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Transcript
Introduction and Context
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, and this is the conclusion, you might say the epic conclusion of the Black History Month rebroadcast. And this time I decided to do something really special, one of my favorite series of episodes. This is another big supercut. And even though this was not part of the regular Black History Month episodes that Derek and I used to record,
00:00:38
Speaker
or that Kellan and I recorded last year, I still felt that this was appropriate to kind of end this rebroadcast with because in this series, this was when Derek and I covered HBO's Watchmen and just a lot of stuff with that focused on
00:00:57
Speaker
you know black history and uh... black experience black superheroes and so i felt this was uh...
Audio Quality Apology and Listening Tips
00:01:05
Speaker
a good way to kind of and this so this is a supercut this is the all three episodes of the uh... the uh... this the nine episodes that of hb l broadcast of watchman so it's a long one
00:01:20
Speaker
Also, unfortunately, I don't have access to the original audio files that Derek and I recorded, so I'm just going back by the MP3 versions that were released, so there's some. The audio quality's not that great, so I apologize for that, but I hope you can put up with that, and I hope you enjoy listening back to these episodes that we did on Watchmen.
00:01:42
Speaker
Again, it's a long one, so you'll want to be patient. Grab a few drinks, grab some popcorn, listen to it in batches, whatever you feel like. But I do hope you enjoy listening to, re-listening again, if this is the second time, or listening to it for the first time. And a lot of fun stuff that we talked about in these episodes.
00:02:01
Speaker
And that does it for me, so I hope you enjoy these. I hope you enjoyed this Black History Month rebroadcast.
Watchmen Series: Plot and Character Analysis
00:02:09
Speaker
Hopefully next year I'll budget my time a little bit better and be a little bit more cognizant of the release schedule so I can have some new content for you, some new Black superhero content for you next time Black History Month rolls around. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.
00:02:45
Speaker
How about that coffee now? Where's it go? Just outside the fence. Gotta be 300 meters long. Must have used some kind of drill to get it done that fast. Well, don't rule out extremists to gophers. How are your children? Safe. I thought he was laughing.
00:03:16
Speaker
Us fuckers always say the device is rigged to their hearts, and none of them actually take the time to do it. You saved us. Thanks. Crawford jumped on the grenade. I just gave him a little push. Yeah, well, I sure as shit can't exhale him now. That's not funny.
00:03:38
Speaker
Sorry, I wasn't joking. You guys just scheduled this funeral so fast, kind of weird, considering it's an active murder investigation, by the way. But we were literally going to dig him up tomorrow. Discreetly, of course. Why? Your chief was murdered by the 7th Cavalry. I get it. It was a history. But you still have to consider other possibilities, right?
00:04:07
Speaker
For instance, I was at the crime scene earlier, and you know what I saw? Tire tracks right at the base of the tree. What kind of vehicle? I'm sorry, did I say vehicle? No, no, no. No, um, it was a wheelchair. And I get how you guys missed it. You know, he was your chief, he was your friend. It's hard to do your job well when you're that close to someone. That's why I'm here. Hey, did you know that he had a secret compartment in his closet?
00:04:38
Speaker
What? Yeah, I was over there talking to his wife. And while I was there, I found this secret fucking compartment. Isn't that insane? Why were you looking in his closet? Oh, well, when my dad was murdered, they found a secret compartment in his closet. So, you know, I always check. Once in a while, pants out. What was in it?
00:05:06
Speaker
You tell me. What wasn't it? How the fuck should I know? Well, his wife told me that you were the only person in that bedroom since he died. And, frankly, Angela, you just don't strike me as the fainting type.
00:05:31
Speaker
Okay, I'll tell you. It was a bust, just a big naked bust. That's it. However, I think there was something on that bust. I don't know, maybe your pal Judd asked you to get rid of it if something ever happened, or maybe the two of you were having an affair, which makes no sense, because your husband's fucking hot. But whatever it is, this much, I know.
00:05:57
Speaker
Men who end up hanging from trees with secret compartments in their closets tend to think of themselves as good guys. And those who protect them think they're good guys, too. But here's the thing about me, Sister Knight. I hate good guys for breakfast.
Personal Experiences During COVID-19
00:06:25
Speaker
Oh.
00:06:53
Speaker
Welcome to Superhero Cinephiles, I'm Perry Constantine. I'm about to get to the discussion that Derek and I had about the first three parts of the Watchmen TV show, but first I just wanted to give you guys a bit of a disclaimer. During the call, we had some connection problems, a few little hiccups here and there, so there are some parts in this interview where Derek gets caught off maybe, or
00:07:18
Speaker
where there's some overlap in our audio. So I've done my best to try to clean it up as much as I can, but there may have been some parts that I couldn't clean up or that I just, or some parts that I just frankly missed. So apologies for any problems you have while listening to this episode. Hopefully we won't have these problems going forward. And thanks for understanding and enjoy the show.
00:07:45
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I am half of your host, Perry Constantine, coming to you from the, so far, not quarantine, Kagoshima, but we'll see how that goes. And I am the other half, Derek Ferguson coming to you from beautiful downtown Brooklyn, where I am
00:08:06
Speaker
safely ensconced and sequestered in my house as you we all know right now we're going through a semi sort of lockdown here in New York where you know most everything everybody is encouraged to stay home where we're at right now. How are you doing Derek? I'm doing fine so far I've been you know staying in the house
00:08:31
Speaker
getting stuff done, writing, reading, catching up on my TV watching. I binge watched the last couple of seasons of, it's always sunny in Philadelphia. How is that? I've only seen like a handful of episodes of it.
00:08:58
Speaker
Oh, you know what? I like it. But it's that type of humor that I like that's very mean-spirited and very cruel and very, like, uh, like, uh, Seinfeld cranked up to 11, where people are very, you know, they do mean things to each other. And a lot of people say, oh, well, I don't, well, why do they have to be mean to each other? Well, that's kind of the humor of the show is right. No, I was saying, and I'm planning on finally catching up because I've been hearing
00:09:28
Speaker
for years and I've never watched it so finally I said you know what I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna watch Westworld I plan on doing that this weekend you know Westworld because everybody keeps telling me how terrific it is how fantastic it is how great finally I said you know what I'm gonna bite the bullet and watch it
00:09:45
Speaker
I watched the first season and I really enjoyed it, but I haven't... I've got the second season, I just haven't sat down and watched it yet. Though I did start watching Legion, if you ever saw that show, based on the X-Men character that was on FX. I think it ran for three seasons, and that's been an interesting show to watch because it's...
00:10:06
Speaker
it's not what you'd expect from a show based on the X-Men. It deals a lot with the way they handle the psychic powers and everything in it. It's a really unique take on it. I finished the first season, I just started part of the second season, and it's very much like
00:10:29
Speaker
like the main villain is pretty much just the shadow king and just like the it's very trippy it's very interesting to watch and uh and it's also got you know an actress who's in what we're going to be talking about today and that uh gene smarts in that too oh really okay i i think i watched like the first two episodes and i liked it and i watched it man because orberry plaza was in it yeah
00:10:55
Speaker
And I love all the Plaza. So I have no idea why I didn't continue watching it. I probably just got distracted with something else, which is easier to do now. But what is happening since FX.
00:11:09
Speaker
is on Hulu now. I've been catching up on like you know like shows I said okay be like uh I'll be able to catch up on shows that I missed and Legion is one of those shows I want to watch because everybody was telling me how great it was how trippy it is and you know it's think it's not like a traditional superhero show so I've been wanting to get back into watching it for a while so I'm definitely gonna put that on my list to also watch after
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm gonna watch that. Yeah, it's really it's really interesting and and one and you know I'll say this too. Don't fall asleep to it because you'll get some trippy dreams that happen to me one time Really?
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah, I was laying on the couch and it was late at
Streaming Trends and Movie Discussions
00:11:50
Speaker
night and I kind of dozed off watching it and just like, I can't even describe like the kind of trippy dreams I ended up having after that. Yeah, I know. Sometimes that'll happen to me like there's a movie that I'll be watching and I'll sleep and the movie will get integrated into, you know, my dreams and stuff like that. And I think I'm still watching the movie, but I'm actually dreaming. Yeah, that's exactly what happened to me.
00:12:11
Speaker
And you know, with Legion, that's, you get some real, you feel like you're going insane when that happens. I've heard that visually, it's, you know, very, very good. Oh yeah, like the, they do some really unique things. Like it's very stylistic and, um,
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm not sure if it came to a logical conclusion or if it ended up ending because of the Disney merger, but whatever the case, I hope they get that guy. Noah Hawley, I can't remember his name, the showrunner, but he at one point was talking to Fox, I think, about doing a Dr. Doom movie.
00:12:54
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah, so hopefully he'll still get something, you know, he'll still be able to do something after when Disney starts utilizing the Fox properties more. What happened? Legion only lasted, what, like three seasons? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, so it only lasted three seasons, so I guess that
00:13:15
Speaker
uh... that show kind of got cut off kind of show okay that's too bad and i'm maybe they'll be able to do something with it there uh... but we'll see how it works going forward but i also picked up uh... birds of prey because that's now uh... it's not what they ended up releasing it early on itunes though i haven't actually had a chance to watch it yet because uh... i bought it on release day so i bought it on tuesday and
00:13:40
Speaker
uh Tuesday night my girlfriend really wanted to see it too so I wanted to watch it with her but Tuesday night she didn't feel like watching a movie and then last night uh I worked at night and then when I came when I came home she was already asleep so hopefully we'll be able to watch it tonight but we'll see okay well I hope I hope you enjoyed as much as I did yeah I was gonna watch because now they've got uh that new Vin Diesel movie Bloodshot yeah yeah that's when you know
00:14:09
Speaker
So I went on Amazon. I said, oh, well, maybe I'll watch it because, you know, I really don't know too much about Bloodshot, but I like Vin Diesel's. I said, let me watch it.
00:14:18
Speaker
Now, they want you to buy the movie. You can't even rent it. You got to buy it. And they're like charging something like $22 to watch it. I said, bump that. I don't like Vin Diesel that much. Yeah, Birds of Prey was also $20. But I didn't mind paying that for buying it without seeing it because we were going to see it in the theater anywhere. We were talking about going to see it like last weekend. But movie tickets in Japan cost $20 anyway.
00:14:46
Speaker
So, you know, we're paying half price to watch it here at home. And, you know, now we don't have to worry about going to the theater, don't have to worry about, you know, parking or dealing with traffic or any of that stuff. And, you know, and then we can watch it again and again and again. So. Yeah, exactly. Because my wife, she wanted to watch The Invisible Man.
00:15:06
Speaker
the new one. But again, you go on in, it's like $19 just to rent it. Yeah, I thought that was a little bit weird. Like they have all these, I mean, I understand why they're doing it, but if it's just you by yourself, like you're not going to want to spend 20 bucks to rent a movie at home.
00:15:24
Speaker
but I understand if it's like, you know, you get a bunch of people over or something like that or you're watching with your family or that kind of stuff, but. Right, okay, yeah, exactly, exactly. Like if I was gonna have like a bunch of people over to watch it.
00:15:38
Speaker
Yeah, okay, well I'd spring for it. I'd say, yeah, okay, yeah, no problem. But it was just me and my wife, nah, you know, cause we used to like, rent movies for like, you know, from Amazon for like $5 or something like that. Right, right. So we're not, uh, no, we didn't want to, let me put it this way, the bottom line is we didn't want to see that bad.
00:15:58
Speaker
Yeah, I had read a few of the Bloodshot comics, the relaunch stuff when they did the big, when Valiant did their big reboot a few years back. I read some of the Bloodshot stuff that came out then. And yeah, it was pretty interesting. Like the first trailer I saw for Bloodshot, I'm like, well, okay, it just looks like a Vin Diesel movie. It doesn't look like anything like the Bloodshot comic books. But then,
00:16:21
Speaker
Other trailers that came out, I guess they were just trying to capitalize on the Vin Diesel stuff in that first trailer, but in other trailers that came out, it looked like it was close to the comics than the original trailer made it seem. My thing is, Vin Diesel, if I was talking to Vin Diesel, man, listen, just go back to doing XXX and Riddick. Stop trying to, you know, create franchises that keep bombing one after another, because he did what, like the last Witch Hunter?
00:16:49
Speaker
That didn't go anywhere. There was something else. And he did go back to doing XXX. He did the XXX movie that came out a couple years ago where they had to explain how he came back to life because he pulled off his character. But the movie actually was really more like a Fast and Furious movie than, you know, it was like Fast and Furious Light. The thing about Vin Diesel is like I've
00:17:13
Speaker
I've never seen him as really leading man material. He's good and more of a supporter. I think that's why I like the later Fast and Furious movies, because it's more of an ensemble cast, so it's not all on his shoulders to carry it. Yeah. Well, it's the A-Team, basically. I call it the blue-collar version.
00:17:36
Speaker
It's like a cross between Mission Impossible and The Eighteen. Yeah. And although I'm not sure how interested I'm going to be in the series going forward, because one of the reasons I stuck with and when I came back into it with Five was because of Dwayne Johnson being in it.
Fast & Furious Franchise Discussion
00:17:53
Speaker
And now he and Jason Statham are off doing Hobbs and Shaw instead, which I just watched the other day. And it's fantastically over the top.
00:18:03
Speaker
it's
00:18:21
Speaker
Oh, you know, make, you know, two or three more of these things, you know, as long as I keep making money. So that mean, and then there was that whole thing where Dwayne Johnson had been, don't get along anymore for whatever reason. Yeah. I have no idea what that's all about. So, cause I don't, cause I, cause I don't think Dwayne Johnson is in this one.
00:18:40
Speaker
So he's not in it. Paul Walker's gone. Gal Gadot's gone. What's his name? The guy who played Han. He was my favorite character in Fast Five. He's gone, too. So it's just like, yeah, I'm not really interested in watching. Oh, they're bringing him back. Oh, they are bringing him back. OK. Yeah, they're bringing him back. Well, of course, they
00:19:02
Speaker
Now, you know, movies, they spoil everything that's in the trailer. So if you've seen the latest trailer, you've seen that, yeah, that they show that, yeah, that Han is. OK, so that might bring me back because I'm not interested in watching.
00:19:18
Speaker
Oh, what's his name? The guy who plays Roman. Oh, Tyreese. Tyreese, yeah, yeah. I hate him. He's so, so annoying. Why are you supposed to be annoying? He doesn't wait to, he does it too well. Like he's just, his character, I remember a friend of mine dragged me to the theater to see Too Fast, Too Furious, and I hated it then, and I hated his character most of all. And just like in every single one of these movies, he's still there. And I'm just like, just kill this guy off already. He's such a pain in the ass. Okay, you mentioned Han.
00:19:47
Speaker
The other day about two weeks ago, I'm sitting at home and I'm watching, you know, I'm flipping through the channels. I'm trying to find something to watch, everything like that. And I see that there's this movie called Better Luck Tomorrow, which directed by Justin Lin. Oh, yeah. And the guy that plays Han. He's he's OK. So you've seen it. Yeah. Because apparently this movie is the origin. It's the same character that goes to the Fast and Furious.
00:20:11
Speaker
Oh, no way. I never even picked up on that. I'm gonna have to rewatch that movie. I haven't seen that movie since, uh, since, like, I was in college. Well, what I did was that I watched the movie and I really liked it. It was a good movie. Yeah. I mean, and I recommend it to all you guys that are listening. Better Love Tomorrow, directed by Justin Lin. Yeah. Great crime movie with, uh, an Asian cast. Yeah. It's about a bunch of, uh, high school kids who become criminals. Right. You know, they kind of like,
00:20:41
Speaker
You know, like, full ass backwards. They don't mean to become criminals, but they kind of like get caught up in that life. But what is the most interesting thing besides, you know, everything else is that I tell Han who we see in the Fast and Furious. This is his origin story. Yeah, that's it. I never even realized that I'm going to I haven't watched that movie in so long. I'm going to have to break it out and watch it again.
00:21:05
Speaker
But yeah, that was a good movie. It was this small little independent film and it just got like complete, and I found it, it was like back in the blockbuster days. Like it was on sale for like two bucks or something. So I bought it and yeah, I really ended up liking it. And now Justin Lin, of course, he went on, he did, I think he did Fast Five, didn't he? I think he did like two or three of the Fast and Furious movies if I'm not mistaken. He did those and then he did Aquaman. Yeah.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah. And I believe he, and he also did the, uh, the first two insidious movies. So, you know, he's, um, was it him that did that? Double check, make sure. Oh, I know. He didn't do insidious. Who did insidious then? I don't know. I've never been into the insidious, uh, things. So I have no doubt, but I do know he, he, he did, uh, what, uh, you know, the Star Trek movie. Yeah. I'm getting them, I'm, I'm mixing them up. So James Wan, who also did, he did furious seven.
00:22:03
Speaker
And he, James Wan is the one who did Aquaman and Insidious. And then Justin Lin, he did Fast Five and Fast and Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I mean like the guy has got,
00:22:17
Speaker
You know, some range as a director. He does. You know, he does a lot of different things. Yeah. Oh, it looks like he also did. He's not just one trick pony. Yeah. It looks like he also directed F9. So that makes sense why they had where they brought back on in that one. Mm hmm. Because Hans was first showed up in Tokyo Drift. Right. Yeah. That was the third one. Yeah. That was set in Tokyo. So he showed up in that one. And then I think, yeah, he comes back in.
00:22:42
Speaker
The one that's in Rio de Janeiro, that's Fast Five. That's Fast Five, yeah. So he comes back in that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then he dies, because Jason Statham's character kills him, I think in, what was it, six or seven? Seven. Yeah. He kills him to seven. I think it was like the end of six. It was like a post-credits scene in six, and then seven was when Jason Statham's character was the villain. Right. Yeah, he was the villain.
00:23:11
Speaker
was weird to me how now they like kind of pretended that never happened. That, you know, like Jason Statham tried to kill all of them and one of the movies is like, yeah, well, we're just going to ignore that. That ever happened. And then in F8, they bring him into this member of the team and they do that where they bring it because they did the same. Like The Rock, though, you know, his character didn't kill anyone, at least. But, you know, they did that, too, where he started off as a villain, but he was so popular they brought they made him a regular cast member.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. They had to, like, kind of make a part of the team and everything like that. So it's, yeah, I mean, it's really weird how they do that. They introduce these characters as villains or, you know, the antagonist and then they become so popular, you know, then they say, OK, well, now we got to figure out a way that they'll become part of the team, which is why they had that whole thing where Jason Statham has to rescue
00:24:05
Speaker
Uh, Vin Diesel's son. Yeah. And that was his way of, I guess, you know, redeeming himself. And that's how he got accepted into the team. You know, so it's good, but you know what?
00:24:17
Speaker
I enjoy them. I love the Fast and Furious movies. People say a lot of terrible movies have that. No, they're not. They're entertaining as hell. They're very entertaining. The main point to me. Yeah, very entertaining. I love that they've got this attitude where they're just like, we're just going to go completely over the top. They don't care. And like I've been telling people, I said, you know what?
00:24:39
Speaker
The Fast and Furious movies, the last two or three of them, have been better James Bond movies than the actual James Bond movies, as far as I'm concerned. You know. Yeah. All right. So today, we're talking, so we're going to be doing our
00:24:54
Speaker
first actual TV show we're covering on this, and that is Watchmen, the all nine episodes. And so this is gonna be unique because you and I made a decision when we started this show that we were gonna kind of avoid TV shows for the most part, unless it's something really special. And this qualifies as something really special, I think. Well, yeah. I mean, the first one we did, we did the, you know, The Crisis.
00:25:22
Speaker
You know, that was the first one we did. But again, that was a unique case. And I think that we're justified in doing this because, of course, it's connected to one of the most popular superhero and controversial superhero movies ever made. You know, Watchmen, which we covered. And since this is an extension of that movie, yeah, you know, it's justified. And also it had such it has such an impact.
00:25:48
Speaker
on fans of the movie and people who even didn't like the movie.
00:25:56
Speaker
Ended up liking the TV show. I talked to a lot of people that said they hate the movie, but they love the TV show. Well, yeah. And I'm one of those. Because we talked about this when we talked about the Watchmen movie. I didn't like it that much because I thought it was a good movie.
Watchmen Series: Racial Themes and Historical Context
00:26:11
Speaker
It's good. But as a Watchmen adaptation, I thought it fell flat. Right. Now, this TV show, contrary to what some people believe, is they didn't do it as a sequel to the movie. But it's actually a sequel to the comic book. Right.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yeah. So they, I mean, they actually do something in this TV show that they didn't do in the movie is that they actually show you the squid that fate dropped on New York. Yeah, we see the squid.
00:26:40
Speaker
And we didn't even see it in the comic book. Like, we only saw hints of the squid. We didn't see it full on. So, I mean, they take it further than even Dave Givens took it. And, um, okay, uh, now I remember when they announced that they were doing a Watchmen TV show. My first thought was, oh, good, good, they're gonna do, um, they're gonna do a new adaptation and, you know, doing Watchmen...
00:27:00
Speaker
Adapting Watchmen as a TV show is really the only way you can adapt that story, because as we saw with the movie, there's so much stuff to cram in there and a lot of stuff gets left out, even in the three-hour director's cut. Right. Yeah, that was the same thing I thought, too, when I first heard it. I said, oh, OK, what are they going to do?
00:27:21
Speaker
Oh, and they're going to have the room to do the whole story. Finally, I said, OK, cool. Right. But then they they switched it up because then they said Damon Lindelof is going to do it, which I was a little bit nervous about because he did lost. And after the first few seasons, lost just kind of.
00:27:37
Speaker
they were trying to just keep it going without having any real idea of what they were doing anymore. And they were just kind of like throwing a whole bunch of stuff against the wall. And then, so that was like a red flag for me. And then the second red flag was when they said, well, we're not going to be doing an adaptation of the comic book, we're going to be doing a sequel to the comic book. And I thought, okay, that's
00:27:57
Speaker
I thought it was weird because I'm like, well, if you're going to do a sequel, wouldn't it make more sense to do it to the movie that everybody had seen as opposed to the comic book that only like a quarter of your audience has probably read? And that was my attitude going into this. So I was kind of skeptical of this going in and I'm just like, well, you know, I'll probably get around to it someday. But I hadn't planned to.
00:28:18
Speaker
And then people started watching it, and they're saying, oh, this is amazing. So I started catching up on it. And now that the whole thing's out, I ended up buying the whole series on iTunes for this episode. Oh, so you didn't start watching it from the beginning. You didn't start it from the beginning. You caught up to it later on. Yeah, I started with episode four, and I binged all four episodes at once. Oh, OK. That's when I started getting into it.
00:28:43
Speaker
All right. I didn't know that. No, me. I watched it, you know, from I watched it from the front, first of all, because I once I found Regina King was going to be starring in it. And I've been in love with Regina King. She's a fantastic actress.
00:28:58
Speaker
I mean, I remember she was a child actor on the 227 and I've been following her career ever since then. I think I've just seen about everything that she's done. And she's like one of those actresses that I always you know what, even if what she's in is crap, she's going to be good. You know, she was in the season of she was in one season of twenty
00:29:23
Speaker
You know, she was in one season of American Crime Story. You know, she's been, you know, she's just been in like a ton of stuff and like everything that she's in. I always find myself saying, damn, she is so good at whatever she does. So I was in it right from the start. And, you know, even my wife, as I said before, she doesn't care for superhero movies. She, you know, we watch Watchmen.
00:29:50
Speaker
before we watch this, when the first episode came on, I said to, okay, well, you never seen Watchmen, so.
00:29:59
Speaker
You want to watch the movie? She said, oh, she said, oh, yeah. Well, you know, I was I said, OK, so this way you will have an idea of what the background of everything is. And she said, yeah, yeah, yeah. She'll put it on. So, you know, I threw it on and I've got to just cut, you know, do it on. And, you know, she watched it and she said, oh, OK. She said, I didn't get it. She said, but I said, that's all right. But he does, you know, so. Yeah.
00:30:27
Speaker
I said, nobody really does. But we watched a TV show and by the third episode, she was hooked. She said, oh, she said, this is nothing like the movie. And I said, oh, yeah. I said, yeah, well, you got to pull. It is nothing like the movie. And a big part of that is because when we talked about this in our Watchmen movie episode, but Zack Snyder, you get the sense that he didn't really
00:30:54
Speaker
understand what Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were trying to do with the movie with the comic book and so when he made the movie he had like the wrong take on a lot of stuff so Rorschach becomes more of a heroic figure the comedian is more of a
00:31:09
Speaker
is a bit more sympathetic in some ways. It's much more focused on the action and the fight scenes and all that. And all the deep character stuff, all the flaws that these characters have, which is really what it was about, was about a bunch of broken people.
00:31:25
Speaker
That kind of falls to the wayside in the movie. But the TV show, like, Lindelof shows that he understands what Morin Givens were doing. And he brings that to the TV show. So let's just jump into it. We'll start with, we're doing the first three episodes in this episode. And so the first episode, it's summer and we're running out of ice. And this is when we're introduced to...
00:31:47
Speaker
Well, first off, Regina King plays Angela Abar, which is another allusion to black superheroes because Abar, which we covered in our last episode, the first black Superman. Yeah, right. Exactly. And it was something that you pointed out while you were doing that. And I said, holy shit, I never even made that connection. And, um,
00:32:09
Speaker
while I was watching this episode and you know what I love about I love it that I was watching the first episode and there was still things in there that I was picking up on that I hadn't seen the first time like I never noticed until I watched it this time that
00:32:24
Speaker
They get the original Watchman smiley face in there when she's doing the thing with the eggs. Yeah. And it's the cool thing about it is it's reversed, too, because in the comic book, you know, the face is white or the face is yellow. And, you know, it's just like a standard smiley face. But this one, it's the eyes and the mouth that are that are yellow instead. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, it's stuff that, you know, I didn't catch the first time. I didn't catch the first time around that.
00:32:53
Speaker
the actual title was from the musical Oklahoma, which we see is being formed by an all black cast. Right. Yeah. And there's also a line. There's the one of the songs is poor Judd is dead. And that's that's where that that's where that line comes from. It's summer running out of ice. And you know, in this movie, the movie adds with the sheriff, Judge Crawford dead.
00:33:21
Speaker
Yeah, so it's all these little tie-ins and illusions they make. So yeah, it's amazingly well done. He throws in, just like Morin Gibbons did with the comic book, they throw all this stuff into it and into the background that you don't notice the first time around or even the second time around.
00:33:38
Speaker
And just like in the comic book, it ends with the bloody smiley face, right? The comedian's badge with the blood on it. This time it's judge badge, which has the blood on it. So it's a little twist on it, but they're still doing, so it's, at first it kind of starts off in a way that,
00:34:00
Speaker
kind of reminded me of Superman Returns and The Force Awakens where it's like, okay, we're doing sort of a remake, sort of an original thing. And so that's kind of the feel you get when you get to the end of the first episode, but then it does veer in completely different directions after that. Yeah, because I mean, first of all, let me just say right off the bat that Damon Lindelof,
00:34:27
Speaker
There's a surety that he has with this series that he didn't have it lost. Maybe it's because he put more thought into it and he took more time writing the overall story. But like you said, there's things that are thrown in there that they're not just thrown off the cuff. There's things that are callbacks to the comic book and even some callbacks to the movie. And there's little things that are thrown in that let me know that there's a sure hand
00:34:58
Speaker
that wrote this script that knew exactly where he was going with it and what he wanted to do yeah and just like the the movie did is there's some fantastic world building in this because the comic book you know this is something that's often overlooked in the comic book with people who've only read it maybe once or twice you don't really realize it until you read it uh you know a few times that the entire world
00:35:20
Speaker
has been completely changed by the introduction of superheroes so you've got things like electric cars you've got four-legged chickens being served in a restaurant you know all sorts of things like that you know nixon was able to abolish term limits and he was president of the eighties vietnam is an american state now because doctor manhattan easily won the war and all these little things are are changes in the background that you don't really notice the first time you read the book and they continue that trend in this one so
00:35:49
Speaker
One thing you'll notice, they never use computers or really like cell phones or anything like that in this show. And there's a reason for that because
00:35:59
Speaker
after and they find out about this and um so just like the comic book they had um all this supplemental material with excerpts from Hollis Mason's books um you get one of um an article that night owl wrote um uh police i think they had like Rorschach's um the psychiatrist like his report i think was in there as well yeah uh an interview with adrian fight all all sorts of like supplemental material is in the background and it really helps
00:36:27
Speaker
And most people, I think, are probably like me. They skip the supplemental material when they read the book. But the last time I read it, before we talked about the movie, is I went through for the first time and read all the supplemental material. And it really gives you a much deeper understanding of the world. And the TV show did something similar. They had what's called PDpedia, which is on hbo.com slash PDpedia.
00:36:52
Speaker
And it is basically like reports compiled by Agent Petey. Who is partnered up with the former sub-spectrum.
00:37:06
Speaker
You know, Laurie Blake. Yeah. And so he's, and he mentions in that episode that, you know, he's got a PhD in history. He did his thesis on the police riots and all this kind of stuff. So he's really, he's really knowledgeable about this. So the, it has all these documents in there. And one of the documents, like the, like one of the introductory documents talks about
00:37:26
Speaker
the use of technology. And after the squid, because everyone still believes that it was an actual interdimensional invasion, which is what Adrian Veidt, Ozymandias disguised it as and wanted people to think. Whereas in the movie, they changed it to him trying to mimic the powers of Dr. Manhattan. But this show, it goes full on with the squid. Which I actually like. I know we went back and forth about that, about them changing the ending.
00:37:56
Speaker
for the movie but for the purposes of this TV show because they do have the room to explore it more and you know I'm glad they went with the squid because I'm because I'm not sure I'm not sure but I do believe the character looking glass
00:38:14
Speaker
I they never come out and state it, but I get the impression that he does have actual suit was from the fact that he was traumatized by being close to the squid when it landed in Manhattan. He was in New Jersey. Yeah, definitely. And that's we'll talk about that more when we get to the fourth episode in our next segment. But but yeah, yeah, he get there some sort of like because one of the things that one of the after effects of the squid was it was also there was a lot of psychic feedback that happened.
00:38:43
Speaker
Right. A lot of people died as a result of the psychic feedback. I got to give Lindelof credit because the whole reason Snyder didn't use the squid is because he thought it would be too difficult for audiences to understand. Lindelof says, we don't care if you haven't read the book, we're putting the damn squid in this thing. He just goes right in and does it.
00:39:05
Speaker
Well, there's a whole lot of that all throughout the three episodes. Like you said, there's a lot of world. There's a lot of things he throws. And one thing that I appreciate that he doesn't stop to explain every little thing. He just goes ahead and does it and just trust that. Okay. You're going to stick with it long enough for him to explain.
00:39:25
Speaker
what it is that you're seeing, like, I like the fact that there's a part where there's a rate of little baby squid from the sky. And nobody, and everybody just treats it like, okay, yeah, okay, baby squids are falling from the sky. And they treat it very matter of factly. And yeah, now we explanation later on, but at the time it just happens and we just say, okay, we'll just go with it and just trust that, okay, he's going to tell us,
00:39:53
Speaker
you know, what's happening later on. Right. Yeah. And well, one of the things they do is they said in the PDF files that they had kind of halted technological developments because they were worried that technology had somehow
00:40:13
Speaker
triggered something that caused the dimensional incursion. So a lot of technological development kind of came to a halt. So they don't have like the internet. They don't really rely on computers as much. So that's why you don't see any of that stuff really in this show. Yeah, you don't see a live day. I think really the only time you know that don't, if I remember, is scenes in the police station.
00:40:34
Speaker
I seem to remember that you do see, like, little computer terminals sitting on the desk of the police. Yeah, but you're right. People don't have computers in there. You don't see people, you know, with their laptops. You know, you don't see that, you know, here, which which, again, is something that you don't pick up on at first. But when you watch again, you say, wait a minute, there's something missing here that that, you know, they say, oh, wait a minute, there's no computers, there's no cell phones.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah, and also going on with the world building is this is, so the end of the Watchmen comic book, there are these background things that Robert Redford was thinking about running for president. And so in this series, they say, okay, he did run for president and because there are no term limits, he's like in his fourth term now as president.
00:41:23
Speaker
One of the things he's done is he instituted reparations for slavery and which are called, dismissively called Redfordations by racists and stuff like that. But that's actually a whole little subplot in itself in this thing about the fact that Robert Redford gave reparations to black people because it's continually referred to and there's a scene in a classroom
00:41:54
Speaker
you know, we're one of the children, you know.
00:41:56
Speaker
asks the Regina King character, you know, well, how did you open up your business? Did you do it with your red forations? Yeah. You know, so it's kind of like a little subplot of its own that runs through the whole show. Yeah. Because apparently Robert Redford is not a popular president in this world. There's some interesting things they do with this. And like, Angela was born in Vietnam. She was born and raised in Vietnam, which is an American state. And so
00:42:25
Speaker
Right. And, you know, the teacher mentions, you know, were you born in Vietnam before it became a state or after? Right. And she's like, oh, wow, it's a state in this movie. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a scene, there's a funeral scene. And we see that the American flag has been changed, that the stars are in the circle now.
00:42:43
Speaker
And there's 51 of them instead of 50. Yeah. And there's a whole lot more of them than, you know, yeah. So presumably Puerto Rico is now. Oh, so I was going to say I was going to mention that, like, you know, because they make Vietnam estate, but they still haven't acknowledged Puerto Rico is one.
00:42:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I said, well, you know, I'm saying, you know, well, presumably Puerto Rico said, but they never come out and say, they never say, you know, and I said, well, you know, well, how did you make Vietnam a state before? But then again, it goes back to the whole movie and movie and the comic book where, you know, the United States won the war.
00:43:20
Speaker
because of Dr. Manhattan. Right. And, you know, apparently they just went, you know, he just went over there and he just conquered the country. Yeah. Apparently. Because as we see later, later on, I'm not trying to jump ahead, folks, but in later episodes, we see that
00:43:35
Speaker
There's all kinds, like apparently they have a whole day dedicated to Dr. Manhattan in Vietnam. They have a holiday. And there's a lot of that like kind of resentment slash, you know, there are mixed feelings about it. Kind of like if you go to Hawaii, there's also kind of mixed feelings about being an American state among Hawaiians because there are some people who feel like, you know, we were an independent nation and then America took us over, basically. So there's a lot of mixed feelings about that kind of stuff.
00:44:01
Speaker
The way this show opens is it opens in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1920s during the Oklahoma race riots, which was this assault, basically, full-on assault by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists against what was at the time called Black Wall Street. Well, it was a massacre, plain and simple. Yeah.
00:44:31
Speaker
One of the remarkable things about this episode is that this is something that a lot of people, black and white, did not know about because I had a lot of friends of mine. Black and white, you know, they were contacting me and they said, wait a minute, did this really happen or was this something that they just, I said, no, this actually happened. And the reason why I know
00:44:54
Speaker
that actually happened is because, what was it? Back in the late 90s, there was a movie called Rosewood directed by John Singleton starring Ving Rhames and John Voight. And it was about a town in Florida called Rosewood where the same thing happened. The same thing happened. This was going on quite a lot, believe it or not, that there was all of these
00:45:21
Speaker
black settlements and towns and small cities where black people were doing very well. And, you know, everybody from the mayor down to the wino that was on the corner, everybody was black. And these towns were wiped out and people were massacred by the Klan and white supremacists. So, yeah, this actually happened. And for the for this TV show to start off with that,
00:45:48
Speaker
I mean, first of all, Lidloff is putting right up front in your face what this show is going to be
Societal Commentary and Satire in Watchmen
00:45:55
Speaker
about. It's not going to be just about people in costumes. It's going to be about race and how not only superheroes, well, not really superheroes, they're people in costumes for the most part.
00:46:11
Speaker
This is going to be about race, unabashedly about race. And that whole thing carries through the entire series. But it's a powerful way to start off. I mean, you know, the series and I was reading something about. Some people had seen this episode and they saw echoes of how Superman was sent to another planet.
00:46:36
Speaker
that the little boy is sent away from, you know, this town that's being destroyed. It's kind of like the same kind of analogy. Oh yeah, very much so. Like I picked up on that once we get into the, once the, when they did the hooded justice episode, focus on Will, that really came through to me. Like, oh my God, it's basically the story of Superman. And just like, you know, the superhero comics started with,
00:47:02
Speaker
this uh with this um this refugee from a from a dying world being sent to earth the same thing happens with they basically made it the same thing here and watched me because superman was the first superhero and will as we later find out is the first superhero in this universe because he's he becomes hooded justice who in the comic books was also the the first costumed adventurer who appeared on the streets
00:47:27
Speaker
So they do a really good job of making that illusion. And yeah, you're right. Like, Lindelof made a conscious effort to make this story about race, which also sets it apart from the original, because the original was all about Cold War politics. But this takes it in a different direction, because you can't do, it doesn't make sense to do a series set in 2019 that's about the Cold War. And you know what?
00:47:55
Speaker
This points out something also that you and I have talked about, and it's a real bugaboo to me about, you know, cause we hear it all the time. We keep talking about, oh, how come they don't do anything different? How come they don't do anything new? Why they do the same thing all over again? This is definitely not the same thing as the movie or comic book. No, this is a brand new story with brand new characters for the most part, but set in this universe.
00:48:20
Speaker
Yeah, and it's the way it expands that story and takes it to a different level. For years, people were saying, you can't do a sequel to Watchmen. What would you do? There's no way you can take that story. There's no next logical step in that story. That story is completely self-contained.
00:48:39
Speaker
And that was one of my, and I was one of the people who believed that too. So that was one of my red flags when they announced this series. But Lindelof, God bless him, he found a way to make it work. And he showed that, no, you can do a sequel to this story. Yeah, I mean, you just don't do a direct sequel. You take this world and you say, okay, well, let me go 25 years road and see where this world has developed and how it's developed.
00:49:06
Speaker
in that time, which is, you know, which is, but, but at the same time is directly linked to the past. And I would be highly remiss if I didn't point out that the first, okay. The first thing we see is this little boy, he's sitting in a movie theater and he's watching a black and white solid movie. And it's a movie about
00:49:30
Speaker
Bass Reeves, the famous Oklahoma man. Yeah, and the movie's called Trust in the Law. Right, and that's the first heroic, which again, is a callback to what we got later on, because this is the first heroic image that we see in the movie, a black law man. And watching it again, I said, oh, okay, that has got Bass Reeves in it. And again, Bass Reeves, just like the massacre that took place in Tulsa, Bass Reeves,
00:50:00
Speaker
or the longest time was a heroic figure that nobody knew about. It's only been in recent years that he's been rediscovered and people have been saying, oh wow, we never heard about this guy. And he was actually just one of many because one thing we've talked about before is that the old West wasn't as lily white as Hollywood has made people believe. Like there was a lot of diversity there because you had
00:50:26
Speaker
black people, you had Asian people, you had Native Americans who, you know, they weren't welcome in the big city. So they moved out to the frontier. Yeah. Yeah. And as I was telling Pete, you know, cause we were, Oh, well, all of these towns were set up by black people. I said, yeah, because after the civil war, they went West. They went, went there with the white people. Yeah. They said, okay, well, you know what? We're going to go West. Whereas all of these, if you, um, uh, one of my favorite movies, buck in the preacher,
00:50:56
Speaker
It's about that because Sidney Portier as Buck, he's taking this black wagon train west. They're going as far west as they can, you know, to find someone where they can settle and they won't be bothered with white people. It's just that simple. So yeah, I said there was all kinds of different settlements that you had that was
00:51:18
Speaker
You know, it was nothing but immigrants. Right. Yeah. You know, they just went out there because it was all this land. Nobody else was using it. They made the deal with it. OK, OK. Well, if you go over there and you don't slaughter too many buffalo, you can live over. And, you know, everybody was getting along until, of course, your people came along. White people, we just mess everything up, man.
00:51:48
Speaker
Oh my God. I don't know what we're going to do with y'all guys. I don't know what we're going to do. Y'all just can't. Y'all just can't leave shit alone. I apologize.
00:52:06
Speaker
No, no, listen, you're right. And folks, listen, I'm going to tell you all right now. You know what? Since the watchman is dealing with race, it's probably going to be a lot of things that I'm going to say I'm not going to like. So I'm telling you right now in advance, because I'm not going to bite my tongue when it comes to this subject. I'm not. I mean, I'm sorry, but hey, it is what it is.
00:52:43
Speaker
If he had the ball sung about it, because I respect that man to the highest for, you know, putting this out there, you know, really. Yeah. He didn't have to do it, but he could have played it safe. But he didn't. And that's what's that's what's so remarkable about this, because, I mean, this story about the Tulsa riots, it's being brought to the screen by a white guy who's and all these issues of race and everything. So this also.
00:52:53
Speaker
which is one of the reasons I really wanted to do this because I knew that you would not be holding your tongue with this kind of stuff. So I'm really glad that we're going to have that happen.
00:53:12
Speaker
It's it shows that you know, there's kind of this idea a lot when it comes to modern fiction that if your
00:53:20
Speaker
if you're white, if you're a straight white male, you should not be writing about issues that affect black people. You should not be writing about issues that affect women or anything like that, right? There's that kind of idea that, and there's some truth to that, right? There are plenty of black authors who can tell their own stories, but Lindelof proves that
00:53:44
Speaker
You can still be a white guy and still tell stories like this. You just have to make sure you treat it with respect and reverence and you do your research on it. My position is always that if you're a human being with any kind of empathy at all, you can write about other people. Right. I'm a black guy, right? White characters, I don't write them as white characters unless I'm actually trying to make a point.
00:54:14
Speaker
but you know i just write them just as characters you know i've written you know female characters i just write them as people if you just write people as people and like you said it's obvious that he didn't search into this and he has respect for the characters and he had he has respect for their point of view and really that's all you need to write a world-wide engaging story which is what we have here exactly yeah and um
00:54:43
Speaker
One of the really interesting things they do is when they bring it to the modern day, you have a guy getting pulled over by a cop.
00:54:53
Speaker
And it's like a flip of what we see in the modern day, right? It's a black cop going to a white guy. Well, actually, first of all, it's funny because you see the guy, and he looks like your typical southern redneck, right? Right. But he's listening to hardcore rap music. Yeah, I caught that, too. Yeah. And then he gets pulled over by the cop, and it's a black cop wearing a mask.
00:55:15
Speaker
And, you know, he's all nervous and scared. And like you said, yeah, it's a fool on what we used to see, you know, and the white guy is nervous. You know, he's obviously nervous. And, you know, he said, oh, my God, I got pulled over by the cop. And he says so often. Then, you know, we see sheer terror on his face as a cop said, well, would you say? Yeah. You know, and now as a black man who has been I automatically, you know, I feel sorry for him because I've been in
00:55:45
Speaker
I've been, yeah, I've been pulled over by the cops, you know, and I don't know. So my God, am I going to go home tonight? Right. Yeah. So if you've got good writing and if you
00:55:55
Speaker
just write with some empathy and respect for what you're writing about, you can make viewers go anywhere you want. And he got me with that scene because I'm saying, well, the cop is black. I'm supposed to be feeling for the cop. No, I'm feeling for the poor white guy because I've been in that position. Right. And it shows like how the balance of power in America has kind of shifted as a result of reparations because now you've got the black guy in a position of power and the white guy who's
00:56:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:56:39
Speaker
which was an interesting way of doing that because there's been all this, you know, all the talk about, you know, traffic stops going wrong and police using excessive force. Whereas this kind of, it shows that the measures taken to prevent that can kind of go too far sometimes. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like, yeah, because at first you say to yourself, oh yeah, well that's,
00:57:09
Speaker
but idea until the cop gets machine gunned. And then you say, oh, well, you know, damn, he should be. And then you say, damn, he should have been able to protect himself, you know. And so again, we see where the writing it makes you look at.
00:57:24
Speaker
this situation and you know like kind of weigh it and say yeah well you know something okay on the one hand i thought it was a good idea but maybe it isn't such a good idea it makes you think and you know something you know is you know me and you know
00:57:39
Speaker
I'm good with entertainment for entertainment's sake, but it's a bonus when you have entertainment that entertains you and also makes you think and weighs your own values and how you see society and the laws of our society, which is what a lot, which is what goes on a lot in this series as we go on through it. You think about the laws of the society and how you feel about it and what works and what doesn't work and why this works and why this doesn't work.
00:58:07
Speaker
And should this work? And why would this work that way? It's a lot. You remember earlier on when we were going on and on about politics in our superhero movies and we were railing against people and saying, oh, it's a superhero. Well, you know what? This is very much political. Very much political. And societal. And it makes you think. It makes you think. It's not just people in costumes running around beating up on each other. Right.
00:58:36
Speaker
Oh, but you did mention that the mask thing, the cop wears a mask. Now that's something else that's happened in the years since the comic book. So the keen act in the comic book outlawed costume vigilantes. The only people who were allowed to operate were ones who were working for the government, like the comedian and Dr. Manhattan. But all other superheroes were outlawed.
00:58:58
Speaker
keen son in in this series he's because there's a few years ago there was um an event called the white knight where
00:59:08
Speaker
the 7th Cavalry who wear Rorschach masks, and they're inspired by Rorschach because Rorschach's journal, if you remember the end of the comic book, he left it with the New Frontiersman, the kind of like fringe right-wing publication. And the New Frontiersman ended up publishing excerpts from the journal which ended up creating a whole new conspiracy culture with people, you know,
00:59:32
Speaker
being suspicious about, um, about the squid and, and basically kind of like, and Rorschach has become kind of like a folk hero to these people. And so the seventh cavalry who were a white supremacist group, they have co-opted Rorschach's mask for kind of like their symbol. So they found the names of
00:59:53
Speaker
and the addresses of police officers a few years ago, and they went after them. They attacked them and killed a lot of people. And one of those people who was attacked was Angela Abar. So when we see her in the beginning, she says, I used to be a police officer, but after the white knight, I retired. And now she's opening a bakery.
01:00:13
Speaker
Um, and then we find out what Keene did in this state was he said, we're going to allow police officers to wear masks and to have, and to have costumed identities because they're doing it for the laws to protect themselves and their families. And it's become a really popular initiative that other states are now thinking to adopt. So Angela is still a police officer, but she's one in secret and her superior identity is Sister Knight.
01:00:38
Speaker
where she dresses as kind of like a nun, she has this black face paint smeared over her, and damn, she kicks all sorts of ass as Sister Knight. I love when we first see her, you know, because when she gets the call, kind of like the bat signal, she gets like a special code on her pager. And when I saw that, that really took me back. I said, oh my god, I haven't seen the pager in it.
01:01:03
Speaker
30 years and she gets it and she goes to the bakery and she's got like her own back cave up under the bakery and the way that she and the way that she just suited up didn't that remind you of the Batman movies oh so much so much the way she gets suited up and she takes the hood you know and and then she jumps in this car that looks a lot like
01:01:27
Speaker
It could have been the Batmobile and she's like tearing ass into the streets. Yeah. Yeah. It's so, they do it so well. And then, you know, she goes straight to what's called Nixonville, which is where like the, where it's like the poor white people neighborhood. So you've got, and then she goes there and, you know, she takes this guy and she fricking throws him in the trunk.
01:01:47
Speaker
Yeah. Zero bullshit. She doesn't deploy. She just kicks down this door and just snatches them up, knocks them out and throws them in the trunk. Oh, it's, Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. Once again, establishing her character with, with, you know, okay. We already know this is nobody to be, you know, she doesn't play around clean and simple.
01:02:10
Speaker
But apparently there are some police officers that once they attain a certain rank, they're allowed to wear costumes and have superhero names. Yeah, exactly. Most of the street-level officers, they wear a police uniform and they've just got a yellow mask covering the bottom half of their face. But you've got these other officers who are
01:02:33
Speaker
Obviously some sort of have some sort of rank like you've got Angela as Sister Knight You've got Wade Tillman who's known as Looking Glass. You've got pirate Jenny and Red Scare and all and Panda and all these other ones and Panda Yeah, the guy who wears the giant panty
01:02:55
Speaker
Which, you know, all throughout this, up until we find out who Dr. Manhattan is, there was a lot of speculation that Panda might be Dr. Manhattan. Really? Yeah. There was a lot of that going on on the internet I remember seeing.
01:03:07
Speaker
Um, but, uh, that's a new one on me. I never heard, I never heard that one. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of that. So then, um, but one of the interesting ones is they, so she brings this guy in and then he gets interrogated by looking glass who's played by Tim Blake Nelson. And I did not recognize it as Tim Blake Nelson in that role. He's so good as this character. Tim Blake Nelson again.
01:03:32
Speaker
Just like Regina King, he's one of them people that as soon as I see him, okay, I know I'm in good hands, because I don't believe I've ever seen him in anything I didn't like. Yeah, and he's so good in this. And one of the really cool things, because he is kind of like...
01:03:47
Speaker
So a lot of these characters are kind of analogous to characters in the original. So Sister Knight is kind of more of the night owl type in some ways. And then you got Looking Glass, he's more of like kind of a Rorschach type. You got a very Rorschach vibe for him. Like the first time we see him, he's got, so he wears a faux face mask and he's got it rolled up just to the nose and he's eating something just like Rorschach did when,
01:04:15
Speaker
He goes to Dan Drieberg's place in the comic book. Dan comes home and finds Rorschach. And he's eating a can of baked beans. Exactly, yeah. So there are a lot of little references like that and callbacks. But the cool thing about Looking Glass is he's got this full face mask, very much like Rorschach's, except it's reflective, right?
01:04:37
Speaker
So it's kind of like a twist on Rorschach. So if you're looking into it, basically, you're looking back at yourself. Right, right. And it's kind of a nice twist on Rorschach, because when you look at Rorschach's face, the ink is always moving on his mask. So you're seeing.
01:04:53
Speaker
what you believe, right? It's more of a reflection of what you feel. Whereas Looking Glass Mask, he reflects what you actually are. What you actually are, yeah, yeah. I knew you'd pick up on that. Yeah. And he does this, and this is the first hints we have of his psychic powers, right? Because he brings them into this orb type thing.
01:05:17
Speaker
And Don Johnson, who we have mentioned yet, who plays the chief of police, he says, put them in the pod. Right. They go in the pod. And I got a very, like, Blade Runner kind of vibe when they were in the pod.
01:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, and the images are flashing all around and Looking Glass is asking them a series of questions. Some of them connected the case, some of them completely not. And he's kind of like gauging their reactions while these images are flashing in the background. And it's like all sorts of different images. And the cool thing is when they...
01:05:53
Speaker
cinematography and this is amazing because when those images are flashing you look at Looking Glass's face and it is kind of like the ink shifting on Rorschach's mask. Yeah exactly. And it's just the way they did it was just so masterful. Again we see that there was thought put into these characters and as you say it's a nice little callback you know and
01:06:19
Speaker
OK, you don't have to know anything about a character to appreciate what's going on in the scene right then and there at that moment, because it's just a guy that's interrogating another guy. But if you know the crown of the original character from Watchmen, everything like you said, like you just pointed out, it's an interesting little callback. And so they find out that the 7th Cavalry, they're gearing up for something.
01:06:49
Speaker
Oh, wait a minute. Hold on, one second. Because I had a thought early on, I forgot it, and now it came back to me. This is something that I wanted to ask you, something. OK. The seventh Calvary. Do you know that seventh Calvary, because I know myself that I've talked to quite a few people who felt that Rorschach was the real hero of Watchmen. I said, now, if you thought he was a hero, then you missed the whole point. Yeah. Now, with.
01:07:18
Speaker
OK, now with The 7th Cavalry being a bunch of rare white supremacists, do you think that the TV show is making a commentary on the people who thought that Rorschach was a hero? I don't. I'm not sure if I go that far. I think they are. I think they're just trying to show like they're trying to really they're trying to portray Rorschach in a very honest light in this. And because like Rorschach
01:07:48
Speaker
was not necessarily full-on racist, but he was a right-wing sociopathic nut. And I think that's kind of what they're more leaning towards. And it's just, but that kind of thinking, it can easily lead you down that path to being a white supremacist, right? Because we've seen that with a lot of, you know, now that, you see that now in American society there where a lot of these,
01:08:14
Speaker
disaffected white guys who, you know, come out of school, they're young, they can't get work, they have trouble dating, all this kind of stuff, they end up turning to these fringe elements and they end up becoming very easy prey and very easy recruits for the white supremacist movement. I think it's more of a commentary on that as opposed to a commentary on people who misinterpreted what Rorschach was all about. Oh, okay, fair enough.
01:08:41
Speaker
I was just, it was just something that occurred to me and I just wanted to get your take on it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, it's a good take though. Um, but yeah, that's, that's an interesting take, but, but it is because a lot, I remember that was a lot of people who were pissed off about that when the show came out because they're like, well, Rorschach's not a white supremacist. And it's like, well, it kind of
01:09:04
Speaker
But you know what? A lot of people thought that he was a hero because he was beating up the quote unquote right people. Right, which is which going back to we talked about this when we talked about the movie is that was one of the what I felt was one of the failings of the movie is that it misinterpreted what Rorschach really was and it's
01:09:27
Speaker
And it's kind of like, you know, the Archie Bunker thing. Right.
Character Revelations and Identity in Watchmen
01:09:30
Speaker
When when they did Archie Bunker and they the whole idea was he was supposed to be a mockery of like this kind of like right wing extremism type of thing. And these these beliefs when what happened is a lot of people agreed with him. So he ended up becoming kind of a folk hero. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They completely missed the point of what
01:09:52
Speaker
they were trying to say with the carriage and they said, oh, well, this guy, he represents us. He's speaking for us. Well, you remember when, um, when Stephen Colbert was doing, uh, the Colbert report and it was, um, and he was doing a spoof of right wing commentators like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, but a lot of, there were a lot of conservatives who thought he was legitimately a conservative commentator. Yeah.
01:10:16
Speaker
And that's why he got invited to do the White House Correspondents Dinner. I remember, yeah. You have a lot of people that completely missed the point, because they're so ret— You know what? That's one reason why, OK, people in our society don't recognize satire anymore. Right.
01:10:35
Speaker
satire is something that people in this country don't understand anymore. So it goes over their head when they see it, I think, a lot of times. That's why we don't have satires anymore. We don't have movies at it. That's like a dead thing that's in this country. People don't recognize it for whatever reason. I have no idea why, but that's just me.
01:10:59
Speaker
Yeah, so the show ends basically this first episode with Judd being killed. She comes and she finds him hanging from a tree, which also ties back to the beginning because
01:11:14
Speaker
the in the bass Reeves movie they're talking about hang them up hang them up and and bass Reeves says no we're not going to do that and and then so it ends with another sheriff being hung being lynched basically and we should know that and we should point out that she has been summoned
01:11:32
Speaker
to the tree where he's hanging from by this old man, this weird old man that she's been seeing all throughout the episode. And he's been asking her weird questions and stuff like that. Well, do you think I can, you know, carry 200 pounds and you know, all kinds of crazy stuff. Old man in a wheelchair played by Lou Gossett Jr. Right. And he calls her on the phone and tells her, listen,
01:11:55
Speaker
come to the tree is located on whatever road it is and whatever. And he said, and don't wear the mask because I know who you are, which of course naturally freaks her out because nobody's supposed to know who she is except for Don Johnson. He's the only one that knows, you know, the real identity of his mask cops. You know, the ones, you know, sister night and, you know, looking glass and those guys, he's the only one that's supposed to know their identity. But she gets there and, um,
01:12:24
Speaker
He holds up a paper and there's a paper that was given to him when he was a little boy. They said, watch out for this boy.
01:12:32
Speaker
watch over this white rat. Right, right, right. And we also get a scene with Jeremy Irons playing Adrian Veidt, although he's not identified as Adrian Veidt, but it's this weird kind of like disconnected scene from the rest of the thing. Cause he's like in this manner, he's got these two servants, they're celebrating an anniversary or something. But I just want to mention that because he's going to become a bigger part. And let's, I guess now let's transition into the second episode here, which is Marshall Feats of Comanche Horsemanship.
01:13:01
Speaker
I love the titles of these episodes. It's so cool how they bring stuff into this. Now, it opens up with Will, the little boy in the first episode, and then he becomes the old man played by Lugasa Jr. It opens up with his father in World War I, and a German plane flies overhead, and it's dropping propaganda.
01:13:25
Speaker
on
01:13:46
Speaker
They were encouraged by the Germans. They said, oh, well, why are you fighting for these people? You can't even go eat in the same restaurants that they do. You ought to come and fight for us, or go back home, or whatever. Yeah, so this is something that actually happened. They didn't make it up for the TV show. Again, people tell you, oh, did they really do that? And I said, didn't you people study history in school? Yeah. Don't you people read? Yeah. Does that actually happen? Well, see, this is the thing.
01:14:15
Speaker
You know, history is written by the winner. So a lot of like the history, a lot of America's bad history is stuff that the history books don't like to talk about. So we don't find out about a lot of this stuff unless we do our own independent research. Yeah. And that's, and you know what, you know, I hate to come off snobbish like that, but since I'm a person that has been interested in the stuff that people didn't want me to know. So I, you know, even when I was a little kid, when I was, you know, 10, 11, 12, whatever,
01:14:44
Speaker
own independent reading, if there was something that was interested in me, I pursued it, you know, so I guess, you know, a lot of people don't for one reason or another, but because a lot of times I get that people say, well, how did you know about this? How'd you know about that? And I said, well, I've known it forever, you know, because I read it, you know, back when Asia. But as you say, a lot of this stuff, unless and even stuff that, you know, like, for instance, I did not know about the
01:15:15
Speaker
until I saw the movie about the other thing that happened in Florida. And then that's how I found out about it. You know, these are things that are just submerged and buried and hidden in culture. And it's almost horrific to think of how much his actual history is suppressed about that's just coming to light now. Yeah. You know, 50, 60, 70, 100 years later, things that we're just discovering now.
01:15:45
Speaker
is horrific when you realize, which makes you think, how much else has been suppressed that we don't know about? So this actually reminds me of, during one of the Democratic debates, Andrew Yang said he was asked a question about Russia's meddling in the elections. And they asked, what would you do about his president? He's like, well, I'd go to Putin. I'd say, look, you've meddled in elections. We've meddled in elections. But it's time to stop. We've got to find a different way to do this. And A.B. Klobuchar,
01:16:13
Speaker
took offense to that. And she's like, oh, how dare you say that the US meddled in elections. We've never done that. I'm like, bitch, do you not know what the CIA did throughout most of the Cold War? You go to South America and ask them how they feel about that. Yeah. Yeah, go to half of the countries in South America.
01:16:32
Speaker
or go to Southeast Asia. Jesus. I mean, come on. I mean, yeah. America's done tons of reprehensible shit all across the world. But it's stuff that, you know, like we said, it's stuff that doesn't get talked about. Like I did not know about the Tulsa riots until I saw this show. If for nothing else that this show made millions of people aware of the Tulsa riot, you know, this for me is worth watching.
01:17:02
Speaker
And I'm glad that it got made it for nothing else that that it made people aware of it. Yeah. Well, because there was such a huge response to the Tulsa scene, HBO is now partnering with I believe it's I could be wrong. I think it's Dark Horse Comics and they're going to be doing a graphic novel about the Tulsa race riot. So so it is it's a really which, you know, I'm pretty sure HBO has already got the rights for that. So that will probably be coming down the pike in the in the in the future.
01:17:32
Speaker
But so in the present day, we find out that Angela and Judd have become friends ever since the White Knight. And then she takes Will to the bakery to interrogate him. And he does a lot of misdirection here, right? He says that I'm your grandfather, but he also says I'm Dr. Manhattan.
01:17:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And no, you get a lot of that early episodes where it's teased that different characters could be Dr. Manhattan. Like at one point, like I thought that Jeremy Irons was Dr. Manhattan, you know, misdirection like, okay, well, and, and
01:18:14
Speaker
I'm saying, well, wait a minute. Well, he could be Dr. Manhattan. No, no, no. I think maybe she's Dr. Manhattan. And yeah, there's a lot of that that goes on in these early episodes. Yeah. And she flat out tells him, he says, you can't be Dr. Manhattan. Dr. Manhattan doesn't have that power. And he's like, well, he can do all this other stuff. Who says he can't change his skin color? Yeah, which stands the reason. Yeah, but then when she goes home and she talks to her husband, Cal, played
01:18:44
Speaker
expertly by Yaya Abdul-Mateen II, who was also Black Manta in Aquaman. He's such a background character throughout so much of this series that, which, you know what?
01:18:55
Speaker
Let's just go ahead and spoil it. We're gonna be talking about in another episode anyway, but he is actually dr. Manhattan and there are all and when you're going back and you're watching it with that knowledge, there are sort of those little hints like you know He says without missing a beat old dr. Manhattan can't do that. Right and he says it in the exact same way. Yeah that that she said it almost like
01:19:18
Speaker
he's been programmed to say it that way.
01:19:39
Speaker
I had a suspicion in the back of my head, but I wasn't. I figured like it. I didn't think it. Okay. Here's, here's what it was like. I thought that Cal would be too much of an obvious choice. So I figured like, if there's any hints of him being, you're right. Yeah. I thought if there's any hints of him being Dr. Manhattan, it's going to be misdirection because it's too obvious a route to go down.
01:20:01
Speaker
some reason, like the way they handled that revelation, the way they handle his story, even though it does seem obvious.
01:20:09
Speaker
when the thought first occurs to you, when you watch it actually happen, it's still like, holy crap, that's amazing. Yeah, you say, oh man, okay, well, why didn't I say, and you say something, why didn't I say that? And yeah, and then, you know, like later on, like you said, we get that whole revelation and we get the whole episode where it's laid out for us, how Dr. Manhattan comes in, you know, ends up being a black man. You say, oh, all right, you know, which is one thing about,
01:20:40
Speaker
this whole thing. And I know there's a lot of people that didn't like Watchmen because they felt it violated too much of what had been established. But I
Identity and Relationships in Watchmen
01:20:50
Speaker
think that's all it's asking you to do is just saying, well, you know, so if you keep an open mind and look at it this way, you'll say, OK, well, you know what? Yeah, it could have happened like that. Yeah, it could be like it really doesn't violate anything that we've seen before.
01:21:06
Speaker
No, it doesn't. It actually fits together very nicely because the whole thing about, we find out that Will was hooded justice, everyone's like, oh, that's not possible. I'm 100% confident that Alan Moore did not intend for hooded justice to be a black guy. 100% confident on that, but it works.
01:21:27
Speaker
right? Because the whole thing about hooded justice identity is it was never revealed in the book. Hollis Mason suspected it was this guy, but he had no proof. There was nothing rying him to that at all. Right. And it also would explain because I believe in the comic book that they had said that they, uh,
01:21:46
Speaker
They speculated that the reason why, because he was very good friends with the original Silk Spectre, but they never had a romantic relationship. It was speculated that it was because he was gay. That's why they never had a romantic relationship, which is picked up on here. And when you look at it, you say, okay,
01:22:07
Speaker
Now, in light of what I see in this series, I go back to the comic book and the movie and look, okay, it could have been that way. Yeah, they do a really good job of integrating these new ideas into the lore. And so one of the things she does is because Will has said, I'm your grandfather, she takes some of his DNA to the Heritage Center and she finds out that, yeah, he really is her grandfather.
01:22:38
Speaker
And then, and he had mentioned that, you know, Judd had skeletons in his closet. So she goes into, she sneaks up into his place at the wake and she finds out that he had a KKK outfit with the sheriff's badge on it. She does that whole thing where she fakes that, you know, she faints. Yeah. And she pretends to be sick. And then, uh, Judd's wife takes her up to the bedroom, you know, so I, which is actually kind of smart. So she doesn't have to sneak in. Right.
01:23:08
Speaker
And then she has that meeting with King. She's talking to him.
01:23:14
Speaker
It's in that scene where I think he, to me, he let slip that he knows that, you know, her costume identity as Sister Knight. Right. So, you know, he's not supposed to know it, but he kind of like lets it slip that he does know. And so she finds the Ku Klux Klan outfit and she goes back to Will to take him to arrest him because Will said that he killed the sheriff, which, you know, he's in a wheelchair and you don't think that's possible.
01:23:40
Speaker
So it really creates this, and that's why he says in the interrogation scene, well, I'm Dr. Manhattan and all that kind of stuff. But then when she's about to take him in, the car just, you know, something clamps down in the car and just pulls it up into the sky and it's gone.
01:24:01
Speaker
And she just standing there with like, what just happened? Look on her face, you know? It's like a magnetic clamp just comes and just pulls the car up and it's like, holy shit, what happened? And then we go back to the episode ends, going back to V8 in the strange manner. And this is one of the hints that, well, is he V8? Is he Dr. Manhattan? Because he wrote this play called The Watchmaker's Son, performed by Phillips and Crookshanks, his two servants.
01:24:30
Speaker
And it's all about John Osterman's transformation into Dr. Manhattan. So that's what made me think that he was Dr. Manhattan, because why else would he be putting on a play about Dr. Manhattan, unless the Manhattan? Yeah, that was one of the things that tripped me up to him. Like, well, is he really Adrian Veidt, or is he Veidt that, is this just misdirection? Like, I wasn't sure what to think of it. But you know what, I just got to say, Jeremy Irons is so amazing in these scenes. Like, they're so disconnected from everything else that's happening in the show.
01:25:00
Speaker
But he is just incredible to watch in these scenes. He is just so much fun. Jeremy Irons is so integrated into this. It's like he's been part of the thing all along. But then again, he's Jeremy Irons. We've spoken about this before. We'll be saying that a large part of the success of superhero movies and now TV shows, I suppose,
01:25:28
Speaker
is the casting. And the casting in this movie is, you know, it's a Mac. I mean, well, I mean, Jean Smart.
01:25:38
Speaker
Oh I have nothing you know this is a woman that started out you know she was doing like the light comedies and everything like that you know who would have suspected she was this good a dramatic act oh my god and that's actually a perfect transition into the last episode we're going to talk about today uh she was killed by space junk which i love that title like i love i love all the titles
01:26:00
Speaker
Yeah, I do too. But that is one of my favorites. Although I think my favorite title is A God Walks Into A-Bar because I love to play on it. But this one is all this is a really good one too. You had to play on words. A-Bar. Yeah. Yeah. Now this one is great because this is the because we've seen Adrian Veidt through all this. But this episode, the third episode brings in Gene Smart as Laurie Blake and
01:26:25
Speaker
This is a full integration of one of the characters from the comic into the show. And I like that they waited to do that, that they gave some time for people to kind of get to know Angela and Judd and Looking Glass and Cal and all these other characters. And then they bring in the veteran characters from the comic. We have time to get integrated into, as you say, this new world that we've been putting
01:26:56
Speaker
If we had just started out with Laurie Blake, I would have said, okay, well, I would have thrown it up my hand and said, okay, well, I see what they're doing. You know, they're just playing on.
01:27:05
Speaker
old characters and everything like that. But they waited and took their time. Yeah. Before they brought her in. And they use her in such a great way. Like she is more well done in this series than she was in the comic book. Because in the comic, I always felt like she was kind of underwritten. She didn't get the same amount of
01:27:25
Speaker
character development that the male characters got. But in this, that's one of the things too. That's a nice little twist on it, right? So the original, it was all focused on these middle-aged white men. This show, the focus is on a middle-aged black woman and an old white woman who had no development. So in this show, the women are taking the lead. True.
01:27:49
Speaker
And I really like the way they did that. And they did some, there's some really cool things with, so the first time we see Lori, she's, it seems like she's robbing a bank. And then this guy breaks in, a costume vigilante, who's very much like the Chris Nolan Batman, right?
01:28:08
Speaker
Even down to the raspy voice and everything. And then she tells him like, yeah, um, yeah, well, you know, we're not actually robbing this bank. This is a sting operation. And so you find out that she's now like kind of like a vigilante hunter for the FBI. Apparently there are still costume vigilantes that are running around, but it's her
01:28:34
Speaker
since since she knows how they think presumably because she once was one herself and her mother was one and she used to hang out with them you know this is what she does she goes out and she and she uh rounds up costume vigilantes yeah and
01:28:51
Speaker
They do such a good job with her. One of the things is that she's now called Lori Blake, not Lori Jupiter, but Lori Blake, which was the comedian's last name. Also, in the PDF files, they mentioned that she had also been
01:29:12
Speaker
She had changed her costume identity after the events of the movie, because her and Night Owl, they still operated as costume vigilantes. But they end up getting arrested, and there's more about that in the next episode.
01:29:29
Speaker
they get arrested and when they get arrested, she was calling herself the comedian. Right. Yeah. Right. Just different spelling of that. So she had changed her, she had changed her name. So she had kind of come to this, she had kind of come to terms with the fact that, uh, Edward Blake was her father. Cause apparently Dan Greenberg, he's still in jail. Yeah. You know, they never come out stated, but there's enough hints. Like she has an apple as a pet.
01:29:54
Speaker
And as we saw in the first episode, the police department is using Dan's owlship technology that they've appropriated, apparently, to make their own airships. Yeah, and in fact, there's that line when Keen comes to visit her, and she's got a pet owl in a cage.
01:30:16
Speaker
Yeah. He says, well, if you help me out, maybe I can help you get your owl out of the cage, meaning Dan Drieberg, who's still in prison. Right, exactly. They decide to send the FBI anti-vigilante task force to Tulsa to investigate what's happening there.
01:30:37
Speaker
Um, Lori refuses the idea of like a whole team going down there and she says, no, it should just be me. So they don't want her going alone. So they send agent PD with her who's, um, who's this really interesting, like background character who he's, you know, he says like, you know, I'm not some sort of, I'm not some sort of fan. I, you know, I, I studied this stuff academically, but you find out that he also is kind of a fan too. Yeah. Because you know why? Because the,
01:31:03
Speaker
You know, because they're riding down there, you know, they're flying down there. And he says to her that he brought a mask. I'm like, you stupid sack of shit. What do you mean you brought a mask? You know? Yeah. So yeah, he is a little bit more than a fan. So she goes into Tulsa, and she starts talking with the cops there.
01:31:28
Speaker
And there's another reference here to Cal being Dr. Manhattan, because when she talks to Angela, she says, you know, I thought maybe you were sleeping with Judd, but then I realized it wouldn't be because I saw your husband who's really hot. Yeah. So that's another kind of like little subtle reference to the fact that he is Dr. Manhattan, because she used to be married to Dr. Manhattan. Right. And apparently, as we find out, she still has a thing for him, because later on, we see she opens up that suitcase. Remember?
01:31:57
Speaker
And what does she have right now? Yeah, there's a giant blue vibrator. Oh, OK. And Patricia said, well, why? So why does she have that? I said, don't you remember the movie? And then she said, oh.
01:32:19
Speaker
Oh, OK. She said, but it didn't look that big in the movie. I said, yeah, honey, I know. Well, you know what? The man can change his size. Remember, dip your sound. Oh, OK. You know, later on, when Abdul-Mateen plays Dr. Manhattan, and there's that shot of him naked,
01:32:46
Speaker
Kevin Smith was watching, he said that he was watching the show with his wife. And his wife was like, is that his real dick? Or is that just like, see, is that fake? Cause that is, he's like, Kevin's just like, no, it's completely fake. It's completely fake.
01:33:02
Speaker
And know what? Women talk about men. Patricia said, I wonder, is that special effect? Patricia said the same thing, too. She said, is that CGI? Is that special? I said, yeah. I said, yeah, honey. It's all CGI. Everything is CGI. It's all CGI. Well, in the movie, it actually was CGI. So yeah, that's not actually Billy Crud up swinging pipe up there.
01:33:26
Speaker
Which, you know what, I feel sorry for the guy who had to animate Dr. Manhattan's giant dick in that movie. Yeah, going to work every day must have been like, damn. What are you going to do today at work, honey? Don't ask. Now, apparently, the
01:33:50
Speaker
But this is something in the background. So the vibrator was actually made for her by Dan Drieberg. And it was actually kind of like a fuck you party gift. It was like him being petty and kind of saying, well, you still can't get over Dr. Manhattan. So that was kind of like how they ended terms with him giving this kind of like fuck you gift. OK.
01:34:11
Speaker
Which is an interesting twist, because at first I was wondering where that came from, but apparently in the PDF files, you find out that it was actually his final fuck you to her, because he still felt she was comparing him to Dr. Manhattan. And she also does this thing where her scenes are intercut with
01:34:35
Speaker
her at the Dr. Manhattan booths. Because one of the things they do is they have these booths that Lady True, you later find out is set up, where people can leave messages for Dr. Manhattan, who everybody thinks is on Mars.
01:34:49
Speaker
And so she goes and she tells him these jokes. And she tells him these jokes about these three heroes who meet God. And the first one is Adrian Veidt. He says, you know, he's like, I'm the smartest man in the world. And God says to him, well, what did you do with all this intelligence? And he says, oh, well, I...
01:35:09
Speaker
You know, I saved humanity. And he's like, how'd you do that? He's like, I killed, you know, X number of people. And he's horrified. And he says, you've got all this blood on your hands. And he sends him to hell.
01:35:21
Speaker
And then he asked Nite Owl, you know, I gave you this great intellect, what have you done with it? And he's like, oh, well, you know, I became a superhero and I, I defended people. And he's like, okay, how many people did you kill? He's like, well, I didn't kill anyone. And then he said, he's like, you didn't do enough. And he sent him to hell. And then Dr. Manhattan comes in and says, um, he was basically a god himself.
01:35:43
Speaker
And he says, well, how many people did you kill? And he's like, well, it doesn't matter because a living person and a dead person have the same number of particles. There's no difference between them, which is Dr. Manhattan's line from the comic book. Right. And then God says, and then God sends him to hell. And then, because she first starts with another joke about a bricklayer.
01:36:05
Speaker
And there's this extra brick after he teaches his daughter how to make something. And then she says, oh, wait. And then she throws the brick in the air. And then she stops that joke. She's like, oh, wait, no, no. That's a stupid joke. And then she tells this other joke about the three heroes. And then she ends the joke by saying, and then this girl comes. And God asks, who are you? And she says, I'm the one who threw the brick.
01:36:27
Speaker
and then the brick from the previous joke crashes down and kills God. So I just like, I'm not really sure what the meaning of that joke is. Like I didn't quite fully get, what were your thoughts on that? The fact that her father called himself the comedian was very ironic because he wasn't funny. He wasn't a funny guy. No, not at all. That's the whole thing. And she, you know, she's the daughter of the comedian who tells jokes that are not funny.
01:36:55
Speaker
They're just like these ironic little parables that are more about her thoughts on life than anything. They're really not meant to be funny. They're just the way that she sees life now. At this point when we see her, she's become very hard. She's become very cynical.
01:37:17
Speaker
She's become, she doesn't believe in anything anymore. Quite frankly, she doesn't believe in anything. And we have to wonder why she does what she does. Because this is a woman that has been let down by life and all she's left with is going to these booths. Something that they really don't expand upon, but I was like thinking like maybe there's like this whole cult or religion that sprung up around
01:37:46
Speaker
people who actually worship Dr. Manhattan, but he's a god that they know will actually hear them, and that's why they go in these booths to talk to him. Yeah, that was the impression I got as well. Yeah, that is a whole religion, a cult that sprung up around the notion of Dr. Manhattan, because these people in this universe, they know he's there.
01:38:09
Speaker
Yeah, they know he's there and they believe that she did and I and I believe that Lori that that's the one thing that she's holding on to in her life that Dr. Manhattan is actually listening to her.
01:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's both kind of sad and sweet at the same time, right? Because there's that part where she says, you know, I don't know why people use these booths. You know, you never gave a shit anyway. You never could take a joke. And then and she's like, I know everybody thinks you're listening, but I know you're really not. And then she hangs up and she walks out and then the car crashes down in front of her and she starts laughing because she thinks, you know, there is and you get this sense. Was that Dr. Manhattan? Like, is that his way of saying like, fuck you? Yes, I am listening.
01:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly. That's why she starts laughing because she said, oh, shit, the joke for real. You know, you know, maybe he is listening. You know, he is listening to me, which is when I think that she has a turning point and she actually starts giving a shit again.
01:39:12
Speaker
Yeah. Because literally this is a sign from God. Right, right. Also there's, I gotta talk about the chemistry between her and Regina King because that scene when they're together in the tomb and- Oh my God.
01:39:27
Speaker
I mean and then that scene when Laurie's being really badass and really convincingly badass too when she says you know I eat heroes for breakfast right like you you believe her when she says that line and then it cuts to Regina King who's just kind of like stoic and then she's like am I supposed to be scared? It's the point where I get scared now
01:39:55
Speaker
I mean, yeah, just watching the two of them. You know what? I could have watched a whole hour of them just in that scene, back and forth. That's how good they are. Oh, man. It's just marvelous acting all the way around.
01:40:10
Speaker
If there is any failing about this show, it's that they do not have more scenes together. Yeah, yeah, actually, yeah. I thought after this episode, we would be seeing more of them interacting. But we really don't. They don't have a whole lot of interactions. Their stories kind of diverge from this point in a little bit. And you know, you watch them, and even though this is a superhero show, we're not watching Sister Night and
01:40:40
Speaker
the exil specter. We're watching Lori and Angela. Exactly. Yeah. You know, that's who it is. Well, you know, we're watching these two women who both wear costumes and what, you know, I mean, you know, they're both more costumes and they've called superheroes and everything like that at different points in their lives for different reasons. The similarities between them
01:41:02
Speaker
or just as much as the differences. Yeah. You know, even though that, even though they've done the same thing, you know, they both put on costumes and they went out for whatever reason, because even though this doesn't get into the psychology of people putting on costumes the way that the comic book and the movie did, I think that it does,
01:41:28
Speaker
tried to underline the whole thing, the whole notion of putting on a mask frees you to be who you really are. And when you don't wear that costume, when you don't wear that mask, then who are you? Yeah. And you definitely feel that with Lori, because especially, even though she's part of this anti-vigilante task force, like she's got all these things that's, and even though in the comic, you know, she,
01:41:55
Speaker
Resented having been a superhero at one point like you see that she's kind of got a bit of nostalgia for that time in her life because She does have the like The painting in in her apartment, which is of the yeah, Dr. Manhattan Ozymandus night owl and silk specter and she's got that hanging up in the background and you know, she's got the
01:42:21
Speaker
the doctor manhattan vibrator so there is this kind of longing in a way for that kind of for that past and yet there is this kind of sense that you know she changed her identities in more ways than once each week she went from being the silk specter of the comedian she uh... change her name from
01:42:40
Speaker
And it's funny because in the comic book, the whole reason she goes by Jespekowitz is because her mom took on the name Jupiter because she was trying to hide the fact that she was Polish. Jupiter, yeah. Right, exactly. And she resented that. Matter of fact, Laurie has spent a lot of her life resenting one thing or another. And this seems like a way of, and this seems like her trying to come to terms with that because
01:43:08
Speaker
That's why she takes on her father's name, both when she becomes the comedian in the background of this show, and also when she starts going by, takes his last name, right? So there's these interesting little ways they work with her character, in very subtle ways too, but it says so much about what they're doing with her. Yeah, the characterization of Laurie in this show is very subtle.
01:43:33
Speaker
which I appreciate because in the movie and in the comic, she was a subtle character. Like you said, this TV show brings her to the forefront in a way she never enjoyed before, but it's still subtle. There are things that, I mean, you know, you pick up on and she just drives the story forward in ways that I didn't think that she would because I, because all along, I was wondering, well, at some point or another, is she going to put the costume back on? And I was glad she didn't.
01:44:03
Speaker
Yeah, same here because that that would have been such a step back for what they were doing with her. And yeah, because that's not right. Exactly. That would have been a step back because that's not who she is now. So and then we also this is also the episode when they fully reveal that fight that Jeremy Irons is playing Adrian Veidt because he's which you know, everybody kind of knew going into it. But this was when it first is made obvious and
01:44:30
Speaker
He even wears the costume, right? He wears the Ozymandias costume, which I was not expecting them to do that. He looked pretty good in the costume. I think this is probably the moment when, if people didn't quite get the hint with the squids falling, I think this is probably the moment when people would realize, okay, this is definitely a sequel to the comic and not the movie, because
01:44:54
Speaker
in the in the movie you remember his costume was completely different it was very much like a a Joel Schumacher esque Batman and Robin style rubber suit whereas this it's full on the Dave Gibbons costume from the comic oh absolutely yeah this is faithful like you said the one that's in the movie was more superhero-y you know it was something you would see that was in a superhero movie no this is yeah
01:45:19
Speaker
actually the costume from the, you know, from the comic book. Yeah, definitely.
Visual Authenticity and Collectible Value
01:45:24
Speaker
And it is amazing how well there it would make it look while still being extremely faithful. Like, I was not expecting, if you told me that Adrian Vite, Jeremy Irons is gonna put on the Ozymandias costume and it's gonna look exactly like it did in the comics, I would have said that's gonna look ridiculous, but it does totally work in this scene. As a matter of fact, he looks more like the Ozymandias from the comic book than the...
01:45:48
Speaker
We did. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something we, you know, guys go back to our Watchmen episode if you want to hear our thoughts about that, because I I went off a bit on Matthew Goode and that because it felt like they were really trying to they were doing they were trying to make him
01:46:22
Speaker
and I'm not sure if Jeremy Irons had blonde hair or not, but you give him blonde hair, he would look just like Ozymandias in the comic books. I believe so, yeah. Yeah, as a matter of fact, you know, so that's something that I was waiting for them to do, do the same thing and maybe have like a flashback scene.
01:46:29
Speaker
as effeminate as possible.
01:46:40
Speaker
Mm-hmm of him and do the de-aging thing. I was waiting on that actually. Yeah. Yeah I think they did it to a small extent when they played that the video message that fight gave Robert Redford because that's you know, it's like in 94 or something like that. So that's a little bit there but not but not as much as if like it was made in the 80s or something like that.
01:47:05
Speaker
Well, you know what? I don't know to look for that when I get up because all, because all I did since we were going to be discussing the first three episodes, that's all I watched yesterday. And I was, you know, I said, okay, well, I'm going to, you know what? I was tempted to keep on watching because you know what? I got caught up in the thing to the point where I think I was like, I think I was it like an episode.
01:47:26
Speaker
And I was beginning to take notes because I then got caught up in the story all over gas. Oh shit. I'm slowly watching this critically. You know, it's like a job, but no, I was, you know. Yeah. I was the same way too, because this, you know, okay. So most TV shows I don't buy. I don't usually buy TV shows as a rule. Like I wait for them to come to Netflix or, but I, but there are very few TV shows that I feel like I have to own just cause it's a,
01:47:56
Speaker
It's like so many of them are available on streaming. I could just easily watch them through Netflix or Hulu or whatnot. This is a show that I felt like I should buy. So I did. I went and I bought it on iTunes. So I bought the whole series on iTunes and HD. And because this is a show that I can see myself rewatching like every year or something like that. I could name TU on the fingers of one handed TV shows that I have bought. I have
01:48:23
Speaker
afternoon will travel because that's my favorite Western. I have Nash bridges because that's my favorite TV cop show. I've got a secret agent, man. I'm like you. I don't be buying big sets of TV series, but I'm going to buy this one because as far as we know,
01:48:45
Speaker
Right now, even though there are little hints and everything like that, right now, this is going to be the only series of watchmen that we get. I want to get all the extras and everything like that. You know, along with it. So yeah, so I can see myself buying this one.
01:49:02
Speaker
Yeah. And they're only a handful I own. Like, I've got Cowboy Bebop. I've got... Yeah, I got that one too. Yeah, I got Cowboy Bebop. The short-lived Clerks TV show. I've got Firefly. And that's about it. Everything else. And now Watchmen. But most TV shows, I did at one point, I had...
01:49:25
Speaker
Uh, oh, what was it? Uh, the whole, I had all the seasons of Buffy and Angel, but I don't know what happened to my discs with that. So, but that was also back when it was still like DVD stuff. Oh, okay. But yeah, other than that, like if I, if I was going to go back now, I would probably not buy those shows again. Cause I could just watch them on Hulu now. Right. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, like.
01:49:48
Speaker
TV shows are so available now to watch so many platforms. I don't really see the need. And the reason, the only reason I bought like, you know, I said, I have, you know, I have gone, we'll travel, you know, I bought that for the nostalgia value more than anything else. And, uh,
01:50:06
Speaker
I got Nash bridges. Like I said, that's my favorite cop show. And I'm supposed to be doing a project with another podcast. And we're supposed to be doing that series. But yeah, but I'm not big into buying. I'm not big into buying TV series. I buy movies that drop a bag, but not TV series. But yeah, watch, man. I think I'm going to buy this one too.
01:50:30
Speaker
Because it makes a nice companion. You know what? Because it makes a nice companion piece, I mean, with the movie. It does. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Is there anything else we want to talk about for these three episodes? Anything else you want to touch on?
01:50:47
Speaker
Hmm. There was, there was something that came to my mind, but now it's escaped me. I'll make a note of it. Cause I probably think about it at two o'clock in the morning. And when we come back for the second part, I'm going to open with that. Cause it was something about Don Johnson. I think I wondered, Oh, I wanted it. Yeah.
01:51:07
Speaker
The thing about Don Johnson, did you get the whole thing with him doing the cocaine that was in the bathroom? You think that was because cocaine is legal in this universe? I think, yeah. It was a strange little part where he just goes and he does it so nonchalantly, you know? Like he doesn't try to hide in anything like that? Yeah. Well, you know what? I think that makes sense because
01:51:35
Speaker
The whole War on Drugs thing was really a Reagan-era policy, right? So, yeah, it makes sense that if you get President Robert Redford, that you're gonna have a change in the way some of the things, and it seems like there were a lot of
01:51:54
Speaker
Society evolved in different ways here. They didn't have as much technology, but they're a more progressive society with reparation. So it does make sense that there probably would have been some degree of drug decriminalization as well. Because she also says he did a little cocaine, but that was it, as if it's nothing. Yeah, yeah. And you know what? That caught my attention, because like you said,
01:52:23
Speaker
As far as the world building goes, there's so many little things that are thrown in there. And even, like I said, when I was watching it, yes, there was all these little subtle things that I was picking up that I hadn't caught before when I watched it before. And I was just wondering, well, why did they throw it in? Were they trying to make a statement? Or was it just something that, or were they trying to say? And just like you said, she said it's so nonchalantly. Like I was saying, well, damn, you know, he's a cop, you know? Okay.
01:52:52
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah. I think that about covers everything for these first three episodes. This show, it's just flat out amazing. Watching it again, watching these first three episodes again after scene, I still felt like as invested in it and as on the edge of my seat as I was when I watched them the first time.
01:53:20
Speaker
The only reason why we don't, because you know something? We could come back next week and we could still do another two hours just on these three episodes alone, really. That's how much is in it. Yeah, absolutely, definitely. Believe me folks, we didn't even cover half.
01:53:37
Speaker
as much as we covered in these two hours, still didn't cover half of what's in these episodes, the meat and potatoes of everything that's in these episodes. You have to watch it for yourself if you haven't seen it already. And I'm sorry for the spoilers because I know there's going to be somebody out there that's going to be saying, well, I don't have HBO in there. Well, you know, listen.
01:54:01
Speaker
Don't get me started. It's on iTunes, so you can go to iTunes, you can buy the whole series right now. And it was like 20 bucks when I bought it, I think. So yeah, you can go to iTunes, you can buy it, and it's well worth the price because it's such a good series.
01:54:18
Speaker
But you just know that there's going to be somebody that's going to listen to this and they're going to say, well, I just want to hear what you guys thought about it. Yeah, but you haven't seen it yet. So how would you know what we're talking about anyway? Well, you know, I mean, a show like Watchmen, you cannot.
01:54:34
Speaker
You cannot do a spoiler-free review of these episodes. You just can't. There's no way we could cover it. We could do a general overview. When we talked about the Watchmen movie, we did some general comments about the TV show then as it was still in progress. But you know what? There's so much that happens in each episode. You think of a normal TV show
01:54:59
Speaker
you know, 22 episodes or even like a streaming show that's like 10 to 13 episodes. Like there's padding in those shows. Like we talked about with the Marvel Netflix shows, the middle episodes feel very soggy. Cause there's just like a lot of navel gazing in those episodes. Like a lot of padding out. But Watchmen, so much happens in these nine episodes. And this actually reminds me a lot of, believe it or not,
01:55:28
Speaker
Twin Peaks. Yeah, I didn't. That thought had never occurred to me, but you are absolutely right. It's got a very Twin Peaks feel to it. And not only that, but Twin Peaks was what? That was what, like... How many episodes was that? That was like 10 or 12? Yeah, the first season was only like 10 or 12 episodes, and then the second season I think was like 22. Don't talk about this last... Oh, I didn't see the new one. Okay, that's what I'm talking about, the new one. Oh, okay. Because the last one...
01:55:57
Speaker
was what, like, OK, let's say for the purposes of this argument that it was 12 parts. It was 12 parts. But it actually did 12 single episodes. It was actually a 12 hour movie shown in individual segments. The feeling that I got from watching this TV series, that it was more like a nine hour movie told in one hour minutes, if that makes any sense.
01:56:27
Speaker
Oh, so look, it's like, it was actually like 18 episodes. Oh, 18, okay, well, okay, well then, 18-hour movie. Yeah. Told an hour-long segments. That's what it felt like to me. Felt like I was watching a nine-hour movie told in one-hour segments. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, so we've also got a little bit of an announcement about the show. So because of the,
01:56:54
Speaker
We do? Yeah, well, we talked about this at the beginning. You know what I'm talking about when I get to it. So well, first off, two things. Oh, OK. Well, two things. First off, I have been doing these news segments about superhero movie and TV news. And I've been doing those every week.
01:57:10
Speaker
15, 20 minutes, however long it takes to get through all the superhero related news for that week. But, you know, this coronavirus, it's been shutting down production of so much stuff, like Black Widow's release is- Left and right. Left and right, yeah. The Arrowverse shows have stopped production. The Batman has stopped production. Shang-Chi has stopped production. All these movies that were currently being made, they've stopped filming.
01:57:37
Speaker
So there's not really a
Pandemic Impact on Media
01:57:38
Speaker
lot of news to talk about. So I'm actually gonna be putting a stop to those segments for the time being. And then when everything goes back to normal or whatever the new normal ends up being, we'll see how it works out, then maybe I'll go back to them. But instead, what we are gonna be doing is Derek and I talked, and because I'm not really working that much right now and he works from home anyway,
01:58:04
Speaker
and plus he's in New York where they've got everything locked down anyway. We've been talking that for the time being, we're gonna be doing weekly episodes of the show.
01:58:15
Speaker
So we're going to be doing it weekly. Hopefully for everybody that's stuck at home, if you've been enjoying this, you're going to be getting even more of what we do best. So hopefully enjoy it and we will all get through this
01:58:36
Speaker
thing whatever it is and like perry said you know when we get back to the new normal we're gonna be doing our part to try to help you and help us as well cuz you know this is just as much as much therapy for us
01:58:53
Speaker
to help get us through this for us as it is for you, you know, because this is a tough time and God only where we're going to be. You know, me and Perry were talking about this earlier on. God only knows where this country is going to be in a couple of months from now. Me, I'm optimistic. I always believe in faith over fear. So I'm just going to pray that, you know, we'll all be OK and we're going to come out of it. And in the meantime, you know, we're just going to keep doing what we do.
01:59:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. Yeah, it sounds good. OK, so head on over to SuperheroCinephiles.com. Go to SuperheroCinephiles Facebook group. Join in the discussion there. Talk about the show. I actually just posted a link to the PD-PD stuff so you can read some of the background and supplemental material for the series. And then, yeah, next week we're going to be back talking about the next three episodes. So we're going to be talking about episodes four to six, which
01:59:51
Speaker
in that batch has one of my favorite episodes, which is the background of Will as Hooded Justice. Spectacular episode. Yeah. I can't wait to get to that one. See, that's why I had to stop watching it. Yes, because if I kept on, yeah, I would have watched the whole thing all over again. No problem at all. Because episode four is the Looking Glass episode. But if episode four had been the Will episode, I probably would have just kept on watching.
02:00:22
Speaker
And it's not because I didn't like the Looking Glass episode, but I said, OK, well, I can stop here now. And we're going to see. But I like the Looking Glass episode, because you were talking earlier on about the parallels between him and Rorschach. And I was glad to see that his origin, that Looking Glass origin, wasn't what I thought it was going to be, because I thought it was going to be similar.
02:00:52
Speaker
you know, the Rorschach's origin. And I'm delighted that it didn't turn out that way. Yeah, same. And, you know, I like the Looking Glass episode. Don't get me wrong, but there's not as much of a need to watch it as there would have been if the next episode had been the Will episode. Well, the Hooded Justice episode, to me, that's like the pivotal, you know, that's the one that really says everything on its head. Yeah. So yeah, these next three episodes are going to be really interesting.
02:01:24
Speaker
Go ahead. No, no, no. I was going to say that everything that you thought that you knew, and you always hear that. You always hear that. Well, this episode is going to change everything that you know, or this issue changes everything forever. Well, that episode truly does change everything forever, which is why I love it so much. Yeah. Yeah. That episode is just,
02:01:53
Speaker
And these next three episodes in general, they go very deep into the lore of the comic book. So like they really, they did such a good job of setting this up, right? Because they did these first three episodes where it introduces the character in a kind of light in light ways, it connects it to the original. The next three episodes dive really deep into the connections with the original. And then the last three episodes are like the big finale.
02:02:21
Speaker
Right. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, as a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, not to say, yeah, that's a good structure. It's like the first three episodes are the beginning, the second three episodes are the middle and the final three episodes are the end. It is. Yeah, it is really like a trilogy, like a movie trilogy when you think of it that way. Yeah. Wow. Cool. Yeah.
02:02:49
Speaker
Learn something new. Every time I talk to you, I'll learn something new. So head on over to SuperheroCinephiles.com, join the Facebook group, join in with discussion, talk about the series. And if you haven't seen it yet, then go to iTunes right now and buy it. Because if you are a fan of Watchmen, especially if you are a fan who was disappointed in the movie like I was, then you owe it to yourself to buy this series.
02:03:18
Speaker
It is such an amazing follow up to the book. Absolutely. No argument here. All right. So that does it for us. And we will be back next week with episodes four to six of Watchmen. OK. Looking forward to it. This is Derek Ferguson in Brooklyn. And I'm Perry Constantine in Kagoshima. And we will talk to you guys next week.
02:03:48
Speaker
Goodnight and God bless. The movie. The one you watched over and over when you were a boy. Used to tell me about it all the time. Uh, trust in the law. Trust in the law. That's the one. Tell me how it ends. There's a sheriff on the horse. He's shooting at somebody riding after him. It's a man all in black.
02:04:13
Speaker
A man in the hood, and he's kind of lasso, and he throws it at the sheriff. But it was the sheriff right off his horse. And they're in front of the church now, and the doors burst open, and all the townsfolk come running out to see what's what. The man in black tells him the sheriff's no good. Cattle thief, he's stealing from the town. And now they ask the man who he is. He throws his hood back into the past wreaths.
02:04:42
Speaker
black marshal of Oklahoma. He shows his badge, townsfolk cheer. They cheer for him, huh? Yeah. And they start shouting for him to string up the sheriff. The best reason won't happen. There will be no mob justice to date. Trust in the law. What color are those townsfolk? White.
02:05:12
Speaker
Tell me, what happened to the Dreamland Theater? Where you watched that picture over and over while your mama played the piano? What the Klan and the fine white citizens of Tulsa do? They burned it down. You ain't gonna get justice with a badge, Will Reeves. You're gonna get it with that hood.
02:05:41
Speaker
And if you want to stay a hero, townsfolk will need to think one of their own's under it. You sure you want to do this? I'm sure.
02:06:09
Speaker
I don't want to set the world on fire. Welcome to Superhero Cinephiles. I am half of your co-host, Perry Constantine. And I am the other half, Derek Ferguson coming at you from beautiful downtown Brooklyn, New York.
02:06:29
Speaker
Excuse me, how are you doing, Perry? I'm doing pretty good. I'm coming to you from Kagoshima, where we are not quite quarantined. University classes got delayed by two weeks. But my other school, where we just had a meeting yesterday, and we're still planning to move ahead starting our classes. And in fact, I ended up discovering what classes I'm going to teach this year. So I'm pretty excited about this semester, because they gave me
02:06:57
Speaker
one of my classes, they gave it to me twice a week instead of only once a week. And so I'll be teaching a total of three classes. And in the past, I've taught like a Japanese literature and film class, but this year they decided, you know what, let's split them into two classes. So I'll be teaching only a Japanese film class and then only a Japanese literature class, as well as viewpoints and world issues is the other class I'm going to be teaching. So I'm really excited about what I'm going to get to do this semester. Oh, cool. Very cool.
02:07:27
Speaker
I hope it worked. I hope everything works out for you. Yeah, so it's going to be a lot of fun to do that. How about you, Derek? How are you doing in quarantine? Well, listen, like I said, me and my wife are usual. We are.
02:07:41
Speaker
I mean, we hibernate anyway, although I must say that spring has come early this year because in the last couple of weeks, we've had like a run of weather. Like it's been like springtime. We've had like, I think today it's like 65 degrees, 60, 65 degrees. So it's kind of so. So I mean, you know. Oh, OK, the thing is that, see, we're lucky in that we have a car so that
02:08:13
Speaker
If we want to get out, we don't have to interact with other people. We can just get in the car and just, you know, take a ride. Right. You know, just drive around for a while. You know, if we start to get the cabin fever, unlike, you know, like other people who don't have a vehicle, if they want to get out, they actually have to get out and walk around. You know, so. But yeah, but I mean, you know, it's no real hardship as yet. That's good to hear.
02:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, as far as as far as we're concerned, yes, you have people that are worried how they're going to pay their rent, how they're going to take care of other things that they got going on, how they're going to pay out the bills, everything like that. Thank God we don't have to worry about that. But yeah, so far so good. I mean, we're doing all right. Patricia is fine. I'm fine.
02:08:59
Speaker
you know, health-wise, we're staying away from people and we're just, like everybody else, we're waiting to see how this thing eventually plays out. Well, I found out something interesting because
02:09:12
Speaker
You know, as you guys know, I'm an American citizen, but I live in Japan. And so they're talking about these $1,200 a month payments they're going to be given out to everybody, right? Yeah. So I figured like, oh, I'm not going to be getting any of that because of...
02:09:29
Speaker
Even though I file tax returns every year, you know, I live abroad, but it looks like that because some of my income is from U.S. sources, like from the book sales and stuff like that on Amazon, it looks because I file a tax return every year, it looks like I might actually get some of that stimulus payment, too.
02:09:49
Speaker
Really? No problem. Cool. So that's good. And we might also, we're talking about that in Japan too, where they're going to be, in fact, it was funny. Yesterday, they made a big deal about the prime minister making an announcement about some measures the government's going to take. So everybody's thinking, oh, he's going to announce stimulus payments, which is something they've been talking about for like the past few weeks.
02:10:15
Speaker
So he goes on TV and he says, what we are going to do to help households in Japan is we are going to issue two cloth masks to every house. Say what now? Exactly. Say what now? And he goes on TV, he's wearing his cloth mask. He says, we're giving out two cloth masks to every home, which, you know, some homes have more than two people in them.
02:10:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's saying here now, I was just watching a little while ago, I was upstairs when I was getting the mail that they're saying now that the CDC is going to start telling American citizens that it's going to be mandatory to start wearing a mask when you go out.
02:11:00
Speaker
Yeah. So what I decided to do was I went online and I got this kind of, it's a reusable type mask. It's got like a filter in it and you can like remove like the inserts out of it. So I bought one of those because first off, it's more comfortable than those disposable masks. And second, like those disposable masks, I want to leave those for the medical workers and the people who really need them.
02:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I've got one of those type of masks myself for like when I do work around the house. Right. You know, like, so I don't breathe in, because, you know, I've got problems with my lungs and stuff like that. So I don't breathe in fumes and stuff like that. I've got one of those type of masks that, you know, like, what's the guys I'm picking up like?
02:11:55
Speaker
What's the guys that work with wood? You know, like carpenters. Yeah, carpenters. Yeah, you ever see them, like, they have a mask. So then, like, they don't breathe in like the wood dust. Right, right. Yeah, I've got one of those types of masks. So I'm going to say, and, you know, it's reusable. You know, you don't just wait one time and throw it away because it's meant to be used over and over and over again. Right. So so I bought that a couple of years ago. So I guess I'm going to have to start getting used to wearing that when I go out. Yeah, yeah.
02:12:20
Speaker
And I think that kind of thing is better, you know, save those other masks for the people who really need them. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that I don't think a lot of people have thought of going to like hardware stores or stuff like that, like if you need a mask and getting one of those masks. Yeah. You know.
02:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing to me that nobody's really thought of that because the experts they've been saying, like you don't need those N95 masks. You only really need something to, because the main concern is not preventing you from getting it from other people. It's preventing you from possibly transmitting it through the moisture in your mouth. Right, exactly. And so that you won't give it to somebody, you're keeping it in, you know? Yeah, exactly. That's the whole thing. A lot of people think that, oh, well, I wear it.
02:13:06
Speaker
for the wrong reasons. They're wearing it so they won't breathe it in. No, no, that's not it. So that the people who have it, it'll stay with them. Right. And one of the reasons why they didn't want people wearing masks in the first place is because those masks, they have to be worn a certain way. And most people don't really know how to do it. So they're constantly fidgeting with it and touching their face even more, which is increasing the risk.
02:13:31
Speaker
Those that's why they that's why they're they're now selling people. Like, look, you don't have to wear that particular kind of mask. Like you can even just a bandana is better than nothing. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Because what I was doing, like when I was getting out of the car, when I was going shopping, I had like a scarf and I would just wrap scarf around the bottom half of my face. Yeah. Yeah. And that's all you really need to do. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I was doing. You know,
02:14:00
Speaker
Pretending like I was a shadow, you know. So speaking of covering up the lower half of your face, we're we got the perfect TV show for that because we're doing episodes four to six of the Watchmen miniseries. Yep. Beginning with so I made a mistake last one because I said in the last episode that episode four is the Looking Glass episode, but I was wrong. I realized that when I went to watch them is the
02:14:30
Speaker
Fourth episode is titled, If You Don't Like My Story, Write Your Own, which is a line from the novel, Things Fall Apart, which is about European colonization in Nigeria. As a matter of fact, there's a scene in this episode where Cal, Angela's husband, is reading the book. Yeah.
02:14:53
Speaker
He's reading that book and she spoils it for him. And he just says very calmly. As a matter of fact, this was the episode where you were OK in rewatching it now that I know what's coming later on. This was kind of like a hit that he's Dr. Manhattan when he has to explain when his children are speculating
02:15:17
Speaker
on where the Don Johnson character went after he died. And they're speculating, did he go to heaven? And he comes over to the table and he gives them this very clinical explanation that there is no heaven and he didn't belong anywhere before he was, he was nothing before he was here. Then he was born, he lived, he died, and he went back to nothing.
02:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And then Angela even kind of like talks, you know, says she's like, she's like, you know, she kind of gets upset with him when he, when he says that. And she gives him this kind of, not really upset, but she's just kind of like, really? That's what you're going to tell a little kid who's, you know, ask, try just learning about death for the first time. Right. Yeah. Cause it's a very cold and clinical and, um, and, and it was weird to me because
02:16:06
Speaker
Most black people, at least black people that I know personally, most black people are spiritual. Right. So even if they're not Christian, they believe in something else. You know, they believe whatever, but generally on the whole, most of the black, I mean, I'm sure there are some black atheists. I don't know any personally, but I'm sure there are. But the point I'm trying to make is that most black people that I know of have some sort of spiritual belief. So for Cal to have been so cold and clinical,
02:16:36
Speaker
about the notion of heaven because he just says flat out oh well you know that's made up you know that's you know that that's very cold and clinical but of course now looking in hindsight and while i'm re-watching these episodes are
02:16:53
Speaker
You know, now I'm picking up on all the clues I missed the first time around. Yeah, this cat was Dr. Manhattan, okay. And there was clues along the way to tell us, and I do believe that was one of them. And also, when Angela tells him, you know, she's like, so when were you going to tell me that you spoke to Laurie? Which was another hint. Like, the first time I watched it, I was wondering, like, you know,
02:17:15
Speaker
Why is she so upset about the fact that he spoke to Lori? And then you realize now, because in the past, Lori was Dr. Manhattan's girlfriend. Right, yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, that kind of came off to me like it was a little bit more than professional. She was kind of upset that day. But then again, when they're in the car talking,
02:17:44
Speaker
OK, because remember, they're going to see Madame True. Yeah. And they're in the car talking. And Lori.
02:17:53
Speaker
tells what's his name in the back says okay well tell her because they're having the whole discussion about you know wearing masks and being superheroes and Laurie says okay well you know i used to wear a costume too and it's like the Angela wasn't aware that she was silk specter which i pretty much thought was public knowledge i think it was but you know what also jumped out to me is when um
02:18:19
Speaker
Dale when Petey tells the story of the Minutemen, right? And Angela's first reaction is you mean like the TV show. So that that kind of jumped out to me because it's this. You know, she's aware of like Dr. Manhattan because he was, you know, such a public figure. But a lot of the other stuff, you know, it's it's kind of been almost lost to history a little bit, it seems. Well, it's you know what I OK, it's kind of like like
02:18:51
Speaker
OK, when they started making all of those fictional TV shows about guys like Wyatt Earp and stuff like that. So there was like the TV version that was different from the Wyatt Earp as it actually was. So I guess they make these TV shows and they kind of like.
02:19:04
Speaker
you know, sweeten up the image of how, you know, Night Owl and all the rest of these guys was. So maybe that's what Angela was going on, what she knew from TV. Right. Yeah. And she wasn't aware of the real history because when, well, of course, I mean, that wasn't public knowledge that the comedian tried to rape Silk Spectre.
02:19:23
Speaker
But I was always on this. It was public knowledge because it was in Hollis Mason's book, but it wasn't something that it is right. Yeah, but it wasn't. But I think, you know, that's that's kind of what I'm getting at is that it's become so much time has passed since the 1940s when the Minutemen broke up that a lot of that stuff has been like it's probably more remembered if you're in a place like New York where the Minutemen operated. But outside of New York, you know, people probably don't really.
02:19:51
Speaker
think too much about it anymore. And it's probably only with shows like the American hero story that it's starting to come back into the public consciousness. Right. And who's to say that Angela, you know, maybe she didn't read the book. Right. Exactly.
02:20:06
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, she didn't know because, you know, Laurie says very casually, OK, well, you know, go ahead and I mean, you know, tell her everything like that. And, you know, Angela's like like kind of surprised when she hears about the stuff going on. Some say, well, you know, I thought it was public knowledge that she was, you know, suspect her and everything like that. So, yeah. OK. But.
02:20:28
Speaker
Okay. I'll go with your explanation. That makes sense. Thank you. That makes sense. I'm going to go with your interpretation. Okay. And so this episode introduced a character who's been hinted at for a while, and that's Lady True, who's played by Hong Chow. And the way they introduce her, it's another callback to Superman, right? Because, and you know, another thing that really jumped out to me is the eggs in this episode, because the eggs are a recurring motif, and we find out in the last episode why.
02:20:57
Speaker
Yeah. Because the first shot is of a woman selling eggs by the side of the road. Right. Yeah. And the eggs are such a focus in that opening montage of scenes going through her relationship with this guy and how they meet. They fall in love. They get married. And the eggs are present in every single scene. And also, you've got when Cal is explaining about death, Angela's making waffles using eggs.
02:21:27
Speaker
Yeah. And so all these things just keep coming back and forth. And also, when we first got introduced to Angela in the first episode, we also see her cracking open eggs and making the Watchmen smiley face with them. Right, exactly. So yeah, it seems like we can't get away from eggs in this thing. And when Lady True is talking to the couple that we meet and they're talking about
02:21:55
Speaker
Uh, she made a child for them. Well, of course, how did she make the child? Because she had one of the woman's eggs. Right. Exactly. Yeah. When they went to the fertility clinic, you know, she had an egg and that's how she was able to make the child. So yeah, there's another, you know, we go back to eggs again. And, um, did you catch the name of the, of the couple? No, the clerks.
02:22:20
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah, so this couple, this kindly couple, they live on a farm, and they want a child more than anything, but they can't have one. They can't, for whatever reason, they can't have kids, so.
02:22:37
Speaker
then comes this mysterious visitor, this scientist, who gives them a child, right? It's straight up Superman narrative, but it's twisted a little bit, because in this case, Lady True wants something in return, right? She wants all their land. And knows something? Yeah, you're right, because knows something. At the end of the scene, after they made the deal, a rocket from space crashes on their farm. Right, and then the first thing she says when she sees that is, that's mine. Oh, God.
02:23:09
Speaker
It just hit me, okay, go ahead, sorry, it just hit me. No, yeah, no problem. And so the interesting thing is what we find out that that thing is later on, right? Which we find out that, because we don't learn in these episodes, but in the next ones, we're eventually gonna find out that all the scenes with Adrian Veidt have been in the past. Yeah. And they're all taking, and that crash, I believe that crash is when he crashes down to Earth.
02:23:40
Speaker
because Yeah, because then that's when we start seeing the statue And her you know, and then we find out later on with the statue actually In this episode I think yeah, it's in this episode where they find out that the Lady true has these these like flying crafts which can pick things up with they've got like magnetic
02:24:09
Speaker
I don't know, grips or claws or whatever, you know, kind of like those claw machine things. And they can pick things up, you know, and it's used primarily for construction of this Millennium Clock Tower. But what Laurie suspects is that one of them could have been used to pick up Angela's car, which still had Will in it from episode two, I believe it was.
02:24:37
Speaker
Right. And then dropped it back without Will inside anymore. So they go into the facility and they talk to Lady True and Laurie points out the fact she's like, holy shit, that's a statue of Adrian Veidt. And she notices, you know, because he's in his costume, but he's old. But he's old, right? Yeah. And she said, well, why did you make him so old?
02:25:01
Speaker
And she gives him some jumps that, oh, well, we revere our elders. And then, of course, later on, we find out why he looks old. Right. Because he's actually frozen inside. They Han soloed him in that thing. Yeah. Bingo. That's the perfect phrase. As a matter of fact, you stole it. I was going to use it. I said, they Han soloed his ass. She froze to be carboned. Really? That's what she did. She Han soloed his ass.
02:25:28
Speaker
And yeah, that jumped out to me the first time, even the first time I watched it, I was like, I'm like, yeah, that's a good point. He does look old because he's been missing for a few years and then he was declared legally dead. So why would they, how would they even know how he looked as an old man then? Exactly, exactly.
02:25:50
Speaker
But again, I was watching that scene where she's talking to the Clarks. And again, there was another clue that was planted there that didn't catch the first time around when she brings in the baby. And she's talking to them and she's saying, OK, well, if you sell me your farm, you know,
02:26:07
Speaker
sign over your phone to me, and I'll give you a child. And Mrs. Clark, she starts ranting and raving and screaming and jumping up and saying, oh, you think you're going to come here? You're going to prom? How you think you're just going to give me a baby, and you're making these promises you can't keep? And she said, wait a minute. You don't understand. I've already done it. Yeah. Which is a clue as to her heritage. Oh, yeah. Because remember, in the original Watchmen, when Ozymandias, when he's confronted by Night Owl,
02:26:35
Speaker
and Rorschach, and he's explaining his master plan, and they said, oh, well, we're going to stop you. And he said, what do you think? I'm some kind of comic book villain that, he said, there's no reason why I would tell you my plan if there was any chance of you stopping me. I did it 30 minutes ago. Yeah. It's the same. Probably the best one in the comic. Yeah, when I watched it the second time when, you know, when Lady Crew was making it, I said, oh, OK, bingo. Clue. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.
02:27:03
Speaker
Now, um, if you look in the, cause there was speculation and the PDP files, they kind of added some speculation as to what lady true's connection was because, and it's really clever of them because they put a little misdirection, right? Cause in the,
02:27:21
Speaker
In the PDP files, there's a newspaper article from this Tulsa gossip magazine, and it's all about fact and fiction involving Lady True, who's just moved to Tulsa, and she's this big mystery, this eccentric woman. And they asked the question, is her father the comedian? Tying back to the fact that when Edward Blake was in Vietnam, he was sleeping with the locals. We saw that in that one scene where the pregnant woman comes after him.
02:27:52
Speaker
and he shoots her and there's a
02:27:56
Speaker
And Dr. Manhattan just stands there and watches it happen. So there was speculation online that maybe Dr. Manhattan felt guilty because Blake calls him out and he says, you could have done anything, but you just stood there and watched it happen. You don't care about us. So there's some speculation that maybe he brought her back to life or maybe he brought her baby back to life or something. And that baby was child. Right. Yeah. That was the speculation.
02:28:25
Speaker
Another thing they mentioned in the article is that, well, Blake has several illegitimate children from his globecrodding escapades, including several in Vietnam. So there was a lot of speculation that her father was the comedian. You know what? That never occurred to me because that wouldn't explain why she was so smart. Right, yeah. Because Blake wasn't exactly the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
02:28:51
Speaker
Well, he was he was smart. It's not in the same way like he was crap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't a stupid guy. Don't get me wrong. But what I'm saying is that compared to some of the other characters in the thing, he wasn't, you know, like as smart as they were. Let's face it. You know, he was a thug. Yeah. Basic guy was, you know, the guy was a thug, you know, but he did have the interesting thing that I liked about the comedian.
02:29:17
Speaker
was that we can digress just for a minute here, was that he did have a very deep inner pain, I think, that was born out of his being in a world where he saw things that he shouldn't have seen. Yeah.
02:29:35
Speaker
Because we see that he was the guy that did the Kennedy, you know, the assassination. Right. And he killed Edward Bernstein and a bunch of other stuff, too. Right. Yeah. So he was a guy that had, you know, like a really deep spiritual pain, you know, inside of him. You know, the thing about the comedian is where, because like you've mentioned before, he's not funny.
02:29:59
Speaker
Right? But the point of him being the comedian isn't that he's someone who makes jokes. The fact is, he's the comedian because he views life itself as a joke. He's got this very nihilistic view of humanity. And we see in the comic book that that's taken its toll on him, that worldview, because that's how that, having that outlook for so long has allowed him to do all these terrible things, and it has affected him on a deep emotional and spiritual level, like you said.
02:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, because you know what? Matter of fact, he even says when the guy breaks in and they have the fight scene and everything like that, he says just before the guy busts in, he said, well, I knew it had to happen sooner or later. He knew that this was how he was going to go out sooner or later. He was not going to die in bed. He knew that for a fact. Right. Right. Sad guy.
02:31:00
Speaker
So in this episode, what did you think of Lady True? You know what? I liked her. I like, first of all, I liked smart characters. I liked the way that she came in with such confidence and she came in and she already had the plan mapped out as to what she's going to do. And we, for a while there watching this episode,
02:31:22
Speaker
And again, like you said, it's another piece of misdirection because I was getting the feeling that, first of all, it was never in my mind whose daughter she was. I knew from the, okay, well, this is who she's got to be related to somehow. I don't know how yet, but that's how she, you know, but she's related to Ozymandias, some kind of way, but they kind of misdirected and they lead you to think that, you know, that she's been manipulating all of the events that's been going on. She's been manipulating some of them. Yeah.
02:31:51
Speaker
but she's not behind everything, which again, we find out later on.
02:31:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, the way that Hong Chow plays the character, like she's, she does a really great job of acting, you know, the performance. You really believe that she is the smartest person in whatever room she's in. And she does a really good job of selling that. Something else that I noticed is when they go to the... Sorry, go ahead. She has a sort of, how can I put it? She has a sort of casual arrogance. Right, yeah, that's a good perfect way to say it.
02:32:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's the best. It's a casual, you know, like you see some people who are arrogant and they're very aggressive in their arrogance. But no, no, she's very, she's almost like passive aggressive in her arrogance. Right.
02:32:43
Speaker
that I don't know. I felt quite appealing as a character. I did. I enjoyed it because it was like, yeah, you know, like the scene where she's speaking to Angela in Vietnamese and she's communicating a secret message. Yeah.
02:33:00
Speaker
And Angela tells her, you know, well, you fuck off and tell my grandfather to fuck off. And they go fuck off some more. And ladies who never blinks eyes, she says, oh, that's so very sweet. I've never heard that before. I just fell on the floor laughing. I said, I love it. And so one of the, another thing they do here is
02:33:24
Speaker
I noticed this the second time around is when they go, because it's Angela, Lori, and Petey, and they all go to the Millennium Clock Tower together to talk to Lady True. And beyond, her daughter comes out and she says, yes, my mother wants to meet you. But then she tells Petey, sorry, women only.
02:33:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like a little signal that the last Watchmen was all led by men, right? And the only real women characters in it were the two Silk Specters. And they were both very minor roles compared to the others. Like, Laurie does pretty much nothing in the grand scheme of things in that story. But in this, they take the lead.
02:34:17
Speaker
And then it's. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, this is some very. Yeah, this is this is driven by the women. This one. I mean, most definitely, you know, this version of watching. Definitely. So I did like that that little signal that they said that that beyond gave they're saying like, you know, women only in this one, like only this this kind of conversation. This is only for the women. They're the players in this. You're not the player. You're a bit player.
02:34:40
Speaker
Right, exactly. Even though we do get characters like in the next episode, we get the origin of Looking Glass and the episode is all about him. But yeah, and then the episode after that is the, you know, that utterly magnificent episode is about Will Reeves.
02:35:03
Speaker
but you know that's like the exception like the majority of the majority of these episodes the plot is propelled by women you know that's it yeah yeah that's they're the ones that are moving they're the engine that moves this plot absolutely yeah and um
02:35:22
Speaker
you also get a hint about what beyonds origins are because she wakes up having a nightmare and she says that you know she goes to her mom and she tells her that you know i had dreams of you know of being attacked in a village you know and that was another kind of hint that maybe that lady true has some connection to stuff that happened during the vietnam war so that was also kind of like a bit of misdirection which i thought was a really interesting way they did that and
02:35:51
Speaker
When she goes and tells her the nightmare, you know, Lady True is happy about it, right? And we find out, and you wonder like, why would she be happy that her daughter is hearing about that? And then you find, we find out later it's because she's actually a clone of her daughter, of her mother. Yeah, well, and you know something, now that we're recapping this,
02:36:16
Speaker
I realized something. There's a lot of setup in this episode for stuff that pays off later on. Right. Yeah. Like the first time I watched this, I felt this episode was a little bit slow, but, but watching it again, I can see why, because this is like the prologue to a lot of stuff that comes. No, I felt the exact same way with the first time I saw it. I liked it, but I said, yeah, this is kind of compared to
02:36:41
Speaker
what we've seen before. This is paste a lot of smoke, but upon watching it again yesterday, when I watched it, I said, okay, I understand why it's this way because there's a lot of stuff in here that is set up that pays off later on in later episodes. That's why it's paying that way. And that's why it's so slow because they got to drop all of these little seeds in there.
02:37:04
Speaker
That's going to grow later on. And then we're going to say, OK, OK, I got it now. OK, I got that now. OK, now. Oh, shit. I got that too. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, we also find out that she's working with Will because Will appears at the end here. And in fact, was it just me or does he look healthier? Not only can he walk, right, Warren, before he was in a wheelchair, but even his overall appearance, he looks more physically fit than he did when he was talking to Angela.
02:37:35
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he really was playing the part of an infirm old man. Yeah. When he was talking to her, but like you said, he looked, yeah, he looks more lively. He's more energy. And like you said, we find out that he didn't need the wheelchair at all. Yeah. Because he's standing up at war. He's standing up and walking.
02:37:55
Speaker
And I love the conversation that, but I love the conversation that Lori has with Angela in the car and they're talking about masks, right? And she says like, you know, and she, she has this really good observation that, you know,
02:38:16
Speaker
Heroes mass vigilantes they often have some sort of trauma in their life. So that's why they wear masks to hide their To hide their trauma and that's why they're obsessed with a sense of justice Well, yeah, well, yeah because even uh, you know you look back at all of the great pulp heroes or you know, the great comic book heroes everybody spider-man and
02:38:43
Speaker
He had one bad day. His uncle got killed. He could have stopped the guy that had did it. And that was his trauma. Batman, his parents got killed. Bruce Wayne, his parents got killed in front of him. That was his trauma. Batman's parents were killed in front of him? I wouldn't know that, because it's not like they've ever shown that in every fucking movie ever made. Oh, please. Thank you. Just once, I want to go. I am so hoping that this Batman movie that they're doing now with Matt Reeves, whenever they get back into production,
02:39:12
Speaker
Just give us a Batman adventure. If you know what, if I see one more scene of pearls falling in slow motion, I'm gonna put my fist through a wall.
02:39:23
Speaker
Matter of fact, to all the filmmakers, if there's any filmmakers that have been listening to this, you know, whether you be independent or, you know, you're working with one of the big suits that we're gonna make, do not give us any origin stories. We don't need any, we don't need origin stories. Thank you very much. We don't. Yeah, this is an aggression, but you know what movie I thought handled the origin story aspect the best? The Incredible Hulk.
02:39:48
Speaker
Because the whole origin story is done just in visuals over the opening credits. And that's it. Boom. We're all set and we're ready to go. That's all you need to. And let's face it, in this day, okay, just as a perfect example, my wife has no use for superheroes. She doesn't care about superheroes. She doesn't like superheroes. Matter of fact, the only comic book she ever read in her life was Archie comic books. All everything she knows about superheroes comes from her association with me, okay?
02:40:18
Speaker
Still, even given that, she knows the fucking origin of Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, the Hulk, Wonder Woman. She knows it because these characters are so well known. Yeah, exactly. We don't need their origin. Absolutely, OK. Aquaman, yes, I can see why we need an origin story for Aquaman.
02:40:40
Speaker
Yeah, but most of those big characters, you don't need to do it. And I think Marvel's gotten very smart about it, because they've kind of done away with the origin story now. So they do it sometimes. They did it with Doctor Strange. It was done a bit in Captain Marvel, but it wasn't the focus of that movie. It was more integrated into the story than just setting up the origin all by itself. Right.
02:41:08
Speaker
because we learned about her actually being a human later on. We just assumed that she's a creep for most of the movie.
02:41:15
Speaker
And it isn't until later on that, you know, we find out, so her origin is like integrated into the larger store, which is okay. But yeah, okay, but with the character, okay, but with the character like Captain Marvel that a lot of people don't know, yeah, I can see why you need origin this way. But when we're talking about major characters like Superman and Batman and Spider-Man and the Hulk and Wonder Woman, and you know, most of these characters, you don't need even the most casual
02:41:42
Speaker
person with a passing knowledge of comic books knows the origin of Spider-Man. Okay. We do not need another origin movie for spider. Thank you very much. Yeah. You know, I think, you know, to me, it's very lazy because a filmmaker, okay, half the work is done for you. You don't really have to come up with a story because, you know,
02:42:03
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, you know, to me, it's very lazy. It is. It is. And because we've talked before that it's relied on so often because the origin story is something that Hollywood easily understands because it perfectly fits the three act structure. Right.
02:42:23
Speaker
And in this day and age, I mean, in this day and age, I mean, come on, who hasn't seen, you know, the Tim Burton Batman, or if you haven't seen the Tim Burton Batman, then you probably see the Christopher Nolan Batman. Well, even the Tim Burton Batman, like, they didn't spend a lot of time in the origin. That was something that I don't think we really talked about when we discussed Batman in our second episode. But the origin is very brief. Like, you don't even find out that his parents died until, like, right before the third act.
02:42:49
Speaker
Yeah, it was. Yeah. He goes to the alley and he's got the roses and he's being followed by Kim Basinger. Right. Yeah. And he puts it down and then she finds out when Alexander Knox, you know, gives her like the file. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's how she finds out that. Yeah. You know, yeah, yeah. They didn't spend any time on the origin because who doesn't know Batman's origin. I mean, come on, give me a break.
02:43:15
Speaker
Now, two other things I wanted to talk about with this episode before we move on to the Looking Glass one is, you know, we find out this is the very first, this is like really like the biggest clue we get at this point that Vite is not on Earth, right? And there's, because he's out on the lake and he's looking for these human fetuses that are being grown in the lake.
02:43:41
Speaker
Yeah. And it's so, it's such a bizarre scene because he's like looking at it, he's like, no, that one's not good. He throws it away, throws it away. And then he finds these two, he takes them back and he uses this machine to accelerate them. We find out they're Phillips and Crookshanks. Yeah. And you know, he basically like grows them essentially. And then he takes them into the manner and we find out he's massacred like a room full of Phillips and Crookshanks.
02:44:10
Speaker
And then he has them gather the corpses up and they go out and he's shooting them with a catapult out of the air. So it's just like this.
02:44:20
Speaker
It's because we don't find out what he's planning to do until later. But it's just like all this lead up to it. It's so wonderfully bizarre. And let me say perfect. That's the perfect phrase because we've been following this guy now. We don't know what the deal with him is or what he's doing. But because it's Jeremy Irons and he's so entertaining.
02:44:45
Speaker
we're willing to watch it knowing that okay you know what i've got to see how this pays off yeah because this guy is so delightfully eccentric you know i mean he's a but he's a guy again
02:45:02
Speaker
just like I was saying that Madame True was casual in her arrogance. He's casual in his insanity. Yeah. You know, like he's taking these little fetuses out of the lake and he's picking them up and we can see they're alive because you know, they're making noises and they're moving and he said, no, not, not that one. He throws it over his shoulder into the lake. That's a way of it, dude. It was a lot, you know?
02:45:26
Speaker
No, no, not that one. He throws it back and oh my God. You know, something else we didn't mention in the last episode is the very first time we see Vite and he's riding across towards the manor is there's a pirate flag. Yeah. And that's a hint that this is kind of like the Black Freighter segment of this TV series. Oh, you know something? I did not even pick up on that.
02:45:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's something that I heard people talk about. I didn't pick up on it the first time. And then I remember people mentioning it online. So when I went back and re-watched this episode, then it jumped out at me when I saw that pirate flag. Oh, could you know what? Yeah, I remember the flag. But it didn't even pick up on me that that was a reference to the black. Oh, OK, cool. You know, that is massively cool. I mean, they do so they put so much stuff in this. We could probably.
02:46:19
Speaker
come back to this series every year and reevaluate it and we would still find new stuff in it. Oh yeah, I'm sure that if I watch this in about another year, which I probably will, I will again see new stuff there I didn't see before. Yeah. One thing I'd like to mention before we move on to the next episode, probably the most
02:46:41
Speaker
In a series full of, okay, in a series full of bizarre incidents and moments, this one has one that I think is like in the top three, and that is the appearance of Lube guy. Lube man, yes. I was gonna mention that was the only thing I wanted to talk about, because the greatest character in the series. Oh my God.
02:47:01
Speaker
We see this guy just, we never see him again. And see me, I don't know anybody else, but I'm waiting. I said, well, listen, I want to see lube guy again. Where's the lube man? Where's he at? Where'd he go? Where'd he? When they're talking about what are they going to do for a second season? If they did a second season, I'm like, you know what they're going to do? They're going to do the rise of lube man. Lube man rises.
02:47:29
Speaker
this man begins. You know, he's a guy, for those of you who hadn't seen it, Angela has gotten rid of the wheelchair that her grandfather, uh, because of course he's walking now. So she's got to get rid of the evidence that he was there cause she's covering up the fact that
02:47:51
Speaker
He claims what she did. He killed, you know, her boss, Don Johnson. So she gets rid of the wheelchair and she's in costume at sister night. She throws it over this bridge. She's on this bridge and there's a train that's going by like a garbage train. Yeah. So she throws a bag with the pieces of the wheelchair cause she's cut it up. She throws it in there and she turns around and she just sees this guy dressed in a silver suit, just looking at her. Now, of course he's not a cop.
02:48:18
Speaker
So she says, ho, you're the rest at the guy turns and starts hauling ass. So of course she's chasing after and they're running and they're running and he's a fast, as fast as a motherfucker. He's, you know, he's hot. So then he turns the corner and there's like, there's no way else for him to go. And she's saying, stop, stop, stop. He reaches to his belt.
02:48:41
Speaker
He's got tubes of lube, and he sprays it all over himself. He slides into a drain of power. And Angela stops, and she looks at all she can say, what the fuck?
02:49:14
Speaker
And then we never hear about him again. We, we see her go to, go to the police station with his belt because he takes off the belt in order that he can fit. And it's an impossibly small, you know, great. It's like, it reminded me of the thing from the movie. It, you know, the clown is at
02:49:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those type of dealios, but it's impossibly small and he just slides into that thing with no problem at all. And he just disappears and we never see him for the rest of the, for the rest of the series. We get no explanation for, Hey, you know what? I absolutely love it. Never found out the deal with discount. Well, actually in the, the PDP files, they do,
02:50:03
Speaker
give a pretty strong hint because what happened is at the end of the pd pd files the very last one in there is a memo from like um a deputy director or something like that who says that uh pd was relieved of his duties and that his memos were garbage because all his memos he was writing like reviews of american hero story and shit like that uh-huh and talking about superheroes and all that and he said and the
02:50:30
Speaker
The deputy director, he's like, these memos are garbage. What the hell is all this crap? And then he says he's been relieved of his duties. And then he's gone missing. And all we found among his effects was like an empty bottle of lube. Oh. So yeah, so it's pretty obvious that he became lube man. He became a vigilante himself. And now that he's been relieved of duty at the FBI, he's gone full on mass vigilante route.
02:51:05
Speaker
Oh my God. That is hilarious. And I just sat there and I just watched it and I just said, I can't believe what I just saw. Why did they do that? And you just sit there and you're waiting for this guy to pop up again. And he never
Themes of Trauma and Identity
02:51:25
Speaker
does. He never shows up again.
02:51:28
Speaker
Hm. Hilarious. So that brings us to the next episode, which is episode five, Little Fear of Lightning. And this is the Looking Glass episode. This is the origin of Looking Glass. Which I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. When I saw the preview for it, I'm like, oh, it looks all right. But this show does a really good job of taking things that
02:51:56
Speaker
and taking things in a direction you didn't really expect it to happen. Because Looking Glass has been kind of hinted at as being almost the Rorschach figure of this piece.
02:52:06
Speaker
Right. And we see that right in the beginning because he is in 1985 on 11-2, which I love that they did that. They call it 11-2, just like we refer to 9-11. Wade was part of some religious group that was preaching about the end of the world. And
02:52:29
Speaker
they're going to Hoboken and they go to, um, to try and convince people to repent. And he goes over to this group of like, uh, punky looking kids and he tries to talk to them and they start giving him shit. And then one of the girls there, you know, she's really nice to him and she's like, no, come on, come on, come with me. And she takes him into this, uh, fun house of me, this mirror fun house and there,
02:52:57
Speaker
You know, she's getting into him. She makes him think that he likes her, that she likes him.
02:53:04
Speaker
And she says, well, if we're all gonna die soon, you don't wanna die a virgin, do you? And then she starts taking his clothes off, and he's getting excited, right? And then she takes all his clothes and she runs out, and she's like, fuck you Bible boy, and leaves them inside there. Yeah, yeah, now you know, listen, that was some really foul shit. That was, that was, yeah. I mean, that was cold. I mean, he's entirely naked. Yeah, nothing but his socks on.
02:53:33
Speaker
Yeah, not even, you know, not even underwear. You know, I mean, you know, leader got with some underwear, you know, like at least. So, yeah, he goes out, people laugh and ha ha ha, you know, but damn. Well, before he gets to go out there like the he goes back into the into the house and, you know, he's looking at the point. Yeah, it's a moot point. And he's looking at himself in the mirror and he's like screaming at himself. You know, he's, you know, he's talking down himself. He's like, you're a sinner. You're an idiot.
02:53:59
Speaker
And then the psychic backlash from the from the squid landing in New York hits. Mm hmm. And. And, you know, he's in the mirror, he's in the he's looking at he's in that funhouse looking at all these mirrors when it hits him and he survives. But then he goes out and he sees like all these people are dead on the ground from the psychic wave.
02:54:24
Speaker
Yeah, most of the people that have been attending the carnival, we see one or two other survivors stumbling around, but it's like they're out of it. But it's like, yeah, he came out of it, which is what leads me to believe that, yeah, that he, and we talked about this in the last episode, which leads me to believe that he does have some sort of superpower as a result of having survived. He does have some sort of psychic ability as a result of having survived that horrendous event.
02:54:53
Speaker
Now before we get into that like one of the one of the things I loved about this episode is that opening scene of destruction of New York right and with the squid tentacles entangled in the buildings and they show the giant squid on the on the building there and
02:55:16
Speaker
My God, it's amazing how they did that. That's like virtually the panel from the original Watchmen comic. Yeah. That's it, basically. That's what we're seeing. And yeah, that's like the first time you've ever seen the squid. Mm-hmm.
02:55:31
Speaker
the actual squid. And it is appropriately horrific, you know, to see this thing, you know, you say, Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know what? Maybe they didn't have special effects to do it back then, but they had special effects to do it now. And yeah, it's a pro it get,
02:55:48
Speaker
It got the appropriate reaction from me. Let me put it that way. Yeah, same here. I said, holy shit. I said, holy shit. Because we had the hints. We knew about the squid. This takes place in the comic book universe because we had the squid rain in the first episode. I never thought they'd go full out and show the whole squid.
02:56:12
Speaker
Yeah, I thought they were just gonna leave it at that and just have, you know, but they are like putting it like front and center. Okay, if you didn't believe before that this takes place in the universe of the comic book and it's a sequel to the comic book, well, here it is. You know, this is it, we do. This is the comic book, folks. I said, oh, okay, cool. It's more than the comic book because the squid is only, is barely visible in only a few panels. Like you only see parts of it in the comic book.
02:56:42
Speaker
And Lindelof showed the entire thing. Like he showed more than we even saw in the comic book. He took it a step further than even that. Yeah. I mean, cause it's like, I don't know. It's like, like it's hanging over Bill. I don't know how many builders are, like you said, the tentacles are inside the buildings and everything like that. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, you get, you get a real sense of, okay.
02:57:10
Speaker
You say, okay, it's no wonder people freaked out. Yeah. After this thing landed, I'm freaking out. You know, I'm freaking out. I'm sitting in my, you know, basement at home watching this and I'm freaking out. Imagine if, you know, no wonder the poor guy, you know, when, yeah, it was a horrific event. And this series gets across the point that year
02:57:35
Speaker
this truly did change the world. Between this and Dr. Manhattan, yeah, these were events that truly did change the culture of the entire planet. Right. So you've got people like the Seventh Cavalry who are devotees of Rorschach and they believe the journal of his that was published saying that
02:57:55
Speaker
vite is uh... behind everything and so they don't believe that the squid is from another dimension uh... but you know they also show that there are people who yeah they do believe it and wait is one of them because he has this extra dimensional security system which uh... is supposed to warn him about any sort of incursions coming from another dimension he has anything like there's this whole cottage industry that's been built up around you know
02:58:25
Speaker
the extra-dimensional invasion. Yeah, because the mask he wears is like of some kind of metallic fiber that's supposed to prevent you from further psychic attacks. Right. You know, like another giant squid. Yeah, and we see like he sleeps with the mask on. Yeah, yeah. And we also had to call back to Rorschach because he comes home and he's wearing the mask and he lifts it up just to his nose and he's eaten from the can of beans, just like Rorschach did in the comic.
02:58:55
Speaker
As a matter of fact, we see that he's got more than one mask. He like keeps some stash dollar all around so that like he's never without a mask. And even when he is without a mask, he always wears a baseball cap and the cap has the same foil lined around the inside. Right. Yeah. That's why he did that. But you know, it's interesting in that we see that Wayne has a pretty diverse life away from being a cop. Well, all the, I think because all the cops are masked, right? So they have to have some sort of cover.
02:59:25
Speaker
To cover up for the fact that they that they that they're secretly police officers So Angela's cover is that she runs a bakery that you know is never really open Yeah, yeah weights cover is he he helps with market research and this is where we get the hints the the very strong hints that he is psychic because
02:59:48
Speaker
He's watching these people go through their Q&As during the market research, then he talks to the people afterwards. And they're saying, oh look, we loved it, we loved it, we loved it. He's like, no, they hated it. Yeah, they hated it. And one of the interesting, one of the really cool things here is the first panel he's on is for an advertising program, a marketing program to get people to come back to New York. Oh yeah, yeah.
03:00:16
Speaker
So that was something that never even occurred to me, but that, you know, New York is probably not the center of everything in America now because of what happened in the squid attack. Yeah. Well, you know, that's one thing that always bothered me about say like, Oh, okay. The Marvel universe. Cause I said to myself, why does anybody still live in New York?
03:00:38
Speaker
Because, OK, between, first of all, the first time Galactica came, everybody got the fuck out. That's it. We're leaving. We're not coming back. No, no more.
03:00:49
Speaker
We are not coming back, which is I never understood why people still stayed in Manhattan. To me, there should be nobody left in Manhattan except the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. Especially when you've got Reed Richards, Mr. Mad Scientist himself, opening up portals and shit to hostile dimensions right in the center of Midtown. I have always said this when I get into arguments with people about the X-Men, when they talk about, oh, the X-Men. And I said, no, I said the X-Men.
03:01:18
Speaker
The X-Men are no threat. I said, the X-Men have their mansion out in Westchester, a remote part of Westchester, where they're attacked by Magneto or the Sentinels. Nobody's going to get hurt except for them. Yeah. No, the Avengers put their headquarters right on Fifth Avenue.
03:01:35
Speaker
right in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. So when they get attacked by the masters of evil, you cannot help but have massive property damage and loss of life and injury. Reed Richards has his own private portal to a hostile universe. And you mean I'm supposed to take his word for it. Listen, this is a guy calling himself Mr. Fantastic now.
03:01:57
Speaker
Which shows you the size of his ego. And I keep reminding people this all the time. Remember, he gave himself that name, folks. His wife didn't say, oh, Marie, you should be Mr. Fantastic. Then we can say, OK, well, OK, well, she thinks every wife thinks her husband is fantastic. No, that's what he called himself. So he's got his own private portal to a hostile universe. And I'm just going to take his word for it. He's got it under control. Yeah, OK. See, Reed Richards is a menace.
03:02:28
Speaker
He's the real man, not the X-Men. The X-Men are minding their business. Absolutely, yeah. No, Reed Richards, and he's firing off rockets. He's got his own rocket in the middle. Who thinks this man is a reasonable human being?
03:02:47
Speaker
Now this explains why there's been so much, like you look at the Tulsa in this series, right? It's a very vibrant community. It's very modernized. It's got a lot of diversity in it too, which you wouldn't expect for Tulsa.
03:03:04
Speaker
And so they mentioned that red foundations, they allowed people like, you know, for the people who were descendants of the Tulsa race riots, they had, they had a campaign to try and bring people back to Tulsa be after, after red foundations. And then they had, um, and now you combine that with the 11 two and it makes sense why there's so much diversity because people are leaving New York and they're moving to the middle of the country. Yeah. Well, Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma, it's the new New York. Yeah.
03:03:35
Speaker
And they, that's why I spoke diverse. Cause like you said, everybody's moving out of New York and they went, you know, whenever, and like you said, they got this program that they're trying to get people to go back to New York and wait and tell them, listen, ain't nobody moving. I don't care what you do. Nobody's moving back to New York. One thing that jumped out to me in that video is the, the couple who said we went to Central Park and it was so quiet and so peaceful. And there was nobody else around. And you're like, holy shit. They're talking about Central Park being empty. Yeah. Yeah.
03:04:04
Speaker
And it's weird that they're trying to build New York as this like vacation destination, right? This place that you go to to get away from it all. And I thought that was really interesting. And then they got the guy who's eaten the Italian food and he's eaten calamari. Which Wade points out to them. He said, you know what? You might wanna lose the calamari. Yeah, because you're just reminding people of what happened there.
03:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, you know, if you want, what he should have been eating was like, I don't know, pizza. But for anything would have been better than calamari. Calamari is not a food that you associate with New York anyway. You know, hot dogs, pizza, you know, something like that. No, not calamari. He said, you know, you might want to lose a calamari. Yeah. So then, especially because they say, you know, I came back for the Italian food. So just like, just show them eating the pizza then.
03:05:00
Speaker
Yeah. And also, we see that Wade runs a PDSD group. Right. I was going to mention that next. Yeah. Oh, well, go ahead. Take it away. Something that jumped out to me in this scene is the young black guy who talks about how he wasn't alive in 11.2, but his mom was. And his mom experienced it. And now he feels like he's experienced it too. So there's this.
03:05:30
Speaker
This is like the first time that this idea is really verbally stated, but one of the themes that runs throughout this whole series is this idea of inherited trauma.
03:05:45
Speaker
So you've got the Tulsa race riots and then reparations trying to make good on that and the treatment of black people in America. And then also it comes really much in the forefront of the next episode when Angela experiences Will's memories. But this whole idea of inherited trauma, it's an idea that keeps running in the background throughout every episode. And how you have parents
03:06:13
Speaker
are infecting their children, if you will, with their trauma. Right. Something that their kids had nothing to do with, but the parents are inflicting their trauma on their children. And their children, in turn, have to carry a burden that they don't need to carry, but it's a burden that they have. I use the word infected because that's what I see it as. I see it as an infection. You're infecting
03:06:41
Speaker
you know, the next generation, you know what, there's an old saying that I like that they use, you know, that the old timers when I was growing up that they used to say, you say, you know, carry your own water. That means, you know what, you carry your own burden. Don't pass it on to anybody else. But that's a, but you hit the nail on the head that that's one of the major themes of this series is that, yeah, it's all of these traumas that are being passed on to the next generation.
03:07:08
Speaker
for no reason, you know, that there are burdening, you know, this next generation. That's got nothing to do with what happened.
03:07:16
Speaker
It's also- But they've got to deal with it. It's also kind of a subtle commentary on the fans of Watchmen itself, right? Because whenever Alan Moore is asked about Watchmen, he says that his biggest disappointment is that nobody has done anything better than Watchmen. And that his whole thing about doing Watchmen was, I didn't expect that to be the be all end all. I expected people to look at what I had done and to do something better.
03:07:45
Speaker
And so, and this also ties into the thing when we get to the next episode with the nostalgia pills is people constantly stuck in the past, right? People constantly going back to revisit the past. And that idea, I think that idea of inherited trauma kind of ties into that too, because you have people now who, they weren't even alive when Watchmen came out. And yet they're still holding it in as like the be all end all of comic books.
03:08:14
Speaker
Yeah. What does that say for the comic book genre as a whole, that we are still looking at watchmen and the dark knight returns as, okay, well that was it. You know, that was it. That was Citizen Kane and nothing else that came after that was worth anything.
03:08:36
Speaker
Which is basically what fans will tell you. They will say, Oh, no. Well, you know, what watching was it? That was it. No, you know, everything after watching was crap or everything after dark night and dark night has, has, you know, that's been the standard by everybody has measured Batman by since then. Dark night was when Batman stopped being a detective and started being a guy that simply beat the piss out of his opponents. Right. You know, which I kind of,
03:09:01
Speaker
You know, I don't know. I miss the detective Batman, because that's the one I grew up with, the guy that actually saw off crimes, that just didn't get in a Batmobile, that had, you know, big honking Gatling guns and, you know, blew shit up. You remember when Frank Miller and Jim Lee did the All-Star Batman and Robin book a few years back? Oh yeah. And it was...
03:09:26
Speaker
I was thinking about it recently because it was on sale on Comixology, and I missed the sale. I didn't buy it then, but I was thinking about it. Some people were saying that it was Frank Miller being satirical of his own Batman, which now that I'm thinking back on it, because Frank Miller has kind of lost his mind in the past 10 years.
03:09:50
Speaker
Part of me wants to think that it's satirical, but part of me is not sure if he's actually being satirical or if he's actually being serious with it. If it's satire, it's brilliant, but if it's not satire, it's just more proof of how nuts he's gone.
03:10:04
Speaker
Well, Frank Miller has said, I've seen, you know, I read interviews where he said that he really didn't want to do it. He said, but they offered him so much money that it would have been crazy for him not to do it. So he said that he claims he deliberately wrote a comic that was going to be so batshit insane that DC wouldn't want to publish it.
03:10:22
Speaker
That's what he says. Now, you know, whether it's true or not, I cannot count to the veracity. All I know is that, you know what, I'm going to go with him on this one. I think that, yeah, he deliberately said, you know something, I'm just going to write some crazy ass, a bunch of whole crazy ass shit. And as far as I know, they never did finish the series, did they? I think, no, I think it stopped at like issue nine. And I think Jim Lee has said that, you know, he does want to get back to it eventually, but now he's like running DC Comics. So who knows?
03:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, but it was, yeah, but that's what, and he said, yeah, he said, they just kept offering me so much money that after a while, it gets to the point where you would be crazy to turn down the money. So he's like, okay, I'll, but yeah, I think I read like the first three or four issues and I say, I don't know what kind of shit he's on, but I want some. I don't care, I want some.
03:11:20
Speaker
Now, one of the people in the meeting here is this woman that he meets and he starts talking to, whose name escapes me at the moment. But they go to this bar afterwards and they're talking.
03:11:35
Speaker
This is one of the cool things about this episode is and how it shows you how the world has changed because she's talking about This movie called pale horse that Steven Spielberg directed and it's all about 11 too and she talks about and she says, you know It's all in black and white and there's this little girl walking through the destruction of New York looking for her mother and she's wearing this red jacket and because it's all black and white the red really pops and
03:11:59
Speaker
That was so cool. That was so cool, and I'm just like, oh my god, you know what? Instead of making Schindler's List, Spielberg made a movie about 11-2. About 11- yeah, yeah. And if you look in the PDP files, they mention all these other movies, and we could talk about this a little bit more when we get to the Angela episode, and her background and everything.
03:12:23
Speaker
Like she gets her name from this black exploitation movie called Sister Night. And the pedophilia files, they talk about how a lot of black people after Vietnam became a state, they left America and they moved to Vietnam, they left mainland American, continental US and moved to Vietnam for work because they were trying to get as far away from the racism of the Nixon administration as possible.
03:12:52
Speaker
And then in Vietnam, you had a lot of these to cater to all these new residents. There were a lot of films coming out in Vietnam that were like these, instead of the black exploitation movement that we had in America, you had this kind of like black hero movement in Vietnam, where all these black exploitation movies came out with black characters wearing masks.
03:13:15
Speaker
And it's just a brilliant revision of history and how it, and a brilliant ultimate take on history. And they talk about one of the movies they mentioned as being part of this, you know, wave of black hero cinema is Batman. So, you know, we talked about how before Bruce Wayne can't be black, but you could have enough. So we got a black Batman in this universe apparently somewhere.
03:13:43
Speaker
Yes, somewhere, yeah, there's a black Batman. He just isn't Bruce Wayne, but you know, yeah, we got a Batman. Which I thought was really cool. I'm just like, if you guys seriously go to the PDF files, like some of the early ones are a little bit slow, but some of the later ones, they've got some really interesting stuff in there. Well, if you, okay, going back to the original movie,
03:14:02
Speaker
for a minute. If you remember during the opening credits where we have Bob Dylan singing the times they are changing, we do see briefly the original Night Owl apparently is rescuing Bruce Wayne and his parents. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So apparently there's a Bruce Wayne in the watching universe.
03:14:28
Speaker
He just never became Batman. He just never grew up to become Batman because of course his parents weren't killed. Right. Yeah. One thing I'd just like to point out before we move on. Tim Blake Nelson. You know why I love Tim Blake Nelson? Because he is supremely expert at playing these like
03:14:49
Speaker
redneck crackers that because of the way they dress and the way they talk, you tend to underestimate them. But there is a very sharp intelligence at work in these characters.
03:15:01
Speaker
He just uses the way he talks and the way he dress as like a mask in itself to hide how smart he actually is. Because we see a lot of times in this series that he's probably the smart... To me, I would go so far to say he's probably the smartest character in this show besides Madame True. Yeah.
03:15:23
Speaker
Because he's very sharp, even besides the psychic powers that he has. He picks up on a lot of shit that people don't, and he makes connections very quickly. Yeah. And also, there's one more thing I want to mention about this, is when he goes to the seventh cavalry. And this is why I said that these nine episodes split perfectly into a trilogy. This whole thing is the second act of this long nine-hour movie.
03:15:52
Speaker
Yeah. And we really get to see how, because the first three episodes were introduced to the characters, we get to know all the players. These three episodes, we start advancing the plot forward. And we see them, they're experimenting with a teleportation device. And Senator Keen shows up, and he tells him, look, I want to show you something. And he shows him this video.
03:16:17
Speaker
Oh yeah, the video. Oh lord. It's Adrian Veidt leaving a message to future president Ronald Reagan. From 1985, he's leaving a message for Reagan's inauguration in 1993. Or whatever it was. Because he purposely plays events so that Reagan will eventually become president.
03:16:42
Speaker
Again, pointing out again, we go back to the thing right. Reminding us that at one time, this guy was the smartest man in the world. And that wasn't just him blowing his own home. He actually was the smartest man in the world. He could accurately predict who would be president and leave a film for him explaining, OK, this is how shit's going to go. And this is what's going to happen. And of course, for Wade,
03:17:11
Speaker
He's sitting there and this poor guy's world is completely turned upside down. I mean literally everything that he knew Just just got drop kicked out the window. Yeah Yeah, and and then he goes home and you know and first Keen shows him this because he says, you know, I want you to help us Yeah, I want you to help us. You're right. He wants to recruit him basically and
03:17:37
Speaker
And then he leaves and he goes back home and he, you see, he's gotten the new arrival of the new system, new security system. He takes it out to the dumpster and he throws it out, but then he goes back and he gets it. Yeah. Yeah. Because listen, some of us cannot let go of beliefs that we've had for so long. And he's lived with this notion, you know, for so long in a way that other people
03:18:07
Speaker
have it because he was there. Yeah. And on some level, he still wants to believe, no, that this is, you know, maybe it was a, so that's how I interpreted it. That, you know, he went back and got it because he thought about it and he said, well, how do I know that that tape was actually real? How do I know that they didn't make it up? You know, which, uh, which is, you know, because we can always rationalize
03:18:33
Speaker
to ourselves and justify our own actions to ourselves in some kind of way. And that's why I think he went back and he got the package because maybe he was having second thoughts about the second Calvary, which as we see at the end of the episode, he was justified in having those second thoughts about the seventh Calvary. Something you mentioned also just jumped out at me because remember we talked about in the last episode how the mask
03:19:00
Speaker
reflects your yourself right whereas Ruchak it it tells you what you're you it reflects your beliefs whereas the mask reflects who you are and when you said that Tim Blake Nelson plays these kind of characters who you underestimate the mask kind of is a is a metaphor for that I think in a way because he's he's hiding his true self and people are only seeing what they think he looks like and they're basing every their whole impression of him based on that hmm
03:19:29
Speaker
Good point. Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, because see, again, in rewatching this, that stood out to me that, you know, and the relationship between him and Angela is not antagonistic. You know, I mean, you know, they're not exactly friends, but they're not exactly enemies either. You know, when he says that, you know, I don't have any friends. Right. You know, you can see that they respect each other and, you know,
03:19:59
Speaker
And it says something because he's the only one that she trusts to go to him for help because of course, her best friend, the Don Johnson, chief, he's gone. So it says something that he's the one that she goes to. This is the guy that she feels that she, out of all the cops that's in there, this is the guy she feels that she can trust. She doesn't go to pirate Jenny or to the Russian guy because frankly, they're idiots.
03:20:30
Speaker
You know, but yeah, she you know, she goes to him Yeah, and then she and he ends up betraying her right because lori told him that there's a bug in your cactus and then At the end when he's telling Angela about the pills Right, and she says it was my grandfather like lori hears that whole conversation and she and then she so
03:20:55
Speaker
And Angela realizes in that moment that Glasses betrayed her. And then so she takes the pills and she swallows all of them. Dumps the whole bottle down her throat. Right. Which is the perfect way to transition to the last episode we're going to be talking about. And one of the best episodes, if not the best episode of this entire series. And that's episode six, This Extraordinary Being.
03:21:20
Speaker
Okay. First of all, let me say, as I said, you know, in our last episode is that oftentimes, you know, if you read comics long enough, you see that they will put on special issue. This is the issue that changes everything. This is tried to, oh, nothing will be the same after this. You know, you see that all the time. If
03:21:43
Speaker
If this episode of Watchmen was a comic book, that would be on the cover. However, unlike most comic books, where it's bullshit, it's actually true in this one. In this one, not only does it change this series, it changes the original Watchmen comic book too. It's impossible to go back and reread.
03:22:07
Speaker
the original comic book and not think of this episode. Yeah. And because like we said before, there is no Alan Moore had never had any intention of hooded justice being a black guy. Right. It works so well in this. Excuse me. Bless you. It works so well in this. Thank you. And because there's this whole idea of him having to wear a mask in order to be accepted by society.
03:22:37
Speaker
And that works in two different levels. One, as a black man. But two, it also works because we find out that he's bisexual in this, because he's having an affair with Captain Metropolis. With Captain Metropolis, yeah.
03:22:53
Speaker
who I believe in the original, it was hinted that he was gay. I believe that it was. And it was also hinted that, so Hollis Mason in his book, he mentions that this German strongman was probably, who was found dead, is who he suspects is being hooded justice.
03:23:11
Speaker
And in one of the early panels, when Laurie and Dan are at a restaurant, you see this old couple. They're two old men. One of them is drawn to look like Captain Metropolis. The other one looks a lot like that German wrestler guy. So the implication left there is that he didn't actually die. He survived and him and Captain Metropolis ended up getting married. Right, okay. Okay, yeah.
03:23:40
Speaker
Because the whole thing with Hooded Justice being gay came about because supposedly they had speculated that him and Silk Spectre was in a relationship because she was always hanging on to him. And it should be noted that it's very interesting in the flashback scenes that we have with the Minutemen, because we do see Captain Metropolis, he recruits Hooded Justice to join his team.
03:24:07
Speaker
when we have those flashbacks, because this story is about hooded justice, and you know, we see him clearly, and we see Captain Metropolis clearly, but we don't see the rest of the Minutemen, they're kind of blurry. They're in the background, and we can't really see, we see the newspapermen clearly, because it's the whole press conference. We see everybody else, we don't see, you know, like the comedian, and silhouette, and silk specter, they're in the background, but they're very like,
03:24:36
Speaker
foggy and blurry and we can't quite make them out, which I think is quite appropriate because, you know, Watchmen was their story. This is not their story anymore. Right.
03:24:48
Speaker
So Will, so this, I mean, the cinematography in this episode is amazing. The way they cut back and forth, the way they transition, it's masterfully done. And it's so much, it's dream logic is taking full effect here. And I think this is one of the best depictions of a dream that I've ever seen. Because like there's that scene where the,
03:25:13
Speaker
The racist white cops, right? They're driving alongside Will, and they're inviting him out for a beer, and then Will refuses, and they say, okay, well, next time. And they keep on driving, and they're dragging a black man behind it. And it's just like, you know that didn't actually happen in real life, but it's just that dream imagery is all over the place in this episode, and it's done amazingly well. Yeah, it's dream logic. Yeah. It's dream logic.
03:25:37
Speaker
And they really do a great job of making it feel like, cause most times when they depict a dream, it still feels too much like reality in movies and TV shows. But this makes it feel like a dream. And the whole dream like feeling is reinforced because sometimes we see Will and then sometimes we see Angela as Will. Yeah. You know, without any warning, like, you know, like the kid, like we'll hear his voice and then the camera will swing the, and it's Angela. Yeah.
03:26:07
Speaker
or we'll hear Angela and we'll turn to him and this will. You know, so that carries on the whole, yeah, the whole thing about, and it kind of leaves you off balance as a viewer because I found myself, how can I put that? Okay. I'm watching it for the second time. And as I'm watching it, I was aware of the fact that I was leaning in closer.
03:26:29
Speaker
because I didn't want to miss anything this time around. You know, it was like, it was really drawing me in. I really got sucked more into the story this time. Maybe because I knew what was coming and I wanted to pay more attention to things I had missed the first time around. Because this is, this really is an emotionally powerful episode and carries on with the theme of people being traumatized because Will,
03:26:57
Speaker
just has one trauma in his life after another. So it's no surprise that the poor guy just finally snaps, really. There's no other way to put it because
Hooded Justice and Racial Identity
03:27:08
Speaker
he survived the Tulsa massacre.
03:27:12
Speaker
He becomes a police officer with this dream that he's gonna fight for justice like his hero Bass Reeves, whose name he has taken because he's idolized him. He's gonna wear a badge, he's gonna fight for justice. Only to find out that his badge and his status as a police officer means absolutely shit. Right. And that is made very clear when he arrests Fred, a white shopkeeper who sets fire to a Jewish deli. Now, do you know who Fred is supposed to be in real life?
03:27:42
Speaker
Had no idea. Okay. Let me see if so you remember they've got his deli truck his his meat truck and The name of the of his business is FT and Sons Okay, Fred Trump. Oh My god Yeah because You know Fred Trump got his start in the meat business and he was also He was also arrested at a KKK rally. I
03:28:13
Speaker
OK, that I knew. Yeah, that I do. I knew his father was a Klansman. I knew Trump was dead with a Klansman. Yeah, and you look at the photos of Fred Trump. He's got placed the same. His grandfather. Sorry, go ahead. You know where that money came from, right? You know where that money came from. Trump's grandfather ran a whorehouse. Oh, that doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah, his grandfather ran a whorehouse. That was the beginning of the Trump before his grandfather running a whorehouse. Yeah.
03:28:43
Speaker
Which fits, totally fits. Yeah, doesn't surprise me. Yeah, so they find out that, and Will gets, and when the other cops come in and they, this racist white cop and he tells, and he says, oh, it's okay, we'll take care of this. And he gives this hand symbol where he puts like, like the okay symbol, he puts it up against his forehead. And that's a signal for a secret society, a secret white nationalist society called Cyclops.
03:29:15
Speaker
And as we see, part of the reason why Will becomes hooded justice is because we see that he has a whole file later on of, you know, incidents that he has gotten from newspapers and various other sources because
03:29:36
Speaker
Obviously, Cyclops has infiltrated the police department to such a degree that the sergeant even tells Will, because Will said, well, what does that mean? And the guy said, that means you're going to get a hole in your head if you don't mind your business. Yeah.
03:29:51
Speaker
Because they've infiltrated the police department. Yeah, and they take Will and they beat the crap out of him. And they put a hood over his hat and they string him up and they try to lynch him. Then they cut him down and they tell him if he doesn't back off, next time it's gonna happen for real. And this is when Will, so he's walking down the street, he's walking through the alley, he sees this couple getting assaulted.
03:30:15
Speaker
And he still has the noose around his neck and he puts the hood back on and he beats the crap out of these, out of these criminals and saves the people. And when he goes home, his wife urges him to, you know, take on to keep doing this. But once again, going back to what we were saying earlier about how women
03:30:41
Speaker
drive this series, because it's his wife that encourages him to put on a costume and go out and fight crime. Yeah. And also, there's an interesting contrast between Will and Angela, right? In that Will wipes his eyes with white face paint. Angela wipes her eyes with black face paint.
03:31:09
Speaker
Yeah. That was a contrast that jumped out to me this second watch. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, they make the contrast really clear because they have a shot of him where, yeah. And you say, OK, I see what they did there. Yeah.
03:31:30
Speaker
we're covering up because because of course since he has to pretend to be a white man he has to paint that part of his face so that you know people will only see you know the whites and they would just assume okay well you know this is a white guy yeah yeah so that's
03:31:47
Speaker
And it also kind of ties back to what Lori was saying in the last episode or the two episodes before where she was talking about heroes using the masks to cover up their own trauma. Yeah. And like I said, this guy has been traumatized so much that becoming hooded, becoming hooded justice, as I see is isn't so much
03:32:16
Speaker
An act of him wanting to be a hero as an act of desperation, that he can see no other way, you know, to get what he wants and to feel like a man.
03:32:28
Speaker
Excuse me, but to do this. Whereas we are presented with Captain Metropolis, who is quite plainly is a narcissist. And he's doing this because he thinks, oh, it would be fun to be a costume adventurer, as he puts it when he comes visiting Will, you know, to recruit him. And Will just looks at him like he's like the dumbest piece of dog shit. It's a costume adventurer. What are you talking about? You know, you know, the contrast between the two men is presented
03:32:59
Speaker
very well, I think, because this is a holy mission for Will. This isn't a joke to him. He realizes that this is something that will affect not only him. He could not only die doing this, but his wife and his child could die. Whereas Captain Metropolis, what's his name? Nelson? Nelson Gardner.
03:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, Nelson Garner. You know, this is a lark for him. Yeah. You know, he's OK. He is your typical rich, spoiled guy that Bruce Wayne pretends to be. Mm hmm.
03:33:34
Speaker
You know how Bruce Wayne pretends to be this spoiled, you know, playboy so nobody will suspect that he's actually Batman? Well, that's what this guy is. Absolutely. He's a rich, spoiled ass. He's a rich, spoiled asshole. Yeah. Yeah. And this and you know what? I kind of got the sense. I'm not sure if you picked up on this, too. But when they're at the press conference with the other Minutemen and Will tries to talk about investigating Cyclops.
03:34:00
Speaker
And then Nelson cuts him off and says, no, we're going to investigate this, you know, this supervillain named Moloch. Did you kind of get the sense that the whole thing was like a PR stunt, that the supervillains like Moloch and all that, they were all like a part of a PR stunt? Well, you know what? Now that you done said it, yeah, it could have been that, you know,
03:34:30
Speaker
The guy could have paid them off just saying, you know, because Moloch, as we found out, actually from, you know, the original movie actually wasn't, you know, like this supervillain that he was presenting. Matter of fact, most of the supervillains that these guys fought.
03:34:46
Speaker
They weren't like what we were, okay, they were no red skull. They weren't the red skull. Matter of fact, there's one guy that they mentioned in the original movie. They said that his whole thing was that he just liked to be beat up. Yeah, yeah, Captain Carnage. Right, so he would do shit just so, you know, he would get, you know, they would beat up on him.
03:35:10
Speaker
You know, it was pretty pathetic once you think about it. So yeah, cause when he's talking about Moloch and then after that, that's when he pulls aside, um, the drapery he's got over this billboard that's advertising like some bank or something like that. Right. Yeah. A PR stunt. Yeah. That's it's a, you know what? It's an interesting interpretation. And again, there is nothing that we haven't seen in the comic book.
03:35:40
Speaker
that violates what we're being presented with now, which is what I think is one of the most brilliant things about this episode, because, OK, let's say you watch it and you don't want to agree with that. You say, well, you know what? I think that's full of shit. I'm just going to believe that he was this German guy. You can do that. Yeah, you can do that. But if you want to go with this interpretation of it, you can go with it because there is nothing present.
03:36:07
Speaker
Okay. Why couldn't who did justice have been a black man? Because they said in the comic book, nobody ever found out who this guy really was. They just speculated he was this German bodybuilder. Exactly. Nobody actually knew who he was. So yeah, it's open to interpret. It's open to whatever interpretation you want. You know what I call it? I call it spiderman thing. Spiderman. Spiderman is
03:36:32
Speaker
such a beloved New York hero because he's got that full costume with the full mask. So he could be anybody under there. So if you're an Asian kid, you could think that Spider-Man is Asian. If you're a Mexican kid, you could think Spider-Man is... And you wouldn't be wrong because you don't know what he looks like. Right.
03:36:53
Speaker
So it's the same thing with Hood and Justice. You can imagine, yeah, he could have been anybody under there because we never found out who he actually was. He just came, he beat up some people, he operated superior for a while, and then he just disappeared. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we know that, and Lori suspects in the comic that he may have been her biological father, but of course we find out by the end of the comic that it was Eddie Blake who was.
03:37:20
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because, uh, because as I said earlier, uh, they did have speculation. They was wondering what something going on between hoodie does. And in the original comic book, um, that, uh, the Minutemen, you know, they get together, uh, the original still expected. She's hanging on hoodie justices aren't. Well, in the supplemental material for the TV, the PDP stuff, they mentioned that there was kind of, um,
03:37:49
Speaker
It was kind of an act for Silk Spectre to pretend that her and Hooded Justice were dating. Oh, okay. So that's also why I kind of think that maybe there was this really heavily PR aspect to it, where they were kind of like almost like a pre-TV reality show. Mm.
03:38:14
Speaker
You know, so there are probably like gossip columns and stuff about who Silk Specter is dating and all that kind of crap. Yeah.
03:38:21
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it was once. Well, because there's this. Sorry, I just want to get this thing first, is that there's this part where when they're at that press conference and, you know, what Will's talking about and what Will has seen, it's so disconnected from what Captain Metropolis says about Moloch that it almost feels like it it's too incongruous. Right. The two parts just don't really fit together. These two different worlds. So
03:38:49
Speaker
That's why I think there was this PR aspect and that it was all kind of like a farce that Will wasn't really in on. Well, yeah. Well, as we see in both the original comic book and in the movie that
03:39:06
Speaker
Every one of these characters, they got into it for their own reason. The original Silk Spectre, she just wanted to be famous. She wanted her picture taken, and she wanted to get movie deals, and all kinds of licensing deals, and she wanted to get rich.
03:39:24
Speaker
character called Dollar Bill, who actually was a superhero sponsored by a bank. Right. You know, they want their own personal superhero. And basically he just went around to bank openings and, you know, he encouraged people to buy war bonds or whatever, or to open up, you know, um, I don't know, IRAs or, you know, buy life insurance. And I, and he gets killed because he gets his, his case caught in the revolving door during a bank robbery.
03:39:54
Speaker
Poor, poor dope. No case. Yeah. Yeah. No case. So, but then we had, um, you have characters like the original night owl who, who, who was driven by a honest sense of just, and who actually wanted to fight crime and do some good.
03:40:15
Speaker
But we had all of these other characters that got into the costume thing. Some of them who just thought it would be fun, no doubt the comedian got into it because, well, he was a psychopath and this was a way for him to beat up people and get out his violent.
03:40:32
Speaker
tendencies, you know, as long as he was beating up the right people, nobody said anything.
Societal Issues and Code-Switching
03:40:37
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So, yeah. So everybody got into this thing for diverse reasons. So your interpretation of the whole Minutemen thing is just as valid as far as I'm concerned. Yeah.
03:40:49
Speaker
which again, going back to, that's one of the brilliant things about this whole episode and the whole concept of hooded justice being a black man, because there is nothing in it that violates what we already know. It's just another interpretation. Absolutely, yeah. And that was one of the things that I really liked about this episode is how well it works this new interpretation in with everything that we've seen of hooded justice in the comics before this.
03:41:21
Speaker
And so then also, so Will finds out that, this episode passes over several years, and then there's a riot at a movie theater. And Will finds out that Cyclops is using some sort of like hypnotic control.
03:41:41
Speaker
on black people using special film projectors and telling them to turn on each other, basically, and to kill each other. Yeah, because he talks to a woman in the movie theater, which, again, we see, again, how Will is disrespected by his fellow officers because one of them says, well, it's about time you showed up. We need somebody that speaks their language.
03:42:08
Speaker
Yeah. And he goes into the movie theater and one of the traumatized women that, one of the few people that are still alive, you know, she tells them, well, when the movie started, she said, you know, the light started flickering, you know, like a strobe light.
03:42:26
Speaker
you know, sort of effect. And she said, and I just heard voices telling me to hurt and kill people. Yeah. So Cyclops is, you know, this is Cyclops is ultimate master plan that, you know, they're going to use, uh, this special kind of strobe effect to insight, insight riots in black neighborhoods and had them kill each other. You know, so he wants, so, so will of course goes to, uh, he goes to captain metropolis and he says, listen,
03:42:54
Speaker
this is what's happening. I need your help. I need, you know, the men, men to come. Captain Metropolis isn't interested in nothing, but you know, balling quite frankly, he just, you know, he dismisses him in such a way it made me pissed off. Yeah.
03:43:09
Speaker
You know, as a black man, it pissed me off the way that he just dismissed her. Well, you know, this also, because Will's explaining that they're using mind control and Nelson reacts as if it's the craziest thing he's ever heard in the world.
03:43:26
Speaker
Which is why I think the whole thing with Moloch and the Minute was why I get this PR stuff feeling. Because, wait a minute, you guys fight evil magicians, but you think hypnotism is out of the realm of possibility? Yeah. Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, so those little types of cues, they kind of really jumped out at me.
03:43:49
Speaker
And let me tell you something, that scene where he asked him, there isn't a black person that's listening to this that doesn't understand that, that hasn't had a white person that they've gone to and asked them for a favor or a system or something and been dismissed like that. Trust me, it's happened to me. So I knew exactly how that guy felt, because I'm telling you, it happened. So that was another powerful moment, in a lot of powerful moments.
03:44:19
Speaker
Now, you know, because that's the one moment when that's the one moment where you say, OK, we'll see. Now, I know if I didn't know I couldn't trust white people before. I know I really do. I can't because I say because he's saying, OK, I trusted this guy. I gave this guy my body. Basically, like, speaking of that, do you like the episode title I chose for the for the last one? What for the first three episodes we did? White people ruin everything.
03:44:49
Speaker
Oh man. I think I cracked up for about, I sat here for about like 10 minutes and I laughed up. I said, Oh man, that cat, he's, he's doing it. I said, you know what? If there was ever a title that would probably sum up the totality of
03:45:13
Speaker
you know, this whole series, that would be it. Why, basically, white people ruin, because they do. Why do you basically ruin everything in this movie? You know? Oh, man. I get what you're saying about Will feeling dismissed. And I felt a connection to that scene as well, because, so.
03:45:35
Speaker
Like I'm not going to say it's the same experience, but being a white guy in Japan, I'm part of a minority now. So I'm noticing a lot of things. And I've been in those situations where like at work I'd suggest, you know, why don't we do this? And you know, my opinion was pretty much just dismissed out of hand. So I really understand that, like that spoke to me coming from that perspective as well. And if I could tie this into a real world thing that we're all going through now,
03:46:05
Speaker
You know, you read a lot about there's a lot of people, white people that are asking the government for help. They're asking their elected officials for help. They're begging for help. They're looking for leadership. They're looking for guys, everything like that. And they're not getting it. And you know what? Quite frankly, a lot of white people are feeling what black people have been feeling for hundreds of years now. That's a good point. Yeah.
03:46:32
Speaker
It's the same shit we've been going through. It's just that now, OK. I want to say to white people, don't take this the wrong way, people. But yeah, you're feeling now what we've been going through. And know what? I think that there's going to be a paradigm shift when we come out on the other side. There's going to be a new consciousness. I think there has to be. Yeah, there has to be. You know what? We can't go back to the same thing that we were doing.
03:47:01
Speaker
If this coronavirus thing has not shown us anything else, it's just how awfully broken this system we live in really is. We've been living in a dream and we have got to wake up because if we don't wake up, we literally have got people dying in the streets. Absolutely. That's how bad it's getting. I honestly do not see how we can just go back to the way things were.
03:47:28
Speaker
You know, once we get past this, and yeah, we're going to get past, we get past everything. We're going to get past this, but we have to learn from this. And for God's sake, we have to be better people.
03:47:38
Speaker
Sweet Jesus' sake, folks. We gotta be better people. Yeah. Bottom line. And, you know, I mean, well, it's crazy. They've got their hiring prisoners paying them like six bucks an hour or whatever to dig mass graves. Yeah. I mean, this shit is insane. Like, I heard that on the news. I'm like, wait, wait, wait. Did they just say mass graves? Did I just hear that right? I mean, what are we going to wait for? Are we going to wait until we're bulldozing dead bodies in the mass graves?
03:48:05
Speaker
And there's still the crazy thing, though, is there are still people who refuse to believe that it's happening? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you get you. Trust me, I there on the news all the time. There are people who still believe that this is a whole. Oh, yeah. Well, this is not. Well, you know what? A lot of people, that's the only way that they can protect themselves.
03:48:25
Speaker
you know, from what's happening, I mean, you know, from what's going on, because we've lived with the illusion for so long that this is America and nothing can touch us. You know, now 9-11 taught us that that wasn't, you know, the case. I guess maybe we needed, I guess we needed another wake up call because we had slid back into that complacency. Well, we had, we had several wake up calls. Like this is why I'm like, I get your, this is why I'm saying it's,
03:48:53
Speaker
I don't know, I believe that there should be a paradigm shift after this, but after 9-11 and seeing how things didn't really change, some ways they got worse, and then after the financial crisis, they bail out the rich people and they tell the poor people to go fuck themselves. So America is so,
03:49:21
Speaker
resistant, it's like that old Winston Churchill quote. Like, I don't know if apparently there's some debate over whether or not Churchill actually said this, but it's been popularly attributed to him. And it's that you can always count on America to do the right thing after they've exhausted every other possible option. And it's true whether he said it or not. Yeah, it basically is true. I mean, they tell, okay, the regular people,
03:49:48
Speaker
such as us, the Hoyt Poloy, the Joe and Jane Punch Clock. They tell us, oh, well, you need to have at least six months rent and whatever in the bank as a backup in case of an emergency. Okay, well, why don't the airline companies have a backup?
03:50:09
Speaker
when there's an emergency. Why is it that the first week that the coronavirus hit, they were the first one in line with their handout saying, oh, well, we need a bailout. And you know what? Did you hear what the Boeing CEO said?
03:50:24
Speaker
Because there were talks about attaching strings to the bailout money, saying like, okay, well, if you do this, then you also have to do this. Or even talk about possibly nationalizing parts of the industry. And the Boeing CEO said, well, if that's the case, then we don't want the money, we have other options. Well, if you've got other options, why aren't you using those other damn options? Yeah, why aren't you using those options?
03:50:49
Speaker
Why are you here back again with your hat in your hand saying, oh, you need a bailer? And then they had the woman that was the president of the union for the flight attendants. And she was on the news programs that she was saying, listen, if you're going to give the money, make sure you give the money to the people actually do it. She said, don't give it to the executive. She said, because they're not going to do the right thing with it. Right. She said, they didn't do the right thing with it when you gave it to them the last time.
03:51:14
Speaker
She said, why are you going to give them more money? And she said, you know they're not going to do the right thing with it. She said, they're going to pay themselves first. They're not going to give it to us. I said, what they should do is nationalize the airlines, completely nationalize them, put the workers on the boards, and then fire all the damn CEOs and do not give them any severance package or golden parachute or any of that shit.
03:51:39
Speaker
No, it's ridiculous. I mean, that's what they should do because, you know, this whole idea in corporate of America of failing upward to success is, is gotten ridiculous. And you know what? This is where I'm going. Okay. I'm going to say something. This is probably going to be the last episode. You know what we here, the citizens of the United States have nobody to blame.
03:52:08
Speaker
for the state that we're in, except myself, because you know something? We should have been rioting in the streets. Oh, yeah. Long ago, going to Washington and throwing that and saying, know what? This bullshit has got to stop. Yeah, I'm saying we should have been rioting in the streets. What were they doing over there? What was it? China, they was rioting for like six months. Yeah, Hong Kong.
03:52:31
Speaker
yeah Hong Kong they were riding that's what we should have been doing here but you know what we got our HBO we have our Netflix we have a Hulu we have our phones you know we have a Facebook you know so we're happy you know the most the most disgusting thing for me was when um
03:52:52
Speaker
So in 2008, after the financial crisis, I think, well, I think it was like probably 2010 is when you had the Occupy Wall Street movement, right? People rebelling against the fact that the 1% had gotten this massive unprecedented bailout while everyone else got nothing.
03:53:11
Speaker
the guy who sends cops into Central Park and all these other places to beat up these people who are protesting income inequality, then becomes the guy that the Democrats are thinking about making president. You know, you have to laugh. You do. I laugh. You know what? If I didn't laugh, I'd be running through the streets with a machine gun.
03:53:41
Speaker
I'd be throwing Molotov cocktails. You know what? I would put on a mask. Actually, Dominic Purcell made a low-budget movie about that called Assault on Wall Street. Really? Yeah, with him gunning down Wall Street types. I never saw it, but all I saw was it's like one of those low-budget action movie type things. I was watching a low-budget movie last night with my wife called Brown Paper Bag, which is about a black private eye.
03:54:09
Speaker
in Hollywood during the 1940s. And they have one character that's, you know, and he's talking to this black private eye. And he said something that was very telling. He said, you know, there are three seats of power in this country. He said there's Wall Street, which controls the money. He said there's the White House that controls the military. And then there's Hollywood that controls the images.
03:54:32
Speaker
Good point and I said holy shit. I never thought I I said wow and You know, I had to really stop and digest that cuz I never heard it put like that before but what I thought about it I said, yeah, you know, he's 100% right. Yeah
03:54:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's, that's, what was the name of the movie again? Brown Paper Bag? Brown Paper Bag, it's on Amazon Prime. Okay, I'll see if I can find it. Overlook the low budget, and I think, I read a review, it's up on the Ferguson Theater. If you, if you, the rest of you guys are listening, you want to read the review before you check it out. Yeah, but it was that one line that that guy said, and you know, like I said, I said, wow, I said, you know what, that's some deep shit, you know.
03:55:19
Speaker
I had never thought of it that way before, but, yeah, he said, yeah, that Wall Street controls the money. He said, those are the real three seats of power in this country, Wall Street, the White House and Hollywood.
03:55:30
Speaker
And so, taking it back to this movie, I also wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the guy who plays Young Will, Jovan Adepo. And I've only known him in, I've only seen him in one other thing. He was in When They See Us, Eva DuVernay's series about the Central Park Five.
03:55:50
Speaker
Oh, okay. And apparently he was also in Jack Ryan too, the TV show. And he was also in the Leftovers, which was also another Damon Lindelof series. But this is the first thing that I really noticed him in. And man, he's great in this role. He did a wonderful job of showing that,
03:56:15
Speaker
the way he's walking back and forth between these different lives. And this is something else that kind of stuck out to me is there's this this idea of code switching, right? When people
03:56:30
Speaker
In some ways they become a different person when they're around different types of people. So Will's one person when he's at the police station. He's another person when he's at home with his wife. He's another person when he's with the Minutemen. And he's yet another person when he's with, alone with Nelson. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's something that as a black person, you learn how to do, you know,
03:56:59
Speaker
almost as a survival method. When you go around white people, yeah, you act and you talk in a different way than you do. I mean, I would go to work during the day, yeah, and I would act one different way. But then when I got back to where I lived and I got around my buddies and everything like that, yeah, I spoke and acted a completely different way. And yeah, even the way that I'm talking on here now, I don't talk this way.
03:57:29
Speaker
I have a lot more profane. That's my way. I don't talk this way. No, but yeah, but yeah, but it's, you learn how to be, this is why I think that the notion of a black man being a superhero isn't so far fetched because yeah, in a way you have to take on different personas depending on whatever situation you're in. And usually you got to do it in the blink of eye. Sometimes you may, yeah, you got to switch up, you know, your persona.
03:57:58
Speaker
Yeah, did you ever see the movie the hate you give? No, okay, so I had to watch it recently because um, so I teach a class where i'm teaching english through um, uh through movies and Me and uh and the staff of the school like we go back and forth with like movie suggestions And so they suggested, you know, why don't you try teaching this movie? They hate you so I did and um the main actress in it whose uh name is escaping me right now, but she's um
03:58:26
Speaker
She's a black girl from the low-income neighborhood, but her parents have decided to send her to this prep school, where it costs more money to get there and everything. And she does the code switching thing, just like you were talking about. When she's around the people at the school, she talks one way, and her voiceover narration says that,
03:58:55
Speaker
The star at school is not going to say anything that will make anybody think for a second that she could be ghetto. But then when she goes home and goes back to her neighborhood, the way she speaks completely changes. I was reminded of that with what you just said. Yeah. Well, you have to do that because
03:59:14
Speaker
When I was a teenager, when I was growing up, I grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which wasn't the nicest of neighborhoods during the 70s when I grew up. And yeah, there was a certain way that I couldn't talk, because if I did, then, of course, I'd get the dreaded thing, oh, what are you trying to be, white? Right. You couldn't talk. Yeah, there was a certain way I couldn't talk. But then when I got around white people, of course, then I talked
03:59:43
Speaker
another way and then I would get the thing where they would look at me as if I were an alien and they'd say, oh, you're so articulate. Right. You know, so yeah, so. Well, I'm reminded of a story you told me when someone had emailed you and was mad at you for making him think you were white because you didn't write like how he quote unquote thought a black person should write.
04:00:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. When my first novel, Dylan and the Voice of Odin, the first edition had my picture on the back, you know.
04:00:20
Speaker
which was my wife's idea. I really didn't care one way or another, but she said, no, no, no, your author, your picture should be on the back of the book. So I put it on the back of the book. And it was the guy who had read my fan fiction for years and he'd email me, you know, oh, I love your writing. Oh, man, you do this. I know you're great and everything like that. So when the book came out, he emailed me and he said he did not appreciate me tricking him all these years. And that if I really wanted to be a successor as a writer,
04:00:47
Speaker
I should stick to issues and subjects that would be of interest to black people and stop trying to write like a white man. And see, like, when I remember when that book came out, too, and, you know, we had been, you know, we'd known each other for several years by that point. But yeah, it wasn't until I saw your picture on the back that I realized, oh, he's a black guy. Cool. And then that was it.
04:01:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But you know what? I had never like made a secret out of the fact that I was black before. It wasn't like, you know, I had represented myself as being white, you know? So I didn't see where that was coming from. But, you know, I just did what I usually do. Well, you know, it's white folks. I went on.
04:01:31
Speaker
Really? Seriously. Sometimes that's sometimes people will sometimes when I respond to certain things on Facebook and you've probably seen it where it's the scene from Chinatown where Jack Nicholson's being led away by his friend and he says, let it go. Jake is Chinatown underneath when I post the little picture, you know, it
04:01:52
Speaker
Instead, it has to capture it. Forget it, Jake. It's white folks. Yeah. I mean, sometimes that's all you got. You know what? It's white folks. And you move on. My favorite one of those is the one from Unbreakable Kimmy Shit. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Not shit. It's good to see him, actually. What white nonsense is this? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or another one. Even white people are sick of white people's nonsense.
04:02:20
Speaker
You have, I have so many white people, white friends, they say that. They say, you know what, I'm just about sick of white people. I said, what? They say, yeah, I'm about sick of white people, really. I can't. Well, you know, being in Japan for so long, when I go back to America or when I see stuff going on in America, like I get even more sick of white people nonsense now. Because I've been so disconnected that I don't even sympathize with it anymore.
04:02:45
Speaker
And yes, I know some people out there say, well, what about black nonsense? Well, yeah, there is black nonsense, but it's different from white nonsense. Yeah. Trust me, it is. And there's a white guy saying that it's different from white black nonsense. And trust me, there's black nonsense. Don't get me wrong. But trust me, nothing like white nonsense. Yeah. Maybe that should be the episode title here. Nothing but nothing like there's nothing like white nonsense.
04:03:15
Speaker
Nothing like white nonsense. Yeah, okay, we got the title. Nothing like white nonsense. Every white listener of this show is just gonna go find another podcast now. Okay, yeah, I told you, man, this is gonna be the last one. You know, we, you know, we might as well get ready for it. Yeah, this is gonna be the last one.
04:03:32
Speaker
I don't know. I got, you know what? I got away with saying some of the most outrageous shit when we would do it, you know, the other part, what I was doing better in the Dartmouth Tom DJ. I said some stuff that later on, I said, damn, you know what? I shouldn't have said, but you know what? Nobody said anything. So I said, Oh, I mean, I said some stuff. I just knew that people were going to say, how dare you?
04:03:57
Speaker
can't talk that way to me. Oh, you're horrible. No, as a matter of fact, I did get one or two emails from people telling me that they thought I was like a racist thing. You're just a racist. And I thought, oh, okay. But nothing like what I thought I was going to get. I said, okay, well, hey, which only encouraged me to keep on saying outrageous shit.
04:04:24
Speaker
All right. So is there anything else we want to mention about these three episodes? Only that taken as, oh, and know something?
Nostalgia and Political Commentary
04:04:36
Speaker
We never even got to, wait a minute. What did I want to do? We never got to the end where we see the Angela because she eventually does come out of it. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah.
04:04:53
Speaker
Yeah. And we see that she ends up, she's been taken to lady Cruz, you know, mansion or whatever. Cause apparently she knows how to, how to bring people out of this, uh, you know, because apparently it's happened before when people have taken too much of this drug, which is called nostalgia, by the way, you know, so apparently she knows how to bring people out of this. So that's how the end of the episode ends with her.
04:05:22
Speaker
You know, and we say, okay, now what's going to happen next because that's, that's something I also, I'm glad you mentioned that because that's something I wanted to mention too, was about nostalgia. So if you remember in the comic book, nostalgia was the name of this cologne that Vaidya produced.
04:05:44
Speaker
There's this memorable scene where it's like a series of panels. I can't remember exactly when it is, but the panels are intercut with the bottle of nostalgia falling and shattering on the ground. That was kind of like an indictment of the comic book industry at the time, which still fits today too.
04:06:05
Speaker
they take it a step further because Lady True has turned it into a drug that allows people to relive their memories. And the whole point of it was that this was to help people who were suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's or things like that. It was supposed to help them recover their memories. But as we find out in the, and we can talk more about this in the next episode,
04:06:31
Speaker
But what we find out is that people were abusing the drugs and people were wanting to go back and live in the past basically. Right. Yeah. And also, uh, also again, we see that that nostalgia is another clue as to lady true her heritage. Because like you said, the nostalgia was that was a brand of perfume made by, that was one of the companies owned by her father. Right.
04:06:58
Speaker
nostalgia. So if you're paying attention, then you say, okay, I get mad. And we do see the nostalgia bottle. I remember now in the previous episode with Wade, because one of the focus groups is about this perfume called mercy. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. But it's the exact same nostalgia about that the nostalgia perfume came in.
04:07:21
Speaker
And we had that, I picked up one. And we can talk more about this, because they go into more explanation. Nostalgia plays a big part in the next episode, or one of the next episodes anyway. But it's this idea of wanting to live in the past, wanting to avoid the present to go back and live in the past, which applies not only to comic book fans, but just America in general. True.
04:07:47
Speaker
Very true. Like there's this constant, yeah. Yeah. Because, uh, what was Trump's whole slogan? You know, make America great again. Right. Which was a rallying cry to go back to the past, but a certain past, not necessarily passes, you know, that's going to be beneficial for everybody. But yeah. And not even a past that really existed ever.
04:08:14
Speaker
No, no. I mean, the past that he was calling for really never existed. Yeah. It never did. It was just a, it was just a dream. It was an ideal that, you know, but as long as he could evoke that dream, that ideal. But you see the same thing in the, on the Democratic side, you see the same thing too, right? Because Joe Biden's whole campaign platform is basically let's go back to the Obama years.
04:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, let's go back to Obama. Yeah, basically, that's what it is. That's his whole shtick. I like Joe. Don't get me wrong. I like him. But you know something? They should have never dragged that old man out there to do this. They should have let him live out the rest of his life in peace. They should have let him do that, really. They should never have dragged him out there. It's a shame what they done to him. And actually, I was talking to my wife the other day because
04:09:13
Speaker
Uh, Joe Biden resurfaced after about like two weeks, you know, nobody knew where it was. And I said, oh, he probably had the coronavirus. You know what? I wouldn't, because you got to remember something. These presidential candidates have been all over the country for, you know, the past year. Right. You know,
04:09:31
Speaker
And also, if you know a lot of them, look at Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren never saw a TV camera that she didn't love. She was on TV every day. Oh, and she was taking selfies with every single person who wanted one. Like, people were waiting three hours in line to take selfies with her. Well, this is what I'm saying. But you haven't seen hiding over here with Elizabeth Warren for two weeks, either.
04:09:53
Speaker
So it wouldn't surprise me if every last single one of the presidential candidates had coronavirus. Yeah. Now one of the things that, and you know, full disclosure, I voted for him, I'm a supporter of his, but even all that being said, I think it's really admirable that Bernie Sanders has turned his campaign operation into a fundraising machine for victims of coronavirus.
04:10:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's been, you know, he's been doing these live streams like pretty much every single day, talking with doctors, talking with medical experts, talking about things that we should be doing now, things that we should do going forward to reform the healthcare industry, healthcare in America. And I mean, that's the kind of stuff Joe Biden should be doing.
04:10:40
Speaker
If we had any sense in this country, which we don't have, but if we had any sense, you know we do, we would just say, you know what? Hell with it. Let's just put Jimmy Carter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Bernie Sanders in charge of everything, because obviously they're the toughest human beings walking the planet. Yeah. Now.
04:10:56
Speaker
Ruth Bader Ginsburg gets up in the morning, go look for, see, I know she don't have the coronavirus. Cause see, the cancer done told the coronavirus about that chick. He said, leave her alone. I said, cause she wake up in the morning and come looking for me to kick my ass.
04:11:11
Speaker
So we, he done told, cancer done told Coronavirus, you stayed the hell away from her, far away from her. Jimmy Carter's beat brain cancer, what, like two or three times? Yeah, I mean, Bernie Sanders had a heart attack and next week he was back out on the road. And he was stronger than ever, like the, it's like they feed on the diseases.
04:11:31
Speaker
Yeah, these are the people that should be running the country. Because obviously, these are the toughest human beings walking the planet. Ruth Bader gave it to me. I'm half convinced that she eats a bowl of nails every morning. Aw, man, that chick scared the shit out of me. If I met her real life, she said, nah, I ain't messing with you. They don't tell you. I'm telling you. I'm a notorious RBG for nothing.
04:11:51
Speaker
I'm telling you, cancer in total. Listen, do yourself a favor. Don't mess with her. Leave that chick alone, man. I'm telling you. So I know she has a guy. Because remember, they had the thing yesterday. She was in the gym working out. And they was criticizing her. I said, listen, there's one person I know who ain't got the coronavirus. It's RBG. Jimmy Carter's 95 years old, man. And he's still going out there building houses. I mean, Jesus. He's building houses. Who does that?
04:12:21
Speaker
Please, man, give me a break. I'm only 36 and I'm not building any fucking houses. Listen, I'm telling you, yeah. I ain't building no houses. That man, you know, it's like I said, obviously let them run shit because obviously they're the toughest people.
04:12:43
Speaker
we got on the planet today. So let them run shit. Well, there was a Stephen Colbert did this thing where he tried to join Ruth Bader Ginsburg for one of her workout routines. He couldn't keep up. I believe it. I believe it. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. Just put those three in charge of everything and just let them take care of everything. Yeah. Yeah.
04:13:04
Speaker
All right, so I think that's about all we have to say about these episodes then. Or is there anything else? Not right now. Probably something will come across to me. And you know something? We'll probably have to do the next three episodes, and then we'll probably have to do another special episode after that to get it everything that we forgot to talk about. Seriously, because there is so much in this that, yeah, like I said last time,
04:13:33
Speaker
We could probably easily go. We've been talking now for what, two hours, 15 minutes. We could easily go for another two hours talking about just these three episodes. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. There's just so much stuff in these episodes. And so much stuff. Oh, man. I'm so glad that I bought this series because I am going to be watching this again and again and again.
04:13:53
Speaker
No, absolutely. I usually end up watching Watchmen at least once a year. And I haven't gotten it yet. But yeah, I want to get the TV series so I can watch the movie and watch this all at one time. Because you know what? I figured that I'd probably get the full immersive effect.
04:14:13
Speaker
watching everything back to back, and I will be making even more connections between the movie and the comic book and the TV series, which is the brilliant thing about this whole Watchmen thing, is that there are so many connections that you can make, and you're always seeing new things. And like you said, we should come back next year and do it. And there would be a whole new set of things that we've seen that we didn't see before. Absolutely, yeah.
04:14:42
Speaker
All right, so that does it for this episode. And next week, again, we're going weekly with these right now during this coronavirus whole thing. Yay. As long as I can keep it up, as long as they keep, if they keep delaying school classes and everything like that, I can keep it going, so. Yeah, yeah.
04:15:01
Speaker
So yeah, head on over to our Facebook page, facebook.com slash SuperheroCinephiles. Join in the conversation. You can follow us on Facebook or on Instagram and Twitter. We're there as SuperCinemapod. And also we got a Patreon page, patreon.com slash SuperCinemapod. So go there, become a patron and toss us a few bucks to help us support the show and help us keep the lights on around here.
04:15:31
Speaker
It wouldn't hurt. All right, that's all for this week, and we will be back next week to talk about the last three episodes of Watchmen. And until then, please, folks, stay safe, be well, and stay home. Yeah, and wash your hands. Constantly. All right, that's it for this week. Thanks again, and we will talk to you next week. Good night and God bless. Pay attention.
04:16:01
Speaker
along the journey 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.
04:16:29
Speaker
I'm not moving away. I'm here. I'm staying. You have to stay. John, John, come back. Where are you?
04:16:59
Speaker
I'm in every moment. We were together. All at once. I love you Angela.
04:17:33
Speaker
you
04:17:44
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. And I am the other half of your host, Derek Ferguson, coming to you from beautiful downtown Brooklyn, where, yes, we are in the, well, you know what? This is the United States of America.
04:18:14
Speaker
At this point in time, nobody really knows what is going on. If we're locked down, if we're not locked down, then we're here. 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. Oh, man. You know, yeah, I mean, again, this is the inconsistency with this country. Either we're locked down or we're not.
04:18:43
Speaker
you know, you can't just, you know, make up shit as you go along. You know, so then we got the hypocritical sociopath in the Oval Office who who votes by mail himself saying that vote voting by mail is bad. You know what, this kid, you know what, that character is, you know, there, you know what, I have no words for it. I don't even
04:19:08
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 him. So, you know,
04:19:36
Speaker
Listen, I just go on about my day and do what I do and just pray for the best. 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.
04:20:05
Speaker
as far as I was concerned, to fix Suzanne. 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.
04:20:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, 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? Yeah.
04:20:52
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.
04:21:17
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.
04:21:37
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. And let me ask you let me ask you a question. OK, quick.
04:22:08
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.
04:22:35
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.
04:22:57
Speaker
But here's the thing. There's no punishment if you don't renounce. Renouncing is very difficult, so...
04:23:06
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 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. Yeah. And when she,
04:23:35
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
04:23:58
Speaker
you know, senators and, you know, 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 that, you know, 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 illegally, you wouldn't be where you are now. Well, you know, it's the whole, it's the whole Uncle Tom thing, right? Where you have to prove when you're
04:24:27
Speaker
part of the minority that's been accepted by the, 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.
04:24:48
Speaker
So anyway, I wrote this medium post about it and like me personally, I'm going to be okay. Like I don't have anything to worry about, even if my job is taken off because my girlfriend is Japanese and if she gets the 300,000 yen a month, 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
04:25:11
Speaker
who are immigrants in Japan but 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.
04:25:28
Speaker
And it's gotten, like, shared all over the internet. It's gotten, like, 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. 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 see what happens with that. Maybe it'll get a look at you. Congratulations. Well, I mean, let's not count any chickens. But yeah, that's pretty cool.
04:25:58
Speaker
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.
04:26:26
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.
04:26:57
Speaker
One thing that I noticed while I was watching, cause 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 Vite, his imprisonment. We see, you know, the beginnings of, um,
04:27:26
Speaker
the relationship between 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 see it, and 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.
04:27:55
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. 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.
04:28:15
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.
04:28:37
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,
04:29:05
Speaker
Is this the episode where we see the flashbacks to Vietnam when she was a little girl?
Sister Night's Origin and Vietnam
04:29:09
Speaker
Yeah, so this is when we find out what the origin story of Sister Knight is because it was a 1977 movie.
04:29:20
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.
04:29:46
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 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
04:30:14
Speaker
you know, tapes of, you know, the movies that exist in this world. And they've got a theme song for Sister Knight. Did you know this from the PDF files?
04:30:25
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.
04:30:54
Speaker
I want to see.
04:31:14
Speaker
fog dancing, the post-apocalyptic movie that was based, that features like super soldiers. It was, and it has like kind of a similar plot to the original Watchmen 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.
04:31:44
Speaker
Right, yeah, exactly. And he always throws in 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 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,
04:32:13
Speaker
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
04:32:23
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.
04:32:48
Speaker
That was one of the best parts of that movie. And that's why I made sure when I bought Grindhouse, I had met 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 into two. Yeah, they split it up into death proof. And yeah, but yeah, in Japan, they released like a six disc set.
04:33:10
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.
04:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, see, now, see, I would kill just to have a disc with it. Now, see, I was lucky enough that, of course, I went to the 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
04:33:46
Speaker
on one single disc, as it's originally supposed to be presented, but that was an experiment that was really
04:33:56
Speaker
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, 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
04:34:22
Speaker
you know, parts of 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.
04:34:33
Speaker
Yeah, and that was that was one of the things that that's one of the things that I really like about this is this is that was a good example of using world building in a way to enhance the story and they do something similar here in 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.
04:34:56
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.
04:35:20
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.
04:35:36
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.
04:36:01
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.
04:36:17
Speaker
Yeah, she left them and she said, yeah, this thing is kind of like taking you over and you're gonna, you know, and again, it was such a brilliant episode because, you know, you can see both sides of it. And, you know, 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
04:36:46
Speaker
hooded 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 um this dr manhattan puppeteer who's got like 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
04:37:13
Speaker
And it's intercut with the shots from Will's past seeing the Clamsmen 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
04:37:36
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.
04:38:00
Speaker
And then they, and so then Angela is now orphaned. She's living in a Vietnamese orphanage where they only speak Vietnamese to her.
04:38:09
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 Angela her badge and she says, you know, when you're older, come see me.
04:38:32
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, nah, 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.
04:39:02
Speaker
in the background. So you know that, yeah, that there was swift justice administered. They was not taking him back to book him. Absolutely. Yeah. And then Angela's grandmother June, she comes to the orphanage and
04:39:20
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.
04:39:49
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.
04:40:17
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.
04:40:40
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
04:40:54
Speaker
And then 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.
04:41:24
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 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.
04:41:48
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,
04:42:15
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.
04:42:35
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 tells you, 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.
04:43:01
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 said, and Jack said, knocks her out again. Yeah. Whatever. Now, did you notice the logo for Lady True's company?
04:43:30
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.
04:43:43
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.
04:44:03
Speaker
And she thinks it's her grandmother. Her grandfather. She thinks it's her grandfather. Yeah, because she keeps saying, oh, I want to talk to him. I want to talk to him. The lady who says, no, that wouldn't be a good idea right now. You can't talk to him. And actually, that's what I thought it was, too, because we haven't seen the old guy. Right.
04:44:19
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.
04:44:36
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.
04:44:55
Speaker
That's why they never explained it. Because, you know what? Because while we were watching it, Patricia said, she said, well, what was the elephant for? She said, it 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 now. I said, yeah. Just like Lou's man. Yeah.
04:45:19
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
04:45:38
Speaker
recover from traumatic events or for people who have lost their memory through like 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.
04:45:59
Speaker
And I, sorry. Like Angela was doing, they were taking other people, you know, they were, you know, living vicariously through other people's, you know, memories or whatever. Right. Which is such a great commentary on not only comic book fandom, but society in general, I thought.
04:46:20
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,
04:46:37
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.
04:46:58
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.
04:47:14
Speaker
And yeah, which, 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, okay, well he survived. He killed them all and got away. Yeah.
04:47:34
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.
04:48:02
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,
04:48:18
Speaker
And Lori lays out her theory all about it, that she thinks that Senator Keane 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.
04:48:38
Speaker
Because, of course, Laurie has put it together that 7th Cavalry is actually Cyclops. Right. 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.
04:49:03
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.
04:49:30
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,
04:49:50
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?
04:50:17
Speaker
Yeah. She said, Oh, was I not supposed to? Okay. And Lori is like, and see as well, cause Lori's just sitting there like dumbfounded like, huh, what do you mean? And then of course she uses the oldest gag in the book.
04:50:33
Speaker
She drops her down a trap door. But before, but when she hits the button the first time, nothing happens. Yeah. Yeah. It only goes like, my mom. And Laurie 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. You know, they was doing this thing in 1930s serials. You know, they could drop 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.
04:51:03
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.
04:51:10
Speaker
It hasn't been, yeah, she hasn't used this thing in years. Like I said, the remote control is like from the 1950s. You know, this thing hasn't been used, and she actually wax it. You know, she said shit, and she waxed 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 and says, yeah, I got it. You want me to kill her?
04:51:38
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. Okay.
04:52:09
Speaker
And so then we've got, and then back at Lady True's clock tower, Angela gets out and she finds the Dr. Manhattan booths, like all these recordings Lady True has been making of these messages people think they're sending to Dr. Manhattan.
04:52:28
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.
04:52:54
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.
04:53:12
Speaker
Yeah, which actually, you know what? I had suspected it up to, but then I said, nah, that's misdirection. That's, you know, because yeah, that, but, but yeah, you know, in the next episode, a guy walks into a bar.
Cal's Identity as Dr. Manhattan
04:53:26
Speaker
Yeah, we do. As a matter of fact, we get the whole history of the relationship between Angela and Dr. Manhattan.
04:53:34
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, okay. Excal-a-bar. Excal-a-bar.
04:53:55
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.
04:54:21
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, and there's this great,
04:54:40
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.
04:54:52
Speaker
Yeah, right. Yeah, I noticed that today when I was watching it. You have to look at her eyes, because you look in 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 that this past year, he's been on trial.
04:55:18
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, OK. Because initially, where you thought that all of these incidents were happening at the same time, no, they're not. Yeah.
04:55:46
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. 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.
04:56:08
Speaker
way prior to what we're seeing now, all of the scenes that took place on Europa, you know, that took place a long time before, you know, what we're seeing is happening now. So, yeah, ain't no something.
04:56:25
Speaker
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 to figure it out. 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.
04:56:53
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 wonder, 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.
04:57:19
Speaker
Yeah, what's the fun of watching it if every single thing is laid out for you?
04:57:25
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,
04:57:54
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 up lets a fart rip yeah and then he just says the defense rests the defense rests and sits back down
04:58:18
Speaker
And the game warden says that the, um, the Phillips and crook shanks, they cannot judge him because he needs to be judged by a jury of his peers. 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.
04:58:42
Speaker
It reminded me of one of those scenes, 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.
04:59:09
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 iTunes credit listing, it's listed, it's spelled A bar, two separate words.
04:59:34
Speaker
But in the show credits, and the opening titles in this, I love the way they do the opening titles, right? If you look at the episode and you see, OK, 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.
04:59:56
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, they're drinking and it's VVM day.
05:00:15
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.
05:00:41
Speaker
which shows that apparently Dr. Manhattan has more of a sense of humor than we thought. Also,
05:00:49
Speaker
You know what? It's one that I could never get over. Dr. Manhattan apparently is a very horny cat. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think she, because I was thinking this as, 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?
05:01:14
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 gets laid more than anybody else in Tommy's book and in TV series he does.
05:01:31
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.
05:01:57
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.
05:02:26
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.
05:02:56
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.
05:03:21
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.
05:03:46
Speaker
Yeah. And even Cal himself says, yeah, the chicken or the egg. He said, yep, it's the chicken or the egg. You know? Right. Yeah. Because she says, wait a minute. Did I start this? Because her grandfather didn't know nothing about Judd. Right.
05:04:05
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.
05:04:34
Speaker
because they're supposed to come out, you see what I mean? Yeah, yeah. They're 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? It's like, you just told me that. But it's, you can't,
05:05:01
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,
05:05:12
Speaker
you're here drinking because you're mourning the death of your parents. And then later, and she's like, how'd you know that? And he's like, you're about to tell, you're gonna tell me yet. 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
05:05:40
Speaker
He sounds completely different when he's Dr. Manhattan in that bar versus when he turns into Kel. Yeah, because even Angela even says, oh, well, you even sound different now.
05:05:52
Speaker
You know, and he says, oh yeah, well, he said my vocal cords relaxed. He gives us some kind of BS explanation, but you know, I, you know what? I probably think that's because they just had, they simply had a different actor doing the voice. I'm not sure if that's someone else.
05:06:17
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.
05:06:37
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,
05:06:51
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 easier. 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? Yeah. But the grandfather paradox. The grandfather paradox.
05:07:22
Speaker
So again, the way they play with language in this and they throw in those little puns 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 just realized that now that she ends up, it's a twist on the grandfather paradox. And it involves her literal grandfather.
05:07:47
Speaker
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. Matt, you know, Dr. Matt, as 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 and the egg. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What can I tell you?
05:08:16
Speaker
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, but they're not really, because they don't really realize, because Dr. Manhattan doesn't think he's messing with time, right? That's true, yeah. Because he perceives it all at once. And Angela, of course, doesn't realize it.
05:08:45
Speaker
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 Adrian Bight, who's in exile in his big fortress up in the Arctic. And of course, he's not surprised to see him. And Cal 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?
05:09:14
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 be the same thing that is going to bring his relationship with Angela the same way it broke up his previous relationships because 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.
05:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, OK. So he goes to a nearby and says, OK, well, you know, I'm going to need some kind of device. Adrian says, yeah, no problem. I can hook you up. I do that. And Cal says, OK, well, how long is it going to take you? He says, shit, I made that thing 30 years ago. I love this guy.
05:09:54
Speaker
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.
05:10:14
Speaker
And he says, will you pick one? And she's hesitating. And he's like, unless there's another one that you haven't shown me for whatever reason. And then she takes out the last drawer, which was Cal's body. And she says, I would be fine with him. Now, of course, we have to, going back to addressing the elephant in the room,
05:10:42
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 the inner least, too, I think.
05:10:57
Speaker
You're right. I believe there was one Asian, and the other two or three were Caucasian. 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. The question? 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?
05:11:23
Speaker
And I said, well, are they trying to make us a yeah. And we were discussing it, you know, me and her were discussing and we were trying to say, well, are they trying to make us a like some subtle 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.
05:11:45
Speaker
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 that came to mind for me um one of them is that Angela didn't feel comfortable
05:12:00
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 Veit 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.
05:12:21
Speaker
Right? Yeah. Literal blackface. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. And which is later what Adrian 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 you're 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, when Adrian made the cultural appropriation,
05:12:49
Speaker
you know, statement, you know. Because of course, because also what 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.
05:13:14
Speaker
You know, I think that that's what they did, you know, with the cultural appropriation thing, you know, that, cause yeah, cause I'm sure you read online and you know, a lot of people were not happy with that. Oh, oh, I, they have to turn them into black. I'm sick of this shit every time I turn around. Oh, people are freaking out. Why are they turning them into black guy? They didn't have to do that. That was a bunch of balls.
05:13:45
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.
05:14:14
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.
05:14:42
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.
05:15:02
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.
05:15:13
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, 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.
05:15:43
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?
05:16:11
Speaker
He looks kind of like that. And she said, get away. 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. And Angel's kind of like freaking out through this whole sequence. She's just walking around. And this is like the first time, really, in the whole series that we've seen her, where she's not out of her emotions or in the situation.
05:16:37
Speaker
because she said, well, the seventh 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, you know, we're going to take care of shit. You know, and it hurts making waffles. 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.
05:17:05
Speaker
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.
05:17:25
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.
05:17:53
Speaker
And amazingly enough, I was kind of surprised. I was like, whoa. So he's living in the old mansion that Captain McCrop was used to living. 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.
05:18:20
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. But 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 him, yeah, well, you know, you've got a granddaughter and now I don't have a grand. He actually do got granddaughter.
05:18:49
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 Angela inadvertently gives Will
05:19:14
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.
05:19:37
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.
05:20:06
Speaker
No. Right? The masks are 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 where one of her kids
05:20:27
Speaker
Topher. He's 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.
05:20:49
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. Yeah. When she started, when she's gearing up, you know, John is just watching her and she says, what is it? And he's like, this is the moment that I fell in love with you.
05:21:12
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,
05:21:40
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.
05:21:53
Speaker
Why don't you change what's going to happen? But 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. But that don't matter. I've just set everything up so that everything will turn out the way it's supposed to turn out. Yeah.
05:22:11
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.
05:22:25
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? 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
05:22:55
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 may also have something to do with the fact that he's horny all the time.
05:23:25
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. And they, because they make it, 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 okay. 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. Okay.
05:23:47
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, you know, that you will go out and you will make something beautiful.
05:24:00
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, you know, he made a replica.
05:24:19
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 when he created life, he created them in the image of Crookshanks and, you know, Phillips, you know. And also, yeah, that did have a strong emotional connection for him.
05:24:40
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.
05:25:07
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.
05:25:32
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, bam, bam, bam, bam. And you say, OK, well, they're going to come out of this one. They're going to win.
05:25:59
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.
05:26:28
Speaker
the game the game warden comes into um vite cell and he brings him the anniversary cake another damn anniversary cake oh my god which he hates a death yeah and the warden tells him that he was the first phillips and he saw dr manhattan create the world
05:26:48
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. You know, 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.
05:27:19
Speaker
Now this is where we get the origin story of Lady True. Yeah, 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 did we get. And the origin, that's kind of messed up, I'm sorry.
05:27:47
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, like boys porn on his computer. And he's also like Studio 54 and all that stuff. But yeah.
05:28:13
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.
05:28:37
Speaker
But as we see, he does have a secret stash of his old sperm, locked away in his office. What's that all about? Yeah,
Lady True and Plot Twists
05:28:48
Speaker
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, you know, she knows where it's at.
05:29:06
Speaker
And, you know, 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.
05:29:29
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 while he's making the tape,
05:29:50
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 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 tube of Adrian sperm, slabs it up the old hoo-ha,
05:30:16
Speaker
And bam, nine months later, the 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?
05:30:47
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 expect that the smartest man in the world would have a better password. Right. Especially one that somebody cracked before. Yeah, yeah.
05:31:17
Speaker
OK, but it is what it is. And moving along. 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 and he deposed that he's been arranging the dead Phillips and crookshanks there.
05:31:39
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
05:32:09
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. Well, because in 2008, she goes to Karnak to visit him.
05:32:29
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
05:32:58
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. And then he said, OK, everything's got to line up. I said, oh, wow. OK, cool. And
05:33:28
Speaker
So then he sends the spacecraft there and save me daughter because he says, I will never call you daughter.
05:33:37
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. Right. 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, it's 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.
05:34:06
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 the second time around.
05:34:25
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.
05:34:51
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. But I just didn't figure that that actually was him.
05:35:11
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.
05:35:32
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.
05:35:44
Speaker
But there's no, yeah, and yeah, 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 has no, he's done with the reflective tape.
05:36:09
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.
05:36:35
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'm going to that. 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 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.
05:37:05
Speaker
Because this is made of lithium. This one, a lot of the whole things that have been going on because we've got a Joe.
05:37:16
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.
05:37:42
Speaker
And you notice the mistake he made is he explained his master plan before he did it. Yeah, 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.
05:38:09
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.
05:38:25
Speaker
And Joe was saying, ah, 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 and 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.
05:38:52
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 Laurie 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
05:39:20
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.
05:39:44
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 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.
05:40:05
Speaker
June Crawford says, well, stop. Wait, stop. Hold on. Lady 2 says what? She said, listen, I don't want to hear this bullshit. If you're going to kill her, just kill her. You know, you have a lot of people be interrupting master plans. 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.
05:40:32
Speaker
Yeah.
Final Showdown and Resolution
05:40:33
Speaker
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.
05:40:55
Speaker
And then as the, 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 going to save the day.
05:41:24
Speaker
Yeah, he said, 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 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, yeah. It's looking glass that vomits, because this is the first time it's ever happened to him.
05:41:48
Speaker
and then um 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'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
05:42:12
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,
05:42:38
Speaker
This man killed three 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.
05:42:54
Speaker
one of the biggest callbacks to the original Watchmen, you know, the comic book, where Vyke does indeed save the day again with squids. Yeah, yeah. And this ties back and it shows that the baby squids he's been dropping on 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.
05:43:22
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,
05:43:48
Speaker
Vite says, well, no, we can't let her have that power. I said, well, what do you mean by 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. 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. Yeah. He says it in Latin first. And then he says the translation takes one to know one. I love that. Yeah.
05:44:14
Speaker
He said no, he said when she has the power he said trust me. She's gonna go bad shit on us You know, yeah, 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
05:44:44
Speaker
Yeah, because, and I mean, I mean, I just love the symmetry of that Adrian Veidt. Once again, he saves the world by using squids. He's like, this is his thing. If there's squids around, look for Adrian Veidt. 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.
05:45:10
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.
05:45:34
Speaker
And Will explains the whole thing that how him and Dr. 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, let me put it that way. Oh, something else I wanted to mention is when
05:45:55
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 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.
05:46:23
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. It was, it was, yeah, it was one of those moments where you say, Oh,
05:46:40
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
Final Reflections and Series Legacy
05:47:00
Speaker
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
05:47:10
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 phoning 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.
05:47:30
Speaker
And then back in Karnak, Looking Glass says, you're coming, you know, he says, you know, you killed 3 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.
05:47:52
Speaker
And he tells, and you know, she says, he's like, no, you can't, you can't arrest me. You know, you have no evidence. And Looking Glass has the disc 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?
05:48:15
Speaker
because Adrian said, well, you know, kept the secret all these years. Now, while I was saying, you got a conscious and looking glad looks at us. Wait a minute. You knew about this? Yeah. Yeah. You know, and then, um, then when she, she arrests him and then, and he says like, 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. Yeah. She said, Oh man. She said, you know what? Yeah. Everybody keeps saying that, but you know,
05:48:46
Speaker
I love Jean Smart's performance in this. Like, she's just got this don't give a fuck about anything anymore attitude throughout 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 where, like I said, where 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.
05:49:14
Speaker
Also, did you catch the look on her face when Manhattan was teleported inside the cage? Yeah. Like I love that. It's such a subtle performance. Like the look she has, it's like this look of...
05:49:28
Speaker
of, it's like this mixture of like fear 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 in it, 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.
05:49:55
Speaker
Right. And in that scene, 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 get that kind of reaction, but it worked so well. And I didn't even notice it the first time. And it's so funny because her and Cal, when Cal is Dr. Manhattan, well, even as Cal too, we never see them interact at all on screen.
05:50:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Like, we know that she interviewed him, but we never saw that. Right. We hear about the interview, but we never see it. Yeah. Which I think probably would have been, OK, that was a good idea, because if we had seen it, we probably would have said, well, how come she didn't pick up on something that he was Dr. Manhattan? Because she picked up on it, if anybody else would. Yeah. So I think it's a good idea that they never showed us that. Yeah. Yeah.
05:50:52
Speaker
It was a really great way to do it. 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.
05:51:19
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.
05:51:47
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.
05:52:07
Speaker
Perfect ending. 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,
05:52:30
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
05:52:56
Speaker
for it. We did not have to know if you want to believe that Angela got the powers of Dr. Manhattan to find. 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.
05:53:11
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.
05:53:31
Speaker
Right. So they go out still fighting. And that's it. All you see
Cultural Impact and Storytelling Risks
05:53:36
Speaker
is that them charging this war that's coming at them, and they just charge, and then that's it. And then it's up to you to figure out what happened. Yeah. Did they all die? Did they? 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.
05:53:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm a big believer in ending things and letting me figure out what happened. 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. I don't mind an ending like this where it deliberately said, OK, well, I don't know what happened. Yeah.
05:54:23
Speaker
You know, yeah, same here. Yeah. 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 going to be a sequel. No, no. Yeah. Not to this. Yeah.
05:54:41
Speaker
And that, yeah, and you know what, also it's, there's some interesting comments. 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 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.
05:55:12
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
05:55:39
Speaker
to me, was a commentary on superheroes, period. Right. Because sooner or later, that's something that we always ask about any super. Well, you can do more with that. We always say, OK, 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?
05:56:03
Speaker
Yeah, those programs and stuff like that. And, you know, Superman, what, well, wouldn't he do more good, you know, uh, you know, uh, uh, changing deserts into gardens of Eden. So, so people can, you know, eat and stuff like, you know, there's always that question with superheroes that.
05:56:21
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.
05:56:39
Speaker
You know, you know, that's how I took that sentence, which to me, it was very good. And like Lady Truth says, you know, he could have eliminated all nuclear weapons. He could have scrubbed the air clean. He could have done all these things that he never did. So yeah, that was just a brilliant way to end the finale. And I thought they, you know, everything about this series from beginning to end, there is not a dull moment in this show. Like it's,
05:57:10
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, uh, listen, there are a lot of TV shows that I've seen and that I could pick apart and say, and, and even ones that I liked, I could, I could point to like one or two episodes or, you know, say, well, I didn't like this episode. Well, I didn't like this season. I didn't like that. I think that,
05:57:37
Speaker
This was a masterful story that was obvious, that this was playing from start to finish, because there wasn't anything wrong. I'm serious. There isn't anything, maybe because I'm not that type of person. I was supremely overjoyed that this was as good as it was. Yeah, absolutely.
05:58:06
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 actual comic book, and not the movie. But by pushing it forward,
05:58:36
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,
05:59:04
Speaker
You said it right. It was downright ballsy of the creators. 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.
05:59:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They were gutsy to do this, you know? Or I mean, listen, they got my subscription. Let me put it that way. You know, I think it goes to show as well that, you know, studios should not be afraid to take risks like this because, you know, when, because you think about this show and it was a big risk to do a sequel to a comic book,
06:00:04
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
06:00:25
Speaker
People were saying that Black Panther would be too unbelievable for movie audiences. 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.
06:00:55
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.
06:01:11
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, some Hollywood doesn't come up 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, Derek doesn't know what he's talking about. Yes, they do. A lot of people,
06:01:39
Speaker
Well, basically you want, why else do we keep getting to say terminate a sequel? Nobody wants to see Terminator anymore. At least I don't. But 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,
06:02:08
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, I 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 it is coming.
06:02:37
Speaker
I had a couple of people. Why did they have to change everything and make them?
06:02:46
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 problem. 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?
06:03:13
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.
06:03:48
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
Diversity and Narrative Evolution
06:04:02
Speaker
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.
06:04:19
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. It 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.
06:04:49
Speaker
well, 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. Like that, whenever there's a remake of something, like the ones that do the best are the ones that find a way to adjust the story for the new audience. Right. So like, that's one of the reasons why I say like the, yeah,
06:05:13
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.
06:05:24
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.
06:05:46
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.
06:06:12
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, you know, okay. Yeah, maybe not. Yeah, maybe not.
06:06:38
Speaker
What movies and TV shows go? Oh, yeah, she's into that culture. Right. So that's like science fiction movies and TV and superhero movies. Right. Right. But that's what I'm saying. Yeah. See that culture. Like you see someone like that on a national TV show talking up watchmen. Like that's just you don't. And that's and someone you wouldn't expect. Right.
06:07:00
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. 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?
06:07:27
Speaker
Nope. That's it. If I haven't convinced our good listeners by now, how I feel about this utterly broke, magnificent TV series. I could say if you haven't seen it by now, you can, you still got time to watch it. If you got HBO, as a matter of fact, HBO, because of the, uh,
06:07:56
Speaker
They're allowing a lot of people to watch this series. So I think all you have to do is just download the HBO Go app, and you can watch a lot of series, including watchments. If you want to watch it, you don't have to subscribe to it. You can watch it for free if you haven't seen it yet. And if you do want to, it's only, I think, like 20, 30 bucks or something on Amazon or on iTunes. So you can just go buy the damn thing, too.
06:08:30
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?
06:08:58
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 won't 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,
06:09:19
Speaker
All right, so here's what I'm thinking. 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.
06:09:42
Speaker
Um, I might. Is it out on what you 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.
06:09:53
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.
06:10:19
Speaker
And if you 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.
06:10:27
Speaker
Yeah, just tune in if you 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
06:10:54
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.
06:11:23
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.
06:11:44
Speaker
All right, thanks so much and we will talk to you next time. You have been listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at SuperCinemapod. Join our Facebook group by searching for Superhero Cinephiles where you can interact with us and other superhero fans. If you'd like to support the show, you can become a regular supporter at Patreon or make a one-time donation through PayPal, both of which can be found at our website, SuperheroCinephiles.com.
06:12:09
Speaker
If you buy or rent any movies through the amazon links at our site, it helps support the show Please be sure to rate and review us on ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Thank you for listening and as always
06:12:39
Speaker
Good night, good evening, God bless.