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Watchmen (HBO), Part 3
138 Plays5 years ago
Watchmen comes to an explosive end! We discuss episodes 7-9 of the groundbreaking HBO miniseries, give a summation of some of our thoughts on the show and what it means, and speculate as to why Dr. Manhattan is so horny all the time.
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Transcript
Intense Character Exchange
00:00:23
Speaker
Pay attention. You will all return to your homes. John, tell me what to do. Angela, it's almost time. You need to go now. No, you have to fight. I can't hold myself together. You have to try. You need to move away. It's not safe.
00:00:53
Speaker
I'm not moving away. I'm here. I'm staying. You have to stay. John, John, come back. Where are you?
00:01:23
Speaker
Every moment, we were together. All at once. I love you, Angela.
Introduction to 'Superhero Cinephiles'
00:02:08
Speaker
Welcome to Superhero Cinephiles. I am half of your host, Perry Constantine, coming to you from Kagoshima in southern Japan, where we're not locked down, but we'll see how things work out in the next few weeks.
00:02:22
Speaker
And I am the other half of your host, Derek Ferguson, coming to you from beautiful downtown Brooklyn, where, yes, we are indeed. Well, you know what? This is the United States of America.
00:02:38
Speaker
At this point in time, nobody really knows what is going on. It went locked down. It went not locked down. Should we stay at home? Should we go up? Because we just had a big thing the other day where they were saying that a bunch of people, they had to go vote in person. That was so ridiculous. You know, yeah, I mean, again, this is the inconsistency with this country. Either we're locked down or we're not.
00:03:08
Speaker
you can't just make up shit as you go along.
Political Inconsistency in the U.S.
00:03:13
Speaker
Then we got the hypocritical sociopath in the Oval Office who votes by mail himself saying that voting by mail is bad. You know what? That character is, you know what? I have no words for it. I don't even
00:03:32
Speaker
I don't even complain anymore because apparently it does no good because the people who support him, apparently he's put something in the water or there's something about him that he's done cast them at because it seems like no matter what happens, his supporters, they believe in him 100% and you know, they're behind them. And you know, if he leads us all down into Armageddon, they're going to go with them. So, you know,
00:04:00
Speaker
Listen, I just go on about my day and do what I do and just pray for the best.
Bernie Sanders' Campaign Ends
00:04:05
Speaker
And, you know, because that really, that's about all you can do now. Ain't no way for the elections. And what's his name? He threw in the towel today. Bernie Sanders. Yeah. In fact, I saw that just before I went to bed last night. I'm like, Oh crap. Yeah. Yeah. He threw in the towel. But you know what? That was, and I hate to put it this way, but yeah, I mean, you know, the fix was in. Yeah.
00:04:29
Speaker
as far as I was concerned, the fix was there. I mean, the thing I thought he was doing, why he was staying in the race, and this is why I had hoped they would have had one more debate, is because my theory is he was trying to get Biden to come more to the left, to adopt more progressive ideas. So I think he was staying in for that, and I hope that he got some concessions from Biden, and that's why he chose to drop out now, as opposed to waiting until the convention or anything like that.
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's the world we are living in now is, you know, I asked Patricia the other day, I said, well, how does it feel to be living in a science fiction movie?
Japan's Exclusion from Benefits
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:16
Speaker
Really? I mean, I wake up and, you know, I feel like I'm living in a David Lynch movie. Yeah. So I've gotten some international attention lately because I'm not sure if you know this, but I published this article on Medium because here in Japan, they're talking about giving out stimulus money to households that have been affected by the coronavirus, people who've lost their jobs and that kind of thing.
00:05:41
Speaker
Well, yeah, but then two lawmakers with the with the Conservative Party, which is in power, they said that foreign residents should be exempted from it, with the reasoning being that they their own countries can take care of them. Meanwhile, they're not talking about giving any money to.
00:06:01
Speaker
Japanese citizens who live in other countries. So I wrote an article about it on Medium, you know, calling this out, saying that, you know, we pay taxes here, we pay to the pension system. So when stuff like this happens, you know, we need support, too. We shouldn't be we're not immune. We shouldn't be expected to still go out and work or expected to, you know, starve or get evicted because our jobs have been canceled due to no fault of our own.
Contemplating Japanese Citizenship
00:06:28
Speaker
And let me ask you let me ask you a question. OK, quick.
00:06:32
Speaker
And this isn't the proper form to answer this question. Just tell me it's not the proper form, and we'll just go on from there. Have you ever thought about seeing citizenship there? Yes, I have. And I've gone back and forth about it over the years. But see, the thing is, OK, if Japan allowed for dual nationality, I would definitely apply for citizenship. Right, OK. Yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting into, dude. They have a dual citizenship.
00:06:59
Speaker
Well, this is where it gets a little weird because technically they don't. But if you're born, if you're like a mixed race child and you have like American citizenship and Japanese citizenship from birth, then technically you're supposed to renounce one of them when you turn, I think it's 20.
00:07:21
Speaker
But here's the thing. There's no punishment if you don't renounce. Renouncing is very difficult, so...
00:07:30
Speaker
A lot of people, and there's no enforcement mechanism for it. So it's like this, so people who are born with both national, dual nationalities, they, a lot of them end up keeping it unless they're forced to give it up. Like, and that has happened in the cases of ironically enough, one of these legislators who's against foreigners receiving aid was born in Chicago herself and is half American.
Politicians and Policy Hypocrisy
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah. And when she,
00:07:59
Speaker
ran for her election when she ran for public office, it was found out that she had dual nationality. So she had to go and renounce her US citizenship then. And you know something, that's one thing I've never been able to understand because I know that back when Trump was going full tilt boogie with the whole thing, with keeping the immigrants out and everything like that. And you had a lot of
00:08:23
Speaker
senators and congressmen and stuff like that, who were of Mexican descent and whose parents had come over here illegally, they was right there with him. And I said, wait a minute, where'd you get the balls? Your parents came up and you're up here backing him. I said, I don't know, we ought to keep them out. They should come up. If it wasn't for the fact that your parents came over here legally, you wouldn't be where you are now. Well, it's the whole Uncle Tom thing, right? Where you have to prove when you're
00:08:51
Speaker
part of the minority that's been accepted by the conservative, like the token minority in the racist party, you have to be 10 times more racist than the white guys in the party. Yeah, yeah. That's what I think it is. That's why I think this legislator who is half American has been the one who started this call saying like, oh, foreigners shouldn't receive any money.
00:09:12
Speaker
so anyway i wrote this medium post about it and like me personally i'm gonna be okay like i don't have anything to worry about even if my job is taking off because my girlfriend is is japanese and if she gets the three hundred thousand yen a month that's that's enough for the both of us to live off of plus i may be getting some of the american stimulus money but other people may not right so people who are from
00:09:35
Speaker
who are immigrants in Japan that are from countries other than America, or if they don't have a US bank account anymore, which a lot of people don't if they've been staying in Japan for their whole lives. So I was mainly writing it not out of concern for myself, but out of concern for those people. And it's gotten shared all over the internet. It's gotten tens of thousands of views. And I got contacted by a radio program in Australia asking me to come on and be interviewed about it.
00:10:04
Speaker
Really? Yeah. And a friend of mine, his girlfriend works for NPR and apparently he sent her the article and she pitched it to NPR as well. So we'll
Watchmen: Final Episodes Discussion
00:10:14
Speaker
see what happens with that. Maybe it'll get a look at you. Congratulations. Well, I mean, let's not count any, count any chickens, but yeah, that's pretty cool.
00:10:22
Speaker
And listen, I think so. Whichever way it goes, yes. Listen, any kind of recognition that you get for something that you've written, hey, listen, that's a cause to stand up and cheer. So I hope it does work out for you. Yeah, yeah. And you get a little bit more recognition in interviews and stuff like that. Definitely let us know. It jumps off in that direction. Yeah, definitely.
00:10:50
Speaker
Okay, now today, speaking of counting chickens before they hatch, it's kind of a good phrase to use for this episode, for these last three episodes of Watchmen. So we've got- Very cool segue. Yeah, so we got the final three episodes of the nine episode limited series. And this is where everything comes together. And it all comes together really quickly because all these three episodes, the present day events, they basically take place in the span of one day.
00:11:21
Speaker
One thing that I noticed while I was watching, because I, of course, I watched these three episodes earlier today in preparation for this, one thing that I noticed that even though that, okay, these are the last three episodes, but there's a lot of beginnings in them. We see the beginnings of a lot of things in there. We see the beginnings of Adrian Veidt, his imprisonment. We see, you know, the beginnings of,
00:11:50
Speaker
Uh, the relationship between, uh, Cal, who we find out is actually Dr. Manhattan, you know, in that terrific episode, a God walks into a bar, which has a dual meaning, you know, that's another one of those episodes that, you know, tells a whole lot. And we want, and we see it by the time we get to it, you know, it's like, Oh shit. You know, I mean, because there is so much in there.
00:12:19
Speaker
You know, but we're going to get to that in a minute. Let's start with episode seven in almost a religious awe.
Angela's Memories and Vigilante Themes
00:12:25
Speaker
Right. Which is a great title and comes from a line that Dr. Manhattan used in the comic book when he talks about the Vietnamese surrendering to him and how when they surrender to him, they surrendered with an almost religious awe.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, and we see that in Vietnam, apparently they have, I don't rightly recall, and I was even looking to see if it had an official name, I guess it's Dr. Manhattan Day. Well, I think it's all tied in with VVN, Victory in Vietnam. Right, yeah. So yeah, I think that it's kind of like tied in with that.
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah. Cause we see that, you know, in the flashback with Angela, because now her memories are started as she's going through the treatment that lady true is putting her through to flush out the nostalgia of her grandfather, you know, that's been in her head. Her memories are starting to surface and we, um, you know, we,
00:13:29
Speaker
Is this the episode where we see the flashbacks to Vietnam when she was a little girl? Yeah, so this is when we find out what the origin story of Sister Knight is because it was a 1977 movie.
00:13:44
Speaker
And the cover is awesome. It's this 1977, it was part of the sub-genre called black mask movies. So responses or parodies to mass vigilantes in the 70s. So it's kind of like a different twist on black exploitation. And so a lot of movies that are named in this from the PDP files were like the black Superman, which we talked about right before we talked about this series.
00:14:10
Speaker
And other ones, Sister Knight was one of them. Tarantula, which was, I guess, kind of like a black Spider-Man, probably. A black Spider-Man, yeah. And Batman is explicitly mentioned. So I guess that was also something that they made. They made a black Batman movie in this universe. Yeah, because there's a scene. We see Angela, where she's a little girl and she's spinning the rack with all of these VHS tapes in it. So we get a good look at all of these different
00:14:38
Speaker
You know tapes of you know the movies that exist in this world and they've got a theme song for sister night did you know this from the pdp files.
00:14:49
Speaker
I haven't read it yet. I'm waiting until we finish. OK. And then I'm going to read it. OK, so it's awesome. She's got a body like an angel, 3448 brick red. But if you touch her chocolate body, your turkey ass will end up dead. She's out of sight, sight, sight. Oh, that's right, right, right. She's sister night, night, night. Get out of town, honky. Written by Willie Hutch, no doubt. And when you're eating too much coleslaw and the mail was turned sour, sister night is getting stronger by the minute by the hour.
00:15:19
Speaker
Cool, see? Now that's a movie I want to see. This is one of the things about this is that I want to see the movies that are referenced in this universe. I want to see Steven Spielberg's Pale Horse. I want to see Sister Knight, The Nun with the Motherfucking Gun.
00:15:39
Speaker
fog dancing, the post-apocalyptic movie that was based, that features like super soldiers. And it has like kind of a similar plot to the original Washington comic. I want to see this stuff. And you know, that would be a cool way to kind of continue the legacy of Watchmen. If you did this kind of stuff, kind of like Tarantino did in his little universe where Kill Bill, that was like the type of movie that people watch in his alternate reality.
00:16:08
Speaker
Right. Yeah, exactly. And he always goes on like these little things, as you said, with these other movies. And you end up saying, well, damn, I want to watch that movie. I want to see that movie. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff here.
00:16:23
Speaker
that's in this episode that I say, OK, yeah, well, I want to see more of that. I want to see more of that. And as I said, I made a post earlier on in Superhero Cinephiles where I said that as I've been watching this, the one thing that has really impressed me about the storytelling of this series is that, yeah, there's a lot of world building that's going on, but
00:16:47
Speaker
Never once does the story stop dead in the water and sacrifice the story and characterizations just for the sole purpose of world building. No, I mean, this is a masterclass in world building. And you know what? All these little intros, at least little asides, remind me of. You remember Grindhouse, the full uncut version with both the movies back to back? And they had all those fake movie trailers spliced into it.
00:17:12
Speaker
That was one of the best parts of that movie. And that's why I made sure to, when I bought Grindhouse, I had meant it up. Because in America, I don't think they have like a full uncut version of Grindhouse on DVD. No, they split them up. Right. Yeah, they split it up into death proof and yeah. But in Japan, they released like a six disc set.
00:17:34
Speaker
And so it had each, both Planet Terror and Deathproof had their own discs, but they also had another disc which was all of them cut together.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, see, I would kill just to have a disc. No, see, I was lucky enough that, of course, I went to movie theater and I saw it. Yeah, sort of like. And it's full, uncut, you know, glory. And I do have, you know, deathproof. And I have the other movie, I have them, you know, like on separate discs. But I would like to have the whole experience
00:18:10
Speaker
on one single disc, you know, as it's originally supposed to be presented. But, you know, that was an experiment that was like really, you know, and you know what, I appreciate what Tarantino and Rodriguez was trying to do, because they was trying to give people the flavor of how it was going back, going to the movies during the 1970s. But a lot of people just didn't get it. A lot of people didn't understand it. And I don't think that they made it clear enough
00:18:37
Speaker
you know to the audience because you know they had to put up signs and stuff like that telling people well you know you're going to see uh you know parts in the movie that are going to drop out and you're going to see this and that it's all part of the movie and people just didn't get it they said yeah i don't understand you know so hey it is what it is
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah. And that was one of the things that I really like about this is that was a good example of using world building in a way to enhance the story. And they do something similar here with all these little asides. And I just love that cover of the Sister Knight movie. And that just made me want to see that movie so bad. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a definite vintage.
00:19:20
Speaker
you know, VHS, Grindhouse movie, you know, cover. Definitely. Yeah. And so in this episode, we find out that Angela, she's got, she does this kind of little dance with the shopkeeper where she always tries to buy the videotape and he tells her, he's like, you know, they're not going to let you watch it. And she's like, oh, it'll be fine. He's like, he's like, I'll be here when you have to bring it back.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah. And then she goes, she finds her parents, and she's hiding the tape behind her back, and they're like, what do you have there? And she shows them the tape, and they just kind of laugh. And they're like, because they've done gone through this so many times before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get the feeling that they've done this dance plenty of times.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah. But see, the thing is, the reason they refuse to let her watch it isn't because of what you think. It's not because of the violence or the language or the sex or anything like that. It's because it portrays a masked vigilante in a positive light because her father was the son of Hooded Justice, Will Reeves, which we saw in the last episode. Right.
00:20:25
Speaker
And later when she meets her grandmother, we find out why he's got this because there was that scene when he was putting on the hooded justice makeup and Will got mad at him and kind of lashed out at him. And then that was when June left him.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, she left them and she said, yeah, this thing is kind of like taking you over and you're gonna, and again, it was such a brilliant episode because you can see both sides of it. And you can see the growing frustration that Will had at being hooded justice, because he thought, first he thought that he could make a difference being a police officer. He couldn't make a difference being a police officer. So then he thought he could make a difference being hooded justice. And he couldn't make a difference being
00:21:10
Speaker
who did justice so you know the frustration was eating him alive really. Yeah and then while so then she takes the type and she's about to go back to the store and then she sees this this doctor manhattan puppeteer who's got like a scarred face and he gives a backpack to this guy on a bicycle and the guy runs rides towards um Angela's parents and he shouts death to the invaders and sets off a bomb.
00:21:38
Speaker
And it's intercut with the shots from Will's past seeing the Klansmen in Tulsa, killing all these people in Tulsa. And I thought that was a brilliant way of intercutting it because it's showing that, yeah, the Vietnamese people, they've been oppressed, but this guy by
00:22:00
Speaker
turning to terrorism, he's kind of become exactly like the oppressor. I thought that was a neat little juxtaposition they did. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, visually they showed that they didn't have to use a whole lot of words to spell it out. They, they use, you know, the visuals and if you're paying attention, you'll get it. Yeah. So yeah, I agree. Yeah. But that was an excellent way to do that.
00:22:24
Speaker
And then they, and so then Angela is now orphaned. She's living in a Vietnamese orphanage. We're the only speak Vietnamese to her.
00:22:33
Speaker
And then one day, well, first there's a cop who comes by, right? And they say, they ask her to identify the guy in the back and she says, yeah, that was him. And then the female cop, Jen, she talks to her for a little bit and she gives her, she gives Angela her badge and she says, you know, when you're older, come see me.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah, because Angela, because when she identifies the guy, the woman stays with her. And the male cop, Roy, he takes the guy, the terrorist, and he takes him around the corner. And the female cop tells Angela, OK, well, you can go back inside now. She said, no. She said, I want to hear. And the female cop gives this little smile, like, yeah, OK, I like you, kid. And that's what she gives her to bad, just say, yeah, when you grow up, you come see me. And then you hear a gunshot.
00:23:26
Speaker
in the back of it so you know that yeah that there was swift justice administered they was not taking him back to book him absolutely yeah and then um so then Angela uh Angela's grandmother June she comes to the orphanage and
00:23:45
Speaker
And she kind of like, she takes Angela out of there and she says, well, I'm your grandmother. I'm here to take you back with me. And this is another clue to how the world has changed because the restaurant they go to is called Burgers and Borscht. Yeah. So like after Vite's scheme to drop the squid, like apparently there's been a lot of cooperation between the US and the Soviet Union. So now there's even a chain US Soviet restaurants around.
00:24:13
Speaker
Well, to an extent, his plan did work to bring all the nations together and unify them. But like you said, yeah, when you look at that flag of the United States that's got the circular stars, and there's a whole bunch of stars in there. So apparently, there was a lot of other countries that afterwards, they up and they joined the United States. I imagine they probably said, OK, well, you know what? We're all going to become one big, happy democracy.
00:24:41
Speaker
Because I don't know exactly how many stars are in there, but it's a whole bunch of them. Yeah. Yeah. And so then Angela tells her story. June tells her about herself that, you know, he left to join the army and then, you know, I never saw him again until they told me that he had died. And so then that's that's where she came over. So.
00:25:04
Speaker
Angela's being taken away by her grandmother and you think it's like this big happy reunion She's gonna move to Tulsa. She's gonna live with her grandma. She's finally gonna get to watch the damn movie and then
00:25:18
Speaker
And she drops dead of a heart attack right after she puts Angela in the backseat. Right on the spot. I'm sitting there, I'm saying, what the hell? I said, this kid cannot catch a break. No, and that goes back to what we talked about in the last episode. Lori's comments about why vigilantes wear masks and it's to hide the trauma. And we see here, Angela's got a whole lot of trauma in her life.
00:25:48
Speaker
More trauma than any one person should have had because of course, she sees her parents get blown up right in front of her practically. She knows she sees her parents get blown up. Then she has a grant. Then when it looks like her life is going to change, it's going to turn the corner. It's going to be rosy and happy. Oh, she's got family and this and that. And the grandmother drops it, which of course ties into later on.
00:26:12
Speaker
when Dr. Manhattan, he says to Will when he goes to visit him and he tells him, yeah, well, you know, that's why she keeps saying that she doesn't want to have family. And we see why now she doesn't want to have family. But then he says, but that's the one thing she really desires more than anything else is have family, you know, because she's had because just like all the because just like all of the great superheroes,
00:26:39
Speaker
in literature, most of the trauma involves their parents being taken away from them. She had to deal with not only her parents, but her grandmother too. Angela is just following in that tradition of super heroics where your trauma is that your parents are taken from you.
00:26:59
Speaker
In a violent manner. Yes, yeah. And then in the modern day, Angela wakes up and she finds that she's undergoing some sort of treatment. And I love Lady True in this episode when she wakes up and she's like, I'm going to explain this to you again for like the fifth time. Yeah, the fifth, yeah. She's like, oh yeah, this is the part where you ask so and so and so and so again. And then she said, and this is the part where then I inject you with the tutorial.
00:27:25
Speaker
And she's like, don't, once she wakes up, she's like, don't ever fucking do that again. She's like, yeah, you said that last time too. Yeah, you said that last time. Yeah. And again, you know, I just love the way that she has, like I said, she has like this casual arrogance about her that, you know, that, yeah, okay. Yeah. I know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Here you go. And she just injects it, knocks her out again. Yeah. Whatever. Now, did you notice the logo for Lady True's company?
Lady True's Unique Approach
00:27:54
Speaker
The big stylized tee? Yeah. Do you notice, do you know what it looks like? Uh, uterus? No, an elephant. What? Yeah, it looks like an elephant.
00:28:08
Speaker
An elephant, oh yeah, yeah, oh, okay, yeah. And that's, and she's got like this thing for elephants, basically, is this thing that is like the running joke throughout the series. And then, so Angela's, her treatment is coming from the spinal fluid or whatever connected to a natural host in the next room.
00:28:27
Speaker
And she thinks it's her grandmother her grandfather is a grandfather yeah cuz she keeps saying i want to talk to him i want to talk to the ladies know that would be a good idea right now you can't talk to and actually that's what it was too because we haven't seen the old guy right.
00:28:43
Speaker
You know, and that would only make sense. Okay. Yeah. Well, they would hook him up so that, you know, they would siphon off his memories and put it back into him. Yeah. So that makes sense. And then she goes and she follows the cord and she breaks into the room and she finds this elephant that she's connected to.
00:29:00
Speaker
Because the elephant never forgets. An elephant never forgets. And also, you know what else about that is they never really explain in the in the episode why they used an elephant because they never addressed the elephant in the room. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I got that. Yeah.
00:29:19
Speaker
That's why they never explained it, because no one, because while we were watching it, Patricia said, she said, well, what was the elephant for? She said, doesn't matter. She said, why not? Because nobody ever explains the elephant that's in the room. It's just elephant in the room. And she said, oh, OK. She said, OK, I got it. And I said, yeah. Just like Lou's man. Yeah.
00:29:43
Speaker
I love that guy. I want to talk a little bit about the nostalgia drug they use here because this is something we kind of touched on in the past and I think this was a really cool thing they use because Lady Drew explains that when she designed the drug she used it for people to
00:30:02
Speaker
recover from traumatic events or for people who have lost their memory through disease to be able to recover their memories. And what ended up happening is people were abusing the drug because even in traumatic memories, they wanted to go back and relive them as opposed to moving on with their lives and improving their lives. Right.
00:30:23
Speaker
And I- Or else, like Angela was doing, they were taking other people, they were living vicariously through other people's memories or whatever. Right, which is such a great commentary on not only comic book fandom, but society in general, I thought.
00:30:44
Speaker
Because I'm pretty sure that in the world of watchmen, there's a black market where you can get like say like a bottle of say like Brad Pitts nostalgia memory. Yeah. And you can buy those on the black market and you can, you know, take them and you can live vicariously as you know.
00:31:01
Speaker
Brad Pitt, you know, when you take a pill. I'm pretty sure that there's something going on like that because, you know, us being human beings, anything like that, we're going to find out a way to abuse it. Yeah, absolutely. And I just thought that was such a brilliant touch they threw into that episode. And so cutting back to Laurie Blake.
00:31:22
Speaker
and Petey. Agent Petey goes to Looking Glass's apartment, or his house, and he says that I can't find him, but, you know, I don't think he's 7th Cavalry. And Lori has some wives, like, because I've seen a bunch of dead 7th Cavalry guys in his house.
00:31:38
Speaker
And yeah, which of course is our first clue that, you know, because all we saw the last time, we just saw this, oh, we just saw the guys going into Looking Glass's house and we just assumed that he got killed because we'd never seen him again. But this is our first clue that, oh, okay, well he survived. He killed them all and got away, yeah.
00:31:58
Speaker
So this is the first hint that we get, really, that Looking Glass is a pretty dangerous guy himself. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like we haven't seen him fight at all. Like he's just been doing interrogations and that kind of stuff. But here, you know, we see the aftermath of his fight with the there's like a dozen of them or something. Right. And he and he has jacked these cats up. Oh, yeah. And he stole one of their nuts. They did not die well. Mm hmm.
00:32:26
Speaker
We put it that way. They did not die well. And then, um, and then Laurie goes to meet, uh, Jane Crawford, judge, uh, judge, wife, widow, widow now. And there's this great scene where they're sitting there talking and, um,
00:32:43
Speaker
And Lori lays out her theory all about it that she thinks that Senator Keene is working with the 7th Cavalry, that she's using them to manipulate them so that he can get the police to wear masks and then eventually use this as a platform for running for president.
00:33:02
Speaker
because of course, Lori has put it together that the 7th Cavalry is actually Cyclops. The organization that Will Reeves was battling against in New York during the 40s, the white supremacist organization, they have metamorphosed into this other organization and actually it's a front.
00:33:27
Speaker
for the real organization, which apparently is a bunch of, as we see later on, it's like a bunch of business people and politicians and stuff like that. But can I say one thing about that scene? With Lori, okay, with Lori and Jay, okay. As much as I love Lori, and as much as I love her, you know what? I kind of got a little bit of pleasure out of seeing somebody finally, you know, take her down a peg.
00:33:54
Speaker
because she's been walking through the whole show, you know, smart ass and everybody, you know, and she's two or three steps ahead. And she's so, you know, she just, she knows what's going on and you can't put one over on her. And Jane Crawford pulls, puts one over on her, you know, you know, for once in the show, Lori,
00:34:14
Speaker
is not two steps ahead. She's actually three steps behind. Yeah. Oh, I love that. I actually, I love that too. And you know, I, Laurie's like probably one of my favorite characters in this show, but that was brilliant how they did that. And how Jane just so, is so casual about it. Like she's got that same kind of casual arrogance that Laurie has and Lady True has. And it's just, and she just kind of like, Oh yeah, that was the original plan. She's like, Oh, was I not supposed to confess now?
00:34:41
Speaker
And then, of course, she uses the oldest gag in the book.
00:34:57
Speaker
She drops her down a trap door. But when she hits the button the first time, nothing happens. Yeah, yeah. It only goes like, my mom. And Larry says, what the hell is going on? And it's like this old fashioned remote control from the 1950s, which again, is a commentary on how old this trap is. They was doing this thing in 1930s serials. They were dropping people down trap doors. That's why I love that. Oh my god. When was the last time you saw somebody got dropped down a trap door? Yeah.
00:35:27
Speaker
Oh, that was great. I just love the way that it just, it's failing because it's so old and hasn't been used in years.
00:35:34
Speaker
It hasn't been, yeah, she hasn't used this thing in years. Like I said, there are more control. It's like from the 1950s. You know, this thing hasn't been used and she actually wax it. You know, she said shit and she wax it to the side and presses it to get, and then it works. And we just hear more and she's cussing everything like that. And Jane Crawford goes and looks down at her and then she makes a phone call. I said, yeah, I got it. You want me to kill her?
00:36:02
Speaker
Oh man, great scene. And then Joe talks to her, Joe Keene, and tells her his plan. It was originally to use to become president, but when he found out that Dr. Manhattan was alive, then, and on Earth, he decided he was going to try to steal his powers, because he said, well, it's so hard to be a white man in America nowadays, so I thought I'd try being blue. OK, here we go.
00:36:33
Speaker
And so then we've got, and then back at Lady True's clock tower, Angela gets out and she finds the Dr.
Angela's Revelation about Dr. Manhattan
00:36:43
Speaker
Manhattan booths, like all these recordings Lady True has been making of these messages people think they're sending to Dr. Manhattan.
00:36:52
Speaker
And then, and she tells them that about the seventh cavalry's plan. And she says that I want to stop them because can you imagine all that power in the hands of a white supremacist? And she says that Dr. Manhattan is not on Mars, he's here in Tulsa. And then Angela leaves and right before she's, and just as she's about to leave, Lady True says to her, you know, you didn't ask who he is.
00:37:18
Speaker
Right, he says, you didn't, I just told you Dr. Manhattan is in Tulsa and you never asked me who he is. And you never asked me who he was, yeah. And that was the moment when like, oh shit, now it's Cal. Yeah, that was the moment when I was like, okay, yeah, it's definitely Cal now.
00:37:36
Speaker
Yeah, which actually, you know what, I had suspected, but then I said, nah, that's misdirection. That's, you know, because, yeah, but yeah, you know, in the next episode, a guy walks into ABAR. Yeah, we do. As a matter of fact, we get the whole history of the relationship between Angela and Dr. Manhattan.
00:37:58
Speaker
Yeah, and there was another clue, apparently, I found out. So do you know what the name of the Dr. Manhattan vibrator was? No. Excalibur. Oh, OK. Excalabar. Excalabar.
00:38:19
Speaker
Very clever. I know, yeah. I love how they do these little things on that. And so then she goes back to her house, and she confronts Cal. And she takes a hammer out. And she explains to him, you know, I love you. You're my best friend. And he says, you're not acting like yourself. And she says, no, John, you haven't been acting like yourself. You haven't been acting like yourself, yeah. And she whacks him in the head.
00:38:46
Speaker
I mean viciously, and we say, oh, shit, what happened now? And she cracks his forehead open. And then she's rummaging around in her brain, and she pulls out this device that looks like Dr. Manhattan's symbol. And then as she's holding it, there's this blue glow over her face. There's this great
00:39:04
Speaker
The cinematography in this is, I've said it before, but it's so amazing the way they structure all these shots here, because they get this close up on her face, and in the reflection in her eye, you can see Dr. Manhattan.
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah, right, yeah, I noticed that today when I was watching, you have to look at her eyes, because you look at her eyes and you see, yeah, that Cal turns into Dr. Manhattan. Yeah, and then over on the vague story, he's on trial by the game warden for his crimes, the squid attack, and also because of all the Phillips and Crookshanks he's killed. And we find out like this past year, he's been on trial.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah, the whole year, because they said, oh, well, this is day 365. I said, holy shit. And then, but you know something, that makes you reevaluate the whole time structure of what you've seen before. Right. You have to go back and you say, okay, because initially where you thought that all of these, all of these incidents were happening at the same time. No, they're not. Yeah.
00:40:10
Speaker
because then it goes back to that other episode that we were talking about where Lady Trusche goes outside and she sees the rocket, you know, coming at it and lands on her prop. That's the rocket bringing. Bringing Adrian, but yeah, yeah, right. Her father back from, you know, from Europa, you know. So now when you see this and you have to, okay, well then this all happened
00:40:33
Speaker
way prior to what we're seeing now. All of the scenes that took place on Europa, that took place a long time before what we're seeing is happening now. So yeah, ain't no something. They do it without the benefits, because usually like in most TV shows, they will tell you when it's a flashback or this happened, so on, so on, so on. They don't do that here. They leave it to you.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah, they leave it all open to you to try and piece together. And again, it's the amount of balls this show has and the amount of trust it places in the audience to put these things together on their own. You don't see that in a lot of TV shows.
00:41:17
Speaker
Well, it treats us with intelligence. It says, you know what? You're smart enough to figure this out. We don't have to, you know, and I know that I get this from people all the time. Well, I want to know this, and I want to know that, and I want to know this, and I want to know, well, listen, you know what? Can't you figure some shit out for yourself? You know, I hate when people do that, and they just want everything explained out. Look, you've got an imagination, right? Use it for once.
00:41:43
Speaker
Yeah, what's the fun of watching it if every single thing is laid out for you?
00:41:49
Speaker
You know, and as we have said before, and we said many times, I'll say again, we could probably do another show next year about these same episodes and come up with completely new stuff that we've seen. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Again, that's how much detail is in it. And that's how cleverly it's, and that's how cleverly the story is told. And so then this week, oh, and then the game warden,
00:42:18
Speaker
so it's the the crookshanks lawyer she lays out this entire closing statement you know accusing brilliantly on my yeah and then um the game warrant asks vyte for his closing statement and vyte just stands up looks really sincere and then he lets a let's a fart rip yeah and then he just says the defense rests the defense rests and sits back down
00:42:42
Speaker
And the Game Warden says that the Phillips and Crookshanks, they cannot judge him because he needs to be judged by a jury of his peers. And they're not his peers, yes. So that they bring in a bunch of feral pigs and he picks one of them up and it's squealing. And the Game Warden says, guilty.
00:43:06
Speaker
It reminded me of one of those, a scene that you would see in, what was that movie I was thinking of when I saw that? The ruling class with Peter O'Toole. Where they had those bizarre, absurd scenes like that that took place where he thought he was Jesus Christ and he was walking around. I actually inspected somebody to break out in the song at some point during this. That's how crazy this scene was getting.
00:43:33
Speaker
I said sooner or later it's going to turn into a musical. And then that leads into the next episode which is my favorite title of the entire series and that's a god walks into a bar which could be and they did it in if you look on the on the h on like on the itunes credit listing it's listed it's spelled a bar two separate words
Dr. Manhattan's Perception of Time
00:43:58
Speaker
But in the show credits, and the opening titles in this, I love the way they do the opening titles, right? Yeah, if you look at the episode and you see, okay, the title, because Dr. Manhattan, he walks through the titles. A-bar is all one word. Yeah. Yeah, it's not two words, just one word.
00:44:20
Speaker
And this is, you know what, this shows like just how amazing Yaya Abdul-Mateen of an actor is because he's doing this, playing Dr. Manhattan. And they don't show his face in these flashback scenes in Vietnam, right? And he goes into this bar and he finds Angela there drinking and it's VVM day.
00:44:39
Speaker
So, all these people are dressed up as Dr. Manhattan. They're wearing Dr. Manhattan masks. So, he wears a mask himself. He's wearing a Dr. Manhattan mask over his Dr. Manhattan face. Over his Dr. Manhattan face, yeah. Which even Angela says, you know, that don't make a whole lot of sense. Yeah. So, you're Dr. Manhattan. So, why are you wearing a mask? Well, because I don't want to be recognized.
00:45:05
Speaker
which shows that apparently Dr. Manhattan has more of a sense of humor than we thought. Also,
00:45:13
Speaker
You know what? There's one thing I could never get over. Dr. Manhattan apparently is a very horny cat. Yeah, yeah. I think she, because I was thinking this as they started this episode and I'm like, wait, okay. So he approached Angela and then he also, you know, he had a Janie and then he also went after Lori. And then I'm thinking like, man, this is a lot like Zeus. And then Angela goes and mentioned it. She's like, is this a Zeus thing?
00:45:38
Speaker
right yeah she said yeah because yeah because Zeus was always going down the earth and getting laid and you know left and right which pissed off Herod at no end you know so yeah because Dr. Mahatma is laid more than anybody else in the TV series he does
00:45:55
Speaker
In fact, there's this graph, I saw a pie chart. What causes the most problems in Greek mythology? And it's like, hubris is a small part of the graph. Fate, prophecy that couldn't be avoided is another small part. Some got through a hissy fit because a human was better than them, another small part. And then like 90% of the graph, Zeus couldn't keep it in his pants. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, exactly.
00:46:22
Speaker
And I mean, yeah, you know, like, I mean, every time you turn around and say, wait a minute, this guy's getting laid every time. For a guy that's supposed to be so far removed above humanity, he sure has no problem with indulging in the most primal of human, you know, desires. Well, you know what I think it is? I think it's his, that's the human part of him that still wants love, right? Because that's the one thing he can't create for himself.
00:46:50
Speaker
Good point. Actually, he can create everything else, but he can't create love. Right. He can create worshippers, right? Like he created Phillips and Crookshank in order to, so that they would care for other people more than themselves. And he found it was very hollow, right? And so he's always seeking out these relationships, but because of the way he perceives the world and the way he perceives time, those relationships never work out the way he wants them to.
00:47:20
Speaker
And this episode, I'm glad you mentioned that because this episode does an excellent job of portraying the way that Dr. Manhattan perceives time, which being only human, if you think about it too long, it'll actually drive you crazy. Yeah. Because he's existing simultaneously. As a matter of fact, there's a great scene where he's able to communicate through Angela
00:47:45
Speaker
with her own grandfather. Yeah, yeah, that was amazing. And we'd never seen anything like that done before, but it makes perfect sense why they'd be able to do that. And there's a very frightening moment in there where Angela realizes that she actually started all this shit. Yeah. And I just sat there, the first time I saw her, I said, oh shit.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah. And even Cal himself says, yeah, the chicken or the egg. He said, yep, it's the chicken or the egg. Right. Because she says, wait a minute. Did I start this? Because her grandfather didn't know nothing about Judd. Right.
00:48:29
Speaker
You know, so yeah, but yeah, the way that they use how Dr. Manhattan perceives, cause he goes and has all these conversations with different people. And even though he's telling them, he knows how this is going to come out and says, no, I have to do this because, because of course, since he lives in everything and all through time simultaneously, he must know how this is going to come out, but he still has to make these events happen anyway.
00:48:58
Speaker
because they're supposed to come out, you see what I mean? It's supposed to come out that way. So even, nevermind. Well, this was something in the comic book too when, and we see a replay of that in an extent, right? When Laurie is with him and he says to her, he's like, you know, you're about to tell me that you've been sleeping with Dan Drieberg. And then she's like, well, that's why I started sleeping with Dan. And he's like, oh, you've been sleeping with Dan Drieberg? And she's like, you just told me that. But it's, you can't,
00:49:25
Speaker
he can't change his responses, right? His responses are like pre-programmed in a way. And so that same thing happens when he's talking to Angela in the bar and he says, you know, you're here drinking because you're mourning the death of your parents. And then later, and she's like, how did you know that? And he's like, you're about to tell, you're going to tell me it.
00:49:45
Speaker
And then when she tells him, he acts surprised, like, oh, your parents died? And it's just like the way that he does it, it's the way that seeing that played out in live action. And also, like, I'm not sure if they did some sort of technical funkiness or if this was Mateen's voice, but he sounds completely different when he's Dr. Manhattan in that bar versus when he takes turns into Kel.
00:50:11
Speaker
Yeah, because even Angela even says, oh, well, you even sound different now. And he says, oh, yeah, well, he said my vocal cords relaxed. He gives us some kind of BS explanation. But you know what? I probably think that's because they simply had a different actor doing the voice when they were at it. Because we never see his face until he goes into cows, but he becomes, you know, cow. Now, I'm not sure if that's someone else
00:50:41
Speaker
because his voice does sound kind of similar to Mateen's, but it's just different enough. I'm not sure though, I'm looking on the Wikipedia page and it doesn't mention anything one way or the other. Another mystery for us to figure out. Yeah.
00:51:01
Speaker
So yeah, it looks like it doesn't say anything about if there was a different guy playing it or if they did some sort of technical. But if that's just his voice, like that's amazing work. But you're right, you know something, they probably could have just, I mean,
00:51:15
Speaker
Because they can do that. They probably just tweaked his voice enough in post-production so that they say, OK, well, we want him to sound like a little bit off, but not too much off. Yeah. So it would have been easy to do. You know what? We're going to go with, it's him. Yeah. Oh, so another thing about what you said about her basically telling her grandfather and kind of starting all this. You know what? That's a time paradox, right? You know what that paradox is called? What's the grandfather paradox? The grandfather paradox.
00:51:46
Speaker
Yeah, so I get like the way they play with language in this and they throw in ponds and stuff. It's if you create. Yeah, it's if you create a time machine and you go back in time and you accidentally kill your grandfather. Well, how did you get to be born to make the time machine? Yeah. But I do. I do. I just realized that now that she ends up she ends up. It's a twist on the grandfather paradox. Yeah.
00:52:08
Speaker
And it involves her literal grandfather. It's a literal grandfather paradox. Because he had no idea about Judd and everything like that. And then when the realization hits her, because Dr. May, you know, Dr. May asked Cal, tells her, says, your grandfather said he didn't know nothing about that shit. And she says, what? Yeah. She said, wait a minute. She said, so you mean I started all of this? And Cal said, hey, the chicken today.
00:52:36
Speaker
What can I tell you? If we have, see, apparently they do not have Star Trek or any other time travel show or movie in the Watchmen universe because you watch enough movies or science fiction shows, you know not to mess around with time. Well, you know, I mean, but they're not really because they don't really realize because Dr. Manhattan doesn't think he's messing with time.
00:53:03
Speaker
Right? That's true. Yeah. Because he perceives it all at once. And Angela, of course, doesn't realize it. Well, the main reason why they go through the whole process, and we see that there's a whole part where Cal, he goes to visit.
00:53:21
Speaker
Adrian Bight, who's in exile in his big fortress up in the Arctic. And of course, he's not surprised to see him. Macales said, well, how did you know it was me? And he said, well, who else with Dr. Manhattan is going to walk into the Arctic naked?
00:53:38
Speaker
And he says, well, I want a device so that, you know, because he realizes that by him knowing everything is going to happen, it's going to do the same thing that is going to break his relationship with Angela the same way it broke up his previous relationships because
00:53:54
Speaker
the women couldn't deal with the fact that, you know, he knew everything that was going to happen before it happened. It was driving them crazy. Yeah. Okay. So he goes to a nearby and says, okay, well, you know, I'm going to need some kind of device. Adrian says, yeah, no problem. I can hook up. I do that. And Cal says, okay, well, how long is it going to take you? He said, shit, I made that thing 30 years.
00:54:18
Speaker
Well, he took on the appearance of Cal, right? And they were very specific in how they did this. She shows him dead bodies in the mortgage. She says, look, these people are dead. They've got social security numbers. So it's and they've got no next of kin. So it's very easy for you to take over their identities and.
00:54:38
Speaker
and he says like you know will you pick one and she hesitating and he's like you know unless there's another one that you haven't shown me for whatever reason now and then she takes out the last drawer which was Cal's body and she says I would be I would be fine with him and now of course we have to
00:55:06
Speaker
Why is it that Angela, being a black woman, why is it that she did not show him the body of the black man first? Every other body she showed him was of Caucasians. Or at the end of these two, I think. You're right. I believe there was one Asian, and the other two or three were Caucasians. Right, right. Why didn't she show him the body of the black man first? I was wondering about that myself, and I'm still wondering.
00:55:34
Speaker
Yeah. What do you think? Do you have any theories about that? Me and my wife, we watched. And of course, her being a woman, she picked up on that before even I did. She said, well, why didn't she pick up the brother first? Why didn't she pick, you know? And I said, well, are they trying to make us a yeah? And we were discussing it. Me and her were discussing it. We were trying to say, well, are they trying to make us some subtle
00:55:59
Speaker
comment, you know, did Angela just did not see race or did she just assume that Dr. Manhattan would be more comfortable with a white body than a black body or, you know, and we were, you know, bouncing these things back and forth trying to figure out and we never came up with anything that satisfied us. There are two things that came to mind for me. One of them is that Angela didn't feel comfortable
00:56:24
Speaker
picking, like, her perfect man, right? Like, it seems a little too by design that way, and she felt a little uncomfortable making that decision. That's one theory I have. Another one, and it ties into something Veidt said, is the fact that, well, here's this white guy, and you're asking him to take on the form of a black man.
00:56:45
Speaker
Right? Yeah. Literal blackface. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. And which is later what Adrienne tells Dr. Manhattan when he comes to visit him, you know, this sort of cultural appropriation isn't going to fly anymore. Are you right? Yeah. So are you right? So I was wondering, was that whole thing with, I mean, the picking out a body, was that like a subtle statement, right? Especially like you said, with
00:57:11
Speaker
he didn't make the cultural appropriation statement. Because also when I think too, they probably anticipated because we've seen how smart the writers and directors have been so far. And they probably said, well, you know something? Yeah, we're going to catch a lot of flack from the fans for turning Dr. Manhattan into a black guy. So let's get a jump on them ahead and we're going to address it. Right.
00:57:38
Speaker
You know, I think that that's what they did, you know, with the cultural appropriation thing, you know, because, yeah, because I'm sure you read online and, you know, a lot of people were not happy with that. Oh, oh, why did they have to turn them into black? I'm sick of this shit every time I turn around. Oh, people are freaking out. Oh, yeah. Why are they turning them into a black guy? They didn't have to do that. That was a bunch of bullshit.
00:58:09
Speaker
But now that scene where he goes to visit Adrian, I just love everything about that scene. The way they do their communication, their interaction with each other, it's so well done. And you know something? Considering the fact that these characters that we've seen in the movie played by two other different actors, the way that these guys play it, I totally bought that these were the same characters. Yeah.
00:58:38
Speaker
No, you know, I had no issue with bond. Yeah, these are the same guys. Yeah. And so then he offers him this device and he says, he says that, you know, if you don't remember you have these powers, then you won't, you won't know to use them unless there was like a life or death or situation where it just happens on instinct, which is what happened during the white night where he teleported away one of the attackers. Right. Yeah.
00:59:06
Speaker
Which is how the 7th cavalry ends up finding out that Dr. Manhattan is in Tulsa. And he says to him, look, I'll give you this device, but you only get it if you do something for me.
00:59:26
Speaker
And then he says, you know, I want to basically he says, you know, I want to go to Europa. I want to go to a place where where people will worship me, will give me the accolades that I feel I deserve.
00:59:37
Speaker
Cause frankly, he's been up there for what? I think like 25 years. I think cause he asked, you know, Cal at one point, he said, well how long has it been? And he said something like 24 years, 322 days or something. Like, you know, in other words, he's been up there since the events of, you know, when he dropped the squid, he had been up there in exile. And yeah, he wants to go someplace else. And you know, Cal says, okay, fine. Yeah. Well, I'll send you there.
01:00:07
Speaker
And, boosh, he's gone. Yeah. And then in the present day, he's adjusting to being Dr. Manhattan again. And he's going through these really strange motions. He goes out to the pool, and he starts walking on water. And the kids are like, who's that blue guy? And then he looks up at them, and he just waves his hand, and they teleport away. He said, Bobby, who's the blue guy?
01:00:35
Speaker
He looks kind of like that, and she's like, just get away from the widow. Get away, get away. And she says to him, why are you walking out in the water? He's like, I have to show you this for later.
01:00:46
Speaker
And Angela's kind of like freaking out through this whole sequence. You know, she just walking around and like, this is like the first time really in the whole, uh, series that we've seen where she's not of her emotions or the situation because she said, well, the seven calorie, you know, they're on their way. They're going to come. They're going to kill you. We got to get away. We got to get away. Okay. I was just like, yeah, you know what? Calm down. Calm down. We, yeah.
01:01:17
Speaker
And he starts making bubbles. Yeah. You know, he has this inhuman calm, you know, that we usually associate with Dr. Manhattan. Of course he's called because he knows what's going to happen. Right. You know, Angela's whole thing is, you know, well, listen, we just got to get away. We just got to get away, you know, and she doesn't know how, but she just knows that they got to get away. Yeah. Yeah. He told the kids away. She freaks out where the kids are. Well, they're with your grandfather, my grandfather.
01:01:49
Speaker
My grandpa, what does he have to do with this? And then we see, there's a flashback where we see, because Adrian had told Cal, listen, before you put this shit in your head, take care of anything you've got to take care of. Because you won't remember. So then Cal goes to see Will, who is living, because apparently when Captain Metropolis passed away, he left all of his wealth and his property to Will. Yeah.
01:02:17
Speaker
And amazingly enough, I was kind of surprised. I was like, whoa. So he's living in a gold mansion that Captain Metropolis used to live in. Yeah, in the PDP files, they have a copy of Nelson Gardner's will. And in his will, he says that I now realize, with the hindsight of time, that will was right and I was wrong. And so I hope that.
01:02:44
Speaker
giving him my estate is some way that I can begin to show how, how sorry I am. Yeah. So apparently he, he felt bad about the whole, you know, cyclops incident and stuff like that. And, you know, I mean, when Will asked him for help and stuff like that. So this was his way of making the men. So Cal goes to see him and he's, and you know, he's telling me, yeah, well, you know, you've got a granddaughter. No, I don't have a grand. He actually do got granddaughter.
01:03:13
Speaker
And he says, well, how do you welcome Dr. Manhattan? No, you're not Dr. Manhattan. Dr. Manhattan's a white guy and he's on Mars. And of course, Cal has approved that he's Dr. Manhattan. And we'll say, oh, shit, you are Dr. Manhattan. So then they sit down and they have to talk. And that scene, and that is the scene where, you know, Angela inadvertently gives Will
01:03:38
Speaker
the clues to judge secret, which, which as we found out, he had no knowledge of before, right? You know, until the idea was given to him by his own granddaughter, which he didn't know yet. And in the present day too, when he's making the waffles, right? He tells Angela, watch out for the eggs and the eggs float out of the refrigerator. She grabs them. She smashes them on the ground.
01:04:01
Speaker
and which is a clue for what's gonna happen in the next episode. Right, well, yeah, when he tells us the thing about the pool and the eggs and everything, that sets everything up for, yeah, what we're gonna see in the closing scenes of the last episode. Yeah, and then she gets, the seventh cavalry arrives, so she starts suiting up, right? She gets ready to go to battle. And you know something I noticed here that was interesting in these last three episodes? She doesn't wear the sister knight costume anymore.
01:04:30
Speaker
No right the master gone in this and that's kind of like a commentary on how this is kind of like closing the book on watchmen. Right because now there's no need for masks anymore. Well, you know what they did have a scene, I noticed it was a very brief scene in the next episode with one of her kids
01:04:51
Speaker
Topher. Yeah. Looking at the sister night costume. Yeah. Like, you know, he's looking at it and it kind of gives you the hint. Okay. Well, is, is he going to be like the next generation that's going to take up the mask? Yeah, that, or I just thought it may have just been like he finally, he understands. Okay. Or like maybe he always suspected something about her.
01:05:13
Speaker
Well, see, again, we go back to the brilliance of the writing in this is because you can look at that scene and you can interpret it in a bunch of different ways. And none of those ways are wrong. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And when she started when she's gearing up, you know, John is just watching her and she says, what is it? He's like, this is the moment that I fell in love with you.
01:05:36
Speaker
And she just kind of maxed, like, you know, we've been together 10 years and you just realize that now. And you just realize that now, yeah, yeah. But for him, it's not because he's, it's so, when you try to think about how that must be like to perceive all of time at once like that. Yeah. Oh, it's unbelievable. Yeah, it's one of those concepts that,
01:06:04
Speaker
As I said, if you sit and you actually do think about it for too long, it'll drive you crazy. Yeah. Because how can you comprehend everything that's going to happen? And if you know, if you know what's going to happen.
01:06:17
Speaker
Why don't you change what's going to happen? Dr. Manhattan never does that. He never changes the way he says, well, this is how it's supposed to. It's supposed to turn out this way. Yeah, but you know you're going to die. Yeah, but that don't matter. I've set everything up so that everything will turn out the way it's supposed to turn out. Yeah.
01:06:35
Speaker
Which may be a commentary in itself on Christian faith, whereas the people who are associated with Dr. Manhattan have to take everything that he says on faith. Exactly. Because they don't know how it's going to turn out. He does.
01:06:49
Speaker
And also- So they just have to trust him when he says, listen, I know how this is going to turn out. It's going to be fine. Well, speaking of that commentary on Christian faith, that's a good segue into what I want to mention is the flashback to when John was a child, right?
Dr. Manhattan's Childhood Influences
01:07:06
Speaker
We find out he was a refugee from Germany and that his father was of Jewish descent and they go and they're staying in this manner as
01:07:19
Speaker
where they're staying kind of like on the way to going to America. And the Lord and Lady, he finds them, he's like snooping around the house and he ends up in the room and he sees them starting to have sex. And they open the door and you find out that they look just like Phillips and Crookshanks. Phillips and Crookshanks, right, yeah. And they tell him, you know, what you saw was us creating life, which, you know, may also have something to do with the fact that he's horny all the time.
01:07:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Bingo. There you go. Because they give him a copy of the Bible, right? And he says, he's like, well, father doesn't believe in this. And he said, well, that's OK. These are still beautiful stories, even if you don't believe in them. Which is true. That's how I've always looked at the Bible myself, being an atheist. OK.
01:08:11
Speaker
So I thought that was a nice little thing in there. And then he tells, and then they tell him, look, in exchange for the Bible, we want you to make us a promise, that you will go out and you will make something beautiful.
01:08:25
Speaker
And that could be why, that could be why he's horny all the time. It's like, that's the biological need to try and create something. And as we see that stuck with him, even when he was changed into Dr. Manhattan, because he made a replica.
01:08:43
Speaker
Well, he didn't even make it. He transported because Angel even asked him, she said, well, why don't you just make a castle? Why did you transport the castle from Earth over there? And now we see why, because it has an emotional connection for him. Yeah. As as when he created life, he created them in the image of Crookshanks and, you know, Phillips, you know. And yeah, that did have a strong emotional connection for him.
01:09:05
Speaker
But see, he can't seem to get it right. Because like every time he tries to create something beautiful, he's never satisfied with it. Like there's that, the giant clock tower he created on Mars. Then he goes to Europa and he creates life and he gives birth to Phillips and Crookshanks. But something is still missing for him. There's something that's still escaping him. And he's not satisfied with it. And that's why he goes back to Earth.
01:09:31
Speaker
which is the ultimate tragedy of Dr. Manhattan, because here it is, a man who has become God, he can literally do anything he wants. He lives in time simultaneously, but it doesn't mean anything to him. Because he cannot create anything that's lasting, that means something to somebody else.
01:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, and then in the present day, they get attacked by the 7th Cavalry and they do a great job like fending them off. Like Angela's just cutting loose with that assault rifle and then Dr. Manhattan comes in and just like blowing people up left, right, and center. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's blowing heads up and she just capping guys left and right. And you say, okay, well, they're gonna come out of this one. They're gonna win.
01:10:23
Speaker
Right, and then there's one left, and he fires a tachyon cannon. Which Dr. Manhattan knew he was there, because he apologizes to Angela before the guy blasts up. Right. Because he knew that the guy was there. He said, listen, this is supposed to happen. Yeah. And this is also the one post-credits scene we have in this episode. Yeah, yeah. And apparently, they did it because they didn't want to break up the flow of the episode. So they put it afterwards.
01:10:52
Speaker
The game warden comes into Vite Cell and he brings him the anniversary cake. Another damn anniversary cake. Oh my god, which he hates to death. And the warden tells him that he was the first Phillips and he saw Dr. Manhattan create the world.
01:11:12
Speaker
So that's, and then he leaves them and there's the horseshoe baked into the cake, which earlier on, right, they gave him the horseshoe and they said, I don't need it yet. Yeah, I don't need it yet, yeah. But now he needs it and he starts using it to, you know, apparently to dig out a tunnel. He's using the horseshoe to dig a tunnel, yeah. All right, so that brings us to the last episode, the series finale, see how they fly.
Lady True's Origin and Family Dynamics
01:11:43
Speaker
Now this is where we get the origin story of Lady True. Yeah, like I said, these last three episodes, like I said, one thing that I liked about, it's a lot of beginnings that we get in here, even though it's all wrapping up everything, but we also say, okay, now I see how this ties into what we get. And the origin, that's kind of messed up, I'm sorry.
01:12:11
Speaker
That was, yeah, and you know, this is also something that it proves Rorschach's theory wrong, right? Because remember Rorschach had that theory about Veidt being a homosexual, and which then they played up in the movie, which I talked about before with Veidt having like a folder label of like, boys porn on his computer, and he's also like Studio 54 and all that stuff, but yeah.
01:12:37
Speaker
Vate says, no, I've never been with anyone, right? I'm celibate. Probably because he doesn't think he's found anybody worthy enough to bear his child. Right. Well, he says that Alexander the Great, which is kind of ironic because Alexander the Great was also pretty gay himself, but he says, I don't indulge in hedonistic activity.
01:13:01
Speaker
But as we see, he does have a secret stash of his old sperm, locked away in his office. What is that all about? Yeah, I mean, this guy's got some real, and he keeps it behind a portrait of Alexander the Great, no less. Yeah, okay, though, right? So make of that what you will. So Lady True's mother, she knows where it's at.
01:13:30
Speaker
And apparently, you know, Vitus got all of these Asians. Don't ask me why, they never explain it. But it seems to be that he has exclusively Asians working for him at his Arctic lair slash fortress slash home. Well, that comes from the comic book, because all his servants in the comic, they're all Vietnamese refugees.
01:13:53
Speaker
Oh, okay. And he had done that because like he had because he had felt like the US government had betrayed them had, you know, given the short shaft. So he's giving them these jobs and opportunities. That's why he was doing that. Oh, okay. Cool. Cool. So, um, while he's making the tape,
01:14:14
Speaker
where he's explaining his master plan to Robert Redford, who isn't the president yet, but he's telling him, well, I'm making this and, you know, eight years from now, you'll be the president. I know you'll be the president because I'm going to work things out so that you will be elected president. Yeah. Lady Truth's mother goes in here, she gets a tuba, you know, Adrian sperm, slabs it up the old hoo-ha and
01:14:40
Speaker
And bam, nine months later, a lady true. And this is something, and when she types in his password in the computer, like this is something that I hate they do in movies, and I can't fault the TV show for doing it because they did it in the comic too, where his password is just Ramsey's too. Yeah. Right? I mean, it's just like, I mean, come on, you're the smartest man in the world. Can't you think throwing some additional symbols in there or something? Make it a little harder to guess. Yeah, don't you use like a password manager?
01:15:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the things that drives me crazy when I see that happening in movies. But if you ever noticed that, yeah, and they always do that with people, they have to figure out a password and they sit there for like, you know, like 30 seconds and then they, and bam, you know, they can figure out, I mean, come on, really? Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yeah. And yeah, you would, you would expect that the smartest man in the world would have a better password. Right. Especially one that somebody cracked before. Yeah. Yeah.
01:15:41
Speaker
OK, but it is what it is. And so then Europa, you know, he uses the horseshoe to escape and there's a spacecraft. And we find out that what he's been doing when he goes to the moon and he throws any deposit, he's been arranging the dead Phillips and crookshanks there.
01:16:03
Speaker
Yeah. He's been arranging them into a message. Like we saw before, we saw save me, but we didn't see the last part, which is save me daughter. Save me daughter, yeah. And in the past. Sorry, go ahead. No, because I was thinking when we just sort of saved me, I was saying, well, who was he talking to, Dr. Manhattan? That's what I was wondering, too. Yeah. Yeah, I was saying, well, who was he talking to? And then when we finally see the last word, and even when he gets back
01:16:33
Speaker
who even says to them, you know, well, you know what? That's the reason why I rescued you, because, you know, you didn't finally acknowledge me as being your daughter. She said, that's the only reason why I rescued you. Right, because. Which I thought was kind of touching, actually.
Europa Probe and Timing Obsession
01:16:49
Speaker
Well, because in 2008, she goes to Karnak to visit him.
01:16:53
Speaker
and she says that she just she learned that he had that he had stopped that what he had done that he had set this the squid and she tells her you know i'm your i'm your daughter or i'm sample 274 whatever it is yeah yeah she's and she says and i know he's on europa because i lost i i launched a probe that detected uh his energy signature there and i've launched another one that in
01:17:22
Speaker
It's going to arrive at 2013 on this specific day at this specific time. And that's when it's going to capture an image of him on Europa. And that's why he's there and he's looking at the watches because he wants to be there at that specific time when he knows the probe will be flying over. Yeah. That's why he kept looking at the time because he knew that the probe was going to be there at that specific time. Right. And then he said, OK, everything's got to line up. I said, oh, wow. OK, cool.
Spaceship and Self-Reliance
01:17:50
Speaker
And
01:17:52
Speaker
So then he sends the spacecraft there and save me daughter because he says, I will never call you daughter.
01:18:01
Speaker
And he tells her, like, I built everything by myself. You have to build it all by yourself, too. And then she goes and does it. Yeah, because she asked. And she said, I was hoping you'd give me a loan of $40 billion or something like that, you know? You know, something she wants to visit, I was hoping you'd give me a loan. He said, no. He said, listen, if you're really my daughter, you'll go out and you'll make it yourself. Yeah. Which she does. She goes out and she says, yeah, OK, well, OK, screw you, Daddy. Yeah, yeah.
Hints of Elephant and Golden Encasement
01:18:30
Speaker
Oh, also there's a little hint because remember in the last episode when he's talking to Dr. Manhattan and he says, you've been on Europa. And Dr. Manhattan asks, how'd you know? And he says, a little elephant told me. Oh yeah, yeah, I remember. I only picked up on that this second time around.
01:18:49
Speaker
And so he brings, so she sends a ship to go retrieve him and he gets encased in gold for the return trip. And they even say like, put your hands on your hips and everything. Right. Yeah. So he'd be in that pose when, you know, and then, and then that's when we realized, Oh shit. Well, he's been in the show all the time because we've seen the statue in previous episodes, but we just didn't know that that actually was him.
01:19:15
Speaker
We thought it was just a statue and you would say, well, why does she have a statue? Which is why it didn't surprise me when we find out that she's his daughter. Because I said, well, yeah, she's got to be Adrian's daughter. I figured that all along.
Masks and Cruelty
01:19:31
Speaker
But I just didn't figure that that actually was him.
01:19:35
Speaker
Yeah. And, um, soon back in the, in the present day, he, they, they revive him and she says like, we have to get you changed. And he brought, and she's like, what's wrong with what I'm wearing? He's like, well, it's a little bit too dated or something like that. It's not suitable for an old man. She said, I brought you something a little bit more suitable for a man your age. Yeah.
01:19:56
Speaker
Which is also what I was saying before about how the need for masks is kind of gone now, because the clothes he's wearing, it still has the Ozymandias symbol on it. Yeah.
01:20:08
Speaker
But there's no, yeah, and yet nobody through like these last three episodes, nobody wears any masks, you know. With the exception of Looking Glass because he's wearing, he's disguised, that's because he's disguised as 7th Cavalry still. Well, yeah, he's disguised, but since it's not his actual mask, you know, I say, okay, well, you know, he's not even wearing his own mask anymore, you know. Right, he doesn't even wear the, he's done with the reflective tape.
01:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So he knows the truth now. Right, yes. The need for masks is being stripped away. Oh, also, this is something else I wanted to mention, but the game warden tries to stop Vate from leaving. And then Vate, you know, takes him down. He says to him, he stabs him with the horseshoe. Yeah. And the game warden asks him, why did you have me wear a mask? And he says, because masks make men cruel.
01:20:59
Speaker
Mm, yeah. And he says, was I a worthy adversary? And he says, no, you won't. No. I said, damn, you couldn't have left the guy with that at least. He said, but you were entertaining. Yeah, I said, that's some cold shit, man. You better at least let him die with the illusion of, you know, was I a worthy adversary? He said, no. So
Dr. Manhattan Capture Plan
01:21:21
Speaker
then they captured Dr. Manhattan. They transferred him into this cage, which is, this is what we find out why they were stealing all those batteries.
01:21:29
Speaker
Because the cage is made out of lithium. This went a lot of the whole things that have been going on because we've got Joe.
01:21:40
Speaker
He shows up, you know, he's unexplained the whole master plot of, you know, Cyclops because the whole leadership of Cyclops has come to watch the transfer of energy from doctor because that's the whole plot. They captured Dr. Manhattan. They're going to take his, uh, energy transferred into Joe and he's going to restore the white race to the glory and power that they once knew. Yeah.
01:22:06
Speaker
And you notice the mistake he made is he explained his master plan before he did it. Yeah, bingo. Bingo, never explain your master plan before you do it. Right, and then he gets into the booth planning to transfer Dr. Manhattan's power into himself, but they didn't know about what the safety measures are needed. So when Lady True shows up and she opens the door, it's just like he's been liquefied.
01:22:33
Speaker
Yeah. And even, okay. And even before that, okay. Uh, Angela has showed up before and she tried to warn him. She said, listen, listen, she knows she's got to figure it out left, right, front, and center. Lady Cruz knows what you're going to do. Yeah.
01:22:49
Speaker
And Joe was saying, I have bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about. She said, yeah, she said, look around. Look at the batteries. Where'd you get them from? Oh, we stole them from her. He said, yeah, because she wanted you to steal them. Yeah, yeah. You dumbass. And Joe said, please, you're black. You don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to become Dr. Manhattan. Just sit over there, just stand over there and watch me become God and rule the world. And then he ends up getting liquefied as a result.
01:23:16
Speaker
He opens up the thing that, you know, the booth that he's in and all he is is just liquid that comes out. She said, dumb ass. Oh, and also I love the scene with him and Lori because when he takes off his clothes and he's wearing like the Dr. Manhattan speedo from the comic book. Yeah. And she's like, you look ridiculous in your panties. Yeah. And he tells her that the whole reason why he had her come down there
01:23:44
Speaker
was that she had a relationship with Dr. Manhattan and she, and he wanted to watch her and he wanted her to watch it, you know, watch the whole thing happen. That's the only reason why he asked her to come down to investigate. Right. You know, so it's, it's, yeah, he was a, he was a sadistic bastard that had to go. Yeah. And then later arrives and she vaporizes all of Cyclops.
01:24:08
Speaker
Oh, I love that scene where she's reading the message that Will, because Will has given her a message that he wants her to read to
Lady True vs. Cyclops
01:24:17
Speaker
them. And basically it's him saying, yeah, you've been torturing and killing and raping and people of color for all of these years.
01:24:29
Speaker
June Crawford says, well, stop. Wait, stop. Hold on. Lane two says, what? She said, listen, I want to hear this bullshit. If you're going to kill her, just kill her. You know, you have a lot of people be interrupted. Master plan is that when people try to explain their reason for why they're doing it, you have a lot of people are saying, listen, I don't want to be bothered if you're just going to kill us, just kill us and get over it. And she's dead serious because you see she closes her eyes and she starts praying. You know, her lips are moving. She's praying. She's like, yeah, let's get over it.
01:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And also Lori does that to Keen in the previous episode too, when he starts explaining his plan. Like she also, she says like, you know what, I'm done hearing about all these plans. Yeah, she said, she said, you know what, I'm just tired of this. And that's exactly what she said. She said, no, I'm tired of all this bullshit. She said, I've been listening to this for years now, you know.
01:25:19
Speaker
And then as the,
Reactions to Teleportation
01:25:21
Speaker
Dr. Manhattan finds a way to still use his powers. So the blood that was Senator Keene ends up flowing, you know, and you've got Looking Glass, Lori and Vite are all standing in it. And then it flows over within reach of Dr. Manhattan. He touches it and he transports them back to Karnak. And then he's like, why did they transfer us here? And then Vite says, well, it's because we're gonna save the day.
01:25:48
Speaker
Yeah, which in a nice little thing, you see looking glass with vomits, which before, apparently Lori has gotten used to teleportation, because she used to be the one that vomits all
Unacknowledged Achievements
01:26:00
Speaker
the time. Right, right, yeah. So apparently teleportation doesn't bother her anymore. Yeah, I didn't even notice that, but yeah, you're right. Yeah, it's looking glass that vomits, because this is the first time it's ever happened to him.
01:26:13
Speaker
And then oh you know what else i noticed too in the in the last episode because or actually i think it was this episode too um yeah it's this episode when uh true goes to visit Vite and he's this is why he he's so upset that he hasn't been acknowledged because he says Robert Redford won't return any of my phone calls because he sent him the message and it's like he refuses to work with me.
01:26:36
Speaker
Right. So this is why he feels, this is what he was hoping for, is he was hoping that he could usher in a new age with a new president and he could work with him to create a better world. But even though he helped get Redford elected, Redford's like, nah, screw you. Well, yeah, because Robert Redford doesn't want to work with a mass murderer. Right. Yeah. As we're reminded of numerous times in this episode, you know,
01:27:02
Speaker
This man killed 3 million people. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's brought out a couple of times and leads up to, you know, the ending, which we'll get to in a minute. But we get to the scene in the witches.
Squid Hailstorm Defeat
01:27:18
Speaker
one of the biggest callbacks to the original Watchmen, you know, the comic book, where Mike does indeed save the day again with squids. Yeah. Yeah. And this, and this size back, and it shows that the, the baby squids he's been dropping on, um, in random places, it wasn't just, you know, like they had a story reason for that. It beyond just him like trying to keep people cognizant of extra dimensional threats.
01:27:46
Speaker
and that's how they're gonna end up saving the days. He tells Looking Glass to alter the temperature so they'll freeze. So then when the squids fall, it'll be like a Gatling gun falling over Tulsa. Yeah, because Lady Truth now, she's got her own device for stealing Dr. Manhattan's power and she's in it and she's getting ready to, you know,
01:28:12
Speaker
Veidt says, well, no, we can't let her have that power. He said, well, what do you mean by that? He said, because she is a raging narcissist and she's going to use that power, you know, for her own ends and stuff like that. And he said, well, how do you know? Well, trust me, I know. He said, because I'm one. Yeah, yeah. He says that. He says basically like, it takes one to know one. He says it in Latin first. And then he says the translation, it takes one to know one. I love that.
01:28:38
Speaker
He said no, he said what she has the power. He said trust me. She's gonna go bad shit on ya You know, you know, we have to take her out and that's what he does is this massive hail of Frozen baby squid, right? Which it's funny because earlier in the episode Lady true says it's a rerun, right? You haven't done you're not doing anything original and then it's the rerun that ends up It's the nostalgia that ends up killing her. Yeah. Yeah, nostalgia kills her
01:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, because, and I mean, I mean, I just love the symmetry of the Adrian bite. Once again, he saves the world by using squids. He's like, this is his thing. If there's squids around, look for Adrian bite. And then that first one falls, right? And lady true feels them. She's like, ah, and she raises her hand. There's a hole right through her hand. Yeah.
01:29:34
Speaker
And she knows, and she said, ah, shit. Yeah, and then they just come raining down. And then Angela runs for cover, and she eventually gets to the theater where Will is, and the kids are all sleeping there. And he says they were pretty much knocked out as soon as they were teleported in. Yeah. They probably just threw up and fell out. Yeah. And then.
01:29:58
Speaker
And Will explains the whole thing that how him and Dr.
Dr. Manhattan's Vulnerability
01:30:02
Speaker
Manhattan, when he came to visit him, that he had told him that this was how shit was going to work out. And him and Angela, they come to some kind of understanding that way. Oh, something else I wanted to mention is when
01:30:19
Speaker
when Dr. Manhattan teleports the other three away, but he doesn't teleport Angela. And then she says, you know, why don't you teleport me too? And he says, because I don't want to be alone when I die. Like that was just, Oh, that, that, that killed me watching that scene. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know what? Again, going back to what you were saying earlier, which was a very good point was that the one thing that he couldn't do was create love. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why he was always looking for it.
01:30:47
Speaker
And yeah, even though this was a guy with the power of a God, yeah, he still wanted somebody to be there at the end. Yeah. And he did, which is very poignant.
Arrest of Ozymandias
01:30:59
Speaker
It was, it was, yeah, it was one of those moments where you say, Oh,
01:31:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and Mateen, he's like he's such an amazing actor. He sells this. The way he balances that between like the inhumanity of Dr. Manhattan, but he still gives him this kind of vulnerability. Like I don't know how he does it, but it's it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's it's one of those performances that you know will not be acknowledged when it comes time for the Emmys, which is a shame because
01:31:34
Speaker
This was a TV series that was full of nothing but Emmy worthy performances. Oh, yeah. From everybody. You know, this was like, forget about it. You know what? Nobody in this show was following it in. Everybody gave it their A game. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt, they gave it their A game. Nobody was phoning this in.
01:31:54
Speaker
And then, back in Karnak, Looking Glass says, you're coming, you know, he says, you know, you killed three million people and Laurie's like, yeah, you're coming with us, Adrian, you're under arrest. And he shows him the way to get back is he kept Archie, the airship from the original graphic novel. Yeah, yeah, he still had it.
01:32:16
Speaker
And he tells, and she says, he's like, no, you can't arrest me. You have no evidence. And Looking Glass has the disk of his recording is confessing to Robert Redford. And there's a nice little moment where Looking Glass, he realizes that Laurie knew about it, too. Yeah, yeah. Well, he says, wait a minute. You knew about this shit? You knew he killed all these people?
01:32:40
Speaker
Because Adrienne said, well, you done kept the secret all these years. Now all of a sudden, you got a conscience. And looking glad looks at us. Wait a minute. You knew about this? Yeah. Yeah. And then when she arrests him, and then he says, oh, you can't arrest me because the world is going to end if you do. And then she says, yeah, you know, people who keep saying that, but the world's still around. Yeah. Yeah. She said, oh, man. She said, you know what? Yeah. Everybody keeps saying that.
01:33:15
Speaker
don't give a fuck about anything anymore, attitude, the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, because you know what? She's not seen at all. She's not been through at all. And it's like, you know, nothing can surprise her anymore. Yeah. It's like, which is why I like going back to that scene. Well, like I said, with June Crawford, you know, one upped her. That's like the first time we ever seen her where she's not, you know, sure of her footing. Also, did you catch the look
01:33:37
Speaker
I love Jean Smart's performance in this.
Emotions During Capture
01:33:40
Speaker
on her face when Manhattan was teleported inside the cage?
01:33:40
Speaker
Like she's just got this.
01:33:45
Speaker
Yeah, like I love that it's just it's such a subtle performance like the look she has it's like this look of
01:33:52
Speaker
of, it's like this mixture of like fear and, and like regret and all these emotions like mixed together. And there's like, yeah, there's like five, which again, going back to Jean Smart, if you had ever told me that there was this kind of performance center, but she's turned into in recent years, you know, like I said, I saw her, she was on a season of 24 and there was something, she's turned into a hell of a dramatic actress. Yeah, she was also a legion.
01:34:19
Speaker
Right. And in that scene, you know, as you said, you see about five different emotions on her face all at the same time. Yeah. I don't know what she had to dig up to, to get that kind of reaction, but it worked so well. Like it's, and I didn't even notice it the first time. And, and it's so funny because her and Cal, when Cal is Dr. Manhattan, well even as Cal too, like we never see them interact at all on screen.
01:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Like we know that she interviewed him, but we never saw that. Yeah, we hear about the interview, but we never see it. Yeah. Which I think, which probably would have been, okay, that was a good idea, because if we had seen it, we would probably would have said, well, how come she didn't know, pick up on something that he was, you know, Dr. Manhattan, because she picked up on it, if anybody else would. So I think it's a good idea that they never showed us that. Yeah, yeah.
01:35:16
Speaker
It was a really great way to do it.
Angela and Power Transfer
01:35:20
Speaker
And then Angela, you know, they go back to her house and she lets Will use the guest room. And he says to her, you know, he was a good man, but considering everything he could do, he could have done more. He could have done more, yeah. Which was the criticism that Lady True also had of Dr. Manhattan as well. And you know what? To their credit, they're both right.
01:35:43
Speaker
And then she's cleaning up the eggs and she sees there's one left. And she remembers that he told her that he can transfer his powers into an organic medium like an egg. And this is where everything, the chicken, the egg thing, all of this, it all comes together. That's what it's all been building to. And when he said, you know, I have to walk on water, so you'll understand for later.
01:36:11
Speaker
Uh-huh. So then she goes out to the pool, she rolls up her pants, she cracks open the egg, she eats it raw, and then it's a close-up on her foot just as it's about to touch the water. And then it cuts to black. And then boom, that's it.
01:36:31
Speaker
Perfect. Perfect. And I saw so many people getting annoyed by that ending saying like, Oh, I wanted to see your turn blue. I want to see her walk up. No, this is the perfect ending. Maybe she didn't. Maybe she fell in the water. Right. But I like that they left it open like that. Yeah. So do I mean, you know, I don't know. I guess it's because as you know,
01:36:54
Speaker
A lot of people don't, but I grew up watching movies during the 70s and 80s. And a lot of movies in the 70s and 80s, that's how they ended. They let you say, okay, well, it just ended and let you figure out what happened afterward. It wasn't no need for you to have a sequel or anything like that. They just said, well, you figure out what happened. And I think that, yeah, that this was the perfect ending
01:37:20
Speaker
For we did not have to know if, and if you want to believe that Angela got the powers of Dr. Manhattan, fine. If you don't want to believe she got the powers of Dr. Manhattan, that's fine too. One of my favorite endings of any TV show ever was the ending of Angel.
01:37:35
Speaker
Right? When they're standing up against this horde of demons advancing on him and they're like, what are we going to do? And he's like, well, we're going to fight. And he's like, well, and he's like, you know, and I kind of want to slay the dragon. He just says, let's go to work. And then boom, cuts to black before the epic battle, because that was the whole theme of the show was you never stop fighting for redemption.
Series Finale Reactions
01:37:55
Speaker
Right. So they go out still fighting. And that's it. All you see is that them charging this war that's coming at them, and they just charge, and then that's it. And it's up to you to figure out what happened. Did they all die? But again, like you said. I mean, we did get a comic book sequel, but still, as far as the TV show goes, that ending was the perfect way to end it.
01:38:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, I don't know. I'm a big believer in ending things and letting me figure out what happened. You know, I don't need for everything to be tied up in a neat little bow. Right. And as we were saying earlier, I don't need for everything to be explained to me. You know, I you know, I don't mind an ending like this where it deliberately said, OK, well, I don't know what happened. Yeah.
01:38:48
Speaker
Yeah, same here. And yeah, I know a lot of people were pissed off by the ending. They were saying, yeah, and then people said, oh yeah, well they just left it open for the sequel. Well, from what I've heard, no, there's not gonna be a sequel. No, no, yeah. Not to this, yeah.
01:39:05
Speaker
And that, yeah, and you know, also it's, there's some interesting comments.
God as a Black Woman
01:39:09
Speaker
So, you know, the fact that Lady True and Will, they both said that, you know, Dr. Manhattan could have done more. He should have done more with all, every, all his powers. And then you've got, so this is something I thought was interesting was in the original graphic novel, God was a white man, right? He was a product of the nuclear age. Now in this new world, God is a black woman.
01:39:36
Speaker
And she's a product of a century of racism and persecution and all this. So what is she going to do with that power? What is she going to do now that she has that power? How is she going to change things? It's a really interesting question, Mark, to leave on the end of this series. And I really like, you know, like you said that Will and both ladies who said that, yeah, with all of his power, he could have did something
01:40:03
Speaker
to me, was a commentary on superheroes, period. Because sooner or later, that's something that we always ask about any super. Well, you could have did more with that. We always say, okay, well, Bruce Wayne, is Bruce Wayne really doing any good for Gotham City by dressing up as a bat, going out and beating up people at night? Wouldn't he do more good putting his money in the social
01:40:27
Speaker
Yeah, those programs and stuff and stuff like that. And, you know, Superman. Well, wouldn't he do more good, you know, you know, changing deserts into gardens of Eden? So people can, you know, eat and stuff like, you know, there's always that question with superheroes that
01:40:46
Speaker
But why are you just beating up on other people? Why aren't you using your powers to actually help some and actually change the quality of life for people in the world? Which is what Dr. Manhattan could have done. He could have turned the whole planet into a demon. But he didn't do that.
01:41:03
Speaker
You know, he likes how I took that sentence, which to me, it was very good. And like Lady True says, you know, he could have eliminated all nuclear weapons. He could have scrubbed the air clean. He could have done all all these things that he never did.
Praise for Series Execution
01:41:21
Speaker
So, yeah, that was just a brilliant way to end the finale. And I thought they know everything about this series from beginning to end. There is not a dull moment in this show like it's
01:41:34
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what else to say about it other than that. How about you? Do you have any other? Listen, there are a lot of TV shows that I've seen and that I could pick apart and say, and even ones that I liked, I could point to like one or two episodes or say, well, I didn't like this episode. Well, I didn't like this season. I didn't like that. I think that
01:42:01
Speaker
This was a masterful story that was obvious that this was player from start to finish because there wasn't anything wrong. I'm serious. There isn't anything, you know, maybe because I'm not that type of person. I was supremely overjoyed that this was as good as it was. Yeah, absolutely.
01:42:30
Speaker
Yeah, like you said, everything is planned out so meticulously. And also, like you said, there is not a bad performance in this bunch. Everybody is bringing their A-game to this show. Yeah, and I mean, the whole notion, first of all, it was an audacious idea to do a sequel to Watchmen, the comic book, the comic book, and not the movie. But by pushing it forward,
01:43:00
Speaker
you know, 30 years and dealing with an entirely new set. Because as you said, when we started doing this, yeah, you couldn't go back to the Cold War thing. That was the thing that drove that series, the original. But for this, it had to deal with what's going on now. And the racial issue is one that is, you know, paramount among other things that's going on. And I think that it was, you know,
01:43:28
Speaker
You said it right. It was downright ballsy of the creators.
Storytelling Risks and Reception
01:43:33
Speaker
I mean, you know, to do this, you know, to go that route with the series. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, hats off to Lindelof for having the guts when HBO asked him if you wanted to do a Watchmen series to say, I don't want to do an adaptation. I want to do a sequel to the comic book and hats off to HBO for saying, OK, we're going to take a chance on this.
01:43:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They were gutsy to do this. I mean, listen, they got my subscription. Let me put it that way. They got my subscription. I think it goes to show as well that studios should not be afraid to take risks like this because you think about this show and it was a big risk to do a sequel to a comic book
01:44:28
Speaker
that had already gotten a movie adaptation, but not to be an adaptation of the movie, right? Not to be a sequel to the movie. And then you think about all the stuff in here with race and all the hard questions it's asking. And then, and you also look at things like Black Panther, taking a chance on Black Panther when for decades, people were saying Black Panther would be too unbelievable for movie audiences.
01:44:54
Speaker
For, to the point that even you, as a black man, were betting people 10 bucks every chance you got that you'll never see that movie. And then taking the chance on Wonder Woman, you know. Every chance I say, well, I'll never see. That's probably this long to make a black widow movie. Yeah, yeah.
01:45:19
Speaker
And it shows that we can take these chances. And as long as you put your effort into it, it's better than just trying to phone in another Terminator sequel or whatever.
Cultural Representation Debate
01:45:35
Speaker
Well, you know what? One thing that I found, and this goes for white and black audiences both. So I'm not just trying to single out one. As much as people always complain and cry and whine and bitch and moan about,
01:45:47
Speaker
Some Hollywood doesn't come with something new or something different. And one different, nobody wants to see it. Basically, people want to see the same old thing. They do. I know a lot of y'all are saying, oh, don't know what he's talking about. Yes, they do. A lot of people, basically, why else do we keep getting to say Terminator sequels? Nobody wants to see Terminator anymore. At least I don't.
01:46:12
Speaker
Then you get something like this that is fresh and bold and audacious and take chances. Probably couldn't have been done in Hollywood. First of all, because of the scope of the story, you know,
01:46:32
Speaker
or something, here, take this money, go make what you want to make. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a gamble that paid off. I definitely think it's a gamble that paid off because except for, you know, those few people that we hear that, you know, of course, got to change everything and make everybody black. You know, you hear that, you know, I've heard it and I say, OK, well, you know what, I know what is coming.
01:47:02
Speaker
I had a couple of people, why did they have to change everything and make them?
01:47:10
Speaker
Right? I remember you asking me this. I was getting an argument with someone on Reddit who was saying like, whoa, how can he change himself black? How can he make himself black? That doesn't make any sense. He didn't have that power. He can alter, he can make copies of himself. He can alter matter on a subatomic level. You think he can't change his skin color?
01:47:37
Speaker
One of the things that cracked me up about, you remember when the Thor movie first came out, and there was such a big thing about Idris Elba playing Heimdall. Well, that's ridiculous. Well, why is it ridiculous? Well, they're supposed to be Norse gods. Well, no, in the movies, they never say that. They never specifically say that they're Norse gods. They say they're an extraterrestrial race that were worshipped by the Norse. Darcy specifically says a primitive culture like the Vikings could have seen them as gods.
01:48:12
Speaker
Exactly. But they never exactly said that, you know, that it's in the movie or so they can be anything they want to be. Why couldn't they be, you know? So, you know, but, you know, people do have their hang ups and I understand that. And all I can say is that, you know, what certain levels of our society have evolved to the point where you can have a story like this and people can't accept it for what it is and exploration of the imagination.
Evolution of Stories
01:48:43
Speaker
and take a story into a new direction, which is what you're supposed to do, which is why stories become legends and they keep getting passed on from generation to generation because each new generation adjusted the story and makes it fit to suit their mindset and where the society is at that moment in time, which is what this series is. It's about where we are in this moment.
01:49:13
Speaker
two or three years, dealing with something else that's going on with society then. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that makes any sense. Oh, it makes perfect sense. And I think you're absolutely right. Whenever there's a remake of something, the ones that do the best are the ones that find a way to adjust the story for the new audience. So that's one of the reasons why I say the
Successful Remakes for New Audiences
01:49:37
Speaker
I talked about this on Japan on film when I talked about compare the two versions of the ring. There's the Japanese version and the American version.
01:49:48
Speaker
I'd always wondered, you know, why is it that the American version is a pretty good remake, but all these other remakes of Japanese films, even ones that were made by Japanese directors, are terrible? And then I watched them back to back after living in Japan, and I found out, I realized the reason is because it's the same story, but they changed it to suit an American audience.
01:50:10
Speaker
they made conscience effort to appeal to that audience. And by doing that, by changing the story just in that subtle way, they were able to make it to appeal to a whole different set of people. Yeah, because you had a lot of people watching Watchmen that would have never been interested in it before if it hadn't been for the subject matter and the cast.
01:50:36
Speaker
Oh my God, you had a, like Joy Reed was talking it up on her morning show. Joy Reed doesn't read comic books. Oh, Joy Reed's a geek. Well, I don't think she's like that big of a comic. I don't think she's someone who has been like that, like maybe with movies and TV show, but I don't think she's someone who's like out reading comic books and that kind of stuff. Well, maybe you'll, okay. Yeah, maybe not. Yeah.
01:51:02
Speaker
Because movies and TV shows go? Oh yeah, she's into that culture. Like science fiction movies and TV shows and superhero movies. Right, right. But that's what I'm saying. Like you see someone like that on a national TV show talking up watchmen. And someone you wouldn't expect, right?
01:51:24
Speaker
No, no, no. I was kind of surprised when I found out that Joy Reid was that heavy into, you know, science fiction movies and superhero movies and stuff like that. You know, fantasy and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So I think that I was kind of surprised. Yes. OK. All right. So I think that's about all we have to say. Do you have any other final thoughts about the Watchmen TV show? Nope. That's it. If I haven't convinced
01:51:54
Speaker
All good listeners by now, how I feel about this utterly brilliant, magnificent TV series.
Series Availability Encouragement
01:52:02
Speaker
I can say. If you haven't seen it by now, you still got time to watch it. If you got HBO, as a matter of fact, HBO, because of the, you know, they allowing a lot of people to watch this series.
01:52:25
Speaker
So I think all you have to do is just download the HBO Go app, and you can watch like a lot of series, including Watchments. If you want to watch it, you don't have to get a, you know, you don't have to subscribe to it. You know, you watch it for free. Yeah. If you haven't seen it yet. Yeah. And if you do want to, you know, it's only like, I think like 20, 30 bucks or something on Amazon or on iTunes. So you can just go buy the damn thing too.
01:52:54
Speaker
Yeah, wow. All right, so that does it. Our first three-part series is over now. And that means we're going back to our regularly scheduled format where we switch off with different movies. So it was my choice to do the Watchmen TV show. So Derek, it's your choice to figure out what we're watching next. So what movie are we going to be looking at next time?
01:53:22
Speaker
I'm going to let you have this one because I really didn't come up with anything. I didn't really think anything. I don't want to come up with something just off the top of my head. So I'm going to let you have this one too. Oh, okay. All right. Well, I have to come up with it off the top of my head now too. All right. Um, actually, okay. Here's what I'm thinking. Um,
01:53:44
Speaker
All right, so here's what I'm thinking is, and this came out fairly recently, and I don't know if you've got access to it. Do you have access? If you don't, then I've got to back up. Do you have access to Birds of Prey? Do I have access to Birds of Prey? What, the movie just came out? Yeah.
01:54:06
Speaker
Um, I might. Is it, is it out on what you would call it digital? It's out on digital. I'm not sure if it's for rent, but I know it's out on digital because I bought it off iTunes.
01:54:18
Speaker
Okay, well let me see if I can find it. If I can't find it, then I'll get in touch with you. Okay, all right, if you can't, so if you can find it, then next we'll watch Birds of Prey or The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, because that just came out, we both seen it, we both enjoyed it, so I think that's pretty timely. Now, if you cannot find that, I've got a backup, so just let me know if you can't find it, and then I'll let you know my backup.
01:54:43
Speaker
And if he can't find it, then next episode, guys, you'll find out. It'll be a surprise, I guess, what our next episode will be then.
01:54:51
Speaker
Yeah, just do it in the fucking now you'll see All right, that does it for us for this week Thanks so much for listening to us head on over to Facebook. We got our superhero cinephiles Facebook group follow us on Twitter or Instagram super cinema pod on both or you can leave us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and also, you know, we've got a patreon page patreon.com slash
01:55:18
Speaker
super cinema pod. Feel free to come in, become a patron, toss us a few bucks a month so we can keep the lights on around here. Okay. All right. That does it for us and we will see you next time. And we thank you so much for listening and we hope that you enjoyed this first, our first three-part thing. And if you did, please let us know if you want us to do another one, another three-part of you want to do another TV series. Yeah, absolutely.
01:55:47
Speaker
Okay. Hey, this is Derek Ferguson, wishing you, you know, I know we're all stuck at home and we're all trying to get through this, but watch some good movies, read some good books and be good to each other. Yep. And this is Perry Constein telling you the same as well as wash your hands and wear a mask if you got to go outside. All right. Thanks so much. And we will talk to you next time. Okay.
01:56:17
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superheroescinephiles at gmail.com. Or you can also visit us on the web at superheroescinephiles.com. If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners.
01:56:43
Speaker
You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of pheasantlionstudios.com.