Watchmen, not Game of Thrones, proved to be HBO’s show of the decade

[Karlston]

Watchmen, not Game of Thrones, proved to be HBO’s show of the decade

Maybe this counts as a spoiler for our own "Best TV of the Decade" story to come.

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Warning: This story references events in the HBO series Watchmen and Game of Thrones, including their final episodes.

 

"Just do it. We don't want to hear your little speech. Fucking do it. "

 

"Do what?" Lady Trieu asks her assembled audience of white supremacists.

 

"You're gonna kill us, right?"

 

"Oh yeah, of course I am."

 

And with that, the best show of 2019 went out with a literal atomic bang. Watchmen capped off its nine-episode run in striking fashion last night, simultaneously tying up several loose ends (How does Veidt fit in to all of this? What's Lady Trieu's plan? Can anyone stop the Kalvary?), delivering deep sentiment, and forcing a superhero/villain who killed millions to actually deal with an arrest. This show killed it.

 

Yet I watched the show alone from my couch, and only a few coworkers and a neighbor seemed ready and excited to chat about it today. There were no red-carpet screenings, impromptu community watch parties, or nearby bars advertising a highly anticipated viewing like some other HBO season finales this year.

 

That's a shame, because one of these series is perhaps the network's finest work of the decade—and the other is Game of Thrones.

 

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Game of Shade

Both Thrones and Watchmen benefited from a new TV era. Execs were not just open to but thirsty for genre, and they sought the kind of material that may only attract a small niche of fans—but it'd be a rabid, passionate, subscribed-yesterday-and-forever type of fan. Both shows started out with a bit of a bang, a little high-profile misdirection casting, and unexpected character exits. And, perhaps most importantly and most obviously, both series were borne out of existing (and paper-based) IP.

 

The differences begin from there. Thrones by and large stuck to its source material until it literally couldn't. And even the most supportive fans could agree that the show lost something when George RR Martin's road map reached its (maybe-still-in-progress?) conclusion. Suddenly the riveting female characters the show had become known for were taking actions more stereotypical characters would, contemplating if love was the number one motivator above all (see Brienne and Jamie) or acting out of rage-filled hysteria even if it contradicted prior character traits (goodbye to the merciful and justice-championing Queen of Dragons, Freer of Slaves). The show still delivered spectacle like nothing else, but it seemed to lack storytelling. Its "anything can happen" feeling suddenly left, allowing for things like keeping Jamie alive despite coming under heavy enemy (dragon) fire or for the hugely successful conqueror Daenerys to suddenly make puzzling decision after puzzling decision with her scaly, strategic advantages.

 

But perhaps even more frustrating than its story line slip ups, Thrones also seemed to lose its ability to conjure up deeper questions and thought without Martin's source material. This was a show that had interesting things to say about gender in society and politics, the weight of history and family, and the ability to make decisions in spite of destiny. Heck, even The Night King might have represented something much deeper (the inevitability of mortality?) than a zombie bogeyman. Did Thrones' final two seasons complicate those questions or move the ideas forward in any significant way? In Ars' eyes, at least, the show pivoted to more of a saccharine delivery system. Does the show Annalee Newitz wrote about in her review of Game of Thrones S7 feel like a monumental piece of art?

Watching Game of Thrones now feels like mainlining a bunch of CW shows like Arrow or Vampire Diaries—or even, sometimes, Jane the Virgin. The pacing is so fast that there are multiple reversals of fortune in one episode, and people go from "hey so we are kind of friends" to "we are totally boinking" in 40 minutes. I should say that I love a lot of CW shows, and I'm definitely not opposed to fast pacing. But part of Game of Thrones' appeal was a stately, complex layering of circumstances that gave us a sense of the tragic loss so many characters have suffered. So this season's choices felt like stylistic whiplash.

 

 

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Watching Watchmen

Despite some warning signs about its shortcomings, fans largely remained optimistic heading into the final Thrones season. Instead, such pre-airing fears, anxiety, and jitters were saved for something else in fall 2018, when HBO announced it would have a new Watchmen series. The feeling seemed justified. For starters, Watchmen creator Alan Moore famously rejects any adaptations (sorry, Zack Snyder). And the project had Damon Lindelof pegged as the creative force, which likely sent chills down many an old Lost viewers' spines. Did his five-page Instagram explainer help or hurt a growing sense of dread?

 

But while it would undoubtedly become another puzzle box, this series knew what it wanted to say and how it would do so. Watchmen built several of its main theses—that caped crusaders come from some trauma that births an inherent need for justice, that collective history becomes personal memory, that fighting for change in the face of systems larger than us (whether man-made like oppression and racism or somehow of a god-like destiny) is what makes us most human—from its very first scene. We just didn't realize it at the time.

 

The series starts with a young Will Reeves experiencing the 1921 Tulsa massacre first hand (an event Lindelof said he became fascinated with when first reading about it from Ta-Nehisi Coates). This later leads to him becoming the first superhero, Hooded Justice, though that decision eventually erodes his family. Reeves' young son grows up to become a cop (like the father he admired), which led to an appointment in Vietnam where his daughter (Angela) witnessed the death of her parents via resistance bomber (which, coincidentally, ties Dr. Manhattan in to all this). Ultimately, Angela grows up to be the cop at the heart of this series. But throughout every depicted generation of Reeves/Abar, the current generation battles racism both systemic and explicit—from Klan to Kalvary.

 

If that sounds like way too much plot to cover, the fact Watchmen gracefully managed it speaks to how well this show was constructed. Those facts revealed themselves to us slowly, in surprisingly but completely logical ways over this season.

 

Episodes like "This Extraordinary Being" (the nostalgia hour) and "A God Walks into Abar" (hello, Dr. Manhattan) may have involved a lot of exposition, but they were executed in ways we rarely see in entertainment (whether TV, film, comic, video game, or otherwise). Watchmen's depiction of how Dr. Manhattan experiences time in particular is an all-time bit of writing. And that hour is indicative of the show's ability to not only give virtually all of its main characters a single-episode showcase, but to do so whole, adapting the show's tone and structure accordingly to whoever's in focus. The fact that all these distinct parts feel of the same whole in retrospect is awe-inspiring.

 

 

The promo for "This Extraordinary Being."

 

Whatever you might have admired about Thrones, Watchmen ultimately had it and did it better. Elaborately imagined worlds with deeply intricate histories and rules? Robert Redford has been president for several decades, Vietnam is a state, reparations exist (but cell phones don't), and squids fall from the sky. The show has revealed each of those aspects as anything but happenstance.

 

Or, maybe style and spectacle were the things that drew viewers to Westeros? Watchmen is again an equal if not more. The show's soundtrack includes everything from Oklahoma the musical to the rapper Future, and the original score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will keep you glued to Spotify for hours. Its set pieces—whether smaller like Hooded Justice taking down Klan members in retro NYC or massive like Dr. Manhattan's and Angela's showdown against the Kalvary—consistently stun without veering too far into the over-the-top superhero-y stuff you might find in the MCU.

 

And when it comes to leaving audiences with something to think about, it's not even much of a comparison. Watchmen not only had the more surprising plot, but it had more philosophical ideas, too. In addition to all of the above, the show touched on the audacity of privilege (Veidt wanting to "earn" everything himself and telling Trieu to do the same), the inescapability of one's past, and the negative impacts of choosing masks (literal in their world; more like social media personifications, message board muscles, and the like in ours).

 

Just as the original comic famously spoke to humanity's fascination with the bomb, the new version had to at least touch on the lure of weapons, too. “This may appear paradoxical, but they make them feel safe," as Dr. Manhattan said. And Watchmen couldn't even help itself from making a quick dig at modern megalomaniacs.

 

"She claims she's going to fix the world," Veidt exclaims as he rushes to try to foil Lady Trieu's grand scheme.

 

"How do you know she won’t?"

 

"Because she is clearly a raging narcissist whose ambition knows no limits—it’s hubris, literal hubris," he replies. "Anyone who seeks to obtain the power of a god must be stopped at all costs from obtaining it."

 

In fairness, Thrones has a much larger body of work to defend. And maybe there's a bit of recency bias seeping in here with that riveting season finale occurring just last night. But... have you seen Watchmen?! Nothing HBO has aired in the last 10 years reaches this series' highest highs in terms of concept, execution, and pure thrills.

 

That's partially because of how Watchmen leveraged its original texts in a much different manner than Game of Thrones. Rather that straight adaptation, Lindelof wanted to work within the comic's pre-existing world, borrow its ethos for societal truth-telling, and bring everything into the present day with timely new characters and themes. That's a process that took a clear vision (making a show at least in part to illuminate the 1921 Tulsa massacre and ponder US history's oversight through a superhero lens) and lots of thought. Lindelof has said in interviews he relied heavily on a diverse writers' room to keep the show honest, and these nine episodes were long in the making—he told The Watch podcast the pilot alone was built off a 12-week writers' room before an initial script. The level of care and consideration shows.

 

The folks in accounting will surely disagree. Thrones boasted unparalleled ratings in its final seasons, banked more episodes to woo future HBO Go/HBO Max subscribers, and created the cultural cache to potentially carry HBO for years to come via spin-offs. Marketing may have a word with us, too, given how Thrones lent itself to elaborate event tie-ins and lists multiple Emmys on its resume.

 

But whether Angela Abar can truly now walk on water or not, Watchmen delivered an immense work of art right before the dawn of TV's (and HBO's AT&T-led) next decade. And it's hard to shake the feeling that in 10 years from now, I and many others will still be recommending folks go back to watch these nine episodes—whether for the first or the fifth or the fifteenth time—quicker than anything else in HBO's 2010s archive, Thrones included.

 

 

Source: Watchmen, not Game of Thrones, proved to be HBO’s show of the decade (Ars Technica)  

 

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[leapinlizards]

am watching deadwood series ..

[Kaby]

So I'm not the only one considering GoT a weird latin telenovela mixed with just a little bit of fantasy show ;]