For 80 years, spandex crusaders have managed to thrive in popular culture, their tone reflecting the youth counterculture combined with a heavy dose of capitalism. Batman ’66, for example, thrived on psychedelic pop. Batman ’89, on the other hand, preferred a highly sexualized, dark, and gritty punk/pop feel. In all that time, across movies, video games, comic books, and television shows, nothing touched me like tonight’s episode of Watchmen.
The caped crusader swings from one rooftop to another. An oversized moon behind him briefly illuminates his silhouette before he disappears into the darkness. A crack of thunder and he re-emerges on top of a gargoyle looking down at his city. This is my first memory. I’m sitting on my father’s lap watching Batman: The Animated Series. My little brother and my mother tuck in on the opposite end of the couch. I love Batman, but I feel far away from Bruce Wayne. Gotham doesn’t understand Batman, and therefore they fear him. No matter how much good he puts into the world, he’s still a pariah. He’s a hero, so he doesn’t stop trying to protect the people. He chooses to do what is right. At that time, Batman was the superhero that best represented me.
The gods of the new world came in the shape of superheroes. America’s early legends Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, and John Henry each developed a power beyond the capability of a normal man. They used their powers to better the nation. They fed the hungry, cleared forests for settlements, and helped to build the railroad that connected this great mass of land. Even before the capes and cowls, the United States thrived on superheroes. An old interview with Alan Moore, half of the creative team behind the Watchmen comic series, recently resurfaced in which he articulated that Birth Of A Nation was the first superhero movie. Watchmen TV series creator Damon Lindelof took that critique and morphed it to shape the opening of his series. D.W. Griffith’s ode to the south, and ultimately a wonderful propaganda tool for the Ku Klux Klan, cemented itself as iconic with a historic box office draw and innovative special effects. If this is the first superhero movie, it says a lot about who Americans idolized, and how willingly the country overlooks disgusting, violent, oppression as long as it’s attached to something shiny and new.
Trust In The Law gave a five-year-old Will Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr.) a dream; a sheriff, with a gold star pinned to his chest, beloved by the community he sought to protect. The opening scene of “This Extraordinary Being” is a snippet from the in-show television series American Hero Story: Minutemen, featuring a white Hooded Justice sitting across from two wisecracking FBI detectives. Here, Lindelof and co-writer Cord Jefferson visually explore how arbiters twist history to fit a white power narrative. Director Stephen Williams lingers on Hooded Justice’s hands, wrapped in rope-like handcuffs, unmoving and in plain sight of the officers. Black children train early on how to behave in front of the police. One of the officers begins the interrogation with compliments. “You’re true Americans, all of yous. But you, Hooded Justice, you most of all. Because like I said, you were the first.” Part of being a hero demands the guy in the mask eventually wins. In many ways, not being the best superhero broke The Comedian. In her debut episode, Laurie also struggled with being the last of her group, after having felt overlooked. History says HJ must have been white because any other race would have been labeled a terrorist. Our Black hero chose to be invisible for exactly that reason.
But this hero also lives at an intersection. The opening scene addresses the rumors of HJ’s sexuality. “Help us settle a bet,” one of the officers pleads. “What the story with that noose around your neck?” Jerry, the other officer, think it’s sex stuff. “See, we know what you do. And who you do,” the other officer proclaims as he pounds the air with his fist. In the same way that Black names and faces disappear from history’s ledger, so do queer people and the struggles they endure. Talking to government law enforcers as a gay person in J. Edgar Hoover’s America meant gambling with one’s life. It wasn’t just mockery or fear of abuse, but the distinct pain and fear that accompanies carrying a secret. It’s overwhelming. It hurts everyone surrounding William. It’s rumored to have hurt Hoover. Every aspect of his private life could become fuel for his public destruction. Now, we are in the mind of a gay Black man in the late 1930s.
One of the main themes of this new Watchmen, highlighted in last week’s episode, centers on transgenerational trauma. The theory goes, post-traumatic stress disorder mechanisms get handed down through surviving generations. Cut to Angela (Regina King), under arrest, betrayed by her colleague and friend, attempting to figure out her next steps. She does not sit. Trapped in a jail cell, she begins to show signs of a panic attack—heavy breathing, sweating, and unfocused eyes—as Laurie (Jean Smart), rattles off her offenses. The latest problem: Angela swallowed all of her grandfather’s Nostalgia pills. In describing how the pills will implant memories in Angela’s brain, Laurie says, “Who would want to live in the present, when they can live in the past.” Most Black Americans, I thought to myself. A drum roll and the same piano that scored every important moment of Will’s youth sends Angela crashing back into the past.
The first memory takes her to Will’s induction ceremony, where we meet young William (Jovan Adepo).“The uniform a man wears changes him. Make sure yours changes you for the better,” the captain says to the new graduates. “Protect the law and uphold the badge,” like “liberty and justice for all,” holds exclusions. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross slow their score down. The anticipation of the crowning achievement seems to follow the pace of Will’s heartbeat. Then, the music stops for the briefest moment as the white officer shoots Will a look of disgust before passing him entirely. Instead, Lt. Samuel Battle, the first Black policeman in New York City, welcomed Will to the force. I still get goosebumps seeing real-life heroes next to the badass fake heroes of Watchmen.
From the ceremony, Angela travels to a bar with the woman who cheered Will. June was the baby thrown from the car in episode one. Now, she works for the New York Amsterdam News. This paper, founded for Black Americans in 1909, still runs today. Together, June (Danielle Deadwyler) and Will have built a beautiful life for themselves, but Will hasn’t outrun his trauma. She’s quick to call him on it, too. “They gave you a gun and a stick. That’s what I’m worried about. Because you are an angry, angry man, William Reeves.” A hollow, drum-like sound echoes across the scene spelling doom. Reeves denies his anger because he’s achieved his dream. He gets to be the man on the horse, saving the day.
Earlier, Will wondered aloud if June thought he’d become a Tom after accepting the position. For Black people, being the first comes with a lot of doubt. Integrating means more than just diversifying for white people. It means being the only voice in the room. It means having drinks poured on your head. It means everyone doubting your intelligence, your capability, your authority, and your right to be in the room. It’s not an honor to be first. It’s a responsibility; it often hurts a lot more than a win should.
It’s why the Fatty Arbuckle lookalike, a.k.a. Fred (Glenn Fleshler), knew he could throw a molotov cocktail into a Jewish Delicatessen and never suffer consequences. “Who are you going to believe, me or him?” Fred makes this statement proudly, in the middle of a police station knowing despite the uniform, his word would matter over William’s word. The officers gently reprimand Fred in front of Reeves, before letting him sneak out the back. By not booking his catch, Will receives a demotion in rank, as the white officers smile in his face. It’s supposed to feel like a win, but he knows it’s a loss, even before he sees Fred free on the streets.
Enter, Superman. Suddenly, Reeves sees himself, like I saw myself in Batman. “It’s about a baby,” the news stand attendant tells William. “His father puts him in a rocketship just before his planet explodes.” This triggers an automatic response to Reeves; own daring escape. He may not want to live in the past, but it’s certainly catching up to him. The well meaning white officer begs Reeves to forget what he saw. The warning Lt. Battle gave him rings in his ears. “Beware the cyclops.” With a gentle nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, day turns to night as a cozy apartment turn on their lights to fight the darkness. William became a cop to find justice for the little boy who saw too much. He won’t forget Fred. How could he? So, the cops punish him, hoping the pain will keep his mouth shut. This scene plays egregiously knowing what survivors of trauma go through.
In Anatomy Of A Lynching, author James R. McGovern details how an entire community of African Americans stopped talking about the horrific murder of Claude Neal. Decades after the event that saw Claude castrated, stabbed, burned, hung, and eventually displayed on the court steps to assuage an angry mob, many could only shake their heads and weep when his name came up. Mr. Neal was in police custody before they allowed a mob to kidnap and torture him to death. No one was found guilty of the crime. As William turns down the sinister offer for beer and a ride home, the police cruiser takes off, revealing the same mutilated bodies he witnessed dragged behind a truck as a child.
They take him out to a tree in the middle of a park. When they cut him from the limb, we see Angela fall to the ground struggling to breathe, and traumatized by what she’s just endured. I think back to the stories my father told me. He’s six, and he’s being arrested for walking down the road outside his family’s farm. He’s 12, and an officer shoves a gun in his face saying, “I could kill anyone of you niggers.” My younger brother is five, and a neighborhood mother goes into conniptions when she observes her little boy playing with the only Black kid on the block. Our trauma runs on a never-ending loop of shame and dehumanization.
Completely in shock, William walks home, the noose still around his neck, when he hears a call for help. He, like his ancestors before him and the descendants that came after, transformed the tools that nearly killed him into a shield. The bag that covered his face, he now wears like a mask. The noose becomes a terrifying symbol. His anger no longer repressed, becomes a justified rage. Adepo swings his body like a real street brawler, leaning into every punch, struggling to stay on his feet. It’s messy, but he gets the job done, and receives the thanks and acknowledgment he idolized in his favorite movie.
“Okay, I’m angry,” William finally admits. But a new obsession forms in between those words, because now he can do something about that anger. I think it says a lot about how we process pain, that June goes to work the following day. Later that evening, she tries to quell expectations of praise. Life is not like the movies. “You ain’t gonna get justice with no badge. You’re going to get it with that hood.” She understands he needs to do something. She does her best to keep him safe, painting his eyes white so people will not be afraid. “If you want to stay a hero, town folks gonna need to think one of their own is under it.” His transformation to Hooded Justice is complete.
Now, we’re at the place that started everything. Hooded Justice emerges from the shadows to stop a robbery at a local deli, or so the story went. William, deep undercover, discovers a conspiracy to hypnotize Black Americans into committing violent crimes in hopes of dwindling their numbers. Bursting from the back and into the front of the store, Will discovers Fred carries a huge shot gun, and dives out the window as Fred pulls the trigger. Back in the world of the conscious, Laurie gives Angela a shot of adrenaline to wake her from the coma. Cal (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) comes to try and talk Angela out of the past. He reminds her of the facts that define her life. She cries as she slips back into William’s memories. Angela’s mission cannot be thwarted. She’s too close to understanding where she came from.
So far, the struggle to be Black in America has taken the center stage, but sexual desire makes a powerful entrance with Nelson Gardner (Jake McDorman). June must sense trouble immediately because she refuses to leave that table. It’s an official invitation into the Minutemen. June sits out of focus at the back of the frame. Her opinion, given freely and I would argue correctly, quickly falls to the wayside, as the men get amped up on the possibility of justice and the excitement of lust. (Honestly, Deadwyler is so great here. I demand we see more of her soon.) When someone sees what you’ve skillfully hidden from the rest of the world, and invites your truth into the light a feeling of possibility floods the senses. “Why fight alone when you can have true companionship?” Gardner whispers this devil’s promise without a second thought. At this moment, he believes those words to be true. He can’t know how much William needs a team behind him; to be supported emotionally and physically. Gardner doesn’t know the unquenched thirst for justice lingering in Will. His ignorance makes him a dangerous companion for the vulnerable Will.
They consummate the relationship. Lindelof and Jefferson do some tongue in cheek dialogue here. “When did you know,” William asks Nelson. “That I was…Hooded Justice?” Though his queer identity must be kept a secret, William doesn’t seem ashamed of it. June, who must know, doesn’t make him out to be a pariah. There’s something liberating about the fact that his gayness doesn’t make him feel small or out of place. It’s simply something he knows others will not accept, and he plays his cards accordingly. Moments later, he’s shamed for the color of his skin by his new lover. “What (the Minutemen) can’t know is your secret. You’ll have to stay covered up. Wear the makeup and the hood.” This arrives on the same breath that pleads for William to join the team in the first place. “You legitimize the whole operation.” Then, those dreaded words, “They’re not as tolerant as me.”
It’s coded language for “I’m not racist, but my friends hate you.” Similar phrases include “You’re not black, black,” or “You’re a credit to your race.” My least favorite of these phrases, “You’re so articulate,” foams from the mouths of those who delight in Black excellence because they believe it’ll encourage “uppity negroes” into well-behaved citizens. These are the negotiations most Black Americans manage internally when entering conversations with white individuals, particularly those with great power. “How am I being used? Does my appearance here hurt my community? Are the words being said to me, genuine? Can these promises be kept? Should I leave this opportunity on the table, and attempt to forge my own way?” In the final moments of the scene, Nelson takes possession of William when he says, “It’s a shame the others can never see how beautiful you are.” It’s a small way of keeping Will to himself.
June’s trying to be understanding. Her love for the boy who saved her has not yet found a limit. “I’m your team,” she explains when William comes to Nelson’s defense. She has Will recite the story of how he found her. She makes him promise to never make her cry again. A foolish promise to request or give, even if done out of pure love. More reading between the lines suggests June’s okay with the extramarital affair so long as it does not impact their home life. Then she drops the bomb that she’s pregnant. Again, a new transformation begins. Now, Will will fight for his son.
A second induction, this time to the Minutemen, comes with more journalists on his side, but no less racism. Which strikes as bizarre, given that only two people in the room know of his true identity. A reporter asks Will if he has superhuman strength. “I’m just a man,” he responds in his best white voice. “I believe there’s a vast and insidious conspiracy,” William says for the first time. Just as he’s about to present the evidence to the world, his boyfriend shoots him down. Once again, he’s a pawn, a good public image with zero real power. How can he fight for his son, himself, or the little boy he was under these conditions? His legacy threatened, realization dawns on William as Nelson reveals the racist poster Angela sneered at in episode two.
Time goes by, and life moves on. William seems lost until a disaster leads him back to his beginning. Bodies litter the ground as cops beat victims at random. Violent clashes between white and black breakout in front of a movie house. Brave as ever, William strolls inside, ready to bring justice to an unjust situation. There he finds Lorna (Marissa Chanel Hampton) sobbing in her seat. She claimed a flickering light told her to hurt people. William connects it to the cyclops. When he calls Nelson for back-up, he’s reduced to begging for help. In that annoying sing-song voice, Nelson reprimands William for his wild beliefs. He encourages William to grab a drink, and then come warm his bed. “I’m afraid you’ll have to solve Black unrest all on your own,” Nelson faux laments. He’s uninterested in the problems of the Black community. Superheroes save white people, and business is good.
Here comes goddamn Fred. Fred, with his foul mouth, belittling gestures, and his hate-filled heart runs around without consequence. It’s enough to make anybody understand that justice isn’t equal. So William tips the scales and fires directly into Fred’s face. Good riddance. When William walks through Fred’s factory, he uncovers a conspiracy to cause riots in Black communities. If the voiceover on the films they sought to place in segregated movie houses seems over the top, consider how many iconic corporate mascots have been Black service workers. Ponder the difference in sympathy for victims of the opioid crisis, and the crack epidemic. Look at the difference in sentencing Black criminals and white criminals.
No, the episode is spot-on, but I have one gripe with a conspiracy. If one organization planned and upheld the systemic oppression of Black Americans, there would be cause for celebration. But it’s deeply ingrained in every aspect of global culture. It makes that squid look like a joke. It is pervasive. It’s in the DNA of all human beings. And it won’t be beaten in my lifetime. I don’t know how the season will close. Lindelof, the master of suspense, only gives answers to derive better questions. Given the excellence of the season thus far, faith remains that the next set of questions will be ones we are eager to ponder and whose conclusions have no definitive resolution. Is there a name for this endless mystery style of television? Watchmen bests Lost, True Detective, Manifest and The 100, because the questions raised have real-world, life-and-death stakes. It’s what made reading the original graphic novel such a wondrous experience. It takes a writer at the top of their game to do it.
No longer trusting in the law, William comes home to find his son dressed in his costume. All of the secrets, the shame, and the pain draped on his tiny shoulder breaks something in Will. He tries to course correct, but as June explained, he can’t take back the decisions he’s made. Mother and son leave for Tulsa the next day. This explains how and why Angela never knew William. In the final memory, Will left for his granddaughter, he murders her captain. He said he wanted her to know everything and that she would never forgive him. As he used the tools of his oppression to form armor, so too, did he use his oppressors’ tools to fight back. The same tech from the projectors now fits in a flashlight. Under the tree, Judd makes a plea for his life, using the absolute worst choice in words. “Whatever you think I did, you don’t understand,” he begins. “I’m trying to fucking help you people. You don’t know what’s really happening here.” With friends like you Judd, who needs enemies?
I’ve grown a lot since those first Batman memories. Every week I get to see Regina King in a healthy relationship, struggle to uncover her family’s secrets, and molly whop bad guys. A hero like Hooded Justice helps me feel seen in an entirely new way. He’s the men in my family, the generations above me still struggling to make sense of what they survived, and hoping to further civil rights for their children before they perish. He’s not an ideal hero, but a human hero brings something we can aspire to.
Stray observations
- Lady Trieu (Hong Chau) to the rescue. I’m so glad to have her back with her functional sneakers and a bit of color added to her outfit than we’re used to seeing. I hope next week is a Trieu heavy episode.
- “He’s got a safe behind the painting of the white horse in his boudoir.” Am I learning that Judd’s granpappy and Angela’s gramps used to smash? Probably not, but I liked writing that sentence.
- So Hooded Justice threw that KKK member right into some romaine lettuce. What is the connection?! Why lettuce, the least tasteful of the vegetable so central to this story?
- All the old-timey songs came from a Black quartet called The Ink Spots.
332 Comments
Jesus, that was intense. So much information, I’m going to have to think about it for a while – but what a technical achievement, too.
Honestly, I find at least 50% of long-takes to be too much of a wank (“Birdman” being the worst offender). But this really had meaning to it, it was additive to to the story instead of just showing off. The worst I’ll say is that it was a bit too cute to have so many revolving camera shots disappear William behind someone else so that you think it’ll switch out to Angela, but it’s still William.
I think with a lot of fight scenes one takes can be great. You don’t have editing to cue you into what’s about to happen so there’s an unpredictability to the whole thing. I think it also goes back to blink of an eye, in which editing’s supposed to follow blinking. In fights your attention’s pretty unwavering so you’re not really blinking.
Another great review from Joelle Monique here. I recently encountered a near version of “you’re not black-black” in the wild and it was kind of astonishing to see in the context of the moment. Obviously it happens all the time and what would I know about it…I don’t know where I was going with this but I compliment the episode and the review.
Absolutely superb review (of an absolutely astonishing episode).
That was a heavy ep. Well titled, Will was(is)extraordinary.Kudos to those who guessed from jump he was Hooded Justice.
A+++++
I watched tonight’s episode on streaming, and it was mostly “silent”; I heard very little intelligible dialog — I assumed that was an aesthetic choice. This recap details a lot of dialog I didn’t hear. Anyone else?
Sounds like your tv audio channels were messed up. Usually when I can’t hear dialogue it’s because it’s set on 5-channel somehow but only L and R are playing, so the middle channel with all the dialogue is being cut.
If you watched on Hulu, occasionally it messes up and mute the dialogue. I’m assuming something similar happens with other streaming apps.
There was a fair amount of dialogue, so it’s likely you had an audio issue somewhere in the mix (no pun intended).
This is why I always use subtitles.
The only dialogue in the above recap that I didn’t hear was any regarding — “By not booking his catch, Will receives a demotion in rank…”I must’ve missed that line.
My soundbar was twitchy that way. I found setting the TV output to PCM helped.
https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00027069
Black Trauma?
So that pretty much guarantees that the racist incel neckbeards over at IGN are going to be whining their asses off.
That had to be one of the most incredibly directed and edited hours of television in recent memory. Stephen Williams can take a bow. The craftsmanship that was constantly on display, most especially in the first 30 minutes had me riveted. The partial sets, the split focus, the jump shots, the framing it was masterclass and never once distracted from the intensity. In fact it played beautifully with knowing this was a jacked up collision of Angela’s deep memories after imbibing the pills. Honestly I cannot wait to re-watch. It was at times exhilarating filmmaking.
Just finished watching. Fucking incredible.
This is the episode that can proudly be proclaimed as one of the ultimate “Watchmen” media, next to the original graphic novel and the Ozymandias origin story.Fucking incredible.
It was intense and twisty, to be sure it was set up that way. I imagined all the pills hitting her stomach, and each memory busting out as each capsule dissolved. However, I sat up and said “Whoa!” aloud when the b&w cop car drove away with the (phrasing?) colorized dead bodies dragging behind. Now that’s an image I won’t soon forget.
I got the freeze-fame of Justice jumping through the window spoiled (thanks io9!), but man that was an incredible shot. I love how the “fictional” version takes the barebones of what happened (gunshot, man jumps through window) and embellished it, when the reality is much darker and more depressing, but much more meaningful and impactful.
I want to re-watch this entire series when it’s all done for the season because I know I missed some stuff and especially with this exquisite episode.
Great example of dramatically over-praising an episode because of the subject matter. White liberals really are the most predictable people on the planet when it comes to what you will fawn over.
Great example of dramatically under-praising an episode because of the subject matter. White conservatives are the most predictable people on the planet when it comes to what they’ll write-off as bullshit because it causes them to realize how racist they actually are.
I have no adequte words. It’s both an immense relief and a genuine pleasure to see that not only does Damon Lindelof actually seem to UNDERSTAND the original comic, but also that he’s not afraid to go deeper and poke the very foundations of the storytelling that the original comic was riffing on in the first place. Could go anywhere from here and could still very easily fail to stick the landing, but… hot damn.
I definitely like how Lindelof is even undercutting Alan Moore’s ideas and what the Minutemen were doing back in their time. Pretending to be heroes while a real problem was going on. On point for something called Watchmen.
After this episode, I wondered if Moloch was even possibly on Metropolis’ payroll? It made the whole thing seem even more like playacting than Moore did, or like a Venture Brothers kind of thing. Maybe it’s just that conflict is always going to seem trivial next to the material this episode dug into.
Actually it feels like more closer to the premise of The Boys. That The Minuetmen was basically just an act that did stuff just for the publicity and fame. They never actually stopped or solved any crime. Moloch was a safe, white, media friendly villain that they quickly put away for the cameras and soundbites. Key word white considering that Metropolis straight up dismissed Hooded Justice’s concerns as “nobody cares about black people” therefore The Minuetmen couldn’t be bothered.
I think it’s more about the indifference of the white crimefighters to what was going on. Moloch would have been a genuine threat. And metaphorically I think it would be a mistake to have the Minutemen, who are a stand in in this story for the white power structure in general, being just do nothings who are indifferent to any wrongdoing. Black people weren’t the only ones with problems in this era. The problem isn’t that these things which they’re fighting aren’t real threats. The problem is that they’re only concerned with the stuff which impacts the white community. It’s the indifference which kills. We see that throughout the episode. Captain Metropolis is happy to use Hooded Justice, a presumably white vigilante, as a symbol, but he’s not willing to listen to the concerns of Will Reeves, the black man, and do something about it. The things which are impacting the black community just don’t interest him. We see that as well when Will approaches the theater and asks a, white, officer what happened. The guy replies “what do you expect when you put a bunch of animals in a cage”. He’s indifferent to what’s going on except perhaps in that this created extra work for him. We see it again with William’s phone call trying to alert the Minutemen. Captain Metropolis gets even more explict that he’s just not interested in these real threats against the black community.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here as you’re largely repeating what i’m saying other than the parts you got explicitly wrong. Moloch wasn’t a serious threat; he didn’t mass murder people or try to take over the world or something, as they quickly caught him and tossed him in jail. And unlike, say The Joker and other comics villains, he didn’t try to escape. He largely reformed himself/retired after he got out. Also, The Minutemen were not really a stand in for the white power structure, they were like supers in The Boys, a for-profit enterprise of costumed people who wanted to be celebs, and fighting the Klan for “black issues”(as he said in the comics), just wasn’t profitable or gets them glory. Metropolis is exactly right that people just won’t care, because again “black issues,” (which, btw, is still a thing today) as he was just reflecting the reality of the day as well as his own personal biases and racism.
I disagree about Moloch being a threat. Within the context of the Watchmen universe I think he was a threat. The fact that they stopped him doesn’t negate the reality of his potential threat.
I think that arguing that the Minutemen weren’t involved in real crime fighting renders the metaphor in this episode problematic. The Minutemen are standing in here for the white power structure. But implying that white people weren’t actually trying to solve problems is incorrect, because they were trying to solve problems. They just weren’t interested in the problems of the black community, or not interested enough. Captain Metropolis is only really interested in exploiting William for his own ends, whether those be sexual or reputational. But I think that making this like all he wants to do is play act in costume dulls the metaphor by making it about the evil of shallow people who aren’t interested in doing something real, rather than about the wider indifference of white society, including the politically engaged white society, to the problems of African-Americans. To me, saying that the Minutemen weren’t really interested in fighting crime or doing anything useful is rendering them as bad people who knew that they were just going off on a lark. But the more powerful metaphor is about people who weren’t “bad people” and who saw themselves as good and useful but who ultimately weren’t willing to engage with the problems of black America. The episode gives us both sides of the problem in America. We’ve got the Cyclops guys who are the full on cross burning racists who are looking to actively target black people for violence. But then we’ve got the Captain Metropolises who aren’t like that. He’s not some frothing at the mouth Cyclops racist. He’s not looking to hurt black people. He even, to some extent, admires William, and not just in a fetishized sexual way. But Captain Metropolis also helps prop up the work of guys like Cyclops by ignoring it. He’s just not concerned with what’s going on in the black community. To him that’s penny ante stuff and what’s going on in the white community is what really matters. I think that making their mission just play acting makes he metaphor less dangerous and less powerful.
Moloch was just a mobster/local crime boss that they exaggerated and inflated into a super villain as part of their charade to the public. If you consider that “threatening,” then i’m really not sure what to say.Your tl;dr is still wrong, still misses the point, and/or still only is repeating what I already say to you twice now: That he’s not concerned with the black community because its not news worthy enough that’s because white society doesn’t care, and also because of his own internalized racism, i.e: blacks are an inferior race that cause their own problems and are not worth helping. And that Will to Metropolis is the token/magic negro that he fucks and keeps around in order to feel better about his liberal (for that time) values and for the PR/Marketing value since Hooded Justice was the hot, talked about hero, but would’ve been outright rejected if the rest of the team, let alone the public, knew about his true identity.
And Cyclops was just a local bunch of racist thugs. Mobsters are a threat, and Moloch as presented in the books is a legitimate threat. He’s not just some fantasy. Now we can debate the relative threat of Moloch vs Cyclops but I think that to pretend that it’s just all play acting is ridiculous and misunderstands the nature of the metaphor of white indifference to black problems. As I said, it’s not that the white people don’t have legitimate concerns or that they’re bad or frivolous people who just don’t care about actually getting anything done. It’s that they don’t rank black problems as being among the real problems that they have to deal with, or at least not as pressing as whatever they’re dealing with in the white community. I think the Minutemen are serious about fighting crime and doing something important for the city. That’s what makes the betrayal even worse. They don’t, or at least CM doesn’t, consider this serious.
If you’re going to keep repeating/rewording my points to me while also missing them at the same time, I really don’t see the point of this conversation as I don’t see what it even is you’re trying to say.
Probably Capt. Metropolis’ treatment of William—admiring him only sexually, taking his originality and “white-washing” it into something that exists for a white audience—can be said to a be stand-in for how a dominant white pop culture both stereotypes and fetishizes black men.I’d like to think that this era is ending, as we see a lot more black artists and POC artists as producers, directors and writers (see this episode for example).
I had to laugh at how Metropolis thought Will’s theory about black people being mind controlled was too outlandish after he’d proclaimed in public Moloch was planning to turn the Sun into a giant laser.
I don’t think they were pretending so much as they were keeping it simple (muggers and such) and picking and choosing their big fights.
What a gorgeously rendered hour of television. This show is more than I expected, and after The Leftovers I expect quite a lot from Lindelof.
An old interview with Alan Moore, half of the creative team behind the Watchmen comic series, recently resurfaced in which he articulated that Birth Of A Nation was the first superhero movie. Watchmen TV series creator Damon Lindelof took that critique and morphed it to shape the opening of his series. D.W. Griffith’s ode to the south, and ultimately a wonderful propaganda tool for the Ku Klux Klan, cemented itself as iconic with a historic box office draw and innovative special effects.Actually Birth of a Nation wasn’t that innovative for the time. Many other filmmakers had already created the techniques Griffith used years earlier.In fact, as the video above goes into, the first feature length movie was actually The Story of the Kelly Gang, which was made in 1906 and was about the true story of Ned Kelly an Australian bushranger who famously donned bulletproof armor in a gunfight with Victorian police. This Twiiter thread also goes into the many other ways Griffith was a piece of shit.
I had two film professors in community college; one touted Birth of a Nation as the cinematic innovator many claim it to be, and another the semester after that debunked it with examples.It kind of plays right into the whole rewriting of history things.
I had two film professors in community college; one touted Birth of a Nation as the cinematic innovator many claim it to be, and another the semester after that debunked it with examples.Was that planned by the professors? That would have been kinda cool.
I had a film professor in college that made a really big deal out of BoaN, and made us learn all kinds of nonsense about it.I have to say that it was one of the things that put me off my love of film studies for years.What a dick.
Birth of a Nation is less iconic for its technique (though its technique was cutting edge for the time) than for its impact: It very much helped to cement a white supremacist fable of southern “redemption” in the national imagination as a false historical memory.
Weirdly enough, this episode’s plot twist is heavily reminiscent of an episode of the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon where a masked hero from the 1940s (the Black Marvel) is revealed to have been a black man, unbeknownst to all the other members of the American Six, his superhero team from that period.
Unrelated, but, that story arc from the Spider-Man cartoon was my dream adaptation for a Spider-Man movie when Sony and Marvel made a deal.Replace the forgotten Warriors with the Howling Commandos from First Avenger and it could have written itself.
Marvel also has Issiah Bradley, the first black Captain America. He was introduced in Truth: Red, White, and Black.
Nerd note — although there was a golden age comic book hero published by Timely named Black Marvel, he was not African-American. The Spidey cartoon added that part. Marvel comics has in the last decade introduced the Blue Marvel, who is African-American and is written as having had to retire in the early 1960s of the Marvel universe once his race was revealed due to racism.
Also, John Ridley wrote a pretty good comic called “The American Way” that explored a similar idea.
The Spidey cartoon added that part.Yep, which is another commonality with this episode.
Additional nerd facts: There’s a lot of debate about who the first black superhero was, and it doesn’t help that so many of them were inconsistently colored during the Golden Age of comics, i.e. when this episode is mostly set. Dark-skinned heroes who are contenders for the title, like the Red Mask or Voodah*, were often “accidentally” portrayed as white on the cover. It’s a nice parallel to how Reeves has to literally recolor himself to be palatable to a white superhero audience.
*The Red Mask may have been intended to be a white guy — his series was cancelled before a central mystery was resolved — but he’s dark-skinned in the issues that actually exist. Voodah, despite being an African tribe member, turns white without explanation a few issues into the series, then into kind of a mix. It’s…not a great look. There’s a reason most histories skip these guys and go right to Black Panther. But it’s a shame that heroes like Lion Man, who was actually created by a black journalist from Philly, don’t get more acknowledgement.
There’s a long history of “white African” heroes, from Tarzan to the Phantom, to Fantomah who may be the first female superhero.
Creators liked the exoticism and tropes of the fictionalized African setting, including how it allowed them to involve ancient mystical powers in their origin stories, but they didn’t want to have an actual black person being the hero and kicking ass, especially kicking white ass. So they would always have them be these white people who somehow ended up living in the African jungles (it’s always jungles, no other type of African landscape is used).
John Semper Jr., who was the producer and head writer of the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon, actually said he was somewhat inspired by Watchmen when he wrote the “Six Forgotten Warriors” arc:
Yeah, I thought of Spider-man TAS when real Hooded Justice was revealed. It was part of a 6 episode arc.
Marvel more or less made a canon version of the concept with Blue Marvel.
There was also a similar hero in a 1991 FLASH episode. . . a Sandman-esque hero who was secretly African-American. https://www.hyperborea.org/flash/tv-nightshade.html
One of the better episodes of that show.
Well, I’m not going to brag that “I knew it!”, but… “I damn knew it!”… 😉https://io9.gizmodo.com/1839405630Will is the survivor kid from the the Tulsa Riot. Theoretically, he could also be the baby that kid finds in the field, but Will’s age fits the boy better. He’s also, surprise, suprise, Hooded Justice! The mix of the admiration towards the ideals of law and order from the Black Marshall, and the resentment from the massacre of his people in Tulsa, led him to become the first of the masked vigilantes, an answer to the question of how to reconcile his worship of lawfuness and his lost faith in the autorithies. Originally he must have used some form of “white face” around his eyes, in the visible part of his face (the holes in his mask) to further conceal his identity. People wouldn’t bat an eyelash at a “white vigilante” pummeling criminals. But a hooded black man assaulting whites, even if they’re criminals? The age of “heroes” would end befor it even starts, with a lynching… So people was led to believe Hooded Justice was white, therefore the use of a white actor as Hooded Justice in the current “American Hero Story” show.
And again, last week:https://io9.gizmodo.com/1839930652I’m still clinging to my theory that Will is the true identity of Hooded Justice, who he became inspired by a mix of childhood admiration for the “Black Marshall” and disillusion with the legal system due to the Tulsa massacre. As I stated in another comment, to further conceal his identity and avoid the obvious answer from the society in his time to a black man dispensing vigilante justice against individuals who, while criminals, are also white, he intentionally chose a mask which left the area around his eyes visible, and used “white-face” make-up. Therefore the modern portrayal of Hooded Justice as white in the “American Hero” show.
I believe I mentioned that I didn’t quite believe that Reeves would be Hooded Justice because that seems too easy a guess.Well, I’ll have to eat crow because the writers did thought up of that and EVERY OTHER DAMN THINGS and made it so fucking good that anything else beside this would never ever be a better form of origin tale.Bravos for you to nail on these guesses and so we all still win for getting the best hour of television so far this year.
I was a little surprised he didn’t have an encounter with Hollis Mason who would have been on the force at the same time.
It would have been a nice bonus, but adding a “good” white cop would have undercut the narrative.
At the time, Mason was also concealing his “adventurer” sideline. Aside from that, Officers Mason and Reeves served in different boroughs, so they probably never crossed paths as cops.
On a lighter note, I was reminded of this earlier this week
I haven’t read comics in a long time, but that was the greatest use of them and superhero tropes to talk about race and racism in this country that I’ve ever seen. Using their iconography. Consider the phone booth. Superman uses it to change from Clark Kent to his real self. It’s a symbol of justice, and personal freedom. But for Will, it’s where Captain Metropolis rejects helping him find justice for the black residents of Harlem, so the booth turns into another mark of racism and personal constriction, he instead of shedding his skin, so to speak, like Kal-El, is reminded all the more that he’s trapped in it. (And the theater massacre had more than one echo of the later squid attack.)
I loved the flowing camera work. Some shots looked like they were in one take.
This reminded me of the best episode of Castle Rock’s first season, where Sissy Spacek takes a similar stroll down memory lane.I actually was expecting the episode to be more surrealistic and disjointed, but they did a fine job with those touches, especially compressing spaces and places next to each other.Of course the source of Will’s trauma was in color while his regular life was in black and white. Great way to signify how much he’s trapped in it. And kind of foreshadowed last week with the Spielberg movie reference. But used in opposition: that little red girl in either Schindler’s List or in this world’s Pale Horse is a sign of life, and maybe hope, even though you know what’s happening to her. The Tulsa Massacre, in color, is like an example of this country’s holocaust, a great tragedy and shame.The thought put into every aspect of this show has been remarkable. I loved the last few episodes, but I was wondering if they were ever going back to the racism themes of the beginning shows. Boy, did they.
You made me think about so many new things!! Thank you.
Welcome! Thank you for these reviews. This one was particularly poignant about your Black experience. And thanks for being there in the comments.On second viewing, I caught the framed wall portrait of Ida B. Wells in June’s apt. This show!
I thought the Pale Horse dialogue from last week was very well-referenced right towards the end, when there was a flashing red light in the warehouse as Will took out all the KKK members that really stood out among the black-and-white.
“Fred” is very obviously Fred Trump (note the “F.T. & Sons” sign on the warehouse). Maybe very nearly the pig his inspiration was.
And they do make reference to him being in Queens, too. Thanks for pointing that out, I totally missed it!
Donald wasn’t born for another eight years, so in this timeline, perhaps he doesn’t exist
I want to go to there.
I would happily trade Trump for random squid attacks.
Haha, I considered that, but was unsure of the timeline. Watchmen just went back in time and prevented the Trump presidency.
Oh WOW!
He was also played by the creepy sister screwer murderer from True Detective Season 1. Coincidence?
I didn’t notice that. Fred Trump was a Klan member, although he didn’t really look like the Fred in the show. His racism also tended more towards the systematic oppression of refusing to rent to black people.
or not fixing or fireproofing their buildings that burned down?
Another thing to note here: There’s an unpublished Woody Guthrie song called “Old Man Trump”, written in 1954 (!). I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project
Beach Haven ain’t my home!
No, I just can’t pay this rent!
My money’s down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!
I’m calling out my welcome to you and your man both
Welcoming you here to Beach Haven
To love in any way you please and to have some kind of a decent place
To have your kids raised up in.
Beach Haven ain’t my home!
No, I just can’t pay this rent!
My money’s down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain’t my home! Where this song was found? The Woody Guthrie Archives, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Here’s a link to him singing it:
Man, I wish it really did kill fascists.
*David Lynch voice* Serendipity!
I never knew I needed to see Klansmen beaten to hell and gone set to Ink Spots songs, but here we are.
I never fully got the point of I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire until this episode. By saying something, it implies you’re aware of its opposite meaning. Therefore, saying you *don’t* want to set the world on fire means perhaps you really really do, and are just trying to convince yourself or others that what you’re saying is true. It’s a great dramatic tool, and also coincidentally shows you how much of an idiot Donald Trump really is (why do you proclaim so often there is “NO COLLUSION?”)
This song was heavily featured in Fallout 3, where it’s part of a fictional radio station you listen to while kicking loads of mutants and giant scorpions in a very funny Kubrick soundtrack dissonance. Pretty sure someone in this series was on this too.
I’m really glad the task of reviewing this show here falls on Joelle, who’s been doing a stellar job at it. Can’t think of any of the usual reviewers here who would’ve been a better fit.
Says the guy who uses the word “s unironically and thinks that white people should be allowed to use racial slurs.
I see you still haven’t stopped misrepresenting what I said.By the way, I have looked up “soyboy” and I didn’t know it was an alt-right term. I’m not a westerner and I don’t really dabble in American politics that much, so I only picked up the term from memes. That was genuinely my bad, so I do apologize for that one.Though we both know you don’t really care. All you care about is twisting truth somehow, hmm? You still haven’t pointed out where exactly did I say “white people should be allowed to use racial slurs”(the actress wasn’t even white, so good job erasing her racial identity in your misguided pursuit of I don’t know what exactly).
I see you still haven’t stopped misrepresenting what I said.By the way, I have looked up “soyboy” and I didn’t know it was an alt-right term. I’m not a westerner and I don’t really dabble in American politics that much, so I only picked up the term from memes. That was genuinely my bad, so I do apologize for that one.Though we both know you don’t really care. All you care about is twisting truth somehow, hmm? You still haven’t pointed out where exactly did I say “white people should be allowed to use racial slurs”(the actress wasn’t even white, so good job erasing her racial identity in your misguided pursuit of I don’t know what exactly).
I see you still haven’t stopped misrepresenting what I said.By the way, I have looked up “soyboy” and I didn’t know it was an alt-right term. I’m not a westerner and I don’t really dabble in American politics that much, so I only picked up the term from memes. That was genuinely my bad, so I do apologize for that one.Though we both know you don’t really care. All you care about is twisting truth somehow, hmm? You still haven’t pointed out where exactly did I say “white people should be allowed to use racial slurs”(the actress wasn’t even white, so good job erasing her racial identity in your misguided pursuit of I don’t know what exactly).
Totally agree with you there! I was so looking forward to the write up after being blown away by this episode. Remarkable.
This is now the second prestige television show in the past year to use “My echo, my shadow and me” by the Ink Spots (the first being Better Call Saul) Anyway. What an incredible episode. This origin for HJ is so much more powerful than the one suggested in the comic, which means this show has done something better than…Watchmen. God, what a show.
pretty sure I just watched every person involved in this show earn an Emmy. best series of the year for me at this point, so many great touches. the flashes of red in the black and white memories calling back to “Pale Horse” which is itself a reference to Schindler’s List. ‘there is a vast and insidious conspiracy’ callback. when HJ puts the hood back on the first time I literally shouted fuck yeah at my laptop. just . . . wow. nothing else on right now even comes close imo.
And A Hugo.
The burning factory was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Another great review.I do wish they hadn’t shown the Action Comics issue since as I remember in the Watchmen comic the reason they had that pirate comic is because the idea was that in a world with superheroes you wouldn’t use them as the basis for fantasy adventures. And I thought the similarity with Superman’s origin from the first episode was more subtle without showing the connection explicitly.But that’s a small quibble in a pretty amazing episode of TV!
Actually it made sense here because it was BEFORE the masked adventurers became a thing so many comic books were pretty much all the rages back then. They got it right here.Even so, tying it up with Hooded Justice along with several other elements made it for best hour of television this year, even more so than Ep. 4 of Legion’s Season 3 with these Time Eaters.Fucking incredible.
Hollis Mason (night owl 1) is inspired by a Superman comic he picks up on his beat, I think the idea is that after Hooded Justice et al appear on the scene, superhero comics as a genre become less popular because the element of escapism is gone, and the pirate genre fills that gap
Forgot that (it’s been a while!) Thanks!
I always attributed it more specifically to the arrival of Dr Manhattan on the scene rather than the Minutemen themselves that doomed superhero comics. Why read about Superman when the real one exists?
In Nite Owl’s biography, it’s started pretty clearly that superhero comics (specifically Action Comics, no less)a were a big party of why he became the Nite Owl. So that scene is very much in line with the comic.
I forgot so thanks for reminding me!
The Watchmen comic established that superhero comics were published (the newspaper vendor mentions Superman), they were just quickly cancelled after real heroes showed up. I do agree they didn’t need to spell out the allusion so literally. though.
I wish they didn’t intercut the explanation of Superman’s origins with HJ’s own. It was too on the nose. The first review here had a bunch of people pointing out the similarities already.
In the Watchmen timeline, the publication of Action Comics #1 is the point of divergence. In this world, it led directly to masked heroes fighting crime in real life, which led indirectly to events like the creation of Dr. Manhattan and Nixon serving into the 1980s. The pirate comics only became popular later on, once superheroes were firmly established as an everyday occurrence.
“Cyclops is using film projectors to turn Negroes against each other.”Wouldn’t have thought a film projector from this era could screen Chi-Raq, but on this show, anything really can happen.
I wonder if there was any particular reason the theater was showing “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”.
Amazing episode and an amazing review. I don’t have much to add, the review did a far better job than I ever could. I will say that I think many of us saw the Hooded Justice reveal coming from a mile away, right? and…The HJ origin story via Angela’s Nostalgia trip reminded me of two of my all time favorite pop culture moments: John Henry’s story from the late, great Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontierand Ben Sisko’s Bajorian Prophets induced trip to the 1950s.Both of those moments were just as amazing and tragic as HJ’s story, IMO
New Frontier is so fucking good
Yeah, Sepinwall said he brought the New Frontier similarities up to Lindelof, who had never heard of it: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-recaps/watchmen-recap-episode-6-exceptional-being-914283/
And funnily enough, Darwyn Cooke did Before Watchmen: Minutemen and Silk Spectre!
Since I got mostly right about Will’s origin, as stated in my other post, I would like to try a second theory, now on the “great plan” of him and Lady Trieu: consciously, is using the masterplan of the Cyclops against their (Will and Trieu’s) perceived antagonists; and unconsciously, it’s sorta of a rethread of Adrain Veidt’s original plan.They’re going to use the “mesmerizing” tech from the Cyclops, now enormously advanced and improved by Trieu’s corporation, to induce riots and revolution in America. Both Will and Trieu see America and what it represents as an enemy and an evil that sistematically hated, opressed and violated their people (African-Americans and the Vietnamese). That’s what the “Clock” Trieu is building in Tulsa is: a gigantic mind control machine. As for how this is a rethread of Adrians original plan: in the same way Adrian need to eliminate the only being capable of stopping his plan from the gameboard – Manhattan -, Trieu took off the only one smart and powerful enough to stop her: Adrian himself! I still have not figured how, but I believe she’s the one responsible for the current situation of Veidt, imprisoned off-Earth.Another point I also haven’t figured out yet is why they need Angela in the plan. But let’s see if next eps prove me right or wrong.
As soon as it was “revealed” that William was HJ I couldn’t help but think “how could anyone other than a black man wear a noose as his armor?”
Per the fake show on the show because he was gay? On the fake show he seems just to be gay, and not debatably bi as commenters here are discussing (plus their casting choice). I mean that’s pushing it for a superhero wearing a noose, but the fake show (and their history) really wanted him to be white and pretty.
The circus strongman secret identity from the comics always felt circumstantial, and it’s interesting that the Minuteman show we’re seeing choose to go a different direction (or at least that the guy the police unmasked didn’t look like a bearded, german circus performer)I don’t want to know what current Alan Moore thinks about the show, but I am curious what 1980s Alan Moore had in mind for HJ’s full backstory. Because yeah, how could it be anything but what we’re seeing?
The only other option would be the opposite, right? That HJ was a klansman and meant to evoke the fascist origins/nature of superheroes.
I guess that I (being naive) thought he was supposed to represent a hangman, but I don’t know that hangmen ever dressed like that? (and a noose around your own neck ain’t a great plan)Apparently the last public hanging in the US was in 1936, and Hooded Justice would have showed up around 1939. Would anyone in 1939 New York see that costume and think that he was an executioner? Probably not. Thinking back to the comics, I probably always wondered what a noose had to do with a supposed german strongman. But this version sure has a feeling of inevitability.
The first episode of the show-within-the-show had a voiceover by “HJ” when they pulled the circus strongman out of the water that basically said, “they think that’s me, but it’s not”. So the even the show-within-a-show dispensed with that possible secret identity.
I think in the original comic, along with the note from Hollis Mason that he thought HJ was a Nazi, Moore was leaning into the fascism thing and implying that Hooded Justice was a racist fascist Klansman. Lindelof just threw that whole thing for a giant friggin loop.
Beautiful review – a small correction though: the actor is Jake McDorman, not James
What an incredible episode. Thank you Jonelle for the impeccable review
Excellent review. One quick correction – the name of the vocal group cited in the notes is The Ink Spots (plural). Interestingly, their legacy involves inspiring lots of imitators follow in their footsteps, not unlike a certain hooded hero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ink_Spots
Sure felt great watching a black superhero beating up Klan members and racist cops. For Lindelof to make this out of a comic that many right-wingnuts liked (by misunderstanding the text and have been crying and moaning all over the internet about this show “ruined” the comic) is simply amazing. Between this and The Leftovers, it’s pretty clear he’s an excellent storyteller
This is Watchmen’s “International Assassin,” which was my “see! this is what prestige TV could use more of/be!”example for the longest time. I think “This Extraordinary Being” may have surpassed it.
Watchmen is beloved by right wingers? Why? Because Rorschach is a right winger and the villain is a lefty? Did they miss all the politics in the book? While it takes place in America it’s basically a 1980s lefty Brit’s screed against Thatcherite Britain.
Sadly “Because Rorschach is a right winger and the villain is a lefty” is almost exactly it (well the Rorschach part anyway.)A lot of fans of the original comic completely miss that Rorschach is not a hero, merely a protagonist.
Its almost entirely because Roschach is a Randian wet dream, and requires completely ignoring everything else about the text. But Moore and Gibbons specifically meant Watchmen as a criticism of America under Reaganism. Its just that Reaganism and Thatcherism are kinds of inextricable, and was the dual rise of Reagan and Thatcher at the same time that drove much of the British Left’s fear of rising fascism at the time. So criticizing one goes hand in hand with attacking the other, and it works both ways.
Rorschach is a Randian because he’s based on The Question and he was an Objectivist.
And it still reads more to me as a take on 1980s Britain, just set in America.
Roschach is Randian because Ditko was fixated on Objectivism and Alan more disliked Ditko and hated his politics. He described Ayn Rand as a white supremacist.
It wouldn’t be the first time right-wingers failed to understand subtext. In this case, they take Rorschach at face value, and do none of the critical thinking necessary to understand the character or attendant social commentary. No less a Watchmen fan than Zach Snyder made this mistake.See also: right-wingers talking about “redpills.”
It never ceases to amaze me that all these right wing white supremacist MRA types take the name for one of their major concepts from a film created by two transwomen.
I think there is a contingent of really dumb Watchmen fans who just liked the book because it was grim and gritty and dark and of course they love Rohrshach who they erroneously think was meant to be right. And yes I guess you could say Ozymandias was the “Big Bad” and he was sort of a “globalist liberal” type
That was one of the best recontextualizations I have seen in any franchise, taking a well known element and twist it into something refreshingly provoking and yet absolutely relevant to the story. Not only that, but also basked it with incredible sequence of flashback that further flesh-out not only Will Reeves as man but also as masked adventurer and the racism he went through.Also… I pointed out before that the only way that Will Reeves as Hooded Justice would works is if he wore makeup of appropriate colors. Watchmen had that one scene where they very clearly show that behind the hood, you can see the skin colors around the eyes. So glad they got that details down. Every single seconds were not wasted as they all speak their own truth to what happened and why they happened.
Fucking incredible.
A small complaint in that I hate the trope of gay folks immediately recognizing other queer folks and making nonverbal signals that immediately lead to boning. Implies that queer folks have some sort of extra sensory abilities and seriously minimizes the gay experience.
Wait, gaydar isn’t real?!?!?!
Maybe he popped on Grindr 5ft away and it was really obvious.
But leaving sexual orientation aside for a bit, sometimes attraction does work like that. It’s happened like that for me a couple of times.
Yeah, I hate being told that gaydar doesn’t exist when it sure as heck does. Yes, it’s based on stereotypes that don’t apply to everybody but yes there are people who are really good at it.
But some of us do have that extra sensory ability! In fact, myself and several other men utilized that very same power in a not-specifically gay steam room just several days ago! ;o)But seriously, I didn’t see this as the show double-downing on a trope, but instead accurately reflecting the subtle (and maybe not so subtle cues) that queer people use to identify each other. And I for one, not previously detecting Will’s queerness, found the reveal thrilling.
I’m not sure being able to detect a boner through a towel is the same as being able to sense somebody’s sexual orientation hidden even from themself 😀
The thing is pretty much all of the way up until Stonewall, being gay meant navigating this incredibly subtle and complex realm of signals that would be barely discernible to anyone today. It could literally be life-threatening to be open about it so I can believe that these two guys would be able to communicate and pick up on very subtle cues
“making nonverbal signals that immediately lead to boning”Because offering someone “true companionship” is definitely a very subtle non-verbal signal
Test.
The first half of this ep was great. Things felt a bit rushed after Captain Metropolis showed up.1.) One of the riskiest scenes was depicting the near-lynching of William through his perspective. Very unsettling yet effective cinema, imo.2.) I kind of wanted more from the moment when William turns murderer. We are told he’s a rage-y guy, but his actions actually seem very composed until he plugs Fred. Maybe that was part of the point, but it just seemed to…happen.3.) I’m wondering if whatever the 7th Kavalry has planned has to do with mind control.
On #2, I think he recognized that Fred was walking him into a trap in which he would be killed for real. After all, it is absolutely impossible that Fred was being sincere when he claimed not to recognize the young black cop who arrested him.
You’re probably right. I found the dialog between William and Fred outside the phone booth to be kind of odd. But what you said makes sense.
2. The thing is: Williams is angry. Like, all the time. He just hides it, and only lets it come out when he’s able to wear his “masks.”
1) It’s done through his perspective but this also centers he experience on a vision of the white perpetrators. Perhaps that’s good to show the evil of how they acted, but I think it also may obscure some of the violence against him because we don’t see it.2) We get some buildup to this. Hooded Justice in the comics is supposed to be a particularly violent figure and we see hat he’s pretty violent in dealing with these Klan members.3) I think that Lady Trieu’s plan involves mind control. William is allied with her and he has the mind control flashlight. She’s doing something with that big tower outside of Tulsa and in the preview for next episode she talks about wanting to save the world
You’re right. There’s plenty of pretty extreme violence from Hooded Justice before William starts shooting. That probably is a bit of foreshadowing and, whether deliberate or not, an echo of Rorschach’s trajectory in the original Watchmen.
On #2, I believe we are supposed to be alarmed by the sudden turn, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. Early in the episode, we again get to see the movie with Bass Reeves and hear the message “Trust in the Law”. So William first joins the police force, assuming the law will be used for justice. When that fails him, he turns to vigilantism and the Minutemen. But even as a vigilante, he has thrilling superhero fisticuffs and can still trust in the law to punish those he has brought to justice. But when the Minutemen fail him in providing justice for the black community, and he feels the betrayal of Captain Metropolis, that’s when he discards “Trust in the Law” and provides his own justice with bullets and fire. It’s supposed to be sudden and jarring as we go from super-hero fights to straight up murder.
It’s a very matter-of-fact sequence, but you’re right: it’s a commentary on how white-dominated enterprises—first the police, then the Minutemen—utterly fail to provide anything like justice for the black community.
He’s mad at Captain Metropolis.
Damn. Wow. Just… powerful.So many layers to this episode too. What particularly struck me was the implicit struggle between living in the Black American present vs past, given how Angela is implicitly allowing her grandfathers’ identities and traumas to temporarily overwrite her own, this being the only way she can access and learn about them.You also had Captain Metropolis as a quintessential sympathetic white liberal, who idealizes the black body but ultimately can’t refuses to help. And the ultimate trap of violence, where Will’s violence is the only corrective left to him against an insidious plot to… brainwash black people into committing violence.The characters are placed in a seemingly endless series of no-win situations like this. I feel like the only answer lies in something like Laurie’s joke two episodes ago – understanding the narrative well enough to write yourself out and around it.Also I can’t believe there are only three more episodes of this show! I’m gonna need like a dozen seasons, please.
I don’t think Metropolis is liberal at all. I think it’s more likely that he fetishizes Will and possibly black men in general. While I acknowledge that most white people were (are?) racist, and certainly most of the ones who weren’t should have actively resisted segregation and Jim Crow laws, Metropolis is fully accepting of the racism he assumes exists within the rest of the Minutemen. Even a liberal going along to get along would express hope to his lover that he would someday be able to operate and be respected without hiding his skin color.
Metropolis is liberal by 1930s/40s standards but not by 2019 standards. And a lot of liberals by 1930s/1940s standards which includes FDR (which was acknowledged in this episode when Will’s wife said (“You think FDR is gonna do anything? More like Eleanor.”) were like how you correctly said “and certainly most of the ones who weren’t should have actively resisted segregation and Jim Crow laws“ a lot of liberals/progressives went along with it because they were too afraid to rock the boat, were racists themselves, or if they did, like Eleanor Roosevelt, nobody didn’t listen or care anyway. Metropolis was all three.
Also. Hollis Mason outright calls out Metropolis on “making statements about black and hispanic americans that have been viewed as both racially prejudiced and inflammatory.”
Of course, what makes it even more crazy is that Mason also claims that Hooded Justice himself has made claims supporting the Third Reich
It’s possible that he did, given the only thing Will had left of his parents was the not his father had kept from his time in WWI that had been dropped by the German army asking the segregated Negro regiments to consider why, exactly, they were fighting for America. It may have held undue influence over his psyche because of the various and tenuous connections/influences of the trauma he had suffered as a young child. He remembers his mother by remembering her at her piano during the showing of the Bass Reeves movie, his father, all he had was the note that was brought back from the war, and that had the plea for Will’s protection written on the back of it.
Of course, what makes it even more crazy is that Mason also claims that Hooded Justice himself has made claims supporting the Third ReichTrue, but, in light of this episode, you could take it one of three ways: Will Reeves playing the part of a conservative white man of the time, Will Reeves trying to out Klansmen and Nazi sympathizers, or Will Reeves’ perception of Germany at that time was still colored by his father’s experiences in Germany. Doesn’t Mason say that HJ later recanted/stopped his support cold after the war reached the U.S./the full horrors of the Reich came to light?
(Interestingly: in the link I posted below, Gardner writes that Will would often use the “we should avoid political entanglements” phrase mockingly rather than seriously, as had been shown in the comics.)
That’s because Moore’s Hooded Justice is very much not a black man. Lindelof and company have completely reinvented the character as a closeted black man reacting to racial violence. In Moore’s book he’s a closeted gay white man of German ancestry named Rolf Muller whose motivation is more of a sexual interest in sadomassochism. As the Comedian says, Hooded Justice gets off on beating up these criminals. In that context, the stuff about the Nazis makes perfect sense. Muller is sort of like Enrst Rohm, one these hyper masculine gay Nazis who reveled in the physical violence of the movement.
The Peteypedia posted his Last Will and Testament. It seems Nelson Gardner would have agreed with your assessment and was shamed by it. (I love the Peteypedia.)
https://www.hbo.com/content/dam/hbodata/series/watchmen/peteypedia/06/memo-the-will-of-nelson-gardner.pdf
YES! Another Petey fan.
Quick Petey Question. Is the fact that he works in Sub-Basement 1, Room X, a little wink to the X-Files?I want to believe…
Fair enough, but I still think that his lack of empathy in an intimate moment shows what he truly is, no matter the decade.
Yes, but, no matter the decade, some liberals can be racist pricks too. Thats the/my point.
I’m so conflicted about this relationship… I’m a white, gay anti-racist – or I aspire.to be – and I can’t wrap my head around the idea of what a “liberal” in the 1930s would be if s/he were genuine and not just going through an intellectualized process of being “accepting” – Metropolis upsets me terribly for his fetishizing and I can’t help but regret – is that really the best of what could be offered by white liberals at the time (?).. obviously, sadly I think yes is the answer. …it horrifies me to think I couldn’t have been better, I’d like to think I’d be as instinctively outraged aw I am now …or maybe I’d have been ignored (like Eleanor?), or have gotten myself killed, or have joined with Will wholeheartedly in the fight with him as leader … I don’t know and I can hear “white guilt” in my writing as I process. Yuk, so boring. Regardless, I’m learning so much from this amazing show – I realize I just have to keep watching, listening and learning I hope you’ll forgive my naïveté. ..wonderful analysis and comments here please keep writing! J.
Did like the FDR to Eleanor comparison here: FDR was willing to capitulate to the Dixiecrats on the New Deal not applying as well to black and brown folk, where Eleanor in a soft power move thwarted the DAR to present a glorious black performer and worked her butt off in the UN. Both strung up by the times, but one – like Metropolis – is more inclined to capitulate to meet his ends over doing the right thing without a showy show.
Yeah you’re pretty much describing what a liberal is
Captain Metropolis is more your Log Cabin Republican than a liberal. A masked Milo Yiannovich, if you will.
Sure, from back when there were law-and-order liberal Republicans in New York. People seem to be forgetting this is set in the 40s.
Wow. A beautiful and painfully illuminating recap of this episode. You made me think about it in even more ways. It’s truly an amazing sHow.Your mention of queer history being erased resonated with me, which is why I hope you won’t take offense if I say that I think the assumption that he’s gay leaves out the possibility of him being a bisexual character.Regardless, thankful for this piece and all of personal connections you shared in it.
Oh, and one more thought that just occurred to me: Will is inspired by seeing the story of Superman (brought to us via the American immigrant narrative, as symbolized by the accented newsstand guy whose copy he looks at), thinking it mirrors his own story, but the actual baby cast away from their home planet in this episode is revealed to be June, Angela’s grandmother. She’s wrapped in an American flag, much like Superman’s cape. And she even becomes a reporter like Clark Kent.
Love this.
I think we all know why the writers gave him the last name of Reeves now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Reeves#Superman
Christopher can’t hurt, either. (O.K., one letter difference.)
The Superman actors are a wonderful coincidence, but Bass Reeves was an actual person.
I feel like the Lone Ranger is a bastardization of what Bass Reeves actually did. I guess that story would have been too much back in the day to believe; a heroic black lawman.
And the inspiration for the Lone Ranger who (surprise) was whitewashed . . . like Hooded Justice, in the show.
It’s also a cheeky detail to consider that in the world of ‘Watchmen’, costumed vigilantism is a cultural product like rock n’ roll— largely created by black innovators and then co-opted by white frontmen.
Which reminds me, we still don’t know what crashed on the Clarks’ (Kents’) farm.
Adrian Viedt is my theory.
Damn, she really did buy him out.
Say, what’s Lady Trieu’s first name?
OMG YES!
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but Superman also made the Klan his number 1 enemy in the late 40s.
Excellent catch. Because what Superman’s superpower is, ultimately, is his morality. William is motivated by anger and rage, which is a very un-Superman like quality. June ultimately leaves him because of his anger and rage. She also, correctly, sees immediately that Captain Metropolis is only interested in Hooded Justice as a propaganda piece and not in the battle which Will is fighting.
Did I miss something that pointed to Will being gay rather than bisexual?
So much to unpack. I was a huge Leftovers fan and thought, “this will never wrap-up well.” There was too much to juggle. I was wrong. I hope for the same thing here. And I have tons of faith in this crew. As for the reviews, Joelle, you unlock a dimension of the show I can see, even recognize, but never internalize. Thank you for the extra boost. In return (via age) it’s The Ink Spots. They were awesome.
Ok I now have another series of predictions
Angela’s husband is a clone of her grandfather because HBO
needs its incest Goddammit! After realizing that the real mask is the human face,
everyone resolves to turn themselves inside out so they can really be seen by
inhaling the gas. The series ends with a live action recreation of this Lady Trieu eventually decides to make a white supremacist alarm
and makes a killing in the market. After the success of the all black version of Oklahoma, they
stage an all-black version of Fiddler on the Roof Doctor Manhattan regains his love for humanity when Jupiter
aligns with Mars. FX turns into a hardcore gay sex channel so gradually that
nobody even notices.“Oh my god! He killed Mr. Phillips!” “You Bastard!”The pouring down of squid influences tentacle porn in ways
you don’t even want to know. At one point Petey says “Oh gee Willikers Laurie.”In a flashback we see how much Laurie hurt herself trying to
bug the cactus. Oliver Stone made a movie about Rorschach with Al Pacino in
the lead role. It was a hit in the 90’s but has since aged quite poorly.Angela shaves Joe Keene’s head, thereby robbing him of all
his power.Instead of wading through this show and trying to decide who
should get awarded, the Emmy voters decide “Fuck it” and give all their votes
to Ozark.Panda is a furry hiding in plain sight.The red scare is not going to make it because he’s a red
shirt hiding in plain sight too.Ozymandias needs that horseshoe for uh… I don’t know. Space
ziplining?Lady Trieu plans to unite the world by eliminating the white
race. It’s all good until they forget what to do with all the leftover BMWs and
Audi’s.Alan Moore is finally ok with an adaptation of his work. Jk.
Was that nod to Snyder when HJ goes through the glass? I get they did some slo-mo/stops to do the coma-interruptus bit, they could’ve done that after he hit the ground too.
Episode ‘This Extraordinary Being’ will probably be the one
submitted for Award nominations, unless next week blows
the balls off this one – very high plateau.
Hot take: William’s bi, not gay.
Or he was using June as a beard? You know that was a common practice among “straight acting” gay men before the gay rights movement and still happens in some rural and conservative communities. Also, it seems pretty intentional that they had a scene of Will in bed with Captain Metropolis and June back-to-back. One where he’s visibly comfortable and one where it looks quite the opposite.
I think it is more than that considering their history. Even if he has no sexual attraction to her, there is a very deep bond between them. She’s not just a beard.
This point of view isn’t surprising. I’ve often heard it said among gay men that bi men are just pretending. You’re correct in that we don’t see June and Will having sex, the same as we do of Captain Metropolis. Though they are married and have a son, perhaps they adopted. One could argue that Will looks uncomfortable because his wife is asking him not to promise he won’t seek justice as a masked adventurer—the very thing his adult life is based around—or it’s her vagina.
Well, June says that she was pregnant, we see her pregnant, and we have had the DNA tests in 2019 to reveal that Will is Angela’s biological grandfather. So we know that they have had sex. But what that ultimately means about his sexuality…who knows.
His sexuality isn’t entirely clear from the show. Just because a guy has sex with a woman doesn’t mean he’s bi. We don’t get a lot of the romance of his relationship with June so we can’t really tell if he was actually romantically in love with June or whether this was a cover or a companionate marriage where he was friendly with her (there’s plenty of stories of gay men dating or even marrying women who they liked as friends)
…and just because a guy has sex with a guy doesn’t mean he’s gay.
True, but the social pressures move almost exclusively the other way. You see a lot of gay men who have been in relationships, even long term relationships, with women. You see fewer straight men who are involved with guys.
True. As far as we see, he’s just as romantic with Captain Metropolis as he is with June. I wish there were a term for that, but, as it is, we’ll just have to go with gay, I guess.
I get that in *this* story it was his race and not sexuality that was important, but it does make me think that I don’t think Lindelof–who I find inanely talented–has ever really told a decent story involving GLBT subject matter or characters… (when they come up at all). I sorta got the feeling like that was just included here because it had to be…
Sexuality is a spectrum and we are all on it.
🎆✨🎆🎉🎉🎉🎆✨🎆
The white makeup around the eyes is so perfect because it creates a photo negative of the domino mask that’s defined superhero costumes almost since their inception. Costumes within costumes.What a stellar, thoughtful episode.
In fact, it’s an exact reverse of his granddaughter’s mask.
Yeah, that was a real nice touch for sure.
Yeah the visual motifs are so well thought out thematically… this is so obviously written by people who understand ‘Watchmen’ so deeply in their bones that it never feels a bit like fanfic. This is real artists taking up Moore’s work as a challenge and fucking GOING FOR IT. It’s bracing to finally see the book get the proper adaptation it deserves, from the most delightfully unexpected angle.
By all rights, the show should be, at best, fine. The fact that it’s both adventurous, and clever is astonishing to me.Moore is entitled to dislike or ignore the show, but the adaptation is so successful in his spirit of taking something established, and using it to explore further questions.
If Moore doesn’t like this, he’ll never be impressed with a Watchmen adaptation. Which, ok, he said he wasn’t going to be. But still-what an incredible show this is.
After watching this episode specifically I thought it was a shame Moore will either immediately disregard this series or just hate it because that’s his thing. This was a perfect continuation of Watchmen and exactly what he was going for with the comic/graphic novel. Amazing episode.
Does Moore like anything?
Watching that episode made cry. Your review made me understand more… and cry harder. Thank you!
Damn. I mean there’s really not much more to say than that: Damn.
There is this thing called bisexuality. Perhaps you meant to use that word instead of presuming Will was gay. What with his having a wife and all.
ummm.. Not discounting that he could be bisexual. But considering the era Will was in, it’s also very possible that having a wife and kid is just another part of his mask.
Jovan Adepo (who should be on the short-list for an Emmy nod) does describe Will as bisexual in this interview. Don’t know if that’s supposed to be text, though, to be clear. https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/watchmen-episode-6-hooded-justice-actor-jovan-adepo-interview
Weird you assume he is and that Joelle us not. Hint: She is.
I generally do not care for superhero media and I did not care for Leftovers. (I didn’t even know until tonight that this is the same showrunner.) But god damn. This episode was an absolute tour de force. One of the best things to ever be shown on TV.
Relevant: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/23157/how-superman-defeated-ku-klux-klan
One of my favorite allusions was the appropriation of black culture by whites – Hooded Justice was the first and yet a whole league of white folk took it and ran with it, becoming the faces of “costumed adventurers.” So good.
Of course, in reality the exact opposite happened where a white character was retroactively appropriated by the new Watchmen.
The Ink Spots have been heavily used in Better Call Saul as well (including the two featured tunes, “My Echo, My Shadow, and Me” and “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.”
The idea June accepted the affair is a forced reading.June and Will are effectively brother and sister who married each other. This is really worthy of comment.There is no reason to think Will has any affection for Nelson even before Nelson shows he despises Will. If these characters were written as people, Nelson’s disappointment at Will’s not reciprocating his feelings would be a motive to dismiss Will’s conspiracy. Nelson being a sexual predator would also work, with the refusal to help becoming a reveal, except the show clearly insists Will is a top, strongly implying, not really gay. Captain Metropolis is a f***** which means he is effete and monstrous, like his successor Adrian Veidt. The way Will lucks into “discovering” the plot, then the way the direction gives him the win, is not really agency. It is also remarkable that anyone could wonder why Reeves wouldn’t talk to Battle at any point. It is not at all clear why June broke with Will. It is not even clear why she was so down on him about his anger issues, whatever they may have been as they aren’t on screen. This could be rationalized as older Will’s disinclination to remember when his anger was misdirected…except the episode clearly means this to be an some sort of paean to black agency. Narratives of agency are not liberation. But the more realistic the narrative, the more powerful a reminder of possible agency, as an impulse to struggle for liberation. Unrealistic fantasies tend to be substitutes.
An absolutely incredible hour of television. I don’t know that I have anything to say about it that other folks here haven’t already, but I’m still vibrating from how good that was. They sketched inside the outline that Moore laid out, but the details they gave to HJ and Will Reeves made it all the greater. And the direction? My word.
“If one organization planned and upheld the systemic oppression of Black Americans, there would be cause for celebration. But it’s deeply ingrained in every aspect of global culture. It makes that squid look like a joke. It is pervasive. It’s in the DNA of all human beings.” Exactly. Great episode, and your commentary was illuminating. Thank you!
Joelle you are such a profound and talented writer.
The stuff about the painting in his “boudoir” was from the Ryan Murphy-esque tv show IIRC.
Watchmen embraces sudden cuts to explicit gay anal sex. Just Lindelof’s current way of saying f you to the viewers. At least he does it half way through so I can stop watching instead of saving it for the end like in Lost.
Now that I’ve had more time to digest the episode I really want to know more about how Nostalgia works. We get the bare bones but not how it chooses which memories and I think that information would really reflect and inform the characters.Does it transcribe all memories but the user directs, consciously or subconsciously, what tidbits are recalled? If so what does that say about Angela’s balance of crime-fighting versus her family? She talks and acts as if family, and learning of her past are very important to her but the memories retrieved show nothing about family except where it intersected vigilantism.Does it transcribe just the strongest/.most intense/most important memories? If so what does that say about Will that things like the birth of his child, first steps, etc. – pretty much anything outside of vigilantism – didn’t make the cut?
Finally if the subject chooses which memories to encode and thus recall what has he chosen not to show her? Since it definitely seems it was part of his (if not also Trieu’s) plan that Angela would take them eventually. Also, while none of the memories we were shown seem suspect, is it possible to manufacture fake memories with Nostalgia? Will that eventually come into play since mesmerism/mind control is now a theme.(And, yes, I know it could all just be directorial choice to skip the ‘unimportant’ stuff but it would have been very quick and easy to include a few other random snippets or interstitial scenes to show she was getting all his memories and we were just focusing on the plot relevant ones)
There’s more info on Peteypedia.
This info is in the Peteypedia – one of the items there is a marketing brochure for Nostalgia.
Basically, you go to a clinic and you select which specific memories you want to put into pills, and they do some technobabble stuff to your brain to record the memories onto pills. Brochure says 1-5 memories per pill. They’re also supposed to be color-coded by level of trauma or intensity; Will seems to have skipped that step. Guess they would all be bright blazing red anyway.
The theater in this is a call back, and inversion, of the first episode. In the premiere, William is a child who finds shelter in a theater as everything is going to hell around him. He watches a movie which inspires him to justice.
In this episode, as an adult, he returns to the theater, but this time it’s a place of violence and horror and the film has inspired people to assault and savagery, not to justice. And this theater experience causes William not to be inspired but to be disillusioned. He finds out that his crimefighting partner, and secret lover, doesn’t really care about him and his crusade. So he goes on a bloody rampage to clean things up himself.
Could we please, as a culture, move past this myth that 50% of black/gay persons alive before 1990 were getting taken out back by the government and shot?It’s disingenuous garbage. Yes, there was bad treatment of both people groups.Yes, there were some straight up murders that occured.But no, just being alive wasn’t a danger back then, and no, the government wasn’t whisking gays and blacks off to be murdered. One or two instances a holocaust does not make.
Not sure what was better the episode or your review. <3
‘Every week I get to see Regina King in a healthy relationship, struggle to uncover her family’s secrets, and molly whop bad guys. A hero like Hooded Justice helps me feel seen in an entirely new way.’Excellent review, but this sentiment brings up an issue about the show that concerns me. So far HBO’s ‘Watchmen’ has done a phenomenal job of capturing the spirit and tone of the book. And in the book, every single one of the characters ends up morally compromised in some way. The point being: ‘Watchmen’ may have superheroes, but no actual heroes.And this is the fine line that Lindelof and co. are treading: On the one hand, they’ve taken up the challenge of approaching the corrosive issue of race in America in ‘Watchmen’— an entirely appropriate and important element, given it’s themes, that isn’t dealt with in the original book— and are adjusting the focus to tell stories that have been criminally neglected for far too long.However, I hope that the creative team finds a way to tell this story without making Angela too much of a ‘hero’. If the show delivers us a clear-cut moral center, it will miss the point of the book. Thankfully, so far the show has done anything but miss the point of the book. Apart from say, The president of the United States, ‘KKK is bad’ isn’t too complex or troubling a concept for most people to wrap their brains around.To be sure, Will Reeves, just as flawed and sympathetic as any of the original ‘Watchmen’ characters, tows that line pretty well. He straight-up murders Judd— and do we know what Crawford’s crime was, other than having a KKK robe hidden in his closet and choosing his patriarchal, patronizing words unwisely? Will’s killing of the Klansmen in the warehouse felt fully justified but not at all triumphant. The show did a masterful show of contrasting the early superhero violence of Hooded Justice’s first raid (viscerally satisfying) with his rampage in the warehouse— which, no matter how understandable the motives, was grim, ugly, bleak. Of the remixed elements from the book, the tone of the warehouse massacre seems meant to echo the missing girl case that sent Rorschach over the edge. (Y’know, one of the many scenes of violence that Zack Snyder lingered over fetishistically while completely missing the fucking point)Fantastic, fantastic show—so good that it terrifies me more each week that it could fail to stick the landing. But given the sheer amount of thought and care the writers have poured into the story so far, that doesn’t seem too likely.
Angela is shown to be every bit the dense, violent idiot Rorschach was. Amusingly though, reviewers on AV Club don’t notice what’s clearly in the text to be the mirror image of the reviled “Rorschach fan”.
Honestly, I don’t think Angela is portrayed as anywhere near perfect. Her husband and her home might be perfect, but I don’t think that extends to her. As a police officer, she unlawfully arrested a guy and threw him in her trunk with no real evidence of wrongdoing, then beat the shit out of him for information. She didn’t take Will in to the police and she covered up the murder of her captain. She, like her grandfather before her, is using violence, masks, and vigilante justice as an outlet for the rage and trauma within her. At least, that’s what I think. Joelle describes the theory of trans-generational trauma incredibly in her reviews, and I think that it’s at the heart and centre of Angela’s story.
I agree— It’s just the way Joelle seems to unambiguously revel in the ‘kick-ass’ aspects of Angela and Will’s superhero identities that gives me pause. Similar to the incel-crowd’s romanticization of Rorschach—Is he an interesting character? Yes. Can his violence be thrilling? Yes. Might he be even sympathetic? Occasionally, yes. But is he a bigot and irredeemably psychologically warped? Also, yes. And is he an aspirational character that one should want to emulate? Fuck, a thousand times, fuck no.
I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. I feel like there’s a significant difference between incel white guys unironically idolizing Rorschach and a black woman feeling represented by a black female superhero kicking racist ass, while clearly understanding the nuance and moral ambiguity of the character. (Especially since historically its been white guys who go out and commit racist hate crimes in real life). Joelle never said she wants to be Angela, or even that Angela is any way aspirational, and I don’t think the show is saying that either. The show is using Angela, and HJ, to show how oppressive systems and transgenerational trauma can hurt people. Angela is depicted as pretty cool in the first few eps as she beats up racists using the law as a shield. Her grandfather did the same thing, except he was even more violent, just outright murdering people while completely blank-faced. Its a good cause, and I fully advocate for shooting nazis btw, but in seeing how the violence screwed Reeves up, I believe Angela comes to a sort of realization about her own anger and where it comes from. A few eps back, she tries to stop her cop buddies from rounding up Nixonville, but the second someone hits her, she beats him into a pulp, and is somewhat shocked by her own rage. Now, I think, she has an answer to a question she didn’t really know she was asking about herself.
I absolutely see where you’re coming from. Agreed, Nazis should never go unpunched. But the idea of ‘Watchmen’ as a ‘brand’— since this is where we are with people extrapolating from Moore/Gibbons’ original text— is that there is no safe, moral way to solve political problems with violence. And Joelle’s statement at the end of the review:Every week I get to see Regina King in a healthy relationship, struggle to uncover her family’s secrets, and molly whop bad guys. A hero like Hooded Justice helps me feel seen in an entirely new way. He’s the men in my family, the generations above me still struggling to make sense of what they survived, and hoping to further civil rights for their children before they perish. He’s not an ideal hero, but a human hero brings something we can aspire to. —seems to contradict your reading of her point of view. Look, I have NO problem with a show that depicts badass black superheroes unambiguously fighting evil white nationalists as its own story. But as an extension of ‘Watchmen’? I’m not so sure, since anything truly ‘Watchmen’ demands muddying the moral waters. And any muddying of the moral waters ina show that deals with the USA’s history of racial violence would look like an apologists’ take on our country’s history of systemic racism. I do think—or hope— the show has been slightly more hedging on how triumphantly they treat Will Reeves and IS preparing us for more complex and upsetting moral quandaries than that last paragraph from Joelle implies. A black ‘Batman’ is fine— by which I mean, a hero who is representative of black america and who deals out vigilante justice in a stylized wish-fulfillment space, who is ‘on the edge’ but ultimately always does the moral thing. Sure, great, I’ll read it. I’ll watch it. Fuck, I’ll cheer it on! But not as an extension of ‘Watchmen’. My point is, there’s not supposed to be ANY kind of ‘Batman’ in Watchmen. In Watchmen, no one’s ever cool. No one ever manages to do ‘the right thing’. There’s NO BATMAN in Watchmen, black or otherwise. You dig my concern?
anything truly ‘Watchmen’ demands muddying the moral waters. But I think the show is clearly doing that. After Reeves lets his anger out and murders all the klansmen, his family falls apart. No matter how many evil racists Angela punches, the conspiracy is never solved, and her rage never stops. Things just get more complicated and muddied. And I’m pretty sure Joelle understands that. White guys get to watch Iron Man and Superman and Captain America and Thor and Batman all be vigilante heroes who work outside the law and be portrayed as objectively good people that we should symbolically aspire to be. They ALSO get to have The Boys and Watchmen and The Tick and a gazillion other pieces of media that shows ‘the dark side’ of vigilante justice and political violence, and talk about how superheroes should not be aspirational. They get to enjoy both and live in the hypocrisy without being called out, because Watchmen and The Boys technically are calling them out. And I don’t think “there is no safe, moral way to solve political problems with violence” is the objective statement of the original Watchmen comic, and even if it was the absolute only way to read it, I don’t think that every piece of Watchmen material needs to have the same exact themes and message. Its the same way I don’t think every Batman comic needs to have the same theme/message. I see these stories and characters as more of a template that different writers can use to tell their own story.In my mind, the original Watchmen comic is about the dangers of single nations amassing so much power that they could kill the entire world. It is about the horrifying, almost humanly unimaginable pain that Global Superpowers could inflict, and how easily they can slaughter millions without acknowledging the humanity of their victims. Its why I believe the subplots about various New Yorkers living complex lives before being killed is the most important part of the story. Its also an analysis of different types of moral systems in superhero comic, from Rorshach’s black-and-white morality, to Veidt’s pragmatism. Meanwhile, this TV series uses Watchmen to talk about American racism, transgenerational pain, and the unhealthy ways we deal with trauma. It uses the Watchmen universe to talk about completely different social and political issues, and I applaud it for that. But that’s what I think its about. That doesn’t make it the only possible interpretation, and even if it was, any and every subsequent Watchmen media doesn’t have to make the same points or say the same thing.(Also, I haven’t seen the newest episode, so if it like, completely refutes my point, don’t @ me lol)
Good discussion. We’ll both have to see how it plays out, anyway. A lot rests on the conclusion. Despite my extensive whinging, I adore this show and am cautiously optimistic they’ll stick the landing.
Yeah I was gonna say I find it bizarre that anyone would think Angela is an example of a role model type character. If she was it wouldn’t be “Watchmen”. If anything I kind of think that with her as the main POV character it’s strange how far the show has gone to make her unappealing and morally compromised.
I mean, she tortures people so there’s that.
Excellent episode, hot damn was this some killer TV. Aside from being a fantastic episode, I’m also happy it was able to retcon Hooded Justice, the whole white guy thing was off since his introduction in the comic. I thought I was over-analyzing when I noticed Will was wearing Hooded Justice colors since he was first introduced, pretty excellent reveal IMO, even if it was televised pretty early on in the episode.
Only 3 episodes left and way too many questions in this apparently ‘book-ended’ show. Not sure they are going to stick the landing. They certainly did not with Lost or The Leftovers….
Agree with you on Lost, but definitely not The Leftovers.
Also very meta and cool: the fact that the Okay hand gesture that white supremacists now use and is now a proper hate sign was also used by the Cyclops/Klan members. And that “Fred” is possibly Fred Trump?!? Jamaica Avenue/Jamaica Queens was mentioned and that’s where the Trumps were. And the guy looked like him. And with Fred dead, that means no more Donald?
I also like that the symbol they were using on their foreheads is very similar to the ASL for “asshole” (it’s the same sign turned downward and held at chest height, the way some white supremacists flash it, which makes it even more funny!)
Maybe the KKK and 7K settled on lettuce because it has the least flavor of all the vegetables and they hate seasoning?
Jokes aside, this is a masterpiece of an episode! I especially loved the touch of Will’s Hooded Justice makeup having the exact same pattern as Angela’s Sister Night disguise, and showing the racism of white queer men. Casual and outright racism both get taken down in this episode, and I love it!
I really enjoyed this recap, but, one thing: why do you assume William is gay and not bi? He seems to have a healthy sex life with June (they get pregnant after all and there isn’t any indication she’s unhappy with him in that aspect), and it’s difficult to read you talking about queerness being erased while you completely erase bisexuality. It happens all the time. Just a thought.
Hey, So this is a fair question. I’m bi, and watching the interactions with his sister/wife Will and June didn’t feel romantically in love, to me. Now, I’ll admit I’m doing a lot assuming, and it certainly wasn’t my intention to participate in bi-erasure; but given the time period and the way he interacted with June, I felt that he was a gay man living the best way he knew how.
The thing I always wonder about is how much our understanding of these sexual identities even matters that much in such pre-Kinsey days. Would someone like Will even think of himself in those terms?
Reading any specific sexual identity onto Will, beyond having a some sense of his queerness, seems like projection on our parts.
I will note though that Will and June’s relationship could never have been a simple romantic one considering their history. They grew up together in a way that’s more sibling-like than anything else. I can’t imagine that wouldn’t have influenced the way they were together.
The relationship with June is complicated, that’s for sure. Saved her as a baby, grew up together, ect. Still, as I bi man I rarely see anything like my life on screen so it was nice seeing something resembling that aspect of my life so not gonna write it off yet.
Thanks for the measured response, and I can see where you’re coming from. I guess my feeling on it was that, given he and June had actually known each other since they were children and had been together for so long, it would have been natural not to see them completely fawn over each other, but the scene where she reveals she’s pregnant seems loving in a more than platonic way, and also indicates that even though they’ve known each other for so long there’s still some form of physical intimacy there. There wasn’t anything written into the script or implicitly suggested that he struggled with wanting to be with both she and Captain Metropolis at the same time, and given how strong everything else in that episode was–how beautifully considered and thoroughly executed–I took the absence of that struggle as a sign that maybe he was bi. But again, thanks for the response!
I think he felt a feeling of responsibility for her given the situation he saved her from as a baby, an important feeling that may be comprised of love, but so much else as well.
From the way they interacted starting with the first scene after he became a cop I didn’t even think they were in a romantic relationship. I thought they were friends or she was a female relative. I didn’t realize they were supposed to be a couple until she said she was pregnant
Another bi person here, and I thought there was crazy sexual energy between June and Will, particularly in the scene right after his cadet graduation, when they’re in the bar. Plus if their relationship weren’t sexual, and they were having sex only for the purpose of having a baby, I think the pregnancy reveal would’ve gone differently.
I also missed the evidence that she knew about his relationship with Captain Metropolis. I’d assumed she didn’t know.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking this. He doesn’t seem at all uncomfortable being physical with her, so why assume he’s anything other than bi with no textual evidence to support such a reading?
lol ‘completely erase.’ Why are you people so insufferably over dramatic? Its a TV review by a black bisexual person. You guys are the fucking WORST
Anthony Perkins had a wife and kids but was definitely not bi. It was just a sign of the times and his whole family life was a beard. It happens.
Well to be fair for Perkins his wife and family weren’t a beard situation or even really a sign of the times—it was a very conscious choice of Perkins, from all accounts by those who knew him, and he genuinely felt love for her.
But I admit, if there’s one aspect of Lindelof’s writing I think he’s not particularly good at, it’s in how poorly he depicts GLBTwhatever characters (if he depicts them at all). I mean, on one hand I can see Joelle’s point that it’s refreshing that the sexuality doesn’t really seem to be an issue for HJ. But I also felt like the writers simply didn’t know how to deal with it, and so focused instead on the racial aspect (which, f course, is completely valid especially given the themes of this series). I’m all for ambiguity, but I wish there was *something* in the episode to expand on this.
I’m not naive enough to think this sort of thing didn’t happen all the time, but I’m going off the context of the show, not Anthony Perkins’s life.
I thought this as well (as another bi person), but I was more focused on how lazy it seemed to make her the baby. It seemed like they tried to force a “woooah, mind blown!” moment that was unearned and, honestly, pretty fuckin’ weird if you really think about it. If they were raised together they would have more of a sibling relationship and that would be unlikely to turn sexual.
Other than that though, I do think the review could have mentioned bisexuality but also, it was a little shitty of the show to go to the tired bi/gay people = cheaters well for the millionth time. I’m just not sure it added anything.
Also, side note unrelated to OP: anyone who says shit like “GLBTwhatever” probably does not have an opinion on this topic that I care to hear about. Wtf.
Coming in very late to note that the scene did not read as “cheating on June” but as “expressing his inner self”. If he was bisexual, it should read as the former.
Looking at IMDB for the episode cast — I recognized Cheyenne Jackson but couldn’t get a name — I noticed an “Officer Bourquin” easter egg which I missed while watching the episode. Comic readers will remember that Joe Bourquin was Steven Fine’s partner in the 1980s.
Well, where has THAT show been? So much more engaging than what we’ve seen to this point. By the way, the song playing as Will is kicking that KKK ass in the back of the store is “I don’t Want to Set the World on fire” by the Ink Spots, released in 1941. I assume it’s not coincidental the showrunners/writers/whoever picked a song by a group of black men, who found success by sounding as white as possible.
Stop being such a shill, Joelle. Watchmen isn’t reaching back to any roots. None of this story is meant to be a continuation of the original Watchmen. It’s entirely Lindelof’s original creation that’s been cut and pasted onto the brand, ala the Cloverfield franchise.I wish avclub would stop acting like it’s a genuine sequel.
And Bass Reeves, the marshal in the film, was also a real person. Many regard him as the inspiration for the Lone Ranger.
I take some issue with characterizing Reeves as “gay.” I think that’s a bit reductive; “bi” or “queer” could be a more accurate characterization, as there’s no indication he wasn’t also attracted to/in love with his wife. The character clearly has a complicated relationship with his many identities and his sexuality is a part of that – we shouldn’t try to oversimplify something that’s complex by design.
That said, I’m glad the show didn’t shy away from it – it would have been easy to not even mention HJ’s sexuality in this episode, and let us believe it was just an unsubstantiated rumor from Nite Owl’s book. I’m curious if the show will address the later allegations of domestic violence between him and Metropolis, given that Reeves’ anger is a central part of his characterization, but making the black male hero a domestic abuser would be a tough line to walk. Great review! 🙂
Excellent story but too much vanity/narcissism in storytelling and directing.. it ruined the whole episode for me. Felt like they were trying to force the “we film so cool scenes in black and white” even more than the light strobe brain washing.
Style over substance, that menace of Peak Tv era…
Worse episode of the season so far.
There’s always gotta be that one person …
There are many things about this episode that blow the mind.For me, it was simply having a Fallout 3 flashback after hearing World On Fire.
HEY, who did all the damage to Judd’s body then? He looks unharmed when he’s talking to Will.
this show is absolutely amazing. It is important. Unlike Game of Thrones, which was fine entertainment and escapism, Watchman has something to say. This is art
The scene when Reeves burns the film warehouse has a few links to a similarly formative experience for Rorschach, in which R kills the dogs and leaves the pedophile/murderer to die in a burning house, the scene of his heinous crimes.
1. The first time Reeves actually killed someone while fighting crime.
2. The burning of the scene of the crime, along with all evidence.
3. Reeves stands and watches in what appears to be a profoundly cathartic moment for the character, just as it was for Rorschach.Do we think this was a deliberate symmetry? If so, is it a subtle nod to the trauma that creates people like this, a simple wink to fans, or in service of some greater significance down the road?
I forgot about this moment with R. Good catch. I think everything is done very deliberately in this show, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
God, just re-read this part in the comic. Stirring stuff, and I think a lot of Rorschach’s internal monologue applies to Reeves:
“Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.
Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there.
The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.
Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us.
Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.”You’re right; this show is too thoughtful to not be doing *something* with this.
A bit off topic, but to underscore how much thought Lindeloff has put into this show as it relates to the original story, consider the scene in the graphic novels where a pregnant Vietnamese woman is shot and killed by the Comedian. Many have theorized that Lady Trieu is that woman’s child. While Dr. Manhattan didn’t stop the shooting, it’s entirely possible that he still could’ve saved the child. This would make the conversation about Laurie Blake’s trauma stemming from her own parentage all that more significant, considering this show is about how trauma gets passed down from one generation to the next. Laurie and Lady Trieu would share the same father, a “thermodynamic miracle”. A father who was violent to both their mothers, yet Laurie and Lady Trieu have chosen to deal with that trauma in different ways.People have further theorized that Lady Trieu’s plan involves some sort of mechanism that will force everyone to experience a shared, collective memory. If this turns out to be the case, then her mother’s final words to the Comedian right before she was killed are especially significant: “I think you will remember me and my country. I think you remember us as long as you live!”The Vietnamese woman is largely treated as a passive victim in the graphic novels — we never learn her name and her final words are rarely mentioned in any synopsis or discussions of that scene. In interpretations of that scene, the focus is usually on what Blake says to Dr. Manhattan afterwards and why Dr. M didn’t stop the shooting.
But if Lindeloff plans to take Lady Trieu’s storyline in the direction that people have theorized, I have to think that her mother’s final words are more than just coincidental and that they played a role. It would be a brilliant way of giving this unknown woman more of a voice in the story. Of course, this is all speculative and based entirely on the premise that Lady Trieu is indeed the Comedian’s child. But if this all turns out to be true, then it just goes to show that Lindeloff is a master at his craft.
Nothing to add to the discussion except for a deeply felt thank you for sharing your story and memories, and those of your family. That vulnerability is fundamental to true heroism.
A powerful piece. Matches the power of this episode. More and deeper understanding of a multitude of issues after watching the episode and reading your recap/review/explanation. This is art of very high quality.
I have to admit when I first saw the preview for this episode with it’s black and white images representing the past and its surreal transitions between times I thought it all looked a bit too conventional and cliche. I can’t say I was particularly looking forward to the episode. With that said, I think this was the first truly great episode of the show so far. The rest of it has been entertaining and mildly intriguing, but this single episode elevated its premise and ideas to a level I wasn’t sure the show was particularly interested in achieving. I’m almost a bit disappointed to be going back to the present now.
I saw this mentioned elsewhere as a plot hole but I want to explain how it isn’t.The plot hole: In the comics, Hooded Justice expresses admiration for the Third Reich until WW2 starts and then he stops talking about it. In the show, he’s a black guy who we see arresting a guy for attacking a kosher deli. WTF?The explanation: The WW1 letter. It can make sense that he doesn’t know what’s quite happening in Germany, but he has written evidence that for all its flaws, Germany is probably better on race than the US. The evidence is misleading, but it makes sense as a great reason for the plot to work.Lindelof using Watchmen as a platform to tell a black story (and hiring black writers and I think directors too to tell it) is one of the bravest things I’ve seen from a white Hollywood guy in a long time, too.
Great catch!
During WWI, it would have been accurate.
Definitely not during WW2, but I do agree in WW1. One of the top German scientists in WW1 was Jewish (Fritz Haber, feel free to look him up. Fascinating person. Kind of a shit).
Oh yeah, I wanted to be clear on that. It’s not like the Nazis didn’t try similar propaganda, although I believe they used radio more in that war, but WWI was a good old fashioned territorial dispute and black people generally faced fare less discrimination across most of Europe including Germany at that time.
Lindelof using Watchmen as a platform to tell a black story (and hiring black writers and I think directors too to tell it) is one of the bravest things I’ve seen from a white Hollywood guy in a long time, too.I understand your point, but in reality a white showrunner not hiring a black director and writers to tell a black story should be a brave thing. Brave because it’s an ignorant and unproductive thing to do.What Lindelof did shouldn’t be brave; it should be status quo.
I think the point was that the brave thing is using a story like Watchmen to tell a black story
It’s amazing to me that a show that is so good so much of the time can be so bad at exposition.Like in this episode, Laurie giving a long explanation of Nostalgia at the beginning, or June reminding William of his own life story. Ugh! Not only do these bits stick out as completely unnatural and shoehorned in, they’re somehow much more badly written than any of the other dialogue, and they often seem to assume the audience are idiots who can’t remember what happened in previous episodes (or even earlier in the same episode).Aside from all that’s already been mentioned on the positive side, I thought the guy who played Captain Metropolis was absolutely perfect casting.
Why are we calling Will queer instead of bisexual?Everyone is doing it. I’m not challenging it. But queer is so much more than bisexual I’m feeling….old. Yes. I feel old. Explain to this old man why we prefer this language.
because queer in its current use is a catch-all for non-straight sexualities. we don’t know if will is bi or gay, nothing was said out loud. using queer is just handy for when non-straight sexuality isn’t explicitly defined.
What an amazingly powerful hour of TV. I don’t think I have anything to add that hasn’t already been said, but wow.One nitpicky tiny plot point that ultimately doesn’t matter, but still has me scratching my head. Why did Laurie need express written consent to pump Angela’s stomach? Isn’t there an implicit level of consent granted if someone is in medical distress and they aren’t aware enough to consent? If you’re hit by a car and unconscious the doctors don’t need your permission to perform life saving surgery and you can’t sue the surgeon for assault later. Even if it’s because she consciously made the choice to take the pills… so do plenty of suicide attempts and they don’t need consent to pump stomachs in that case either.
“Why did Laurie need express written consent to pump Angela’s stomach?”Welcome to Robert Redford’s America! (LOL)
Breathtaking episode, and beautiful recap. What stood out to me while watching it (as a 30-something white queer lady) was how Hooded Justice in “American Hero Story” seemed to function as commentary on how it’s easier for us to tell a story about a gay white man struggling with oppression than it is to tell one about a gay (or straight) black man. “He’s a superhero that happens to be gay!” is a story that’s a lot easier to sell in our culture than, “He’s a superhero who needs a mask because of his race.” The truth of Will Reeves (and the world he was living in) was so much more complex than AHS’ story.It’s interesting to take in especially with Pete Buttigieg on the rise.
A review as powerful an experience as that episode of television. Beautiful work.
First of all let me say that from a visual and artistic standpoint this was already a brilliant hour of television. How they overlapped the memories, the film noir vibe.But my GOD was hard to watch, especially as a black women.
When i realized the circumstances around which his uniform was inspired, and what led him to create that persona i just…
I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of Angela and her grandfathers experiences.. and how one is a funhouse mirror version of the other, right down to her wearing black around the eyes and he white. And theyve both found themselves in similar circumstances to very different effect ( she is valued and respected in her job, and loves it) , yet both have to contend with the same enemy… again.
And the irony of Will using a modern derivative of cyclops hyno tech on the chief.
Im so curious as to how Will teamed up with Lady Trieups..Im not sure i got from the reading that June knew her husband was gay and tacitly accepted it.
ps.. thats the actor from the leftovers right? will reeves charater?
HBO are loyal as hell to their talent
If it was the same guy, its more likely that Lindelof is loyal.
All the old-timey songs came from a Black quartet called The Ink Spots.Except “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” performed by Eartha Kitt.
Just finished the episode not too long ago. This was an incredible review on so many levels. I may need to watch it again to catch everything. And as a black man who has loved superheroes since he was around five or six, alot of your what you bring up about the episode hit me in the gut.
So…nobody is going to mention the thing in Agent Carter season 1 where the bad guys released mind-control gas in a theater that made the audience turn on and kill each other?
“Ivchenko hypnotizes Dooley and has him steal one of Stark’s weapons from the SSR’s labs: a gas cylinder that Underwood and Ivchenko activate in a crowded cinema before leaving and locking the door behind them. The gas in the cinema makes many in the audience become maniacal and attack each other violently, and when an usher arrives soon after, the entire audience is dead. “I know there is nothing new under the sun…but come on. “Superhero” still isn’t THAT big of a genre, and that was only 3 years ago. There are tropes, and then there is not even trying.
I mean, it also happened in Kingsmen too. So it’s just a thing at this point, like a doomsday device or one of those lasers that takes a long time to bifurcate someone lengthwise.
Yah, but the specificity. New York. Early-mid 20th century. Movie theater. Mind control that turns the patrons on each other.
Tropes Are Not Bad. And, in this case, are being used to say something very different from the prior art.
Yeah, but that’s not a trope. It’s a specific thing.
I don’t think it’s nearly as specific as you think. Both stories (and many superhero stories) are set in NYC. Gases or drugs that turn people maniacal are very common as is subliminal thought control. The movie theater setting is about the only detail that might suggest an influence and I believe that’s pretty thin.
“You’re not black, black,” and “You’re so
articulate,” …. are the negotiations most Black Americans
manage internally when entering conversations with white individuals
I’ve gotten this from other blacks as well (moreso, even) my entire life. I don’t know if that still qualifies it as ‘coded’ language, but it’s annoying from pretty much everyone is the point, and really leans into the sorts of ‘Uncle Tom’ toxicity that’s probably a topic for another day.
Beautiful episode and beautiful review that made me think of certain scenes in new ways. Thank you.
Not only was this the best episode of the series so far, but this was the best review I’ve seen on this site. Thank you, Joelle. Keep doing what you’re doing!
Just echoing what is on here but it all deserves to be said again:Alan Moore should be proud as heck of Lindelof for this episodeHaving the white makeup negative Sister Night’s black makeup is just fucking brilliantGreat reviewI hope we come back for more Will Reeves: Year One stories
two things: the sign of the cyclops mirroring the fascist online use of the ‘ok’ emoji 👌 as a dog whistleangela and will having the same mask painted, in opposite colors.just beautifully done.
Woot what a great write up! Really look forward to these reviews and this one makes me want to re-watch this episode again.I was dreading a ‘flashback’ episode since they are so often used to stall the progression of the main story line (looking at you Walking Dead), but this was the best episode so far. It filled in all kinds of gaps and created a whole new set of compelling questions.
I thought this was both the best and worst episode so far. I’ll get to the good stuff in a minute, but what threw me was the mechanics of the central conceit (ie. how Nostalgia functions):Agent Blake heavy-handedly explains what they are/do (which Angela apparently already knows, so should be unnecessary) but why did they play ‘in order’ (I know there was some bleed-through between memories, but overall the timeline was consistent), and why ‘store’ some outright bad memories like when June and his son leave him? (I also thought their initial discussion about him becoming Hooded Justice lacked subtlety) And nevermind how the final memory jumps forward a substantial number of years to show the truth behind Judd’s death. It’s all very convenient, is what I’m saying. Maybe Will manufactured the pills for exactly these reasons but that relies on Angela doing exactly what she did, which obviously was a hell of a gamble. Anyway. This really bugged me haha but otherwise I enjoyed the holy heck out of everything and could have stayed in Will’s memories for a lot longer. I thought it was fascinating how injustice surrounded and followed him: entering the police force and being ignored by the white captain, then being undermined when he first arrests Fred. And then, worst of all, when he finds a person/group who should have given him exactly what he needs (Nelson/The Minutemen) he’s undermined and ignored there, too. There were also two particular moments I thought were incredible: when the corrupt cops drive off to reveal the bodies being dragged from another memory (the reveal and juxtaposition felt like pure horror) and when Will is standing in front of the burning warehouse (which was simply a striking, powerful image).Anyway x 2: I love that we have a show that invites so much analysis and critique, and that every episode has more layers than a particularly large onion.
I love that the American Hero Story HJ was Cheyenne Jackson, real life star of American Horror Story in our reality.
Unless I misheard, the American Hero Story segment referred to a Mimutemen villain called King Mob, which is the name of a Situationist movement but more pertinently the name of the man who led The Invisibles for a time. King Mob is the dead spit of his creator, Grant Morrison. As far as I’m aware, Morrison and Moore do not get on.
What a goddamn beautiful hour of television.
I was on the fence about this show for the first three episodes. The stories seemed a bit heavy handed and contrived, but starting with the Silk Spectre and Looking Glass focused episodes it started to work better for me…and then this episode took it to a whole other level. Fantastic storytelling and directing here. Love the idea that…SPOILER…Hooded Justice was actually a black man in disguise. Also making him gay I’m not sure about…seems kind of like a hat on a hat. He’s already dealing with one massive form of systemic oppression…adding him also dealing with being a closeted gay seems a bit extra. But I’m a straight man so maybe that’s my own bias showing.
There are suggestions in the comic that he was gay.
I’d say it was a lot more than just “suggestions”.
I am not counting the RPG materials. Only the comic. And I would not call it more than a suggestion in the comic.
The original comic (the story and the supplemental material at the end of each issue) has multiple characters say that Hooded Justice was gay.
Yeah, No. It’s possible that someone claimed it in the supplementary materials. I forget. But I am pretty sure that no one stated he was gay in the comic. If I am wrong, please enlighten me. I do believe that the Comedian’s comment after their brief fight strongly implied HJ was gay. It still did not state it.
The supplementary materials are *in* the comic. Moore did not write all of those supplementary materials because he was bored. They were extra material he wanted added to the world of the characters that would not fit into the issue’s story.Comedian: “This is what you like, huh? This is what gets you hot …”
Hooded Justice: (shocked look on his face)From Hollis Mason’s book: “Strangely enough, even though Sally would always be hanging onto his arm, he never seemed very interested in her. I don’t think I ever saw him kiss her.”You’ve gotta be pretty naïve to read this and not understand what Moore is implying here.And as far as it being implied and not stated, there is a *lot* in this book that Moore implies without stating it. That’s what great writers do – they give the readers enough information to figure things out for themselves.
Please quote a section where a character calls him gay. The closest thing is the letter from Sil Spectre’s manager and that still leaves it unspoken, albeit all but stated plainly.
Please re-read my previous comment where I included actual quotes from the comic.If you need a character to specifically come out (no pun intended) and say “Hooded Justice is gay” then apparently you’re not able to understand subtext in fiction. Moore included the 2 quotes/scenes I mentioned to say that Hooded Justice was gay without actually saying it. If you can’t get that, then I don’t know what else to tell you.
I am not sure if you forgot what you originally posted, or you are intentionally moving goalposts here. You said “The original comic (the story and the supplemental material at the end of each issue) has multiple characters say that Hooded Justice was gay.” That is not in fact true. However, there are characters clearly implying he’s gay. I have said from the beginning that the comic implied he was gay. And by the way, the following passage:“Comedian: “This is what you like, huh? This is what gets you hot …”
Hooded Justice: (shocked look on his face)“Is actually about violence getting him off, not his partner preference.And there’s much stronger evidence than the Hollis Mason quote you provided. In particular, the letter from Spectre’s manager/second husband.
At this point I’m not even sure if you read the original series.The Comedian/Hooded Justice scene strongly implies that HJ is gay.The supplemental material at the end of one of the issues has the original Night Owl say that HJ is gay.The only way it could be put any plainer would have been if Moore had one of the character look directly at the reader and say “By the way, if you can’t understand subtext and subtlety, Hooded Justice is gay.”
Still shifting those goalposts. Yes, it was obvious he was gay. I never thought he wasn’t. However, please point to where Hollis Mason flat out stated he was gay. You seem determined to argue against a strawman.
“Yes, it was obvious he was gay. I never thought he wasn’t.”Wow. Thanks for admitting that you were wrong. Small victory.I already pointed out that Hollis Mason never flat out stated he was gay. I did point out where he strongly infers it. Anyone reasonable person reading that would get what Moore was saying (except you, I guess). The only other way he could state it was to flat out say it, but that’s the funny thing about authors, sometimes they like to give the reader subtext and let them figure things out on their own.
LOL. Nice distortion. You really just cannot admit being wrong, can you?“I already pointed out that Hollis Mason never flat out stated he was gay. I did point out where he strongly [implies] it. Anyone reasonable person reading that would get what Moore was saying”Liar. That’s exactly what I said. Grow the fuck up and own your mistakes. I respond to a poster who claims the HBO show added the “gay” with a statement that the book suggests he is gay. And now you try to paint it as me minimizing that.
I have expressly pointed to the elements implying he is gay multiple times. I was only pointing out that it was not stated in the book, which you repeatedly claimed it was.
The slang for the babbling that people do while under the influence of nostalgia is called “waxing”. Goddamn brilliant. 😁
So if I’m reading this right, HJ/Reeves may be the grandson of the real life legend Bass Reeves which makes Angela Bass’s Great-great granddaughter.
What an astounding episode. Hands down a perfect 10
Being a survivor of the Black Wall Street Massacre who turned vigilante
after being was lynched by his racist police peers is such a good origin
for Hooded Justice that it makes me retroactively mad at Alan There’s nothing in the original comics that
necessarily precludes this, yet the text also doesn’t even suggest it’s
an option.
If he really debuted being chased out of a racist’s store in a botched
attempt to stop the Ku Klux Klan’s Cyclops brainwashing scheme, why did
he become regarded as the first superhero rather than the first
supervillain? Why would the shop owner & eyewitnesses report the
story backwards to make the intruder more heroic & successful? This
retcon scene undermines an otherwise extraordinary episode.
Thank you, Joelle! This was one of the best hours of TV I’ve ever seen, and it wouldn’t resonate in the same way if not for the deep insight from an African-American perspective in this review. I sincerely appreciate it.You add the social commentary with the pacing, direction, acting and music in this episode, and just fucking wow.
Laurie explains how the Nostalgia pills work – they put chips in your brain to extract memories (does this process remove the memories, or just copy them? Is modern-day Will missing these memories?) and put them in pills so you can re-experience them.This makes sense for all the young-Will memories.But what about the murder of Judd? The fact that Angela experiences this memory means there is a Nostalgia pill containing this memory. I assumed the process of using a chip to extract memories and put them into a pill was something that the customer would not be able to do themselves – this would need to be done by a doctor(s) – would actual surgery be required?So the episode tells us that Will mind-controlled Judd into hanging himself, then he extracted this memory and put it into a Nostalgia pill, and put that pill in the bottle (so Angela could swallow it later). This is a lot for Will to do all by himself, at night, without any equipment (Angela didn’t seem to find anything on him besides the WATCH OVER THIS BOY note and his pill), in the middle of a field, before Angela shows up.Maybe this is explained in one of the upcoming memories.
Loved this episode but still a bit of cognitive dissonance to reconcile this version of Will with the Hooded Justice who expressed support for the Third Reich and told Sally to cover herself up moments after the Comedian assaulted and attempted to rape her. I think the letter from his father goes a bit of the way in explaining the first though, and I suppose he could have just been lashing out at Sally after having his sexuality thrown in his face. He probably was annoyed by her constantly throwing herself at him as well.Anyway not that big a deal, no one in Watchmen is without issue.This does make me wonder how the black community felt about Hitler back then