Television

ayayrawn said:
It's attachment to Watchmen was the only reason I had an interest in it at all, and the main reason why it's so effective IMO. It manages to respectfully and brilliantly fill in blanks left by the source material and then expand on it in a way that feels natural and modern. Parts of it were flawed, certainly, but there's more creativity, passion, and timeliness in it than 95% of the cape shit released this decade. On tv or otherwise.

If they were to make a season 2, it should be exclusively about lubeman.
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I think it betrayed major plot points and characters from the source material and I would be actively rooting for a S2 if it were it's own thing. While I agree it was better than the majority of Cape material this decade, 95% is a bit of a stretch for me, I'd have it closer to 70-80% range.
Bull Shannon said:
Watchmen stuck the landing.

Considering how the party line going into the finale was "how are they going to tie up all the loose ends?", I was impressed that they pretty much tied it up in one giant finale scene. Kinda annoying that Seventh Calvary / Cyclops were kinda a red herring (I had a feeling their plan would straight-up backfire without outside interference). I wasn't hugely emotionally affected by the death of Dr. M, though I liked the final scenes with Will.

I think, considering this was Watchmen, I was surprised by how few wide-world ramifications (other than the loss of Dr. M) the finale had. It tied up on a very personal level.
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I both loved and hated the final M scene as it was both emotionally resonate but also betrayed who the character is.


Overall I thought the setup episodes were much better than the final 3 conclusion episodes
 
Woob_woob said:
Overall I thought the setup episodes were much better than the final 3 conclusion episodes
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Agreed, I felt the show emotionally and ideologically climaxed with episodes 5, 6, and 7 (especially 6), and 7, 8, 9 were there to both introduce the plot's actual stakes and bring it in for a landing. In my eyes, all they had to do was not blow it.
 
I haven’t watched the Watchmen finale yet but I wasn’t like all in on every episode. There were a few that were incredible but as a whole it’s just pretty good. I like it, maybe don’t love love it. I just got the third volume of the score on vinyl in the mail though, so I am pretty psyched on the music.
 
The Watchmen finale honestly felt very uninteresting to me. I guess they wrapped everything up? But by the end I was just like...ok? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a perfect show and I really feel the finale was kind of disappointing. Oh well.
 
I liked the Watchmen finale, although I agree it suffers a bit from an odd combo of having a big twist and being mostly falling action.

I think a proper 2 part finale airing the same night would have have been a bit better, where we could get one episode with the climax with Lady Trieu revealed as the real puppet master to feel a lot less rushed. Nitpicking, but I think it would have been a lot more "Watchmen" to cut when Angela lifts the egg vs having her eat it, it's pretty obvious she's become Doctor M, the cut with her foot really felt like it gave a lot more away than the comic's ending did. I think that would have left the show with a much more complex question, specifically "should anyone have the power of a god?" Overall I really though they did a solid job, but it didn't quite rise to the heights of the midseason episodes, not that it really needed to, since the comic itself is mostly meaty in the middle. One of my favorite shows in a long time and another homerun for Lindelof. This is probably his tightest project yet, and I think roping in his tangential instincts is making his work better.
 
For those still watching His Dark Material this show is really adept at shooting itself in the foot, and has really become a total mess precisely at the point where it needs to be honing in with laser focus.

This week's episode had amazing production design, a fairly robust use of effective creature animations and some of the better acting from Dafne Keen. Too bad it's being absolutely slaughtered in the editing room. The biggest offender is of course the Will narrative which completely sucks the life out of the show as Thorne keeps trying to force it into a story that had no room for it when written.

There's moments that have me completely astounded, like when we cut from an all too short clip of Lyra and Rodger riding on Iorek at sunset in the north, then quickly cut back to the weak modern day psychological thriller tone of the Will story, for no apparent reason. I almost wonder if Throne is reacting strongly to the usual expanding world of fantasy sagas. As we go through fantasy stories like Tolkien's Middle Earth or Harry Potter the authors keep revealing new information and retconning existing pieces to add to the ever growing mythos and world. Now with years of ancillary work written by Pullman I can almost see the desire to jam some back into the source narrative but the story itself suffers, much like the Hobbit movies which pull the same trick. IMO Will's story could have easily fit into one episode of season 2, with him meeting Lyra at the end. This is like if Damon Lindelof decided to keep cutting away to Desmond in season 1 of LOST because we might be concerned we tuned into the wrong show when S2 started....
 
zombie.modernist said:
For those still watching His Dark Material this show is really adept at shooting itself in the foot, and has really become a total mess precisely at the point where it needs to be honing in with laser focus.

This week's episode had amazing production design, a fairly robust use of effective creature animations and some of the better acting from Dafne Keen. Too bad it's being absolutely slaughtered in the editing room. The biggest offender is of course the Will narrative which completely sucks the life out of the show as Thorne keeps trying to force it into a story that had no room for it when written.

There's moments that have me completely astounded, like when we cut from an all too short clip of Lyra and Rodger riding on Iorek at sunset in the north, then quickly cut back to the weak modern day psychological thriller tone of the Will story, for no apparent reason. I almost wonder if Throne is reacting strongly to the usual expanding world of fantasy sagas. As we go through fantasy stories like Tolkien's Middle Earth or Harry Potter the authors keep revealing new information and retconning existing pieces to add to the ever growing mythos and world. Now with years of ancillary work written by Pullman I can almost see the desire to jam some back into the source narrative but the story itself suffers, much like the Hobbit movies which pull the same trick. IMO Will's story could have easily fit into one episode of season 2, with him meeting Lyra at the end. This is like if Damon Lindelof decided to keep cutting away to Desmond in season 1 of LOST because we might be concerned we tuned into the wrong show when S2 started....
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Last night we finished the 5th, I think, episode. My wife, our teen, and I had a conversation afterward where we were all basically like "This is interesting...I guess. But I have no idea what the rules of this world are, or even what the central conflict really is." So much is unexplained. You're introduced to the concept of companion animal spirits up front. They can talk, and their lives our linked to ours. No one says this, but they seem to always be the opposite sex of the person they're adjoined to. Okay. Got it, sort of.

There's something called Dust, and some sort of theocratic power doesn't want James McAvoy to....do...something something something with it? And they steal children?

There's some sort of Gypsy-like tribe of boat people called Gyptians that live on the canals and they have their own king, and they seem to have some sort of past as rebels or separatists or something that you can only infer.

There's a device that tells the truth, if you have lots of training in how to interpret it. It's covered in symbols, and it just...works somehow? And the main character doesn't need the training because she just...knows how to use it suddenly? And the device is super rare and somehow maybe indicative of rebellious activity, yet the main character pulls it out of her pocket every chance she gets.

Oh, and there's talking bears that are also, I don't know, blacksmiths? They're not part of the whole animal-as-linked-spirits deal, they're their own thing. Maybe all animals can talk? Who knows.

There's also a council of immortal witches flying around. I guess magic exists and some people know about it?

Lin-Manuel Miranda is the only person who doesn't have an English accent. He does have an accent, though, and it's completely unidentifiable. He's a hot-air balloonist-gambler-rogue...I think? His presence in the show is completely inexplicable.

Oh and also this is a parallel universe and some people have figured out how to travel to our world, where there is another ostensibly main character* who wasn't introduced until this episode.

I don't know. As a viewer who has no familiarity with the source material, I don't know if I'm *supposed* to be asking these questions because it's slowly feeding me information, or if it's just failing to explain the world it's introducing us to. Its worst sin is that it's not making me interested at all in checking out the books to fill in the background. I know some of you love this property dearly, but this adaptation feels like it's missing some sort of throughline that's accessible enough to forgive the parts that aren't making sense.

*And the only reason I think this is because of the VO narration that popped up for the first time in this episode and told me "this person is pretty, pretty important."
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Last night we finished the 5th, I think, episode. My wife, our teen, and I had a conversation afterward where we were all basically like "This is interesting...I guess. But I have no idea what the rules of this world are, or even what the central conflict really is." So much is unexplained. You're introduced to the concept of companion animal spirits up front. They can talk, and their lives our linked to ours. No one says this, but they seem to always be the opposite sex of the person they're adjoined to. Okay. Got it, sort of.

There's something called Dust, and some sort of theocratic power doesn't want James McAvoy to....do...something something something with it? And they steal children?

There's some sort of Gypsy-like tribe of boat people called Gyptians that live on the canals and they have their own king, and they seem to have some sort of past as rebels or separatists or something that you can only infer.

There's a device that tells the truth, if you have lots of training in how to interpret it. It's covered in symbols, and it just...works somehow? And the main character doesn't need the training because she just...knows how to use it suddenly? And the device is super rare and somehow maybe indicative of rebellious activity, yet the main character pulls it out of her pocket every chance she gets.

Oh, and there's talking bears that are also, I don't know, blacksmiths? They're not part of the whole animal-as-linked-spirits deal, they're their own thing. Maybe all animals can talk? Who knows.

There's also a council of immortal witches flying around. I guess magic exists and some people know about it?

Lin-Manuel Miranda is the only person who doesn't have an English accent. He does have an accent, though, and it's completely unidentifiable. He's a hot-air balloonist-gambler-rogue...I think? His presence in the show is completely inexplicable.

Oh and also this is a parallel universe and some people have figured out how to travel to our world, where there is another ostensibly main character* who wasn't introduced until this episode.

I don't know. As a viewer who has no familiarity with the source material, I don't know if I'm *supposed* to be asking these questions because it's slowly feeding me information, or if it's just failing to explain the world it's introducing us to. Its worst sin is that it's not making me interested at all in checking out the books to fill in the background. I know some of you love this property dearly, but this adaptation feels like it's missing some sort of throughline that's accessible enough to forgive the parts that aren't making sense.

*And the only reason I think this is because of the VO narration that popped up for the first time in this episode and told me "this person is pretty, pretty important."
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100% all of this. I think I'm starting to enjoy it, but also wouldnt lose any sleep if they never aired another episode
 
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Teeeee said:
I have often said that I have a very very loose grasp on understanding this show. And yet it still keeps me watching. But I honestly have no idea now what is happening. And how this is all going to end.
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I'm really excited for the finale because then I can start reading about all the tidbits I missed which will help me piece everything together after the fact. Everything about this season is amazing.
 
The Watchmen finale was meh to me.

I'll preface this with: I have not read the comics.

What was the point of this? As someone that didn't read the comics, it was entertaining enough until it wasn't. The last 2 episodes just did not hold my attention at all. The season reached its pinnacle with the Angela experiencing her grandfather's memories. And went downhill after that - and pretty quickly. Regina King was great. But man, I just didn't "get it". Not that I didn't understand what was happening, I did. I just didn't get what the show was trying to do. There was so little character development with the senator that I could have cared less any time he was on the screen. Mirror Guy had an episode of backstory and then.... where was he the rest of the series? He got a few minutes of screen time here and there. And Cal was just so blah. It just felt like a very superficial story. I wasn't invested in really any of the characters except maybe Angela. But that might just be because I love Regina.

If there is a 2nd season, I don't think I'll watch.
 
Teeeee said:
The Watchmen finale was meh to me.

I'll preface this with: I have not read the comics.

What was the point of this? As someone that didn't read the comics, it was entertaining enough until it wasn't. The last 2 episodes just did not hold my attention at all. The season reached its pinnacle with the Angela experiencing her grandfather's memories. And went downhill after that - and pretty quickly. Regina King was great. But man, I just didn't "get it". Not that I didn't understand what was happening, I did. I just didn't get what the show was trying to do. There was so little character development with the senator that I could have cared less any time he was on the screen. Mirror Guy had an episode of backstory and then.... where was he the rest of the series? He got a few minutes of screen time here and there. And Cal was just so blah. It just felt like a very superficial story. I wasn't invested in really any of the characters except maybe Angela. But that might just be because I love Regina.

If there is a 2nd season, I don't think I'll watch.
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Lindelof has been inspired by Watchmen for years and I think a big part of that inspiration is the meandering nature of the work. It's the main reason it's so hard to adapt it because despite appearing to be a cohesive "graphic novel" it wanders all over the map thematically, like most of Moore's work. That's sort of why Lindelof's style is so simpatico with the comic to me, because both LOST and The Leftovers are similarly free-spirited. I think it's hard to distill any core theme from the show but there are several contenders, namely the role of race and memory, the processing of American tragedy and power and responsibility. Beyond that list another viewer probably has a completely different one, much like the comic which is exactly why I think they nailed the nature of the comic so well.

I think a big challenge the writers faced was how to make the show resonate and build off of the comics without rehashing many of the comic's plot points. A big one that factors into the climax and finale is knowledge of who Hooded Justice and Dr. Manhattan are, which I think puts show only viewers at a big disadvantage. If you're not invested in those characters in any way I can see the show's pivot to them seeming pointless. IMO Lindelof was being very sneaky saying this wasn't a true sequel because it completely turns into one by the last 3 episodes. I think the gamble there is that the show only viewers will be invested enough to push on and the comic readers will get super excited.

Personally the whole thing really worked for me, but it's a big swing and I can see it not landing for all.
 
DownIsTheNewUp said:
Which makes me really sad. Because it's such a beautiful, imaginative, thoughtful series of books. Jack Thorne simply was the wrong hire as a screen-writer.
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Yeah, when moving to screen they really needed to pull off something like Steve Kloves did with Harry Potter not Throne., ie clean up the subplots, focus around strong themes and core characters, use the extra time to build the world visually. Currently, there's so much shit crammed into every episode that just serves as exposition that it feels more complex and boring than it ought to. Every time the show gets to a moment of genuine visual enjoyment it just cuts back to something really boring, which is a total shame. I will keep watching and I really hope it improves in S2 and can make it through the rest of the books, but it's a shame seeing so much potential go to waste.

This show actually makes me keep thinking of the Netflix Dark Crystal, which was based on far flimsier source material yet somehow managed to be a more focused smart and coherent fantasy than this.
 
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