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Watchmen (HBO), Part 2
152 Plays5 years ago
Our spotlight on HBO’s Watchmen limited series continues, and this time we focus on episodes 4-6. The story moves forward in exciting directions as we meet the mysterious Lady Trieu, learn more about Looking Glass, and—in one of the best hours of television ever—dive into the memories of Will “Hooded Justice” Reeves!
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Transcript
Exploring Justice and Race in Childhood Memories
00:00:20
Speaker
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 holding black. A man in the hood.
00:00:46
Speaker
And he's got a lasso, and he throws it at the sheriff. But what 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.
00:01:13
Speaker
black marshal of Oklahoma. He shows his badge. The townsfolk cheer. They cheer for him, huh? Yeah. And they start shouting for him to string up the sheriff. But the best reason won't happen. There will be no mob justice to date. Trust in the law. What color are those townsfolk? White.
00:01:43
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 the badge, Will Reeves. You're gonna get it with that hood.
00:02:12
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?
Podcasting Challenges and Introductions
00:02:30
Speaker
I'm sure.
00:02:41
Speaker
I don't want to set the world on fire
00:02:50
Speaker
Welcome to Superhero Cinephiles. I'm Perry Constantine. Looks like this week we had another little mistake with the feed. There was the first version of this episode that went out, had some audio overlap, and that was because of a mistake I made during editing. So I've gone ahead and fixed that now. So if you did listen to that first one and you heard something garbled, then I apologize. And hopefully this one works out a lot better. Thanks so much.
00:03:19
Speaker
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.
00:03:29
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
Pandemic Life: Teaching and Quarantine Experiences
00:03:47
Speaker
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
00:03:57
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 gonna be teaching. So I'm really excited about what I'm gonna get to do this semester.
00:04:24
Speaker
Oh, cool. Very cool. I hope it worked. You know, hope everything, you know, 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, you know, me and my wife are usual. We are.
00:04:41
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 is 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
00:05:13
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. It's good to hear.
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, as far as as far as we're concerned, yes, you have people that are worried about 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.
Living Abroad: Financial Aid and Mask Debates
00:06:12
Speaker
Uh, you know, as you guys know, I'm, I'm an American citizen, but I live in Japan. And so they're talking about these, uh, $1,200 a month, uh, 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, um,
00:06:18
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.
00:06:29
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.
00:06:49
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.
00:07:15
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.
00:07:42
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.
00:08:00
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, you know, the medical workers and the people who really need them.
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I've got, yeah, I've got one of those, uh, type of mass myself or like when I do work around the house, uh, you know, like, so I don't breathe in feet cause 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 mass that, you know, like, uh,
00:08:49
Speaker
What's the guys I'm picking up? What's the guys that work with wood? Carpenter. Yeah, Carpenter. They have a mask, so they don't breathe in like the wood dust. Right, right. Yeah, I've got one of those types of masks.
00:09:07
Speaker
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. 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. 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,
00:09:37
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.
00:10:06
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.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah, 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 the scarf around the bottom half of my face. Yeah. Yeah. And that's all you really need to do. Yeah.
Unpacking Watchmen: Themes and Theories
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah. And that's what I was doing, you know.
00:11:00
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
00:11:29
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.
00:11:53
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
00:12:17
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.
00:12:40
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
00:13:06
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,
00:13:36
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
00:13:53
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 we're going to tell me that you spoke to Lori, which was another hint. Like the first time I watched it, I was wondering like, you know,
00:14:15
Speaker
Why is she so upset about the fact that he spoke to Laurie? And then you realize now, because in the past, Laurie 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,
00:14:44
Speaker
OK, because remember, they're going to see Madame True. Yeah. And they're in the car talking. And Lori.
00:14:53
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
00:15:18
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 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
00:15:51
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.
00:16:04
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.
00:16:23
Speaker
But I was always on this list. 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.
00:16:51
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.
00:17:06
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
00:17:28
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
Lady True and Power Dynamics
00:17:42
Speaker
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.
00:17:57
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.
00:18:27
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 the Watchman smiley face with them. Right. Exactly. Yeah. 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
00:18:55
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.
00:19:20
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.
00:19:37
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.
00:20:09
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 had been in the past. Yeah. And they're all taking, and that crash, I believe that crash is when he crashes down to Earth.
00:20:40
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
00:21:09
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.
00:21:23
Speaker
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. Right. And then dropped it back without Will inside anymore.
00:21:44
Speaker
Oh, 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? And she gives him some, oh, well, we revere our elders. And then, of course, later on, we find out why he looks old.
00:22:08
Speaker
Right, because he's actually frozen inside. They Han Solo-ed 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 Solo-ed his ass. She froze to be carbon. Yeah, really, that's what she did. She Han Solo-ed his ass.
00:22:28
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.
00:22:50
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,
00:23:07
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, how do 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. Which is a clue as to her heritage. Oh yeah. Cause remember in the original Watchmen when Ozymandias, when he's confronted by Night Owl,
00:23:35
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 best one in the comic. Yeah, when I watched it the second time when, you know, when Lady Krew was making it, I said, oh, OK, bingo clue. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.
00:24:03
Speaker
Now, um, if you look in the, because 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? Because in the,
00:24:21
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.
00:24:52
Speaker
any shooter and there's a
00:24:56
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- He saved his child. Right, that was the speculation.
00:25:25
Speaker
Another thing they mentioned in the article is that, well, Blake has several illegitimate children from his globe prodding 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.
00:25:51
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. That was, you know, the guy was a thug, you know, but he did have the interesting thing that I liked about the comedian.
00:26:17
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, his being in a world where he saw things that he shouldn't have seen. Yeah.
00:26:35
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.
00:26:59
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.
00:27:29
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.
Women Leading the Watchmen Narrative
00:28:00
Speaker
So in this episode, what do you think of Lady True? You know what? I liked her. I like first of all, I like smart characters. I like 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
00:28:22
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, 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.
00:28:51
Speaker
But she's not behind everything. Which again, we find out later on.
00:28:57
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.
00:29:28
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.
00:29:43
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.
00:30:00
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.
00:30:19
Speaker
And so one of the, another thing they do here is, 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's wants to meet you. But then she tells Petey, sorry, women only.
00:30:49
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.
00:31:17
Speaker
And then it's, um, 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 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.
00:31:40
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, but and then the episode after that is the, you know, that that utterly magnificent episode is about Will Reeves.
00:32:03
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
00:32:22
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
00:32:51
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, you know something, now that we're recapping this,
00:33:16
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
00:33:41
Speaker
what we've seen before. This has paced a lot of slow, 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.
00:34:04
Speaker
that's gonna grow later on and then we're gonna say, okay, okay, I got it now, okay, I got that now. Okay, 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, 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.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he really was playing the part of an infirm old man when he was talking to her. But like you said, he looked, yeah, he looks more lively. He's more energetic. And like you said, we find out that he didn't need the wheelchair at all. Because he's standing up and walking. He's standing up and walking.
00:34:55
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,
00:35:16
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
00:35:43
Speaker
He had one bad day. His uncle got killed, when 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,
00:36:12
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.
00:36:23
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.
00:36:47
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, okay, just as a perfect example, my wife does, my wife has no use for superheroes. She doesn't care about superheroes. She doesn't like superheroes. Matter of fact, all of her, not 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.
00:37:18
Speaker
Still, even given that, she knows the fucking origin of Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman. She knows it because these characters are so well known. Yeah, exactly. We don't need their origin. Absolutely. Aquaman? Yes, I can see why we need an origin story for Aquaman.
00:37:40
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.
00:38:08
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.
00:38:15
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
00:38:42
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,
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, you know, to me, it's very lazy. Yeah, it is. It is. And because we've talked before that it's 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.
00:39:23
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.
00:39:49
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.
00:40:15
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,
Veidt's Experiments and Hidden Agendas
00:40:31
Speaker
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.
00:40:41
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.
00:41:10
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.
00:41:20
Speaker
It's because we don't find out what he's 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.
00:41:45
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
00:42:02
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 lie, you know?
00:42:26
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.
00:42:53
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 rewatched 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.
00:43:19
Speaker
come back to this series every year and reevaluate it and we would still find new stuff in it. Oh, I'm, oh yeah. I'm sure that if I watched 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
00:43:41
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.
00:44:01
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? What are you? 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.
00:44:29
Speaker
this man begins. You know, he's a guy, for those of you who haven'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
00:44:51
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.
00:45:18
Speaker
So she says, Halt, you're the rest. And 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 as fast as a motherfucker. 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.
00:45:41
Speaker
But he's got tubes of lube, and he sprays it all over himself. He thinks it's wrong. He tells what to grab. And he slides it to a grain of flour. And Angela stops, and she looks at all chickens like, what the fuck?
00:46:13
Speaker
And then we never hear about him again. We see her 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, where, you know, the clown is at. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those type of Delios, but it's impossibly small.
00:46:42
Speaker
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 series. We get no explanation for, hey, you know what? I absolutely love it. Never found out the deal with discount.
00:47:03
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
00:47:30
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 massive vigilante route.
00:48:05
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 does. He never shows up again.
00:48:28
Speaker
Hm, hilarious.
The Impact of the 1985 Squid Attack
00:48:31
Speaker
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. Like 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
00:48:56
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.
00:49:06
Speaker
right and we see that right in the beginning because he is um in 1985 on 11-2 which i love that they did that they call it 11-2 just like we refer to 9-11 um Wade was and um he was part of some like religious group that was preaching about the end of the world and
00:49:29
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, Oh, come on, come on, come with me. And she takes him into this, uh, fun house of me, this mirror fun house. And there,
00:49:57
Speaker
You know, she's getting into him. She makes him think that he likes her, that she likes him.
00:50:04
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.
00:50:33
Speaker
Yeah, not even, you know, not even underwear. You know, I mean, you know, leader got with some underwear. Yeah. 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 some 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.
00:50:59
Speaker
And then the psychic backlash from the squid landing in New York hits. And he's in the mirror, he's in that fun house 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.
00:51:24
Speaker
Yeah. Most of the people that have been attending the carnival, we see like 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 super power as a result of having survived. He does have some sort of psychic ability as a result of having survived.
00:51:50
Speaker
you know, that horrendous event. Now, before we get into that, like, 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 building there.
00:52:16
Speaker
My God, it's amazing how they did that. That's like virtually the panel from the original Watchmen comic. Yeah. That, you know, that's it basically. That's what we're seeing. And yeah, that's like the first time you've ever seen the squid.
00:52:31
Speaker
the actual squid and and 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 they 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
00:52:48
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.
00:53:12
Speaker
Yeah, I thought they were just going to leave it at that and just have, you know, but they are like putting it like front and center. OK, 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, OK, cool. It's more than the comic book because the squid is only is barely visible and only a few panels like you only see parts of it in the comic book.
00:53:42
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.
00:54:10
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
00:54:35
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 7th Cavalry who are devotees of Rorschach and they believe the journal of his that was published saying that
00:54:55
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
00:55:25
Speaker
the extra dimensional invasion. Yeah. Cause the mask he wears is like of some, of some kind of, um, metallic fiber that's supposed to prevent you from further psychic attacks. You know, like another giant squid. Yeah. And we see like you sleep with the mask on. Yeah. Yeah. 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.
00:55:55
Speaker
As a matter of fact, we see that he's got more than one mask. He like keeps him stashed 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. But you know, it's interesting in that we see that Wayne has a pretty diverse life away from being a cop.
Tulsa's Transformation Post-11-2
00:56:20
Speaker
Well, all the I think because all the cops are masked, right? So they have to have some sort of cover.
00:56:25
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 the market research and this is where we get the hints the the very strong hints that he is psychic because
00:56:48
Speaker
He's watching these people go through their Q and A's 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.
00:57:16
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?
00:57:38
Speaker
Because, okay, between, first of all, the first time Galactus had came, everybody would have gotten the fuck out. That's it, we're leaving, we're not coming back. No, no more.
00:57:48
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 Fantastic Four and The Avengers. And that's when you've got, you know, Reed Richards, you know, 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 they talk. And I said, no, I said the X-Men.
00:58:18
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 gonna get hurt except for them. No, the Avengers put their headquarters right on Fifth Avenue.
00:58:35
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.
00:58:57
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. So he 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.
00:59:28
Speaker
He's the real man, not the X-Men. 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?
00:59:47
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.
01:00:04
Speaker
And so they mentioned that Redford Nations, they allowed people, like for the people who were descendants of the Tulsa race riots, they had a campaign to try and bring people back to Tulsa after Redford Nations. And then they had, and now you combine that with the 11-2. 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.
01:00:35
Speaker
And they- That's why I spoke diverse, because like you said, everybody's moving out of New York. And they went, you know, went everywhere. 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 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.
01:01:04
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.
01:01:31
Speaker
Yeah, you know, if you want, what he should have been eat was like, I don't know, pizza. 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, I came back for the Italian food. So just like, just show me the pizza then.
01:02:00
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.
01:02:30
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.
01:02:45
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
01:03:13
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
01:03:41
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.
01:04:08
Speaker
for no reason, you know, that there are burdening, you know, this next generation. That's got nothing to do with what happened.
01:04:16
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.
01:04:45
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.
01:05:14
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.
01:05:36
Speaker
Which is basically what fans will tell you. They will say, oh, no, well, you know, what was it? That was it. 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.
01:06:01
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 big honking Gatling guns and 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...
01:06:26
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 I'm like because some people were saying that it was Frank Miller being satirical of his own Batman which now that I'm thinking back on it like because Frank Miller has kind of lost his mind in the past 10 years so
01:06:50
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.
01:07:03
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.
01:07:22
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?
01:07:52
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 what it gets to the point where you would be crazy to turn down the money. So he's okay. But yeah, yeah, I think I read like the first three or four issues and I said, I don't know what kind of shit he's on, but I want some. Whatever. I don't care. I want some.
01:08:20
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.
01:08:34
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
01:08:59
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.
01:09:23
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.
01:09:52
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.
01:10:15
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.
01:10:43
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. And 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 OK, going back to the original movie.
01:11:02
Speaker
for a minute. If you remember doing during the opening credits where we have, uh, you know, Bob Dylan saying that, uh, 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 there's a Bruce, apparently there's a Bruce Wayne in, you know, the watching universe.
01:11:28
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
01:11:49
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. 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.
01:12:10
Speaker
because we see a lot of times in this series that he's probably the smartest. To me, I would go so far to say he's probably the smartest character in this show besides Madame True. Yeah.
01:12:23
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.
Veidt's Manipulations and Revelations
01:12:41
Speaker
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.
01:12:52
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.
01:13:14
Speaker
and he shows him this video. 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.
01:13:42
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 he does it. And of course, for Wade,
01:14:11
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
01:14:37
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,
01:15:07
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
01:15:33
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, you know, 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
01:16:00
Speaker
Reflects your yourself, right? Whereas Ruchak it it tells you what you're you it reflects your beliefs. Where's 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
01:16:29
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,
01:16:59
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.
01:17:30
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
01:17:55
Speaker
And Angela realizes in that moment that Glass has 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.
Reimagining Hooded Justice and Representation
01:18:10
Speaker
And one of the best episodes, if not the best episode of this entire series. And that's episode six, This Extraordinary Being.
01:18:20
Speaker
OK, 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. Oh, nothing will be the same after this. You know, you see that all the time.
01:18:43
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.
01:19:07
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. But 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.
01:19:37
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.
01:19:53
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.
01:20:11
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.
01:20:40
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.
01:21:07
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,
01:21:37
Speaker
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.
01:21:48
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 there's that scene where the,
01:22:13
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.
01:22:37
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.
01:23:07
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.
01:23:29
Speaker
because I didn't want to miss anything this time around. Yeah. 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 we'll
01:23:57
Speaker
just has one trauma in his life after another. So it's no surprise that the poor guy just finally snapped, really. There's no other way to put it because he survived the Tulsa massacre.
Police Racism and Superhero Motivations
01:24:12
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 analyzed 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?
01:24:42
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
01:25:13
Speaker
OK, Dad, I knew. Yeah, that I do. I knew his father was I knew Trump was dead with the Klansmen. Yeah. And you look at the at photos of Fred Trump, he's got his grandfather. Sorry, go ahead. You know where their money came from, right? You know where their money came from. Trump's grandfather ran a whorehouse. Oh, that doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah, his grandfather ran out. That that was the beginning of the Trump before his grandfather running a whorehouse. Yeah.
01:25:43
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, 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.
01:26:15
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
01:26:36
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.
01:26:51
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.
01:27:15
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
01:27:41
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.
01:28:09
Speaker
Yeah. That was a contrast that jumped out to me this second watch. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, they make the contrast, I mean, really clear because they have a shot of him where, yeah. And you said, OK, I see what they did there. Yeah.
01:28:30
Speaker
We're covering up because because of course, since he has a 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 will just assume, OK, well, you know, this is a white guy. Yeah, yeah. So that's
01:28:47
Speaker
And it also kind of ties back to what Laurie 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
01:29:16
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.
01:29:28
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
01:29:59
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.
01:30:23
Speaker
Yeah, Nelson Gardner. 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.
01:30:34
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 it's 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.
01:31:00
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,
01:31:30
Speaker
The guy could have paid them off just saying, you know, because more like as we find out actually from, you know, the original movie actually wasn't, you know, like this super villain that he was presenting. Most of the supervillains that these guys thought.
01:31:46
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.
01:32:10
Speaker
You know, it was pretty pathetic once you think about it. So, yeah, because when he's talking about Moloch and then after that, that's when he pulls aside 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. You know what, it's an interesting interpretation. And again, there is nothing that we haven't seen in the comic book.
01:32:40
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.
01:33:07
Speaker
OK, 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 Spider-Man thing. Spider-Man. Spider-Man is
01:33:32
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.
01:33:53
Speaker
So it's the same thing with Hood and Justice. You can imagine, yeah, he could've 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.
01:34:20
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 are one, the supplemental material for the TV, the PDP stuff. They mentioned that there was kind of, um,
01:34:49
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.
01:35:14
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.
01:35:21
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it was once because, 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
01:35:49
Speaker
That's why I think there was this PR aspect and that it was 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.
01:36:06
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. There was one
01:36:24
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 I don't know IRAs or you know by life insurance and I and he gets killed because he gets his his case caught in the revolving door during a bank robbery
01:36:54
Speaker
Poor, poor dope. 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.
01:37:15
Speaker
You know, but we had all of these other characters that got into the costume thing. You know, some of them who just thought it would be fun, you know, 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.
01:37:32
Speaker
tendencies, you know, as long as he was beating up the right people, nobody said anything. 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.
01:37:49
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.
01:38:21
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.
01:38:41
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.
01:39:08
Speaker
Yeah. And he goes into the movie theater and one of the traumatized women that a 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.
01:39:25
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,
01:39:54
Speaker
This is what's happening. I need your help. I need, you know, the minute 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.
01:40:09
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.
01:40:25
Speaker
which is why I think the whole thing with Moloch and the minute was why this I get this PR stuff feeling because wait a minute you guys fight evil magicians but you think if 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
01:40:49
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.
Systemic Inequalities in Fiction and Reality
01:41:12
Speaker
So that was another powerful moment in a lot of powerful moments.
01:41:19
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.
01:41:49
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, he, I said, you know what, if there was ever a title that would probably sum up the totality of
01:42:13
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? Now, I get what you're saying about Will feeling dismissed, and I felt a connection to that scene as well, because, so...
01:42:35
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,
01:43:05
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. 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.
01:43:32
Speaker
It's the same shit we've been going through. It's just that now, OK, you know, you know, 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 a lot of it. 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. I mean, it has to be. It's got to go. You know what? We can't go back to the same thing that we were doing. We were going because.
01:44:01
Speaker
if this coronavirus thing has not shown us anything else, is 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. That's how bad it's getting. I honestly do not see how we can just go back to the way things were.
01:44:28
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.
01:44:38
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?
01:45:05
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. Yeah. You have. Trust me, I they're on the news all the time. There are people who still believe that this is a hoax. Oh, yeah. Well, this is not. Well, you know what? A lot of people, that's the only way that they can protect themselves.
01:45:25
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,
01:45:53
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,
01:46:21
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,
01:46:48
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. OK, well, why don't the airline companies have a backup?
01:47:09
Speaker
when there's an emergency. Why is it that the first week that the coronavirus hit, they was 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?
01:47:24
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?
01:47:49
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.
01:48:14
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.
01:48:39
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 hear the citizens of the United States have nobody to blame.
01:49:07
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.
01:49:31
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
01:49:52
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.
01:50:11
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.
01:50:41
Speaker
I mean, I'd be throwing Molotov cocktails. You know what? I would put on a mask. You know what? 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 Paperback, which is about a black private eye.
01:51:09
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.
01:51:32
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
01:51:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's what was the movie again? Brown paper bag. Brown paper bag. It's on Amazon Prime. OK, 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 are the rest of you guys 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. Yeah.
01:52:19
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.
01:52:30
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.
01:52:50
Speaker
Okay, and apparently he was also in Jack Ryan to the TV show And he was also in the 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 in this role. He was a he did a wonderful job of showing that that
01:53:15
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
01:53:30
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,
01:53:59
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.
01:54:29
Speaker
I have a lot more profane as my wife. 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.
01:54:58
Speaker
Yeah, did you ever see the movie the hate you give? No, okay, so I had to watch it recently cuz um, so I teach a class where I'm teaching English through 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 The main actress in it whose name is escaping me right now, but she's um
01:55:26
Speaker
she's uh... she's a black girl from the from like the uh... low-income neighborhood and but her parents have decided to send her to like this this prep school where you know cost more money to get there and everything and she does the code switching thing very just like you're talking about like when she's around the people at the school she talks one way she ensure voice-over narration says that you know um...
01:55:55
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
01:56:14
Speaker
When I was, you know, a teenager, when I was growing up, I grew up Bedford-Stuyvesant, which wasn't, you know, 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 know, you couldn't talk, yeah. There was a certain way I couldn't talk, you know, but then when I got around white people, of course, then I talked
01:56:43
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.
01:57:10
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.
01:57:20
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 success as a writer,
01:57:47
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. I remember when that book came out too, and 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.
01:58:09
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.
01:58:31
Speaker
Really? Seriously. 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
01:58:52
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. Yeah. My favorite one of those is the one from Unbreakable Kimmy Shit. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Not shit. It's good to see you actually. What white nonsense is this? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or another one. Even white people are sick of white people's nonsense.
01:59:20
Speaker
You have, I have so many white people, white friends, that say that, you know what, I'm just about sick of white people. I said, what? I said, yeah, I'm about sick of white people, really. 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.
01:59:45
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.
02:00:15
Speaker
Nothing like white nonsense. Yeah, okay, we got the title. It's nothing like white nonsense.
02:00:22
Speaker
Every white listener of this show is just going to go find another podcast now. Yeah. I told you, man, this is going to be the last one. You know, we, you know, we might as well get ready for it. Yeah. I don't know. I got to, you know what? I got away with saying some of the most outrageous shit when we were doing, you know, the other part, what I was doing better in the dark with 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.
02:00:49
Speaker
So I said, oh, I mean, I said some stuff I just knew that people were going to say, how dare you.
02:00:57
Speaker
can't talk that way to me. You know, I thought I was, you know, 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, you know, like a racist thing. You're just a racist. And I thought, Oh, okay. But, but nothing like what I thought I was going to get. I thought, you know, I said, okay, well, Hey, which only encouraged me to keep on saying outrageous shit.
02:01:24
Speaker
All right. So is there anything else we want to mention about these three episodes? Oh, only that taken as oh, and no something 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.
02:01:53
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.
02:02:22
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, um, cologne that. Yeah.
02:02:44
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.
02:03:05
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.
Nostalgia and Hope for Societal Change
02:03:26
Speaker
But as we find out in the, and we can talk more about this in the next episode,
02:03:31
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.
02:03:58
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, Bob, that the nostalgia perfume came in.
02:04:21
Speaker
That I picked up one and we can talk more about this in because they go into more explanation nostalgia plays a big part in the in the next episode Right the next set of one of the next episodes anyway, but it's this idea of you know wanting to live in the past wanting to avoid the present to go back and live in the past which applies not only to you know comic book fans, but just America in general and
02:04:46
Speaker
True, very true. Like there's this constant, yeah. Yeah, because 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.
02:05:14
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.
02:05:43
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
02:06:13
Speaker
Joe Biden resurfaced after about two weeks. Nobody knew where it was. And I said, oh, he probably had the coronavirus. You know what? Because you got to remember something. These presidential candidates have been all over the country for the past year. Right.
02:06:31
Speaker
And also, if you notice, 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, you haven't seen, you haven't seen, hiding over here with Elizabeth Warren for two weeks either.
02:06:53
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.
02:07:18
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.
02:07:40
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.
02:07:56
Speaker
Ruth Bader Ginsburg gets up in the morning, go look for, see, I know she don't have the coronavirus. See, cancer done told the coronavirus about that chick. He said, leave her alone. He said, because she wake up in the morning and come looking for me to kick my ass.
02:08:11
Speaker
So he done told cancer to tell Coronavirus, you stayed the hell away from her, far away from her. Jimmy Carter's beat brain cancer what, like two or three times? Bernie Sanders had a heart attack and next week he was back out on the road. And he was stronger than ever. It's like they feed on the diseases.
02:08:31
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 be telling you. I'm telling you. They don't be telling a notorious RBG for nothing.
02:08:50
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?
02:09:21
Speaker
Please, man, give me a break. I'm only 36 and I'm not building any fucking houses. Listen, yeah. I ain't building no houses. Like I said, obviously let them run shit because obviously they're the toughest people.
02:09:43
Speaker
we got on the planet today. So let them run shit. Well, there is 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.
02:10:04
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,
02:10:33
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.
02:10:53
Speaker
No, absolutely. I, you know, 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'll probably get the full immersive effect.
02:11:12
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 could 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.
02:11:42
Speaker
All right, so that does it for this episode. And next week, again, we're going weekly with ease 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.
02:12:01
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.
02:12:31
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.
02:13:02
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superherocinephiles at gmail.com. Or you can also visit us on the web at superherocinephiles.com. If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners.
02:13:28
Speaker
You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of Hezlionstudios.com.