Hey guys, Pete here. This will be my Watchmen season 1 episode 1 recap and
review. the Watchmen HBO pilot episode is titled "It's Summer and We're Running Out
of Ice" which is a lyric from the song Pore Jud is Daid from the play Oklahoma
the episode was written by showrunner Damon Lindelof who you might know from
his previous TV shows Lost and the leftovers and was directed by a Nicole
Kassell who I think did a magnificent job here. this video will contain
spoilers for everything we saw in episode 1 and the source material - the
limited run comic series/graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and David
Gibbons. I had really high expectations going in
because I really loved The Leftovers and I also loved the original Watchmen book.
I've been watching everything and reading everything related to this new
show and I was in the danger zone of being too hyped and perhaps set up to
get let down in light of those expectations, but so far so good. this
episode is a great beginning to take us back into the Watchmen universe in my
opinion. the world building stood out as being impressive from where I was at and
I really like the way it feels like our world for the most part with big changes
under the surface as a result of the events that happened in the original
story. of course this story doesn't start out in the same place as the original
instead we start out with an actual historical event the Tulsa Race Riot of
1921. this is an event that I didn't learn about in school and it's one
that's worth looking into if you're just hearing about it for the first time now.
the alternate reality that the original Watchmen created diverge from our
history in the late 1930s when Hooded Justice put on a costume to start
fighting crime. everything that happened before that is the same as in our
history. everything that happens in the alternate history of the show follows
what happened in the comics timeline when they diverge. in the opening
flashback we meet a young boy who's watching a Bass Reeves movie we can see
that he's seen it enough times to know the dialogue by heart and while he's
fully engaged we find out that there's trouble brewing outside the theater. it
is the riot complete with airplanes. I read this in the wiki, I was like wow
they actually used airplanes in this thing? and it's crazy. but his family gets
him out alive with a note that reads watch over this boy. the riot sequence is
difficult to watch although I think it's done as
well as something like that could be and it's difficult to believe that things
like this happened in our not so distant past. the flashback ends with the boy
waking up by the getaway car which crashed after the driver and his wife
were shot dead. he finds their baby nearby and walks away from the city
alone. as we move forward to the present day we learn a lot about how this
alternate reality is different during a traffic stop. the cops wear masks, they
need to record their interactions with consent, and they can't use their
firearms without getting an authorization cleared through dispatch. I
got a chill when the driver went to the glove box and we caught the first
glimpse of the Rorschach mask and loved when he described it as such to Panda on
the radio. the scene ends with the cop getting shot up by the driver who by
then is wearing sad mask and with a head of lettuce tossed into his car for
dramatic effect our story is ready to unfold. we meet chief of police Judd
Crawford who was watching the play Oklahoma with his wife. he's pulled away
to go to the hospital where the officer who was shot looks to be in critical
condition. the new character Looking Glass is there to brief him on the situation
and his mask comes in handy when Judd needs a mirror to tie his tie. this scene
and the one that follows at the police officer's home lay the groundwork for
Seventh Kavalry bring into this world. a little
bit later we learn about the White Night which was a coordinated attack on
police officers which is what led them all to wear masks and even go as far as
creating cover stories as to what they're doing while they're on duty. at a
school career day we meet Angela a bar and get a nice introduction to her cover
story as being a retired cop turned Baker. we learn that she was born in
Vietnam which according to comic canon became the 51st state after Dr.
Manhattan helped the u.s. win that war. as she makes moon cakes for the kids and
fills us in on the state of affairs things turn awkward when a smartass kid
asks if Redfordations paid for the bakery. her adopted son jumps on him and
we transition to their drive home which is interrupted by a squid storm
this is a reminder that the world isn't the same as ours and it's also a
callback to the event that Ozymandias staged at the end of the comic. this and
Redfordations both deserve a closer look so I'll circle back to them at the
end of the recap. when she returns home we meet more of her family briefly
before she gets a message on her pager about the shooting. we see her transform
from Baker mom doing the career day at her kid's school into the
costume adventurer persona Sister Night she is a secret room in the back of the
bakery a kick-ass car that she drives like a person who wears that costume
should drive it and she heads straight to Nixon bill which is a trailer park
not before having a conversation with an old man in a wheelchair though which
includes him asking her if she thinks he could live 200 pounds she doesn't pay
him much mind since she's on a mission which ends in her having a guy subdued
in the trunk of that car at the police station we watched a Seventh Kavalry
video that is clearly inspired by the words from Rorschach's Journal a
side-by-side comparison reveals how they're taking his words and injecting
their own white supremists bent in there and the bottom line here is that they're
on a mission this leads chief Crawford to invoke
Article 4 which is a 24-hour firearm release for the entire police force we
get insight into the friendship that Angela and Judd had before we see
Looking Glass' interrogation pod which is equal parts impressive and
frightening he concludes that the suspect knows where to find the shooter
but won't give up the information sans motivation Angela apologizes for her
previous interaction with the suspect before beating the answers the police
want out of him this leads us to a cattle ranch where the 7k is holed up
removing old batteries from watches and there we get some heavy-duty action that
leaves quite a few cattle worse for the wear we see that they are well-armed
organized have some serious tech in their security system and that they're
willing to die for their cause by taking poison pills they also have a plane
which they try to use to escape but it's no match for the artsy like Police
airship the Judd and pirate Jenny are waiting in nearby this battle ends with
the police on top and later we see the two families celebrating the victory
with dinner at the bar house as I was watching the chief sing to the family I
got a feeling that this would be his last episode and that's exactly where
things go after a conversation about the batteries and what the Kavalry's mission
might be a cancer bomb perhaps Judd falls into a trap and he ends up strung
up in a tree he had a heart of gold he wasn't very old oh why that such feller
have to die poor Judd is dead rest in peace Don Johnson Angela gets a call
from the old man in the wheelchair alerting her about this situation and
when she arrives on the scene he's there
he has the watch over this boy note on his lap and we have ourselves a murder
mystery complete with the drop of blood just like the original comic this is
where the episode ends and where we all say what the hell is actually going on
here his murder and whether or not the old man did it is a nice setup for the
main mystery but there's also so much other stuff going on here
one thing I skipped over completely was Jeremy Irons and his raw thighs over in
England he looks to be well looked after but beyond that it's difficult to
explain why his existence seemed so far removed from the world we see the other
characters inhabit back in Tulsa I mean I don't think there's any doubt that
he's playing Adrian Veidt aka Ozymandias at this point but that
doesn't exactly explain why his servant would offer him a horseshoe to cut a
cake that they gave him for his anniversary what that anniversary is
where he is exactly and what he's been doing since he saved the world from
nuclear war by teleporting a squid into New York City killing millions in the
process isn't in any way clear the only thing that is clear is that he spends
some of his time writing and he's completed a new play called the
watchmakers son which is absolutely a reference to dr. Manhattan this pilot
had everything I could hope for it had plenty of mystery plenty of callbacks
and references to the source material which would take a whole video of its
own to go into all of those nice character development
excellent world building and it looked and sounded great I'm confused about
where it's going and what it all means but not in a bad way there are tons of
little details that make rewatching a necessity which is a nice tribute to the
graphic novel because the first thing I did after I read that was want to go
back and read it again and pick up on all the things that are going on in the
background of each scene you know it definitely brings that same kind of
feeling the seventh Kavalry are definitely the bad guys here and they
definitely have white supremacist ideology among their core beliefs
they're also clearly influenced by the writing and Rorschach's journal as they
use similar language in the video that they made and that's where things start
to get interesting Rorschach died because he wanted to expose Ozymandias
his plan his journal gaining out would undermine the official story of what
happened at the end of the comic and that's why it was important the other
characters weighed their choices and decided that exposing the truth would do
more harm than good they decided to keep the peace they
decided to keep the secret and we have to assume that the story people in this
alternate reality grew up with is that aliens actually did attack New York City
back in the 1980s the fact that these bad dudes are wearing Rorschach masks
would indicate that they've read the journal and made it central to their
identity they are the bad guys but they also happen to be right about the
conspiracy to cover up the truth of what happened in my mind they can use that
bit of truth to recruit all sorts of people and I love that the writers are
willing to take this kind of risk when lookingglass asked the prisoner do you
believe that transdimensional attacks are hoaxes staged by the US government
I feel like Lindelof was yelling at us to look under the surface of what we see
then you pile on top of that the fact that the police and angela specifically
have a lot in common with Rorschach and his methods while there's still the good
guys and they're in their pursuit of justice there's a lot of potential here
for a really interesting story and I can't wait to see how they navigate
these waters it could be tricky because we like characters who are created in
shades of gray we don't want the good guys to be all good and the bad guys to
be all bad but this is pretty serious stuff that they're dealing with here and
like I said I enjoy that they're willing to take this risk and I hope that they
can pull it off I mentioned that I would come back to the Redfordations Robert
Redford is president and has been for almost three decades in the alternate
reality in the original story Richard Nixon who we saw is now on Mount
Rushmore got term limits thrown out and was still president in 1986 when the
story took place according to interviews with the show's creators he died in
office his Vice President Gerald Ford took over until the end of that term and
then Robert Redford became president in 1992 at the end of the book they
mentioned that he's thinking of running for president so that's where that idea
came from the Sundancer in chief is a big change because he's a liberal in
contrast to his predecessors who were in office for a long time during his
presidency reparations have been made for victims of racial violence we'll
learn more about that I guess as things go but his political opponents have
dubbed them Redfordations the smartass kid gives us an idea of how they were
received by the public and that gives us some insight into the racial tension
that coming to a head around our characters
at this time not to say that the world needs more racial tension but you know
what I'm saying there's a lot going on and a lot to think about one of the
things I loved when I first read Watchmen was how they brought the
individual characters backstories into focus as the investigation into the
murder mystery plays out Lindelof has said several times that this has
influenced his work I think that shows in his previous projects I think we're
going to be going down that same road where we're gonna learn more about all
these characters we see already that they are lacing in the history of the
Minutemen which is the predecessor group to all of the masked vigilantes that we
know of in the current story I think it'll be interesting to see how that
plays out to fill people in on the history that haven't read the original
story it's gonna probably work a lot like the black freighter comic did in
the original work so it's a lot of cool stuff I can't wait to see how it plays
out there's so many Easter eggs I didn't go into a lot of them here I would like
to make a separate video about that after I do the trailer breakdown some of
the things that popped out that I'll just mention quickly here though was
that Chief Judd was reading under the hood by Hollis Mason which is the basis
of the American hero's story Minutemen it basically tells the tales of the
original masked or costume vigilantes costumed adventurers and the subtitles
there was an owl hooting when we saw him hanging from the tree which could be
interesting as to what his identity is we also of course saw Angela drinking
from an owl mug in his office the new characters all seem pretty badass the
history behind their story should be good like a Looking Glass episode more
about Angela who's definitely a cool looking character so far plus there is
still a lot of new characters that we know about that we haven't seen at all
Laurie Blake lady Trieu and many others learning more about the white night
Robert Redford's presidency it seems that they're showing us that there was
problems either way whether it was Nixon in office or the liberal Redford we know
there's no cellphones we saw her with a pager there's no cell phones in this
universe there's no internet access we see the cops using violence liberally
and no one seems very concerned about that on a personal note I was glad that
they brought that idea about Vietnam being the 51st state into the store
I currently live in Hanoi it's my adopted home I guess you could say
looking out of my balcony a few minutes ago I can tell you for sure that it is
not the 51st state of the United States but it was pretty cool to see the look
the mooncakes reference and some of the other things that were in there
I mentioned that I would come back to the idea of the squids falling from the
sky the first thing that came to my mind is
how would that smell like if you've ever been in a market where they sell fresh
fish and squid in particular it has an awful smell and they were covering
everything but yeah it'll be interesting to see how this came about his event the
usher in world peace or to end the nuclear holocaust that involved a squid
but how that transformed in the squid falling from the sky like raining down
isn't exactly clear I wonder what people think her and I don't mind really a big
fan of comic book movies and I wonder if what fans of those think like was this
comic book II enough maybe too much maybe not enough I thought it was pretty
cool like I thought that it had a feeling of that in particular like
inside the police station and when we saw her getting ready getting into
costume and then the way that she drove around it was these little details that
kind of fit in and augmented things rather than making it really like
cartoonish overall I thought the action was pretty slick it didn't seem overdone
it was really well directed like I said I think Nicole Kassell did a really good
job with it and there were also some comedy nuggets
in there as well there was quite a few things that put a smile on my face
or made me chuckle under my breath so it was pretty well rounded and it pretty
much delivered a feeling similar to what I got when I read the original story so
it'll be interesting to see what fans of the original thought of it what people
who never read it think about it and if you want more details about things I
made it several trailer breakdowns where I went pretty deep on the different
imagery that we see so you can pick that up there but there is so much here that
I just can't go into it in this video so please like this video if you enjoyed it
please subscribe to my channel I want to do quite a few videos weekly on this
because it's gonna be a great ride as far as I can tell
let me know in the comments what you thought what you hope to see in the next
couple of weeks how you're hoping to see things play out if you got questions
about the original I can answer those for you if you have theories I'd love to
hear them for watching I will talk to you soon