"If You Don't Like My Story, Write Your Own" – Watchmen S01E04 Review

To echo two lines from the Watchmen comics, "I'd almost forgotten the excitement of not knowing, the delights of uncertainty." And "This must be the way Jon sees the world."

Watchmen encapsulates both of these feelings for me. For one thing, me seeing the TV show must be like how many "normal" people see the original comic book series and the movie. For another thing, the comic book series has been endlessly dissected. The movie, being a relatively straightforward adaptation of the comic book, doesn't have a whole lot to add to the comic book dissection.

But with Watchmen the TV show, we have a whole new degree of uncertainty. Why was Angela's car dropped from the sky? What are the pills inside of it? What are Trieu and Will up to? Why is Adrian growing clones of Phillips and Crookshanks and launching the dead ones into the sky? What era are Adrian's adventures set in? And who is Lube Man? We're not rehashing the comic book the way the movie did, and to a large degree the newer Doomsday Clock does as well. We're in wholly unexplored territory, and among all the uncertainty you can rely on nothing.

At the same time, I'm willing to piece together the clues. The first four episodes of the series feel like reading the first couple of issues of the original Watchmen comic. We're introduced to a whole new world, with some anchors in the past. In the comic, we had Richard Nixon. In the series we have Laurie Blake and Easter eggs to the comic book. But we're learning new things, meeting new characters, and dealing with a new reality where squids fall from the sky and police detectives wear masks.

So what is so new and different about "If You Don't Like My Story, Write Your Own"? It's mostly clues sprinkled throughout and people speaking obliquely about stuff they already know. In the opening sequence, Trieu (Hong Chau) shows up to buy a farmhouse by offering the childless couple a child born from their genetic material submitted during tests a few years earlier. They quickly leap at the chance to sell off their legacy, and Trieu adds the property to the land she's accumulated around her Millennium Clock. Just in time, as something crashes to earth nearby just after she seals the deal.

Angela confirms Will is her grandfather, and mentions Cal's accident. She also meets Lube Man, a masked skinny lube-covered costumed-type who escapes Sister Night by slipping into a sewer outlet.

We get to see some of Wade/Looking Glass's home life. He's a Rorschach-like type who hangs out in a bomb shelter and collects photos of raining squid. And Looking Glass being a Rorschach type makes sense, given he looks like Rorschach if Rorschach had a mirror mask instead of a Rorschach-pattern mask. We also find out Wade has an ex who works in a lab somewhere.

We find out the car dropped from the sky last week is Angela's SUV taken with Will in it. Laurie helps Sister Night investigate it, after being put in charge of the Tulsa police. They meet with Trieu, who reveals (in Vietnamese) to Sister Night that Will left her a bottle of pills in the SUV. Later, Trieu's daughter Bian has a nightmare about being marched out of a village. She goes to Trieu, who refuses to comfort her, and seems satisfied with Bian's nightmare.

After Bian leaves, we find out Will is hanging with Trieu. They both admit they're playing their descendants, and Will warns in three days Angela will find out what he's done, and will hate him for it.

On the Adrian front, Adrian fishes babies out of lobster pots, tosses away the unacceptable babies, ages two of them into new Phillips and Crookshanks, and has them help launch other Phillips and Crookshanks clone corpses into the sky via a trebuchet. Adrian mutters a lot of enigmatic stuff about how he's in a prison, and apparently shooting dead clones at the sky will help him get free. Oh, and he's the clones' master but not their maker. Why any of this? Because it's Watchmen.

Since this is Watchmen, I figure most of this will make sense eventually. Trieu and Will's plan will be revealed, Adrian's imprisonment will be explained. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying myself just watching the whole thing. Jeremy Irons as the vague, imprisoned Adrian is entertaining. Looking Glass is fun. Sister Night cuts an imposing figure. While Laurie doesn't get as much screen-time as she did last week, her partnership with Sister Night is good.

There are also quiet scenes, like Angela going to Topher's room, their discussing the explosion at Jack's funeral, and Topher offering Angela his stuffed animal. Louis Gossett Jr. demonstrates why he keeps getting cast over a long career.

The only bad thing I can say about "If You Don't Like..." and Watchmen in general, is it's a very slow burn and couched in vagueness. Which brings me back to my original statement: I've talked to many non-comic fans who didn't "get" the comic book series. Some of them don't "get" the TV series, either. And I understand. Watchmen makes Lost seems like a straightforward linear narrative. It's difficult. Things aren't laid out, characters don't speak their thoughts for the benefit of the viewer, motives are murky. That's not to say American TV can't be subtle. It often is. But Watchmen goes way beyond that. The creative team very much has a "Here it is: take it or leave it" attitude to the show.

Me, I'll take it. And one gets the impression the episode title is a flip-off to many of the viewers. "Hey, if you don't like our story, write your own."

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.