WATCHMEN on HBO

[tabo61]

So Veidt knew Dr Manhattan was on Earth?

[Ntnon]

So Veidt knew Dr Manhattan was on Earth?

He is the smartest man..

[Ntnon]

It would be glossed over when going over Angela's background.

I know very little about the Vietnam war but natives celebrating Manhattan, is that a good thing?

Notice that one the big Blue billboards had "murderer" graffiti, and of course there was the central incident of Angela's memory.

Of course the 51st state would celebrate the figure who made that happen. And of course not everyone would see the Americans as liberators..

[Ntnon]

So what exactly can a bunch of mask-wearing racists do to what is essentially a god?

Veidt, smartest man on Earth, felt it worth a try to re-Inteinsic him. And the 7K are experimenting with teleportation, too.

Maybe somebody's logic is that if you split him up and separate the pieces, he can't reconfigure himself?

More relevantly, Keene wants to become Manhattan. So... shades of The Fly, or even using Nostalgia to overwrite him somehow..?

Given that the 7K channel Rorschach, maybe they're also channeling his grit and belief that right will win.

Who has Veidt? Who is Trieu's father? What is the clock for?

(7K/Veidt/bring her father to earth?)

[Ntnon]

Was the closing music for Episode 7 some version of Bowie's "Life on Mars," or did I imagine that..?

[Kirby101]

Was the closing music for Episode 7 some version of Bowie's "Life on Mars," or did I imagine that..?

Yes it was an instrumental of it.

[JKtheMac]

Yes it was an instrumental of it.

While it was nice to listen to, and one of those times I sat through the whole credits just to do so, there is no instrumental version that will ever top Wakeman’s tribute version.

[JKtheMac]

I have really mixed feelings about this episode. I can’t shake the idea that it is being watered down a little for its audience. This feels true for the whole series to some extent. Every theme has a lantern hung on it. Every mystery is not only being revealed but brought out in the dialogue.

The series has been on a journey, not just of explaining itself, but demystifying itself. It is as if Lindelof has taken criticisms of his work being opaque to heart, and that has resulted in a lesser product. This episode had far too many tidy bows. The most clumsy being the overly convenient recordings on Laurie’s dictaphone. Sometimes I wonder if this is something we can actually lay at the show runner’s feet or if it is the episode writer taking necessary shortcuts to hit the beats they have to.

The reveals themselves were fun. Especially the final reveal which is one of those rewarding reveals that was right there in front of our eyes and double underlined in dialogue hints. I am certainly not going to complain about a Lost style flashback episode that gives us insight into a character.

So, that results in a bit of a mixed bag. I always remember that Lost used to have problems in the lead-up to final episodes. Sometimes, while enjoying the experience, an element of what made the show what it was seemed to be missing, as the plot was pushed along towards a crescendo it was more easy to spot the contrivances and expository dialogue became more prevalent. On the other hand, I am usually the first to point out that exposition is essential and that all story is contrivance. I hope this all bodes well for the final two episodes. That all of this revelation will push us towards a satisfactory conclusion.

[llozymandias]

To go into this episode a bit more, one of the most fascinating aspects to it was the way in which it showed how comic book superheroes were informed by racism and vice versa. The idea that Hooded Justice had to hide his race even as he donned a mask to fight crime outside the strict realms of the law was an interesting parallel with the way that despite superhero comics being created overwhelmingly by Jews (as well as the odd Irish or Italian Catholic who were also discriminated against at the time), the superheroes themselves were made to appear as "goyish" as humanly possible. Superman is a particularly striking example of this. Here is a character created by a couple of Jewish teenagers that was informed greatly by Biblical figures like Moses and Samson and was clearly a wish-fulfillment fantasy against their own real-world disempowerment but not only was he drawn to have as few traditionally Semitic features as possible, his ship landed in the decidedly non-Jewish American heartland of small-town, Kansas, where he was raised "all-American" by a couple of quintessential mid-Westerners. It's not for nothing that Action Comics #1 was specifically referenced as an inspiration for Will.

The other racial aspects of the episode were generally well done and were depicted with a suitable sense of nightmarish horror (though I do think it was a bit much that EVERY single white person in the episode was pretty shockingly racist) but it was this particularly fresh take on superheroes and bigotry that really stood out for me.

Prior to coie Smallville was always in an east coast state.

[Ntnon]

I have really mixed feelings about this episode. I can’t shake the idea that it is being watered down a little for its audience. This feels true for the whole series to some extent. Every theme has a lantern hung on it. Every mystery is not only being revealed but brought out in the dialogue.

I don't see that to an extreme degree, and it seems reasonable where I do see it - very, very little seems "forced" or unlikely. If people are lampshading or discussing pertinent things, it's because that's (relatively) realistic.

The series has been on a journey, not just of explaining itself, but demystifying itself. It is as if Lindelof has taken criticisms of his work being opaque to heart, and that has resulted in a lesser product. This episode had far too many tidy bows. The most clumsy being the overly convenient recordings on Laurie’s dictaphone. Sometimes I wonder if this is something we can actually lay at the show runner’s feet or if it is the episode writer taking necessary shortcuts to hit the beats they have to.

First, I think that the clarity (where there's clarity) is reasonable - and as it ties into the criticisms/comments about the politics and racial focus, I also sense anger and frustration. If it's more heavy-handed than some might like, then - like Moore and Gibbons! - it's Good heavy-handed: these fictional problems and biases and horrors are Very Bad. We know this. So why have we let reality stay as bad?

Second, we're at 7 of 9(!), so if things are moving closer to resolution that shouldn't be surprising.

Third, there's always tension in collaborative mediums - and it should be less of a blame/claim question, and more of an example of the challenges faced when disparate people try to create a cohesive whole. There will be bumps or oddities.

Fourth, the dictaphone is obviously a side-effect of TV-time and contrived convenience: everyone can squiggle to the exact soundbite, have eight-word phonecalls that convey 10m of information and switch on a TV whenever breaking news is just about to break. It's a reasonable contrivance. But, for in-world explanation, we could assume reel-to-reel re-recording and condensing of hours of ramble into punchy revisitable soundbites... or, given that Nostalgia appears to replay set memories, it's not entirely improbable that Angela would give voice to only a few hyper-relevant statements while experiencing them, which would result in a tailored recording for Blake to then hear.

...I am usually the first to point out that exposition is essential and that all story is contrivance. I hope this all bodes well for the final two episodes. That all of this revelation will push us towards a satisfactory conclusion.

Me, too. After this phenomenal 3/4 show, I certainly hope the ending winds up as strong.

[Ntnon]

Prior to coie Smallville was always in an east coast state.

Wasn't that location more of a two-step extrapolation from Metropolis being East Coast, and Smallville probably being near it..?

Crisis essentially relocated Smallville to Kansas, but it'd always been hazy. I remember reading Iowa, Maryland and the general mid-west long before the 80s.

[stillanerd]

No exaggeration, when I watched this latest episode and started to realize what the final twist actually was, I literally went, "What?! You can't be serious!" That's how caught off guard I was by the surprise reveal.

Watchmen season 1, episode 7 review: An Almost Religious Awe

[JKtheMac]

I don't see that to an extreme degree, and it seems reasonable where I do see it - very, very little seems "forced" or unlikely. If people are lampshading or discussing pertinent things, it's because that's (relatively) realistic.<snip>

You seemed to take an awful lot of effort to say you don’t see things the way I do. But, then you seemed to use my own counter argument like for example the position in the series. I have no idea why you decided to take issue with my critique. I was expressing a personal dissatisfaction with an otherwise enjoyable experience, nothing more.

It certainly has nothing to do with realism. Nothing about Watchmen has ever been realistic. Watchmen as a comic was also self-consciously contrived, so nothing new there either.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It’s funny when this first came out a lot of people said it was interesting but asked why it needed to be Watchmen and said it kinda felt like they took similar concepts and slapped the name on it. But in the end we get Dr. Manhattan, a plot revolving around Dr. M. Silk Spectre as a major character. Veidt as a major character. Hooded Justice as Major character. An army of Rorshachs. Oh and the main villain is the son of the man who outlawed superheroes in the original

[Robotman]

Very happy Looking Glass escaped. I really love the character and Tim Blake Nelson is one of my favorite actors. We hadn’t really gotten to see him fight before, but seeing the 7th Calvary on the ground shows that he can definitely take care of himself. When they were panning around his bomb shelter I noticed a copy of the New Frontiersman.