Tonight’s Watchmen episode title is dedicated to anyone who doesn’t like these recaps. Just kidding, thanks for reading.
I’m fine with any TV episode that starts with Islands in the Stream playing. More Kenny and Dolly, please, Hollywood. As Kenny and Dolly sing, we see the story of a couple getting together and building a life with each other. Both the song and their story are interrupted by the arrival of Lady Trieu. Lady Trieu has an hourglass with her, well a three minute glass. She’s there to negotiate the sale of their house and the land around it, in those three minutes. Trieu is a trillionaire, but offers them the gift of life instead of a big cash offer. They can’t get pregnant, and Trieu offers to change that for them. The wife is skeptical to the point of kicking Trieu out, but that’s when Trieu plays her hand. She’s not offering to help them get pregnant, she’s giving them a son, their infant son, made from each of their genetic materials, and $5 million. They sign immediately. As soon as they sign, the lights start flickering and a meteor crashes on their property. Looks like Trieu saw that coming.
Over at her bakery/secret headquarters, Angela gets to cleaning. She also takes apart William’s wheelchair. Angela seems to be getting rid of all evidence that William was there. She hesitates at burning the WATCH OVER THIS BOY note, but accidentally burns it when an automated message comes over her answering machine for William from the Cultural Center saying a new branch of his family has been discovered.
Sister Night calls in a break in at the Greenwood Cultural Center, and that she’ll investigate. She doesn’t report that she’s the one doing the break in. Once inside, the computer system lets her know that Will is her grandfather. She then gets a video primer on her great-grandparents. I call this scene “Night at the Museum.”
More glass shattering sends Angela back outside. It was the sound of her car crashing to the ground from the end of last week’s Watchmen. Angela has the keys on her and is able to disable the alarm. Laurie informs Angela that her car fell out of the sky. Angela finds a bottle of pills in the car. Are they Will’s?
Angela’s husband is a card carrying atheist. When the kids get into an argument over whether or not Judd went to heaven, he tells them heaven is pretend and gives his kids a very scientific explanation of where Judd was before he was born and where he is now, nowhere.
Angela visits Looking Glass at his fallout bunker/dark room. He has a keen interest in the space squids that occasionally rain from the sky. Apparently, they dissolve quickly and he wanted to get photos of them. Angela wants Glass to get William’s pills tested. Angela asks if Glass knew Judd was a racist, to which Glass responds, “He was a white man living in Tulsa. What do you think?” Angela then produces Judd’s Klan robes. Glass ID’s them as being old school robes, possibly Judd’s grandfather’s. She wants Glass to hold onto them for her, to keep them out of Laurie’s sight.
Night throws the bag of Will’s stuff off an overpass into a passing dump truck. She is observed by a guy is the worst Silver Surfer cosplay I’ve ever seen. The guy runs, sprays himself with some sort of liquid that helps him slip and slide into a narrow sewer grate, escaping Night.
At police headquarters, Night runs into Senator Keane. He knows who she is, and thanks her for saving him. There’s something fishy about this guy; he’s definitely not clean.
Laurie moved into Judd’s office. Angela isn’t keen on that, and lets her know. She dusted Angela’s car for prints. There was a mystery set of prints in there, William Reeves’s. We learn from Laurie that William was a cop in New York City in the 40s and 50s, who retired early and moved off the grid. Laurie quickly 2 and 2 together that 100+ year old William might be her mystery wheelchair man from Judd’s crime scene.
Laurie fills Angela in on who she really is, and her parentage. Despite being a former superhero and the former girlfriend of Doctor Manhattan, I guess Laurie Blake isn’t as big a celebrity in the world of Watchmen as I assumed, because Angela had no idea that Laurie Blake was Silk Spectre.
They visit the Trieu plant, where Laurie and Night meet Bian, Mrs. Trieu’s daughter. She’s the girl from the first episode who bought al. the newspapers at the newsstand. Laurie thinks one of the Trieu hoverplanes may have taken William and her car, but Trieu’s people deny that anyone there could have had a part in it.
Trieu meets with them, and calls Sister Night “Detective Night” which for a minute made me think she knew her identity, but Night does carry a badge, so calling her Detective makes sense. Though then Trieu asks her in Vietnamese “You grandfather wants to know if you got the pills” to which Angela responds “Tell that old fucker her can tell me himself.” Okay, so she does know who Angela is, and that was definitely one of Trieu’s hoverplanes that stole William away.
Trieu has a statue of Adrian Veidt in her office. She says that he’s an inspiration to her. Well, we definitely know she’s into genetic engineering from earlier on tonight’s Watchmen.
Speaking of Veidt, he’s out on a rowboat in the lake and pulls up some clone babies in a lobster trap. He tosses a couple of them overboard back into the lake, but takes two back with him. He places them in some steampunk microwave that artificially ages them. As they cry, he enjoys some cake. Four episodes into Watchmen, I think Veidt only eats cake. By the time he’s finished a few bites, a fully grown Philps and Crookshanks await him. He explains to them who they are, and who he is, their master. He brings them into a dining room full of dead Philips and Crookshanks. Apparently Adrian killed them all, rather violently too. He picks up a silver horseshoe, saying with disdain to one of the dead Mr. Phillps, “I don’t need it yet, not yet.” The new Mr. Philips and Ms. Crookshanks help him catapult the corpses away. Veidt takes notes on the where they go, and adjusts the catapult accordingly. He announces his plan to escape this Downton Abbey prison he’s in.
Back at Angela’s house, Angela’s husband is reading Things Fall Apart. Fun fact, I had to read that in college. Another fun fact, when she spoils the ending of it for him to express her displeasure with him, I realized I have no retention of it at all. She’s not happy that he didn’t tell her that Laurie came by and talked to him. He says what he told Laurie, that he lied to Laurie for Angela, telling her nothing about the secret stuff from the night of Judd’s death, nor about his “accident” in Vietnam. I’m assuming we’ll find out more about this accident later this season. Angela’s happy and announces it’s time for more closet sex.
Trieu’s daughter wakes from a bad dream. She goes to see her mom. She had a dream about men coming to her village and them making her walk a long time. She then says her feet still hurt. Weird. Seriously, I can’t tell if this was just a throwaway or if this is going to have some payoff later.
Ms. Trieu and William Reeves get back to talking over tea. She wants him to be more direct with Angela. William sounds MUCH more lucid in this scene than in any of his past present day scenes on Watchmen. He’s definitely not a doddering, semi-senile former supertype. Well, he might be a former supertype, but he’s definitely not doddering. From the sounds of things during their conversation, both of them are former members of the superhero community. Something big is going down in three days, which I’m hoping is seven days our time on Watchmen. Tonight’s episode was kind of slow and I’m hoping for something with a little more juice next week. They’re counting down to something but what? Doctor Manhattan’s return?
