# A Watchmen HBO TV Series... \[Open spoilers\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 21, 2017, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546 "2017-06-21T16:21:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/241 "2019-11-27T14:05:04Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I did not expect June to be the baby. If Will is 105 in 2019 he was 7 in 1921. That makes him 24 in 1938, actually kinda old to be a rookie in those days. But the baby couldn’t be more than one year old. So if June was the baby she is at most 18 in 1938. But she has an adult job and lives in a large apartment on her own. > > That makes as much sense as ordering a bottle of memories from somebody who doesn’t know you and finding out they’re filled with memories sliced from a man nobody knew was alive. Did I miss some exposition there? > . You missed that this show is based on a comic book and thus requires one suspend a lot of disbelief. Or perhaps one just needs a little imagination. Maybe the baby was a wunderkin and graduated high school at the age of 16. Back in those days, it was fairly common for people to get a writing gig without a college degree if they were good enough. And for all we know, she had a roommate who is never shown. Or she was house-sitting for someone wealthy and important (a literary figure in the Harlem Renaissance, perhaps). I can think of some wild and crazy things in this show (like Veidt being able to fish newborn babies out of a pond and having a machine that can make them reach adulthood in a matter of seconds). The ages of Will and his wife don’t even make the top 20. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/242 "2019-11-27T16:53:30Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > As to the first, yes I think you missed some there. Will had those pills with him and intentionally left behind. These were curated memories that he wanted Angela to experience. For reasons. So how did they wind up with Looking Glass’ ex-wife? > [@monstro](#): > > I can think of some wild and crazy things in this show (like Veidt being able to fish newborn babies out of a pond and having a machine that can make them reach adulthood in a matter of seconds). The ages of Will and his wife don’t even make the top 20. Science fiction does depend on suspension of disbelief. The consumer is required to accept devices like giant psychic squids as plotlines. That’s why many people cannot “get” science fiction. The flip side is the reward consumers receive from seeing how those crazy plotlines affect people just like them. When those people aren’t real, then the pleasure drains away. We’ve had many threads talking about this phenomenon. The small things movies and tv get wrong bother many people far more than the big things included just for the fun of it. And there’s no need for these lapses. They’re just sloppiness. Like the “lack” of computers. Tech is different in this world. Fine. Then why did the animal cloning center have two computer monitors on its reception desk? And just how do they think the CD players work if not with a computer chip? Sloppy. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/243 "2019-11-27T17:11:03Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > So how did they wind up with Looking Glass’ ex-wife? Will Reeves left them with Angela. Angela gave them to Looking Glass to get his ex-wife to analyze them, so he did. These things all happened on screen in the foreground with dialogue by the characters. What baffles me is that you apparently missed all that but were sitting there calculating the characters’ ages in your mind over the course of episodes and scenes scattered throughout the series when their exact ages at different eras isn’t relevant to the plot. Same with the computer screen thing. It seems to me that some people have forgotten how to understand a performance. I’ve used this phrase repeatedly—a fictional performance is not a fake documentary. When you go to a stage play you don’t wonder why every room has only three diagonal walls unless the play itself brings that to your attention. If the show doesn’t bring the thing about the characters’ ages or the computer screen to your attention then you’re not supposed to notice it, because it’s irrelevant. A performance is an artifice, a magic trick, whether it’s on stage or on screen. It’s fake, and it’s meant to be so. It’s just a vehicle for telling a story. It’s people playing pretend and make believe. Science fiction does depend on suspension of disbelief. The consumer is required to accept devices like giant psychic squids as plotlines. That’s why many people cannot “get” science fiction. The flip side is the reward consumers receive from seeing how those crazy plotlines affect people just like them. When those people aren’t real, then the pleasure drains away. We’ve had many threads talking about this phenomenon. The small things movies and tv get wrong bother many people far more than the big things included just for the fun of it. And there’s no need for these lapses. They’re just sloppiness. Like the “lack” of computers. Tech is different in this world. Fine. Then why did the animal cloning center have two computer monitors on its reception desk? And just how do they think the CD players work if not with a computer chip? Sloppy. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/244 "2019-11-27T18:02:13Z")
Sorry that I’m not having the immersive experience that you are. I forgot about the pills. That’s why I asked if I were missing something. The small things that take you out of immersion in a fictional world are a real problem, though. Some people are bothered more than other people, and different small things will bother different people. The writers can’t be expected to deal with every one of them, even if they knew in advance which would wind up bothersome. Taking care of the major errors - the ones that are elements in the plot - is their responsibility, nevertheless. That people have forgotten how to understand a performance is sheer nonsense. The average viewer is orders of magnitude more understanding of artifice than ever before. When movies began, directors spent inordinate amounts of time getting characters through doors because they felt that viewers wouldn’t understand how the characters got to a new room. You’ll still see this in the 1930s. Flashbacks were slowly introduced as a device and accompanied by swirling pictures and flipping calendars and music cues to ram home the difference, to the point where this became a standing joke. Hundreds of narrative techniques had to be introduced and accustomed to over the decades so that today an episode like the last Watchmen, in which time and space and bodies are scrambled, can be easily followed by the average viewer. That was a showpiece of narrative technique, as advanced as anything I’ve seen on television. It will certainly be studied in film classes. All that good work is undermined for some viewers who find their minds distracted by seeming trivialities. Once you get jerked out of the immersion it takes time to re-immerse. Until then you watch from a critical, in several senses, distance. If that never happens to you, consider yourself fortunate. When it happens to me, I’m going to complain in addition to offering praise. Why you don’t understand that baffles me. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/245 "2019-11-27T18:02:46Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > We’ve had many threads talking about this phenomenon. The small things movies and tv get wrong bother many people far more than the big things included just for the fun of it. And there’s no need for these lapses. They’re just sloppiness. And yet you will continue watching the show, right? The sloppiness is obviously not affecting whether you tune into this show or others like it. So maybe that’s why writers don’t care about creating a perfect product. People will eat it up regardless of how “bothered” they claim to be over picayune details. It is strange to me that intelligent people such as yourself can fan-wank away the implausibility of a guy fighting off mobs all by himself without ever being knocked unconscious and thus having his identity (let alone his race) exposed. But they somehow can’t search their brains for a hypothesis that explains how an 18-year-old woman managed to secure a good job and a large apartment. That bothers them more than a pond full of cloned babies on Mars? Sorry, but this kind of biased incredulousness is ridiculous, and it shouldn’t be given a pass with a lame “That’s just how science fiction fans are”. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/246 "2019-11-27T19:17:59Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > It is strange to me that intelligent people such as yourself can fan-wank away the implausibility of a guy fighting off mobs all by himself without ever being knocked unconscious and thus having his identity (let alone his race) exposed. But they somehow can’t search their brains for a hypothesis that explains how an 18-year-old woman managed to secure a good job and a large apartment. This is spot on. And it’s not just that they can’t come up with a hypothesis. It’s that they need a hypothesis at all. We don’t really need an answer to the question of why the guy is so good at fighting. No hypothesis is needed. It’s just the way things are in the story. So it should be the same with the 18 year old with an apartment and a job. Actually, the story never even asks you to calculate that she is 18. She’s just a Young adult of no specific age. That’s all the story needs. ---
**Author:** ![duality72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duality72/32/3910_2.png) [@duality72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duality72)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/247 "2019-11-27T19:34:55Z")
Apparently this episode had more [real life social commentary](https://www.vox.com/2019/11/25/20981767/watchmen-episode-6-fred-trump-recap) than at first appears. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/248 "2019-11-27T19:49:46Z")
Real life is also mirroring the show: [Robert Redford: President Trump’s dictator-like administration is attacking the values America holds dear](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/president-trump-s-dictator-administration-attacking-values-america-holds-dear-ncna1091156) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/249 "2019-11-27T20:37:30Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Once you get jerked out of the immersion it takes time to re-immerse. Until then you watch from a critical, in several senses, distance. If that never happens to you, consider yourself fortunate. When it happens to me, I’m going to complain in addition to offering praise. Why you don’t understand that baffles me. This isn’t something that “happened” to you. The story didn’t tell you that she was 18 with a job and an apartment in New York. At some point you decided on your own, with no prompting from the story, to calculate her age. That’s not something that the story did to you. That’s something that you did to the story. And then you assumed that your calculation must be true in the story—an assumption that the story itself doesn’t say anything about. And then you assumed you had some kind of authoritative knowledge about the plausibility of an 18-year-old woman’s living circumstances in New York City in the 1930s _in an alternative **fictional** reality_, none of which has any support in the story itself. None of these things are things that the story gave you. You put in the time and effort to make all that up in your own head and then decide that the story was responsible for all that stuff that you conjured up. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/250 "2019-11-27T21:29:28Z")
I’ll put forth a different take. If one IS immersed it takes a lot of illogic to take you out of it. It takes a lot less when one isn’t. Exapno clearly wasn’t as immersed as many of us were. But many of us complain about less in less compelling shows. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/251 "2019-11-27T21:52:02Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > … > Like the “lack” of computers. Tech is different in this world. Fine. Then why did the animal cloning center have two computer monitors on its reception desk? And just how do they think the CD players work if not with a computer chip? Sloppy. There are computers and holograms in the ancestry building that she needlessly broke into. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/252 "2019-11-28T02:30:33Z")
Damn, Don Johnson looks good at 69. Damn. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2019, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/253 "2019-11-29T20:23:19Z")
It’s a boring day, so I’m home watching TV, including rewatching some of these episodes. In rewatching the fifth episode (Looking Glass’s origin story), I wonder about the continuing squid attacks. Somewhere we learned that Adrian Veidt was responsible for the giant squid attack on New York, but who is causing the tiny squid to rain down? And the proposed tourism commercial for New York had one couple talk about how nice it was to walk through Central Park and not see another soul. That suggests that New York has been largely abandoned, which surprises me. But perhaps after three million dead, others moved out of the city and it’s been depopulated. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2019, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/254 "2019-11-29T20:52:14Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > It’s a boring day, so I’m home watching TV, including rewatching some of these episodes. In rewatching the fifth episode (Looking Glass’s origin story), I wonder about the continuing squid attacks. Somewhere we learned that Adrian Veidt was responsible for the giant squid attack on New York, but who is causing the tiny squid to rain down? I believe it’s been hinted that the tiny squid rain is part of the government’s efforts to keep people believing in the original squid attack. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2019, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/255 "2019-11-29T21:40:38Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I believe it’s been hinted that the tiny squid rain is part of the government’s efforts to keep people believing in the original squid attack. where would they get millions of one -eyed alien squids? And how would they spread them? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2019, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/256 "2019-11-29T21:45:16Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > where would they get millions of one -eyed alien squids? And how would they spread them? How important is it for you to know this? Do you have any other questions about unexplained things in fantasy/sci-fi fiction? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2019, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/257 "2019-11-29T22:26:17Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > where would they get millions of one -eyed alien squids? And how would they spread them? Viedt set it up in advance with the same technology that produced the first one including the teleportation device that kills them as it teleports them. All Redford and the government needed to do was follow the plan as laid out by him. A very simple squidus ex machina. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2019, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/258 "2019-12-01T19:19:52Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > where would they get millions of one -eyed alien squids? And how would they spread them? How did they get the original city-sized squid, and how did they transport it? I imagine they’re using similar technology. It hasn’t been explicitly stated, so you’re going to have to use the same suspension of disbelief that you used to accept that creating a gigantic NYC-sized squid is possible, or that transporting it is possible. (In fact, we’ve already seen the transporter technology in use, so you’re halfway there!) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2019, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/259 "2019-12-01T22:12:24Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > How did they get the original city-sized squid, and how did they transport it? > > I imagine they’re using similar technology. It hasn’t been explicitly stated, so you’re going to have to use the same suspension of disbelief that you used to accept that creating a gigantic NYC-sized squid is possible, or that transporting it is possible. (In fact, we’ve already seen the transporter technology in use, so you’re halfway there!) Ozymandias opened a portal. Did the Govt know about his plan and get his tech? Because if they know about his plan, then the whole lie doesnt work. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2019, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546/260 "2019-12-01T22:16:47Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Ozymandias opened a portal. Did the Govt know about his plan and get his tech? Because if they know about his plan, then the whole lie doesnt work. Senator Keene said that he was shown the Ozymandias video soon after he became a senator. So that means that the federal government is in on the ongoing hoax. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-watchmen-hbo-tv-series-open-spoilers/789546.md?page=14)