Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkDqxCbyGVk

snake?!? SNAAAAAAAAKE

can't find what you're refering to in the Esther Rosenfield twitter; the Lynch stuff?

oh wait I found it.

telegraphed by the relatively small cast but as soon as I heard “it’s someone in Tulsa” I figured it out, and oh no

withholding judgment till next week but props to the Reddit sleuths who guessed this many weeks ago

come for the sleuthery, stay for the Excalibur joke

on one hand the focus on Vietnam is just what I was hoping for, otoh there are a lot of ways this could go very wrong. I'd be curious to hear some knowledgable takes on the semi-"Americanized" Saigon depicted

telegraphed by the relatively small cast but as soon as I heard “it’s someone in Tulsa” I figured it out, and oh no

― mh, Sunday, December 1, 2019 10:10 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, as soon as Trieu said this, I said to my wife, "The Law of Economy of Characters says that it's X."

Immediately thought about how much Sally was lusting after Cal.

Sorry. Laurie.

Show is about race in America = there is a literal elephant in the room

never forgets

Ok, I love how audacious this show is. On the other hand, let's start wrapping up some loose ends before the last 15 minutes of the series.

I mean there aren't *that* many loose ends - the Millenium Clock, Veidt, and the inevitable climactic showdown with the 7th Kavalry, and of course finding out the ballad of Angela/Jon. But that's not so much for two episodes.

And lube guy!

Kinda hoping he tries to intervene in 9 and dies horribly

I hadn't realized till I actually put the soundtracks on that Reznor/Ross were doing all that instrumental jazz as well; neat!

I mean there aren't *that* many loose ends - the Millenium Clock, Veidt, and the inevitable climactic showdown with the 7th Kavalry, and of course finding out the ballad of Angela/Jon. But that's not so much for two episodes.

Respectfully, I disagree rather strongly: I think that is an awful lot to explain in two hours without it feeling rushed.

Lindeloff wrapped up his last series in a monologue and it was awesome

Just from the measly Spotify credits, it looks like this guy is involved in the jazz tracks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Beasley_(musician)

And this guy performed the silent movie piano I believe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Garson

Reznor/Ross score has been really great. Even though it was an instrumental of “Life on Mars” I couldn’t help but think the “take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy” had an additional draw to it’s cover selection.

I just tweeted asking when trent's gonna work Pop Will Eat Itself into the soundtrack.

I suspect his former signee and fellow score pro would block any usage.

soundtrack is realll good

also: does everything need to be wrapped up? do we know that this is a one-and-done series, or will there be another season?

Lindelof has said it was written as one-and-done but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be tidy.

“We want to see how it's received by you guys," he said. "If the show comes out there and the conversation surrounding the show suggests you're hungry for more, we'll certainly take that into consideration.”

That sounds like there will be more than one season.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/watchmen-may-end-one-season-damon-lindelof-1245569

Lindelof also said he may hand the show off to a different show runner

He's hoping the curse will migrate to a different target.

he could do a leftovers thing where each season is essentially a hard reset

is that...a spoiler?

nah

not really
they just changed the setting each season and introduced new characters

ah ok

also: does everything need to be wrapped up? do we know that this is a one-and-done series, or will there be another season?

I'm not looking for a neat bow on everything, more just don't pull a GoT and cram two seasons' worth of story into two episodes.

It hope this chapter of the story basically wraps up, with some questions left open-ended and DL comes back in 5 or 6 years with The Watchmen we need then.
No rush.

In the interim - 5 years of deep Lube Guy origin story.

There are so many things that have to get resolved or at least addressed in the next two eps – why Trieu couldn't or didn't warn Angela long beforehand that Manhattan was a target, for example – that it's hardly worth speculating about them (Lindelof has said that the audience should be feeling 'panic' at this point but all will get sorted out) ...

But the Veidt scene this week bugged me, for not advancing that storyline at all that I could see. We doubled down on his contempt for the environment and the clones, we learned again that time passes glacially (the trial took an entire year) and that he's frustrated by the time but also resigned to endure it, it's reinforced again that he is the guy behind the squid, we discover again that the only rule for this environment is that he and the clones can't leave. (Given that, the only thing he has to work with is the stupidity of the jailers, so he must be conning them to some degree.) We may find out that he's inside his own statue carbonite-style being fed invented, not experienced, memories, or that he really is on Europa in the future or in the past and that he's returned via meteorite, but this week didn't get any closer to any of that or move the ball appreciably

So is Trieu busting him out? Or keeping him in? Is Veidt her dad, or the Comedian?

"We may find out that he's inside his own statue carbonite-style being fed invented, not experienced, memories" this is my wife's theory

ohhhhhhhhh

curious too about whatever crashed into the farmfield that trieu needed ownership of the land to claim

I'm colder on the idea that Trieu is related to, or even is, Veidt, because to have Trieu's accomplishments be the mere result of being possessed by someone (an older white guy) smarter than her devalues any agency or audience interest the character would have had. So I think she's her own woman and is this generation's equivalent of Veidt, rather than being him (Acquiring all of his patents and Pyramid-this-and-that companies would be extremely helpful, though)

Veidt's experiences being generated would explain the dreamlike tone and general wackiness (in favor of the statue), but given that Trieu's things seem to be vivariums, clones, time, memory, and 'micro-fusion' satellites, the environment could be real (in favor of Europa). I'm thinking Veidt is arriving from space at the farm, but when that happens or why Trieu'd be interested, I don't know. Manhattan could either be on Mars in episode one through time travel (though why Mars and not Europa), or he could just be a Trieu projection to distract people into not thinking he's on Earth. There are so many red herrings I can't keep track of them all. The only thing I would say is the Veidt sequences are most likely running from 2012-2019, since he vanished then (nobody'd seen him since 2007, but it wasn't until 2012 when Trieu's people tried to meet him and couldn't find him), so you could consider them an extended flashback, which should dovetail to the 'present' of the show somehow, probably by having him leave and arrive in the same sequence.

xp lol maybe the clone bit is real and they got fed up with his farting and fired him back at earth in statue form

I think Lindelof's said the farm sequence happens when it happens, eg after the audience has already seen the statue, and not in the past, but I should double-check that. I do enjoy the idea of the clones creating a guided missile out of him, though, something like that may still happen

It may be that Trieu knew very well Manhattan was pretending to be human, and decided to leave him right there, because otherwise his Total Timeline Awareness would make it impossible for her to do something like use a giant machine to manufacture a new timeline or rewind history (her father will 'be here soon'), or trap everyone in some timeless Eternal Sunshine memory aleph. So him being warned he was about to be fragged by the Kavalry too late to do anything about it must factor in to her plans somehow. (Haven't seen 'next time' trailers, so I have no idea what's coming.)

I guess if Bian starts telling Veidt stories suddenly, we'll know Trieu's his daughter, and then he'd really 'be here soon' since she's taken delivery of him, but I'm kind of hoping she's not related to him

"trap everyone in some timeless Eternal Sunshine memory aleph"

something on this lines makes sense... the villain trapping everyone in a mass delusion would echo the original.

plus trieu bemoaning how everyone had misused Nostalgia to relive trauma rather than exorcise it seemed like a tip off that she might want to do something like this...

and really fits the show's big themes about collective trauma and supressing memories

Yeah, that was kind of what I was thinking, that what she might be up to is giving everyone the same omniscient everything-at-once experience of time that Manhattan has (in Manhattan's case this distances him from humanity but her hope might be that it creates a sort of pan-empathy that makes conflict seem self-wounding) – if that's true though it makes her needing to clone and recreate her own mother to have her present nonsensical

Bian: 'It tells time' – not 'tell' in the sense of quantitatively designating, but 'tell' as in qualitatively explain or relate