Watchmen 1.09
Dec. 16th, 2019 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI am a bad Beatles fan, because I didn't realise the title of this episode was a song quote until the damn song started playing at the end. *facepalm* Anyway, that was a terrific finale, though it makes this another show I loved which I hope won't get a second season, because this was perfect, and told its story well to the finish.
My problem with Trieu being Adrian Veidt's literal daughter as a speculation was that biological descendants aren't his kind of vanity, he's a different type of narcisissist. Otoh, Trieu's smart mother she will clone later stealing a sample and impregnating herself for her own purposes? Perfect. As is the fact the 7th Cavalry and Smarmy McSmarmy aren't the Big Bad to be defeated in the finale, they're the little Bad - well, plenty bad for a great many people, of course, but seriously: the emotional punch of the original Watchmen was that the serial killer tale Rorschach thought he was uncovering wasn't the evil plan at all, that the true plan was using mass slaughter to save the world - and that it was too late to do anything about it by the time everyone realised this. Compared with that, our heroes duking it out with a bunch of Klansmen, superpowered or not, would have been a step back. Otoh, Trieu, equally full of good intentions but also fueled by narcissism like dear old dad (takes one to know one, indeed), using the Klansmen as cover (as Adrian had used Rorschach's serial killer theory back in the day) while preparing her own divinity? "Now there's a worthy opponent."
(Mind you: if Ozymandias had remained at large and smugly triumphant at the end it would not have felt nearly as fitting, but Laurie arresting him, post Trieu-divinity-preventing, for the three million dead from 1985 with Wade Tillman - one of the few survivors from that day, remember - providing the evidence? Perfect. Also is probably the last and best pay off for Laurie's choice to become an FBI agent and abandon the superhero life (again).)
Angela figuring out just how Trieu was playing everyone, including the Klansmen, but too late to prevent it from happening also echoes the original work without repeating it. (This show is so smart.) At the same time, Angela's arc was never going to end with her saving Dr. Manhattan. That would have felt as wrongly as Adrian being triumphant (again) for this particular story, starting with her grandfather watching his family - and so many others - getting massacred by racists. Hers and Will's reunion at the movie theatre was poignant and incredibly moving, and Will's comment - that you can't heal beneath a mask - brings a season long theme in so many variations (including the first clone, the Gamekeeper, being told by Adrian the reason for his mask was so he could become cruel earlier in this episode) to a close. Now the very end after, with Angela putting together the (egg) puzzle, was what I had expected, i.e. her being the one to end up with (at least some) of Jon's superpowers. Again, great choice of a) having her make the choice - Jon just transfering them to her would have been something she didn't ask for, cue questionable consent, but the egg, which she could consume or ignore, makes it her decision, and b) leaving it that final note of ambiguity by not actually showing us Angela walking on water. I mean, I'm sure she does without seeing it. (And that the sole person superpowered by the end of this season is our black heroine, granddaughter of the black boy traumatized at the start of it into becoming the first superhero in this 'verse, is well done.) But at the same time, her foot touching the water is a far more poetic last image than her actually walking - it's all one moment, coming together, fragile and eternal at the same time.
Lastly: loved Laurie warning Angela via the Manhattan-phone - and succeeding. Sorry for your probably prison time, Robert Redford, but four terms and a cover-up are more than enough. (I would say you're better off in our time line in terms of your career, but then I remembered what our time line is actually like right now, and, well, um, not so sure anymore....
Anyway: this was one awesome season of tv in its own right and a worthy follow up to a comic book masterpiece. Damon Lindelof, you deserve all the laurels for that one, as does every single scriptwriter and actor involved, as does the sound crew, and whoever was in charge of picking the music. Just - wow.
My problem with Trieu being Adrian Veidt's literal daughter as a speculation was that biological descendants aren't his kind of vanity, he's a different type of narcisissist. Otoh, Trieu's smart mother she will clone later stealing a sample and impregnating herself for her own purposes? Perfect. As is the fact the 7th Cavalry and Smarmy McSmarmy aren't the Big Bad to be defeated in the finale, they're the little Bad - well, plenty bad for a great many people, of course, but seriously: the emotional punch of the original Watchmen was that the serial killer tale Rorschach thought he was uncovering wasn't the evil plan at all, that the true plan was using mass slaughter to save the world - and that it was too late to do anything about it by the time everyone realised this. Compared with that, our heroes duking it out with a bunch of Klansmen, superpowered or not, would have been a step back. Otoh, Trieu, equally full of good intentions but also fueled by narcissism like dear old dad (takes one to know one, indeed), using the Klansmen as cover (as Adrian had used Rorschach's serial killer theory back in the day) while preparing her own divinity? "Now there's a worthy opponent."
(Mind you: if Ozymandias had remained at large and smugly triumphant at the end it would not have felt nearly as fitting, but Laurie arresting him, post Trieu-divinity-preventing, for the three million dead from 1985 with Wade Tillman - one of the few survivors from that day, remember - providing the evidence? Perfect. Also is probably the last and best pay off for Laurie's choice to become an FBI agent and abandon the superhero life (again).)
Angela figuring out just how Trieu was playing everyone, including the Klansmen, but too late to prevent it from happening also echoes the original work without repeating it. (This show is so smart.) At the same time, Angela's arc was never going to end with her saving Dr. Manhattan. That would have felt as wrongly as Adrian being triumphant (again) for this particular story, starting with her grandfather watching his family - and so many others - getting massacred by racists. Hers and Will's reunion at the movie theatre was poignant and incredibly moving, and Will's comment - that you can't heal beneath a mask - brings a season long theme in so many variations (including the first clone, the Gamekeeper, being told by Adrian the reason for his mask was so he could become cruel earlier in this episode) to a close. Now the very end after, with Angela putting together the (egg) puzzle, was what I had expected, i.e. her being the one to end up with (at least some) of Jon's superpowers. Again, great choice of a) having her make the choice - Jon just transfering them to her would have been something she didn't ask for, cue questionable consent, but the egg, which she could consume or ignore, makes it her decision, and b) leaving it that final note of ambiguity by not actually showing us Angela walking on water. I mean, I'm sure she does without seeing it. (And that the sole person superpowered by the end of this season is our black heroine, granddaughter of the black boy traumatized at the start of it into becoming the first superhero in this 'verse, is well done.) But at the same time, her foot touching the water is a far more poetic last image than her actually walking - it's all one moment, coming together, fragile and eternal at the same time.
Lastly: loved Laurie warning Angela via the Manhattan-phone - and succeeding. Sorry for your probably prison time, Robert Redford, but four terms and a cover-up are more than enough. (I would say you're better off in our time line in terms of your career, but then I remembered what our time line is actually like right now, and, well, um, not so sure anymore....
Anyway: this was one awesome season of tv in its own right and a worthy follow up to a comic book masterpiece. Damon Lindelof, you deserve all the laurels for that one, as does every single scriptwriter and actor involved, as does the sound crew, and whoever was in charge of picking the music. Just - wow.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-16 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-17 10:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-24 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-17 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-17 10:33 am (UTC)I was much more into Trieu being Adrian's daughter than you were; I liked the whole cascade effect of "Ah-Hahs" towards the end of the series: Judd *was* 7th Kavalry, Cal *was* Jon, and Trieu *was* Adrian's daughter. (Also, hah! Adrian's a virgin! Which actually makes sense as he sees others as lesser beings.)
I would have liked to see Laurie and Wade take off in Archie at the end; I like to imagine him getting fast-tracked into the FBI and The Adventures of Laurie and Wade being a thing, not necessarily onscreen and definitely not romantic.
I like that they cut off just before the moment of truth with Angela; I can't imagine she won't get his powers, but I can't imagine how that will play out with her new family unit -- since I suspect Will won't be going back to his home in, er, Manhattan. (OK, that makes me laugh a little.) I wonder how long Will has to live, being 100 and all. I do suspect Angela will use her powers wisely and be much more emotionally connected than Jon was as Jon before he became Cal. Much as I liked Laurie in both the comic and the series, Angela was Jon's destined endgame because she taught him to be human again, in a way that Janey and Laurie never could. In the comics, Jon's increasing distance from humanity is one of the most haunting things (it's understandable why Laurie turns to flawed, very real Dan as her rebound), but Angela somehow bridges that gap and brings him home -- makes him someone who doesn't want to die alone. So I think that means she is the one who can balance her humanity with the power.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-17 06:12 pm (UTC)Laurie and Wade fighting crime together: headcanon accepted.
So I think that means she is the one who can balance her humanity with the power
She has probably a very good shot at it, at least. Also, Angela now is a complete and strong personality, she's seen what power (in all its different shapes) can do, and she has strong human connections that make her care about the future. By what we see in the comic, Jon Osterman pre accident is a shy nerd with precisely two relationships - Janey and his friend Wally - and what happens to him ostracises him and makes him radically other from the get go; also, there's no precedent, he has to figure out what it all means by himself. Angela chose to eat that egg, and she didn't do so blindly. That's a very different premise right from the start.
Mind you: I hope Jon only gave her some of his powers, not including the non-aging. Because otherwise, watching her children grow and age and die will be very bitter indeed for her.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 06:59 pm (UTC)And then they riff through my favorite scene from the comic -- Veidt and Manhattan quibbling about what it means for everything to work out in the end -- and I just ate it up. Though possibly my favorite moment with the returning characters was that Wade/Veidt/Laurie exchange where Laurie makes it clear she knew Veidt's secret. "You know, did the whole FBI know?" "You're IN THE FBI?!" And Laurie's delightfully self-satisfied response (made even better with the realization that she was planning to take him in).
I commented to my brother (who was the one who insisted I watch) that I was a bit disappointed by the reveal Manhattan was NOT on Mars because the image of him being fed up with it all and leaving Earth is sort of an absurd fantasy of mine whenever this Earth gets too much (which is A LOT LATELY). After that, though, I figured out it was inevitable he'd get bored, and that there's an interesting parallel that Veidt becomes a demonstrably WORSE person when he's bored on Europa (he does less damage because he can't help doing less damage, but proportionately he certainly does much more, in that he murders almost everyone he has a chance to murder.)
The one thing I haven't quite reconciled is that Jon seems like a wholly different (better) person with Angela than he was with Laurie or [the previous girlfriend whose name I have forgotten] but maybe even though time isn't linear for him, he still develops as a character along certain frequencies and when he's at the frequency of Angela he is able to understand that he needs another person and WANTS the experience of living like a mortal. And so in that sense it's appropriate he and Laurie have very little to say to each other after their reunion (they worked that shit out and it's firmly in the past for her, while it's elsewhere for him?) but he's tuned in to Angela the whole time.
Still musing. (Also I don't want a sequel but I'm now imagining a sequel where Veidt is in prison and they ask Laurie to come see him Clarice Starling style to pick his genius brain until she realizes all his ideas keep coming to those fucking space squid and she will handle this for herself going forward, thanks much).
no subject
Date: 2020-01-16 01:15 pm (UTC)Oh, same here. BTW, I thought of you when he did the arm thrown up "I did it!" scene on Europa which you had missed in the Snyder movie.
there's an interesting parallel that Veidt becomes a demonstrably WORSE person when he's bored on Europa (he does less damage because he can't help doing less damage, but proportionately he certainly does much more, in that he murders almost everyone he has a chance to murder.)
Quite. It's not just that he can't live in the Utopia he thought he wanted - and the riff this is on the Comics pirates' tale on the survivor who manages to get home on dead bodies only to end up massacring the peaceful town he wanted to arrive in is so clever - but that the clones remove one impediment that probably restrained him on earth; he can tell himself they're not human the same way he is, because he knows Jon created them.
Jon with Angela vs Jon with Laurie or Janey: I think what also comes into play is that Angela is her own, finished personality when he meets her. There is no time he's known her when she wasn't. He meets Laurie when she's 16, and while he also knows her at all the other points of her existence, that still means she is largely formed by her experiences with him. It makes for a way more uneven relationship, even with the best of intentions. As for Janey, Janey was in love with pre-experiment Jon Osterman and never quite adjusted to Dr. Manhattan. Lastly, all three endings probably reflect back on the beginnings for him: after the experiment, he always knows Janey and he will break up, that she'll be essentially destroyed by their relationship. He knows Laurie will, in the end, leave him. He knows Angela will not.