Lady Trieu rules and I wish there was more of her.
So, after I’ve had some time I think the biggest offense is that Lady Trieu’s story got chopped. I feel like we needed to have more exposition as to why she was actually a good person because she’s literally Veidt but less murdery. Putting the audience on DrM’s side via their love story is kind of great, but really there’s no payoff for her ruining that other than, “oh smart/rich/successful woman/foreigner is untrustworthy,” which is like insane considering half this show is about right wing shit.
The parallels between Trieu and Veidt are pretty obvious, and he’s set up to kill her, and we’re set up to “get his back” despite spending the entire season being a piece of shit… and I just wish there was more said on it. And it feels like there should be more! The crazy rush to stop her feels like we were meant to be swept up in the moment, and it’s meant to critique us for being swept up in the moment when… a successful young foreign woman is on the verge of saving the world? IDK, man. Also, unceremoniously offing Nazis puts me on anyone’s side, but here especially it feels like she was set up against our emotions especially w/ the Angela/Jon lovestory.
Yeah like, I think from the outset the biggest single issue with this show is that it doesn’t have anything to say. It sets up a lot of interesting threads, that feel like they’re going to culminate in a meaningful message or point, then they don’t. I know this sounds ridiculous to say out loud, but, “Man this is just like Lost.”
There’s almost no articles that say anything negative about the show, but, this Decider bit nailed this down pretty well:
But seriously, what do we have here that we didn’t have before? Watchmen the original article had a lot to say about America, the Cold War, vigilantism, the right, the superhero genre, and the comics art form. Other than opening with the Tulsa Race Massacre—a big point in its favor—did Watchmen the TV show comment on politics in general or its own medium in particular with anything approaching Moore & Gibbons’s innovation, vision, and purpose? The puzzle pieces all fit, but what kind of picture are we looking at?
Like, Lady Trieu has a lot of interesting elements, and like you thought, I was entirely expecting her to get retribution on the U.S., especially since she created a way for memories to be perfectly preserved and passed down, so she herself likely carried memories of DM’s genociding of the Vietnamese. But then when it came time for her plan to be sprung, she didn’t really want revenge, or anything relating to the Vietnamese, so I guess that whole part of the story didn’t matter? It was just flavor? Why was Angela raised in Vietnam? Why did it matter that her parents were killed by a Vietnamese suicide bomber?
I was legit expecting a massive blue Lady Trieu to blow up the white house or something. Her plan didn’t even get off the ground.
The entire Veidt part of this show is similarly baffling, because, he does not change whatsoever throughout the course of the show, even after a good amount of every episode is devoted to watching him. I COMPLETELY expected Trieu’s spaceship to just catapult him directly into space, like he’d done to the “natives”, but nah, she flew him back, he gave a little half-hearted apology about not calling her his daughter, then he was home, fully free of any consequence for what he’d done. He then kills his daughter because she’s trying to do everything he’s tried to do his entire career? Remember when he made that tape where he laid out everything he wanted Redford to do? Like all those progressive initiatives? She could’ve, like she said, cleaned the water, solved world hunger, solved humanity from itself, like Veidt tried to do his entire life. Why wouldn’t he be on his daughter’s side?
It’s so fucking weird that the last episode of this show is, “all the ol’ boys are back, the hero team is back together, and they beat the bad guy,” without any subversion or twist at all.
Dr. Manhattan is the watchmaker’s son. So his kryptonite is in watches, the way Superman’s kryptonite is from Krypton. So the white nationalists manage to fully depower and imprison Dr. Manhattan by scavenging old watches and building a cage out of them.
there is no way they could make the trillionaire a hero and pretend to be relevant at all in 2019, even if (especially because?) they already made fascist cop lady the protagonist
They made the old white man trillionaire delinquent dad a hero.
Edit: Dog is a boomer and his daughter is a millennial and he kills her which seems like 2019 more than anything
One thing that’s really sticking in my brain: What was the point of the entire “Cyclops” storyline? Why not have it just be the KKK using the Rorschach thing to recruit? Why the hypnosis and mind-control stuff?
I’m trying to figure out what Keen Jr.'s full plan was, based on what he said in the final ep:
“First, President Redford took our guns. Then, he made us say sorry, over and over again. Sorry. Sorry, for the alleged sins of those who died decades before we were born. Sorry, for the color of our skin!”
“All we wanted was to, get cops in masks. Take some power back. Start ourselves a little ‘culture war.’ And if we control both sides of it, then, I could come riding in on a white horse, right into the white house.”
He then says his original plan was to get into the white house, but then they found out about Dr. Manhattan, and that changed the plan to “become Dr. Manhattan.”
So the original plan was to carry out the White Night, to “get cops in masks,” which would “create a culture war,” which he would “play both sides of” to look good and secure the presidency.
So the plan was to have the White Night make the cops extremely hostile toward his KKK cult, then, he, as a Senator, could publicly defeat his own KKK cult (like he did at the funeral), which would rocket him to popularity on his anti-white supremacy platform. Then, once he’s in office, he’d then introduce a lot of legislation that overtly supports white supremacy?
Also wouldn’t he be hated by the KKK at that point due to his “character” he was playing to play the other side? I mean I guess he could reveal his true nature to them, but then, they’d hate him for using them this whole time?
Weird-ass plan.
Ok, so
-
Cyclops not being the KKK mirrors how racism sheds its skin and turns into other things. There are overt and covert racist organizations in 2019, and non of them are KKK.
-
The culture war is exactly what’s needed to give legitimacy to any kind of racist bullshit. A biased mediator will only exacerbate the problems.
The idea that he presents one face to the world while winking to his shitty base is essentially Trump and far right wing politics. And it gets extra messy because “right wing politics” provide a smoke screen for it — something that I’m seeing every day here in Wisconsin, and I’m sure happens in any other battleground state.
Just realized… Lady Trieu was the daughter of Adrian Veidt, Angela Abar was the daughter of Hooded Justice, Dr. Manhattan has three kids, The Comedian’s daughter, Silk Spectre, is a main character, and Rorschach’s “children”, the Seventh Kalvary, all dress up like him.
This show literally was Watchmen Babies.
6 Likes
Good thread:
I don’t understand this point. They clearly had some racist cops on staff before the White Night and they didn’t only hire racist cops after the White Night. This shit is very adjacent to cops and racism, but I don’t think it ever takes a stance other than, “racist cops are dangerous”.
Edit: I keep thinking about how ridiculous this position is. There’s an entire storyline devoted to the history of racist cops perpetuating violence from everywhere between the public and to within their own ranks. The main character is essentially a pro violence cop from her childhood, and her entire arc is about giving that up.
That thread is the definition of a strawman argument. Maybe Daredevil had a racist storyline, and congrats on someone who figured that out, but come on wtf, that’s not what we’re talking about here.
Alt Shift X finally put out his Watchmen 2019 analysis. I really liked his videos on GoT and the original WM comic.
The analysis of WM2019 right alongside the original is something I’d have trouble doing on my own, but I think this helps.
1 Like
A bit about the video above — I always thought the WM show was a way to discuss people from the perspective of TV shows about super heroes just like the WM comic was a way to discuss people from the perspective of comic books. I could never really put the literary analysis behind it, but seeing ASX do it helps and justifies my thought.
That doesn’t mean much for my enjoyment — it just makes me feel kind of dumb? Like, I really enjoyed it while watching it, got a few things from it from thinking about it afterwards, and started to hate it for not doing things I wanted after that. This is pretty much exactly how I felt about the comic, actually.
But I do think that it helps me appreciate the WM show more. It helps me forgive how contrived or forced some things are. And it definitely helps me fill in the “but what does it all mean” about the show. Do I have to be a smarter watcher to enjoy more things like this? I don’t know. Maybe? Or is it not my fault for missing this stuff? I really don’t know. It does make me wonder how much I’m missing from other shows I’m watching, but, yeah…
Here’s to that HBO Now subscription and watching The Wire
Rewatching this, in light of recent events. Not that I ever liked cops, but going through this again I’m adopting a more cop-critical perspective, when my first watch was kind of preoccupied trying to watch for what the show wanted to do with its themes about the racist history of America. I remember really cooling down on the show as it reached the finale, but as I’m watching the early episodes and thinking about what it does to critique authority and power and governmentally or morally sanctioned violence I am optimistic that this rewatch will be better.
Right now I am pretty pleased and on board with it all. Though, there is something which has already happened that I’m kind of looking ahead at the later episodes and squinting about. It’s to do with Angela’s “pragmatic” black and white philosophy about doing what needs to be done because there are definitely bad people in the world, and Laurie’s nihilism that there is no such thing as a just or good act or person and everyone, even God, is just making justifications. I get both of these positions, and I am probably ambivalent to them in actuality. But I am watching carefully to see if there is a miraculous third option provided by the show or if the show is confident to work within this presented system of morality. If there is a third option, it better not be some neoliberal copaganda shit cause WOAH would that be a lame pay off to all this magical realism and the stylish complication of the morals of authority!!! Don’t fuck this up Damon!!
2 Likes
On rewatch, the building optimism around Angela’s grandmother coming to Viet Nam to take her home to Tulsa is just unbearable. Way too sad to go through with this knowledge 
1 Like