Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

It hope this chapter of the story basically wraps up, with some questions left open-ended and DL comes back in 5 or 6 years with The Watchmen we need then.
No rush.

In the interim - 5 years of deep Lube Guy origin story.

There are so many things that have to get resolved or at least addressed in the next two eps – why Trieu couldn't or didn't warn Angela long beforehand that Manhattan was a target, for example – that it's hardly worth speculating about them (Lindelof has said that the audience should be feeling 'panic' at this point but all will get sorted out) ...

But the Veidt scene this week bugged me, for not advancing that storyline at all that I could see. We doubled down on his contempt for the environment and the clones, we learned again that time passes glacially (the trial took an entire year) and that he's frustrated by the time but also resigned to endure it, it's reinforced again that he is the guy behind the squid, we discover again that the only rule for this environment is that he and the clones can't leave. (Given that, the only thing he has to work with is the stupidity of the jailers, so he must be conning them to some degree.) We may find out that he's inside his own statue carbonite-style being fed invented, not experienced, memories, or that he really is on Europa in the future or in the past and that he's returned via meteorite, but this week didn't get any closer to any of that or move the ball appreciably

So is Trieu busting him out? Or keeping him in? Is Veidt her dad, or the Comedian?

"We may find out that he's inside his own statue carbonite-style being fed invented, not experienced, memories" this is my wife's theory

ohhhhhhhhh

curious too about whatever crashed into the farmfield that trieu needed ownership of the land to claim

I'm colder on the idea that Trieu is related to, or even is, Veidt, because to have Trieu's accomplishments be the mere result of being possessed by someone (an older white guy) smarter than her devalues any agency or audience interest the character would have had. So I think she's her own woman and is this generation's equivalent of Veidt, rather than being him (Acquiring all of his patents and Pyramid-this-and-that companies would be extremely helpful, though)

Veidt's experiences being generated would explain the dreamlike tone and general wackiness (in favor of the statue), but given that Trieu's things seem to be vivariums, clones, time, memory, and 'micro-fusion' satellites, the environment could be real (in favor of Europa). I'm thinking Veidt is arriving from space at the farm, but when that happens or why Trieu'd be interested, I don't know. Manhattan could either be on Mars in episode one through time travel (though why Mars and not Europa), or he could just be a Trieu projection to distract people into not thinking he's on Earth. There are so many red herrings I can't keep track of them all. The only thing I would say is the Veidt sequences are most likely running from 2012-2019, since he vanished then (nobody'd seen him since 2007, but it wasn't until 2012 when Trieu's people tried to meet him and couldn't find him), so you could consider them an extended flashback, which should dovetail to the 'present' of the show somehow, probably by having him leave and arrive in the same sequence.

xp lol maybe the clone bit is real and they got fed up with his farting and fired him back at earth in statue form

I think Lindelof's said the farm sequence happens when it happens, eg after the audience has already seen the statue, and not in the past, but I should double-check that. I do enjoy the idea of the clones creating a guided missile out of him, though, something like that may still happen

It may be that Trieu knew very well Manhattan was pretending to be human, and decided to leave him right there, because otherwise his Total Timeline Awareness would make it impossible for her to do something like use a giant machine to manufacture a new timeline or rewind history (her father will 'be here soon'), or trap everyone in some timeless Eternal Sunshine memory aleph. So him being warned he was about to be fragged by the Kavalry too late to do anything about it must factor in to her plans somehow. (Haven't seen 'next time' trailers, so I have no idea what's coming.)

I guess if Bian starts telling Veidt stories suddenly, we'll know Trieu's his daughter, and then he'd really 'be here soon' since she's taken delivery of him, but I'm kind of hoping she's not related to him

"trap everyone in some timeless Eternal Sunshine memory aleph"

something on this lines makes sense... the villain trapping everyone in a mass delusion would echo the original.

plus trieu bemoaning how everyone had misused Nostalgia to relive trauma rather than exorcise it seemed like a tip off that she might want to do something like this...

and really fits the show's big themes about collective trauma and supressing memories

Yeah, that was kind of what I was thinking, that what she might be up to is giving everyone the same omniscient everything-at-once experience of time that Manhattan has (in Manhattan's case this distances him from humanity but her hope might be that it creates a sort of pan-empathy that makes conflict seem self-wounding) – if that's true though it makes her needing to clone and recreate her own mother to have her present nonsensical

Bian: 'It tells time' – not 'tell' in the sense of quantitatively designating, but 'tell' as in qualitatively explain or relate

Of course, Christ knows how people are going to experience this in the moment and how many trains will derail – if everyone is suddenly thrown into an Angelalike flashback, only the survivors will be more enlightened

for an omniscient being that's transcended time and space, Manhattan sure likes the ladies

they probably look like Picasso ladies to him

In the comics he's on this long arc of becoming more and more estranged from humanity, from ditching Janey for Laurie, to spawning duplicates of himself to concentrate on pleasing her while he conducts experiments, to forgetting she needs to breathe. He could easily compartmentalize all of his relations with Angela and be up to whatever he gets up to elsewhere

Thinking about it Trieu can't be thinking of throwing everyone into the aleph, it must be opt-in in some way, like a Nostalgia kiosk or clinic, otherwise why the emphasis on Oklahoma

I’ve found engaging in plot speculation to be less enjoyable, and sometimes more disappointing, over time

I would, however, find it entertaining if the giant machine makes everyone have the experience of being banged by the Dr. Manhattan dildo simultaneously

why the emphasis on Oklahoma

she figured out Dr. Manhattan was there?

here I sit
brokenhearted
watching Watchmen
and Ozymandias farted

(in other words, I'm finally caught up)

After listening to the rather good episode of The Nod podcast about Watchmen, I am going to check this, but is it any good? Will it make me crazy like Mr Robot does?

We'll have to wait for the finale to be sure, but Esmail and Lindelof are not that similar as showrunners imho

would crookshank

*fart*

having just caught up on this week's episode, it's increasingly obvious that the weak link in this show is when they try to shoot locations dressed up as elsewhere - the vietnam scenes in this one, and the new york / new jersey scenes from the hooded justice / looking glass origin episodes, look terrible and are extremely unconvincing

Idk the look of all that felt appropriately comic book-y. Didn’t seem out of place for this show.

saigon didn't bother me since we're obviously in a completely alternate reality.

my biggest problem (and I still enjoy the series for what it is) is the way it became over-expository as we went further on. I had to keep rewinding to make sure I was following each surprise development in the last one, and it took away from what I loved about the first three eps or so - the character focus, the way it used the Tulsa massacre to tie into modern racism, the Redfordations as a pejorative, how modern hate thrives on plausible deniability, with key members hiding their membership, and having leaders trying to curb the violence so their hate can reach a wider audience.

but I still really enjoyed the reveal in the last one, and making Hooded Justice black in ep 6, with the rest of the New Minutemen being as bigoted as the society he protects.

yeah there's been a pivot to explanatory exposition, to the extent that Laurie even seems to offer weary meta-commentary on it in the last episode; I'm inclined to think it's deliberate but I'm not sure what the purpose would be

I would assume that 10+ years after the end of the war (and after Vietnam had become a state?) Saigon would have been pretty thoroughly Westernized, even more so than it had been under the French.

Laurie's meta-commentary was at first a relief, but then kind of eye-rolly to me. "don't tell me your evil plan" has been used to Jedi handwave away excess exposition in too many shows/movies. "hey see even we know we're doing it, so it's ok to do it!".

I'm hoping though, that now that the bombshell is done, that it stabilizes a bit. i still liked the ep but I don't want too many more like it

welp not too many open questions left now!

I forgot this was on..welp guess im staying up

Stay for post credit but. Have they done that before? I usually don’t keep watching because I don’t want to see the spoilery “next week on” bit so kinda random that I caught it this week.

That was a first. My guess is they couldn't figure out a non disruptive way to work that into this episode. (they were right)

a god walks into abar

best episode of the series, I think?

still don't know who Lube Man is though

he's the one who shot at the outrigger

at this point I'm expecting that to get explained but tbh I'd way prefer a few things were left alone. how far we've come from Lost

prepare to be surprised when we find out that Petey is Lube Man next week

So Dr. M must have unwittingly transferred some of his powers to his adopted son, right?

I assume the swimming pool thing has something to do with that too

So Dr. M must have unwittingly transferred some of his powers to his adopted son, right?

He must have transferred them somewhere given all the talk about it; idk about "unwittingly" tho

I fully expect a scene of Regina King going full Akira next week

xpost well, if he was Cal at the time of transfer then I don't know why he would know what he was doing

we already saw the kid levitating stuff, so it must have happened in the tunnel period

one of the better straightforward explanations of the perception of time and causality I've seen on screen