Disclaimer: Try as I might, there is no way I can work through my thoughts without some spoilers. While I’ll try to remain vague, understand that this whole essay contains spoilers for the end of the show. If you plan on watching it, please stop here.
Disclaimer #2: I love this show. My critique comes from a place of love. I’ve also read the graphic novel. I can imagine how if I hadn’t read the graphic novel, some of the decisions would make more sense. In a way, these two pieces of art are separate in my mind. Still, there are some problems that exist even in this alternative imagining.
Disclaimer #3: The purpose of this essay is to express strengths and weaknesses of this show, and then to provide answers to how those weaknesses could have been fixed. I understand that, because the show has already been produced and I am a small time writer, none of this matters. If this seems like an exercise in ego, it probably is. Cheers.
It’s important to begin this piece by expressing how much I loved this show. I would consider the first six episodes some of the best television I’ve ever seen. The writing was engrossing, the characters were realistic and beautifully acted, and the premise was brilliant. It took the world established in the graphic novel and expanded it, sprinkling in tasty references without relying too heavily on the source material. Everything felt organic.
And then, with a few blows of a hammer, Dr.Manhattan showed up and I felt my stomach sink. This isn’t to say that, after his arrival, I didn’t enjoy the show. On the contrary, I was emotionally gutted by both the ending of the penultimate episode, “A God Walks into Abar,” and Dr.Manhattan’s final lines in “See How They Fly.” But ever since his reveal in the seventh episode, “An Almost Religious Awe,” I felt something shift. The show was no longer this intimate story about a woman grappling with her role as a masked vigilante, her race, and her family’s past. Instead, it morphed almost instantly into something bigger. It was no longer organic. It was a sprint towards the ending; I can imagine the writers sitting in a room, trying to puzzle together how their villains would steal Dr. Manhattan’s powers. In a way, the final two episodes struggled with the same thing Game of Thrones struggled with, although with indisputably better acting and writing. By introducing a god-like character they introduced god-like holes into their airtight writing. So, let’s work through some of these glaring holes, and see how one might have fixed them.
Rushed Plot:
As I mentioned before, the biggest error I found with the show was writing in Dr. Manhattan. He completely changed the trajectory of the story that, if done correctly, could have been rather compelling. But because he just shows up in Angela’s life (yes, I know he has been there for ten years, but in the show he just shows up), he completely takes away from her character arch. The show is no longer about her learning her past and how that ties into her present circumstances (being on a police force that is half-infiltrated by the 7th Kavalry), it’s about her and Dr.Manhattan. So, if we want to have our cake and eat it too, it makes sense to split up the show into two seasons.
Angela and Her Past:
This would be the focus of season one. Leave seventy-five percent of the first season alone. Judd Crawford is hung. Angela finds his Klansman uniform. Laurie comes to investigate. Will leaves her clues, and ultimately is responsible for her swallowing his pills and gaining his memory. REMOVE Lady Trieu completely from this part with the exception that she is still building the Millenium Clock (but we don’t know for what purpose,) and she helps Angela when she is lost in Nostalgia.
This is where I maybe lost some of you. I understand her importance to the overall story, but the connection between her and Will seems… shoddy. Did he come to her for help exacting vengeance on the 7th Kavalry? Did she seek him out, and if so for what purpose? Was it to get her closer to Angela? In the current story line Hooded Justice doesn’t really serve a purpose besides telling Angela that there was a superhero in her past. He should provide her with some sense of purpose, and then some closure. Take up my mantle, so to speak.
Angela’s story arch has been all about the closer story. She’s a black woman (presumably the ONLY black woman) on the police force. She mysteriously survives being shot in the chest (Dr.Manhattan just somehow remembers to teleport her out of there? Come on… it makes more sense that Judd Crawford spared her), and so as a result she is suspicious of everyone and everything around her. The first season should simply focus on these aspects. Then, bring everything to a head when she learns the truth about how the Kavalry have invaded the police force. Imagine a climax where she is fighting for her family’s survival, protecting her children and Cal (who, let’s make it easy and just say ISN’T DR. MANHATTAN because it makes him more interesting as well) alongside her grandfather in a final showdown. Maybe the 7th Kavalry are trying to use their teleportation device and Mesmer to attempt a repeat of the Oklahoma race riots and it’s up to her, Looking Glass, Red Scare, Pirate Jenny, and Will to stop it. Then, once it’s done, they realize that there is some bigger threat looming out there. Above them, the Millennium Clock begins to count down.
Keep it close to the chest, keep it simple: about Angela, her past, her legacy, and her empowerment.
Angela and Dr. Manhattan:
I’ll say it right now: Dr. Manhattan has no reason to fall in love with Angela. After the events in the graphic novel he claims that humans are too complicated, and he would be much happier creating life somewhere new (which he does in the show). The show works way better if Dr.Manhattan stays there. But if you NEED to bring him back, because let’s be honest, some of the most emotional moments come from him, it needs to make sense. He wouldn’t come back to Earth to fall in love with a new woman because he has already explained that he doesn’t understand relationships any longer.
But he does love Laurie, or at least was able to love when he experienced those memories with her.
So why not, instead of bringing him into Angela’s life and convoluting her character arch, he appears in Laurie’s? The series already establishes at the beginning of it in an incredible scene with Laurie (beautifully acted by Jean Smart) that she feels abandoned and frustrated with John for leaving her. Have the second season be about how Angela is attempting to clean up the police force and the aftermath of the 7th Kavalry, and Laurie is digging deeper into the conspiracy of WHO gave the 7th Kavalry the means to do what they attempted to do in the first season. It would already make sense that she’s suspicious of such things, given what happened in the graphic novel. The focus should be on how she falls in love with the idea of being… super again. She goes on missions. She gets a rush from the action. Then, when she is kidnapped by Lady Trieu and used as bait for Dr.Manhattan, it makes sense. You could literally take every scene from the last episode and a half, and replace Angela with Laurie and it would make more sense.
Men are outside her motel room to kill Laurie (or so she thinks). Dr. Manhattan arrives, after a season and a half of Laurie doubting and questioning him. He tells her he will die tonight, she doesn’t believe him, gunfight ensues, John is sucked into intrinsic field, Laurie knocked unconscious and tied up, everything. As you can see, my issue with Manhattan being in the story is seemingly small, but it makes a huge difference. If you remove Manhattan from Angela’s story and place him in Laurie’s, it provides Laurie’s character with a means to grow instead of muddling it. Maybe he even saves the world in the end instead of Ozymandias, but dies in the process. Laurie gets to see him as an omnipresent but caring god, whereas at the beginning she did not. She gets closure. I don’t know.
“But Kevin… what about Angela getting his powers?”
Does she really need to? It’s a cool premise, but does it really add to her character? Isn’t one of the ideas from the graphic novel that, by having god-like powers, it makes you less human? If Angela gains his powers she becomes like him, eventually growing detached and indifferent towards everything around her.
But again, if we’re going to keep to the general premise…
It would make sense for Dr.Manhattan to give his powers to someone he found to be worthy of them, not just someone he “loves” (again, is he really capable of love anymore? Can he really create new experiences of love or just experience old ones?). So maybe he is in Vietnam the day her parents are killed, sees a young Angela have this experience, and decides to keep tabs on her. And, by watching her grow up empathetic over the years, decides she is worthy of gaining his powers and, in a way, of righting the wrongs he committed.
Looking Glass:
What happened to Looking Glass? They did my boy dirty. Dude shows up early in the show, is arguably one of the most interesting characters, we find out he has an actual super power – being able to tell when people are lying, and then disappears without really using it in the bigger scheme of things. Maybe, once he finds out that the 7th Kavalry has infiltrated the police, starts using his power to determine who is with the actual police, and then begins killing masked cops. This would be a nice nod to the graphic novel AND would make use of him.
Also, keep him around so he and Angela have to deal with each other. After he betrays her he just sort of disappears. I would love to see an altercation between the two of them where she confronts him for turning her in and he reveals WHY he did it (to save her family as well as her). That’s what Watchmen is all about: morally complex issues. If this scene would have popped up in “season one”, it would have been incredibly powerful and a great place to show Angela’s empathy.
Ozymandias:
I loved everything about him, because it was so weird. I love how he is “banished” to a world of subservient beings only to long for a real challenge. I love how lady Trieu is his daughter (even though, being the smartest man in the world, I highly doubt he would have allowed a janitor to infiltrate his stash of seed unless he wanted them to). He’s arrogant, but he’s also meticulous. For him to be outsmarted seems… odd.
That being said, I love how he has to confront his ego to save the world. It’s a nice touch that could have used more development. Give him more space in “season two” to engage with Lady Trieu in a battle of wits. Maybe he even discovers her plan, agrees with her plan, and then changes his mind in the end when he sees John’s sacrifice. His use of the squids for good this time was a nice touch but, like most other things, it felt rushed.
Finally… Laurie wouldn’t turn him in. There’s no reason for her to. She held her silence for thirty years and nothing happened to change her mind. That’s why she became bitter and cynical. So, for her to turn him in at the end completely retcons the events from the source material, AND it goes against the entire premise of it. The whole point of Watchmen was that Ozymandias did a horrible, fucked up thing… but once you removed yourself from it, it was the only option. And even if people wanted to, the man is literally too smart. If he could orchestrate Robert Redford becoming president he could probably assume that someone would eventually find out his secret.
I should stop before I spiral off into a tangent.
Nothing Ever Ends:
Watchmen is, in my mind, a masterpiece of a graphic novel. Not only does it serve as a brilliant philosophical piece, but it is a brilliant re-imagining of the superhero genre that no other story has come close to paralleling since. Despite my griping, there is a lot that the show does right. I could go on and on about the pacing of that final scene from episode one, where Angela drives up to the tree where Judd Crawford is hanging. I could rave about the various subtle nods to the source material. I could confide that even while I ventured into the final two episodes with a few doubts about how they could weave Dr. Manhattan into this story, I still had tears streaming down my face when he said to Angela “I just told you that you can’t save me and you’re going to try anyway. In the bar, the night we met, you asked me about the moment I fell in love with you. This is the moment”. The show is messy, and that’s what this essay is about, but in the end it is still damn good television.
There are other talking points, I’m sure, but these were the most glaring. If you haven’t watched it and you made it this far I encourage you to watch it. The acting is phenomenal, the cinematography is out of this world, and the soundtrack steals the show. Take these critiques with a grain of salt because, despite its flaws, it’s still one of the best shows of 2019.
And of course, whether you agree or disagree, let me know what you think!
The Word and The Song 