I assume that if you’re reading this, you’ve read the first part. If not, it is here.
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Here’s some room to give you a chance to click away if you haven’t read Watchmen or if you’re not caught up on the show.
Confirmed(-ish) Information
I’ll discuss these in more detail later. This is just to keep track.
One: The servants of the Lord of a Country Manor are clones or duplicates of some kind.
Two: The chief of police does seem to be involved in the racist history of Tulsa/America in some way.
Okay, onto the episode proper. As a reminder, I’m mainly going to be discussing things that are less obvious than “ah, a smiley face is here,” or, if I do discuss those more obvious things, I’m going to try to have something not-so-obvious to say about it. So if you’re wondering why I didn’t talk about something obvious (for instance, an owl costume and a pirate costume in the Abar household… that’s why.
Circles
Circles are a major visual motif in Watchmen, evoking the loaded symbolic meaning of the smiley-face/clock/hydrogen imagery (about which more later), but they mostly occur as a reminder of the synchronicity of the events in the comic. Or, often, they’re just circles.
“A Vast and Insidious Conspiracy”
Will claims that he has given Angela information, so let’s look at what he says.
He claims to be the one who lynched the chief of police.
Dr. Manhattan may be able to “look like us,” contrary to what most people think about his abilities.
He says that if he told Angela about the conspiracy, her “head would explode.” Is this simply a colorful turn of phrase, or also a clue?
The chief of police had “skeletons in his closet.”
“I can manipulate material with my mind.” Mild psychic powers are already canon in Watchmen, so it’s possible we may see a full-fledged psychic.
“Long time since I been home.”
It’s tempting to read his insistence on doling out the information bit by bit as a little meta-joke on Lindelof’s part, as well.
One interesting piece of characterization that occurs in this scene is Angela’s ice-cold acting when she supposedly learns about the chief’s death via a phone call.
The Silhouette; The Newsstand
The silhouette of the lovers is a recurring graffito in Watchmen, a particularly grim bit of foreshadowing. One character notes that it reminds him of Hiroshima.
This silhouette is next to a newsstand, and the newsstand in the graphic novel also had a silhouette painted nearby. Interestingly, the font on the newsstand is the same font used for the German leaflet—a modified form of Windsor.
The girl picking up the newspapers and the newsstand operator refer to an unnamed character. This is almost certainly the head of Trieu Industries, mentioned in supplemental material on HBO’s website.
The newsstand operator tells the girl that the Nova Express won’t be in until the afternoon. In the graphic novel, on the day of Dr. Manhattan’s TV interview, the Nova Express was held back so that a reporter from the paper could confront Dr. Manhattan on live television before they published a story alleging that he was a health risk. This could be a simple reference, or it could be an indication that something similar is going to occur.
The “White Night” Flashback
I want to talk about an interesting detail in the flashback: Angela has straightened hair. In the present day, she wears it in what appears to be a less treated state. My assumption is that this is meant to indicate her defiance toward the Seventh Kavalry—which I think is a thoughtful detail.
The large question this flashback leaves us with, of course, is this: how did Angela survive the attack?
Her husband practically disappears from the scene, but the most plausible scenario (on the surface, anyway) is that he managed to get the drop on the second assailant. However, a later detail makes this less likely, unless Cal has secrets of his own.
If the Kavalry member decided to spare her, it raises the question of why he would. The most likely explanation, with the information we currently have, is that Crawford was a member of the Kavalry, and that he was the second assailant. The shot appears to have been carefully constructed to blur (and to take advantage of the darker lighting setup) at just the moment(s) necessary to obscure any detail a viewer may be able to make out—it’s difficult to even say for certain what color the second assailant’s eyes are. Crawford seems to have had a soft spot for her, but it is unlikely that any member of the Kavalry—acting as a member of the group—would spare Angela Abar. Additionally, the presence of the first assailant complicates matters, and makes it unlikely that this was some sort of clever bluff, although it’s possible it was a split-second decision.
If Crawford was a member of the Kavalry, it also means the story he tells Angela of his survival is a cover: we’ve already seen that the members of the Seventh Kavalry are willing to die for their cause, meaning that his “assailant” was sent on a suicide mission. At the time of the attack, Crawford was a lieutenant. After the attack, he was made the interim chief of police.
In the hospital, Crawford tells Angela: “You got your guy, too.” Surely if there had been a second assailant that Cal knew about and disarmed (or killed), he would have mentioned it to Crawford, and Crawford wouldn’t be referring to a singular assailant.
There is, however, a third option for what happened to the second assailant. Crawford also says that he thinks “there’s somebody up there lookin’ out for ya.” While this could be an innocuous phrase, Dr. Manhattan has the power to teleport or instantly destroy anyone, and he (apparently) “lives on fuckin’ Mars,” as Angela says earlier in the episode. This option would explain why no one else seems to be aware of the second assailant.
The supplemental material for this episode mentions that there were “three survivors” of the “White Night.” Since this clearly does not include spouses, the most likely candidate for the third is Looking Glass.
The Greenwood Center for Cultural Heritage
I’m not entirely sure how Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a literary critic in our world, ends up as Secretary of the Treasury. I’m also worried about what the show may be saying by putting him in charge of reparations in this fictional universe. Although if the writers mean to instead cause the viewer to recall the events surrounding the Obama “Beer Summit,” I think that could count as clever.
It’s also worth noting that many items from the depiction of the Tulsa Massacre in the first episode show up in the Greenwood Center, although it remains to be seen if the show will develop any further symbolism with them. The camera does seem to take care to focus on a leopard-print coat in both episodes.
The Manor Appears Again
Topher is constructing a building which appears to be similar to the country manor Mr. Country Manor is the lord of. Dr. Manhattan appeared to be constructing a similar structure on Mars in the first episode, and the show actually links Dr. Manhattan to this appearance of the manor (or a manor, at any rate) as well: the toy Topher is using is called “Magna-hattan Blocks.”
Angela’s speech about lollipops and rainbows actually comes across as a kind of Rorschach-esque approach: black-and-white thinking was his whole deal (although his philosophy is not without its own contradictions).
American Hero Story
There’s two things we’ve got to discuss about American Hero Story: the content, and the introduction to it. Oh, and also its function in the larger narrative. Three things, then.
First of all: what the hell is this doing here?
In a Vulture interview published before the first episode aired, Lindelof said something about how liberals like regulations too much, and this really seems to be a heavy-handed “trigger warnings” joke, with no deeper purpose. It’s possible that it is meant to illustrate how governing content is misguided—there’s a shot of Kavalry members working on an explosive vest while watching American Hero Story—but the show also portrays the Seventh Kavalry as being directly inspired by Rorschach, so… it’s not that misguided? It’s possible that this is a skewering of priorities in social justice circles, which I could understand, if not entirely agree with, but there’s too little information to say for sure. At the moment, I’m treating it as I do the “satire” in Grand Theft Auto: it’s commentary-shaped, not actual commentary.
And, for what it’s worth: HBO puts trigger warnings on its shows. They have a “Rape” content warning. It was used in the second season of The Leftovers, a show… that Damon Lindelof was the showrunner for.
Also, the way this fictional universe would have progressed seems a little off. The way the show explains the more (on the surface) “progressive” mainstream culture in America is that Veidt funded a lot of progressive candidates in the 1992 election. That (kind of) explains Democratic candidates being elected, but not a 2019 government far more aggressively “progressive” than even the most leftist candidate running in our reality. Surely neoliberalism, not progressivism, would be the dominant political philosophy? Perhaps this show is going to say something deeper about the political situation, but at this point, actively expecting that requires a leap of faith.
Second of all: the content of the episode.
In Watchmen, excerpts from Hollis Mason’s autobiography form most of what we know (and don’t know) about Hooded Justice. Mason mentions that a body washed up in Boston which was presumed to be that of circus strongman Rolf Müller, and Mason muses that Müller may have been Hooded Justice, as both men disappeared around the same time, although it is ultimately unclear which details, if any, are reliable. The makers of AHS appear to have gone with the theory that Hooded Justice did not die circa 1955, and that we’re even trying to parse the intentions of these unknown fictional screenwriters writing this semi-fictional show within the “real” world of the actual HBO show is part of what makes the narrative function of AHS so difficult to determine.
It’s also worth noting that the show seems to have sensationalized the violence from the account presented in Mason’s book.
Here’s what the FBI agent who’s the source of the supplemental material has to say about the show. The agent seems kind of like a tool.
Third of all: the way the show functions thematically.
And here we come to a bit of a tricky situation: this appears to be the narrative device that Lindelof mentioned would take the place of Tales of the Black Freighter, but much of it doesn’t seem to be functioning quite the same way. Most of the parallels between Tales and the rest of Watchmen were thematic, or meant to serve as echoes of actions taking place in the “real world” of the story. American Hero Story interacts with the rest of the show in a much more direct way. For instance, the headline on the newspaper (pictured above) doesn’t really mean anything in AHS: it’s just used to establish the day of the scene. But it does mean something to viewers who have read Watchmen. It’s a neat little connection, but it’s not performing the same role (at least, not yet). (Also, and this is beside the point: Orson Welles’s name is spelled incorrectly throughout the article on the front page. And the newsboy’s hands would be much more ink-stained.) Another example is an employee in the grocery store holding romaine lettuce—which Looking Glass said was (he believed) the kind of lettuce the Kavalry member threw at the cop in the first episode. That’s not so much a parallel as it is just “the same symbol.”
The third major example of this is the way the show portrays the body which Hooded Justice claims to have used to fake his death: its left foot is bare, just as Crawford’s was after he was lynched. Are we meant to think that Crawford’s not really dead? Or are we meant to link this to the work of Hooded Justice? Do the makers of AHS actually know something about what’s happening in the world of the Watchmen show?
Slightly more in line (but not much more) with the way Tales functions in the narrative of Watchmen is a meta-joke from Lindelof: “I’m not ready to tell you who I really am. If I did, you wouldn’t watch until the end.”
There’s always the potential that things which do not appear to have thematic resonance actually do, however, which is how Tales functions in Watchmen. This is just a tentative assessment. It’s only the second episode, after all.
What does function more as Tales does in the graphic novel is the brief monologue Hooded Justice delivers, which is overlaid with footage of Angela in an L-cut. In the graphic novel, Tales most closely functions as a parallel to (and commentary on) Veidt’s actions. Angela is (so far) the protagonist of the show, not the antagonist. Also, the monologue has similarities to Rorschach’s reasoning for wearing a mask. Probably worth pointing out is that Hooded Justice slips into calling it a “skin” that he can finally feel comfortable in.
Visiting Jane
Angela brings roses when she visits Jane; in the graphic novel, Moloch lays roses on Edward Blake’s grave.
We see Senator Keene here; the supplemental material for this episode notes that he was the driver of the amendment to the Keene Act that allowed police officers to wear masks, and that he was an ally of Crawford’s.
The Klan Robe
Angela finds the Klan robe hidden behind a wall in the closet; this parallels Rorschach’s discovery of Blake’s costume behind a false wall in his wardrobe. If we’re meant to link them thematically, and not just as similar events, this suggests that the Klan robe is Crawford’s, not his father’s/grandfather’s, although the sheriff’s badge would suggest it was his grandfather’s.
I mentioned in my previous post that race is a very… submerged element in the graphic novel. I detailed most of the relatively few instances it comes up directly, but there is one more major one: the front-page editorial of New Frontiersman.
This is the paper that Rorschach read regularly. The graphic novel doesn’t really do much with this idea—tracing masked vigilantism to the Klan—and it’s possible that the show won’t ultimately do much with it, either. But I think it’s encouraging that the writers have recognized this as a thread worth following from the original story. (In fact, this editorial is quoted in supplementary material for the first episode.)
By the way, the supplemental material for this episode includes some detail about Crawford that does not paint him in the most innocent of lights. I mean, beyond the whole “hidden Klan robe” thing.
(I initially thought this might be a possible descendant of Rolf Müller, but then I realized that this refers to Bob Mueller, which is a scathing inclusion, although I’m not sure that it was meant to be.)
Welllllll, hm. That would seem to place his family right at the center of the Tulsa Massacre. (One horrifying fact is that the sheriff deputized the mob, as another supplemental document notes.) This grandfather who was involved in the sheriff’s department is almost certainly the one in the picture Crawford keeps in the closet. I think he may also appear in the Tulsa Massacre sequence in the first episode.
A sequence which started with a film of Bass Reeves rounding up the crooked sheriff of a town.
All of this is, to put it mildly, what people in this 2019 might call “bad optics.” At the very least, it means that Crawford failed to grapple with the legacy of racism within Tulsa law enforcement—to do so would mean confronting his family’s ugly legacy. At the worst, it suggests that he was an active participant in the Klan, the Seventh Kavalry, or a related group.
The Lord of a Country Manor Puts on a Show
I don’t have much to say about this sequence at the moment other than to note the watch imagery, which I planned to address here, but which I think I am now going to make its own post. (I’m tired.)
One thing I noticed is that there appears to be an odd buzzing noise in the soundtrack as Mr. Country Manor rides his horse to the tomato tree. It reminds me a bit of the whispers in Lost, although… those turned out to mean basically nothing. I may have to go back and examine the soundtrack for the previous episode in more detail. The only connection I can think of at the moment is that in the first episode, the servants mentioned that he’d provided them with honeycomb. And… and bees buzz.
The Gordian Knot gets a mention during the play; it was/is important to Veidt, who viewed it as (more or less) the creation of lateral thinking. It was also the name of a lock company used by Dreiberg, which was almost certainly completely destroyed in the psychic bombing of New York City.
The recounting of Osterman’s transformation into Dr. Manhattan is not entirely accurate, but given that it does result in a horribly burned body, that is probably focusing on the wrong detail.
One thing that is definitely going to come up again: Mr. Country Manor says that they’ll have a use for (the former) Mr. Philips’s body “before too long,” and presumably this also applies to the other dead bodies in the cellar. What would Mr. Country Manor need tons of burned bodies for?
Arresting Will
If Will is Hooded Justice, as I have speculated, his “friends in high places” could theoretically refer to Dr. Manhattan, although Hooded Justice disappeared before Dr. Manhattan existed. I think it’s more likely to refer to Laurie Blake. Hooded Justice was the one who interrupted Blake’s (attempted?) rape of her mother (and, incidentally, I anticipate talking more about this in the analysis of the next episode), and it is extremely possible that she would help him. Perhaps her crime-fighting career with Dreiberg meant her paths crossed with Hooded Justice (assuming that’s who Will is).
How did Will get out of the cuffs? Maybe he really does have psychic powers. It would also explain how his rescuers knew to come find him.
One thing I did not note in the previous post is that Will’s outfit includes a hood.
A Few Other Details
It’s possible that Rolf Müller is related to the “Frau Mueller” who appears in the opening.
The windows on the manor Topher builds may be similar to the windows in the building shown when Laurie meets Pirate Jenny and Red Scare, but it may just be that I’m tired and I feel that I’ve forgotten to mention something important.
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