Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

We just got the most profoundly racism-focused episode two weeks ago.

xpost yeah but you must not live near a comic book shop. I'd have expected riots from the fanboys if this show didn't have a Dr. Manhattan episode. Dodged a bullet.

Admittedly, this episode kinda pales compared to episode 6, but still... You have a high standard, tuomas.

if by "the racial issues" you mean the dramatization of a white supremacy in its death throes seeking increasingly desperate and dangerous means to retain social and political power, then yes, def completely forgotten and unlikely to factor in the final episode in any way

It was less blatant about it, but there were other scenes that had a fascinating undercurrent to them, like Regina King's almost wordless selection of Cal as the host.

also Woke Veidt

Well yeah, obviously the KKK and white supremacy conspiracy will still be important in the finale, but IMO the series would've been stronger and more original if that would've been the only major plot, with the Hooded Justice being the only major character from the comic to appear. (Retconning him into a black man was a brilliant move and very much in touch with how the show has been addressing racism and its historical burden.) The plots involving Veidt and Jon feel mostly extraneous to that stuff, and more like a fanboy getting the chance to play with his favourite toys. I'm not a hardline Moore defender like Sic or Shakey, but stuff like this makes me sympathise with their view, that any sequel to Watchmen will only be derivative, which is something I wasn't feeling during the first half of the season.

This piece of ephemera from Peteypedia makes it pretty obvious that Petey is Lube Guy. It's from a journal dedicated to the in-universe book "Fogdancing" referred to above, and includes a teenaged Petey's synopsis of the plot, with this passage:

He was made to be a hero. Born on the day we dropped the bomb and saved the world from evil, Howard McNulty was raised by his Ike-loving, Comedian-adoring, Manhattan fearing
parents to be a warrior, and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. He became a super-soldier — the kind your country can’t acknowledge, the kind that walk between the rain drops, the kind they call Fogdancers. They’re the most special of special-forces, braver than a Ranger, deadlier than a SEAL. Fogdancers do the ghastly wet-work that grease the
wheels of the American machine and mop up proof of all the sick stuff you’re not supposed to do during combat. The canisters of toxins, the animals with weird boils, all the charred bodies who can still breathe and talk. See him now in your mind’s eye, moving through boiling clouds of Sunset Haze, wearing his gas mask and skin-tight silver suit shimmering with SPF-666, looking slick and doing what must be done, in secret, to keep you and me
and all of us free. Or so we tell ourselves.

lol at Petey finding Looking Glass' critical marginalia in the magazine piece he wrote as a teen.

I thought about it, and here's my ultimate fan theory for the finale:

- The latest episode shows Veidt is unhappy that the world hasn't become the utopia he envisioned. It also has him discover Jon has created an utopia on Europa. On top of that, it shows Veidt is one of the few people (beside Angela and Will) who's aware of Jon's new human identity.

- At some point before 2019 Veidt manages to escape Europa. He begins to plan to steal Jon's power, so he can create his own utopia on Earth.

- He manipulates the 7th Kavalry into helping with his plan. How else would they know that Cal is Jon? It's unlikely they got that information from Will or Angela.

- Joe Keene is either working for Veidt, or more likely he *is* Veidt, who has used cloning technology to assume his identity. Thus we would have a neat symmetry of both him and Jon living in a new body.

- Lady Trieu is aware of Veidt's plan and trying to stop it. Maybe she's the one who helped Veidt escape, but now she regrets it. And maybe the thing that fell onto the field of the farm she bought was the rocket from Europa?

My fan theory is that the opening scene will be three minutes of a man sitting alone at a typewriter while 'Make Your Own Kind of Music' plays, and only then do we see his face and IT'S ALAN MOORE!!!

Played by Russell Brand

I didn't remember his name but my gf has been saying that Lube Man is Petey all along.

no offense to your gf but everyone has been saying this since his first and only appearance

my only two beefs w/ this episode: the "appropriation" line was a bit much and imo slightly anachronistic (more of a 2019 line than a 2009 one), and Dr M handwaving his role in the Vietnam war with one line of dialogue. I'd like to have seen more wrestling with that; in general the Vietnam angle seems like a missed (or at least not optimally explored) opportunity

I thought about the anachronism of the appropriation talk too, but then again, you gotta remember this is an alternate history where issues of racism and injustice in the US society have clearly been addressed more earnestly during the Redford presidency, with Henry Louis Gates being in the government, with descendants of the Tulsa massacre having received reparations, etc. So it makes sense that a widespread discussion on cultural appropriation would've happened earlier than in the real world.

Why did Dr. M start making waffles like a human would? If I know my Lindelof this is huge.

doc himself said during the scene that it was important

Guess we'll find out in season 6

Mmmm, God particle wafflee

Earlier in the episode he said he could transfer his powers into some object, through which someone else could claim them. So I guess the idea is to transfer them through the waffles to his kids (we've seen him making breakfast to them in the previous episodes). But because he had just come out of his amnesia, he was still confused about what time it was, so presumably he had already made the kids some power waffles earlier.

Although he didn't exactly ask for consent first so I don't think that works.

anyway that's enough analysis for me, happy just to see where this lands

On the Watch podcast Lindelof sort of agreed with Tuomas. He said Dr. M didn’t really figure into the story he set out to tell, but he realized a viewer of a Watchmen series was going to be pissed if Dr. M didn’t show up

Also they didn’t tell the actor playing Cal that he was secretly Dr. M until they were filming the third episode. Wtf

given that he's meant to be totally unaware, not the worst approach imo!

Imagining him jumping up and down like a ten year old when he found out

"...but you're going to get sucked into a Nazi vacuum cleaner shortly after"

Really puts a spin on his little speech to the kids: "Heaven is made up and there is no God, enjoy your breakfast!"

Although he didn't exactly ask for consent first so I don't think that works.

― Simon H., Tuesday, December 10, 2019 6:33 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Ten months from now, you'll tell me that feeding you the waffles was the right thing to do"

i have seen it suggested that the tinting of the poster is a hint

https://oipeirates.tv/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/3-1.png

Absolutely loved this episode. The way that the story unfolded seemed pretty true to the way the Watchmen comic book played with story. I guess on some level it relied heavily on the Dr. Manhattan backstory issue, but I didn't mind because it was done so well. Random thoughts below:

My favorite part of the episode was where Angela communicates with her grandfather ten years in the past in real time through Dr. Manhattan's sense of time. I don't think I've ever seen this exact take on time travel. Angela's gasp when she realizes she was the one who gave her grandfather the information that Jed had a hood in his closet was perfect. I was trying to tease out whether this possibly means that the hood may or may not have been in the closet until Angela opened it but couldn't get beyond calling this Schrodinger's Racist.

Veidt is sent to Europa ten years before the present of the main story and has been there for four years. This means there are six years unaccounted for, which could be, as someone pointed out above, how long it takes him to travel back to Tulsa to land on Lady Trieu's newly purchased farm. On the other hand, it has not been explained how the 7th Kavalry learned of Dr. Manhattan's identity. Only a limited number of people knew this: Angela, Will, Veidt, Dr. Manhattan (at certain points), and Lady Trieu (presumably). So either Veidt or Trieu have to be working with the 7th Kavalry and are also the only ones who could build a tachyon cannon. Trieu could be anti-Dr. Manhattan for his intervention in Vietnam, but she appeared to be helping Will and Angela, so that would leave Veidt as the one working with the 7th Kavalry, which means he would have had to get back from Europa a longer time ago.

I am pretty sure that Lady Trieu's giant clock is in essence a time beacon, perhaps to allow the disintegrated Dr. Manhattan to reassemble himself one last time as a powerless Calvin with Dr. Manhattan's powers transferred to someone else.

Veidt is sent to Europa ten years before the present of the main story and has been there for four years.

aren't there 7 candles on the cake in the post-credit sequence?

https://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2019/12/fKw3GJmhfI2y.png

I need to watch the ep again cos i kept dozing off and had to keep rewinding. Shouldn't have watched exhausted.

But I did feel like it made the adjustments I wanted from the previous episode. Plus, Dr Manhattan, finally!

My favorite part of the episode was where Angela communicates with her grandfather ten years in the past in real time through Dr. Manhattan's sense of time. I don't think I've ever seen this exact take on time travel. Angela's gasp when she realizes she was the one who gave her grandfather the information that Jed had a hood in his closet was perfect.

I thought this was clumsily written and acted

Why would she even ask a 10 years in the past version of her grandfather that?

Because she assumed he must have had a vendetta bad enough to want him offed? Also, in the present context, she's been rather urgently wanting to reach/find Will for a couple of days.

Veidt is sent to Europa ten years before the present of the main story and has been there for four years.

aren't there 7 candles on the cake in the post-credit sequence?

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Tuesday, December 10, 2019 11:11 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Right, I forgot that Veidt's trial took a year and that he's been getting tomatoes smashed in his face for two years after that.

The story of John Locke in Lost was quite similar. He always thought he was special, because a strange man once showed up and told him he was. It turns out, that strange man got the idea from Locke himself, who had travelled back in time. In this case, the paradox mostly brought pain and depression, as this ordinary and mediocre man kept trying to do things he wasn't able to.

Why would she even ask a 10 years in the past version of her grandfather that?

Because her that's pretty much the moment that sent her on this journey (discovering her grandfather and the hood).

her

i have seen it suggested that the tinting of the poster is a hint

John's moral system is kind of fucked from our perspective due to the fact he's not time traveling, he's experiencing time non-linearly. I was alluding to that with the idea that a future version of Angela or their son tells him he did the right thing. He's making decisions with near-complete knowledge -- or more accurately from our perspective, just doing things that seem predetermined. It's beyond our perception to understand what kind of agency he has. It doesn't look like our idea of agency.

He's doing things that should require a new morality, but his very presence disrupts the ability for normal human morals or causality to work. His flat affect isn't necessarily even a lack of emotion, but a result of his sense of perspective. He's resigned to getting sucked up by the tachyon gun because he's experienced it -- is there an alternate world where he's more actively fighting against that possibility? No, because it's perceived that it's already happened.

It's worth noting that tachyon's are the one thing that can hinder his "future sense"; Veidt used them in the comic so he wouldn't know about squid in advance, and tachyons blinding him was mentioned again in this episode by Veidt, which might be another hint that Veidt is actually behind Keene and the Kavalry... He knows about Jon's weakness, and whatever he has planned requires that Jon can't foresee it and tell Angela about it.

Jon did say that he would never transfer his powers to someone without their consent, and can a 10 year old really consent to something like that?

Just working with what we know so far...

Cal only used his Dr. M powers when protective instincts kicked in, as they did on the White Night
That same night Topher heard the attackers and hid his sisters
Topher can apparently levitate things. He built a replica of Dr. M's martian mansion.
He also had that exchange with Angela about hitting the kid "because you wanted to"
Cal wanted his family to see him walking on water. This will be important for some reason in the future.

So either Cal transferred his powers to Topher without knowing he was doing it, or as part of his protective instict or..
Topher has some superpowers of his own.

It's worth noting that tachyon's are the one thing that can hinder his "future sense"; Veidt used them in the comic so he wouldn't know about squid in advance, and tachyons blinding him was mentioned again in this episode by Veidt, which might be another hint that Veidt is actually behind Keene and the Kavalry... He knows about Jon's weakness, and whatever he has planned requires that Jon can't foresee it and tell Angela about it.

This is what I was talking about above. I could see Veidt's progression as: I am the smartest man on the planet, only I can save humanity>>>I saved humanity, why are you so ungrateful>>>Sure, I would love to go to a utopia where I can be worshiped as a god>>>Being worshiped by passive clones with limited agency sucks>>>I need Dr. Manhattan's powers to become a god and be truly worshiped.

Cal wanted his family to see him walking on water. This will be important for some reason in the future.

Maybe Cal-Manhattan was seeding a clone in the pool to come back as nu-Cal.

i seeded a clone in the pool once when i was five and got banned from the leisure centre

couple of random thoughts here...

• Veidt has never sought personal world domination or (obv) the adulation of millions
• Veidt is not a white supremacist -- Rorschach thinks of him as a hippie liberal
• Veidt is crushed to find that, having by all accounts saved the world from assured nuclear destruction, people remain shitty
• Trieu's disappointment with Nostalgia follows the same course
• Makes sense they'd work together, and there's already plenty of evidence for that
• But neither of them seem to be seeking personal glory or "worship"
• Pretty sure Topher ain't levitate shit. I'm not going back and screencapping but iirc the levitation was a feature of the manhattan-tech legos... the more interesting question is why he was building a model of the manor house

so they have manhattan-tech legos but no internet?