Watchmen

  • Guest, it's time once again for the hotly contested and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and fill out your bracket!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Once again, only you can decide!

spronk

FPS noob
22,478
25,383
I am a huge sucker for alternate history kind of stuff, and this delivers that in spades. It takes place in 2019, but America won in Vietnam which is now an American state, Nixon was a great president (he's even on Mt Rushmore), Robert Redford is the current president, there are no mobile phones or internet, giant blimps patrol the skies, cops are ?good? and under attack by ??, etc. Fantastic world building.

I have no fucking idea whats really going on though, the first episode jumps around a lot and you don't really connect with any character and you don't really understand at all what anyones motivations or actions or background is. So it does an extremely poor job at actually telling a cohesive story, but Its interesting enough that I'll watch more. I don't really like Regina King and she's about 40% of the screen time so thats not great. I'm not even sure what she is supposed to be.

It doesn't feel at all like a comic book show right now, but you can see the comic book underpinnings. Right now the show feels more like a "what if racial tensions were ramped up 10x from today? How would that look? What if cops were the good guys?" I could see a lot of modern day online woketavists hating that part, but there is also a lot of stuff in here to piss off "racism isn't real" folks.

I went in expecting an unwatchable mess filled with twitter cliches, it wasn't that bad but it wasn't really good so far either. Just a setup. After 1 episode of The Boys I was fully erect and wanted to binge through the entire series. After 1 episode of this I'm more like "meh", I'll watch more when I can but if HBO deleted the show I wouldn't care either.

Any blue dongs?

There is a brief shot of Dr. Manhattan on mars on a background TV just fucking around with some structure but other than that, nope. I need to read some wiki entries or something on the watchmen, I really have no idea who is who or how they tie into the movie.
 
Last edited:

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,351
4,634
Can't believe they had squid. I wonder if it's using that ending to the comic also rather than the original movie ending. It was mentioned in the interrigation too, asking if he thought it was an interdimensional attack or a government conspiracy.

Really liked this, for all the world building Spronk mentioned. Looks like Irons is this story's Ozymandias and/or Manhattan?
 

Harshaw

Throbbing Member
21,214
100,371
Can't believe they had squid. I wonder if it's using that ending to the comic also rather than the original movie ending. It was mentioned in the interrigation too, asking if he thought it was an interdimensional attack or a government conspiracy.

Really liked this, for all the world building Spronk mentioned. Looks like Irons is this story's Ozymandias and/or Manhattan?


The show is all based on what happened in the comic and not the movie.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Lithose

Buzzfeed Editor
25,946
113,035
I have no fucking idea whats really going on though, the first episode jumps around a lot and you don't really connect with any character and you don't really understand at all what anyones motivations or actions or background is. So it does an extremely poor job at actually telling a cohesive story, but Its interesting enough that I'll watch more.

So a standard Damon Lindelof TV show.
 
  • 4Like
  • 1Worf
Reactions: 4 users

Jorren

Maximum Derek
<Bronze Donator>
1,429
1,337
I think they could have uses a 2 hour first episode to flesh it out a bit. The world building is pretty cool. They did not fuck around with dropping us into the theme "Oh shit, you are gonna start here? Dayum..."
 

Qhue

Trump's Staff
7,465
4,413
So I had no idea that the Tulsa Race Riot off 1921 Wasa real thing, so thanks to this show for educating me on that issue. You can see why they would actively surpress that from the public for several decades, especially with attacks from goddamn planes...

I spent a good portion of the episode explaining what was going on to the people who watched with me, not because I had any prior knowledge about the series, but because they did very little hand holding for the viewer. I feel that anyone who had read the original more than once would have caught the same things I did, but they were clearly aimed above the head of a casual viewer. None of these things were integral to the plot itself, but rather clarified how this fits into the broader context.
 

spronk

FPS noob
22,478
25,383
yeah the 1921 Tulsa Riot is also known as the destruction of Black Wall Street, it was set off when a black teenager was accused of assaulting a white teenage girl, white mobs led by the KKK basically destroyed a successful black community in retaliation. The show mentions reparations a few time (one kid calls them "Redfordations", i assume a play on President Robert Redford being the one that made it happen), I wonder why in this timeline white America decides to give reparations to black America. Its also interesting to think about how reparations didn't really solve racial tensions and maybe made things way, way worse.

I just read this 1 page "summary at the end of the comics" which kinda gave me more context, like Richard Nixon did away with presidential term limits so that explains why his face is kinda everywhere. Need to find a good youtube video that summarizes Watchmen before episode 2.
 

Qhue

Trump's Staff
7,465
4,413
The bit about Vietnam being the 51st state is in the show but very subtle during the talk that Sister Night gives at the career day event.

Seems clear that Louis Gosset Jr is Hooded Justice, who didn't get a heck of a lot of coverage in the original comic.

What isn't clear is whether or not Judd Crawford is also Dan Dreiberg. It would parallel the comic if he was and also explain why Laurie shows up next week.
 
  • 1Salty
Reactions: 1 user

Rengak

Blackwing Lair Raider
2,879
2,761
yeah the 1921 Tulsa Riot is also known as the destruction of Black Wall Street, it was set off when a black teenager was accused of assaulting a white teenage girl, white mobs led by the KKK basically destroyed a successful black community in retaliation. The show mentions reparations a few time (one kid calls them "Redfordations", i assume a play on President Robert Redford being the one that made it happen), I wonder why in this timeline white America decides to give reparations to black America. Its also interesting to think about how reparations didn't really solve racial tensions and maybe made things way, way worse.

I just read this 1 page "summary at the end of the comics" which kinda gave me more context, like Richard Nixon did away with presidential term limits so that explains why his face is kinda everywhere. Need to find a good youtube video that summarizes Watchmen before episode 2.

Here is a quick high point summary of the comics by a TV review who has seen 6 episodes.

 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

jooka

marco esquandolas
<Bronze Donator>
14,367
6,087
I liked it well enough, certainly will be watching the whole season just off this first episode.
 
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 1 user

Kiki

Log Wizard
2,224
1,786
I liked it, it was gritty, but I do regret that I have no idea what's going on with the squid and shit like that, because I never read the comics. I'll check those links.
 

Arbitrary

Tranny Chaser
26,789
70,670
I liked it, it was gritty, but I do regret that I have no idea what's going on with the squid and shit like that, because I never read the comics. I'll check those links.

WELL YOU BETTER CATCH THE FUCK UP BECAUSE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS ABOUT TO FINISH. IT'S BEEN BUILDING UP TO SUPERMAN PUNCHING DR MANHATTAN FOR LIKE A YEAR NOW

Also it's canon. Look out motherfuckers.

superwatch.png


Before Watchmen wasn't very good you can skip that.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

spronk

FPS noob
22,478
25,383
did anyone else feel like jeremy irons participates regularly in a devils threesome with his two servants
 
  • 1Solidarity
  • 1Worf
Reactions: 1 users

Goatface

Avatar of War Slayer
9,172
14,237
premiere drew 800k viewers and .25 in 18-49 demo, with 1.5 million total viewers on all platforms