[9.1/10] Jean Smart is a revelation. Her Laurie Blake has a Dr. House-like aura, far from the semi-naive young woman following in her mother’s footsteps, she is the uber-competent, seen-it-all, as cynical as she is capable representative of the old guard. “She Was Killed by Space Junk” puts a lot on Laurie’s shoulders, and a lot on Smart’s shoulders, and the result is Watchmen’s best episode yet.
What makes the character's entrance work is that she is both a bridge to the original Watchmen story in the most direct way yet, but also someone who can offer a different perspective on the main story of this new series. So far, despite our sojourns to visit Veidt and the occasional flashback to Germany, this series has treated Tulsa as the whole world, with all of the events, political intrigue, unrest, and character having their lives orbit this one community and its larger tensions.
Bringing in Laurie Blake, the daughter of the original Silk Spectre and The Comedian and the head of the FBI’s anti-vigilante task force, as the feds’ representative to investigate Sheriff Crawford’s death, helps pull back our perspective a bit.
We see someone who treats Keane Jr. (who, I’m a little ashamed to admit, I just now realized is likely the son of the author of the original anti-superhero act) with contempt for his ambition and politicking rather than admiration and respect. We see someone who cuts through the protective veneer that the Tulsa police force has erected around itself, quickly getting secret identities, “racist detectors”, and closed ranks local communities in and intuitive, almost causal way. And we see someone who casts explicit doubt on masked cops being any different than the masks vigilantes she’s developed a sincere contempt for over the years.
So much of Watchmen’s early going has been steeped in Angela’s perspective on this community, on the threat the police are responding to, and on its major players. By filtering this now-familiar world through Laurie’s perspective, someone who comes with the authority of being an original Watchmen lead character out-of-universe and her family history in it, it gives the whole situation a different spin. Like the feds descending on a town with very specific power balances and investigating a ground-shaking murder in Twin Peaks, Laurie and her junior associate arriving in Tulsa gives us one more reason to question the rightness of what’s going here, on either side of the thin blue line.
In a much more direct sense, we’re left to wonder what’s going on either side of Adiran Veidt’s property. To be frank, “She Was Killed by Space Junk” more or less stops dead in the middle to check in with him. We see our most tactile outing with “the smartest man in the world” yet, watching as he draws up blueprints, sews and severs, and eventually creates a suit for one of his automatons to “explore the great beyond.’ That is, until, the experiment fails and his efforts to rectify it leave him running afoul of “The Game Warden.”
That leads me to my (admittedly somewhat out there theory): What if Ozymandias is on Mars? What if Veidt’s “captivity” as described in the letter, is him being transported somewhere by Dr. Manhattan, the erstwhile game warden, so as not to be subject to any threats or investigations on Earth. And now, Veidt is trying to test the limits of his gilded cage and see if he can make it out of his enclosure. There’s a bizarre, separateness to every part of Veidt’s story so far, something that seems itching for a big reveal to let everything fall into place, and that’s the best stab I can make at it so far.
But apart from my grand theorizing, Veidt’s interlude still seems like a detour from the major story of the episode in the from of Laurie arriving in Tulsa, sizing up Angela, and proving herself a formidable presence in the town and in the series. Part of how the show establishes that is with some of its best action sequences and most taught moments of tension.
That comes in the early scene, where Laurie smokes out a Batman-esque masked adventurer by tipping him off to a bank robbery, having her team be the bank robbers, and then springing the trap on him. It’s a great way to establish Laurie’s take-no-crap bona fides, her ability to get into the heads of the vigilantes, and her brutal sense of justice with her willingness to shoot the target in the back (with the implication that she didn’t necessarily know his body armor would stop the bullet).
And you see it at Sheriff Crawford’s funeral, where a member of the Seventh Kavalry (explicitly made a Klan equivalent in the text), tries to hold Senator Keane Jr. hostage with a suicide vest he claims is connected to his heart. Laurie doesn't hesitate, just grabs the ankle-holstered gun she snuck in and pops the guy in the head, with the bullet inches away from the senator. Turns out the hostage-taker was telling the truth, and Angela has to drag his corpse into the grave and push Crawford’s coffin on top of it to stifle the explosion. It’s a hell of a set piece, showing the two women’s capabilities when they work together, even if their exchange later in the episode shows them at odd.
But it also shows Laurie in line with someone unexpected -- her father. The woman we meet decades after the events of the original comic has taken her father’s surname, and with it, his worldview. Like her dad, she now works for the government, calling masked adventurers “jokes” and does the bidding of the FBI. Like her dad, she thinks all of the noble-minded vigilanteism is bullshit. And like her dad, she’s seen too much, done too much, lost too much, that to be anything but caustic would be too painful.
That’s why the piece de resistance of “She Was Killed by Space Junk” is the frame element of the episode, where Laurie tells a joke (well, technically two jokes) to Dr. Manhattan through a box that’s theoretically sending the message to him on Mars. It sums up her nihilism, where no matter whether you’ve done good, done bad, or don’t recognize the distinction, everyone’s going to hell anyway, so you may as well act accordingly.
Her tears on the phone, her final laugh at the absurdity of the car that falls out of the sky, signify the ascendance of someone who still remembers falling in love with Jon Osterman, who still laments that Dan Dreiberg is (apparently) in jail, and who has assumed the mantle of The Comedian, in deed if not in name. The original Watchmen was about the toll that a life of masked adventuring would actually take on the heroes we so admired in the comics pages. “She Was Killed by Space Junk”, then, is about the toll the events of Watchmen would take on the people who lived through it. Through the character of Laurie, and Smart’s tremendous performance, we see The Comedian’s legacy rearing its ugly head, long after the man himself, and the events his death spurred, have been laid to rest.
I thought this movie was quite good, especially for a Netflix original, though I do agree the ending fell a bit flat.
The writing is strong. It's a great example of show, not tell, as there was very little exposition in this unfamiliar world and yet we could easily understand what was going on.
All the actors did an incredible job of having to show a wide range of extreme emotions, sometimes having to switch between them quite quickly. Smollett is always a dream to watch, please put her in everything. Even Hemsworth, who is usually just meh to me did a fantastic job in this. I'm excited to see him in more films that have this quality of direction and writing.
The plot does a good job of exploring the intersections of late stage capitalism meets carceral culture. The themes of redemption, love and forgiveness through the narrative without needing to hammer down on these too much. Though I do enjoy a deep, heady, academic exploration of these topics, I also like when a story can let the morals come through via the emotional impact of the narrative, and this movie does that well, allowing us to meet the prisoners as people first, seeing their humanity before we learn of their mistakes, and feel appalled at how they are experimented on.
The twists were well delivered and the pacing was perfect for me, keeping me glued to the story while giving the characters space to do emotional development in the quiet moments.
All in all I had a great time. More of this please!
When Apple TV launched (with The Morning Show, See, and Dickinson) there was only one show that was tolerable out of their limited selection: For All Mankind. Anyhow, after its meh first season, the series immediately turned itself around in its second year where we finally see how speculative the concept of the Russians reaching the Earth would look like.
Anyways, this season creates some amazing dynamics and merges the real historical events with the whole nukes and guns on the moon concept. In the beginning of the season, you notice these characters have changed drastically, and they develop even further once the finale ends. One critic I love stated this is similar to another show that lifted up until its second season, that's Halt and Catch Fire. The reason for that series's turn of quality was that the writers discovered the women of the series were the driving force, not the men. The outstanding performances came from Shantal VanSanten as the astronaut wife turned bar owner Karen, Wrenn Schmidt as the headstrong and heartfelt Margo, Jodi Balfour as the closeted and conflicted Ellen, Krys Waller as the undermined yet loyal Danielle, Sarah Jones as astronaut turned celebrity Tracy and Sonya Walger as the badass Molly (who is most likely Starbucks ancestor). Don't who would be up for lead or supporting, but if the Emmy's at least picks one of these women, they'd be doing something grateful. I'd even say Michael Dorman steals the show with his character arc that has us root for the once jerk astro jock to the now pot bellied dead beat drunk.
I gave this an 8, which means there are flaws. There's a storyline between Karen and Gordo's son, that's best to forget about like Landry killing a guy in Friday Night Lights. But all in all, this is a sophisticated season of TV with one of the most thrilling and heartbreaking episodes to appear on the small screen (the finale, which I praised about on its TrakTV page). But there are some terrific ways in which history is intertwined with this alternate reality, such as the Korean Airflight 007 which results in a terrific two episode arc in which the characters interact with their Russian foe (or friends?). Even how they discuss placing nuclear weapons on the moon, and requesting astronauts use artillery is done in a very serious manner that doesn't have viewers roll their eyes, but ask what if the Moon turned into the next colonialist site.
Anyways, S2 concludes with two major cliffhangers that will have you requesting S3 ASAP. It'll be interesting to see how much the science of this series develops as the creators question how far human technological advancements would have gone had we stayed in the sky. When the series was first pitched, the concept sounded so limited and could only work as a miniseries like The Plot Against America, but Ronald D. Moore and company show there more to speculate beyond the moon. So much to think about, though it is sad from the very ending, you know some characters won't be coming back or they won't be playing as big of role as they did in the first two seasons. And if the characters haven't grown on you after S1, they will here. Damn good TV!
