A RIFF ON RACE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
New Watchmen is a standout series and an excellent reason to keep HBO
HBO’S fantastic new series Watchmen is many things at once — a righteously topical, thrillingly conceived riff on race and criminal justice set in an allegorical U.S.A. of vigilante cops, shady superheroes and subversive domestic terrorists.
It’s based on a beloved 1980s graphic novel that bombed as a movie (in 2009) and has now been adapted by a TV creator who has a checkered past when it comes preferring his vision over the needs of viewers. (That would be Damon Lindelof, still wearing the layered hair shirts of the final season of Lost and long stretches of The Leftovers.)
But Watchmen, billed as a “remix” of the source material, is full of surprises — the first being that Lindelof has discovered that momentum and meaning can go hand in hand. Rather than hoard its biggest secrets, Watchmen comes across like a smart, swift kick to the gut. And as far all that comic-book/superhero/anti-hero business goes, forget it.
Even the most genre-averse among us can absorb Watchmen without feeling like we forgot to study for the test. At the same time, fans of the original can relish Watchmen’s sublime handling of the mythology, spirit and complex tone of the material.
Of the six episodes made available for this review (there are nine in all), the first hour may be the only hurdle for viewers, as we’re fully immersed in a warped America with plenty of WTFS, including stray references to the fact that Robert Redford has been president for decades — after Richard Nixon served multiple successful terms and Vietnam gained statehood.
The show opens with a horrific flashback to the 1921 massacre in Tulsa, Okla., a racist attack on the thriving African-american community of Greenwood that left hundreds dead and injured — the details of which were successfully scrubbed from history for decades. Watchmen uses the real-life massacre as a catalyst for the alternative history that follows. In the show’s present-day Tulsa, police officers don yellow masks that mostly obscure their faces, for their protection, particularly against an uprising of white supremacists called the Seventh Kavalry.
Technological advancements abound in this version of 2019: flying squad cars, subservient clones, special phone booths for making calls to Mars, brief storms of interdimensional phenomena and a pharmaceutical drug called Nostalgia that mentally replays one’s life experiences.
Tulsa’s black community has seemingly thrived in a national effort to correct racial discrimination. This includes financial reparations, which are derisively referred to as “Red fordations” by the local racists, most of whom live in a trailer park ghetto on the edge of town called Nixon ville. (And yes, Redford pops up late in the series, as himself.)
Regina King stars as Angela Abar, a wife and mother of three who is about to open her own bakery. That’s her secret identity, anyhow. Angela’s real job is as a rogue detective, part of an squad overseen by police chief Judd Crawford (Don Johnson). In her hooded black cloak and mask, Angela does her most effective work as Sister Night, alongside such colleagues as Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson) and Red Scare (Andrew Howard).
The coolest thing about Watchmen is the way it upends one’s personal understanding of the line between heroism and vigilantism, well beyond a Batman-style paradigm. The idea and meaning behind wearing a mask is constantly in play, connoting both good and evil. King gives a performance that is both glorious and vulnerable.
While the TV addicts in Watchmen’s America are glued to an event miniseries about complicated superheroes of the recent past (a deft, show-within-a-show device to acquaint us with some Watchmen lore), there’s the constant unease of the hooded history and presence of the Ku Klux Klan.
An unspeakable crime occurs early on, requiring the arrival of FBI Special Agent Laurie Blake, played by Jean Smart, who savours every line she’s given.
By now, it sounds like I’m describing a fever dream instead of another prestige cable drama, but that’s what’s so delicious about it. (And I never even got around to discussing Jeremy Irons’ bizarre character and his futile but fascinating plight.) All I can say is I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the HBO show. It’s all the indication anyone needs that, yes, there is life after Game of Thrones.