Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

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Finally broke down and started this show, though I haven't read much of the thread.

Thoughts after two episodes: the casting is great, the acting is fun, the production values are movie level, the score is good, the ideas at play seem generally interesting and worthwhile and the script and plotting are hot garbage. There's also an ugly, oily taste to the childish absorption with ultra-violence; the brutality=serious drama HBO formula is in full effect here. It doesn't much move the story forward in any way but it does seem gratuitous as fuck and clearly designed to make sure viewers understand this ain't no funny book this is GRIM AND GRITTY pilgrim.

All the above was EXACTLY how I felt about Leftovers. I quit that after two episodes and I would likely drop this too except I want at least one episode with Jean Smart as I love watching her act.

I can't imagine how anyone unfamiliar with the source material is coping with this world-building; it seems vague and confusing if you're coming in cold but very predictable if you've read the book.... worst of both options, I'd guess.

The other more obvious and glaring post-George Floyd problem with this show is that (at least so far) it pits a masked unchained police force against civilians and removes the humanity from everyone involved. Given the current scene in Portland and soon to be Chicago, Kansas City, Detroit and maybe coming soon to a city near you, this is some poisonous make-believe.

ulysses, I know people must say this all the time, but you stopped The Leftovers right before liftoff.

The other more obvious and glaring post-George Floyd problem with this show is that (at least so far) it pits a masked unchained police force against civilians and removes the humanity from everyone involved. Given the current scene in Portland and soon to be Chicago, Kansas City, Detroit and maybe coming soon to a city near you, this is some poisonous make-believe.

This is actually dealt with really well I think (except for the ending, which I hated more than most)

The leftovers is an all-timer. Way better than this show imo

i mean, the cards they're playing even two episodes in (and the fact that HBO decided to air this free as a sort of Black Lives matter nod) absolutely suggest that's where we're going, sure. But maybe those very serious, very harsh realities are better dealt with in a series that doesn't see a car electromagnetized away by a night owl UFO?

a lot of my immediate antipathy likely comes down to just not being able to cope with lindelof or his schtick. his work at its best seems generally like the brightest ideas we came up with in high school about how a fight with wolverine and the hulk would REALLY go down.

Lost burned me terribly and I've hated every film of his I've ever seen.

I don't think the masked cop dilemma was handled well at all honestly. Like the fact that the hero cop protagonist forcefully tortures a prisoner for information on his accomplice's hideout in the very first episode... and the show never once attempts to call any attention to that act for the rest of its duration like it was in any way wrong or problematic is... extremely problematic! Not to mention by the end the entire masked cop commentary and plot is mostly dropped by the wayside in favor of more typically comic bookish sci-fi schlock.

I also think this show does a wonderful (horrible) job of dehumanizing basically every person of color that isn't Angela in the end. I don't want to veer into too deep spoiler territory if you do choose to pick it up again ulysses (because I agree the gritty in-your face patented HBO ultraviolence is obnoxious in the initial episodes but thankfully subsides at least a bit as the show goes on).... but this show has an unfortunate and disturbing habit of disposing of black characters that aren't fortunate enough to be the heroine violently and often instantly after they have finished serving their initial passing relevance to the overarching plot. In enough of a pattern for a show that was pointedly trying to make some insightful commentary about race that seemed extremely juvenile.

fwiw Leftovers works as almost an "answer series" to Lost in that it deliberately swerves to avoid the same pitfalls and into much richer territory. at its best (the middle stretch, mostly), Watchmen does something similar - actually if anything, it overcorrects, in that a longer, less narratively tidy season would have made for a better show.

xp!

also worth mentioning once again that Leftovers is as much a Tom Perotta project as a Lindelof one, and likely a key reason it's the best thing he'll ever do

I stopped watching lost a few episodes into the first season because I thought it was shit

Fumbled through the third episode. Why is this writing so fucking bad? The Ozymandius/Irons and Silk Spectre/Smart scripting is particularly egregious but there’s just so many bad decisions throughout.

I don't recall anything off about Smart's dialogue. If you're still raging at this point I recommend stopping.

I also think this show does a wonderful (horrible) job of dehumanizing basically every person of color that isn't Angela in the end

no spoilers but this seems blatantly untrue if only because it overlooks a major non-Angela character?

yeah these takes don't register with me at all. it's like you're watching a different show.

If we're thinking about the same character I'd say they are not an exception, even if their ultimate fate isn't the same laughable fridging that is doled out to near every other black character on this show. Okay just saying that is a spoiler but this thread is already full of them and the person we're trying to hide them from doesn't seem like they're keen to continue so whatever.

And even if it didn't happen frequently enough to be a reoccuring pattern (I don't think one lone example makes what I said blatantly untrue but it's ultimately just my opinion)... the one egregious example I can think of (not the first but SECOND time it happens in Angela's backstory!) is so, so unforgivably stupid, pointless and awful that I'm not willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt on the matter. And I say that as someone who still ultimately enjoyed this show and was actually pretty eagerly anticipating it ever since it's initial announcement, compared to the venomous initial reactions on here and frankly everywhere online from ardent Lindelof haters and Alan Moore comic rights evangelists (not that I disagree with either position necessarily lol).

so here's the thing: I'm a fan of Hong Chau after seeing her in Driveways so I'm inclined to try one more episode to see what she does in this, at which point I suppose i'm at the tipping point of "you're not coming here for the hunting" and I'm either gonna cope with the shitty dialogue and plotting and just enjoy the acting and the fx or else i guess i've tried my best.

Smart is fun in the role! Irons is fun in the role! Both of them have abysmal scripting! Basically everyone is great in the role! Basically everyone has shitty writing! Tons of stupid shit going on here with little to justify it other than a definite sense of "we gotta get to the point where all our story points are in place so we can have the two hours that fit within the parameters we've very arbitrarily and sloppily laid out."

I don't recall anything off about Smart's dialogue.

not to be too much of an asshole there; this is all subjective of course.

ulysses do you enjoy the series of Noah Hawley, if you do I think it would explain a lot

(also not to be an asshole, just trying to see if we simply process televisual entertainment in opposite ways)

that's cool, not trying to be combative.

I have mixed responses to Hawley: I liked the first two seasons of Fargo A LOT and then season three tipped all the way into sadism and formula and lost me. I tried REAL hard to like Legion but it lost me after like two episodes. I frankly find comparing my issues with Hawley and Lindelhof to be narcissism of small differences; they're basically in the same sandbox. Hawley's strengths are scripting and plotting (which is clearly important to me!) and I would say Lindelhof is a bit better at executing gargantuan action sequences.

should be noted that my poptimist attitude toward music extends to films/television: i generally assume that if I can't find something to like in the work, I'm more at fault than the creator... there's lots to like in DL's Watchmen and I get why it became a watercooler show! I also kinda think it's garbage and I'm not sure I need to fight my way through the 6+ moments per show where I'm audibly muttering "oh COME ON" while on the couch

I don't find them at all similar, I just hate everything Hawley's done and ppl who hate on him seem to often praise Fargo/Legion

that said, I think even staunch Lindelof haters would find something to admire in the Chris Eccleston and Carrie Coon-centric episodes of Leftovers S1 (and virtually all of S2-3)

Huh! They seem remarkably similar to me both in their nerdy choices of subject matter; consistent more-is-better approach to large form/ensemble cast storytelling; emphasis on visuals, murkily red-pill revealing themes and shylaman-esque twists; outrageously good casting and critical love; juvenile and regularly sadistic torture of the characters to the presumed glee of their jaded audience.

Again, two eps of Leftovers burnt me out badly and I would have to watch a few hundred hours of backed up media before I was ready to dip back into that show.

shylaman-esque twists

both an absurd characterization and a good excuse to repost this clip, spoilers for up to mid-s2 of The Leftovers for anyone who cares

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duzZa9Bez8c

sorry, i think you meant to post this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH0DigVw1bA

good dog

I mostly really liked watchmen but I think it’s fair to say the scripts were blarney

Ile tv threads are 90% people talking about how they didn’t watch the show

Ile tv threads are 90% people talking about how they didn’t watch the show

Ile tv threads are 95% people talking about how they didn't watch the show

I don't even own an ile tv thread!

anyway The Leftovers is better than your favorite show, unless your favorite show is Twin Peaks. thank you and goodnight

okay, that's episode four down. Some thoughts:

- I forgot my biggest issue with Lindelof is trust. He creates a hundred nagging "yeah but" situations that he leaves hanging and then surrounds these with MORE questions built atop the earlier questions. You end up hanging on watching just to see how he cleans up the mess... but it's rare that he actually does! Generally there's a number of unlikely twists and/or a deus ex machina and considering this show has a literal deus ex machina baked in, I just realized that I don't much care about the answers behind the questions behind the questions. Or any of these characters! They're well acted but, after over three hours of screentime, they are all still total ciphers.

- Lesser crime but worth considering: there is no reason for this to be a Watchmen story! It might actually be a lot better without the IP or at least be freer to indulge in the story it wants to tell instead of propping it up with something far distant and disconnected.

- Fourth episode title was “If You Don't Like My Story, Write Your Own”. The other option, of course, is just to find a better story so I'm done with this and off to I Will Destroy You.

give it another episode.

no stop it

Episode 6 is the one worth watching. Duck out after that and you don’t miss much.

Yeah, maybe it's best to think of the show as a delivery mechanism for the sixth episode and the Jeremy Irons bits. Dug the squid episode too.

Episode 9 is really the one to watch (shh don't tell)

agree that it’s worth sticking around until ep 6. If you’re still not convinced after that then yeah, you can bail.

it's nine episodes long!

the first like, 5 episodes are largely setup for the climactic final half. but they're good themselves

setup is arguably better than climax in this case

I was disappointed in the last two eps only because they basically became "WELL actually NOW THIS MEANS..." over-exposition and less the exploration of social themes the early eps were.

I May Destroy You is really good btw

absolute king shit for the hack writing the new Watchmen spinoff comic to get outraged at DC interfering with his vision, on ethical grounds, three months before the comic even comes out. respeck nux.

okay that's amazing

xp wait what? i only saw that thing about King spazzing out, confusing Jae Lee for a #comicsgater (which also makes him look stupid anyway, i suppose, but I get the misunderstanding regarding Van Sciver)

Today DC put out an alternate cover to Rorschach by Jae Lee, who has also done covers for comicsgate, a hate group. DC does not consult creators on alternate covers; I reached out to them to express my deep disappointment. Far as I'm concerned this is the cover to Rorschach #1. (posts other tulip cover)