1x06 This Extraordinary Being

[8.5/10] I am torn about “This Extraordinary Being.” Torn because as a standalone episode, it tells an incredible story, one that makes good on the themes of the inflection point between race and law enforcement in the United States, ties them to the interrogation of what it is to wear a mask within that zone of friction, and roots it in a propulsive individual story. Torn because it offers a significant retcon to the original source material that veers into Star Wars levels of “this matters because they’re related to people you already know” cheesiness as a reveal.

But either way, I will give writers Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson this much: it is a bold move to reveal William Reeves as Hooded Justice, and it is bolder still to couch that revelation in what is almost a standalone episode, told as a dreamlike series of flashbacks that bleed into one another as one long take. Separate and apart from my nerdly anxiety over continuity snarls, “This Extraordinary Being” is an achievement of craft, using an Eternal Sunshine-esque conceit to deliver backstory, convey the emotional impact of the story for both William and Angela, and capture the blur and lingering pain of memory.

It’s a pain that comes from not only from the latest incarnation of a longstanding racial injustice, but from a sense of betrayal from someone who became a part of an institution to change that. William’s story of admiring the hero of his childhood, of following in the footsteps of a black lieutenant on the force, of hoping he can make a difference in his community, only to see that the same prejudices and threats he faced as a civilian don’t go away just because he’s in uniform, is sobering. To use it as motivation to become a masked vigilante is brilliant.

It turns the usual superhero story on its head. The usual reason for heroes wearing masks is given as a means of protecting their loved ones, to preserve a safety in civilian life that can’t be had when the supervillains know who you are when you go to sleep at night. To shift that here, to make William Reeves don the hood of the black marshall from the movies his mom used to play for him because he can’t get justice in his own skin, feeds into the themes of this series and threads the needle between superhero adventure and social commentary in the true spirit of the original comic.

It fits too. The noose and the hood of Hooded Justice go beyond simply being intimidating imagery on the page. They become a reflection of the corrupt cops who tried to treat William as subhuman despite nominally being his colleagues and allies. They become a means for Reeves to seek justice in a costume and attain it in a way that he’d never be able to in a uniform. They allow him to exercise that anger in him, to avenge his parents and their community, to fight a fight that no one else is willing to. Taken as its own, individual tale, it is, true to the title, an extraordinary story.

It just doesn't line up especially well with the one told in the original comic. That is not the greatest storytelling sin in the world. One of the most admirable thing about Lindelof’s Watchmen has been its willingness to reassemble pieces and ideas from the source material without simply regurgitating it, something that allows the beats to be familiar but distinctive. And yet there’s something in the nerd nitpicker part of my brain that can’t help but notice the ways in which the retcon strains at the seams.

There’s enough wiggle room in the original comic’s ambiguity about Hooded Justice’s true identity that you can kinda sorta fit this reveal into that space. But beyond the race shift (which the show puts a fig leaf on and uses for thematic resonance), Reeves and his story don’t particularly cohere with the implications in the source material that H.J. was a strapping East German circus strongman, a potential Nazi/Communist sympathisizer, and someone who acted like he was an “old married couple” with Captain Metropolis. You can chalk that up to unreliable narrators in the form of Hollis Mason and Sally Jupiter and others, but it’s an uneasy fit that muffles some of the power of a story that has otherwise done well to advance the story from the original comic without contradicting it.

But what I have more trouble is the “Angela is the granddaughter of hooded justice” reveal. I like this episode, this experience, as a parable to help guide Angela’s awakening. It’s not hard to see Reeves’s motivation for sharing this. He sees his granddaughter as someone who tried to walk the same path he did -- as a member of the police, as someone who is a masked crimefighter in the company of other crimefighters. And he also sees the parallels here, where the force, the institutions of power, are tainted with “cyclops”, with white supremacy, who won’t treat you as an equal, take your concerns seriously, no matter how intimate it seems your connection with them is.

Why does he have to be her grandfather to make that work though? Maybe it makes his interest in her justified, maybe it makes the experience more personal, but it feels like a cheesy way to try to draw a direct line between this show and the original for Angela that isn’t necessary to tell the story. (Though I’ll admit, I enjoy the mythology nod to the fact that Hooded Justice’s costume design was originally meant for a character called “Brother Night”.) The story of a black man who chooses to don a mask because he can’t fight for justice when people see the color of his skin, either as a cop, or among his fellow heroes, is an incredibly compelling one. The story of that man secretly being both Hooded Justice and Angela’s heretofore unknown grandfather ties the narrative and continuity in knots.

Still, I like the other loose ends that “This Extraordinary Being” ties up. There’s a nice mix between the supernatural and the all too real, when Hooded Justice complains to his pals of a mesmerizing conspiracy (aka “cyclops”) to brainwash black people into rioting, and isn’t unbelieved. It’s cathartic when H.J. enacts justice upon the conspirators who are his erstwhile colleagues on the force, and provides the answer to one major mystery, when present day Reeves uses his flashlight and the same power of suggestion to get Crawford to do his own dirty work, a Klan-destroying echo of Hooded Justice’s deeds in the past.

That’s the yin and yang of this episode. Taken as a standalone story, or even part of the broader story and Lindelof’s Watchmen is telling, it’s a compelling, satisfying hour of television. Taken as an extension of the original comic and a “whoa!” family-connection reveal, it comes off a little corny and misaligned. The good far outweighs the bad (as the score probably indicates), but those nagging concerns keep it from soaring as high as it might.

WOW! I’m finally understanding this show!! So this show is a different and necessary approach to an already told story Watchmen (comics) and it also serves as a continuation of that universe, but told from the human and racial experience.
So in 1921 7 year old William Reeves managed to fled the Tulsa race massacre, then he joined the army for ww1 (I think), then came back to new york (I think) where he reunited with the baby who also survived the massacre, joined the police and became a vigilante, got married, had a child (angela’s father) and he inspired others to become vigilantes and he joined forces with them and became the minutemen (capitain metropolis, silk spectre 1, night owl 1, the comedian) all this around the 40s-50s, william’s wife left him and took their child and moved back to tulsa. Then angela was born in 1976 (I think) and that’s why she lived in tulsa. And then the 1977 law making vigilantes illegal, and then the squid accident in 1985 and fast forward to 2019, Angela is the granddaughter of the FIRST EVER VIGILANTE! So without William Reeves there wouldn’t be minutemen or watchmen! And now everyone lives with the sequels of the squid attack and this is all set in Tulsa where no matter fire, extra dimensions, aliens or squid rain white people are still gonna be racist.
I’m really impressed at how they are telling this story!