A bit of housekeeping before I jump into my review of the Watchmen series premiere, “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice.” First up, I’ll be reviewing this exquisite new series on a weekly basis here at Pop Culture Maniacs, and I’m happy you’ve opted to join me on this journey. Next, as with my Game of Thrones reviews, there’s the issue of source material vs. new material within the series. I’ve read the Watchmen graphic novel and I’ve watched the divisive film – but I haven’t done either for a number of years, which means that I know the thrust of both stories, and the characters (which will matter a bit more as we get deeper into the series), but I don’t have an exhaustive knowledge of either. So, when it comes to finding Easter Eggs and writing about them, I’m not your gal.
And the final element: These reviews will assume that you have watched the episode (and that you don’t mind me spoiling anything in the graphic novel/film that is pertinent to the overall story being told here). Judging from the premiere, there’s going to be a lot to unpack every week (when a show is taking big swings at major societal ills, there often is). I can’t promise I’ll always get things right, but I’m going to give it my best effort to make sure we hit on the important issues, delve deeper into the performances, and explore the characters and motivations of this alternate version of America. Let’s begin.
As with its source material, this version of Watchmen opens with a look at the past. After all, if we don’t understand the past, how can we hope to understand the present? And this tale is just as difficult to watch as the murder of masked vigilantes – only this event really happened in our actual history. The “Black Wall Street Massacre of 1921” was a horrific racially motivated attack on the black community of Tulsa, OK, that left hundreds dead and many more injured. It was a massive stain on our country’s history, and I’m guessing you didn’t learn about it in school. I know I certainly didn’t. Choosing to use this as the jumping off point for a series makes a very clear statement about what we can expect moving forward. This is a story about how the horror of the past will be visited on the future. This is a story about how we paper over things in our own history that we don’t want to confront, and how that creates a festering wound that becomes nearly impossible to heal as the years churn on.
Even in a world with a presumably congenial president (Robert Redford, who appears to have entered the Oval Office after Nixon – who was elected to multiple terms after the 22nd Amendment was repealed in the graphic novel – was removed from office resulting in a Ford presidency), racism and bigotry remain. Guns may be far more regulated (a six month waiting period, and cops having to call in and request to have their guns unlocked prior to using them), but we still see vicious murders and a massive gun battle. Showrunner Damon Lindelof and his excellent writing staff aren’t taking the easy path with anything here. They know this central conflict is not a simple one to present and are making sure they provide the best possible layer of exposition to allow their audience a chance to fully immerse themselves in this new reality (that certainly resembles ours, but is just different enough to allow for us to step back and observe).
So, America is in trouble. Rather that having teams of vigilantes filling in for police officers and military, we have “ex-police officers” presenting themselves as mask vigilantes, working alongside actual cops (who are required to wear masks themselves and hide their identities, lest the white supremacist terrorist organization the Seventh Kalvary find them and kill them). As for the episode itself, well, in addition to your knowledge of Watchmen history and Oklahoma’s checkered racial past, it really helped to have a working knowledge of the Oscar and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma to dig a bit deeper into the themes presented (and it really helped if you’ve had the chance to watch the recent, more avant garde, Broadway revival, that challenged the traditional reading of the musical and wrestled with mob mentality, gender, and the question of consent).
We were shown a staging that was termed “black Oklahoma” (a loaded statement for this series if there ever was one), which presented the classic American musical about life on the plains with a black cast (rather than the traditional white casting people are likely used to seeing). As with the recent Broadway revival (which I highly recommend – it won several Tony awards and is absolutely riveting), taking steps to pull a stage production out of its “traditional” staging and present it with a different cast, setting, etc. tends to lead to more depth and complex themes emerging. While the episode didn’t touch on those specific elements, it absolutely hinted that the staging of a musical like this one would grate on certain people, even subconsciously. When Judd’s wife, Jane (Frances Fisher), tells everyone at dinner that Judd felt the actors’ “hearts weren’t in it,” it’s more than just the thoughts of a former high school Curly. There’s an undercurrent there as well: This is a production presented by black actors playing roles that were written for, and traditionally played by, white actors. Perhaps there’s more going on both in that critique and in their performances.
But that moment is, I think, a key element in understanding just what is happening with Watchmen. This isn’t going to be a series where our good guys are fully good and our white supremacist villains are straight-up villains. There are shades of grey throughout the episode, and this moment encapsulates things on a microlevel. Judd Crawford is, on the whole, a good guy. I mean, it’s Don Johnson. He’s almost always the fun, breezy, good dude (which is what makes he heel turns all the more effective). He’s fighting to protect those who need protection and he wants to wipe out an odious terrorist organization from his land. But when challenged on a personal level, he falters. Sure, it’s not a crime to dislike a production of a musical – I know I’ve been guilty of that many times. But there’s just something a bit odd about saying what he said regarding this production.
And it doesn’t help that Lindelof specifically chose the name Judd for the character and then connected him so closely to Oklahoma. For those who haven’t seen the show lately, Judd is the “villain” of the piece in traditional stagings, who is killed by Curly, the musical’s “hero,” and whose death is foretold in the song “Poor Judd is Dead,” a duet between a drunk Judd and Curly and the song that played at the episode’s close. Judd Crawford may be dead, but that’s an awful lot of complex symbolism to pile onto a single character if you weren’t planning on unpacking it at least a bit moving forward. Sorry for the musical theatre history lesson, folks, but I don’t believe in coincidences when watching a series like this one.
So, to recap, we have a masked white supremacist terrorist organization (Seventh Kalvary) clashing with a masked police force that is supplemented by former cops/military personnel that have secret masked identities in a city that once saw white, Klan associated terrorists massacre black men, women, and children. That’s a powder keg if there ever was one, and the fuse was certainly lit with the murder of Judd Crawford at the close of the episode. This is going to be one wild, if difficult to watch, ride.
Final Thoughts:
— Lest you think I’m neglecting talking about the masked vigilante squad, let’s take a few moments to discuss them. While the episode didn’t spell out exactly who else was under the masks beyond our heroine Angela Abar/Sister Night (Regina King, reuniting with Lindelof, with whom she worked on The Leftovers, and giving a great performance) and our supporting/Rorschach-lite hero Wade/Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson, perfectly cast), it’s pretty clear were dealing with folks who have “retired” from the police force or some other realm of protecting the public safety and are moonlighting by doing the things that cops cannot typically do (breaking down doors and interrogating suspects in black sites around the area). It’s an interesting concept that is so central to comic heroes: While some tend to have super human powers (in this world, that would be Doctor Manhattan, who was briefly seen in a news clip), the majority in Watchmen are just normal folks who are highly trained (or super rich, a la Batman/Iron Man/Ozymandias). But, inevitably, the question becomes how much power these people should be allowed to have if they operate outside of or above the law. In the Watchmen graphic novel, they were eventually banned and people were not allowed to wear masks. Have those laws been reversed? Are these squads of vigilantes allowed because they work in concert with sanctioned city police departments? I suspect we’ll find out.
— What happened to those old heroes? Well, one seems to be living in seclusion in a country manor (that would be Jeremy Irons as Adrian Veidet, who is not, in fact, dead as the newspaper headline says), celebrating a mysterious anniversary with a strangely subservient staff around him. And I suspect he won’t be the only member of the old guard we will meet (okay, I know he won’t be, since HBO spoiled that in a press release that got widely picked up, but I won’t spoil it here).
— Louis Gossett Jr.’s wheelchair bound character Will Reeves’ (aka the little boy from the massacre) mysterious appearance at the site of Crawford’s lynching was just plain strange. It’s thrilling to see Gossett Jr. get a role that he can sink his teeth into, and I’m excited to see just how he is tied into the greater story here.
— When writing about a series that deals in a very visceral way with racial issues, I would be amiss if I didn’t note that while the Abar’s are a black couple, their children are not black. I don’t know if there’s a larger story-based reason for this, or if it’s simply just the way things are. But I thought it deserved at least a cursory mention.
— The other major question I have: Are the Seventh Kalvary known for actively killing cops, or was the shooting of the cop in the traffic stop simply a matter of self-preservation? I wasn’t particularly clear if there was a pattern of attacking all police officers or just those of color (since Angela was also targeted in the past, and we don’t know which other officers might have been shot in that attack). I assume this will be clarified down the road, but it’s something to keep in mind moving forward.
— Finally, something to keep in mind while watching the rest of season one: Damon Lindelof shows tend to be defined by a focus on how their characters respond to tragedy. On Lost, it was the through line of the series. On The Leftovers, it was the building block on which the entire series rested. What the characters lost and what that allowed them to discover (about themselves, each other, the world, humanity, faith, etc.) was, ultimately, the story. Here, we’ve been presented with a great deal of loss: the massacre, the loss of innocence for little Will, loss of identity for the cops/vigilantes (both new and old)/ Seventh Kalvary members, the death of Judd Crawford – hell, even the loss of Oklahoma as an example of white frontier spirit to something else when the cast is made up of black actors. Pay attention to how each of these losses impacts both the greater story and the characters within it. I’m not a betting person, but if I were, I’d put money down that exploring this will deepen the story beyond the surface and give you a look into the heart of the series.
