You'd think a multi-million dollar show would have a better action sequence.What on earth was that scene where Ahsoka , Sabine and Ezra are dodging bullets from over 50 storm troopers , oh my god. That was sooo bad. Even I would have directed a better action sequence.
There is so much fury in Rosario Dawson's face while battling , but we can hardly see any of that in her fights and the result is embarrassingly cringe .
So we finished one complete season and we still haven't gotten a clue as to what Baylon Skoll's arc is? The actor has passed away , rest his soul , so I wonder what on earth would they do now .
The storm troopers usually have a zero plot armour in the movies , here they have been dialled down to -100.
And the director's idea to wrap up this garbage of a finale was to show a glimpse of Anakin in the end? Do you expect us to give a standing ovation for that?
Very very disappointing
4/10loading replies
@TheBabaYaga Show: has practically an entire episode dedicated to the relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka and has a conversation in the finale about how Anakin was always there for her.
You: what was the point of having Anakin show up at the end, was it just supposed to be a fan service cameo?
Either you didn't pay attention to the show, or you're just looking for things to nitpick about and you decided a popular character showing up was an easy target.
Shout by Thomas 'Volks' Cunliffe
There is no way Sabine went from struggling to pick up a lightsaber to throwing a grown ass man that far within minutes
loading replies
@volksdk it was all about confidence.
We must conserve resources. Also make a gigantic minefield. Ahsoka must fly straight through and not like hit the brakes or fly up or down and avoid the mines.
Mr Ezra chilling laid back cracking jokes about hey guys gals I really hope I can go home, ya know what I mean, heh, heh, oh it's complicated? let's chat later.
This show doesn't know what it wants to be. Cute alien nomad tribe, soldiers, sabers, blasters .... and slingshots.
Can't get over the fact that Sabine travelled galaxies just to be with a boy bff.Thrawn and Baylan seem like the only adults in the room who understand consequences of actions.
And memberberries fan service 3PO and Leia name-drop, totally unnecessary.
loading replies
So, like, it’s not like your points aren’t valid or anything. But they’re not as big of a problem as you may think they are if you see the good in this show. For me, it works, and while not perfect, it’s quality content. Episodes 5 & 6 are where I got really pulled in, in some earlier ones I felt very much like you.
Was quite nice and felt in the best moments like good old Star Wars.
But!
I can understand why they wanted to have a strong women cast, but why need all men be so stupid? Ezra is being hit, when the battle began. So the women need to fix it! Those decisions are destroying the show a bit for me.loading replies
They're not? Ezra did nothing stupid and Thrawn is the most intelligent character in the series. I feel like you're searching for problems that simply aren't there
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.7/10] I was so pleasantly surprised by this! I didn’t really know what to expect, with this being Marvel Studios’ first foray into animation and the high concept premise of the show. But I really enjoyed what we got.
For a while, I expected that this was really just going to be the plot of Captain America: The First Avenger except with Peggy slotted in rather than Steve. And that would still have been perfectly fun! Watching this show hit the same beats of that film, except with small but significant difference thanks to Captain Carter being in the role rather than Steve Rogers would have been worthwhile on its own.
For one thing, I like how this episode, as Agent Carter did, focuses on how even with her accomplsuhments, Peggy faces discrimination because of her gender. Of all the people for the MCU to bring back, it’s funny that it’s Bradley Whitford’s returning from the all-but forgotten Agent Carter one-shot. But he makes sense as someone who always thought too little of Peggy, stepping into a leadership role after Col. Phillips is shot, and creating an internal impediment.
To the same end, I like how the episode flips the dynamic with Peggy and Steve, but tshowing how they still understood one another and would bond with one another, even if their situations were changed. The two still falling in love, only to have Peggy making the heroic civilization-saving sacrifice play instead, is still heart-rending, and a nice sign that even as major things change, some things stay the same.
But I also liked the places where this episode goes off the reservation! Howard Stark building a proto-Iron Man suit for Steve Rogers called “The Hydra Stomper”? Yes please! Captain Carter saving Bucky, thereby avoiding the Winter Soldier situation (at least with him)? Hell yes. Her finding the tesseract and bringing it back to the good guys on an early mission? Awesome!
The further along the plot of First Avenger that this episode gets, the more it diverges and makes its own rules and own story, and I really appreciated that. Her team’s attack on Red Skull’s stronghold made for a rolokcing conclusion. I don’t know who Red Skull’s “champion” was. (Hive? A Chithuri?) But watching Peggy fight a giant squid monster while the Howling Commandos rescue Steve made for a killer conclusion.
I was especially impressed by the fight sequences here. I have to admit that I had some reticence about the cell-shaded graphics. In truth, the vocal tracks didn’t always sink perfectly. But the action was surprisingly fluid and well-staged. The show uses the freedom of animation to add greater flow to Captain Carter’s badassery, and some of the combat has a more impressionsitic style that makes it top tier MCU fisticuffs. Even the use of lighting and color in these fights stand out. Going into What If...? my biggest concern was the visuals, but they came through like gangbusters.
Overall, this was an exciting start to this new show and raised my expectations for What If...? to be more than a shiny lark, and instead be a meaningful exploration of what these changes in the path might look like.
loading replies
@andrewbloom Just popping in to say i'm 99% sure the tentacleboy is Shuma-Gorath! From my understanding (which might not be fully accurate) he's basically an extra-dimensional being of chaos and superbly powerful. I think his appearance adapts itself to the viewer because his true form cannot be comprehended by mortals (hi Lovecraft), andddd Hydra worships him in the comments and want to revive him, or bring him back? Anyway, super good to see that Marvel is taking this show as an opportunity to get some of the crazier comics stuff in.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.7/10] I was so pleasantly surprised by this! I didn’t really know what to expect, with this being Marvel Studios’ first foray into animation and the high concept premise of the show. But I really enjoyed what we got.
For a while, I expected that this was really just going to be the plot of Captain America: The First Avenger except with Peggy slotted in rather than Steve. And that would still have been perfectly fun! Watching this show hit the same beats of that film, except with small but significant difference thanks to Captain Carter being in the role rather than Steve Rogers would have been worthwhile on its own.
For one thing, I like how this episode, as Agent Carter did, focuses on how even with her accomplsuhments, Peggy faces discrimination because of her gender. Of all the people for the MCU to bring back, it’s funny that it’s Bradley Whitford’s returning from the all-but forgotten Agent Carter one-shot. But he makes sense as someone who always thought too little of Peggy, stepping into a leadership role after Col. Phillips is shot, and creating an internal impediment.
To the same end, I like how the episode flips the dynamic with Peggy and Steve, but tshowing how they still understood one another and would bond with one another, even if their situations were changed. The two still falling in love, only to have Peggy making the heroic civilization-saving sacrifice play instead, is still heart-rending, and a nice sign that even as major things change, some things stay the same.
But I also liked the places where this episode goes off the reservation! Howard Stark building a proto-Iron Man suit for Steve Rogers called “The Hydra Stomper”? Yes please! Captain Carter saving Bucky, thereby avoiding the Winter Soldier situation (at least with him)? Hell yes. Her finding the tesseract and bringing it back to the good guys on an early mission? Awesome!
The further along the plot of First Avenger that this episode gets, the more it diverges and makes its own rules and own story, and I really appreciated that. Her team’s attack on Red Skull’s stronghold made for a rolokcing conclusion. I don’t know who Red Skull’s “champion” was. (Hive? A Chithuri?) But watching Peggy fight a giant squid monster while the Howling Commandos rescue Steve made for a killer conclusion.
I was especially impressed by the fight sequences here. I have to admit that I had some reticence about the cell-shaded graphics. In truth, the vocal tracks didn’t always sink perfectly. But the action was surprisingly fluid and well-staged. The show uses the freedom of animation to add greater flow to Captain Carter’s badassery, and some of the combat has a more impressionsitic style that makes it top tier MCU fisticuffs. Even the use of lighting and color in these fights stand out. Going into What If...? my biggest concern was the visuals, but they came through like gangbusters.
Overall, this was an exciting start to this new show and raised my expectations for What If...? to be more than a shiny lark, and instead be a meaningful exploration of what these changes in the path might look like.
loading replies
@zotobom Super interesting! Thank you for dropping some knowledge!
Wonderful show partially weighed down by more of modern pc bs.
loading replies
@donpalomono I don't really get this viewpoint (and I've heard it before). I think the female characters existence in the story make the show more interesting. In my opinion it would be weirder if the show just glossed over women joining the astronaut program and pretended like it wouldn't be a big deal. I don't think they overdid it, they told the story and showcased how such a situation might have played out in the 60s-70s and then moved on fairly quickly to focus on other stories with all the astronauts doing their jobs.
I hope this isn't the last time we'll see Mayhem, she's a refreshing new character. I'm guessing each person sees something different when they're devoured into Tyrone's dimension? Connors wasn't there where Mayhem was. Or does Tyrone's dimension have multiple separate dimensions attached to it for each separate person that gets devoured, like cells?
loading replies
@legendaryfang56 In the comics, everybody who goes in sees their own personal nightmare. At least if they're evil. The cloak is actually connected to the Darkforce (which we've seen previously in the MCU in Agent Carter)
So, the best episode of the Show Ahsoka is the one where Ahsoka doesn't show up.
It is not great or anything, but at least stuff happens.
They did strech out a little bit over the acceptable trhrshhold the suspense before the big reveals, but at least it was shorter than the pauses between lines of dialogue in the previous episodes.
Baylon and Shin are the only good characters so far, and we actualy got to see them develop on screen, instead of acting like mustache twirling villains.
Thrawn shows some potential, I guess... Not much to see yet.
The actor who plays Ezra has a voice very close to the original (unlike Sabine and Ahsoka). Is he the original voice actor?Oh, the best part (besides no Ahsoka). NOBODY CROSSED THEIR ARMS!
loading replies
@slimyboi You know what I mean, she was only in the cold open, before the titie cards. She had a chat with the droid about Sabine's decision to go with the bad guys and something about the stories he told her in the temple, so he could drop the line "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away". She was the pre-title exposition character. doing exposition about stuff we already know and the title episode, and a small foreshadow about the witches being part of child stories in the Jedi Temple. Like the calamari prince and her romeo and juliet love afair in a mandalorian episode. I took the liberty to being a little hyperbolical instead of writing "the best Ahsoka episode is the one where she in in 5% of it".
[9.4/10] When I watched the first batch of episodes from Watchmen, I thought it tossed a number of interesting balls into the air, but I questioned how and if it would be able to catch them all. Showrunner Damon Lindelof, of Lost fame, is not necessarily known for delivering satisfying endings. And while his series asked all sorts of intriguing questions about the institutions of power and those marginalized by them, and while it threw in one eyebrow raising plot point after another, to answer all of the former, and tie together all the latter, seemed like too much for even the smartest (person) in the world to do in a satisfying fashion.
And yet “See How They Fly” somehow does it.
The finale of Watchmen’s first (and, blue god willing, only) season tells us what Lady Trieu’s angle is, how it fits with the Seventh Kavalry’s plot, how Ozymandias factors into it, what Dr. Manhattan’s role is, how it intersects with Will Reeves’s plans, and what Angela Abar’s place in these grand events is. It tells a story of so many people seeking power, seeking vindication, seeking adoration, and then puts it in the hands of the one person who wasn’t looking for it.
It also allows us to understand not only the plot mechanics that led to the second momentous rain of squid of sky, but the motivations of everyone who reached that point. The racist, status quo-preserving rationale behind the Seventh Kavalry’s scheme has been clear for some time now. But “See How They Fly” accounts for the consequences of Cal Abar’s moment of reflex on the White Night. It accounts for the collection of watch batteries from the pilot. And it accounts for their failure, the assumption that they’ve thought it all out and have all the right answers. The truth, however, someone much smarter is pulling the strings, and even left to their own literal devices, the forces of Cyclops would have turned themselves to mush anyway.
That someone is Lady Trieu, and in Watchmen’s last character-defining, plot twist-revealing vignette, it sets her up as Adrian Veidt’s inheritor. She is, through one enterprising refugee’s machinations, his daughter, one who has matched, if not exceeded, his genius. She is playing the Seventh Kavalry, letting them do the dirty work of capturing Dr. Manhattan so that she can dispose of them and localize him in one fell swoop. It is another instance of a Veidt being one step ahead.
But we understand, for the first time, why Lady Trieu is doing this. She claims that it’s to better the world, to use the power that Dr. Manhattan sits on to eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenals, to clean the air, to fix all that ails us. But she does not seek that goal for pure altruism and, like her father, she’s shown a disturbing propensity to use whatever means are necessary if her goals are just. Instead, the episode suggests that all of this is an effort to impress her parents, to gain their approval, to show herself worthy of the gifts that she’s been given and to prove that she can build herself up to the highest heights of human achievement on her own, as Ozymandias challenged her to do.
But it’s Ozymandias who thwarts her. He declares that she cannot be trusted because she suffers from the same sins he does: vanity and self-aggrandizement. He tells his compatriots that she has to be stopped because she’ll soon demand that everyone bow down before her, because he knows it to be true of itself. And in one of the many little bits of irony and connection in the episode and the season, he uses the frozen corpses of the veritable offspring of his giant squid to crush his daughter, must as he used the frozen corpses of Dr. Manhattan’s children to ask her for help.
There’s two ways to read that scene. The first is as a rare moment of self-recognition in Veidt, knowing what he would do with that power and why, given the hell he’s been through, where it would lead, to the point that he resolves to stop it. The second is another instance of, true to the show’s themes, a white male going to great lengths to preserve the status quo and prevent a person of color from overtaking his position and assuming his legacy.
Either way, the triumph if brief for Veidt. Whether his pronouncements are accurate for Lady Trieu, they’re true for himself. Ozymandias seeks veneration and adoration. He got to save the world, but grumbled miserably for decades because he never got to take credit for it, never got his due from the people he put in power or the lives he preserved. On Europa, he had the thing he always wanted -- endless appreciation and devotion from all those around him -- but it was given reflexively, without due, and thus became hollow and even maddening. And in the end, he saves the world once more, and gets to take credit for it, both for now and for 1985, but it’s also his downfall.
That’s the other cruel irony and the button put on the stories of Laurie Blake and Looking Glass. After everything, the two of them decide to arrest Veidt for the lives lost amid his gambit from the original comic. For Wade Tillman, it’s enacting justice against the man who wrecked so much of his life, who left him so scared for so long, in the name of a well-intentioned lie, but a bloody lie nonetheless. For the former Ms. Juspeczyk, it’s the chance for her to have agency in this story, to take charge rather than be more of a bystander to larger forces as she was in 1985, given time to reflect on what happened and her place in it. And for Ozymandias himself, it’s the price he pays for being known, the music he must face for returning home, the cost he finally has to account for instead of his gilded cage of anonymity.
But the thing that he and his daughter share is that they’re not able to thwart a god. Even though Dr. Manhattan is trapped in his lithium prison, even though he’s mentally disoriented from whatever Keene Jr. and Trieu have done to him, he still has the wherewithal to transport away the people whom he knows can stop this, and to spend his last moments with the woman he loves. If Ozymandias was sent to his own private hell, Jon Osterman spends his final seconds on this Earth in his own private Heaven, experiencing all of his best moments with Angela at once.
As much as Watchmen is a story about racism and its institutional infestation, as much as it’s about masks and what happens when people put them on, it’s also a story about love. It is, as the episode name-drops, another thermodynamic miracle in the making, of two people coming together despite lightyears of distance between them, and the way it changes the world.
That change takes a little dealmaking though. William Reeves gives Dr. Manhattan up to Lady Trieu in exchange for her rooting out and eliminating Cyclops. But Cal very probably knew what the result would be, even suggested the trade to Hooded Justice. Reeves’s plan was to stop the organization he’d been fighting for nearly a century. Dr. Manhattan had even bigger plans, ones that may have widened even Will Reeves’s aspirations here.
As the season’s penultimate episode portended, Dr. Manhattan left something behind for his wife, a piece of himself that would give her godlike powers. In the final scene of the episode, she consumes it, and while the episode ends too tantalizingly soon before she can walk on water, the implication is clear.
So many people in this episode reached toward Dr. Manhattan this season, so many aiming to replicate him or supplant him or best him. But the person who receives his abilities is not someone who sought it out. It’s someone who it was given to, who it was earned by, through her capacity to love, for her capacity to try to save what might be unsaveable, for her willingness to fight and appreciate what’s lovely and wonderful even if it’s only fleeting.
But it’s also someone who has awoken to the injustices that lie under her nose. When Will Reeves offers some comfort and commiseration to his granddaughter, it comes with one admonition -- that for all Dr. Manhattan did, he could have done more. THey’re the words of a man who seems to know what’s coming. His project, and the project of Lindelof’s Watchmen, was to show an awakening in Angela, an internal transition from someone who believed, like Reeves himself once did, that the systems could be fixed from the inside, that they could be welcoming to and changed by people who looked like them, but that the color of law was never going to supersede the color of their skin in the people who tried to hold onto the power that badge conferred. Hers is a tale of epiphany, of understanding, of an insidiousness in the institutions she risked her life to protect that was, unbeknownst to her, ready to chew her up and spit her out like it had done so many others.
So she takes the power that would never be willingly forsaken by those who possess it. It is, in its own subtle way, a radical message. It’s radical because it ties in with a moral that David Simon, who chronicled faltering institutions himself on The Wire once put it, that when those institutions have fully failed you, the only thing left to do is pick up a brick. Will Reeves couldn’t find justice from the police department or the sterling heroes that were supposed to help him, so he found it himself, often in bloody terms. Watchmen firmly suggests that these institutions retain the same debilitating stink of racism in 2019 that they did during the time of Black Wall Street, and ends with Angela Abar picking up one hell of a brick.
The way Angela’s son looks at her own mask, much as William Reeves’s son did his, suggests (as Watchmen inevitably must) that this cycle isn’t over, that the age of heroes and vigilantes and those who’ve suffered trauma finding a way to exercise it in the name of justice isn’t over just yet. Topher has suffered his fair share of trauma today, and long before. When Ozymandias kills The Game Warden, his erstwhile servant asks him why he made him wear a mask, and Veidt responds that masks make men cruel. Only time will tell whether Angela’s son will don the same type of hood his mother and great grandfather did, if he will mete out justice with the same sort of cruelty, and on whom.
But the other way that Watchmen is radical come in whose hands it puts the responsibility and the ability to obtain that justice. While superhero stories can come in many stripes, most often they are a power fantasy. A strapping hero, often one the reader or viewer can see themselves in, fights for truth and justice and the American way with a force and a level of excitement that the muddy grays and grim realities of the real world can’t match. It is, if not as radical as the show’s political message, then certainly bold, for the show to declare in Angela’s raw egg cocktail and first, tenuous step, that it’s time for a change in who gets to assume those power fantasies.
It is remarkable, then, how well this show puts everyone in place and builds, thematically and narratively, to that moment. In the end, Watchmen finds a reason to bring everyone of significance to the show’s story and themes into the same location, as though each vignette and sequence we witnessed led to this moment. It reaches its climax at the same place it started, in what was once Black Wall Street and the theater where young Will Reeves saw a black hero in a mask and borrowed his name and mission. For a show that, from its first frame, asked probing questions about who holds power, how that intersects with the color of law, and who gets to be inspired by the power fantasies of masked adventures, it answers all three with a woman of color about to walk on water.
Each setup had a payoff and each payoff had a setup. Almost every seeming loose end is weaved together by the final frame. There are still queries that can be raised, objections that could be lodged, but everything that the series set up it knocked down. It seems too easy to say -- for a show that trod into such messy territory, that tugged on so many knotted threads of both the real world and its fictional one -- but there’s only one word to describe Watchmen and its ending. Clockwork.
loading replies
@andrewbloom "Showrunner Damon Lindelof, of Lost fame, is not necessarily known for delivering satisfying endings" give The Leftovers a try and as with this series a couple of episodes to test waters;)
Very high chance that the ending won't dissapoint you.
Damon Lindelof is goddamn genius. I will watch anything that man is attached to.
loading replies
@jshwlr except when you get to ending of Lost & say “What the hell was that”.
I thought I like him but now I hope the racists kill him. Weak willed, traitorous piece of crap.
loading replies
@The_Argentinian Wade betrayed her the same way he was betrayed by Jersey Girl in 85 - he made Angela vulnerable, lead her to believe that he cared for her, and then when she was exposed he ran off with her metaphorical clothes. And it looks like it may have worked out for him just as well as it did for Jersey Girl.
Since when do spaceships in Star Wars have Tardis technology inside them?! 31:14
loading replies
@david_opp Since Star Wars features one of the Doctors. :)
Sabine is so weak. She gave up so easily. And she should’ve listened to Ahsoka and destroyed the key. What’s more important the fate of the galaxy or one guy
loading replies
@nox32 Furthermore I would not expect the Sabine from "Rebels" act like this. Ezra told her that he could count on her. However I do not think he meant that she should find him but to honor his decision and protect Lothal and the Galaxy. He knew that finding him means finding Thrawn as well. Therefore, by giving in to Baylan she betrayed Ezra's trust.
Sabine getting stabbed by lightsaber: I am fine, tis but a flesh wound.
Ahsoka on top of ship in space: This is fine, I am going to do some acrobatic jumps in space, fall back on the ship and prevent the enemy from blowing us up using my lightsabers.
Ahsoka falling on the ocean: Well, I am dead... Time for some memberberries and time travelling!loading replies
@FinFan Yeah I get what you mean. I myself am not a fan of all the cop out Star Wars is doing. It completely removes any impact of the deaths. However, I don’t think they’ll bring back Anakin from the dead. They’re probably just going to have an inspirational conversation and call it a day. It’s also possible that Ahsoka only ended up there after falling off the cliff because she was originally saved in the World between Worlds. Maybe it actually is closed but not for her
Sabine getting stabbed by lightsaber: I am fine, tis but a flesh wound.
Ahsoka on top of ship in space: This is fine, I am going to do some acrobatic jumps in space, fall back on the ship and prevent the enemy from blowing us up using my lightsabers.
Ahsoka falling on the ocean: Well, I am dead... Time for some memberberries and time travelling!loading replies
@beestmann True. But Ezra closed the portal to that world and even Palpatine seemed not be able to open it. Now (a badly CGI) Anakin appears out of the blue to save Ahsoka (who was before killed by him and later saved by Bridger) and who lost the fight to Baylan way to easy, just to open that realm again.
I think it was a good think they closed that thing because it pretty much gives writers free reign to bring back whomever they want from the dead and I don't like that.
Sabine getting stabbed by lightsaber: I am fine, tis but a flesh wound.
Ahsoka on top of ship in space: This is fine, I am going to do some acrobatic jumps in space, fall back on the ship and prevent the enemy from blowing us up using my lightsabers.
Ahsoka falling on the ocean: Well, I am dead... Time for some memberberries and time travelling!loading replies
@sikanderx6 @mellowgeek Tbf Ahsoka and Anakin are directly connected, it makes perfect sense. The world between worlds isn’t a new thing either
[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.
loading replies
@andrewbloom I think flyers were distributed in WW 1, not 2. Black soldiers were notoriously mistreated during ww1 by the USA, who sent them first to front lines. That also explains how the grandfather had this note in 1922's Tulsa thing.
If it wasn't for the absurd Jeremy Irons bits I would quit watching this show right now.
loading replies
@onlime on the contrary for me. Those parts feel disconnected from the rest of the series. I guess it will pay off eventually. Like in the finale, lol
What is this garbage? Why is the show opening with democrats killing black poeple? I thought this comic took place in NYC in the 50s.
loading replies
@htpcmac because The Black Wall street massacre is a real thing that happened. The comics took place in the 50s the show takes place after the events of the comics.
Enjoyed it even though the leftist bullshit agenda does my head in,all whites are evil and all that bullshit!
loading replies
@kingy72 The police chief was a white guy he was good, The Red Scare is an actor who often plays racist Russian gangsters but he was a good guy, the officer Looking Glass was a good guy, while one of the little kids was a white racist kid the show goes through efforts to show he's just a kid and isn't a racist. The teacher didn't endorse his words. There were plenty of white cops in that police station scene as well. If you walk away with the sense that all white people are evil in this world then that's on you, not the show.
Review by Lord Million
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.
loading replies
@lordmillion The Watchmen movie has very little to do with the Watchmen comics, so why would you think the TV show would have anything to do with the movie?
Wasn't a big fan of the unmotivated editing during some of the fight scenes, but that doesn't take away from a very strong pilot. The world building, the re-introduction, the updating to a universe finally back in the limelight is very exciting. Watchmen is one of my favorite pieces of literature and Lindelof is one of my favorite showrunners. This feels tailor-made for me and I could not be more excited about it.
This is a significant improvement over the dumpster fire that is the Snyder adaptation.
loading replies
@hcolesmith95 Hmm.. Which fight scene in particular?
As, I gotta say, for example, in the farmyard shootout, I very memorably spent my thoughts thinking about how smart it was to be prepared with that setup (intense field lighting, machine gun turrets, and heavier-than-human, rough-hoofed animals surrounding any intruders) and was pseudo surprised that I hadn't seen that particular display of darkly horrific tacticality (where I expected half of the police to get randomly stomped into bloody smears before one of them could survive) used on screen yet .
I’m a little confused that Rorschach has been taken and used as white supremacy symbol.
loading replies
@bogdangastin sure that actually makes sense. Rorshach by no means was anything close to a white supremacist himself but if he was a real person meeting out violence left and right and always ending up right. That's exactly the sort of person that white supremacists would love. Unlike Ozymandias who was rich and unrelatable. Rorshach did things and you could feel him doing things.
I mean think literally about how police (in real life) see themselves as The Punisher in spite of the fact that The Punisher is literally a person who acts outside the law because he sees the police as incompetent. As opposed to Captain America which would make a much better symbol for protecting and serving.
20mins chase sequence in a 30mins episode. We know the main characters won't die , who are we kidding .
4/10
loading replies
@thebabayaga the chase scene doesn't start until almost 17 minutes in and ends at 27, making it 10 minutes out of a 31 minute episode, and part of that isn't even the chase, as ahsoka wards off the approaching fighters while their ship is down. it's really weird to me that so many comments here are saying the same 20 minute chase scene in a 30 minute episode nonsense, when it's not even approximately true.
Well done, Di$ney, you managed to glorify mental illness in an even worse way than Legion ever did.
loading replies
@erebos Thinking Legion glorified mental illness has to be the worst take I've seen, ever. Congrats man
OSCAR ISAAC SPEAKING IN SPANISH AT THE POST CREDIT SCENE !!! OMGGG
loading replies
@ahacovi well, he is born in Guatemala tho, so spanish is his native language.
Looks like I'm in the minority here, but as someone who has been disappointed with this series (due to a combination of writing and superhero fatigue - it's real dammit), this was one of the best Marvel Disney+ episodes so far.
loading replies
The episode is crazy good. I’m shocked. Glad I didn’t drop the show.
Looks like I'm in the minority here, but as someone who has been disappointed with this series (due to a combination of writing and superhero fatigue - it's real dammit), this was one of the best Marvel Disney+ episodes so far.
loading replies
@balazs955 exactly... it's all about the journey
Looks like I'm in the minority here, but as someone who has been disappointed with this series (due to a combination of writing and superhero fatigue - it's real dammit), this was one of the best Marvel Disney+ episodes so far.
loading replies
@albertic0 Without those, this one would not have felt this great.
