If you’re looking for a great explanation of the plot of Watchmen, or a refresher on what happened last week, check out our review of the premiere. With that being said, this review will contain spoilers for Episode 1. So if you haven’t watched it, you might want to because this episode starts off with a pretty big spoiler that I simply can’t avoid.
Ok. You’ve chosen to keep reading.
Let’s just get this out of the way, Judd Crawford (Don Johnson) is dead. You might have seen that first episode and thought maybe he wasn’t totally dead or maybe it was staged, and to be honest, it still could be, but as of right now he is 100% dead. This leaves his team, Red Scare (Andrew Howard), Looking Glass/Wade (Tim Blake Nelson), and Sister Midnight/Angela Abar (Regina King) incredibly devastated.
However, as we know, Angela was the first on the scene following a mysterious call. When she arrives, she is greeted by an elderly man (105 years old, so he says) in a wheel chair named Will Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr.). Despite his age and handicap, Will claims to have killed Judd all by himself and proceeds to drop obscure hints to Angela about Judd’s supposed true nature. Rather than take him to the police though, Angela keeps Will hidden and proceeds to investigate his identity and his claims about Judd on her own – with startling answers.
Meanwhile, the amazingly supportive (and attractive) husband of Angela, Cal Abar (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), is rightfully worried about a repeat of “The White Night” (which was shown in this episode) which was awful enough, but now he and Angela are raising three children (the orphaned children of her slain partner), which just adds to his growing concern about the safety of his family.
Speaking of children, their adopted son, Topher (Dylan Schombing) definitely has my interest. For one, Angela is WAY more open with him than I expected her to be and while he takes this openness well, there is something about him that feels different. He went through a very traumatic event, yes, but even so, that doesn’t quite explain his mannerisms/behavior. Basically, I’m very curious about his character.
Finally, while all this madness and mystery is going on, we have Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons) being absolutely nuts. I really think he’s just lived too long at this point. I mean, after the events of Watchmen, it was clear things weren’t all in working order up there, if you catch my drift. It seems to have only worsened as we watch him watch a play he wrote about the creation of Doctor Manhattan. That doesn’t sound so bad. No, it’s not until his servant playing Jon Osterman is literally burned to death and then an identical servant painted blue appears to take his place that you realize just how fucked up Veidt is at this point.
It’s hard for me to say how I feel about this show. I find it unbelievably interesting with a unique plot and great characters (I absolutely love Angela), but I don’t understand what Watchmen has to do with it or why it has to be related. Given what happened at the end of the episode, I’m hoping we will start to see more of a tie-in, but as of right now, I think this show would actually be better if it stood on it’s own as it’s own story rather than try and claim connection to something it has virtually nothing to do with thus far.
I guess the best way to say it is, I’m really enjoying Watchmen on HBO, I just don’t think it needs to involve Alan Moore’s Watchmen to be good.
