Rorschach was arguably the most popular character to emerge from the Watchmen comics. One of the show's big promo images is Rorschach, not Comedian or Nite Owl. So, it's hardly surprising the Rorschach-like Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson) is one of the most popular characters of the Watchmen series. He's also one of the most visually appealing. Sister Night presents an ominous figure, but does Red Scare really look like anything other than a pro wrestler? "Little Fear of Lightning" takes full advantage of Looking Glass, exploring Wade Tillman's backstory, while giving the viewer insights into the modern-day Watchmen universe.
The theme of the episode is fear. Wade is afraid of an extra-dimensional (ED) invasion. A lot of people are afraid of an ED invasion, while others shrug it off. Which makes sense, since an ED invasion killed three million people in 1985 and traumatized millions more. If that happened in the real world, some people would react with paranoia, some people would shrug it off as something that happened somewhere else and can't affect them. And the fallout (or "squidfall") is an inconvenience at best, requiring them to pull over their cars and turn on their windshield wipers.
"Little Fear" is also the most comic book Watchmen-like of the Watchmen episodes so far. It uses visual imagery, a mixing of dialogue and scenes intercut against each other, and other comic-book-y type stuff the Watchmen comic book did.
How does it do that? The episode starts with a flashback to 1985. A young Wade (Phillip Labes) is in Hoboken with his religious revival group, preaching to the sinners. A young woman (Julia Vasi) lures him into a nearby fun fair house of mirrors, offers to have sex with him, steals his clothes, and runs out. The squid teleports into NYC, killing millions and traumatizing millions more. Even if the mirrors in the house of mirrors don't seem to have a direct influence on Wade becoming Looking Glass, they're the start of a lot of mirror imagery throughout the episode.
Cut to the present day, and Wade works as a focus group consultant (behind a one-way mirror) determining what the groups really think, because he has an ability to detect the truth. Whether this is good ole policeman's intuition or residue from the psychic blast in '85 isn't explained. We get a horrifyingly upbeat commercial for people to come back to NYC after the squid arrival, and Wade spelling out the episode's theme by saying the ad isn't going to overcome people's fear.
We then see a bit of Wade's personal life. He lives at home, eats beans out of the can (Rorschach Easter egg alert!), watches the American Hero show-within-a-show episode with Hooded Justice and Captain Midnight having sex, wears his reflectatine mask around the house and inside his baseball cap, and deals with his ED-invasion alarm going off at odd hours of the night. He talks briefly with Laurie, who notes his mask acts as a psychic shield since that's what reflectatine does. So Wade gets to be a masked vigilante and has an excuse to run around with a psychic shield on his head. He's basically wearing his fear out in the open so he doesn't have to face it.
Wade leads a support group of ED trauma types, and talks about how they don't have to live in fear and there's always an end to it. Renee (Paula Malcolmson) shows up, and bonds with Wade. After a few drinks, she leaves with a friend in a truck that has lettuce in the back. Since the 7K man who shot the cop was driving a lettuce truck, Wade follows them into an abandoned department store after taking a gun from the truck.
Renee is there, along with a bunch of other 7K guys, and they're testing teleport technology. They capture Wade, revealing they loaded his gun with blanks. Senator Keene (James Wolk) shows up, and tells Wade he's running the 7K and has come to Tulsa to get them back on track. Keene gives Wade the chance to either be framed as a nutter, or betray Angela to take her out of the picture for a few days, and be free of his fear. All by playing a CD. Wade plays the CD, which is Adrian telling President-elect Redford he set up the alien squid hoax to save the world from nuclear destruction.
The next day at the station, Wade gets Angela in tape admitting she let Will go. He knows Laurie has a bug on his desk, and Laurie has Angela arrested. Before being taken away, Angela takes the pills Will left her. Which in another subplot, we find out are Nostalgia which transmit stored memories. Wade finds this out when he meets with his ex, Cynthia (Eileen Grubba), who works at an animal-cloning shop.
At the end, Wade goes home, refuses to wear his reflectatine hat, but can't bring himself to throw away his new ED incursion alarm. After he goes inside, a bunch of 7K men arrive with shotguns and prepare to blow Wade away.
On the Adrian front, Adrian manages to escape the skydome covering his manor and the manor grounds. We find out he's on one of Jupiter's moons, and he spells out "Save Me D" (Dr. Manhattan?) from the limbs of the frozen Phillips and Crookshanks that he's shot out through the dome for the benefit of an overhead spy satellite. Adrian is then pulled back into the dome, where the Game Warden tells him he's under arrest. And Adrian proclaims there is no God. So nothing that apparently has anything to do with the rest of the plot that is going on, but we still have four more episodes to go until the end of season 1.
If you don't like the Watchmen comics, you probably won't like "Little Fear". There are lots of silences, and visual imagery, and a mildly unlikable character at the center of things, because the comic book didn't really have "likable" characters. Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl was probably the closest to likable, and he was an impotent failure most of the time. Wade isn't particularly likable, but he is... interesting. He's a guy living with fear. It doesn't immobilize him, it doesn't stop him from having a relatively normal life. Wade does his job, leads a support group, flirts with an attractive woman, goes home at night, flies into a fury when his ED alarm won't stop ringing, and curls up on his bed wearing his reflectatine mask. We all do that, right? Right?!?
There are bits of the overall plot. Keene says he and Judd were on opposite sides of the fence keeping the peace in Tulsa. The bit with Angela and her grandfather's Nostalgia pills gets a bit of exploration. Laurie keeps the humor going, incessantly referring to Looking Glass as "Mirror Guy" and refusing to take him seriously. The Adrian segments are still inexplicable at this point in season 1.
I'm not convinced seeing the Adrian video would set Wade free of his fear. And judging from his actions at the end, it doesn't. As is often the case, the character seems to accept video evidence as real just because it's video. So we have Wade watching a video of someone admitting they've conducted a giant hoax, and not thinking maybe the video is... a giant hoax. That seems contradictory to me.
At the end of the day, Wade is an interesting character. He's not sympathetic, and he's not likable. But Wade is the show's everyman at this point, the most "normal" person there. I'm not sure I'd want to see him as the central character of the series. And there are plenty of characters I don't want to see be the focus of an episode. Red Scare, Panda, and Cal come to mind. But if they want to dedicate one episode a season to Wade, I'm fine with that.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Nov 18, 2019
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