 What's up and welcome to one take I'm gill and today we're doing a full Recap and review of HBO's watchmen episode two This is going to be full of spoilers So if you haven't watched the episode yet, you're gonna want to go and do that before you check out this video So that's your spoiler warning and with that let's jump into it You'll recall that episode one opened with a flashback to the Tulsa riots also referred to as the Tulsa massacre We see a small child who survives that tragedy and is left with a note by his mother Which said watch over this boy? Episode two actually opens with a flashback, which tells us the origins of the piece of paper Upon which that note was written. It turns out it was written on the back of some German propaganda that was dropped over Battalions or small armies of African-American soldiers From America during World War one the flyers tried to appeal to Their sense of injustice. How can you fight for a country? Which doesn't respect your human rights simply due to the color of your skin? You should stop fighting for America and you should fight for the Germans or at least stop fighting for a country that doesn't support you and Just like episode one this flashback is showing us something that actually happened Something which a lot of us probably didn't learn enough about back in school Actually, if you look at the statistics, I don't remember the actual number But the number of people searching for Tulsa massacre or Tulsa riots skyrocketed after episode one aired So I think that was very educational for a lot of people in the previous episode We learned that this child grows up to become The man bound to a wheelchair the man who called Angela to show her her boss Judd hanging dead from a tree back in the present day We see Angela bring this man named will to her hideout in this scene Angela essentially interrogates the man asking him Who are you and repeatedly he responds by saying? I'm the one who strung your chief of police up And I have to say kudos to the actor here Louie gosette junior Because I could see another actor repeating that line over and over and it just feeling cheesy and repetitive But he did such a great job Throughout this scene, but in particular his delivery of that line as Angela interrogates him She essentially says there's no way that you could have been the one to hang Judd up from that tree You're 95 years old and he corrects her and says I'm a hundred and five years old He then goes on to claim that he was able to do it because he has Telekinesis the ability to move things with his mind He claims to be dr. Manhattan Which leads into a discussion of dr. Manhattan's powers what he can do what he can't do by the end of the Conversation if there was any doubt it becomes very clear that this man does not have powers And this man is certainly not dr. Manhattan But it's clear that even if he's not the one who hung Judd from that tree with his bare hands Clearly he was involved perhaps he was even the one who arranged for it to happen and when Angela asks him why he did it He says Referring to her boss Judd he had skeletons in his closet There's a vast and insidious conspiracy at play here in Tulsa a few things I have to say about this scene first before Angela began the interrogation She left the room and had this emotional outburst where she screamed right in front of the camera And I thought Regina King did a great job in that scene. I think she's been doing a great job Overall, but that moment didn't really work for me And I think it's because when I'm watching a character on screen Portray some big emotion like the one Angela was showing here if I'm not feeling Some degree of what they're feeling I start to have this disconnect and the scene just doesn't work that well for me I felt a little bit of that here, and I think it's because I didn't get to know the character of Judd That well, I mean I came to like him to some degree in episode one mainly because Don Johnson did such a great job of just playing this fun character who you want to get to know But I didn't know him that well I didn't really come to care for him that much over the course of just one episode and in addition to that I don't think the show did a whole lot to establish a Strong relationship between Angela and Judd I mean there was a little bit of it but not enough that I cared all that much when he died in episode one So when I saw Angela have that outburst, I certainly understand it But it just created that disconnect for me between what she's feeling and what I'm feeling So I kind of wish the show did a little bit of a better job in that regard on the flip side one thing I'll say that this scene did really well is The organic world building the show has been doing throughout these last couple of episodes For people who didn't read the graphic novel they're not going to be familiar with what Dr. Manhattan can do and In this scene without making it feel like overt exposition The two characters got into a discussion of Dr. Manhattan's powers pointing out that he doesn't have the ability to look like us Pointing out that he can it be in multiple places at once So there are many examples of that in this episode and that was a great one right there I will also say that before this conversation part of me wondered if maybe this man in the wheelchair will Actually did have some kind of powers Especially in episode one when he asks Angela think I can lift 200 pounds and then when you see him sitting next to Judd hanging from that tree. I mean there actually is precedent for psychic powers in the Watchmen universe in the original graphic novel in the grand finale when Vite or Osmandias Releases that giant squid part of his plan was using the psychic brain of a dead Supervillain he cloned that brain made it bigger and somehow that worked into his whole plan So we do know psychic powers exist So I'm not that crazy for thinking it but of course this scene like I said established that will At least to our knowledge at this point does not have psychic powers And then of course this scene opens up a question. What is the grand conspiracy in Tulsa? I do have a couple of thoughts on that But I'll get to them later during this recap during the interrogation scene between Angela and will She receives a call the cops have found Judd's body so she goes to the crime scene and When she's there she's sitting in the car with looking glass that guy who wears the awesome reflective mask and In their conversation he essentially implies that he doesn't think she's being totally truthful He asks her some questions Mentioning that he's aware that Angela and Judd had dinner together He asks her if he was acting strangely and just you get the feeling He thinks that she's holding some information back throughout this whole thing. He's super cool super collected and Very much gives Rorschach vibes We also see in this scene a couple of people referred to as moths Basically guys with artificial wings and cameras trying to sneak in to get footage of the crime scene I thought the moths were a pretty nice touch one thing that hasn't really been overtly explored in these two episodes is That you'll notice no one has smartphones No one has access to the internet. So you wonder what will that world look like and I think this is just one example Instead of at a crime scene people whipping out cell phones or smartphones to take footage of it You have people with artificial wings trying to fly in and get a glimpse of what's happening So just another kind of cool example of the world building in this alternate reality I'll also say I love the looking glass character. He's just a pleasure to watch like I said He reminds me of Rorschach, which is a character who is sorely missed in this show especially when you see that his image has been Appropriated by all these horrible people the white supremacists known as the seventh cavalry from there We cut to another flashback where we see a glimpse of something We'd heard about back in episode one and that's the white knight the night where the cavalry attacked a bunch of cops Including Angela you'll remember her telling a classroom full of children about how she got shot How she was one of the cops who were attacked that night We see Angela with her husband Calvin get attacked by two gunmen One of them it manages to shoot Angela knocking her to the ground then another of the gunmen walks over Holds a gun to Angela's face and then we cut to Angela in the hospital Staring at Judd Judd basically explains to her everything that happened But there's a couple of strange things with this flashback number one. What happened to Calvin? He sort of seemed to have disappeared in the midst of all the action And how did Angela survive? We see a man holding a shotgun or a rifle to her face Cut to she's in the hospital. So all of that's very Unclear another thing I'll point out about this scene is there is some action in that flashback There's sort of a gunfight and I thought the action in that scene was handled really well one thing I complained about in my review of episode one is that during the action sequences this felt Like a TV show and TV typically doesn't handle action very well in the world of watch men It sticks out like a sore thumb because 80% of the time this show feels so Cinematic it feels big budget. It feels expensive So when something feels cheap or rushed it kind of sticks out this scene is not an example of that I thought the action worked well, but I'll talk about one where it didn't work quite as well in another scene Later in the recap from there. We're back in the present back at the crime scene where Judd was hung from that tree and Basically the cops there decide they want to go and bust some skulls. They want to take action right now Angela tries to get them all to take a deep breath hold their horses, but of course they don't listen So they go to the trailer park where the cavalry and a bunch of other Racist white supremacists hang out and they basically threaten to tear down Their big statue of Nixon. I guess somebody they really look up to they threaten to tear down that statue unless the cavalry and the folks at that Trailer park step forward and come with them for questioning Immediately the cops are attacked and basically all hell breaks loose and this is the scene I was talking about moments ago as soon as watchmen goes into fist fighting It looks awful It does all the things wrong that TV shows do with the quick cuts where the geography of the fight gets jumbled They're probably using stunt doubles and you can tell So I'll show a clip or two here where you can see exactly what I'm talking about It's kind of a minor complaint because this show isn't really about the action But like I said before it just sticks out like a sore thumb when everything else in this show looks so great Overall not a whole lot to say about this scene except that I think this show wants us to feel conflicted about how Militant and authoritarian these cops can be sometimes Like the fact that they're going to this trailer park to bust a bunch of skulls without going through any kind of a process the problem is that every time the cops have really shown muscle in this show so far it's been towards people who Unambiguously deserve it. These are evil people. They're racists. They're white supremacists So I really don't feel bad for them and although I feel conflicted to some degree about the cops not following any kind of a protocol Emotionally you're kind of right there with them So I'm wondering if in the next few episodes we'll start to see some shades of gray or some darker sides to this Where maybe they'll start to use muscle against people where maybe The sides good versus bad aren't as clear as they are here from there Angela goes to a place called the Greenwood Center for cultural heritage Earlier in the episode when she was talking to will or interrogating will she had given him some coffee She took that mug with her to this building and it turns out this is where African-Americans go to receive what people refer to as Redforations which we assume to be a sort of slang or negative way to refer to reparations put in place by President Robert Redford here Angela is greeted by a machine where we learn that these Redforations are given to anyone who survived the Tulsa massacre or Descended from someone who survived the Tulsa massacre So in order to be eligible for this you have to do a DNA test So Angela pulls out that mug uses a cotton swab and submits wills DNA So a couple things about this scene number one we get more organic world building We heard about Redforations here We learn exactly what they are and we even learn how they're administered, but again It's not done in some inorganic exposition This is a logical and pretty clever next step in the plot Angela wants to figure out who this will guy is and she found a clever way to do it Which also peels back the curtain a little bit for us to learn more about this alternate history It also shows us a little bit about how these reparations were able to be passed in this world Because reparations are something that have been talked about in the real world But there's always so much backlash against it that even in this alternate history of watchmen You wonder how they're going to make it something palatable to the public here We learned that it applies to a very specific segment of the population specifically people who were directly affected by the Tulsa riots or the Tulsa massacre and I thought that made a lot of Sense and was just another cool little piece of world building Angela returns home and sees a man sitting outside her door We quickly realize this is her ex-husband who she had her children with that she's currently raising with Calvin He's there because it's his turn to see the kids She writes him a check to get him to leave So it kind of seems like he doesn't really care about the kids all that much He's really there for the paycheck. Hey, I want to see the kids or if you want me to just f off You can give me some money when she goes inside the kids are playing a game One of them is dressed up as a pirate one is dressed as an owl And I'm assuming both of those are meant to be nods to the original graphic novel One of the cool elements of world building back in the original graphic novel is that we exist in a world where superheroes are real So in this world would superheroes have taken on the same place in pop culture as they have in our world and In this reality the answer was no instead pirates were actually pretty popular and people read comic books about Pirates the biggest example of that was the black freighter a comic book Which we saw pages of throughout the watchman graphic novel and then the owl You've got to think is a nod to night owl one of the original Superheroes in the watchman world Angela goes upstairs to tell her son that his uncle is Dead and in a fit of rage he hits the very cool building He was putting together the very cool model building He was putting together which looked like it involved some kind of magnet technology allowing it to levitate in the middle of the room So this scene where Angela tells her son that his uncle is dead I found that the emotions of this scene Resonated a lot more with me than the earlier scene where I complained about Angela's outburst This was probably the first time in the episode where I really felt Judd's death. I think that's for two reasons One is that we got a little more of a taste of Judd and Angela's relationship when we see her wake up in the hospital and Judd Comforts her that really made Judd a more sympathetic character than he was before That scene's fresh in mind then we come to this scene where they're talking about his death So it hit me a little bit harder I think there's also just the added weight of a mother Having to tell her child that someone he was close with has passed away So this scene worked really well for me Then we get to see a little bit of the show within a show American hero story it looks like this is a series that basically dramatizes retellings of Real superhero stories in the world of Watchmen before the show starts We hear an announcer talk about all the violence and horrible things that viewers will see if they watch the show Essentially as a trigger warning and I think this is meant to paint a little bit more of the tapestry in which this show takes place Again, just some more of that world-building one of the things Damon Lindelof wanted to explore in this show is And I'll quote him directly from an interview leading up to the release of Watchmen He says that in the world of Watchmen, they've abolished term limits Robert Redford has been president since 1992 And what Damon Lindelof said is they've abolished term limits and added that the show analyzes What happens if a well-intentioned white man is president for far too long? So I think we're going to see more glimpses of well-intentioned policies That probably go a little bit too far like what we see here This is straddling that fine line between trying to warn viewers about potentially offensive content and Veering into censorship territory Anyway, in this episode of American Hero Story, we see a few armed robbers go into a convenience store But before they can cause any trouble hooded justice shows up and very violently Dispatches those armed robbers a couple of things I'll say about the action in this scene One, I actually thought the action here in terms of close hand-to-hand combat was handled better than some of the other Action we've seen in Watchmen So I just thought it was kind of funny that the show within the show which is meant to be fake Although the action looked over-the-top and ridiculous I thought it was a better action scene than what we'd seen at the Trailer Park for example earlier in the episode the other thing I'd say is that the action here also felt sort of Zack Snyder-esque it kind of reminded me of the Watchmen movie So it almost feels like this show has this fake show within it that Tells the story of these superheroes and that fake show is Zack Snyder's Watchmen anyway at the end of that scene the store clerk asks hooded justice Who are you and then hooded justice gives a very comic bookie Monologue about who he is and I love this monologue because it's sort of a way For this show to have its cake and eat it too It wants to be this grounded very serious show which makes it difficult to have Some of the narration that you would typically see in a comic book It makes it difficult to have voiceover that you have in your head when you read Rorschach's scene in Watchmen where it's this very Detective noir-esque narration But here they found a way to do it because they have a character within this fake TV show Giving that monologue and while he's giving the monologue we cut to Angela And it sort of feels like what he's saying could apply to Angela So we get to have a taste of that cheesy over-the-top Jaw-clenching comic bookie narration Specifically what hooded justice says is who am I when I was little every time I looked in the mirror I saw a stranger staring back at me, and he was very very angry What could I do with all this anger hot? Vibrating electricity with no place to ground it if he couldn't release his rage Maybe I could help him hide it. I never felt comfortable in my own skin So I made a new one and when I slipped it on he and I became one His anger became mine as did his thirst for justice So who am I if I knew the answer to that I wouldn't be wearing a fucking mask So it's a pretty cool narration Definitely on the nose, but it does feel somewhat applicable to Angela's character And I'm glad they found a way to get that in there Without taking away from the grounded and realistic feeling of this show from there Angela goes to Judd's Wake in moments after she walks in she fakes fainting passing out So Judd's widow brings her upstairs and leaves her alone to rest Once Angela is left alone like I said we immediately find out that she faked passing out she's totally fine and so she starts snooping around and She seems to have taken will's statement that Judd had Skeletons in his closet because Angela goes and looks in his closet where she finds a KKK outfit, so this was a frustrating development because I so enjoyed Judd's character in episode one I started to like him even more in this episode when he was so tender to Angela in the hospital And now we find out that he may have been a secretly horrible person This also lends credence to will's claim that there's a conspiracy happening here in Tulsa So immediately this caused so many things into question If I go back to the flashback from earlier in the episode where the gunman had a gun to Angela's face and then she just wakes up in the hospital with Judd Now I look at that and when I rewatched that scene where Judd's being so Nice to Angela telling her it's okay to cry I don't know if I'm just being biased because now I know that Judd has this secret He was hiding, but I watched that scene and Judd almost comes off as Disingenuous to me like he's faking his way through that whole scene And that makes me wonder if maybe Judd orchestrated or was involved in orchestrating the white night Maybe the white night was not what it seemed Maybe the cops are working with the cavalry or at least some contingent within the government or the police force are Working with the cavalry now. Why would they do that? Well, one thing we know is that cops started wearing masks after the white night Because they realized how dangerous it was for people to know their cops so they can find out where they live And they can attack them at their home. They can attack their families We also know that the cops have more power in this world in some ways, right? We saw them enact that Policy last episode where without a warrant they were able to go take some pretty violent action So I wonder if maybe Somebody in the police force orchestrated the white night so they could justify Enacting some of those new policies so they can get more power that feels a little bit simplistic So I suspect there's more to it than that But I wonder if that's an element of it and I'm also assuming that if Judd knew this was happening He planned for Angela to survive again Maybe he did that because for some reason it was beneficial to him To be closer to her maybe he knows about will maybe he thought that by getting closer to Angela He would be able to have some advantage over will I think there's a lot We don't know here We've just been given little bits and pieces of the overall puzzle one other thing I'd say here is that the seventh cavalry to me Feel like villains that are too simplistic for the world of watchmen I alluded to this earlier what I mean by that is there's no sympathizing with them right they're very Obviously Horrible people so I wonder if maybe there's a bigger villain that's yet to reveal itself And I wonder if the seventh cavalry are just pawns in this whole thing. I have a feeling We're going to find out that Racial tensions in this world or at least within Tulsa are Purposefully being stoked by some bigger organization in the seventh cavalry's existence is no accident To what end into our purpose I don't know and this is really all a suspicion predicated on the fact that I think Damon Lindelof will want to give us a more complex Villain that exists in some kind of gray area where you aren't sure if they're totally Evil or if any part of what they're doing is actually right Speaking of bigger mysteries and bigger things going on in the next scene We're back at the castle where a character played by Jeremy Irons is hanging out and the reason I say a character Generically is because I think we're meant to assume this character is Adrienne Also known as as Amanda's the person who was ultimately pulling the strings in the original Watchmen graphic novel in this scene We find out that the two Servants for Vite Phillips and crooks shanks are Apparently not quite what they seem meaning they seem to be playing some kind of a role In fact shortly into this segment of the episode they very literally play a role where they put on a play For Vite the play which he mentioned he was writing in the last episode It turns out this play is a retelling of Dr. Manhattan's origin stories but this play quickly becomes horrifying when Phillips goes into a little contraption and once he's in there Vite pumps a device which incinerates Phillips Which is meant to signify the experiment that went wrong ultimately creating Dr. Manhattan right after Phillips has incinerated a Blue character or a character painted blue lowers from the ceiling to signify the rebirth of this character as Dr. Manhattan as soon as I saw that blue character lower. I thought for a second. Oh, okay Maybe he didn't actually light the other guy on fire But then the jaw-dropping moment that character removes his mask and we see it's also Phillips And then a bunch of the other characters remove their masks and we see many Phillips and Many crook shanks and it seems that Vite has created an army of clones of some kind So this scene gives us the impression that this play has been put on Many times before and there are a pile of Phillips corpses in the basement So I have mixed feelings about this scene on the one hand it's super intriguing and Super interesting Whenever we see Vite in action here just to figure out what the heck is going on here And not only what the heck is going on here But how is this going to connect back to the rest of the ongoing story? But on the other hand it kind of represents one of my least favorite types of mysteries in Storytelling the kind of mystery that I like in storytelling is when you are following a character Into the mystery and the things you're dealing with are as much a mystery to that character as they are to you Because that feels more fair for example if there's a murder like Judd's and we're following Angela We don't know what's going on, but she also doesn't know what's going on So it's kind of fair that there's a mystery, but in the case here with Vite Really the only reason this is mysterious is because we only saw part of the scene the camera left Before we could see what the heck is really going on here. So it's kind of two types of mysteries There's the organic mystery of there's just some information that we're watching characters try and get at then There's the other mystery Where the writers of the show have simply decided not to give us all the information? Like the flashback earlier with Angela a Gunman put a gun to her head and then we cut to the next scene It's sort of an artificial mystery created by well We decided to end the scene before you could really see what was happening. So I'm not necessarily opposed to that Always but maybe I'm just a little gun shy because of how much they did that in the show lost How frustrating that got over time and the fact that Damon Lindelof from lost is the one Managing this show anyway putting that aside as much as I have mixed feelings about this I am extremely curious to see where this is going and Jeremy Irons is playing this character in a way that makes him fascinating It's going to be very disappointing if the next episode we don't get another glimpse at him because now I'm used to whenever an episode starts I'm enjoying it, but part of me is waiting to say I got to get to that next Osamandes section now just like with the conspiracy in Tulsa I don't think we've been given enough information here to know what the heck Adrienne Vite is actually up to but just for fun I'm going to try and take some guesses and do some wild speculation here one simple explanation It would be that Adrienne Vite has just completely lost his mind He's gone so off the deep end that he's doing something as crazy as cloning someone and Burning and killing them over and over. I think that might be an element of what's happening here I don't think there's any way you can do what he's doing without being at least a little bit insane But I have to imagine there is some method behind the madness and my theory is that somehow Adrienne Vite is trying to get Dr. Manhattan's attention Dr. Manhattan is basically omniscient He can see everything that's going on So Adrienne knows that whatever he's doing Dr. Manhattan is seeing and you've got to think that Retelling Dr. Manhattan's story over and over in such a brutal fashion is going to get his attention eventually I think there's more to it than that but I wouldn't be surprised if That's an element of what we eventually find out to be the answer to this mystery One thing I'm wondering about this is Phillips and Crookshank. Are they important characters in any way? Or are they just two generic people that Adrienne used as templates for his clones? Are they even clones or are they something else entirely? It's hard not to draw a connection between the fact that we're seeing multiple copies of people in this scene And earlier in the episode this show went out of its way to remind us that Dr. Manhattan can make copies of himself So is Dr. Manhattan already present in some way? Is he somehow involved in what's happening? With Viteer it's hard to say again. I think they purposely haven't given us enough pieces to figure out exactly what's happening But I think I'm on to something we'll find out Then we get to the final scene in the episode where Angela is back in her hideout with Will And she asks Will if he Planted that KKK outfit in Judd's closet because she points out it was so easy to find I think it's pretty clear that The outfit was not planted. Will was not framing Judd. I think this was more Angela grasping at straws not wanting to accept that her friend Had this dark secret during this scene Angela gets a phone call with the results of her DNA test She finds out from the results that Will is her grandfather When she asks Will why he came back he says Because he wanted to meet her and he wanted to show her where she's from In the midst of all this Angela becomes frustrated With his mysterious and non straightforward answers She goes to arrest him as she takes him in his wheelchair She puts him in her car to take him to the police station But before she can get into the car herself A giant aircraft appears in the sky lowers a magnet picks up the car and takes it away So who is saving Will here? My suspicion is that it's a person or a group of people that we haven't seen yet I get the feeling that there are forces behind the scenes that are pulling the strings And orchestrating a lot of the events we're seeing on screen And we just haven't been exposed to them yet. I suspect that adrian is involved somehow And dr. Manhattan, I'm not sure if we're going to find out that he's been involved in a lot of the events here Or if it's going to be more of a something major happens Which draws his attention and brings him in at the last minute. We'll have to wait and see Anyway, I think that about wraps it up for today Clearly I'm really loving this show. I find every character Super intriguing and I can't wait to learn more about each of them I'll also say the show is more mysterious than I expected I know that the original graphic novel had a mystery at its center But when I think back on it the mystery is only one piece of what made that book so great There also was this underlying tension throughout Where you have the doomsday clock and it felt like the world was hurtling towards destruction So i'm kind of waiting for things in this show to escalate So far it feels pretty small scale. There are clearly a lot of tensions But they feel pretty localized to tulsa So i'm wondering if something's going to happen over the next couple of episodes That escalates this to a potentially global threat or global issue If it doesn't that's not a knock against the show for me, but right now It's just sort of an observation and something i'm expecting to see Anyway, let me know what you thought of the episode and what you're thinking about the show overall in the comments I'd especially love to hear from someone who hasn't read the original graphic novel Are you enjoying the episodes as much as we are? Do you understand what's going on? Do you know who dr. Manhattan is and I would love to hear some fan theories What is adrian vite up to how is dr. Manhattan going to play into all of this and what is the conspiracy happening In tulsa and if you liked this video make sure to hit the like button Subscribe to this channel and hit the little bell icon to make sure you get notifications Whenever we release more videos like this one. Thanks for watching