​ "See How They Fly" – Watchmen S01E09 Review

First, everyone watching The Flash/Crisis on December 10 caught the Watchmen Easter egg on Earth-666, right?

Moving onto the actual Watchmen, "See How They Fly" does wrap up season 1. It's hard to imagine what they could do for season 2. Which echoes my sentiment that as much as I liked season 1, maybe the creative team should rest on their laurels and not try for a season 2. I'm sure they could come up with something, and I'd be happy to see more of Angela, Wade, Laurie, and Adrian, but sometimes you have to let a good thing end on a high note. However, it seems with TV these days, success breeds an attempt at more success.

So why was "See How They Fly" such a triumphal season finale? The creative team managed to wrap up pretty much everything. Joe Keene and Lady Trieu get their just desserts. Adrian is finally brought to justice, with a bit of political statement tossed in: "I suppose the FBI is going to arrest the President, too?" "Sure, why not?" The baby squid rain we saw in episode 1 becomes a literal Chekhov's gun. In one scene, blood and guts literally flow like water. We get the backstory on Trieu and Adrian. And Angela has a quiet conversation with her grandfather Will.

The episode starts with flashbacks to 1989 where Trieu's mother impregnates himself with Adrian's sperm that he keeps locked in a refrigerator in his office. Which seems like such an Adrian sort of thing to do. The guy masturbated and then saved his semen for... what? Out of ego, presumably.

Then we see an adult Trieu travel to Karnak, tell Adrian she's his daughter, and ask for $42 billion to build a quantum centrifuge to take Manhattan's power. Adrian refuses, telling to her to do everything from nothing just like he did. So... she does.

On Europa, Adrian breaks out of his cell just as a Trieu-built spaceship lands nearby. Adrian kills the Game Warden, and the clones bid farewell to him. He's frozen in a metallic substance and taken back to Earth, where Trieu has him unfrozen and says she brought him back just to see she accomplished much from nothing just like he did.

Trieu, Adrian, Bian, and Trieu's tech squad go to downtown Tulsa for some reason. Meanwhile, at the 7K HQ, Joe calls in the Cyclops/7K elders, puts on a pair of Dr. Manhattan speedos, and tells Laurie he's going to take Manhattan's power. Wade survived the attack on his home, and has infiltrated 7K as one of its masked soldiers. Before he can free Laurie, Angela arrives after torturing one of the surviving goons who attacked her last episode.

Joe gets into the transference chamber somewhere, and rather confusingly, Trieu's people teleport 7K, Angela, Wade, Laurie, and the cage containing Manhattan (which is made of the lithium we saw 7K harvesting earlier this season) to downtown Tulsa. Trieu reveals Joe popped like a balloon when he tried to absorb Manhattan's power without a proper filter. Manhattan touches the flowing blood and teleports Adrian, Wade, and Laurie to Karnak.

While Trieu prepares to take Manhattan's power for herself, Adrian freezes the baby squid he's been raining down occasionally as additional extra-dimensional "attacks". He then teleports the frozen squid to Tulsa, creating a fatal bombardment that shoots a hole in Trieu's hand and destroys the floating sphere Trieu is using for the power transfer. It falls, killing her, and the police and technicians are caught in the hail of squid destruction.

Angela goes to the nearby Dreamland Theater, and finds Will there with his sleeping grandchildren. They talk about masks and how they mask fear, not anger. Grandfather and granddaughter reach a rapprochement of sorts, and Angela lets Will sleep in the guest room at home.

Adrian prepares to send Wade and Laurie home. Laurie has had enough of it all, figures the world will survive whether they know Adrian's secret or not, and Wade knocks Adrian over the head when Adrian rants about how they can't do it to him.

At the end, Angela finds an unbroken egg from Cal/Manhattan's attempts at home cooking. She remembers him saying he could possibly put his power in an egg and transfer it to someone eating the egg, eats the egg, and then goes out to the pool to see if she can walk on water. The episode and the season ends as she touches her foot to the water.

"See How They Fly" serves as a perfect ending to season 1, and as a decent closure/finale to the original Watchmen series. It's better than DC's current Doomsday Clock project, in large part because it doesn't have to deal with Superman vs. Dr. Manhattan, and Batman meets Rorschach II, and bringing back characters like the Comedian, who doesn't seem to be doing anything in Doomsday Clock.

Granted, the Watchmen series pays homage to the comic book. And I suspect it would have lost people who weren't familiar with it. There are lots of Easter egg references to the comic book, but at the end the whole plot revolves around the comic book events. Dr. Manhattan is nothing more than a reference early on, but by the end of season 1 the whole thing hinges on him. He's romantically involved with the main character, 7K is trying to take his power, and Trieu is using 7K to get Manhattan's power so they can steal it. There's a lot about Adrian and his killing of three million people, but it seems a bit remote to those not familiar with the comic. I know, I've talked to some of them.

But in these days of the Internet and Wikipedia, maybe ignorance of the past doesn't mean much when it's at anyone's fingertips. The TV Watchmen dumps on a lot of characterization, with Angela and Laurie. Adrian seems to be there mostly as fan service to the comic, and to some degree, so is Wade, who is essentially a laconic Rorschach-like figure but interesting in his own right. At least to me.

The series mostly succeeded in doing what the original comic book did, presenting a "real" look at superheroes and what the world would be like if they existed. Hooded Justice is a response to the racism of the 30s through the present day. 7K is a white supremacist group that turn out to be pretty flimsy villains.

Also, Watchmen eventually becomes a love story between Angela and Cal/Dr. Manhattan. I don't think the creative team conveyed it particularly well, we never saw much of Angela and Cal together. About the time their relationship got going onscreen, Laurie would make her episode-length entrance, or we'd find out what traumatized Looking Glass, or Angela would have a Nostalgia memory trip, or we'd get more on Adrian's adventures on Europa. All of those interludes were entertaining, but they tended to rob Watchmen of momentum. Sometimes the show was more focused on the past than the present, and the present suffered for it. Without Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II selling the hell out of it, the romance would have been less than convincing.

Not surprisingly, there were some unanswered questions. Like... who the heck was Jim Beaver's Andy back in episode 2? And why were the clones both for and against Adrian escaping them? And if Trieu's spaceship hadn't arrived, what did Adrian plan to do? It showing up just as Adrian completed his escape plan stinks of a deus ex mechina.

But overall, it all came together in the end. And... it's over. There are some elements that could spawn a second season, like where is Laurie's husband Dan Dreiberg? Adrian has to stand trial. But after Angela essentially saves the world with some help from Adrian, it seems all downhill from there. Even if she has Manhattan-like powers, so what? She doesn't appear inclined to be a worship-demanding god the way Adrian says Joe and Trieu would be. But the adventures of Sister Night – God Cop doesn't seem doable. Sometimes leaving a show on an open note--does Angela have Manhattan's powers?--is more effective than a second season answering that question.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?