This isn't good. It's just using the Watchmen property. Jeremy Irons isn't enough, even though I will miss Tim Blake Nelson. And Don Johnson flashbacks aren't enough. The plot strays way too far from the original dystopian story line, and no amount of baby squid showers are going to remedy that. It was cool to see Hooded Justice in action, but the occasional tip-of-the-hat to the original comic feels manipulative.
If I hear that characters like Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias provide more of a connection to the novel, I might revisit this. But for now, I'm done with it.
Wait a minute as non-US watcher... Holly hell "Black Wall Street Massacre" actually happened?! Maybe "redfordations" is a way to go jfc
This episode is better and has more pulse to it.
Thank god, the world the characters live in is more grey than first episode suggested (Yeah, it was hinted by the hanging of the "good guy", but still). Cause it would be hard to sympathize with police, especially this one. It already hard to swallow that conspiracy theorists are sort of right here... and being alt right to top things of.
I mean agenda is a wonderful word to throw around, but if I could enjoy season 1 of Punisher with their strawman fallacy and "good guy with a gun" bs, why not give it a try? Don't be snowflakes guys - give the show a chance!
Ok this quickly turned from “somewhat different/strange” to “what the hell”
We knew that Topher was special, so no surprise there. But the Will-reveal, as well as the skeleton in the closet? What!
We need to take things more literally sometimes. Like skeletons and Uhm, friends in high places indeed.
Good episode, but I feel like I'm missing things that I should know / aren't being hidden from the audience.
Heavy handiness continues with that opening (mainly spitting on the black soldier) but damn if it doesn’t go completely overboard with the revelation of the police chief - whose practically in love with a black woman - having a figuretive skeleton in his literal closet in the form of a KKK wardrobe. The storytelling grace of a sledgehammer. (Assuming he affiliates with that stuff and it's not just a remnant of a dark family past. Even then, not sure how many non-racists would keep it hidden in their big closet, and overall I doubt that there'll be more nuance to this in episodes to come.) Might already be losing me at this point. Mystery-box intrigue keeps intriguing, but those rarely build up to anything meaningfully substantial. (Also: Looking Glass giving extra Rorschach vibes with his not taking the mask off while at home this-is-my-true-face type of deal.)
I still don’t understand what’s going on! But it’s a quality show and so far has presented an interesting and necessary racial discourse.
If the first episode is a good, albeit a bit of a rough landing, this second one starts to ease us through the culture shock of a bizarre and familiar world. The reveals here are so classic Lindelof. I'm in.
i don't give a dime of what you all think. I like it.
[7.7/10] There are three versions of the same motif in “Martial Feats”, three moments when Angela has her arms wrapped around someone, supporting their weight, before something major, and a little insane, goes down.
The first is the most straightforward. She, along with Looking Glass and Red Scare, help pull Chief Crawford down from his noose. It is a moment where she is losing a father figure, seeing someone she trusted, who was family to her, taken away from her by vigilantes. There is profound pain in her eyes when she watches the body bag zipped up, and tries to remain calm rather than immediately taking her revenge on Nixontown, even as her brutal beatdown shows how much anger she’s holding under the surface.
The second is a flashback to the “White Night”, where she’s holding her husband close, playing and flirting in the final moments before Xmas. Until all of a sudden, a man in a Rorschach mask barges in and, in a harrowing scene, tries to kill her. The result is an explanation for her closeness with Chief Crawford, a shared survival of something hellacious that hit close to home, that emboldened them to stay in the fight despite tremendous risks, that brought them together as something closer and more significant than two officers on the same force.
And the third is her lifting Will into her car after placing him under arrest. It comes not only after she has learned that her Chief, the man she trusted, was hiding a Klan robe in his closet, something to undermine the faith and love she thought they shared, but also after she learns that this man who claims to have killed Judd Crawford is her biological grandfather. It is something to tear her world apart, to rewrite everything she thought she knew about someone close to her, and a reason to take seriously someone who claims to be his killer.
What does it all mean? Well I think the key is in the opening scene, where we see the development and distribution of a letter to black soldiers fighting in World War II, asking why they fight for a country that treats them as something lesser, that doesn't give them dignity despite serving under the same flag. It seems like that sparked something in (presumably) Will’s father, a realization that despite serving with and under their white counterparts, there was a different war to fight, a level of trust and respect they were not going to get, which gave him, and now gives Angela, reason to question the justness of the battles they’re fighting.
A third of the way through, the Watchmen T.V. series is about the murky intersection of race and politics and service and our national institutions. But it also seems to be about an awakening in Angela, one that opens her eyes to realities she thought she knew, of lines between black and white she thought she understood, that are starting to become much more blurred with the light Will’s little lantern is shining on them.
Much of that falls on Regina Hall to carry, and she does an outstanding job here. Whether it’s selling Angela’s surprise at the revelation about her grandfather, her responding with determination and resolve and tremendous pain after hearing about how many of her comrades were gunned down, her reserve curdling into vengeful anger at Nixontown, or her understanding, concerned interactions with her son, all give Hall a hell of an opportunity to show the different layers and shades she brings to this performance.
It’s also an episode that helps build out the world, fill in the blanks for little questions that we might have assumed we knew the answers to, but couldn’t know for sure. We see what exactly the “White Night” was and how it affected the relationship between the police and “The Cavalry.” We learn that Angela and her husband adopted the children of her old partner who was killed that night, something the kids’ grandfather (Jim Beaver!) is clearly none too pleased with.
And we learn more details about the “Redfordrations” -- the financial recompense offered by the U.S. government in response to the violence enacted against black people in America, including the Tulsa Massacre of Black Wallstreet depicted in the opening episode. I’m apt to slate Watchmen a little for resorting to pretty raw exposition for this, but holy hell, it’s hard to complain when they have Skip f’n Gates do it, and include a DNA test to boot. It’s a revelation that helps connect the show’s political themes to something concrete, an effort to portray a right wing backlash to a left wing government trying to take steps to make amends for the abhorrent things in our country’s past, and to establish Angela’s place within that maelstrom.
We also see Veidt trying to make good on Dr. Manhattan’s suggestion that he might try to create a little life on his own. Ozymandias is trying to recreate tomatoes, emotions, people, and seems to be coming up short each time. His part of the episode seems to take place separate and apart from all the other goings on, without much of even a thematic tie. But it’s an intriguing side-story, one of obsession with his old blue compatriot, and one of trying to find passion and, yes, life in something he can create and control.
And last, but not least, we get a look at the “American Hero” T.V. show, giving us a scene of Hooded Justice’s backstory that...well...looks a lot like the aesthetic and style of 2009 Zach Snyder film. I’m not sure if there’s a broader point here, beyond vaguely slating the earlier flick. But maybe the purpose (along with the FCC’s disavowal) is to show the way that these exploits are still being lionized, still meant to inspire and give a hagiography for a form of vigilante justice that has nuts in Rorschach masks going on organized cop killing sprees. It’s a form of justice that the likes of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre once believed in, folks who may have something to do with Will getting picked up and carried off into the night sky.
They’re the other image that comes to mind when I think of two people holding one another in the way that Angela holds her husband, her surrogate father, and her grandfather here. I think of Dan Dreiberg’s dream of the two of them in the nuclear apocalypse. I think of the newsstand owner and his younger reader reaching for one another amid the squid’s blast. I think of these people reaching for one another in these horrible situations, seeking that last bit of connection amid terrible events. And maybe that’s what Angela is waking up to, a human connection that alerts her to something rotten, something ominous, waiting just beyond the horizon.
If it wasn't for the absurd Jeremy Irons bits I would quit watching this show right now.
I was beginning to think I might give up on this show, but then that play scene drew me right in. I need more of that stuff, it's great and I'm intrigued. Jeremy Irons is fantastic.
But do black nazis exist?
"What the fuck?" is right. Contrary to the premiere, I now know that Angela is a cop/detective, not a vigilante, but that's pretty much all I've learned. I'm still enjoying it, though. Honestly, the scenes with Ozymandias have been the highlight of both the premiere and this episode. I'd imagine that'll continue.
Shout by anthoney65BlockedParent2019-10-29T19:50:28Z
This was better than the premiere. Still very strange. I want to know if the old man pulling an egg out of boiling water with his bare hand meant something or was it a gaff.