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S01.E07: An Almost Religious Awe


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That was interesting.  I appreciate it when know-it-all-smug characters get thrown off their game, like Laurie, Lady Trieu, and Angela all did.  

I rolled my eyes at the elephant.  They have good memories, get it?  

Also rolled my eyes at the Veidt scene.  What the hell was that?  So surreal.  

It took me until today to realize that Angela's eye makeup is a negative image of Hooded Justices's.  Symbolic of ...umm... symbolism.  She's his mirror image?  Antithesis?  Something metaphorical.

Edited by mac123x
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I knew something about Cal wasn't right, but damn.  Didn't guess that.  But no wonder Laurie kept saying 'your husband Cal' in just that way and thinking he was so hot. He must've been giving off blue vibes.

I am sorry but I had to chuckle at the sheer absurdity of Judd's wife having a malfunctioning trap door remote.  The look on Laurie's face. 

Ok I know the show can be symbolic, but a literal elephant pill?  Sooo fucked up.  Trieu pharmaceutics is basically the iteration of big pharma run way the fuck amok.

So glad it seems that Looking GLass didn't die.  Last week, my husband insisted he was too canny to be taken out like that.

This show is a hella ride.

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The piano version of "Life on Mars" playing during that last bit was a great touch.

All that said, I'll have to wait until next week to see what I think about this, because in a lot of ways this seems like it completely throws out Doctor Manhattan's character direction from the source material.

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I’m excited for these last two episodes, but I wish the writers would quit spoonfeeding twists right before revealing them. If we hadn’t suspected it after the amnesia conversation, we all knew Cal was Dr. Manhattan after the final exchange between Trieu and Angela.

Lady Trieu’s “he will be here” made me think Veidt is her father. Speaking of Veidt, his subplot was especially incongruous this episode. Was that a tear? What was that about? Not sure what to make of the prosecutor’s wink at him, either.

I really want to know what Looking Glass is up to.

I’m enjoying the ride so far, excited to see where the show ends up.

It tickles me that Lady Trieu heard Laurie’s message to Manhattan and dropped the car just to fuck with her.

Edited by link417
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This show was always going to be fan fiction. That’s just the way it is if it’s not written by Alan Moore himself. Lindelof and the team have certainly made some gutsy changes. Some of them I’m willing to buy (e.g. Hooded Justice being a black man). And some of them I’m just going to have to see at the end whether they work out or not. They had better have a damn good explanation for why Doctor Manhattan would come back to Earth. I honestly could have done with him not appearing at all. He casts enough of a shadow on the story without having to be there. 

Goodness Laurie, you were a little slow on the uptake weren’t you?

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Having no familiarity with the subject matter, I’ve enjoyed the origin stories and world-building. The plot looks to be pretty simple, though: a tech-assisted showdown between white supremacists and those they have always persecuted, with the twist that the white supremacists have had thirty years learning what it’s like to be a “minority.”

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In an episode featuring an elephant being used to pump a woman's moms memories into a teenage clone, Doctor Manhattan running around disguised as some guy in the great plains, and Ozzy being declared guilty of sucking by a pack of pigs while the clones scream "GUILTY!" at him, its the new Cyclops/Kalvary dicks being the "we are tots not racist we just hate not having everything ever for being white guys" that made me pull the Angela "So your a crazy person" line. 

This show is just the wildest ride. I knew that something was kind of weird about Cal, but him being Doctor Manhattan was not something I saw coming at all. No wonder Laurie was saying how cute he was, she was sensing the blue vibes coming off of him! I seriously cracked up at Judd's wife and her actual trap freaking door, its broken button, and Laurie's whole "are you fucking kidding me?" reaction! I mean, even by this worlds standards, thats just so hilariously ridiculous, I love it.

Glad that Looking Glass made it out (and took out every one of those assholes who went after him), I am excited to see what he is getting up to. I figured that he was too smart and resourceful to get taken out that easily. 

Poor Angela, she apparently just has the worst luck ever. Saw her parents die, sent to crappy orphanage, finally meets her grandma and she almost instantly drops dead, dead partner. But she did get to adopt some kids and marry a super powered god like blue guy so...I guess thats a silver lining. The world building going on throughout is really interesting and detailed, its a lot of fun just to look at background bits (some of the movies that young Angela looked at had references to previous costumed adventurers) and put the pieces together. 

The piano version of Life on Mars was very well placed. I have no idea where this show is going and I am all for it.

Edited by tennisgurl
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49 minutes ago, Cardie said:

Having no familiarity with the subject matter, I’ve enjoyed the origin stories and world-building. The plot looks to be pretty simple, though: a tech-assisted showdown between white supremacists and those they have always persecuted, with the twist that the white supremacists have had thirty years learning what it’s like to be a “minority.”

Yeah, that seems to be where things are headed. But if that's the case, as someone who's very familiar with the source material, I worry that it'll be a pretty radical departure from the graphic novel's central themes.

I say that because the novel is a pretty emphatic condemnation of the very idea of a superhero. Every one of them is portrayed as badly maladjusted in his or her own specific way, and in the person of Adrian Veidt all their various pathologies combine to bring about a horrifying apocalypse in the name of the greater good.

But the show seems to be less clear-cut in its condemnation. The problem is not with the very idea of superheroism but with particular models of superheroism: Keene and the Rorschachs are bad because they're trying to create a racist god, Hooded Justice and Lady Trieu are both good and necessary because they're trying to stop it. That sends a very different message than a comic book in which the finest and most pure superhero turns out to be the most horrifying monster of all.

But maybe the show has some cards left to play. It's possible that we don't know the extent of Trieu's plan, and we certainly don't know how Adrian will fit into all this. And maybe Angela will be a third side in the conflict who has to tear down reactionary and progressive super-plans alike. I hope there's some secret yet to be revealed that takes us out of the realm of comic book morality play.

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36 minutes ago, Dev F said:

Keene and the Rorschachs are bad because they're trying to create a racist god, Hooded Justice and Lady Trieu are both good and necessary because they're trying to stop it.

I don't get the sense that either of latter are being touted that way at all. 

Trieu comes across as another megalomaniac in the vein of her predecessor Veidt, with a very twisted moral compass.  While we know her plan is to save humanity, we still don't know how, and I get the sense it may be something horrific.

And Will was so driven by his rage, he lost his family.  And he's even adopted the mind-control tech of his foes.  Walking a dubious moral line there too.

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So Cal is Dr. Manhattan.  Did not see that coming.  Seeing the bluish tint at the end made it more real.

If Jane has been working with Keene all this time, that doesn't bode well for Judd's legacy.  Either he was involved or he was an idiot who didn't realize what his wife was up to.

Saw a clever tidbit on Reddit; Blake's Dr. Manhattan-style dildo was called the Excalibur.  Now we know that her ex is named Cal Abar.  

Veidt's scenes are amusing, but I can't get into them too much because they're so removed from everything else.

Just saw Faithe Herman in Shazam, now she's playing the younger Angela.  Nice to see her getting more work.

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37 minutes ago, Amethyst said:

Just saw Faithe Herman in Shazam, now she's playing the younger Angela.  Nice to see her getting more work.

She’s been a regular on all four seasons of This Is Us, so I’ve been amazed she has time for other work. 

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1 hour ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

So can Angela confirm for us if Blake's, ahem, reproduction was accurate?

Considering the source, nite owl, I’m assuming it was an upraised middle finger, not a lifelike reproduction. 

manhattan wore pants in vietnam. What is up with that?

i wonder if the closet blocks some glowing blue light he can’t mask during orgasm. I mean, in addition to the kids being in their bed. 

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6 minutes ago, kay1864 said:

How did young Angela get from Saigon to Tulsa?  Even if Grandma had a airline ticket for her, someone that young isn't allowed to fly alone.

I bet she went back to the orphanage and met Manhattan in Vietnam. She came to Tulsa because of Grandma, though. 

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So Cal was basically an android manifestation of Doctor Manhattan?  How long ago was the "accident"? (which I assume is when he was created)

Oh wait, was this the White Night attack?  Maybe Manhattan saved her from the gunman?

Edited by kay1864
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3 minutes ago, kay1864 said:

In the novel, he wore less and less as the years went on.  Briefs during Vietnam era. 

Whew for the censors. I don’t remember that specifically, will check 

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Just now, Affogato said:

I bet she went back to the orphanage and met Manhattan in Vietnam. She came to Tulsa because of Grandma, though. 

I think Manhattan was long gone by then.  War was over, Vietnam was already the 51st state. 

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25 minutes ago, kay1864 said:

I think Manhattan was long gone by then.  War was over, Vietnam was already the 51st state. 

Yes but he might have come back to see what he had wrought. In fact vietnam or tulsa what would be the difference to him. Maybe they do meet in tulsa, but she is still a child when he theoretically retires to mars. 

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7 hours ago, anville said:

Trieu comes across as another megalomaniac in the vein of her predecessor Veidt, with a very twisted moral compass.  While we know her plan is to save humanity, we still don't know how, and I get the sense it may be something horrific.

And Will was so driven by his rage, he lost his family.  And he's even adopted the mind-control tech of his foes.  Walking a dubious moral line there too.

Two speculative thoughts from this episode.

1.  Lady Trieu is somehow related to Veidt -- most likely his daughter.  She exhibits the same traits.  A megalomaniac determined to "save humanity".  She is very coy about providing the details of her said plan so it probably requires a massive sacrifice to achieve her goals.

She wants her parents to be at the completion of her life's work.  She already cloned her mother and is the process of reintegrating her mother's memories into the clone.  She also said that her father will be there with the utmost surety.  If her father was a mere human, he would already be present in her compound.  There must be extenuating circumstances for him not being there.  Veidt's situation would fit that description.

2.  Although it appears that Veidt is a prisoner on a moon of Jupiter, I'm guessing that his imprisonment is a construct of his mind.  It would explain the oddities of the world that imprisons him.  Physically, I think he is trapped in that statue of him in Lady Trieu's garden in Oklahoma.

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11 hours ago, AimingforYoko said:

There's fan-fic about Manhattan masquerading in Tulsa, OK as a black man, while his wife works undercover as a masked policewoman fighting white supremacists? Uh, could you point me in the general direction?

Yes, it’s this show.

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2 hours ago, grawlix said:

Physically, I think he is trapped in that statue of him in Lady Trieu's garden in Oklahoma.

Love this idea.  Maybe that object that crashed into the farm (that was purchased just in time by Lady Trieu) was Adrian already staue-ized.

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3 hours ago, grawlix said:

Physically, I think he is trapped in that statue of him in Lady Trieu's garden in Oklahoma.

I love that idea, and I can totally see her being Veidts daughter. They both share the same feelings of constant superiority to humanity at large, and used/are using massively advanced tech to "save the world" in the manner that they see fit. And they both use human cloning!

1 hour ago, Tryangle said:

There were a couple other VHS tapes in the carousel, one of them appeared to be an Easter egg?

I saw one that looked like it featured Silk Specter, one of the original Minute Men from the comics. Some other interesting facts that I saw around the internet about Cals true identity are that the name Abar is a reference to the Blackspoitation movie Abar, The First Black Superman, which is both a reference to Angelas Blacksploitation themed costume, and the fact that Doctor Manhattan was a deconstruction of Superman (with a bit of The Flash and other super powered people) in the first place. Plus, of course his human secret identity is named Cal, which sure sounds a lot like Superman's Kryptonian name Kal-El.  

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4 hours ago, kay1864 said:

So Cal was basically an android manifestation of Doctor Manhattan?  How long ago was the "accident"? (which I assume is when he was created)

Oh wait, was this the White Night attack?  Maybe Manhattan saved her from the gunman?

According to Peteypedia, the "accident" involving Cal happened in 2009.

It seems that Angela grew up, worked for Saigon PD, and then presented Cal as an amnesia victim to a Saigon hospital. According to this episode, this was done so she and Jon could be together, presumably without the rest of the world finding out that Doctor Manhattan is back and making the demands on him that would ensue.

Why Jon had to apparently hypnotize himself into thinking he was "Cal" instead of just having a dual identity, hopefully will be explained.

It makes sense that somehow Cal/Jon intervened to stop Angela from being killed with the rest of the cops on White Night, and thereby tipped 7K to Doctor Manhattan being on Earth in Tulsa. Because when we last saw Angela on White Night, she seemed pretty dead to rights and it would require near-divine intervention to save her.

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4 hours ago, kay1864 said:

How did young Angela get from Saigon to Tulsa?  Even if Grandma had a airline ticket for her, someone that young isn't allowed to fly alone.

We never saw young Angela going from Saigon to Tulsa. I'm guessing that she remained in Saigon at the orphanage, joined Saigon PD when she was an adult, met Doctor Manhattan while in Saigon, fell in love, concocted the backstory for "Cal," and decided to move to Tulsa to escape the almost religious awe that people there had for Doctor Manhattan.

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1 hour ago, anville said:

Love this idea.  Maybe that object that crashed into the farm (that was purchased just in time by Lady Trieu) was Adrian already staue-ized.

All along I’ve wondered whether the scenes of Veidt sync up at all with the present day series timeline. 

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1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Why Jon had to apparently hypnotize himself into thinking he was "Cal" instead of just having a dual identity, hopefully will be explained.

Too easily distracted by quarks. 
 

It would be hard for him to maintain a working human relationship if he retained his alien nature, his relationship with Laurie being a case in point. But also he would want a break from godhood. 

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I don't know if this has already been discussed but I didn't realize that Cal's last name is Abar. Is it common that a man would take his wife's last name or did Angela just not want to come up with a last name for him?

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4 minutes ago, Shorty186 said:

I don't know if this has already been discussed but I didn't realize that Cal's last name is Abar. Is it common that a man would take his wife's last name or did Angela just not want to come up with a last name for him?

Wasn’t her maiden name Reeves? Her grandfather is Will Reeves, and his son was Angela’s father, so I would imagine she was a Reeves before she became an Abar.

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Her father's ID tag said "Abar".

Edited to add the following:

1. Perhaps, since he "appeared" with no memory, they figured he might as well take her name, since he couldn't remember his.

2. Leads to the question, why was her father's name "Abar"? Did her grandfather leave and her grandmother remarry a man who adopted him?

Edited by Starchild
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1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

It makes sense that somehow Cal/Jon intervened to stop Angela from being killed with the rest of the cops on White Night, and thereby tipped 7K to Doctor Manhattan being on Earth in Tulsa. Because when we last saw Angela on White Night, she seemed pretty dead to rights and it would require near-divine intervention to save her.

Yeah, this makes sense.  One thing I've always wondered was how she got out of being killed on the White Night when Cal was the only other person in the house, supposedly in hiding and the 7k guy was standing over her about to put a bullet in her head.  The 7th Kalvary being tipped to fact that Dr. Manhattan that night -- by Cal's intervention giving it away? -- might also explain why Judd suddenly appeared in her life. 

The plot to become Dr. M could have been born that night with Judd deployed as a stealth infiltrator in her life.  Get close to her so when they were ready to kick off the plan, he was in a position as her friend and mentor to make it happen seemlessly.  Also explains why they needed Angela neutralized.  Why they wanted suspicion on Judd's death thrown on her.  She wasn't just a convenient patsy, she was the critical patsy. So they went after LG to get to her because they couldn't themselves.

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19 minutes ago, link417 said:

Wasn’t her maiden name Reeves? Her grandfather is Will Reeves, and his son was Angela’s father, so I would imagine she was a Reeves before she became an Abar.

To draw on the Peteypedia report of "Cal's" discovery, Angela was going by "Abar" back then, before she and Cal got married. Cal originally went by "Calvin Jelani." Why Cal apparently took her last name is unclear.

Why Angela's last name wasn't "Reeves" is also unclear. But I can speculate/imagine that when June left Will, she stopped using Reeves as a last name and went back to Abar, making their son also go by Abar.

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The elephant was the bizarre element for me. I suppose a creature of that size could dilute the memories. Still, an elephant never forgets. Poor beast. 
 

angela hitting cal repeatedly with a hammer....couldn’t they come up with a less psycho killer method?

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19 hours ago, DearEvette said:

I knew something about Cal wasn't right, but damn.  Didn't guess that.  But no wonder Laurie kept saying 'your husband Cal' in just that way and thinking he was so hot. He must've been giving off blue vibes.

I am sorry but I had to chuckle at the sheer absurdity of Judd's wife having a malfunctioning trap door remote.  The look on Laurie's face. 

Ok I know the show can be symbolic, but a literal elephant pill?  Sooo fucked up.  Trieu pharmaceutics is basically the iteration of big pharma run way the fuck amok.

So glad it seems that Looking GLass didn't die.  Last week, my husband insisted he was too canny to be taken out like that.

This show is a hella ride.

Was going to come here to say all this, so thanks for doing it for me! 

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20 hours ago, Xantar said:

Lindelof and the team have certainly made some gutsy changes. Some of them I’m willing to buy (e.g. Hooded Justice being a black man). And some of them I’m just going to have to see at the end whether they work out or not.

My concern is that the "end" is ill defined.  I assume they are writing this under the assumption that it will get multiple seasons, and therefore a lot of the stuff they're setting up now won't be resolved this season, and (likely given Lindelhof's track record) doesn't actually have a planned resolution.  So it'll either be unceremoniously dropped, or the solution they pull out of their asses in season 5 will be nonsense.

5 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

It makes sense that somehow Cal/Jon intervened to stop Angela from being killed with the rest of the cops on White Night, and thereby tipped 7K to Doctor Manhattan being on Earth in Tulsa. Because when we last saw Angela on White Night, she seemed pretty dead to rights and it would require near-divine intervention to save her

I like that they answered the question "how did Angela survive the White Night" without actually spelling it out for us.  I agree that we're supposed to infer that she survived because Dr. Calhattan saved her.

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21 hours ago, DearEvette said:

So glad it seems that Looking GLass didn't die.  Last week, my husband insisted he was too canny to be taken out like that.

One of his attackers was missing the Rorschach mask -- can we assume Looking Glass is wearing it to infiltrate the 7K?

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1 hour ago, mac123x said:

My concern is that the "end" is ill defined.  I assume they are writing this under the assumption that it will get multiple seasons, and therefore a lot of the stuff they're setting up now won't be resolved this season, and (likely given Lindelhof's track record) doesn't actually have a planned resolution.  So it'll either be unceremoniously dropped, or the solution they pull out of their asses in season 5 will be nonsense.

Lindelof has said in interviews that it was written as a self-contained story, like the graphic novel.  He's said that not every question will be answered but the main story will be resolved.  Of course, his idea of the story being resolved may be different than someone else's.  

When asked about future seasons, he said he would wait to see how the audience responds to this season before making that decision.  

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5 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Why Angela's last name wasn't "Reeves" is also unclear. But I can speculate/imagine that when June left Will, she stopped using Reeves as a last name and went back to Abar, making their son also go by Abar.

Do we actually know what June's last name was? Unless 6-year-old Will knew who she was as a baby, he must have made up her name. Or else she came up with her own name once she was old enough.

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1 hour ago, Shorty186 said:

Do we actually know what June's last name was? Unless 6-year-old Will knew who she was as a baby, he must have made up her name. Or else she came up with her own name once she was old enough.

Surely Will and June didn't raise themselves after the riots. I'm guessing Abar was the last name of June's adoptive family, or something like that.

Though it's also worth noting that June's DNA was in the Greenwood Cultural Center database, and since Angela was apparently already receiving Redfordations prior to her father's paternal grandparents being identified via Will's DNA, it seems likely that she originally qualified via June's parents. So although June may have died before her birth family was identified, Angela probably now knows who they are.

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Plot threads coming together. 

The only complaint I had about this episode is that (apparently for reasons of plot) Laurie suddenly got hit with a bag of stupid and clued in the sheriff's wife on the nefarious doings of the Seventh Kavalry, somehow not suspecting in any way, shape, or form that the man's wife might somehow be in the know.

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On 12/1/2019 at 10:59 PM, Amethyst said:

If Jane has been working with Keene all this time, that doesn't bode well for Judd's legacy.  Either he was involved or he was an idiot who didn't realize what his wife was up to.

Between his wife being deeply involved in the white supremacist plot and Senator Keene saying Judd was, I think we can safely assume he was involved. Not an innocent patsy, not a secret double agent for good. He was just evil.

I totally called that Bian was a clone of Lady Trieu’s mom! Makes sense though, Trieu is not the kind of suicidal megalomaniac who doesn’t plan to survive, and so if she does plan to survive she hardly needs to clone herself.

Trieu is clearly Veidt’s daughter. She’s probably his captor too. His captivity started years after Dr Manhattan had set aside his own powers, and her “micro fusion rockets” could probably get to Jupiter and back.

I felt it was obvious young Angela was going to be orphaned again when her grandmother went to the other side of the car. I’m glad she didn’t die violently, at least.

there’s a critique on Twitter that some of Lindelof’s premises are almost devastatingly naive, like “how unaccountable would cops be if they wore masks” and I think Vietnam becoming the 51st state rather than a 20th century style economic colony is in the same vein.

I wish they could have worked Cal’s total amnesia into an earlier episode. Doing it here telegraphed the big reveal, as did Trieu re-emphasizing how Dr Manhattan was hiding in Tulsa.

Angela’s story felt structurally like the issues of the comic that went over Manhattan’s and Laurie’s backstories: non-linear, with a structure that gradually built up resonances and connections.

Laurie got monologued at, the way Nite Owl and Rorshach got it from Ozy in the comic, but Keene is no Ozy and didn’t wait to have accomplished his goals before gloating.

Edited by arc
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Cal is Doctor Manhattan?!  But he apparently doesn't remember for some reason.  Of course, it sure looks like he'll remember pretty soon after Angela finish wailing on him with that hammer!  Now, that's a crazy twist!

So, Joe Keene and the Seventh Calvary's grand plan is to capture Dr. Manhattan and use his power for their own nefarious purposes.  Yeah, that checks out.  I did love Laurie all "Just go ahead and spill it, Joe!  Don't have time to listen to you drawl it all out!"  She is so over Joe's shit!

Not sure what the hell is going on with Veidt's stuff anymore. Definitely think Lady Trieu is going to end up being his daughter.

Speaking of Trieu, so Bian is actually a clone of her mother and has been getting nostalgia in her sleep.  Really don't think I can top Angela's reaction to that reveal, so I"ll just be quiet.

Really curious to see how these last two episodes go down. 

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