Television Who watches the Watchmen? (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?), update - HBO confirms no second season

[skillzdadirecta]

The other subtle thing that makes Cal being Manhattan make sense is Laurie's attraction to him. She KEPT commenting how hot he was to Angela and you initially just wrote it off as her being "quirky". Now you realize that she was drawn to him even if she didn't know why. Also when he told the kids essentially that there was no god and that when people die... they're just gone. That's a very Dr. Manhattan thing to say. Quick question, was Cal's accident/amnesia ever mentioned before? If so I missed it. And WTF was up with the Elephant?!

[SimpleG]

9 hours ago, Brick said:

Ok I'm loving this show. 

 

 

Knowing how people get pissed at Lindelof's stories makes me worried how this will end though. I've never seen Lost, but Prometheus was a disappointment. 

I am a bit concerned, there’s a lot of ground to cover and only a few episodes left. Lindelof has said he’s only doing the one season and we keep getting deeper and deeper. I am afraid the last episodes are gonna be giant exposition dumps or it won’t get resolved.

[Brick]

20 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

I am a bit concerned, there’s a lot of ground to cover and only a few episodes left. Lindelof has said he’s only doing the one season and we keep getting deeper and deeper. I am afraid the last episodes are gonna be giant exposition dumps or it won’t get resolved.

 

He's only doing one season as in there will only be one season, or just that he's handing it off to someone else after this? I can't imagine this being a one-and-done show. How's it doing for HBO? Have they said what the ratings are yet? 

 

For some reason my mind went immediately to Cal when Trieu said that Dr. Manhattan was in Tulsa disguised as someone. 

[SimpleG]

34 minutes ago, Brick said:

 

He's only doing one season as in there will only be one season, or just that he's handing it off to someone else after this? I can't imagine this being a one-and-done show. How's it doing for HBO? Have they said what the ratings are yet? 

 

For some reason my mind went immediately to Cal when Trieu said that Dr. Manhattan was in Tulsa disguised as someone. 

This his story and he has said it concludes in 9 episodes and he will be done with it. 

https://heroichollywood.com/damon-lindelof-watchmen-hesitant/

[TwinIon]

2 hours ago, SimpleG said:

This his story and he has said it concludes in 9 episodes and he will be done with it. 

https://heroichollywood.com/damon-lindelof-watchmen-hesitant/

That admirable, but also a huge bummer. I don’t want Watchmen to be the next True Detective.

[Brick]

I didn't realize this was only going to be nine episodes. Usually things like this are rounded to 10.

[skillzdadirecta]

10 minutes ago, Brick said:

I didn't realize this was only going to be nine episodes. Usually things like this are rounded to 10.

I assumed it was going to be 10 as well.

[Anathema-]

I assume it's nine in an homage to the original novel's nine panel pacing.

 

As far as whether Lindelof will stick around, he's been excessively coy since Prometheus. He said he didn't have much planned for The Leftovers either. Considering the buzz, the #1 thing HBO cares about, is stronger and louder than for any tv show in recent memory I have zero doubt he'll be back. 

[Bitgod]

Lol, Cal's medical charts on Peteypedia has Emergency! references.  The name of the hospital in the series was Rampart and one of the doctors was Kelly Brackett (the name of the examining doctor on Cal's chart).

[Firewithin]

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

 

 

[TheLeon]

11 hours ago, Brick said:

For some reason my mind went immediately to Cal when Trieu said that Dr. Manhattan was in Tulsa disguised as someone. 

They had just talked about his unusual “total amnesia”, so he was definitely suspicious. 

[Greatoneshere]

Lindelof has said "not to panic" despite the fact that there's only two episodes left - so he's aware of his time limit. The Leftovers had a fantastic ending, so I'm not too concerned.

 

I think it's more interesting we still don't know how Angela survived the "white night" and we still don't know who Lube Man is (Petey probably?). I think we can safely assume Looking Glass took the mask of that one 7th Kavalry guy and is now in disguise and that's what'll help Angela and/or Blake later. 

 

Show is excellent. Lindelof has said it'll be only one season but we'll see.

 

Edit: Also, I'm not sure why people keep blaming Lindelof for Prometheus. He wrote it after Jon Spaihts' version (interesting sidenote: they share a commentary track on the bluray for the film despite the fact that they did NOT co-write the film together) and he wrote it at Ridley Scott's request - Scott may as well have ghost-written the whole movie. That was Scott's movie, not Lindelof's or Spaihts'.

[Brick]

2 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

Also, I'm not sure why people keep blaming Lindelof for Prometheus. He wrote it after Jon Spaihts version (interesting sidenote: they share a commentary track on the bluray for the film despite the fact that they did NOT co-write the film together) and he wrote it at Ridley Scott's request - Scott may as well have ghost-written the whole movie. 

 

It's partial blame. They're all at fault 

[Joe]

On 12/2/2019 at 12:00 PM, skillzdadirecta said:

The other subtle thing that makes Cal being Manhattan make sense is Laurie's attraction to him. She KEPT commenting how hot he was to Angela and you initially just wrote it off as her being "quirky". Now you realize that she was drawn to him even if she didn't know why. Also when he told the kids essentially that there was no god and that when people die... they're just gone. That's a very Dr. Manhattan thing to say. Quick question, was Cal's accident/amnesia ever mentioned before? If so I missed it. And WTF was up with the Elephant?!

 

Just got caught up yesterday with the last couple episodes and I made the exact comment about what Cal said to the kids after the reveal. Really cool stuff.

[Brick]

 

 

 

[Anathema-]

4 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

I think it's more interesting we still don't know how Angela survived the "white night"...

 

I think we can hazard a guess.

 

Lube man being Petey is a good guess. 

[Greatoneshere]

6 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

 

I think we can hazard a guess.

 

Lube man being Petey is a good guess. 

 

I mean, that's my guess too (with the white night situation) which makes it make all the more sense for sure.

[SimpleG]

Lubemans real identity needs to stay a mystery. I want another Watchmen series in 20-30 years that focus's on Lubeman like this one did with Hooded Justice.

[Greatoneshere]

Yeah I mean it's pretty clear Petey is the Night Owl II/Dan Dreiberg in this series since Lindelof says Dan himself won't be showing up and will remain in jail. The fact Blake sleeps with him makes this even more apparent (and the way it all goes down, her thinking about Dr. Manhattan's blue giant dildo first and then instead going to him).

[Brick]

Petey is pretty skinny, so yeah I'm buying into that idea of him being Lube Man. He seems obsessed with, and admires superheroes, so why not become one? 

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, Brick said:

Petey is pretty skinny, so yeah I'm buying into that idea of him being Lube Man. He seems obsessed with, and admires superheroes, so why not become one? 

 

And of course his suit would be hilariously lame (I like Petey, just saying). 

[Bitgod]

Lube Man is just a Kite Man analog.  Hell Yeah.

[sexy_shapiro]

On 11/24/2019 at 8:15 PM, 2user1cup said:

Well it started 1 war, we were stupid and jumped into another

You’re being pedantic but even so, the Iraq war wouldn’t have happened without 9/11 so I don’t understand your point. My point was that 9/11 was a great act of violence that beget greater violence. The squid attack was a great act of violence that led to peace. It’s an important distinction.

[sexy_shapiro]

Wow, these past two episodes.

 

I was always expecting Doctor Manhattan to make a triumphant return but not like this. The way the reveal was made was haunting and beautiful, which was helped a large part by the music. Seriously, Trent Reznor has been killing it with this score.

 

Just from the surface I see some  interesting parallels/contrasts between Manhattan and Hooded Justice. Justice is a black man disguising himself as a white superhero. Manhattan is a white (or blue?) superhero disguising himself as a black man. It seems like an intentional contrast, so I’m curious to see if there are more connections to be made as we head into the final episodes.

[sexy_shapiro]

I’m not worried about the show wrapping up in two episodes. I feel like a lot of the big questions have already been answered. We know what the 7th Kavalry’s plan is. We know where Manhattan is. We know where Sister Night got her name and aesthetic. We know more about Trieu and where she stands. We know the truth about Sister Night’s grandfather. We know why the police wear masks. There’s a decent bit for us to find out but in no way do I feel like I’m heading into these last episodes unsure about what is going.

[SuperSpreader]

On 12/2/2019 at 9:00 AM, skillzdadirecta said:

. And WTF was up with the Elephant?!

They never forget

[Brick]

13 minutes ago, 2user1cup said:

They never forget

[skillzdadirecta]

10 hours ago, 2user1cup said:

They never forget

Yeah it can't be that obvious or simple could it?

[SuperSpreader]

32 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Yeah it can't be that obvious or simple could it?

[Anathema-]

6 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Yeah it can't be that obvious or simple could it?

 

Lindelof does like to tease confounding questions that have straightforward answers once you have the full context. A polar bear on a desert island turns out to have a very easy answer just not when divorced from the full background.

 

It could just be a case of it being a large animal, though, and they need a lot of cerebrospinal fluid without human memories to flush the system and not strictly because of a colloquialism. But yeah I would expect a rather mundane answer to that one.

[skillzdadirecta]

6 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

 

Lindelof does like to tease confounding questions that have straightforward answers once you have the full context. A polar bear on a desert island turns out to have a very easy answer just not when divorced from the full background.

 

It could just be a case of it being a large animal, though, and they need a lot of cerebrospinal fluid without human memories to flush the system and not strictly because of a colloquialism. But yeah I would expect a rather mundane answer to that one.

[Anathema-]

1 minute ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

Not everything has to be mind blowing! The point of that twist was that she's going to need to work harder than coincidentally being brought next door to Will and then barging in the room. Not anything having to do with an elephant.

 

This is part of Damon's real flaw as a writer. He's so good at legitimately mind blowing twists and he's such a master of foreshadowing that his work encourages you to look for deep and complex answers everywhere, to everything, and not getting that complexity you're anticipating is disappointing.

 

Might as well rip the bandaid off now; not every question has another question for an answer and some things are just-so. And I may be wrong about this one! But I think it's more in line with Lindelof's work that an "inexplicable challenge" has a mundane answer and the crazy stuff comes when he's answering questions that he can no longer delay answering.

[SimpleG]

My issues with this is that he purposely led the audience down this road to a twist for shock value and nothing else. In fact the entire setup is shockingly bad, Angela clearly believes its Will shes hooked up to when speaking to Lady Trieu ,Trieu could have given any reasonable explanation and we the audience would have been fine but she doesnt deny thats it Will or confirm it.The smartest MOFO on the planet in what is likely the most high tech facility in the world and shes stringing shit on the floor and down hall like its trailer park. The best part is no one is gonna talk about it afterwards Angela and Trieu just go on like its nothing .

 

 

Everyone just gonna ignore the elephant in the room

[Anathema-]

Or maybe it's like the novel and all the weird asides (lube man, elephant, UFO, Jupiter, etc) will all play a part in an insane finale we couldn't imagine.

[sexy_shapiro]

I don’t think the elephant needs an explanation nor should it. It was just a quirky bit of world building that should be accepted more than explained. Just take it at face value. A cure for a nostalgia OD is derived from an elephant. What else more is there to say?