After last week’s torrent of information, the second episode of Watchmen slows down slightly, in order to offer the viewer some context for the world of Tulsa in (this version of) 2019. Let’s get to it.
This episode’s title refers to this painting seen above, of the same name as the episode, painted by George Catlin.
Spoilers follow.
1. Family
This issue displays a number of different families and, more specifically, what being a family entails. We see Angela and Cal and their adopted children, we see the revelation that Will, the old man who ‘strung up your chief of police’ is Angela’s grandfather, and we see the way that the police handle the death of ‘one of their own’ in Judd Crawford.
We’ll talk more about the Abar family in a bit, but the other two points are important to get into. Angela being Will’s granddaughter is unexpected, in part because Will is 106 years old apparently, but also being Angela didn’t know that she had a living grandparent, and had never met Will before. She finds out about this via the Greenwood Center for Cultural Heritage, which is an institution dedicated to the Tulsa Massacre, and also where the ‘Redfordations’ we heard about last episode get distributed.
Angela, despite being very cautious about revealing anything about her life to Will, seems to listen to him almost instantly when he tells her that Judd had ‘skeletons in his closet.’ In the most literal sense of the phrase, Angela searches out Judd’s closet and…well, we’ll talk about that in a bit.
2. Dr. Manhattan, normal topic of conversation
One of the things that has been really interesting thus far in the show is how Dr. Manhattan is not some whispered about, hushed topic. They show him on the news building sandcastles on Mars, and people talk about him with relative ease and normalcy. I don’t know what exactly I expected, but it is an odd, though inspired, choice to have him essentially a weird celebrity in the sky.
3. The White Night
This episode gives us a very clear explanation of what the White Night actually was: all of the Tulsa police were attached, in their homes, at midnight on Christmas eve, by the Seventh Kalvary. We see what happened to Cal and Angela at their home, and we hear that Angela’s partner and wife were murdered as well. It is also revealed that the Abars adopted their kids, which is addressed in a few different ways in this episode. We see at least one person not pleased with this arrangement, one person openly critical of Angela calling them ‘her kids,’ and we begin to get a better sense of what the relationship is like between Angela, Cal, and the kids, especially Topher.
4. Checking in at the castle, part 2: clones?
The Veidt shit continues to be bonkers, as this week we see the debut of The Watchmaker’s Son, replete with immolation, some painted blue dick, and the revelation that Veidt is employing a series of clones in his castle. This stuff keeps getting more and more bizarre, but in an incredibly fun way.
We are beginning to see the Veidt of “Watchmen” on a microscopic scale. Whereas that Veidt was willing to kill millions to save the world, this Veidt is willing to kill a clone in order to see his artistic vision come to life. It’s a fascinating texture added to the character.
Somehow, The Watchmaker’s Son is the least sensationalized tale of heroes we see this episode, as we get an extended American Hero Story episode, focused on Hooded Justice. The show appears to be total schlock, but is a lot of fun in these small doses.
5. Klan vs Kavalry
So, Angela finds a Klan hood in Judd’s closet. Are we to believe that he was an active Klan member, or is this some sort of remnant of his past/his family’s past? And what does the Klan have to do with the Kavalry? We still don’t know a ton about the 7K beyond their white supremacist roots and the Rorschach masks, and I’m very interested to know a little more about the goals and manifesto of the 7K, and what, if any, role Judd had with them.
Continued belowSince this show is so mysterious, each week I’m going to ask three big questions to wrap up each review.
1. How full of shit is Will? He makes a ton of bonkers claims, but even the ones he doesn’t walk back seem preposterous. But with him being literally hoisted in the sky via a magnet at the end of this episode, it seems like maybe he’s not as misleading as it seems.
2. Why is there no internet/smart phones? We’ve learned a little bit due to the Peteypedia stuff, but it is interesting to see how the world looks with a real internet in it in 2019.
3. Why don’t the Abars want their kids to interact with their birth family members? We see someone, presumably an uncle or grandfather, try to see Angela’s adopted kids, and she refuses. Why is that? Yes, he’s white, and somewhat backwoods-looking. so are we to believe that the Aybars think he’s 7K, or at least a little racist? Or is there more to the adoption that we don’t know about?
