With its third episode, Watchmen finally feels a bit more like…well, like “Watchmen.” Read on, but be warned that spoilers follow.
This episode’s title comes from Devo’s “Space Junk,” which is what Laurie asks her not-Amazon Echo that seems more like a voice controlled multiple CD changer to play when she returns home after the faux-bank heist.
1. Agent Blake?
Aside from Adrian Veidt, who has been cloistered in his own corner of the show, this is the first time we’ve gotten a ‘classic’ character interacting with the new characters created for the show. The former Silk Spectre, the current FBI Agent using her (unknown at the time) father’s last name, Laurie Blake is introduced in a way that seems both totally logical for the character, but also completely unexpected.
And, almost instantly, Laurie establishes herself as one of the most interesting characters on a show already filled with some pretty interesting ones. She’s funny, sarcastic, tough, and you can’t take your eyes off of her when she’s on screen. A big part of that is Jean Smart, who is just so damn good in the role, but a lot of that is the position that Lindelof and co. have put her in.
She also allows the show one of its weirdest and funniest moments of the series, when the MacGuffin of ‘what’s in Laurie’s briefcast?’ is resolved at the end of the episode. The reveal of it being a gigantic Dr. Manhattan branded dildo is a perfect moment, as it does a lot of things at once: it gives the show a well-earned laugh, it shows that Laurie, though she rejected Jon, still feels something for him, and it also blows the expectations for what this show is out of the water.
It’s mainly a joke, but it it’s all that other stuff, too.
2. Petey!
Most shows have an audience surrogate, and we finally get ours, in Petey, an FBI Agent that joins Agent Blake in Tulsa. He has a PHd, to quote my friend Zach Wilkerson, in “Watchmen,” and so he’s basically a fan of Blake and the others in the Minutemen. He gets called on this, and has a good retort, but firmly establishes him as our guy on the inside. I don’t know if the she needed to have a character like this, but the character himself is really fun.
3. Tulsa isn’t normal
One of the bits of really important information fed to the audience this week is that DOPA – Defense of Police Act – is a Tulsa-only thing right now. The city’s plan to mask their police officers, seemingly championed by Oklahoma Senator Keane, is a sort of pilot program for the rest of the country, which Keane is quick to point out. This makes a fair amount of sense – the White Night happens, people want a reaction – but it also gives the city an unusual amount of influence in the world of the show.
It also helps us understand why Keane is still so interested in the goings on in Tulsa, despite him clearly having his eyes set on bigger things.
4. Checking in at the castle part 3: the Game Warden and Jamaican music
This is a relatively light check in at the Veidt homestead, especially given how much information we were given to digest last episode. On a lighter note, we see that Veidt is a big fan of 60s/70s Jamaican music, from his Desmond Dekker selection to his Megaton Dub record lying around. I don’t know why this choice delights me so, but it does.
But the bigger piece of information is that, for the first time, we get an idea of the arrangement of Veidt and the castle. We know now that there is a “Game Warden” who seems to be regulating what Veidt can and cannot do. In his letter to Veidt, the Game Warden speaks of the ‘terms of [Veidt’s] captivity.’ This is the first real clue we have that Veidt’s situation isn’t entirely of his own choosing.
5. Does anyone believe that Angela isn’t still a cop?
At Judd’s funeral, the Seventh Kavalry shows up and tries to kidnap Senator Keane, and due to Laurie’s quick draw and Angela’s quick thinking, Keane escapes and no one is blown up by the bomb attached to the 7K dude’s heart. Angela’s ‘official’ role is that of someone opening a bakery, yet she does some pretty clear cop shit at the funeral and, yes, that could just be from her years of training, but c’mon now, who thinks she’s just learning how to make cupcakes or some shit?
Continued belowJudd’s funeral is important for a few reasons, and not just for showing Angela as a badass with a super quick mind for avoiding collateral damage. First and foremost, this is the event that tethers Laurie to the rest of the cast. Before this, she more or less is an outsider, but this puts her right in the middle of it. It is the first time we see an unprovoked 7K attack (though they would likely say that Keane has been provoking them for some time), and we begin to see just how insidious they are in Tulsa.
Since this show is so mysterious, each week I’m going to ask three big questions to wrap up each review.
1. Is Dr. Manhattan actually listening?
This episode is framed by a phone call that Laurie makes, in a specialty phone booth, to Mars. She doubts that he is actually listening, and says so both in words and body language. But at the end of the episode, a car falls from the sky. Despite looking a lot like Angela’s car, it seems like pretty convenient timing to have a car just happen to fall out of the sky right after Laruie hangs up the phone, and also when she seems to see some sort of beacon or reflection coming from space.
Could Dr. Manhattan be tied into Angela’s car being stolen? Could he be listening? Or is this just a coincidence?
2. How much of Laurie’s past are we eventually going to get?
There is a lot that we don’t know about Laurie’s post-“Watchmen,” pre-Watchmen past, but to me the two big questions are: 1) when did she start working for the FBI/going by Blake? and 2) what happened to Dan? The implication is that Dan is
locked up in prison, presumably for still vigilante-ing when he wasn’t supposed to, but that’s pure conjecture on me part. Dude might’ve just not paid his parking tickets.
But I’m curious to see what, if anything, we’re going to learn about that period of time. On one hand, it seems like if the show gets multiple seasons, it makes sense to eventually fill in some blanks. But, I could also see it never really be addressed, outside of maybe things like Peteypedia, because in so many ways, this show is not about what happened in between 1985 and 2019.
3. When, if ever, will the Veidt story crossover with the main story?
On one hand, I could watch the Veidt show in a vacuum for years, but at some point, it seems like the two disparate parts of the show must come together, doesn’t it?
