Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

Why are we talking about Bolland again?

well i'll have to revise my theory as to where Ozymandias is

Three episodes in, and I think I'm done with this show. It might be fantastic for all I know, but I don't because the way the audio's been mixed has rendered it p much unwatchable. Every one of Laurie Blake's lines was drowned out by background music. God help my neighbours every time a loud sound effect happened because I had to have my volume turned up so loud the gunshots were as loud as actual gunshots.

And speaking of music, I feel like the song choices are really arbitrary. Like someone's just picking songs to show off their good taste, except they're songs a lot of people will know anyway ('Mongoloid', 'Israelites') as opposed to good deep cuts. Neither do they really have much to do with the plot. They're just inserted kind of randomly a bit like those self-conciously cool 90s action films that were designed to sell CD compilations

"Israelites" at least ties back to Veidt's expressed love of dub, I would think

I don't have any trouble hearing anyone's dialogue tho one friend of mine has the same gripe about the mix.

Maybe I'm just being a snob but it feels like a very obvious reggae song to play. It's only a minor complaint - the sound mixing is my main bugbear

Devo is also a callback to the graphic novel.

This week's was on the slow side but I'm very curious about the Vietnamese angle.

I haven’t seen the show, but you can turn on subtitles if you have trouble hearing the dialogue? (In our house, we generally watch TV this way by default.)

There's a setting on Apple TV that allows for reducing loud noises and increasing the volume of speech. It helps some. My guess is that maybe this problem arises because they are mixing for surround sound? I also think most of us (me included) don't have a sound set up that's optimized for TV/movies. But I just use subtitles now on everything.

I am tentatively enjoying this so far (haven't seen last night's episode yet), but I don't have any prior experience with the comic or movie, so I often feel like I'm missing something or not appreciating it as much as I would if I knew the mythology going in. Partly I feel this way because all the recaps I've been reading make reference to context outside the frame.

the fuck?
THE FUCK!!
I am really hoping Lube Man isn't just a weird throwaway detail but there's a reason for him to be stalking while lubed

Having observed Trieu, I'm pretty sure _she_ is actually a re-embodied Veidt in the present-day timeline; she sure as hell acts exactly like him - grandiose but at the same time focused and pragmatic, biosphere, statues of himself, classical references and idols (once Alexander, now 'the Vietnamese Joan of Arc'), giant sci-fi world-remaking projects and all

Elephants, for 'memory' - something which Reeves needs pills 'to get', something which Bian is having without experiencing

I'm losing track of the egg references in this show but it is a lot, including Veidt's twisted incubator

Stuffed animal offered to Angela was of course Bubastis

Watching Jean Smart play Laurie is at the very top of the pleasures of this show. She makes 'sassy' as large as the world and as varied

"Three episodes in, and I think I'm done with this show. It might be fantastic for all I know, but I don't because the way the audio's been mixed has rendered it p much unwatchable."

I'm not having this issue at all. Are you sure there isn't something amiss with your AV setup? How are you watching this?

I just caught up last night. I liked the first two episodes a lot; the second two not as much. I am not a fan of the show still introducing major characters in episodes 3 and 4. It's not fatal for me, but if there are still new major players

The sequences with Jeremy Irons might be my favorite thing so far.

Time for speculation (n.b. I have read no articles about this show):

I suspect there is some sort of time warp/dislocation element to be revealed based on Trieu's comment that her tower is designed to "tell time." I wonder if this is a call-back to *SPOILERS* the fact that Dr. Manhattan experiences past, present, and future simultaneously and that Veidt used tachyon generators to cloud the future from Dr. Manhattan's knowledge.

I would not be surprised if some part of this show (Jeremy Irons?) is taking place on a Mars with beings set in motion by Dr. Manhattan.

*if there are still new major players being introduced in a another episode or two, that will be a bad sign.*

Irons is absolutely my favorite element. He looks like he's having a ball.

expecting to see Dr. M and Night Owl at least though

I read a fan theory about what Trieu and co. are up to that is almost certainly more fun/satisfying than what's actually going on.

I am really hoping Lube Man isn't just a weird throwaway detail but there's a reason for him to be stalking while lubed

He lubed himself as he was being chased, he pulled two squirt bottles from his belt and doused himself just before he ditched the belt and slid into the sewer. Still weird through.

I assume lube dude is the skinny FBI dude.

I listened to Lindeloff's podcast. The story seems inspired a lot by TNC's A Case for Reparations, and the idea of inherited trauma. Trieu and her daughter making that pretty explicit.

I listened to that too. The reasoning for keeping Veidt under wraps was just as half-assed as I suspected, lol

I love how they kept that 'under wraps' so much, lol

under wraps as in who he's being played by?

under wraps as in 'who he is playing' I think.

huh I thought the promos made that clear

He lubed himself as he was being chased, he pulled two squirt bottles from his belt and doused himself just before he ditched the belt and slid into the sewer. Still weird through.

I didn't really mean 'why is he lubed' or 'what happened in that scene', but more 'who is this guy, what does he want, why follow her', etc. I wasn't very clear

Keyes, the idea that he's Petey is hilarious and given The Law of Conservation of Characters is probably true. Laurie's disgust with him and herself will be epic

I would not be surprised if some part of this show (Jeremy Irons?) is taking place on a Mars with beings set in motion by Dr. Manhattan.

Yep yep - I think this is the past ('four years'), episode one shows us Manhattan destroying that paradise/prison. I think Trieu is actually how Veidt 'escapes', he remakes himself into her. It could be that she's meant to be 'the new villain' or a 'Veidt type' and that she's not literally him ... but I think she's literally him

Another possibility is that she's so like-minded that he put her in charge of his (rebranded) empire before being imprisoned by Manhattan (though he says initially he thought it was 'paradise'; it sounds like he was lured there, not put there and told he couldn't leave; he may have actually asked Manhattan to whisk him off given how many people were keeping his name in the papers as a 11/2 suspect), then when he does manage to escape, she's there to meet his arrival (the meteor)

I think it's more likely based on the timeline that Trieu is the one who imprisoned him.

That's true. He disappears in 2007, declared missing by Trieu in 2012 when she takes over the Veidt empire. We know she likes tech and clones, so it's possible she created the environment to contain him (maybe by telling him it was the perfect retirement village). I still think creating a bubble of Earth-temperature and atmosphere on Mars (assuming this is on Mars) is a mighty big ask, though, that might be beyond anyone who's not Manhattan. But I take your point that we're meant to think Manhattan's involved, or is around, when he might not be, at least in this 2007-2019 period

I still think creating a bubble of Earth-temperature and atmosphere on Mars (assuming this is on Mars) is a mighty big ask, though, that might be beyond anyone who's not Manhattan.

https://i.imgur.com/U7FBz6N.jpg

whoops i mean

https://i.imgur.com/U7FBz6N.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/y5LYN5g.png

(downton abbey master-and-servant fantasyland both someone's nostalgia and someone's prison, same as the tropical bubble must've been for veidt's frozen vietnamese "servants")

(same as an egg is?)

I just remembered, watching this most recent episode, I kept thinking, "The actress playing Lady Trieu sounds just like whoever voices Pickles on 'Bojack Horseman.'" Turns out, same person.

good catch!

I think when Veidt was using his body catapult, the bodies were disappearing as they hit the cloud layer in a way indicating they weren't just out of sight, indicating there's a ceiling to the place

Not just a ceiling though, otherwise they'd presumably be bouncing back down.

ceiling as in the weather/cloud sense, although meaning that it's artificial

Yeah, that's how I read the frozen Philips – he gets tossed, or walks, out of the bubble, freezes cos Mars, gets reeled back in

It's one thing to build a vivarium, but another to have a huge sphere of simulated Earth in which everything's engineered (clones, tomatoes, bison, etc), so I'm still thinking Manhattan for this. Good idea on time possibly passing at a different rate inside the 'prison', we shall see

I think right now he's just trying to figure out the circumference of the environment, in which case I guess nobody could walk up to the periphery, or he'd already have done that. So egress must only be possible by flinging, or flying, so next up is some kind of rocket

RIP Tom Spurgeon:

Twenty-One Not Exactly Original Notes On More Watchmen, Written At A Slight Remove

3. [...] As a whole, it's very unlikely they will have much to do with the original project or, by virtue of being derivative works, come close to matching it in terms of quality or ambition.

4. More Watchmen is something of a perfect Internet-era story, and as such serves as a reminder of how much we're driven by and limited to the nature and form of the way news stories develop now. You couldn't build a story like this in a laboratory. The More Watchmen story is about a product; people like products. It's about the hype for a product, which in many ways and for many fans has become the best part of any arts-product experience. Because the work itself doesn't exist yet, arguments can be made on its behalf positing an ideal outcome or a disastrous one -- your choice. [...] The story has been simmering as a depressing eventuality for months now. More Watchmen brings to the fore a bunch of issues about which people have virtually no agreement, and it plugs right into culture-wide developments in terms of our attitudes towards money, the role of corporations versus individuals and the value of art.

5. [...] Part of why the buzz is so important now is that reducing art to brands and product makes the state of the brand as something moves through the publication process way more important than it used to be. Part of why the PR has achieved primacy is that projects like More Watchmen exist on a parallel track to their real-world status: they're strategies employed by people at corporations, collectively and individually, to further their status within the corporation or in the wider corporate world as much as they're ever comics in stores.

6. [...] On the other hand, this doesn't speak well to our ever seeing a project from this group that in 26 years will have grown to the point it can be exploited the way Watchmen can now be exploited. When we talk about companies managing brands instead of making things, we focus on the brand-part and not enough on the managing-part. That has long-term implications, too.

10. I don't buy the line some are peddling that the shape of rhetoric after the announcement is partly due to our giving corporations the benefits of personhood. Frankly, we wouldn't stomach DC's actions over the last 26 years towards Alan Moore from a person. We don't give corporations the same rights we give people; we privilege them over people.

14. [...] The absolute and frequently expressed inability of people from comics fans to fellow comics creators who should know better to realize that a creator might not hold making as much money as is possible the ultimate goal of art is astonishing to me, and distressing. [...]

16. That More Watchmen represents the triumph of brand over literary content, I think is more true than overly facile. Watchmen the work doesn't require a sequel and never did. Watchmen the collection of cool characters and isolated story moments and licensing opportunities demands one. It may really be that simple.

17. I'm also not certain how you can see this as anything but a step away from the wider cultural message of Watchmen back in the 1980s: that authors matter, that original work can be rewarded on the same level as reworking someone else's ideas, that comics have literary and culture value for their ideas and expressive force above and beyond their value as entertainment product. I might call DC foolish if they were touting these sequel books as a match for Watchmen's artistic achievement, but that this idea isn't even on the table may be scarier. This is a toy line. This is a happy meal. This is "based on." This is product.

18. [...] I know I'd rather work with Eric Stephenson than Dan DiDio right now. Wouldn't you?

19. [...] I'm at fault for taking a lot of cheap shots at people the last couple of weeks for the joy of seeing my anger reflected back to me in a lot of right-on, right-back-atcha statements from my peers. For all the fun writing that's been put out there, I'm not sure we're any closer to seeing this doesn't happen again. Alan Moore's statement that he just didn't want to see this happen remains for me the most painful moment in this whole matter, and I'm not sure we've found a way yet for it not to happen to the next guy.

20. So what should we do? I think it behooves us to talk about these matters, even if part of maintaining the status quo is that extended discussion about serious issues be characterized as boring and lame if it goes on for more than a day and isn't expressed in language that makes us feel good in fuck-yeah ways about our own positions. [...]

21. Ten days or so past the official announcement, I'm thinking More Watchmen may be best understood as a blow to comics' dignity. It's product, not art. It's a limited, small series of ideas derived from a bigger, grander one. It's sad. One thing that Watchmen did a quarter century ago was to underline certain values of craft and intent and creative freedom that have helped to yield enough equivalent expressions -- to my mind even grander expressions -- that we may now see this follow-up project for what it is: nothing special. Not Moore. More.

Thanks for posting this sic - Spurgeon OTM. I genuinely find it quite upsetting to see so many ilxors not giving a shit about creators' rights and merrily watching this fucking thing.

Oh no
We’ve done a terrible thing

aw man, what a way to learn that tom spurgeon died :(

Great intro to this episode

Also good to see Trixie!

who was Trixie?

Good episode but it was also fairly confusing. Ok, so, these Cavalry sorts are like 9/11 truthers, but in this instance they appear to be .... right in so far as it's admitted that the squid was a 'hoax' but what about it is a 'hoax'? It clearly happened and people died. Is the revelation just that Ozymandias was behind it? Why does that make this any less of a threat?

I thought Nostalgia was... perfume?

xp the woman Glass meets played Trixie on Deadwood