what’s intriguing about this show is tied exclusively to what’s going on around her. But I want something interesting about her herself. Likes, dislikes, quirks, anything. In the flashback, when her grandma asked her, “Tell me something about yourself”, I was like Yes! This is what I’ve been waiting for! Angela’s answer: Badge. Masked vigilante.
Doh.
Angela is like a miniature Will, though. There’s so much anger that there’s just not much room for anything else. And the constant cursing is yet another mask she wears; if you think about it, she sounds just like a 70’s Blacksploitation movie.
There was a whiff of depth – she liked/wanted to see the movie not necessarily because it was a cool action movie with a badass character, she wanted to see the movie because the VHS cover showed a black character that looked like her and she was living in a place where the people who looked like her were few and far between.
Laurie mentioned Angela’s husband was a hottie back when they first met, I chuckled to myself and wondered how crazy it would be if Cal was Manhattan. Crazy indeed.
I wonder if naming Angela’s husband Calvin was also a wink-and-a-nod to another of Alan Moore’s stories, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”There you also have a depowered superhero (Superman) living in plain sight under the alias Calvin (Elliott in this case).
Can somebody please get me out of the gray – it’s been like this since the Kinjapocalypse.
I wonder if besides the memory part if the elephant in the room was not only literally but figuratively pointing out to an elephant in the room. We just don’t know what yet.
Are you in the right headspace to receive information that could possibly hurt you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_the_elephant
Great find!
Laurie even managed to leave the FBI in Washington, D.C. so she could investigate the murder of a police chief practically by herself. She didn’t though. Keene made it a point to have the FBI send her and she was the one who said Petey should come so she’d have backup. Keene bringing her to Tulsa seems like either some twisted move to either twist the knife, or he somehow thinks she can maybe be useful if they’re successful in capturing Manhattan.
Keene was going to send a team, Laurie wanted to go solo, when Keene pushed, she picked Petey and only Petey.
I can’t believe the theory about Laurie’s dildo giving away who Dr. Manhattan was turned out to be true.For those who didn’t see it, her dildo is named Excalibur. Which read phonetically called come out as Ex, Cal Abar.
Now that we know the truth about Cal/John, I wonder: did Judd know this whole time? Was that the reason why he became Uncle Judd for all those years- to keep tabs on Manhattan? If the theory that Judd was the second 7K thug to hit the Abar house during the White Night is true, that could be how he knew. Think about it: Cal was in the house, Angela was gravely injured. Maybe he stumbled on the shooting in the kitchen and that brought out his latent Manhattan-ness for a moment, just long enough for Judd to see it, freak the fuck out, and boogie on out of there.
After reading the Peteypedia about the movie Sister Night is it possible to actually get a crowdfunding started so we can get this movie made?!? Film it in a Grindhouse style and we could be looking at the biggest cult movie ever created. This would be the role Vivica A. Fox was be born to play.
I think that, unlike last week’s twist that was an instant classic, this one will rise or fall depending on how the rest of the show plays out. I am very glad LG isn’t dead, and guessing that’s him outside Angela’s house. I don’t want them to wrap everything up, I want another season, but my guess is that if there is another season he would keep a few of the characters (guessing Angela if she lives, LG, Petey) and move to another setting like with The Leftovers, and it would probably involve Night Owl more (again if he or anybody lives)
– Glad they addressed the elephant in the room
– Dr. Manhattan has a type
– Adrian Veidt wrote a 10 ft SOS message, pixel by pixel, entirely in launched corpses
The father is most probably Ozymandias. She looks over at what is implied to be the statue when she says “he will be”
“For nearly thirty years, Robert Redford sat in the big chair. A
terrorist organization could easily push the country into a monarchy,
and away from democracy.”Sorry, but that ship sailed at some point during Redford’s eight terms.
Jon doesn’t go to mars in the book. He leaves the universe for another. That’s why it never made any sense
Nobody knew that but Veidt though. The world knew he went to Mars, and that was the last they saw of him.
Placing bets:1. The stuff on Jupiter’s moon did happen, but a long time ago. As punishment, Veidt was trapped in the statue.2. Trieu is Veidt’s daughter – would make sense with her supersmartness + her hint that bringing her father there is a goal.
I know Watchmen’s heroes have always been flawed but did Doc Manhattan really just do a ‘Get Out’ to some poor unsuspecting black dude then?
I read that as Doctor Manhattan subsumed his personality into a newly created shell persona. Cal probably didn’t exist til Doc decided (for whatever reason) he wanted to be a regular man again.
But Lady Trieu referred to him having suffered ‘total amnesia’ -which she is dubious of- following a car crash. That implies that he had a whole life with friends, family and colleagues beforehand.
The only problem I have is that Manhatton isnt the type to hide behind a false identity.
that was batshit insane, which ofcourse is the highest form of praise possible lol
Pirate Jenny and Red Scare look like what happens when the kid tells the parents at breakfast that everyone is suppose to wear Halloween costumes to school that day.
Panda looks like what happens when someone with 2 years until retirement gets told on Friday that everyone has to come to work in costumes starting on Monday.
Per Peteypedia, Cal worked at Pyramid Global Construction, so I’m guessing Adrian was in on it.
Also, the reveal puts Cal’s atheism in a new light.Damn, there are gonna be so many rewatch bonuses.
Here’s a thought I’ve had since we first met Trieu. In the graphic novel, the Comedian did impregnate a Vietnamese woman and subsequently murdered her before she gave birth, doing so right in front of Dr. Manhattan. Given that Ol’ Bluedick “Walking Goddamn H-Bomb” Osterman seemingly has power over life and death, perhaps he saved the unborn baby’s life, and that baby has grown up to be Trieu. That would make her and Laurie half-sisters, which makes for a beautiful bit of symmetry that has always been a part of the Watchmenverse.
Just like anyone who would write a comment on the TV Club, i watch a lot of tv.Eventually, you get good at predicting surprises the writers have hidden, but never in my wildest dreams did i foresee the fate of Dr Manhattan. Opinion is subjective but that makes this show a tie with Rick and Morty, and The Mandalorian as my current choices for greatest on going tv shows as of December 2019.
Veidt is definitely Trieu’s father! She specifically referred to ancestors when Laurie asked about the statue. I think Trieu might have even put him in the paradise prison in the first place. She mentioned sending some advanced rocket into space as one of her early achievements in the speech recorded for the Millennium Clock. She’s seriously into cloning, too. It still seems like she would have needed Manhattan’s help, though. 🤷🏻♀️
I loved the court room scene. I’ve skipped 3 episodes so didn’t care for the reveal, just really glad Dr. Manhattan is back but don’t get why he needed to be Cal.
You did what?
I had too. Found the eps a bit meh and i think the show rides the coattails of Alan Moore’s genius work.
Sorry? You skipped three episodes?
Yes. I’m too much of an Alan Moore fan, and feel this show is riding his coattails. i would have been more intrigued if this was an original concept.
It’s still so weird to skip three episodes of a show like this. It’s not Brooklyn 99 or Modern Family, you’re kinda supposed to see it in order. If someone told me they hated the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird” and that it was “riding Harper Lee’s coattails”, but they only watched the first and last 30 minutes, I wouldn’t trust their opinion. In fact, I’d think their opinion was worthless.
How is Hooded Justice just like Superman?
I know it is weird to think of Veidt having a child… but then again Trieu said this on the 4th episode: “So much of my success grew from the seed of his inspiration.”
You don’t go and use the word “seed” without some subtext.
Rewatching, I’ve got to say that Angela’s flat “What?” when Trieu informs her that she’s slipping her “daughter” her own memories of an old woman, is a masterpiece of understated acting.
Lady Trieu is able to predict things before they happen. So she seems to have an ability to see her own timeline, similar to Dr Manhattan. OR he gave her a road map. Could it be her plan is to break the cycle by washing away all memories? If we have no memories of the past, could it change our actions in the future? Lady Trieu may believe the only way to change the future is to eliminate the past.
On rewatching it I’ve noticed that when Cal arrives at the clock tower to see Angela he’s driving a blue car and wearing a blue shirt.
These recaps are everything. I feel 60% lost whenever I watch watchmen(pun semi-intended)
I just realized the squid drop happened in November. In LG’s flashback from Jersey at that time, it was clearly warm weather. Is that a plot hole or am I missing something?