Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

(pls sub. "defused" for "diffused")

the point of experimenting now is that teleportation is very useful (and cool) and the entire reason they stopped that branch of scientific progress was based on a lie?

the squid was also teleported from that remote island to the middle of nyc, so it's possible that 7k is planning their own squid like attack

maybe the squid is real and the video is a hoax BAM!

Wade in talking to the Senator recaps the consensus understanding, which is that the Institute for Dimensional Studies was screwing around with teleportation and accidentally let in a creature from another dimension, implication being there could be hordes of these things which now have our address so we had better set aside our differences. I think it's ok to think 'hang on, would that even work in the long term' because the book implies not: Veidt is thrilled at what he's achieved until Manhattan reminds him 'nothing ever ends', and Rorschach's journal exists (and in the show is analogous to the Turner Diaries)

The teleportation part is real (anything alive being killed on arrival notwithstanding, a problem with the tech), but if the Kavalry are going to get anywhere with it, they need to figure out how to direct it, which is evidently going to be a while (the Senator's optimistic, however).

Like Veidt, the Kavalry has decided that killing people is justified – I'm not sure if they're an undifferentiated mass, though. Is the Senator secretly running _all_ of them? Or just the group of 'these idiots' he has working on teleportation? Given that Wade's cooperated in neutralizing Angela, why attack his house (other than to restage the Rorshach-resists-arrest scene from the comics)?

There's a little bit of grossness in the differentiation between the rank-and-file (possible) kavalry members, who are portrayed as trailer park-dwelling racists, and the senator and Crawford, who may not necessarily share those views but are willing to take advantage of the political capital their association brings

I can see where there's an attempt to parallel certain aspects of our current political environment, but if you don't care that your foot soldiers are vehement racists, then you're just as racist

weird choice that they gave a character a jehovah's witness past instead of inserting a fictionalized evangelical group

I think the show is implying that he has no ideological alignment with these guys, but I can't be absolutely sure of that. Also, why the heck _is_ he running them, or directing them? He's not freelancing by infiltrating them, him saying that Judd was in a similar position says to me that the plan was to let these groups continue to exist (maybe because the legacy of Veidt is that when you crush your opposition, your opposition goes underground and gets more extreme, so we manage these groups and not attempt to eliminate them). So him being there is part of the plan, but red-pilling them and directing them on a private campaign isn't. What's the private campaign, to attack the government which is lying to everyone?

In this world everyone has a hell of a lot of spare time - mother, baker, cop, nighttime vigilante; focus group consultant, cop, peer group therapist, nighttime vigilante; Senator, underground guerrilla commandante, double agent!

The JW thing, they might have opted for something the audience could immediately identify, rather than inventing something they'd have to kill a lot of time on in exposition for its backstory

They just haven't mentioned aloud that Redford enacted the 20 hour work week.

Shit, I'd be exhausted just maintaining the facade of a bakery in a strip mall that will open soon, promise

how many episodes before Robert Redford himself makes an appearance?

I hate to break it to you but he retired just before this started production. They did write a speech for him to read, but that never got shown to him. Lindelof's said they didn't ask him for permission, in case he refused, if I remember right

Yeah that was in one of the interviews linked above.

The JW thing, they might have opted for something the audience could immediately identify, rather than inventing something they'd have to kill a lot of time on in exposition for its backstory

in the novel two JWs try to sell the newsvendor a watchtower, after approaching riding bicycles in one of a series of cute dylan refs

So, not Mars but Europa, I didn't see that coming

i thought it was phobos, cuz fear

Planet in the sky definitely looked more like Jupiter than Mars

it was 100% Europa and Jupiter

i torrented the first five episodes of this cuz i was going on a plane trip and needed something to watch on my iPad

some thoughts:

- this show, of course, shouldn’t exist and is morally indefensible and stealing it from the internet is praxis and basically makes me a modern-day robin hood

- that said, it’s very entertaining for what it is - it’s playful and weird and cleverly-structured

- i’m still not sold at all on the ‘masked cops’ thing being a something that seems plausible in this world, but as a meta device it adds another couple of layers to moore and gibbons’ many, many watch references: the cops (watchmen themselves) are watching the seventh cavalry and being watched by them in turn, and the cavalry are themselves literally watchmen in the sense that they’re collecting watch batteries

- in other ‘watch imagery’ news, there’s a character called looking glass whose two jobs rely on closely watching people to find out whether they’re lying, but whose mask prevents people watching him (while allowing laurie to check her teeth in his reflection)

- it’s hilarious to me that some of the actors insist on pronouncing ‘cavalry’ as ‘calvary’

- speaking of actors, the cast is uniformly good, with regina king and jean smart right at the top - smart’s laurie is an absolute treat. jeremy irons is also clearly having the time of his life chewing the scenery and is every bit as smug and supercilious as veidt should be, even if his accent is all over the place. hong chau is also tremendous as lady trieu

- regina king has the most incredible copper-coloured eyes i’ve ever seen

- petey is 100% lube man, there can’t be two tall super-gangly guys in one show, it just doesn’t happen

- the couple of mentions of whether dr manhattan can disguise himself as a human seem... significant. have we seen him already? i’m guessing he has some kind of connection to lady trieu but could he be her? she has a daughter but trieu’s first scene shows that she has the ability to create life

- WHERE IS DAN DREIBERG FFS

and oh yeah, all the egg imagery, veidt growing new people in a pond, lady trieu giving a child to a couple whose eggs weren’t capable of fertilisation - i’m v curious to know where this is all leading

one more thing, speaking of creating life - if veidt is on europa, as it appears, i wonder if he’s there for reasons related to it having the potential to sustain life in the hot water springs under its ice?

maybe even... squid life?

petey is 100% lube man, there can’t be two tall super-gangly guys in one show, it just doesn’t happen

I'm assuming this will be confirmed soon, since the show has reliably unveiled the obvious stuff quickly and with minimal fuss (Don Johnson and James Wolk's respective turns for example). I also liked the cops speculating about American Hero Story and Manhattan's identity. whatever Lindelof's defects he's been around the block often enough to understand how to anticipate and play around with how modern audiences behave

WHERE IS DAN DREIBERG FFS

It's implied that he's in prison

WHICH PRISON

The Black Iron Prison.

aquatraz

(it's setting up a stingray crossover) (the only thing that could make this reboot better)

adrian veidt is rory stewart

he's fluent in dari

and like veidt’s hero alexander the great, he walked across afghanistan

anything can happen in the next half hour

episode six of this show will be presented in supermarionation

*is finally persuaded to watch*

I’ve never made it all the way through Watchmen because I find it so upsetting that the guy in the hat and coat has a picture of my parents having sex on his face

— Benito Cereno (@benito_cereno) November 22, 2019

I’m not sure if this show is really stupid or really clever. I honestly bounce back and forth by the minute.

A great sage once remarked on the thin line between the two

I think this episode deserves a "holy shit"

otm

managed to make it through the whole episode without realizing that young william is the same actor who played regina king's son in the leftovers

surely Moore could give a nod to this one. Just outstanding in terms of conception & realization.

i haven’t seen this episode yet but i can say with some confidence that moore will never have anything positive to say about it, and tbh he’s right

didn't realize this still i started re-reading the original GN, but the copy of watchmen I have (probably purchased in 2009 or so) has a pull quote on the back from lindelof

that would be around the time he made a brief foray into comics by writing a series for Marvel

well, attempted to, as he only scripted half the series and then came back to finish it a couple years later. was too busy writing pull quotes, apparently

I know Moore would have nothing to say about it but the level of craft and the weaving into the original GN was really well done.

when your work has been stolen from you, and you have been lied to and about for 32 years, and then hundreds of other people gather around it at once and piss all over it while their leader shouts in exactly as many words “Fuck you, I’m doing it anyway!” over and over and over, you are unlikely to “give a nod” to the graceful arc of four of the individual pissjets

Ok ok

yes we know how you feel about that, you can leave the thread now.

this episode was excellent.

but then I'd miss your explanation of why Moore would give a nod to the excellent episode

lmao

It's evident from the episode itself. Go watch it.

I've liked the show all along, but this really was the first episode where I can say emphatically that yes, this should exist, absolutely. Not like this, but what a brilliant idea, it enriches the original gn so much.

Only part I hated was Jean Smart's expodump on the history of Nostalgia at the beginning. That was painful.

agreed, that could have been parsed out in previous episodes

as if Alan Moore even owns a television