Watchmen (HBO)

Okay so why are some people whining about the show?

Cause I've noticed some particular videos about the topic of how can I say wokness & I'm like "Oh God these types of people.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

"he didn't exactly seethe with sadism or gloat over their bodies as he did it."

On the other hand, narrating your life story to corpses(of people who should by all means already know this) is definitely in the ballpark of over-eccentricity and narcicism, specially as he bury is own forest done under the snow(I get is a sort of ozymandias reference but I find that pointless, not surprise the movie cut it).

"It's why his famous "I did it! I did it!" is amidst tears of joy and relief that he has actually saved humanity."

I always feel that was more a child be relief that he won, like "I won, I won, I won!", caring more about the result than the cost, there is a reason of why he apear heartbroken in the movie and letting nightowl hitting him because otherwise is kind of a little sociopath try to sell us is solution, meh.

" it's a sort of sideways deconstruction of the Superman archetype as well"

I dont know, I feel manhattan is superman as overpower god he is, while Ozymandas is lex luthor in his ego narcissistic way

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Everything with white suprematists in it is anti-white, y'know.

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian

Ahaha I knew it, I fucking knew it.

The moment I saw one dumbass comment calling the show a "racially-dividing work" & seeing the Rotten Tomatoes audience reception being at 42% it was obvious what's going on.

Goddamn morons clogging up the internet.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 12th 2019 at 11:23:11 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

In a timely manner, the Comsonaut Variety Hour posted a response video reminding folks that, yes, Watchmen is inherently polictical and the show's tone does a good job being consistent with the original.

Case and point: how Rorschach's characterization and final messages ultimately created groups like the 7th Calvary.

So, who here has been keeping up with Petepedia (the tie-in website)?

Edited by SlackerSpice on Nov 14th 2019 at 9:09:14 AM

I'm actually disappointed there's not a much bigger focus on race.

And when are we going to learn what Adrian did about the Reds polluting the town lake?

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 18th 2019 at 12:38:50 PM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

This show has two distinct plots, its examination of racism and the efforts to recover from that, and Jeremy Irons bringing out the whole roasted ham while chewing the scenery as Ozymandias. They invite very different crowds.

The two plots do look like they will eventually somehow connect in the end mind you what with Veidt apparently being behind just about everything one way or another but the specifics are still up in the air.

"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."

Well I withdraw my objection about it not having a big enough focus on race.

Beautiful episode.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

"Sailors fighting in the dance hall Oh man! Look at those cavemen go It's the freakiest show Take a look at the lawman Beating up the wrong guy Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know He's in the best selling show Is there life on Mars?"

Edited by Voltron64 on Dec 1st 2019 at 8:25:37 AM

I'm starting to suspect HBO might be regretting greenlighting a TV adaptation of the 49th chapter of Damon Lindelof's Watchmen Crack Fic.

I find it wild that a flashback episode covering Angela's backstory ends with the reveal of, uh, a FAIRLY MAJOR part of it. Next week's is a flashback for her too, which is wild as it's the penultimate episode and supposedly it's a miniseries.

Also, I really wonder WTF people who never read the comic think about this. The more I think of it, the more I realise they'd actually be less confused. I think with the medium change and the feeling that we missed 30 years of stories, it just feels weirdly dissonant, like some unrelated stories using Watchmen character names and appearances for symbolism, not an actual sequel.

It's great! Just, that last episode ending, is so......weird.

Edited by occono on Dec 6th 2019 at 8:13:42 PM

Dumbo

I just caught up with this show.

Goddamn is this show better than it has any right to be. Who here heard about a Watchmen show done by Damon Lindelof and thought, "Well, crap." I liked Lost and heard good things about The Leftovers and am generally pretty optimistic, but even I was wary about a show that was somehow going to be a sequel/remix of a thirty-four year old comic book that has been revered for so long as The Best Graphic Novel Ever done by The Greatest Comic Book Writer Ever.

And yet: I think the show surpasses the book. Because the book, while great, was very much about the Reagan era. And it was about Alan Moore's thoughts on superheroes and what kind of people would wear a mask to fight crime. But it left a lot out of that, too. Race in America was never really tackled. (Neither was queerness, which I hope the show looks at, too.)

But the show dives headfirst into it. It's not about the Reagan era anymore either — it's about the post-Obama era. There's Senator Joe Keene talking about how the scales have shifted too far to the other side — "It's hard to be a white man in America these days" — while also claiming he's not a racist. There's Captain Judd, who claims his grandfather's KKK robe was for "legacy," not that it makes him a racist, no sir.

And there's Hooded Justice, who was the first masked vigilante and a black man, but who had to hide his skin color to be recognized. And then, in reverse, Doctor Manhattan, the most powerful man in the entire world, hid himself as a black man. (Does that make Cal a type of blackface for Jon? How fucking weird is that?)

The fact that the show is able to pull off these amazing twists while also giving us in-depth characters and character studies (I love Wade Tillman, dammit) and even evolve the characters we last saw thirty-four years ago (of course Laurie is more jaded and more cynical) is just goddamn astounding.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 5th 2019 at 11:33:35 AM

Damn this show is good. "A God Walks into Abar" was excellent and the timey-wimey-ness of it was played perfectly.

The season finale is called "See How They Fly" and I'm willing to get that's a reference to The Beatles' "I Am the Walrus."

There's also the "egg man" in the song, while Doctor Manhattan has repeatedly been associated in the show with eggs.

Personally, I would have gone with the original version than a cover, but's that just me.

Well, I called the song reference and I think a lot of people called the twists — which is good, because that means the writers had good setup and payoff, as opposed to the GOT writers who tried to "subvert expectations" with the ending. The only thing I didn't think was going to happen was them actually killing off Doctor Manhattan, which that moment was poignant and worked really well, so I'm okay with it.

Some other moments I liked:

• Adrian Veidt revealing that the Game Warden and the entire trial on Europa was a sham meant to keep his mind occupied. And his line "The mask makes men cruel."
• Will Reeves telling his granddaughter that putting on the mask didn't help — that wounds need air to heal.
• The very last scene. I think we all know Angela got some of his power, but I like that the ended it right before. It reminded me a lot of the Buffy episode "The Body" and its ending.

Open questions if there is another season:

• How will the world react if 11/2 is revealed as a hoax?
• What will happen with Lady Trieu's mother/daughter?
• The Peteypedia entry pretty exclusively showed that Petey was Lube Man, but what happened to him? Will we ever see Lube Man again?
• What happened to Dan Dreiberg and will he ever get out of prison?

What was that thing that fell out of the sky after Lady Trieu bought that farm?

It was the machine that was filtering Manhattan's atomic energy and was almost complete. Without that machine, the energy would have turned her into blood soup, like it did with Senator Keene.

I meant the object from the beginning of episode 4

Oh, that was her ship that picked up Adrian. Or it was Adrian himself as a statue.

I really don’t want a second season. Not because this was bad, but because it was the perfect spot to end it. One question though -

Would Dr. Manhattan give someone his powers? He seemed at his happiest when he didn’t think he had them, when he was just Angela’s husband. It didn’t seem like he wanted to do anything besides be...normal. Maybe the egg is just his sense of humor playing one last joke. It’s a mystery I rather they didn’t solve.

He explicitly mentioned consent. So given that the person involved had a choice, I think its probable that yes, he would.

Plus if he did it deliberately he could presumably modify or change it to try and make it less alienating, so someone wouldn't HAVE to experience their entire timeline simultaneously if they didn't want to.

Edited by jakobitis on Dec 16th 2019 at 4:43:52 AM

"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."

So yeah. That was a thing.

Honestly, no earthly idea where I'd like them to go from here. I'd say "eh, just leave it a One Season Wonder, I don't see them being able to do anything interesting from here" but I also didn't expect them to do so much with this season.

One thing... irked me, I suppose. It was weird how all of a sudden the narrative seems to be treating Adrian stopping Trieu as being noble ^note Note, I'm well aware that they still arrested him, but no one was doubting that in the moment, stopping Trieu was the right thing and their dismissal of him having saved the world twice over implicitly acknowledges that yes, he did save it and her getting Manhattan's powers as world threatening. Maybe it's just painful echoes of GOT, but it felt like "we must put Dany down because she'll be a monster," but in some ways worse because Dany at least made her monstrous plans apparent. Nothing she's done or said indicates that she won't live up to her word of using Manhattan's powers for good, especially from Veidt's POV. Veidt just assumes that Trieu doesn't deserve the power because she wants it and because she cloned her mother. I don't know if it was going for Jerkass Has a Point but to me it came across as "let's agree with the moral judgement of the megalomaniac." I don't know if it's made better or worse because the season ends with Angela, well, seeking to obtain the powers of Doctor Manhattan.

Again, might be biased because I found Trieu interesting and the shitshow that was the GOT finale is still fresh enough in my head, but had to share.

Edited by Larkmarn on Dec 17th 2019 at 10:58:50 AM

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I dont know if he cant, I mean it would probably contradict everything eveeything about him in the comic, isnt?.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"