1x05 Little Fear of Lightning

[8.5/10] The original Watchmen comic was originally supposed to be mainly plot-focused, and only six issues long. But then when the order was extended to twelve, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons decided to fill that extra space with deeper dives into the characters, explorations of their backstories and motivations that would add dimension to the world and the ultimate conflict, without requiring the creators to pad out the plot with needless filler. And while it’s a decision born of format in some ways, it also made that graphic novel what it is -- a piece that doesn't just race headlong into its breathless mystery plot, but which crafted some of pop culture’s most rich and enduring figures.

So it’s nice to see HBO’s Watchmen following that same tack to some degree. “Little Fear of Lightning” does have its major revelations -- like the fact that, somewhat predictably, Senator Keane is involved with the Seventh Kavalry (and apparently so was Sheriff Crawford). It has big time plot developments, like Looking Glass effectively turning in Angela to the feds. And it adds some major pieces to the lore, like the fact that the U.S. government knew that the squid was a hoax and perpetuated the myth for the good social and political effects it had. There’s far more foundation-shaking events in this episode thanin the previous one.

Still, it is, first and foremost, a character story, one that digs into Looking Glass in an incisive, and ultimately heartbreaking way. In the prior episode, Laurie gave her assessment of vigilantes as people who decide to embark upon this way of life as a response to trauma, with their personas reflecting that trauma in some way. From that seed, “Little Fear” proves her right, at least for Looking Glass, whose choice of mask, and efforts as a policeman, are a direct reflection of his foundational trauma, one that just so happens to be “11/2” a.k.a. the giant squid attack on New York.

(As an aside, I love the detail that for however much this version of history differs from our own thanks to Dr. Manhattan and so on, Steven Spielberg is still an Oscar-winning director, who still made a famous prestige picture in the 1990s that still features a little girl in a red coat. Apparently some parts of our cultural past are just immutable.)

It’s noteworthy that Looking Glass is basically the Rorschach of this series, and yet it in an inverse way to the Moore/Gibbons original. He is morally exacting (although, ironically, against the very people inspired by Rorschach). He is lonely and essentially friendless. He is driven by a defining, awakening experience. He has a distinctive, inscrutable mask. And his childhood warped him a little bit, albeit on the side of having been overly repressed rather than exposed to a “den of sin” like Rorschach was. If the thematic ties weren’t enough, “Little Fear” shows Wade eating cold beans for good measure.

The ultimate irony of the episode, then, is that the thing that rattles the foundations of Wade’s world is the thing that Rorschach ended up working so hard to figure out and expose. After a lifetime of a near-crippling phobia due to the squid attack, after a career of priding himself on being able to discern truth from falsehood, he learns that the event that has effectively defined his life is a hoax, one hidden by the government and the people you work for. It’s a truth championed by the people Looking Glass has been hunting and written off as a conspiracy theory by the people nominally on his side.

Imagine what it would be like to have all of those pillars of your beliefs, your fears, your life, come crumbling down? Tim Blake Nelson absolutely sells the glass-shattering shock of that moment, of Wade’s sad, resigned little life, or his warm chances for human connection turned into a trap. For one episode, Lindelof and company focus on two questions: what is the effect a trauma like the squid attack would have on a person, and what would it do to their psyche to learn it was all a lie? By centering that story on one man, focusing on his personal struggles and bewilderment when the rug is pulled out from under him, Watchmen delivers arguably its most impactful and introspective episode yet.

It’s especially engaging to see the subtle ways that one seminal event directed the rest of Wade’s life. The cold open at a New Jersey carnival initially grabs you with the peculiarity of what’s going on. There’s a subtle ominousness to it (though that may just be leftover vibes from Us). And then it compounds a moment of humiliation and self-hatred with a moment of unimaginable tragedy. The big scream is a little much, but it’s easy to understand how a moment like this would burrow within Wade and effect everything else he does.

The episode plays that thought out nicely. The event itself causes him to live in isolation and run thousands of “drills” in the event of another extra-dimensional attack. Him being saved by the hall of mirrors at the carnival leads not only to his distinctive mask, but to a “reflectine”-lined baseball cap to keep psychic waves away. And the regrettable instance of his first romantic encounter being one where the girl was just toying with him to leave him embarrassed and humiliated is implied to have ruined his ability to trust another person in relationships. The episode underlines this all a little hard, but it’s strong writing that lets us come to understand Wade better.

So when he’s tricked by one more woman who uses affection as a lure for a different agenda (Deadwood’s Paula Malcomson!), when he realizes that the squid that he’s been living in fear of for four decades was a fabrication, when he sees once more that the people he’s been working for are working with the enemy, he rightfully doesn't know which way is up anymore.

“Little Fear” builds to his decision to turn in Angela, but it’s less focused on that than in the epiphany and internal sense of turmoil and lostness that would let such a steadfast person be able to make that decision in the first place. By putting the plot mostly on pause for an episode, and channeling the story through Looking Glass, Watchmen manages to advance both character and story more effectively than it could any other way.

(As an aside, I didn’t have a good space there to talk about Veidt’s latest escapade, but I’m intrigued by him both figuring his way out of his gilded cage, if only for a moment, making a plea for help, and truly and firmly running afoul of “The Game Warden” whose god has left him. I assume Veidt is on a planet full of life that Dr. Manhattan created? Who knows! And who knows who might be coming to save him!)