Things are looking up! Not for any of the characters in Watchmen, obviously, but for us as viewers. I’m actually feeling under the weather at the moment, so this is going to be more of an overview of the episode rather than a step-by-step look into its use of symbolism and interactions with the original text. Interestingly, despite this episode being so heavily reliant on material from the graphic novel, it mostly is doing its own thing, which is actually what I’ve been wanting the show to do, so there’s far fewer references to the graphic novel than in other episodes, even though one would think that the opposite might be the case.
I’m excited to talk about this episode because the show is finally following up on some of the hints that it has a reason to exist as its own thing. For starters, let’s talk about Hooded Justice.
Hooded Justice
This episode confirms what I (and I’m sure other people on the internet) have suspected since the first episode: Will Reeves is Hooded Justice. But let’s talk about the way in which the show presents him being Hooded Justice.
To start with, as Hooded Justice, Reeves wears a mask beneath a mask. The makeup he wears for this under-mask is the reverse of Angela’s mask: it is white, and it is part of his performance of whiteness as Hooded Justice. This is actually a really clever use of the literal power of comic book imagery, and it weaves together a lot of strands of writing about blackness, comic books, and blackness in comic books. For instance, there’s W. E. B. Du Bois writing about double consciousness in The Souls of Black Folk, there’s Frantz Fanon writing about comic books in a work literally titled Black Skin, White Masks, and there’s the academic Marc Singer writing about how comic book tropes can present situations which are metaphorical in real life as literal in superhero stories (in an article which references Fanon’s work in its title).
Here’s two excerpts from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page about Du Bois’s writing on double consciousness, which is an… adequate overview for the moment (I’m really feeling so sick right now).
Here’s Fanon:
And Singer’s article is, unfortunately, behind a paywall, but he touched on similar ideas in this blog post. Here’s the most relevant parts:
Honestly, even though I could write about this episode a lot, I’m not sure this is the right format for it. Although that’s maybe just because I am under the weather.
The other thing about Hooded Justice is that he learns some very difficult lessons in this episode, but I’m worried about what the show may have been trying to signal with Bass Reeves showing up as he made Crawford hang himself. I’m also worried that, with only three episodes left, some of the more tantalizing threads from this episode will end up under-developed.
One thing I thought they should have included: whatever their version is of what happened when Hooded Justice interrupted The Comedian’s assault of Sally Jupiter.
Stylistic Choices
There are a few stylistic choices that are good, and a few that aren’t. (This is a much better use of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” than Mad Men’s.) I liked most of the song choices and the way they were used, and almost all of the digital stitches joining shots were seamless (or, at least, pretty dang good).
What I didn’t like as much were the flashbacks-within-the-flashback, such as when Reeves flashes back to the Tulsa attack when hearing about the premise of Superman. I liked that they included Action Comics in the show, and I’m mad at myself for not spotting all the Superman parallels in the Tulsa Massacre sequence, but the show cutting back to what we’ve already seen felt a little on-the-nose. Even if the purpose is to show that Angela is seeing these images, I think it detracts from the episode more than it adds. The same thing happens when Hooded Justice burns down the storehouse. We get it!
Similarly, I felt some of the racism from Captain Metropolis was a little heavy-handed. Which seems like an odd thing to say, but hear me out! I wouldn’t have minded the callback to the “BLACK UNREST” card from the graphic novel on its own, but the actor emphasized the words so hard that I’m surprised the subtitles for that part weren’t underlined. It was as if the character realized he was racist and he wanted everyone to know it. The line wasn’t delivered as if the character saw nothing objectionable in it. And that weakens the point.
I liked the way they used color during the flashback sequences, although I’m worried that this is part of the reason they used the imagery of Schindler’s List in the previous episode, which may make that whole thing an even more questionable choice.
I don’t know if the show keeps making these choices because of a lack of confidence in the material or a lack of confidence in the audience, but I wish it would stop.
Other Flashback Things
The relationship between Reeves and his wife isn’t entirely clear. (I thought her character was extremely underwritten.) Also, I’m pretty sure there are a few key missing parts to his story that we’ll learn about later.
I’m not sure about the movie projector mesmerism thing being converted to, like… just a flashlight?
I’m not sure what happened to the step stool that Judd uses to hang himself.
Further Thoughts
The use of American Hero Story isn’t nearly as focused as the use of Black Freighter in the graphic novel, but I think I figured out part of what the show is doing with it. On the surfaces, American Hero Story appears to be a Ryan Murphy pastiche, but that’s not everything they’re doing with it. The speed-ramping in the scene shown in this episode gives it away, particularly when you learn this from the show’s Wikipedia page:
We didn’t get many more pieces of obvious information relating to whatever Lady Trieu’s planning, but it occurred to me that those “Call Dr. Manhattan” phone booths may be able to do other things than send calls to Mars. I think it’s also possible that the Veidt stuff takes place pre-2019 (and boy, I’m not really looking forward to getting back to that in the next episode).
Conclusion
There’s some other symbolic stuff going on in this episode that I haven’t really touched on, and this is definitely probably going to be the briefest post I write about an episode, but this has given me hope for the series!
I may return to this post and add some things. As I said: I’m sick. I didn’t even rewatch the whole episode (as I usually do at least once before writing these). I need to go lie down now or something.