Today’s Watchmen opener if a light-up key pad.Oddly, there was no history lesson at the start of this one, which I have to admit, I’m kind of bummed about, because Watchmen is filling me on US history that I never knew of, like the Tulsa Massacre.
A woman is calling Dr. Manhattan on Mars. It’s Designing Women‘s Jean Smart! She tells a joke into the phone. It’s not a great joke, but is about a father and a daughter. Oh man, I think she’s Dr. Manhattan’s daughter. That or I’m reading too much into this joke.
Jean Smart then robs a bank. She’s got a whole crew. There’s no Delta Burke though, so I’m calling it a missed opportunity. Some dude that is not Midnighter or Batman breaks it up. But going by his costume, it could be either of them. But ha, the joke is on Not-Batman! It turns out this whole robbery is an undercover sting operation by the FBI. Everybody in the bank was in on it. Jean Smart shoots Not-Batman in the back while he tries to escape. Going by the bank teller’s reaction to all this, I get the feeling that maybe he wasn’t in on it. Not-Batman’s body armor saves his life, so the FBI takes him into custody. The public boos them like they’re Donald Trump at a baseball game/UFC fight/anywhere these days.
Later, Jean Smart opens a steel case with 666 as the combination. A blue light glows from it. I wonder if it’s from the same makers as the case in Pulp Fiction. The only difference being it glows blue, not gold.
Senator Keane from last week visits Jean Smart in her hotel room. He’s there to compliment her on apprehending Not-Batman, whose name is Revenger. Unrelated: Chuck Forsman’s Revenger is cooler.
Jean Smart has an owl named Who.
The Senator tells her that she’s going to be sent to Tulsa to investigate Judd’s murder. From his story, it sounds like it’s been 3 years since White Night, the police starting to wear masks. I have to say, Watchmen does a good job of doling at the exposition without it looking too much like doling out the exposition. Senator Keane calls her Laurie. Wait a second, is she Silk Spectre?
Laurie calls Mars to tell Dr. Manhattan another joke. This one seems to be about Nite Owl.
Laurie shows up at a FBI meeting about the 7th Kalvary. Funniest line of the episode: “Is it the 1980s? Then who gives a shit about Rorschach?” when the agent in charge of the Power Point about Judd’s murder gets reamed out from his boss for including a page from Rorschach’s journal. The presentation goes into the history of how the cops in Tulsa ended up getting masks. The head FBI agent wants to send a bunch of agents to Tula, but Laurie says she’d rather travel alone as to not spook everyone there. She begrudgingly agrees to take an agent with her and picks the guy who put the slideshow together, probably because she thinks he’s too low on the food chain or too inept to cause her too many problems. To prove my point, Agent Inept brought a Lone Ranger mask with him to Tulsa because the Tulsa police wear them. Laurie puts him in his place quickly over that.
On the flight to Tulsa, Agent Inept asks her on Ozymandias, and lays it out for the viewer that Laurie is Silk Spectre. They talk briefly about Veidt and she says she wasn’t a fan.
Laurie tells another joke into the phone, this one about Ozymandias.These jokes keep ending with the hero dying, ending up at the pearly gates, but being sent to hell.
Laurie and Agent Inept investigate the tree Judd was hanged from, and Laurie pays a visit to Judd’s widow. We don’t know what they talk about. But Laurie then goes to Russian Red and the lady who was driving the Owl Ship with Judd in the first episode. Oh, their names are actually Red Scare and Pirate Jenny. Laurie is looking for Looking Glass, or as we knew him last week, Glass.
The Tulsa PD are interrogating many 7th Kalvary suspects. Looking Glass doesn’t seem happy to see Laurie. Laurie’s a real pisser. She checks her teeth in his mirror mask. She knows Looking Glass’s real name, Wade Tillman, which gets him to take his mask off. She asks if they ran a tox screen on Judd, but there wasn’t one. Looking Glass saws they didn’t because the cause of death was known, but the real reason is obviously that Looking Glass already knew that Judd was coked up and didn’t want that getting out. Angela’s full hero name is Sister Night, not just Night. I still like Ninja Nun better.
Her third joke call is about Dr. Manhattan himself, who also ends up in hell.
Protestors are protesting outside the cemetery where Judd’s burial is taking place. Laurie and Agent Inept attend. They have to check their guns upon arrival. Laurie introduces herself to Angela and Cal. When Angela balks at Laurie being on the Anti-Vigilatne Task Force, aurie responds, “Do you know how to tell the difference between a masked vigilante and a masked cop? Me either.”
Angela eulogizes Judd at the burial. jJdd wanted to her to sing a song at his funeral, an old Roy Rogers song, The Last Roundup.
During this, a 7th Kalvary guy tunnels underground into a nearby mausoleum and straps a bomb to himself. He walks out and to the burial and calls out Senator Joseph Keane Jr as a race traitor. He demands the senator turn himself into the 7th Kalvary. Senator Keane agrees, but Laurie quickly shoots the guy through his Rorschach mask, killing him instantly. This sets the dude’s bomb’s timer into gear. Uh-oh. Angla saves the day by telling everyone to run, tossing the dead guy in the grave and piling judd’s casket on top of him. Judd’s body goes boom with the dead 7th Kalvaryman. Laurie was supposed to surrender her gun when they approached the funeral, but it looks like only Agent Inept did.
Ozymandias is working on some designs for what appears to be armor. He cuts, tans and sews leather, grabs some piecemeal armor parts from around the mansion and outfits Mr. Phillips in it. It looks like a space suit. Mr. Phillips has a long rope wrapped around him, which Ozymandias pulls. Cut to Ozymandias standing over a deeply frozen Mr. Phillips. I think he tried launching this dude into space. He tells the next Mr. Phillips “I think we’re going to need a thicker skin,” and proceeds to hunt some bison on his property. After he kills a bison, a masked man on horseback fires a warning shot at him.
His staff prepared him another cake. He’s not having it. He mediates instead. Ms. Crookshanks brings him a letter from the Game Warden, aka the guy who fired the warning shot. He writes that when his arrived, they had met an agreement regarding Ozymandias’s captivity. It seems Ozymandias isn’t living a life or retirement but instead of imprisonment. Ozymandias dictates a letter back saying he’s not trying to escape. And he wants it signed with his name, “Adrian Veidt,” confirming Jeremy Irons is playing exactly who we all thought he was playing. He then changes into hie classic Ozymandias costume.
Senator Keane gives a press conference praising law enforcement for saving him. Afterwards, Laurie and Angela investigate the tunnel dug by the 7th Kalvary member. Laurie thought the bomber was bluffing about the bomb being attached to his heart. Laurie isn’t happy that Judd’s body can’t be exhumed. She says she was at the crime scene earlier and found tire tracks from a wheelchair. Laurie says she found the secret compartment in Judd’s room and wants to know from Angela what she found in there. She put two and two together that Angela was the last one in there and isn’t prone to fainting.
Laurie tells Sister Night she eats good guys for breakfast. Wow, this Laurie is much more of a force than she was in the original Watchmen. Angela has heard enough and walks out.
Laurie calls Doctor Manhattan with another joke, this one about Silk Spectre. She’s the girl who threw the brick in the air from the first joke, and it ends up hitting God in the air, killing him. She accuses Dr. Manhattan about not caring about humanity or even paying attention to them. She admits to calling him often with jokes and wonders why she does it. So do I. I hope her dad, The Comedian, told better jokes.
In her hotel room, Laurie pulls out a big, blue, metallic sex toy. Oh! Is this what was in the case? I’m suddenly wondering if an Iron Man dildo was in Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Laurie changes her mind about the sex toy and has sex with a masked Agent Inept instead.
Done with her jokes, Laurie walks out of the Blue Booth, the phone booth to Mars, Angela’s car, sans William, falls from the sky right in front of her. It’s totalled. She looks up and sees what looks like Mars blinking in the distance. This makes Laurie laugh. I guess Dr. Manhattan is paying attention on Watchmen?
This episode of Wachmen really linked the show to the comic much more than the previous two Watchmen episodes, bringing in a major character from the original series and having another both reveal his identity officially to the viewer and dress up in his costume from the Watchmen comic. Like every week on the show, I’m excited for next week’s episode of Watchmen.
