Watchmen HBO (2019)

[shevek]

Femina, I understand why you like the episode, and yes I do agree actually that it's very well made. Damon Lindelof knows how to make television, he's proven that. But you really seem to just be excusing Lindelof's obsession with the Ta-Nehisi Coates book, which is pretty much the dominating topic of the entire series. So you read a book, so you feel obligated to make a TV show about it - great. Why does that series have to be Watchmen?

I don't have any problem with racial or cultural topics, black or otherwise - I've dealt with them myself in some Heroineburgh episodes. And there are very good TV series and movies that deal with this, not the least of which is Black Lightning. But for this to be pretty much the entire point of the series ("Klan men bad in all time periods, black vigilantes good in all time periods") diminishes the wide impact that the original Watchmen story had on the comics world and the "deconstructing superheroes" trend in general, turning Alan Moore's expansive universe into serving a very specific agenda.

Other than being gay and wearing a hood, the character of Hooded Justice in the TV series is quite disparate from the character in the comics. He's not a 6-foot-7 huge German circus strongman. He doesn't cheat on Captain Metropolis with male prostitutes (instead he cheats on his wife with Captain Metropolis). He doesn't save Silk Spectre from getting raped from the Comedian, he doesn't use Silk Spectre as a pretend girlfriend, and doesn't develop any rivalry with the Comedian, who doesn't seem to be in this show at all. He's almost a totally different character, motivated almost entirely by the racial injustice he experiences. So it's not just a disservice to the gay community, it's a disservice to the character itself. "Will" (who is played by Lou Gossett Jr...I didn't recognize him at first, but I'm a big fan of Enemy Mine) should be an original character, not Hooded Justice, in my opinion.

TIEnTEEZ, you're definitely right about the convoluted nature of the Nostalgia pills plot. Did we even see Will undergoing the procedure you are talking about? I don't remember seeing that. Or was that just an explanation you made up to fill the show's plot hole?

[Femina]

Femina, I understand why you like the episode, and yes I do agree actually that it's very well made. Damon Lindelof knows how to make television, he's proven that. But you really seem to just be excusing Lindelof's obsession with the Ta-Nehisi Coates book, which is pretty much the dominating topic of the entire series. So you read a book, so you feel obligated to make a TV show about it - great. Why does that series have to be Watchmen?

Buwhuaa? I don't see that I was in any dissagreement about this? Wasn't 'why did this need to be a Watchmen show?' something I outright stated in my last post?

I don't have any problem with racial or cultural topics, black or otherwise - I've dealt with them myself in some Heroineburgh episodes. And there are very good TV series and movies that deal with this, not the least of which is Black Lightning. But for this to be pretty much the entire point of the series ("Klan men bad in all time periods, black vigilantes good in all time periods") diminishes the wide impact that the original Watchmen story had on the comics world and the "deconstructing superheroes" trend in general, turning Alan Moore's expansive universe into serving a very specific agenda.

Again... I think I sorta covered this in my last post? 'Klan bad, African Americans good' is a demonstrably simple concept for the type of story I'd hope for from something bearing the Watchmen's flag AS A WHOLE. There's still three episodes left to see where it's all going, so I'll wait for that to decide how I feel about it as a whole. It's simply that for this latest episode in particular, this was actually where the race angle ought to have been most apparent, as it's actual time setting is in a place where racism was utterly out of control. Say what you like about where we are now, its no question that it was worse in the 1940's, so if you have an episode set in the 1940's we oughtn't be expecting cheese and rainbows... that's all.

Other than being gay and wearing a hood, the character of Hooded Justice in the TV series is quite disparate from the character in the comics. He's not a 6-foot-7 huge German circus strongman. He doesn't cheat on Captain Metropolis with male prostitutes (instead he cheats on his wife with Captain Metropolis). He doesn't save Silk Spectre from getting raped from the Comedian, he doesn't use Silk Spectre as a pretend girlfriend, and doesn't develop any rivalry with the Comedian, who doesn't seem to be in this show at all. He's almost a totally different character, motivated almost entirely by the racial injustice he experiences. So it's not just a disservice to the gay community, it's a disservice to the character itself. "Will" (who is played by Lou Gossett Jr...I didn't recognize him at first, but I'm a big fan of Enemy Mine) should be an original character, not Hooded Justice, in my opinion.

I'm pretty sure Hooded Justice's identity was never revealed... I'd have to go deep diving for the facts of that, but the best I can remember was a fake Hooded Justice who killed some people and the fate of the 'real' hooded justice was sorta never extrapolated on (which is probably why they felt safe enough to do this with the character in the show) As for how much of THIS Hooded Justice was involved with the other characters as evident from the comic books just because we weren't shown it happening in the episode does NOT mean those things aren't supposed to have happened... but I'm in semi agreement here as well there feels limited connective tissue here between him and the minutemen AS PRESENTED.

TIEnTEEZ, you're definitely right about the convoluted nature of the Nostalgia pills plot. Did we even see Will undergoing the procedure you are talking about? I don't remember seeing that. Or was that just an explanation you made up to fill the show's plot hole?

Spoiler

There's no reason to think he ABSOLUTELY meant for her to have the pills. HE wanted them in an earlier episode, and then she finds them in the glove box. That nostalgia's apparently deadly if its not yours actually lends me to believe Angela acquiring them was not part of the plan... but I mean... Looking Glass supposedly has an unflinching lie detector and got duped by a random racist gal so's to further the plot, in television anything's possible if it means 'plot profit'

[shevek]

Femina - I got the sense that you maybe thought Lindelof's focus was at least somewhat OK ("I don't really mind it") but if I misinterpreted what you said, my bad. In which case, we basically agree that what Lindelof has put together could simply be some other show that isn't Watchmen.

I'm not sure that it was necessary to have an entire episode set in the 1940s in the first place, because all that shows is that the Current Year when the central part of the story takes place is just not that engaging. Which it isn't, because it's set in frigging Tulsa instead of an interesting location. Why's it set in Tulsa? Because of Lindelof's obsession with the Coates book, where he first read about Tulsa. Res ipsa loquitur.

Seems like we're also mostly in agreement about Hooded Justice. However, in the comic, it is implied that Hooded Justice is Rolf Muller, and in the movie, the line Hooded Justice speaks is with a German accent. Then in Before Watchmen #6, the story was changed to reveal that Hooded Justice was actually Rolf Muller's son. Either way, it was a big German guy, and not an average size black guy who moved to New York from Tulsa.

I think that Will definitely wanted Angela to have the pills and that's why he left them in the car's glove box when the car was returned. Remember that Will said something about how Angela is stubborn and refuses to understand? Taking the pills would help her understand. And I don't think that taking someone's else memory pill is necessarily 'deadly' - it's just very dangerous, as Laurie explained. What is a deadly overdose is taking *all of the pills at once*, which was what Angela did and why Laurie tried to have her stomach pumped.

I think we're not far from each other, basically. But a mere three episodes is probably not enough time to take all of the Lindelof guilt taste out of the average viewer's mouth, so I'm very skeptical at this point whether this can turn into more of just a Watchmen show and less of a 'progressive cops in masks fighting the Klan in Tulsa' show, at least in the initial season. You think maybe Dr Manhattan will just come down at the last minute and change the whole universe like he supposedly did for DC's New 52?

[Maskripper]

I liked that episode too, but for a TV show with 9 episodes.....they are showing a LOT of background story. Yes it was in parts important to the present storyline, but I wonder how they will end all this in another 3 episodes. Haven't heard if they make another season, I hope....they do.

[Femina]

I liked that episode too, but for a TV show with 9 episodes.....they are showing a LOT of background story. Yes it was in parts important to the present storyline, but I wonder how they will end all this in another 3 episodes. Haven't heard if they make another season, I hope....they do.

That actually tallies with the original comic book tbh... it was also a lot of backstory.

[TIEnTEEZ]

TIEnTEEZ, you're definitely right about the convoluted nature of the Nostalgia pills plot. Did we even see Will undergoing the procedure you are talking about? I don't remember seeing that. Or was that just an explanation you made up to fill the show's plot hole?

Spoiler

There's no reason to think he ABSOLUTELY meant for her to have the pills. HE wanted them in an earlier episode, and then she finds them in the glove box. That nostalgia's apparently deadly if its not yours actually lends me to believe Angela acquiring them was not part of the plan... but I mean... Looking Glass supposedly has an unflinching lie detector and got duped by a random racist gal so's to further the plot, in television anything's possible if it means 'plot profit'

Spoiler

No, we don't see him undergo the procedure. Laurie explains the procedure. She doesn't go into much detail. She just says something like: they plant a chip in your brain and it extracts the memories into pill form. Presumably, he already has the chips in his brain. And there's no way to know how long it takes to extract a memory and put it into a pill.

If you assume that making those pills is somehow instantaneous and that the device that makes them is in his pocket, then that might make sense. But assuming it requires some kind of lab and some time (which seems more reasonable), then that means he must have added the "sheriff-killing-memory-pill" after he got rescued, but before they returned Angela's car. Which means he deliberately made that pill, put it in the bottle with the other pills, and then put it in the car deliberately for her to find.

[Femina]

TIEnTEEZ, you're definitely right about the convoluted nature of the Nostalgia pills plot. Did we even see Will undergoing the procedure you are talking about? I don't remember seeing that. Or was that just an explanation you made up to fill the show's plot hole?

Spoiler

There's no reason to think he ABSOLUTELY meant for her to have the pills. HE wanted them in an earlier episode, and then she finds them in the glove box. That nostalgia's apparently deadly if its not yours actually lends me to believe Angela acquiring them was not part of the plan... but I mean... Looking Glass supposedly has an unflinching lie detector and got duped by a random racist gal so's to further the plot, in television anything's possible if it means 'plot profit'

Spoiler

No, we don't see him undergo the procedure. Laurie explains the procedure. She doesn't go into much detail. She just says something like: they plant a chip in your brain and it extracts the memories into pill form. Presumably, he already has the chips in his brain. And there's no way to know how long it takes to extract a memory and put it into a pill.

If you assume that making those pills is somehow instantaneous and that the device that makes them is in his pocket, then that might make sense. But assuming it requires some kind of lab and some time (which seems more reasonable), then that means he must have added the "sheriff-killing-memory-pill" after he got rescued, but before they returned Angela's car. Which means he deliberately made that pill, put it in the bottle with the other pills, and then put it in the car deliberately for her to find.

Spoiler

That's a good point, the memory SELECTION of the pills aren't particularly things someone is likely to be nostalgic about. Not many people longing to relive that time they were nearly hung by a lynch mob. I retract my previous stance, he must have meant for her to have them.

[LovetheFallenAngels]

Refuse to watch this given the remake is expressly against God himself Alan Moore’s wishes. Not to mention Damon Lindelof calling this fan fiction. It’s so disrespectful. The mans still alive. At least wait until he’s dead before you defile his grave.

[Dogfish]

I'm hearing more and more reports that this show is Seriously That Fricking Good, so I might have to check it out. Still want to see how it ends mind you.

[TIEnTEEZ]

Refuse to watch this given the remake is expressly against God himself Alan Moore’s wishes. Not to mention Damon Lindelof calling this fan fiction. It’s so disrespectful. The mans still alive. At least wait until he’s dead before you defile his grave.

Hm. Putting aside the contradiction of defiling a man's grave while that man is still alive and doesn't actually have a grave to defile... this is interesting. I was unaware of the controversy here. So I just did some Googling.

I have to wonder why HBO chose to use the Watchmen here, at all. I mean... I guess they will get a few more viewers and some press just by attaching the name to the his project. But I have to think that, in the end, a show will get the viewership it deserves based on it's merit. I might have watched the first episode because of the name. But I'm not continuing to watch the show week after week because it's The Watchmen. I'm continuing to watch it week after week because it's excellent and I am really enjoying it.

But HBO/Lindelof could just as easily have created some completely new and original story unrelated to the Watchmen that was just as good. I suppose this is ultimately a marketing decision. Are there enough people who will watch the show in spite of Alan Moore's dissent? History and the popularity of the show seem to suggest they will.

But it's a little sad that the show is now tainted in this way.

[shevek]

Maybe there's something to the Alan Moore connection to this show, even if Alan Moore didn't intend there to be.

A 2017 interview with Alan Moore from Brazil just resurfaced and is making the rounds in the media. In it, he basically claims that superheroes
are an American symbol of white supremacy, and calls the Ku Klux Klan the first American superheroes. This seems to be why he made many of
his flawed/deconstructed characters in the Watchmen bigoted or oppressive or megalomaniacal.

“I would also remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’ as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.” - Alan Moore

I very much doubt that Damon Lindelof knew this when he was influenced by Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Tulsa massacre to produce this TV show.

But the content evidenced in Episode 7 seems to bear out an affinity to what Moore said in the interview. Namely:

Spoiler

The conflict in the TV show is shaping up to be a battle between a black Dr. Manhattan - yes, Jon Osterman frozen in the body of Angela's husband who has been hidden from the populace for many years - and a new white supremacist Dr. Manhattan who is Senator Joe running for President.

A lot happened in this episode. I'm personally wondering - if waking up Dr. Manhattan was the whole point, what does it matter whether the
Millennium Clock chimes, or whether Ozymandias ever gets to leave Europa, because Manhattan is omnipotent already, isn't he?

Anyway, given that storyline - sure, it's fan fiction, but it seems that Lindelof and Moore are on the same page politically. What do you think?

There's also technically some standard peril in this episode, as a 60something Laurie Blake is tied up to a chair. It's not like having Malin Akerman tied up or anything. I'm just pointing it out. It's not much, really.

I think we might see the Comedian coming up soon, at least I hope so.

[theScribbler]

Pretty sure Moore dislikes all movie and TV adaptions or expansions of his work. Or is there one that he likes?

[shevek]

Pretty sure Moore dislikes all movie and TV adaptions or expansions of his work. Or is there one that he likes?

No, I'm sure that he dislikes them on principle.

But I also think that's because he has a long history of feeling exploited by the large corporations he has worked for (such as DC Comics)
and I would imagine he thinks that the huge entertainment conglomerates who re-interpret his work onscreen are just as deserving of scorn.

It's certainly the case that Moore is lot more into anarchism, chaos magick, occult esoterica and specifically Thelema (the comics realm's answer to England's "Hidden Reverse" bands like Coil, Psychic TV, Nurse With Wound and Current 93) whereas Lindelof is pretty much just your textbook American Jewish progressive liberal comic-book nerd, especially when it comes to Watchmen.

But it does seems from that resurfaced interview that where superheroes and American racism are concerned, they are very nearly on
the same page. That was my point.

[Maskripper]

Just saw the new episode (8). And my head is still spinning a little. You will know what I mean when you saw the episode.
Now there is only one episode left, and that has deliver a LOT. Especially since it is still unclear if there will be a seson 2.

Make sure to watch the scene after the end credits! Guess I have to rewatch some of the after credits scenes since I didn't know from the beginning that there would be scenes after the credits (pretty new thing for a TV show).

[TIEnTEEZ]

So I just watched the final episode and I have to say, it was very satisfying.

I was very concerned (as I mentioned above) that Lindelof was going to do what he did with Lost, and leave us all in the dark, raising mystery and mystery and never resolving anything. But there actually was a pretty good, satisfying resolution to a lot of the stuff in the series so far. There are still some big mysteries, of course, and it ends on a cliffhanger, but it's a good one IMO.

The big mystery to me is, of course...

Spoiler

Why the heck did Dr. Manhatten have to die? Surely he could have prevented his own death, and clearly he chose not to for some reason.

[Femina]

Well having seen it all I can definitively write this one off as a Lindelof special. It seems to have a hard time maintaining focus, it blips from character oriented bottle episodes and the primary plot in a way that provides what SEEM like great stories... but ultimately make it difficult to form any kind of attachment or even a real understanding of the characters in general all the way up to the finale where we're being asked to care about a marque relationship we only became aware of in the preceding episode that itself is sort of invalidating everything we've already been presented about the characters involved in it. It's all kind of a Lindelof soup, he doesn't do his 'mysteries and no answers' shtick here... but he does kind of pull a Prometheus in that the answers he does provide are pretty underwhelming, and utterly UTTERLY contrived.

But all of that presents a middling show, not GREAT... but not terrible... what the show does do however that makes it BAD in my book.... is that it kind of shits all over the actual BOOK that preceded it. No theme of the original Watchmen goes unmolested here. Where morals were grey in the original, they're vividly separated here as nearly a solid black and white (no statement on the color of the character skin here, though the shows racial politics aren't very sophisticated ether). A character whose morals we were tasked with deconstructing for ourselves by the end of the comic, is here instead painted outright as a parody of hubris. Returning characters don't just take a back seat they're treated like bystanders for what I expect Lindelof thought was all a very clever mixture of plot and Lindelof invented characters... but none of it is very complicated... its just about the sort of thing you see in every television show these days. Lindelof's greatest achievements in television have always been convoluting otherwise simplistic stories and characters violently enough to provide the illusion of depth, I'd say he does that here pretty well, and as usual once naked of all the nonsense and presented for what it is... its just there.

Spoiler

Acknowledging that when the linchpin of your story could be unraveled by an omnipotent man simply choosing to take a step to the right you need a better explanation for why it occured that we have got. It seems that while the smartest man in the world held no more threat to Dr Manhattan than a termite, according to mr Lindelof, the same does not hold true for the worlds smartest woman and a whole crop of racisits... Who knew!?

Unfortunately it ends up playing out exactly how I'd imagine a fan fiction sequel of the Watchmen might actually be written... complete with author insert characters that stave off the trite 'mary sue/gary stu' only just marginally thanks MOSTLY the actors performances... but make no mistake here, this absolutely IS Fan Fiction... just with the highest production value of perhaps any fan fiction ever done.

Far as I'm concerned... he straight Lindelofed it again. You'd think I'd know better by now.

[theScribbler]

I liked it. Good series. I'll watch season 2 if it happens.

[brdiy]

I liked it. Good series. I'll watch season 2 if it happens.

Apparently, it's supposed to be a one and done thing, but if they throw enough money at him, who knows...

https://www.comingsoon.net/tv/news/1114 ... n-lindelof

[Maskripper]

Beside the fact that there was much less vigilante action as I hoped...I am quite happy what the show delivered. Not much Watchmen in Watchmen.
White supremacists will hate the show, but they do hate so much already......a familiar feeling for them.
As I don't know the comics at all, I (still) don't care about how the TV shows compares with them, that might be a good thing from what I read here and there as some fans doesn't like it at all.
The show leaves a lot of ? and delivered a lot of great scenes, I would like a second season!
Then hopefully with more Watchmen

[shevek]

Watchmen did the same thing that many TV shows seem to do nowadays - lots of decompression and expository content in the middle of the season with some rather meandering side-stories, followed by a convoluted rush to the finish line in the finale.

That being said, there are different paths to the finish line. The Titans finale, for example, was filled with actual superhero action. Even Doom Patrol picked up the pace at the end, despite a long slog to get there.

In contrast, much like Femina said above, the Watchmen finale was filled with Lindelof's fan-fiction that was also present almost throughout the entire series. I've put most of the following in spoiler mode, not just because it reveals some points of the plot but also because there are a few folks on here who object to discussions about certain political topics, so if you don't like that, then just don't click on the spoiler button.

Spoiler

Femina, now you understand why 'wokeness' (e.g. intersectionalism - the belief in a hierarchical progressive stack of oppression categories) destroys
the classical Western narratives of good storytelling. For more information on the basics of that tradition, I recommend the Youtube channel The Fourth Age (hosted by RJ of the Island) which goes into these enduring tropes in much detail (almost too much, sometimes).

For one thing, it makes the ending predictable (you always know that the most oppressed person in every situation will be the one who triumphs, sometimes even unearned as a Mary Sue/Gary Stu). For another, it creates villainous caricatures based on identity politics, rather than on the individual characteristics of the villain themselves. The senator who wanted to become another Dr. Manhattan wasn't any kind of fleshed-out villain like Joker or Riddler, he was simply 'generic white supremacist man', backed up by several church pews full of generic WASPs in his Cyclops fanclub, and thus utterly forgettable and meaningless as a character except to serve an agenda. The character of Angela is nearly as meaningless, but in the opposite direction of being the virtuous oppressed minority.

And yes, it's fan fiction. Which we knew would happen since from the very beginning Lindelof has clearly stated in interviews that he was approaching this series after having a revelatory experience reading Ta-Nehisi Coates. If you know Coates' work, which focuses on American imperialism/racism and the case for reparations (which is literally his most famous book title), then you know exactly where Will's quote about Dr. Manhattan, "considering what he could do, he could have done more", comes from. Since Dr. Manhattan represents the immense power of the American Empire (as symbolized by the atomic bomb), what Will is saying is what Lindelof read in Coates' book: America needs to do much more for the groups which intersectionalism considers to be the most oppressed (and there are a lot of these groups, although Coates of course focuses entirely on his own identity group).

The way I look at it (and hear me out here), this Watchmen series offers four hubris-laden characters who want to remake the world, or at least the nation, in their particular philosophical image to forcibly hammer out a Utopia, or at least change society into what they would consider to be perfect.

1) Ozymandias is the conventional Western despot. He's an old-style Caesar and capitalist straight from the Gilded Age, but with modern computers and technology. He uses a combination of vast wealth and influence (getting Redford elected) combined with fear and manipulation of traditional media.

2) Lady Trieu represents technologically-driven Asian-style authoritarianism, like a megalomaniacal, narcissistic version of the president of Singapore.
And part of her character is based on being a 'rebel' - she is named after the actual Lady Trieu, who led a failed revolution in Vietnam against the despotic Chinese imperialist conquerors - and a techno-maverick (like an Andrew Yang or Elon Musk). Which gives her more of an 'edgy' feel than an Asian dictator might have otherwise. She feels that if only she could have absolute power to impose her Mao-like vision, plus killing her American imperialist and racist enemy in the bargain..a Utopia would emerge under her feet.

3) Senator Who-Cares is the regressive, almost laughably stereotypical Southern good ol' boy who still believes in the early 19th century (or mid-1960s American South, take your pick) pecking order of racism. Since (despite what woke types like to say) very few people in America still harbor the same extremist beliefs as this man, his character and Cyclops are just hard to take seriously at all. A film projector that imposes mind control? A cage that can contain Dr. Manhattan and extract his powers? Even to the extent of devising a 'kryptonite' (or maybe more accurately, 'lead') weakeness that
Dr. Manhattan never had in the comics?

4) Then finally, we have Angela, whom we knew for quite a while (the hints were obvious) was going to become the new Dr. Manhattan. Her agenda is that of wokeness - righting all the wrongs done to the stack of oppressed people, while putting those oppressed people on the top of the power scale and pushing the oppressors as far to the bottom of the stack as possible. Not equality or egalitarianism, but something called 'equity', which is essentially revenge by identity class. Because that's what social justice is - a kind of mob-induced revenge.

Regular superheroes follow the law, and even gritty violent 1990s anti-heroes at least followed an internal moral code which was based on the law, just imposed personally instead of through the slogging system (think Punisher and Painkiller Jane, or even Judge Dredd who 'is the law'). But Angela is a woke vigilante, which means she (or at least her creator) doesn't believe that the law should be applied equally to everyone. Intersectionalism implies going easy on the oppressed classes, and dealing harshly with the oppressors, to turn the pyramid upside down. It is not legal, but revolutionary and neo-Marxist/neo-Maoist.

Unfortunately, in its many previous incarnations, the far-leftist 'revolution' just didn't work. Either it was corrupted by authoritarianism and mass murder (e.g. Soviet Union, China, Cambodia), or the system collapsed under its own non-viability (Venezuela, Cuba) or the revolutionaries never had quite enough power and got crushed by 'reactionary' forces (which seems like what's going to happen in Syrian Kurdistan/Rojava). But somehow this time at the height of post-modernism, it's all going to work out for the perfect Utopia because Dr. Eggman (did Lindelof realize it's a Sonic the Hedgehog villain?) has all the power she ever needs to turn everyone into Eloi, prancing about in the perfect paradise, while driving the Morlocks away forever. The message here from Lindelof is that the world could change if only the Greta Thunbergs of the world had a LOT MORE POWER to get things done and crush their enemies.

P.S. A couple of time-and-space plot hole questions:
1) How did Bian get all the way back from Antarctica leaving by herself? Did Ozymandias provide a convenient employee shuttle for all of his dutiful
Vietnamese workers?
2) What about the time it took for Veidt to fly back in the ship from Europa? It seemed like his journey was almost instantaneous.
3) So Veidt was already using fully developed teleportation technology in 1985...but 34 years later in 2019 he is *still the only one who has this
technology*?? Nobody else has thought of it? Most of all Lady Trieu?

Don't get me wrong. I still enjoyed watching the show for what it was. For the Forum's interests there is almost nothing directly appealing to fetish content (no heroines in peril, no sexy female characters, hardly any costumes, etc.), and I remember Femina saying this about The Mandalorian, yet it's even truer for The Watchmen.

But since I knew from the start what Lindelof's attitude was going to be towards this show, I approached it with fairly low expectations, and those expectations were pretty much attained: good Ozymandias segments, decent Dr. Manhattan content, and plenty of wacky machines that do wacky things like they're straight out of Black Scorpion, or...I don't know...that bunker from Lost?

At least there's something unique about this show. Much of the time when the woke brigade invades a revered intellectual property (and this is especially true in comics) they come in not knowing much about the subject and they research it only superficially, then they come in and tear it apart by ham-fistedly imposing their agenda, alienating much of the core fanbase and (usually, not always) tanking the IP in question.

However, with Lindelof, he was not only honest about his intentions, but he is also a huge Watchmen fanatic and comics nerd. So he crafted the series to serve two purposes (the third - to piss off Alan Moore - was incidental): 1) give plenty of fan service to the Watchmen fans and 2) give lip service to all his progressive buddies in the film industry who also read Ta-Nehisi Coates. He learned how to strike the balance while still heavily getting his message across: Tulsa happened.

Mission accomplished.

[brdiy]

3) So Veidt was already using fully developed teleportation technology in 1985...but 34 years later in 2019 he is *still the only one who has this
technology*?? Nobody else has thought of it? Most of all Lady Trieu?

My understanding was Lady Trieu has long possessed the Ozymandias "statue" as seen in an earlier scene. So his journey from Europa may have occured a long way back, and he was just reanimated in time for the final event to capture Dr. Manhattan.

[Femina]

Shevek... with all due respect,

Don't fucking rope my criticism in as exemplar extraordinaire that my issue is or has anything to do WHATSOEVER with how 'woke' it is or isn't. Fuck that! You want to extrapolate the show into whatever political faction you hold, that's on you, but don't drag my name in and along with it. Racial politics and social justice wars have precious little to do with why I think this show doesn't work. I'm a student of NARRATIVE. My critical eye almost universally falls upon the baseline structuring of a story and how well its rolling into and out of itself. I don't actually care if its about good guys versus the KKK. I don't care if its about a muted civil war. BOTH are story arcs that can be done well and present their themes and ideas intelligently and bring about valid critical thinking IF ITS DONE WELL.

There's a reason I mentioned that the shows racial politics weren't very sophisticated - they aren't, but there's also a reason that was only one sentence in my soft analysis - because there are MORE IMPORTANT things to waste our time discussing. The things that I find troubled in this show don't stem from politics, the color of a characters skin and the racist behavior of their antagonist have nothing at all to do with the way their conflict is written and shot. Fantastic oscar worthy films about absolutely righteous vendettas against and OBLITERATION of wicked portrayals of clans and groups are absolutely possible. Several of Quentin Tarantino best movies derive from a place of 'black vs white' as absolutes and do so well, nuanced, and with lasting emotional and logical impact. You don't believe that intersectionalism can result in a film classic western audiences will enjoy? Tell that to Django Unchained or the Hateful eight, films about the perils and punishment of racism in a very blunt (and often bloody) way. It can be done, it should be done, and as with ANYTHING it can also be done poorly.

WOKE is NOT a criticism, and if you use it as one you don't know what you're talking about, which isn't to say that you can fuck that up in your narrative if you do it poorly, its merely to say that 'doing it at all as a nono' isn't just an INCORRECT assumption its a DANGEROUS one. '#getwokegobroke' isn't a criticism, its a rallying cry to censor a mode of thinking that the tagger doesn't like. Fuck that. Read my actual criticisms and don't EVER fucking tell me to just "open my eyes to the real 'wokenes'' of it all and I'll just see..." because I HAVE opened my eyes to it, I have considered the arguments and implications as a reasonable intelligent human being and found them insultingly and REDUCTIVELY ludicrous.

Spoiler

I take no points away from this show whatsoever in Portraying racial politics. To do so and to brush off even thinking about racial politics as 'woke' isn't criticism it's NONSENSE. So to be very clear here, base-lining your story in a setting surrounded by and continually showcasing acts of racial violence and intolerance loses ZERO points from me, it simply GAINS no points from me here either because I don't feel that the themes were approached with enough sophistication to change anybodies perspective about anything.

As a very BASIC example of what DOES lose points from me on the other hand, is presenting your main character in a certain way, then revealing in the ninth inning that she was essentially married to god and finding that her behavior up to that point doesn't actually reflect this revelation. That the plot revolves around said 'gods' death and the narrative failing to adequately inform the viewer that his death was probable or even POSSIBLE based on the things we canonically are already aware of what he was capable of. The plot seeming to be mocking of, to the point of parody, aspects of the original in a way that seems disingenuous considering that your sequel is NOT approved of by the author of the original... tight episodic structure but a CLUMSY overall storyarc ETC.

Notice the abject lack of WOKENESS in any of that, 'boo-hoo one of the villains is a white supremacist' isn't a complaint. Fucking anyone can be a villain, its just up to the writers and storytellers to sell it as realistic and make a statement about it, they simply did not do that here, and so I simply treat it as a cartoon threat deserving no more or less criticism than I would Elmer Fudd as Bugs Bunnies antagonist... which is to say it doesn't register on my critic-o-meter pretty much AT ALL. Weak villains are really only a firm topic of debate in a story that's doing so much so well that you need to pick at it. When you've got deeper narrative problems in play, weak villains are merely strange icing on an already structurally unsound cake.

...and please... PLEASE when extrapolating my criticisms of things in the future leave any further SMUDGED BULLSHIT at the door because its not fucking there!

[theScribbler]

You tell em!!

Not the first time shevek's stated stuff that's "not fucking there!"

11 months ago I replied to him with this...
"Your entitled to your opinion, yet your spin on what progressives think is bullpucky everytime you bring it up. You have no idea what others think, you only know what you think. So let progressives speak for themselves, and you speak for you."

Yeah, brought back memories!

Shevek's political rambles should always be hidden in spoiler tags.

[shevek]

OK, I understood why I needed to put the 'political ramble' hidden in the spoilers. You didn't have to open them but you did. Here are some more:

Spoiler

Scribbler:
So now let's talk about what you erroneously think is "not fucking there" and whether I "know what others think."

It is very simple to know what others think: you watch them speak. I watched Damon Lindelof speak about his intentions for the series in several
interviews. He went on and on about Ta-Nehisi Coates and Black Wall Street, and how he wanted to merge that with the Watchmen story.
So he did it. I am not imagining it, and I am not "speaking for the progressives" (and by the way, I hold plenty of views that would be considered 'progressive' anyway). Damon Lindelof spoke for himself, and I took what he said almost verbatim, applying it to my criticism of his work of art.

That's it.

Femina:
Sorry to say that I didn't "rope you" into anything at all. I simply drew parallels between our criticisms. You didn't like the corruption of the Watchmen narrative which wasn't true to the comic. I didn't like the corruption where an agenda (Coates/Tulsa) was injected in the comic's narrative for no reason at all other than Lindelof simply decided it needed to happen. If you want to emphasize the differences between our critical approaches (one being artistic, and one being more sociopolitical) then that's fine, and I accept that. You need not blow a gasket over it.

Also, as far as Tarantino being 'intersectional', that's not really accurate. Intersectionalists don't believe in stark black-and-white good-and-evil. They believe in a complicated progressive stack of oppression where the amount of evil that you radiate is measured by your identity rather than your deeds. I'm pretty sure that Tarantino isn't down with that political leaning. He has a rather nuanced perspective, and those two films that you mentioned were actually analyzed to death for political incorrectness and appropriating black stories and tropes, even though he was generally praised by critics. Then more recently, the progressive left turned on him entirely, cornering him with questions at a press conference about the number of lines Margot Robbie had in Once Upon a Time Hollywood and trying to use Cancel Culture tactics on him: "Quention Tarantino's exploitation has no place in Hollywood anymore." From the way Tarantino responded to them (stone-faced silence, with no kowtowing apologies) I would surmise he did not agree with their opinions. He might have been liberal and edgy for the 90s but he is not far-left enough for the current Twitter mobs.

Also, I didn't comment in your smudging thread once, remember? And the reason is that I don't necessarily agree with all of your pat conclusions about word usage, and I didn't want to get into intricate arguments about semantics and linguistics, etc that would take up a ton of time. If that's alright with you.

[Femina]

OK, I understood why I needed to put the 'political ramble' hidden in the spoilers. You didn't have to open them but you did. Here are some more:

Spoiler

Scribbler:
So now let's talk about what you erroneously think is "not fucking there" and whether I "know what others think."

It is very simple to know what others think: you watch them speak. I watched Damon Lindelof speak about his intentions for the series in several
interviews. He went on and on about Ta-Nehisi Coates and Black Wall Street, and how he wanted to merge that with the Watchmen story.
So he did it. I am not imagining it, and I am not "speaking for the progressives" (and by the way, I hold plenty of views that would be considered 'progressive' anyway). Damon Lindelof spoke for himself, and I took what he said almost verbatim, applying it to my criticism of his work of art.

That's it.

Femina:
Sorry to say that I didn't "rope you" into anything at all. I simply drew parallels between our criticisms. You didn't like the corruption of the Watchmen narrative which wasn't true to the comic. I didn't like the corruption where an agenda (Coates/Tulsa) was injected in the comic's narrative for no reason at all other than Lindelof simply decided it needed to happen. If you want to emphasize the differences between our critical approaches (one being artistic, and one being more sociopolitical) then that's fine, and I accept that. You need not blow a gasket over it.

Also, as far as Tarantino being 'intersectional', that's not really accurate. Intersectionalists don't believe in stark black-and-white good-and-evil. They believe in a complicated progressive stack of oppression where the amount of evil that you radiate is measured by your identity rather than your deeds. I'm pretty sure that Tarantino isn't down with that political leaning. He has a rather nuanced perspective, and those two films that you mentioned were actually analyzed to death for political incorrectness and appropriating black stories and tropes, even though he was generally praised by critics. Then more recently, the progressive left turned on him entirely, cornering him with questions at a press conference about the number of lines Margot Robbie had in Once Upon a Time Hollywood and trying to use Cancel Culture tactics on him: "Quention Tarantino's exploitation has no place in Hollywood anymore." From the way Tarantino responded to them (stone-faced silence, with no kowtowing apologies) I would surmise he did not agree with their opinions. He might have been liberal and edgy for the 90s but he is not far-left enough for the current Twitter mobs.

Also, I didn't comment in your smudging thread once, remember? And the reason is that I don't necessarily agree with all of your pat conclusions about word usage, and I didn't want to get into intricate arguments about semantics and linguistics, etc that would take up a ton of time. If that's alright with you.

You don't have to spoiler tag things that don't have spoilers for the show. Scribbler wishing your political things were all spoiler tagged was probably more wishing than actual intent (though I confess to NOT being Scribbler on this one so I can't profess to know)

Where it comes to your or others ideas of the validity of smudged language, frankly, I don't care. I've become like you and yours in that regard. Where you feel free to slap 'woke' or 'snowflake' or other such nonsense freely and without explanation as though they are legitimized language and insults, I now feel free to tell anyone raping language in this way to stuff it the fuck up, openly and with all the contempt that sort of language incites within me. If you'd like to discuss that argument intricately we may do so in the smudging thread if you'd like (I won't really do it HERE in the Watchmen thread), allowing that you realize that I'm unlikely to be kind there, nor to take you all that serious and far more likely to chuckle and drop childish notes and pranks in my parody of behavior of twitter types utilizing said language... because I've reached that point of 'don't fucking care.

So point blank, you drop a political slang jargon in my presence, you're gonna irk me. You INCLUDE me in the same sentence as said jargon, I'm gonna get MAD! Now feel free to go whine about buthurt 'snowflakes' wherever you like and I'll feel free show up to snarl at the continued rape of the words intended purpose. Them's muh 'triggering' words now. Trigger me at your own peril... but to be clear I'm not telling you what to do, say what you like, just know that I'm through pretending like these smudged words aren't stupid things to say simply because people have the freedom to say them. I have THAT freedom as well. We clear? Back to topic.


None of which invalidates that where the Watchmen is concerned, I completely agree with you that its a lackluster, unsatisfying and totally unworthy sequel to its source.

Spoiler

If that's the fault of geopolitical plot threads being induced into the storyline... its only because they were poorly implemented geopolitical plot threads that did nothing of consequence. Replace the race stuff with Wile E Cyote and frankly... the story implications don't actually change at all. THAT'S why I don't consider them sophisticated, because they are 'just there'... but that doesn't mean the show is failing because its including politics, it means its failing because its including politics and NOT using them. 'Look politics!' isn't actually a statement or a plot thread anymore than all the 'get woke' nonsense is, its just pointing out that politics exist. Similarly going 'look racism' doesn't actually mean you have anything to SAY about racism, it just means you saw it... Still it loses no points from me here because saying nothing about something means you just haven't said anything about it... every story involves countless little things that are just 'there' to serve as a block in the worldbuilding... SOMETHING had to be there or it'd have been a missing block, but the story doesn't care whats there, therefore ANYTHING is free to be there. In this case it just happens that the block they put there was a bunch of racists...

[shevek]

Yes of course we'll get back to topic, Femina, but the thing is - Watchmen is the topic, and Lindelof has made the show *primarily* about racism even though the comic itself isn't about that - it's just one topic among others that the comic material addresses. And as far as getting 'triggered' when someone uses a certain word or phrase, all I can say about that is...I'm using the terms as millions of people use them in Current Year. So, hit back if you must, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop using them in reasonable doses.

Anyway, unless a whole bunch of other people chime in, the Watchmen thread is nearly done for the season.
I'll definitely check out what happens in Season 2.....but now it's on to talking about The Expanse Season 4..I'm four episodes in already!

[Femina]

Yes of course we'll get back to topic, Femina, but the thing is - Watchmen is the topic, and Lindelof has made the show *primarily* about racism even though the comic itself isn't about that - it's just one topic among others that the comic material addresses. And as far as getting 'triggered' when someone uses a certain word or phrase, all I can say about that is...I'm using the terms as millions of people use them in Current Year. So, hit back if you must, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop using them in reasonable doses.

Anyway, unless a whole bunch of other people chime in, the Watchmen thread is nearly done for the season.
I'll definitely check out what happens in Season 2.....but now it's on to talking about The Expanse Season 4..I'm four episodes in already!

Except its NOT primarily about racism at all. It's primarily a convoluted television drama with no primary theme building towards a big flashy climax that isn't really important or engaging enough to warrant this sequel. If you watched every episode in this series and decided that racism was the primary plot thread... I don't know what to tell you other than that you're paying too much attention to the racism. Given our current geopolitical climate I suppose it's not uncommon for people to hyper-concentrate on this sort of thing but its the truth. Saying this show was primarily about racism is like saying this show was primarily about inter-dimensional squids just because raining squids appeared in several episodes... a thing I feel safe enough to talk about OUTSIDE of the spoiler tags!

Spoiler

The first two episodes deal a lot with the fact that racism in Tulsa 'might be causing trouble ooooh' And then the hooded justice episode deals with racisms, but basically none of the rest do. By the final episode the fact that the racists are involved at all is basically a side plot for making fun of. If this show is 'primarily' about anything, it's primarily about Dr. Manhattan dying for... some raisin.

[TIEnTEEZ]

Yes of course we'll get back to topic, Femina, but the thing is - Watchmen is the topic, and Lindelof has made the show *primarily* about racism even though the comic itself isn't about that - it's just one topic among others that the comic material addresses. And as far as getting 'triggered' when someone uses a certain word or phrase, all I can say about that is...I'm using the terms as millions of people use them in Current Year. So, hit back if you must, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop using them in reasonable doses.

Anyway, unless a whole bunch of other people chime in, the Watchmen thread is nearly done for the season.
I'll definitely check out what happens in Season 2.....but now it's on to talking about The Expanse Season 4..I'm four episodes in already!

Except its NOT primarily about racism at all. It's primarily a convoluted television drama with no primary theme building towards a big flashy climax that isn't really important or engaging enough to warrant this sequel. If you watched every episode in this series and decided that racism was the primary plot thread... I don't know what to tell you other than that you're paying too much attention to the racism. Given our current geopolitical climate I suppose it's not uncommon for people to hyper-concentrate on this sort of thing but its the truth. Saying this show was primarily about racism is like saying this show was primarily about inter-dimensional squids just because raining squids appeared in several episodes... a thing I feel safe enough to talk about OUTSIDE of the spoiler tags!

Spoiler

The first two episodes deal a lot with the fact that racism in Tulsa 'might be causing trouble ooooh' And then the hooded justice episode deals with racisms, but basically none of the rest do. By the final episode the fact that the racists are involved at all is basically a side plot for making fun of. If this show is 'primarily' about anything, it's primarily about Dr. Manhattan dying for... some raisin.

Well, by your own admission, at least three out of the 8 episodes in the series focused heavily on racism. So that's kind've a lot.

[shevek]

There's way more than that, TIEnTEEZ.

Once again, it is not me who watched the show and decided that the primary theme (outside the continuation of the Watchmen universe itself) is racism. It was Damon Lindelof who made the decision. He says so in his interviews. He wanted to make a show about a specific event in Tulsa (which is entirely about racism) and its aftermath, and he also wanted to make a Watchmen show. He figured if he made the Tulsa show by itself, nobody would watch it. So he made the two shows at the same time. That makes the primary theme racism.

The show is set mostly in Tulsa for that very reason, when it could have been set anywhere, including in the same city most of the comic is set in : New York City where Veidt dropped the mega-squid. Whether you're talking about police shootings of black men, or black teenagers attacking ultra-Orthodox Jews, there are plenty of racist incidents throughout New York City history that could have been used rather than setting the show in Tulsa.
But that would not have paid tribute to Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Lindelof also made the new main character (Angela) black, and made Hooded Justice black, and his entire origin story about racism. He also made Lady Trieu's origin story about racism (America and Dr Manhattan conquering Vietnam imperialistically - Trieu's obsession about wanting to forcibly change society is based on her position on the Oppression Stack, and how much she hates Dr Manhattan) and he made the motivation of the one of the two major villains (Cyclops / the Senator) entirely about racism as well.

He even made Veidt's plan to change America about making sure Robert Redford was elected, and the main thing we are told about Redford's post-election accomplishments is not that he put "a chicken in every pot" or provided everyone "forty acres and a mule" (which would be class-based change) but that he did reparations and reconciliation (race-based change). Again, entirely about race, and entirely within the topic of Ta-Nehisi Coates' book.

In addition to all of the above evidence, I now present to you a conclusive tidbit that you probably didn't see mentioned anywhere because somehow journalists aren't smart enough to Google. I guarantee you nobody has asked Lindelof about this: Angela's last name is Abar, correct? Well, look what I found upon simply Googling the word "Abar":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abar,_the ... k_Superman
Abar, The First Black Superman is a 1977 blaxploitation film directed by Frank Packard and starring J. Walter Smith, Tobar Mayo, and Roxie Young. When it was released on VHS in 1990, it was re-titled In Your Face. Premise: Upon moving into a bigoted neighbourhood, the scientist father of a persecuted black family gives a superpower elixir to a tough bodyguard, who then becomes a superpowered crimefighter.

What is her husband's name in this show? Cal Abar. Kal Abar. Kal-El. Get it now? Black Superman again. (In addition, Abar was also a Nubian queen from Kush in the 24th Egyptian Dynasty).

So I could just as easily say if you are watching the series, and you *don't* see the influence of Coates on Lindelof, you're not paying enough attention.
Look what Coates did to the Captain America comic - for the first time, Captain America is "American" by being an anti-government revolutionary.

And that's in addition to the narrative problems of the series that Femina mentioned. In fact, the problems are so bad that Lindelof doesn't quite think he can continue because he's written himself into a corner, and doesn't see either outcome (Angela gets the powers, Angela doesn't get the powers) as interesting enough. He thinks someone else should take a crack at continuing it instead, and as the comics geek he is, wants to move on to a possible adaptation of Frank Miller:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-feat ... ew-925847/

Regina King also thinks that a second season would be a "long hill to climb" and doesn't think it would work unless it was "really smart" (which, let's be honest, Season 1 was not). She also confirms that Angela would almost certainly get the powers. How would you write an entire season about an omnipotent black woman with a violent streak who wants to create utopia? She waves her hand, all non-progressive things are instantly obliterated, and utopia is created immediately. The entire second season would be a few seconds long. (Actually, I'm really surprised that nobody has made a one-minute Youtube parody of this yet called "Hey Damon, I wrote the entire second season of Watchmen for you and here it is - you're welcome!").

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live- ... re-1263295

[Dogfish]

I've heard the ending is a good enough cap to an apparently great series, and that it is worth watching, and the news that there is unlikely to be a second season is comforting in that regard because when a show becomes all about getting another season it has no value. Mostly I was waiting for the confirmation this wasn't going to be just another set of interesting mysteries capped with a big Fuck You.

So I guess I'll check it out.

[TIEnTEEZ]

I've heard the ending is a good enough cap to an apparently great series, and that it is worth watching, and the news that there is unlikely to be a second season is comforting in that regard because when a show becomes all about getting another season it has no value. Mostly I was waiting for the confirmation this wasn't going to be just another set of interesting mysteries capped with a big Fuck You.

So I guess I'll check it out.

Yeah, I was really concerned that Lindelof would leave everything hanging and not explain anything. But I found the ending satisfactory.

[shevek]

This article in Variety is not surprising. After all, Moore doesn't like pretty much any adaptations of his work. He's like the comic book version of "Mikey" from the Life cereal commercials. I guess what's most surprising is that this article comes out now, over two years after the [opinion redacted] of a TV series. Maybe it just took two years for Moore to check his emails.

But, I think Moore fans would probably be interested to get his exact take - and he's certainly not shy to give it.
He's also right about pointing out that Watchmen is one of the *simplest* things he's written, and thus it's hard to mess up unless you're doing it on purpose. Compare Watchmen, for example, to the unholy mess that is Promethea, with all of its esoteric gobbledygook.

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/alan-m ... 235407266/