1x01 It's Summer and We're Running Out of Ice

[7.4/10] Watchmen is not a carbon copy, rehash, or recapitulation of, well, Watchmen, which is to say that the most admirable thing about this introduction to the television series is that it is clearly of the world and characters brought to life on the comic book page by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, clearly indebted to their approach and their style, but is also clearly its own thing. In an age where franchise extensions are ubiquitous and even nominally original films and T.V. shows offer reheated versions of familiar tropes, that in and of itself is refreshing.

That’s not to say that “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice”, that mouthful of a title for an opening episode, doesn't take pains to remind you what its inspiration and source material is. The catch, and the thing that makes the premiere a little more admirable than other late sequels, is that those references and remembrances have a twist that reminds you of what came before while channeling it into what’s happening now.

So you have the chance to see the iconography of smiley face through a classroom baking demonstration. You have the same circular visual motifs in aerial shots that create the tableau of a clock face. With that, you have an ambient sound track of ticks to make the audience nervous, for clocks and bombs and more, at the same time some characters literally verbalize the onomatopoeia. You have police cruising around in something akin to Nite Owl’s ship. You have a crowd of Rorschach worshippers quoting his most famous speech from the comic. You have, as promised in the final pages of the original graphic novel, the legacy of a Robert Redford presidency. You have little baby squid falling from the sky and concerns that batteries from old Dr. Manhattan-technology cause cancer. If you’re a fan of the original Watchmen, there’s plenty to latch onto here.

But the trick is how those homages are used -- as a bridge to the current setting and the exploration of topics that were, at best, tangential to what the original Moore/Gibbons comic were exploring. “It’s Summer” ends in the same way as the first issue of Watchmen started, with a murder mystery over the untimely death of a member of the old guard, and his blood dripping down on his pin of choice, only now, the victim is a police sergeant, not a masked vigilante, and the blood is dripping down onto his police badge, not the iconic yellow expression that’s come to represent so much.

And therein lies the difference, and what makes Lindelof’s Watchmen admirable. It’s using the same iconography and approach to get at something different, something timely about the tenuous connection between law enforcement and race and justice in the same way that nuclear annihilation was timely in the 1980s. It represents a transformation of Moore and Gibbons approach, something that channels their spirit, without just following a cookie cutter roadmap or reconjuring the same conflict and themes in a shiny new box.

I like that approach. I like the themes that Lindelof and company are chewing on in this opening stanza. I like the character at the center of the narrative. I like the concept of police identities being hidden and every interaction rigorously authorized and recorded as something to wrestle with. I like the notion of the post-squid attack United States having to deal with Rorschach-worshipping, hard right, conspiracy theorizing domestic terrorists as the legacy of *Watchmen*s most famous character.

I am intrigued (if a bit apprehensive) about how the typical dynamics are mixed and inverted, with the conservative white vigilantes going after a police force that, in this opening episode at least, prominently features African Americans. I like the bizarre dichotomy between Nixon and Redford as opposing symbols on that axis. I like an aged, secluded Ozymandias clearly still haunted by the memory of Dr. Manhattan.

I just don’t love the execution of all of that just yet. This is HBO, so everything looks pretty damn good. There’s a slickness to the production, a fluidity to the action scenes, and an attention to detail in the cinematography and production design that let you know this is a high class production. There is style here and competence here, reflected in the quality of the shots, the construction of the world, and the performers enlisted to bring it all to life.

And yet there’s something oddly soulless about it all. For touching on such hot topics, and channeling such a well-felt story, “It’s Summer” struggles to feel like a real human story, rather than one of metaphors and abstractions finding convenient purchase in various characters. Pilots are tough, needing to introduce the major personalities, places, and conflicts of the story, and this one does it all ably, on top of drawing noticeable but not over the top connections to its inspiration. But there’s little here that grabs you with its realness instead of tapping you on the shoulder with its intriguing but strangely detached vibe.

Still, there’s enough here to chew on, and enough promise to keep coming back.# Watchmen the T.V. series gives away the game a bit in its 1921 silent film opening, giving us a cinematic throwback to match “Tales of the Black Freighter” from the comic. It’s a story about who can lay claim to being the arbiter of justice, who can rightfully wear a mask, and who can be treated and as worthy of enforcing the law in a time and place where racial tensions and disparities make that suspect. That’s what Lindelof and company want to get at in this, and their focus on the 1921 Tulsa ravaging of the black community that gets the son of one of the perpetrators hanged almost a century later, one who seems to have far more but overcome his father’s prejudices, it sets a tone for a show ready to touch a nerve, to challenge its audience, to get at the heart of current cultural divisions in this country.

It remains to be seen whether addressing those issues is enough to make up a compelling story, let alone one that carries the mantle of one of the definitive literary works of the twentieth century. Still, “It’s Summer” promises a series that takes its cues from the original Watchmen, but aims to emulate its spirit, not just its beats, which makes it worth seeing through beyond this first, solid but unspectacular outing.

what was this garbage that I just wasted 1 hour watching. This show is as far from the movie as one could possibly get. Other than the few references this has nothing to do with the Doomsday time clock from The Watchmen movie. for a pilot or plot I give this episode a great big F. I am afraid i will have to force myself to watch another episode just to give this series a chance. Nothing made any sense in this episode. the world or the alternative America that we saw in the movie is one that was clear on its stance when it came to vigilantes. However we have the number of persons that had super powers both heroes and villains . In the series we have a lot of people running around in mask but absolutely no superheroes introduced in the first episode. Some naked guy typing at the chair seems to be our first introduction as to what they may try to develop into a villain. However there is more confusion than mystery. There is a somewhat forced or artificial connection to the characters in the series. At one point a plane has crashed and I realize that I didn't care whether the person in the wreckage survived or died. there is absolutely no character like Rorschach or Doctor Manhattan that connected with the audience in the way that we saw in the movie. This plot is very disappointing to say the least. One would think that HBO could or would have done better. they clearly need to give this series some love if this is how they're going to start it off.