Talking about Alternate Histories on TV and Film

 

On the evening of February 15, 2023, I talked via Zoom to the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County about alternate history stories on TV and in the movies.

Among the shows I discussed were The Man in the High Castle, Hunters, The Plot Against America, Watchmen, For All Mankind, The Last of Us, Fatherland, Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood, & Juliet, It’s Real Life, and Snodgrass.

Watchmen Season 1 Finale: "So I Suppose the FBI's Gonna Arrest the President"

That was certainly the most relevant line in the Season 1 finale of Watchmen on HBO tonight - "So I suppose the FBI's gonna arrest the President?"  If somehow you don't know why, I suppose you might've been living on one of Jupiter's moons for the last number of years or so, too.

As it was, that line was spoken by Adrian Veidt, back on Earth, just before someone hit him over the head to shut him up, on grounds that he talked too much.  A dumb conclusion to what otherwise was the best night Veidt had on this series.  Also, although there was a cool picture in the newspaper of President Robert Redford, I'd have preferred to see the real Redford in the flesh, or maybe the digital pixels, or whatever they are, on this season finale.  Did they even offer him that part?

And yeah, the ending was good, but I'd much rather have heard John Lennon singing "I Am the Walrus," talking about originals.  But the egg scene was done very well done.  Starting with the literal eggs broken on the floor as an exemplification of the words of another Lenin - V. I. - who alas got no credit for those words in this alternate reality, maybe because Lenin, if he even existed, in this reality never said anything like if if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.  (Or maybe continuity was too lazy to check that out?)

But the ambiguity of the very very ending, with no indication of whether Angela actually walked on water or not, was the right way to go.  Because ... of course she walked on the water.  We didn't have to see it to know that's what happened.  Not only because why else would she have found that egg intact on the floor, after her husband had told her years earlier about eggs, and, we want to see a second season with Angela in super power form.

Which I'll likely watch.

See also Watchmen 1.1: Promising Alternate History ... [Watchmen 1.2: don't look for my review, I didn't feel like reviewing it] ... Watchmen 1.3: The Falling Car ... Watchmen 1.4: What We Learned ... Watchmen 1.5: Some Enchanted Evening ... Watchmen 1.6-7: Deaths and Liberations ... Watchmen 1.8: The Fault

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Watchmen 1.8: The Fault

Well, tonight's episode 1.8 of Watchmen was my favorite so far.  All the pieces came together, not easy in a time-travel story, especially when the time traveler is some kind of god, Dr. Manhattan, who, among his many impressive powers is the ability to live and act in all times that he exists, at the same time, all of the time.

This, for example, at last provides the explanation for why Angela's grandfather killed her boss in the first episode.  We already knew it was because he thought Judd Crawford was a racist, with a Klan outfit hidden in his home.  It turns out that that was because Angela, having been told that by her grandfather, then told it Dr. Manhattan, who in turn told it to her grandfather at an earlier date.  It's the kind of neat time travel snake-swallowing-its-own tale routine that shows like Lost were so good at, at their best.  Which makes sense, given that Damon Lindelof, the creator of this Watchmen, was one of the co-creators of Lost, and Jeff Jensen, one of the critics who most sagely reviewed Lost, co-wrote this episode with Lindelof.  There may be a meta-story there in which Lindelof read one of Jensen's reviews of Lost, and got the idea for this treatment of Watchmen. Or, Jensen is himself a time traveler, and was able to review Lost so well because he saw tonight's episode of Watchmen back when he was reviewing Lost.  Nah, only kidding.  For the most part.

What is certain is that tonight's episode also had one of the all-time best titles, "A God Walks Into a Bar," which was exactly the way the episode began.  And we also learned why Angela "killed" her beloved husband Cal last week, and whom she was talking to, right after she did that.  But back to how her grandfather, Will Reeves, got the idea that Crawford was a racist.  It wasn't really Angela's fault - as she ruefully thought she was - even though she was the conduit.  The fault lies much deeper than that.  It's like how did the universe come into being?  The Big Bang?  Well, then, what caused the Big Bang to happen?  Ok, then, God?  Well, what brought God into being?  To say that God brought her/him/itself into being is no answer, it's a tautology.

Which is to say, it's at the profoundest, mostly unknowable, level of our existence.  And good for tonight's Watchmen for stripping a little of that bare.

See also Watchmen 1.1: Promising Alternate History ... [Watchmen 1.2: don't look for my review, I didn't feel like reviewing it] ... Watchmen 1.3: The Falling Car ... Watchmen 1.4: What We Learned ... Watchmen 1.5: Some Enchanted Evening ... Watchmen 1.6-7: Deaths and Liberations

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Watchmen 1.6-7: Deaths and Liberations

I thought I'd review episodes 1.6 and 1.7 of Watchmen together, since they're both episodes of Nostalgia - the powerful drug that makes Angela relive her family's memories - and I thought two episodes might make a little more sense than the one.  Which they do.  I think (again, with the proviso that I never read the comics or saw any movie, and knew nothing at all of Watchmen before I started watching the HBO series).

A common denominator in these two episodes are that people aren't who they seem to be.  In episode 1.6, we find that Angela's grandfather (Will Reeves) killed Judd Crawford because Reeves thought Crawford was a white supremacist.   In episode 1.7, Angela kills or liberates her husband Cal, because she's sure he's Dr. Manhattan.  And, just for good measure, on a more minor note, Crawford's wife turns out to be pretty bad, getting the better of Laurie Blake and landing her in the basement via a trapdoor attached to a chair.  Yeah, Watchmen is that kind of story, which I guess makes sense, seeing as how it's derived from a comic book.

But there's a seriousness that belies the comic book, just as the alternate reality in Watchmen has some really brilliant aspects, such as the United States won the Vietnam War and made Vietnam our 51st state (it's not that far from Hawaii, when you think about it).  And in 1.7, Angela sees her parents blown up by a bomb, and her grandmother die - presumably of natural causes - just after she safely tucks Angela as a little girl into a cab which will take her from Vietnam back to America (presumably via a plane which the cab will drive her to).

There's a reason for Angela as a girl and now in her memories to visit those family tragedies again.  To harden her psyche, so she can wield the hammer on Cal when she escapes the futuristic facility she's housed in, and gets back home.  That facility, by the way, is in its own right a nice piece of science fictional work, with all kinds of gadgets we don't quite have, or have yet, in our reality.

All in all, Watchmen is a strange, one-of-a-kind brew of a story indeed.  I'm more keen than ever to see where it goes.

See also Watchmen 1.1: Promising Alternate History ... [Watchmen 1.2: don't look for my review, I didn't feel like reviewing it] ... Watchmen 1.3: The Falling Car ... Watchmen 1.4: What We Learned ... Watchmen 1.5: Some Enchanted Evening

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Watchmen 1.5: Some Enchanted Evening

That was the best thing about tonight's insane episode 1.5 of the insano Watchmen - "Some Enchanted Evening" - sung first by Sinatra at the beginning of the episode and at the end by some group unknown to me.  But my favorite rendition of the song that Ezio Pinza first sang in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific all those years ago has always been this one by Jay and the Americans.

As to the tale tonight, we get the back-story of Looking Glass, who's traumatized as a teenaged boy in Hoboken.  Yeah, I know, Hoboken, NJ can be frightening in our reality, but not that bad.  In the alternate reality that is Watchmen, Hoboken and nearby NYC are attacked by a squid that kills countless people.   Those squids, again, prompting the FBI guy years later to talk about a squid pro quo, giving tonight's episode an odd resonance to our own political situation (I was tempted to use that as the title).

I just want to take a moment here to say that I still have almost no idea what's going on with Adrian Veidt, which is one of the reasons I said I liked "Some Enchanted Evening" the best tonight.  I can only hope that he'll escape from his prison before this first season (I don't know, has it been renewed?) ends, and proceed to Tulsa or some place pertinent to the main story, which would give all these scenes of his trying to escape and failing at least some modicum of relevance.

I liked the Jay and the Americans' version the best because of the harmony.  I used to sing the song with my folk rock group, The New Outlook, in the Alcove at CCNY when we were still more of a doo-wop than a folk-rock group.  The Alcove was indoors, and we sang there rather than outside because we were worried about raining squids - no, only kidding, we liked the acoustics.

Anyhoo, see you here next week, when we'll learn the fate of Looking Glass, I hope.

In the meantime, one more thing: Don Frankel, in a group called Sundial Symphony with Robbie Rist which has recorded some of my songs on Big Stir Records - like Looking for Sunsets (In the Early Morning) - always sounded a lot like Jay.

See also Watchmen 1.1: Promising Alternate History ... [Watchmen 1.2: don't look for my review, I didn't feel like reviewing it] ... Watchmen 1.3: The Falling Car ... Watchmen 1.4: What We Learned

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Watchmen 1.4: What We Learned

Here's what we learned in the continuingly gonzo, bordering on insane episode 1.4 of Watchmen tonight - that is, a little more than everything you could want in an alternate reality or alternate history story:

• Henry Louis Gates is Treasury Secretary.  In case you don't recall who he was/is in our reality, he is the African-American Harvard professor arrested by a white racist Boston police sergeant in his (Gates's) own home, because the sergeant thought Gates had broken into it.  As compensation for this wrongful arrest, Gates had to have a beer with the sergeant at the White House at President Obama's invitation.  Gates apparently did better in Watchmen.
• This alternate reality is well ahead of ours in genetics, gene-splicing, DNA manipulation and the like.  And a Vietnamese women owns some kind of huge biological facility in Tulsa.
• Adrian Veidt is in prison - that's what his gorgeous estate really is - and he is permitted to keep ordering up babies who, placed in a bizarre, almost-Frankenstein-like piece of equipment, quickly mature into the man and woman who are his servants.  And who, we also learn, Veidt kills about as quickly as they are created and mature.  Like I said, this is world of advanced biology - and psychos.

At this point, I'd say Watchmen is more comprehensible than Twin Peaks, but a less endearing (nothing, quite yet, like that cherry pie).  But Watchmen does have going for it an intriguing science fiction, nibbling around the edges.

See you next time.

See also Watchmen 1.1: Promising Alternate History ... [Watchmen 1.2: don't look for my review, I didn't feel like reviewing it] ... Watchmen 1.3: The Falling Car

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Watchmen 1.3: The Falling Car

Watchmen checked in with a clarifying, excellent episode 1.3 tonight, introducing Jean Smart as FBI honcho and super good-guy killer Laurie Blake, and giving us a nice extended rendition of Desmond Dekker's "Israelites," one of my many all-time favorite songs (in fact, I'm listening to it on YouTube right now).

Blake is a sarcastic, effective, very necessary character.  The episode went by quickly, and I wasn't paying one-hundred percent attention - I never can, in a story like this - so I may have some of this a little wrong, and I don't like watching a scene twice to check, but I think Blake is Dr. Manhattan's former wife or ex-girlfriend, and he's currently on Mars.  Even if he's not on Mars, I'm certain that humans are on Mars in this alternate reality, and that's another nifty departure of Watchmen's reality from ours.

Blake also calls Manhattan (the man on Mars, not the borough) via a phone in a blue phone booth that connects her to Mars, and tells him a variety of lamely sage jokes, the best of which being about what a girl does with an extra brick - I used to tell a two-part version of this two-part joke when I was a kid (I heard it from someone else) - but in Blake's version the punchline is the brick comes down on God's head.  This is picked up nicely in what almost happens to Blake at the end of this episode.

But first, I also much like the tension between Blake and Sister Night - they make a good pair of adversaries, who may well come together in the end, even though Blake eats good guys for breakfast, or something like that, as she makes clear to everyone.  But Sister Night's her match, and I liked her response to Blake's attempt at intimidation.

But back to the end, a car falls out of the sky and almost on Blake's head, almost fulfilling the brick in her joke.  Maybe that was the car we saw lifted off the ground either in this or a previous episode?  It's hard to tell in this gonzo narrative, but I can at least tell that it's appealing, and I'll continue to watch.

See also Watchmen 1.1: Promising Alternate History ... [Watchmen 1.2: don't look for my review, I didn't feel like reviewing it]

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Watchmen 1.1: Promising Alternate History

I guess I'm either the best or worst kind of person to watch and review Watchmen on HBO:  I've of course heard of the iconic comic book story and its adaptations over the years, but I never read or saw any of it, and really know nothing about it.  But with a cast consisting of Regina King and Don Johnson, and the creator being Lost's Damon Lindelof, how could I resist?

Here's what I now know after watching the first episode:  This is an alternate history or reality in which, by 2019, Vietnam is a state in the United States, which must mean we won that war (undeclared and therefore illegal, and badly lost in our reality).  Police wear masks so they don't risk killers in the public, well, killing them.  So far, this is taking place mostly in Oklahoma, to the point where the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical plays a big role.

Now, I'm a sucker for alternate realities - I have a song, Samantha, on my new album coming out early next year, which I'll no doubt tell you about later on in these weekly reviews, but for now I'll just mention that that song is about star-crossed love across alternate realities (ok, here's a rough mix of it).  And I thought Counterpoint, now sadly departed, was one of the best shows on television in the past few years (not to mention The Man in the High Castle, which with one more season left is almost sadly departed, and is flat out one of the best shows ever on television, period).  So, yeah, I'm a fan of alternate reality TV and novels (here's what I said about the late J. Neil Schulman's The Fractal Man), and I very much like the set-up so far of Watchmen.

I also liked the narrative.  Don Johnson's character is killed at the end if the episode (sorry, that's a spoiler in this reality), but the laws of television say that a star that big won't play a character who gets killed after one episode, so that means Judd (Johnson's character) either isn't really dead, even though we saw him hanging there, or he'll come back to life, which amounts to the same thing.

I also liked the music, not only because I always liked "Oklahoma" - my wife may have played a part in some summer camp production (I'm not sure, and she's sleeping, so I'll ask her tomorrow*) - but all the music is original (i.e., meaning, you don't usually hear it in a television series, even one on HBO), with, for example, a powerful rendition of a song that accompanied Judd's hanging body.  (By the way, Trump, if you're reading this, that's what a lynching is, not the justified investigation that you're now undergoing).

*Note added next morning: She did!

So, yeah, I'm liking this a lot, and expect I'll be reviewing Watchmen once a week.

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