Watchmen

“Watchmen encapsulates the weariness of Black America, our wounds healing just enough for the scabs to be torn off again.”

Title: Watchmen
Episodes Reviewed: Season 1
Creator: Damon Lindelof 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Damon Lindelof 👨🏼🇺🇸 (7 eps), Nick Cuse 👨🏼🇺🇸 (2 eps), Lila Byock 👩🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), Christal Henry 👩🏾🇺🇸 (1 ep), Cord Jefferson 👨🏾🇺🇸 (1 ep), Jeff Jenen👨🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), Claire Kiechel 👩🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), Stacy Osei-Kuffour 👩🏾🇺🇸 (1 ep), and Carly Wray 👩🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep). Based on the comics by Alan Moore 👨🏼🇬🇧 and Dave Gibbons 👨🏼🇬🇧
Directors: Nicole Kassell 👩🏼🇺🇸 (3 eps), Stephen Williams 👨🏼 (2 eps), Steph Green👩🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), Andrij Parekh 👨🏽🇺🇸 (1 ep), David Semel 👨🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), and Frederick E.O. Toye 👨🏼🇺🇸

Review by Robert Daniels 👨🏾🇺🇸

—MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 4.5/5

Nearly a decade ago, I first read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel Watchmen (1986-87), a groundbreaking comic featuring superheroes in an alternate world and history. It’s never left my mind, even when dodgy adaptations have made me want to forget. Burned by Zach Snyder’s 2009 cinematic release, I more than doubted Damon Lindelof’s plans to reformat Moore and Gibbons’ work into a television show.

But Lindelof proved me wrong. Unlike Snyder, his HBO series bravely departs from the graphic novel. He takes the key themes of Watchmen—contemporary anxieties, violence, and the deconstruction of superheroes—and refits them to today’s conversations surrounding race and right-wing extremism.

The series follows Angela Abar (Regina King), an undercover cop in the Tulsa Police Department who disguises herself under the moniker of Sister Night. Wearing a black hood and mask, with remaining skin also spray-painted black, she investigates and fights the Seventh Kavalry (a band of mask-wearing racists) in a bid to cease their hateful ideology. Over the course of nine episodes she searches for the murderers of police chief Judd Crawford (Don Johnson), probes her family history, hunts for her grandfather Will Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr.), and protects her husband Cal (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) from impending doom.

Opening with a myriad of mysteries, Watchmen ambitiously and neatly ties almost every component together by the series’ conclusion—though some storylines do remain frustratingly unresolved, and the exiled millionaire Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons) always feels like he’s in a different show. Cerebral in tone yet action-packed, Lindelof enlisted the help of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to compose music for each episode. The result makes for an uneasy but aggressive soundtrack to accompany heartbreaking subject matters. As a television incarnation of the classic graphic novel, Lindelof’s remix is a beautiful and prescient examination of race in America.

Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES, mostly (7 of 9 episodes)

With an assortment of women writing and directing Watchmen, the series scores high marks for gender. Moreover, the program features several unflappable female characters.

There’s Lady Trieu (Hong Chau), the filthy rich and astoundingly intelligent scientist who arrives at Tulsa to build a doomsday clock meant to save the world. There’s also Laurie Blake (Jean Smart), a tough-talking FBI agent sent to Tulsa to investigate the lynching of Judd Crawford. Once a superhero herself, she fought crime under the Silk Spectre alias (one of the few character links to the graphic novel). While she provides comedic depth, she’s more than an assemblage of one-liners. She holds one-sided phone conversations with the missing hero Dr. Manhattan, hinting at a previous romance. And in one hilarious scene, she takes out a blue dildo from her bag. The visual non-sequitur successfully points to her sexual desires, a departure from the way television often desexualizes middle-aged women. As writer Candice Frederick notes, “Most older mom characters, regardless of marital status, [are] depicted as though their libidos had been depleted many years prior or that looming menopause had stolen their sex drives.”

Ultimately, the series revolves around Angela’s strength and determination. Often told from her perspective, she maintains a career as a crime-fighting force while balancing a love life (not unlike Agent Blake). During Episode 2, “The White Night,” Angela and her husband Cal share a passionate sex scene. Their relationship is further examined in the season’s eighth episode, "A God Walks into Abar," which witnesses not just their courtship, but their equal footing too. Angela’s character, sharp and to the point, summarizes a major theme of Watchmen: women empowered to fight and love.

Race: 5/5

Thrillingly, Lindelof’s Watchmen is completely framed through race. The program’s first episode, "It's Summer and We're Running Out of Ice," opens with the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. Audiences witness the assault upon what was once called “Black Wall Street” by white perpetrators and the Ku Klux Klan. We see a young Will Reeves, Angela’s grandfather, driven away by car from the carnage as he leaves family and home. His departure psychologically scars him, emerging as toxic memories and rage later in life.

One of the series’ main storylines follows Angela as she investigates her grandfather’s DNA. Because the massacre disrupted her genealogy—beginning with the untimely murders of her great-grandparents in Tulsa, resulting in emotional trauma and missing links on her patrilineal side—she must visit the town’s local heritage center to piece together the assemblage of her family. Her unawareness of Reeves’ existence demonstrates how white supremacy has separated and destroyed families through lynchings, forced relocation, and murder.

The agents of white supremacy come under many banners in Watchmen. Each generation sees its own terrorist group, from the KKK at the start of the series, to Cyclops in Will Reeves’ era, to the present timeline’s The Seventh Kalvary. Throughout the decades, corrupt policemen enable such groups in the coordinated terrorization of Black families. For example, once a cop during the 1940s, Reeves enters the force hoping to change the department. Instead, he’s lynched by his fellow officers when he begins to question Cyclops, the secret alias of the Ku Klux Klan. This ugly history repeats itself during the current timeline, as The Seventh Kavalry infiltrates the Tulsa police force, working to steal the powers of Dr. Manhattan—a godlike spectre who presides over the series—for worldwide white domination. The repetitiveness encapsulates the weariness of Black America, our wounds healing just enough for the scabs to be torn off again. It’s a cycle of loss that leads to an internalization of fear and anger—a pattern Angela refreshingly breaks by season’s end.

In parallel, Watchmen incorporates Vietnamese American characters into its fictionalized world, where the United States won the Vietnam War and has annexed the country as a 51st state. Lady Trieu—played by Vietnamese American actor Hong Chau—holds an integral role and widens Southeast Asian representation on television. In addition, Elyse Dinh and Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, who are also Vietnamese American, play Lady Trieu’s mother and daughter, respectively.

Not content to stop merely at authentic casting, Saigon—which was never renamed to Ho Chi Minh City, in Watchmen’s universe—serves as the backdrop to the season’s penultimate episode. Angela flashes back to her childhood in Saigon, where she was raised, and must relive the moment her mother and father (a serviceman) are killed during a terrorist attack by Vietnamese locals who perceive Dr. Manhattan as the monster who murdered millions of innocent people. In this context, he serves as a metaphor for the U.S. Army’s atrocities during the real-life conflict, which itself was predicated on the fear of Communism. Whether through the interrogation of white supremacy and/or American imperialism, Watchmen’s broader theme of fear leading to violence gets told through various facets of U.S. history.

LGBTQ: 4/5

Watchmen breaks the superhero mold in a variety of ways, and does so again in Episode 6, “This Extraordinary Being.” Angela’s grandfather Will Reeves isn’t just a sparse example of a Black crime-fighter; he’s also a main character who is bisexual, not unlike other models Claire Bennet of Heroes (2006-2010) or Sara Lance from the CW’s Arrowverse (2012-present).

Interestingly, the show links race with sexuality through this queer Black character, whose identities are similarly met with violence by a racist and homophobic society. Reeves initially seeks affection and empathy from Captain Metropolis (Jake McDorman), a fellow costumed crime-fighter. While their same-sex relationship is itself noteworthy, as is the refreshing lack of angst that accompanies Reeves’ attraction, it arrives only through brief glimpses and feels like a missed opportunity to fully embrace the strength of bisexual or gay superheroes.

Bonus for Age: +0.50

Though Smart is 68, her character of Agent Blake is never portrayed as anything less than a woman in her prime. From her swaggering walk to her physically taxing role in the field, wry humor, and ability to seduce younger colleagues, she never lacks potency.

Mediaversity Grade: A 4.75/5

Viewers are often confused by the bevy of disconnected storylines in Watchmen. But by the season finale, "See How They Fly," just about every nagging detail is resolved. However, more than simply offering a conclusion, Lindelof ambitiously examines gender, race, and sexuality through a superhero framework.

Moreover, it greatly diverges from Moore and Gibbons’ graphic novel, in a risky venture that still deftly balances the comic’s major themes with a new yet unfortunately familiar cultural environment: the acquiescence of white supremacy by government agencies. Yet this time, Black viewers have a hero in Angela, who harnesses her trauma for empowerment and joy.

As Will Reeves surmises, “You can't heal under a mask. Wounds need air.” And Watchmen gives air to the Black Experience in America.

Like Watchmen? Try these other titles featuring Black superheroes.

Grade: ALiJanuary 5, 2020Great for: Gender, Great for: Race, Great for: Age