S01.E08: A God Walks into Abar

[cdnalor]

12 hours ago, ruby24 said:

Wait, why did he not go back to his real face when Angela pulled him out? I don't get it. 

When shows do stuff like that, I always assume budget reasons.  It's cheaper to put blue make-up on the actor than to CGI a different face on him.  If you watch "Supergirl" you'll rarely see J'onn J'onzz assume his Martian form for that reason.

[link417]

55 minutes ago, cdnalor said:

When shows do stuff like that, I always assume budget reasons.  It's cheaper to put blue make-up on the actor than to CGI a different face on him.  If you watch "Supergirl" you'll rarely see J'onn J'onzz assume his Martian form for that reason.

I agree, I assumed the same. I still can’t get over the crappy CGI of 100-foot-tall Dr. Manhattan destroying the Viet Cong.

But if it’s a choice between good CGI or Dr. Manhattan’s “prosthesis,” I’ll take the blue makeup any day.

Random thing I noticed: Continuing the (tacky, IMO) tradition of VFX/SFX teams “signing” their projects, Reynault VFX tagged the Manhattan mural above the bar.

[enchantingmonkey]

Can Doctor Manhattan really be destroyed?  Adrian Veidt, supposedly the smartest man in the world, wasn't able to do it, so why can the Seventh Kavalry?  It's likely their technology has advanced since Veidt tried to do it but I wonder if he always finds a way to put himself back together, and the tragedy of being Doctor Manhattan is that nothing ever ends.  

It's amusing to me that Senator Keene wants to transition into some kind of manifestation of Doctor Manhattan and he really has no idea what he's getting himself into.  

[tennisgurl]

Oh no Angela, you done created a paradox! I mean, I assume that Judd was always a bad guy (hence the actual trap door in his house) but thats still gotta mess with Angela's head that she accidentally caused his death. But I guess when she decide to marry a God, thats the kind of risk you take! 

Of course any episode that is about Doctor Manhattan is going to be trippy as hell, messing with time and space and all of everything happening at once and also not. Doctor Manhattan must be a tough part to play, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen really put on a great performance. He seems to have softened a bit on the moon since we last saw him in Watchmen, or at least has gotten interested in humanity again, but then, Dr. Blue Man has always been a bit of a romantic, omniscience or not. What until Laurie finds out! 

I enjoy these episodes that go really hard onto one character and their backstory, but it can also be frustrating when you have a bunch of other plot stuff going on that you want to see followed up on. I really am interested in how Angela ended up married to Doctor freaking Manhattan, but I also want to know what else is going on in all of the other plots going on!

So Johns mom left her Jewish family to run off with an SS officer? Wow, fuck you lady. 

So looks like Adrian is about to have a jailbreak, and of course it turns out that this was supposed to be a paradise, but he got all antsy and full of himself and ended up making it into a prison. There just has to be something there about how Adrian started the episode complaining about how people had the chance to make their world a paradise but kept screwing it up with violence, when he was given a paradise, and screwed it up through violence and being uncaring. 

With the timelines being all confused, I continue to think that Adrian is Lady Trieu is his daughter, and that this stuff with him in space jail has all happened in the past. Or Johns present. And future...and now I've gone cross eyed...

[Lantern7]

Credit to the writers for replicating how irritating it would be to talk with Dr. Manhattan. It's not his fault . . . he doesn't see time like normal people, so he can be in different times at the same time. Even if you're aware of his "condition," it would get frustrating for most conversations to end up like Abbot & Costello's "Who's On First?" routine, in the sense that it always ends in the same face. "How did you know that?" "You told me." "No, I didn't!" "You did. Just now." "ARRRRRRRRRGGGGHHH!!!!!!!"

So Dr. Manhattan basically comes to Earth, falls for a new woman, and he ends up become sort-of human, unaware of his omnipotence. Also, he created life on Europa, and he sent Adrian there. And now he's the prisoner of the help, as they smear tomatoes on his face. Seems about right.

Finale should be epic. It should be fun to see Laurie find out about Angela and "Cal."

[Cardie]

2 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

With the timelines being all confused, I continue to think that Adrian is Lady Trieu is his daughter, and that this stuff with him in space jail has all happened in the past

Calhattan says that he sent Veidt to Europa in 2009.  That’s ten years Earth time for all the Europa stuff to happen and him to return to Earth. 

[Johnny Dollar]

I always watch with captions and they definitely said millions. I thought that was a random number because three million were killed, not eight. I figured I would just come on here to get the significance, so eight billion seems logical (as if logic matters with Lindelof).

I figured they didn’t show Manhattan’s face because the non-Cal version of the character may come back in future years and it would probably be a big name actor.  It was probably Yahya since he was already voicing the character and was already covered in blue, so...

Whenever I watch a show or movie with alternate time lines or parallel universes, the initial explanation makes sense to me for about five seconds. Dr Manhattans explanations of how he experiences time seemed legit. I then try not to think about it any further and accept it as a given or I wouldn’t enjoy the rest of the show or movie. I was willing to believe that Paul Rudd could shrink down to the size of an ant without much thought. 
 

[kay1864]

So irrespective of how Jon experiences events and time...why did he seek out Angela in the bar?  It's tautological to say "because he will fall in love with her".  Unless you accept that every event is predestined, he wouldn't have fallen in love with her unless he took action to go to Saigon.

Just re-watched the prison scene.  It's subtle, but Adrian does say eight billion, not million.

Edited December 10, 2019 by kay1864

[Dev F]

10 minutes ago, kay1864 said:

So irrespective of how Jon experiences events and time...why did he seek out Angela in the bar?  It's tautological to say "because he will fall in love with her".  Unless you accept that every event is predestined, he wouldn't have fallen in love with her unless he took action to go to Saigon.

I assume that Jon, having grown disillusioned with his uncomplicated creations on Europa, started thinking wistfully about humanity and decided to revisit the setting where he sort of gave up on them. VVN Day wasn't just the anniversary of Angela's parents' deaths, it was also the anniversary of the day when Jon stood by and let the Comedian murder his pregnant ex-lover. It may even have been the same bar.

[Chicago Redshirt]

42 minutes ago, kay1864 said:

So irrespective of how Jon experiences events and time...why did he seek out Angela in the bar?  It's tautological to say "because he will fall in love with her".  Unless you accept that every event is predestined, he wouldn't have fallen in love with her unless he took action to go to Saigon.

According to Dr. Manhattan in the comic and the show, every event IS predestined.

[kay1864]

23 minutes ago, Dev F said:

I assume that Jon, having grown disillusioned with his uncomplicated creations on Europa, started thinking wistfully about humanity and decided to revisit the setting where he sort of gave up on them. VVN Day wasn't just the anniversary of Angela's parents' deaths, it was also the anniversary of the day when Jon stood by and let the Comedian murder his pregnant ex-lover. It may even have been the same bar.

Okay...but he headed towards Angela's table.  Once he sat down, he knew love was inevitable...but why did he pick her?  Because he knew of her connection with Hooded Justice?

[Dev F]

24 minutes ago, kay1864 said:

Okay...but he headed towards Angela's table.  Once he sat down, he knew love was inevitable...but why did he pick her?  Because he knew of her connection with Hooded Justice?

I take a cue from the setting and assume that it was at least somewhat random. Like a normal guy who walks into a bar, he saw an intriguing woman drinking alone and decided to chat her up.

[Mr. Sparkle]

1 hour ago, kay1864 said:

Just re-watched the prison scene.  It's subtle, but Adrian does say eight billion, not million.

I rewatched it about 5 times and couldn't definitively make it out. Billion makes more sense; sub-titles say million. 

Edited December 10, 2019 by Superclam

[Enigma X]

Loved the episode and like Dr. Manhattan (from the comic books) in general, but I HATE time travel and time paradoxes.

[Tryangle]

23 hours ago, link417 said:

With all the elephant imagery surrounding Lady Trieu (actual elephant at her lab, company logo is a stylized elephant head, the Lady Trieu of legend rode an elephant), I took that to mean Trieu told him. Especially since there is good reason to think she is his daughter.

Another tie in with the Ozymandias character as Veidt envisioned himself as Alexander the Great?

[arc]

IMO the biggest flaw in Jon’s Europa plan is that the sapient beings are force-advanced to adulthood, so they never themselves take care of children or are children. They worship rather than love because some of the basics of human love were intentionally pulled out of their design. It’s all the more bewildering considering his direct inspiration was the English couple who wanted not just to “create life”, but specifically a new baby.

That said, he’s certainly more humane about a failed experiment than the dog cloners.

[Affogato]

2 hours ago, kay1864 said:

Okay...but he headed towards Angela's table.  Once he sat down, he knew love was inevitable...but why did he pick her?  Because he knew of her connection with Hooded Justice?

It is predestined. He is in the moment past, present or future. He does it because he has always and will always. 

[Starchild]

On 12/9/2019 at 2:05 PM, kay1864 said:

Unanswered questions:

1. Is Manhattan dead, or just transported?
2. Why didn't they show Jon's face?
3. What are Veidt's 8 million children?
4. Where is Eve?
5. Why Jon didn’t kill all of the Kavalry?
6. Was Judd 7th Kavalry, or was it Jane, his wife?
7. What did Adrian mean by “a little elephant told me”?

Also, the Peteypedia entry on Fogdancing is quite interesting:  https://www.hbo.com/peteypedia

#5 was like my earlier question. If he could just raise his hand and kill all those guys, why not the one operating the cannon? Someone responded "because that's what happened", but it only happened because he let it. He could have stopped it. He had the power to change the outcome, from a linear time perspective. It's his decision to let it happen, my question is why. Is it a means to an end that we haven't been shown yet? Maybe.

It's fair to say he's decided (after interfering in Vietnam) to be an observer rather than an actor in linear human history. Is that the attitude he developed in the GN? I haven't read it.

[rmontro]

At least they're tying in more directly to the original Watchmen comics than they seemed to be in the early episodes.  I think some of the characterization is off, but whatever.

They said they were going to capture, then destroy, then become Dr. Manhatten.  In the previews it looks like he is being held in some sort of holding tank, so he's not dead yet.

If there's another season of this, not sure where they're going to be taking it.  

[showme]

Dr. Manhattan can get out of any place in a flash, so why doesn't he zap himself and Angela out of there? Doesn't make any sense!

Edited December 11, 2019 by showme
typo

[Lantern7]

2 minutes ago, showme said:

Dr. Manhattan can get out of any place in a flash, so whey doesn't he zap himself and Angela out of there? Doesn't make any sense!

Because he would get zapped. Because it was supposed to happen. For all that power, Jon/Cal is merely a puppet that is aware of the strings. If something happens to him, it has to happen. I’m not asking you who’s on second. Who is on first. I dunno. Third base. Ben is Glory. And Glory is Ben.

[Ottis]

On 12/8/2019 at 10:01 PM, Cardie said:

Lindelof’s “don’t say I never give you answers” episode. I liked that Angela asks if Jon is like Zeus, assuming a mortal form to seduce human women; one of those women was ... Europa.

I wonder if Judd was not 7th Kav after all.

Did anyone recognize the actor whose voice was used for pre-Cal Dr.Manhattan?

I thought it was “Cal” speaking the whole time, and I kept wondering why I didn’t know Dr. Manhattan was black. 

I don’t know why the concept of Dr. M experiencing time differently was such a difficult concept for people to get within the show. It’s pretty straight forward. He can choose which “now” he wants to experience. The question is, what is the last “now” he experiences? 

And I have to say I’ve never understood why the US, given the power of Dr. M, chose to use it to win the Vietnam War. I was a kid during it but that war was essentially far away and almost unreal to the daily lives of most people. There should have been 100 other things they could have asked him to do. It seems like a small thing to base a pivotal plot point on. 

[arc]

I guess it is predestined, but sheesh, Jon shoulda wiped out the teleportation device first, not the Seventh Kavalry people.

In the comic he teleported an entire mob of rioters to their homes. All at once.

Then again, also in the comic, he stood by and let the Comedian murder a woman right in front of him, and as the Comedian said, there were endless ways Manhattan could have enforced the peace there but didn’t.

[Affogato]

I think one of the themes is that it sucks to be Dr Manhattan. The only one with powers and you can’t do anything to change the future. Being supersmart is also not all it is cracked up to be. 

[AnimeMania]

@arc shouldn't your clock be closer to midnight?

I wonder if Dr. Manhattan's life is like you have seen the movie and the rest of your life is like sitting through endless credits. Probably not. Maybe it is more like the worst case of deja vu ever. Or more like the second viewing of a TV show? I have no idea. No wonder Cal was so deadpan, been there, done that. Maybe his life is like a long to-do list where he spends all his time mentally checking things off. I am clueless.

[kay1864]

9 hours ago, Ottis said:

And I have to say I’ve never understood why the US, given the power of Dr. M, chose to use it to win the Vietnam War. I was a kid during it but that war was essentially far away and almost unreal to the daily lives of most people. There should have been 100 other things they could have asked him to do. It seems like a small thing to base a pivotal plot point on. 

National pride, and egotistical Presidents.  The US had never lost a war, and we weren't about to lose the one in Viet Nam.  We were in the midst of the Space Race with the Russkies, and we'd already lost the first man in space race and first man to orbit race.  So it was framed as "if we don't win Viet Nam, the Commies will take over the world."

[Ottis]

4 hours ago, kay1864 said:

National pride, and egotistical Presidents.  The US had never lost a war, and we weren't about to lose the one in Viet Nam.  We were in the midst of the Space Race with the Russkies, and we'd already lost the first man in space race and first man to orbit race.  So it was framed as "if we don't win Viet Nam, the Commies will take over the world."

That was in fact how the actual Vietnam War was promoted at the time IRL dominos and all that. But my point is, if you Find yourself with the abilities of Dr M at your disposal, why is that first? Why not space travel technology to colonize new world and resources, or finding a cure for cancer or heck, if you’re really stuck on Vietnam, ending China or Russia (or at least their role as the base of communism) vs. just winning in Vietnam? It seems oddly specific and short sighted. 

[kay1864]

5 minutes ago, Ottis said:

That was in fact how the actual Vietnam War was promoted at the time IRL dominos and all that. But my point is, if you Find yourself with the abilities of Dr M at your disposal, why is that first? Why not space travel technology to colonize new world and resources, or finding a cure for cancer or heck, if you’re really stuck on Vietnam, ending China or Russia (or at least their role as the base of communism) vs. just winning in Vietnam? It seems oddly specific and short sighted. 

Ah, I see what you mean.  Excellent point.

[Chicago Redshirt]

14 hours ago, Ottis said:

I don’t know why the concept of Dr. M experiencing time differently was such a difficult concept for people to get within the show. It’s pretty straight forward. He can choose which “now” he wants to experience. The question is, what is the last “now” he experiences? 

And I have to say I’ve never understood why the US, given the power of Dr. M, chose to use it to win the Vietnam War. I was a kid during it but that war was essentially far away and almost unreal to the daily lives of most people. There should have been 100 other things they could have asked him to do. It seems like a small thing to base a pivotal plot point on. 

As I understand it, there is more of a Schroedinger's "now." Dr. M simultaneously experiences all "nows" and yet does not necessarily experience all of them or all parts of them. So he knows things that in linear time he has yet to experience, and he can be surprised by things that he demonstrated knowledge about. (For example, that Angela was marking the anniversary of the death of her parents on VVN.)

As to why the U.S. used Dr. M to win Vietnam, it's more a question of why wouldn't it? If Nixon (or really, any president) had access to such one-sided power as Dr. Manhattan, the temptation would always be there to use it.

I think in both the show and the comics, Dr. Manhattan was asked to do numerous other things, not just win Vietnam. He directly or indirectly made most of the fancy technology we are seeing.

19 hours ago, Starchild said:

#5 was like my earlier question. If he could just raise his hand and kill all those guys, why not the one operating the cannon? Someone responded "because that's what happened", but it only happened because he let it. He could have stopped it. He had the power to change the outcome, from a linear time perspective. It's his decision to let it happen, my question is why. Is it a means to an end that we haven't been shown yet? Maybe.

It's fair to say he's decided (after interfering in Vietnam) to be an observer rather than an actor in linear human history. Is that the attitude he developed in the GN? I haven't read it.

So in the GN and implicitly in the show, Dr. Manhattan continued to act in human history until 1985. "Decided" might be the wrong word, because it seems to me he does not believe he has free will. 

But to flesh out some backstory that has not been all explicitly shown from the GN but has generally been alluded to, Dr. Manhattan was a factor that Veidt wanted to neutralize in his hoax to save the world. Veidt decided to do this by giving a couple of dozen people associated with Dr. M (including a former girlfriend, his best friend and an enemy) cancer so that he and the public would think that he was the cause. He also generated tachyons from his Antarctic base, because tachyons interfere with Dr. M's ability to see multiple points in time simultaneously.

So when the cancer news broke (and in part because Laurie had just broken up with him), Dr. M felt disconnected from humanity and left Earth for Mars. He was convinced to come back to Earth and to investigate things by Laurie. They found New York devastated by the fake squid attack, and then traced things to Veidt's base. At Veidt's base, Veidt tried to kill Dr. M by removing his "intrinsic field." But Dr. M reconstituted himself and told Veidt that he was "very disappointed" in him. Veidt then showed that his plot to fool the world into peace worked, and suggested that they agree to never reveal the hoax or the 3 million people would have died for nothing. Dr. M, Laurie and Laurie's new boyfriend Nite Owl agreed. The one person who didn't agree, Rorshach, was about to leave and reveal the truth in full. Dr. M killed him. Then Dr. M had a brief conversation with Veidt in which he said the cryptic "nothing ever ends" comment and said that he planned to go to another galaxy and would create human life there.

As the show tells us, he apparently instead went to Europa to create life there, and then relatively recently went to Vietnam and got involved with Angela. Either he or someone has been faking evidence that he was on Mars while he was being Cal.

[Catfi9ht]

Until this episode, I wasn't really enjoying the Viedt storyline. However, I will say I liked the explanation for how he arrived at Europa. His own narcissism trapped him in what he thought would be utopia, but instead it's a prison. It's similar to what I hoped would be the answer; I theorized he was trapped in his own mind because he tried to recreate how Dr. M. was made.

Good discussion on how Dr. M. experiences time. I'll say how I choose to wrap my head around it is "since he experiences all events simultaneously, there really isn't a future where he can choose to make different actions." Everything exists in a single instant.

I'm probably in the minority, but I thought the scene with the Brits and young Jon was treading treacherous waters. Jon is Jewish, and they were attempting to educate him on the creation myth which is in the Christian Old Testament but originated in the Torah. The scene was taking place in 1936 and his family just fled Germany because of the Nazi party gaining power. All three of these circumstances added up to something that made me very uncomfortable. I understand the purpose of the scene was to parallel it with Dr. M creating Europa as his own Garden of Eden, but I thought the subject matter and the time and circumstances under which it took place entered into the territory of bad taste.

That scene aside, I thought it was a solid episode. I'm looking forward to see how they wrap things up!

3 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Either he or someone has been faking evidence that he was on Mars while he was being Cal.

I believe the exact sentence Dr. M. said about the image on Mars was "It's a projection." He didn't specify whose projection it was, his or someone else's.

Edited December 11, 2019 by Catfi9ht
Added quote about Dr. M's projection.

[Tryangle]

On 12/11/2019 at 5:38 PM, Catfi9ht said:

I'm probably in the minority, but I thought the scene with the Brits and young Jon was treading treacherous waters. Jon is Jewish, and they were attempting to educate him on the creation myth which is in the Christian Old Testament but originated in the Torah.

In Judaism do they approach the Genesis story differently? Or is this moreso a thought that this was a situation of a perceived Christian family trying to knowingly brainwash a Jewish child into their faith?

[Catfi9ht]

2 hours ago, Tryangle said:

In Judaism do they approach the Genesis story differently? Or is this moreso a thought that this was a situation of a perceived Christian family trying to knowingly brainwash a Jewish child into their faith?

It's essentially the same story for both religions. 

My issue with the scene was Jon and his father had literally just fled a country because they were persecuted for their faith. Almost immediately, adults begin pushing another faith onto the same child (without his father's supervision) while simultaneously being oblivious about how the Christian Bible copied the Adam and Eve story from Jon's and his father's religion.

I struggled with distilling my emotional reaction to the scene into a clear, concise narrative. Please let me know if it doesn't make sense and I'll attempt to elaborate. 😃

[Tryangle]

20 minutes ago, Catfi9ht said:

I struggled with distilling my emotional reaction to the scene into a clear, concise narrative

I think you expressed it quite well and I appreciate that particular outlook as it's not something I'd have looked for otherwise. I don't know if the show had that in mind or plans to dive into that topic, but I for one appreciate that particular insight. Wish I could mark the previous reply as both 'Useful' AND 'Liked' 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Tryangle

[WearyTraveler]

7 hours ago, Tryangle said:

I think you expressed it quite well and I appreciate that particular outlook as it's not something I'd have looked for otherwise. I don't know if the show had that in mind or plans to dive into that topic, but I for one appreciate that particular insight. Wish I could mark the previous reply as both 'Useful' AND 'Liked' 

Lindelof is both, Jewish and Catholic. He was born and raised in one religion and later, when he married, converted to the other. I'm not sure which one came first, but if my memory serves me right, I believe he was born Jewish and then became Catholic. So, he might not see it as anything other than putting into the script a shared story between the two religions.

For what it's worth, Catholicism (and all other Christian religions) did not steal or appropriate the Old Testament, per se. From what I understand, the main difference between Judaism and Christianity is that these stories, which originally came from the Dead Sea scrolls, state that God will send a saviour to us humans. Judaism thinks the saviour is yet to come and that Jesus (who was born a Jew), is a prophet, Christians, OTOH, believe that Jesus was the promised saviour and thus added a New Testament to the old scripture with his life history and teachings, and the teachings of his Apostles after Jesus died, resurrected, and ascended to Heaven.

But I am not an expert on this, so, open to be corrected.

[TheGourmez]

59 minutes ago, WearyTraveler said:

Lindelof is both, Jewish and Catholic. He was born and raised in one religion and later, when he married, converted to the other. I'm not sure which one came first, but if my memory serves me right, I believe he was born Jewish and then became Catholic. So, he might not see it as anything other than putting into the script a shared story between the two religions.I

For what it's worth, Catholicism (and all other Christian religions) did not steal or appropriate the Old Testament, per se. From what I understand, the main difference between Judaism and Christianity is that these stories, which originally came from the Dead Sea scrolls, state that God will send a saviour to us humans. Judaism thinks the saviour is yet to come and that Jesus (who was born a Jew), is a prophet, Christians, OTOH, believe that Jesus was the promised saviour and thus added a New Testament to the old scripture with his life history and teachings, and the teachings of his Apostles after Jesus died, resurrected, and ascended to Heaven.

But I am not an expert on this, so, open to be corrected.

 Not Jewish, but I don't think they believe Jesus to be a prophet. Muslims do, though.

[MrWhyt]

17 hours ago, TheGourmez said:

 Not Jewish, but I don't think they believe Jesus to be a prophet. Muslims do, though.

yes the new testament is all a christian addition to Judaism

[Chicago Redshirt]

Unspoiled speculation: Lady Trieu is playing both sides. Of the characters shown so far, she is basically the only free one to have a) the technological know-how to even conceive of stealing Doctor Manhattan's power b) the financial ability to create the necessary tech to do so and c) the information that Doctor Manhattan is posing as a human in Tulsa.

The people who fall into category a) as far as we have been shown are Lady T. and Ozy.

The people who fall into category b) is really just Lady T. (Ozy got bought out and doesn't have access to money on Europa)

The people who fall into category c) as far as we have been shown are Angela, Will, and Lady T. Ozy knows that Doctor Manhattan can and has looked human, but has no way of knowing where Doc is in 2019.

[Affogato]

Jist to throw this in. We haven’t heard from Pirate Jenny for a while. Given the subject matter if the pirate jenny song (Three penny opera) she could be a hidden mole for the kavalry. Maybe Jane’s daughter from a previous marriage. 
 

so Judd could be in innocent and the KKK robes simply his family past, haunting him (like Angela’s past haunts her). 
 

however the wound in his side makes an argument for him being Angela’s specific assailant. 
 

[Dev F]

3 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Unspoiled speculation: Lady Trieu is playing both sides.

I definitely think Trieu has some important cards yet to play. I realized recently that she's actually a good match for the girl in Laurie's joke who threw the brick into the air: the daughter of the masterly, precise bricklayer (Veidt) who passed on his mission to her, and now she has to figure out how to deal with his one unexpected loose end.

Today, though, I realized that all the second-generation "heroes" play that role in one way or another. There's Laurie, obviously, who took over her dad's role as a government-sanctioned enforcer of the social order, but now uses it to wipe out the "masked hero" facade he embraced in favor of unflinching frankness. There's Senator Keene, who was on his way to becoming a white-supremacist super-politician in his father's image when he decided that playing by his daddy's rules was thinking too small, so he threw out his plan and started plotting to become a racist god instead. And finally there's Angela, who inherited her grandfather's violent anger and desire for revenge but has spent her whole life trying to cut off the loose end of vigilantism, turning Hooded Justice's vengeful quest back into a legally up-and-up search for justice.

And Angela's the only one of the four whose brick seems already to have landed, when she hurled a question about Judd and Cyclops back through time and ended up accidentally causing the lynching she was trying, like a diligent police detective, to solve. Good joke. I expect more such bricks to hit their targets in tonight's finale.

[Ubiquitous]

On 12/1/2019 at 7:04 PM, saoirse said:

"A God Walks into Abar".

Angela's mysterious past in Vietnam is at last revealed.

Interesting backstory on Angela, but TBH, I don't think Doctor Manhattan would do any of this. At the end of the novel, he left for parts unknown b/c was bored with humans and wanted to go on to greater and better things. Adrian's device was interesting but would have required DM to have possessed someone's corpse. I'm not sure where to begin with having to induce someone to eat an egg that DM made to become like him, either. Other than that, I enjoyed this ep. I'm hesitant to watch the final ep b/c it's either going to be spectacular or another Lindolf train wreck of epic proportions.

 

On 12/8/2019 at 9:32 PM, Kirbyrun said:

Loved this ep. Even Jon’s memory glitch (he left Janey Slater’s watch in the Intrinsic Field Chamber, not his own) couldn’t wreck it for this continuity nerd. 🙂

He knows that if you're trying to pick up a woman at a bar, you do not mention your previous girlfriends!

On 12/8/2019 at 10:26 PM, Starchild said:

If he has those powers and knows what they're trying to do, why does he have to let it happen?

Besides "because, plot"? That's one reason I wouldn't have had him on the show.

On 12/9/2019 at 12:07 AM, Dev F said:

Me too. And for me that's an exciting possibility, because as I've mentioned in some of the earlier episode threads, the series wouldn't feel much like the original Watchmen if it ended up with a straightforward "evil racists vs. heroic multicultural progressives" dynamic. Anything that complicates the respective sides of the showdown would be greatly appreciated.

That would have been interesting, but I'm finding it hard to believe she'd be able to install that Wilson Trapdoor ™ without Judd noticing.

On 12/9/2019 at 3:27 AM, link417 said:

Someone mentioned that one of the tapes from Angela’s Vietnam flashback was “Fogdancing,” and that was the name of the book Veidt was reading in prison; I wonder what the significance of that is.

Fogdancing is their version of Jason Bourne and the SEAL team, whose members go on missions wearing silver dive suits and goggles. Hmm..

On 12/9/2019 at 6:50 AM, DearEvette said:

I do wonder about Angela's reluctance to show Jon Cal's body in the morgue.  He was so obviously her first choice and yet she had to be prodded to reveal him.  Is it because she didn't want a white man literally wearing black face?  It was her 'elegant solution' in the first place, so maybe subconsciously she always wanted him to wear Cal's body because but was conflicted on many other levels?

Yeah, I think she preferred to date a black man (I think she lamented the lack of them in Saigon) but was hesitant about it and maybe Jon's reaction.

Edited December 24, 2019 by Ubiquitous