Is 'Watchmen' one of the year's best series, or a manipulative mess like 'Lost'? Our critics debate in advance of Sunday's finale:
HBO’s “Watchmen” examines race, white supremacy and police brutality. Sunday night’s series premiere has creator Damon Lindelof asking, “Should we have done it?”. Still, I was excited to see this show because trailers made it look like it was going to explore very real issues — discrimination, the normalizing of white supremacy, women as avengers for justice — inside a fictional universe.
It’s based in present-day Tulsa, Okla., where white supremacists have amassed and mobilized. Cop Angela Abar leads the effort to eradicate the terror group. She’s the superhero here, masked and fighting the Seventh Kavalry . Then there are all the other story arcs rooted in utter fantasy — squid dropping from the sky, mind control, a doomsday clock. Yet eight episodes into “Watchmen,” I’m still scratching my head, trying to figure out what exactly this series is about. Vigilante justice meets institutionalized racism meets time travel meetsand the end of the world? It evokes brutal truths, like the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, lynching and police brutality. It makes the obvious point that America has a really ugly past, and it’s not really the past because history keeps repeating itself. But then the heavy subject matter is mixed with outlandish subplots, so it feels like it’s dropped in for effect. Overall, it seems irresponsible and exploitative.I agree that the show, from which the comic’s creator Alan Moore has disassociated himself, is a muddle, which sets us apart from what seems to be the critical consensus that something great and meaningful is going on here. There is still the finish to come, so it’s possible that the show’s many threads will tie up into something like a point. Still, on the big issues, or what the show seems to suggest might be issues without significantly developing them, it frustrates me — even as, at nearly any given moment, I find it enjoyable to watch; it’s a matter of the parts being greater than the sum.That the show exists largely on an alternative timeline — certain events, like the Tulsa massacre, are historical fact; others, as with an ongoing Robert Redford presidency, might be called historical fun — lets it off the hook to a certain extent, I guess. We’re talking about our America, when it fits, and not our America, when it doesn’t. The series is built around a a core of vigilante heroes and superheroes, cops who act like vigilantes, and a couple of mad scientists who might as well be called superheroes since they invent impossible things with ease — all of whom seem to be trying to save the world in their cross-purposed way. But it has nothing consistent to say about vigilantism, or even the ambiguous way we as viewers situationally regard it: good when it’s our guys, bad when it’s theirs. And how are we meant to regard the country as a whole, which is fleetingly suggested to have become a liberal nanny state? It’s the beginning of an idea, but it just seems to be there to give the villains something to grouse about.
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