Watchmen — ‘It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice’ [1x1] ★★★★☆
By: Dan Owen
Tags: Television, Culture, Comics, Review, TV

And it seems that every cop has taken to wearing yellow masks to hide their faces since an incident three years called the ‘White Night’ (when white supremacists attacked the cops and their families on Christmas Eve), which is both a good and bad thing. It helps protect police officers from hate crimes but sows suspicion and distrust in law-abiding citizens.

The incident that triggers events in the modern-day is the murder of a masked cop by a white supremacist driver he stopped. The driver might’ve been listening to gangster rap but he’s a white supremacist (oh, the irony) and member of the 7th Kavalry — a group who wear “Rorschach” masks and feel a kinship with Walter Joseph Kovacs/Rorschach, a moral absolutist vigilante who wore an “inkblot” mask. Their name comes from the cavalry led by Colonel George Custer, who died in the Battle of Little Bighorn — and “Bighorn” is seen to be the codeword for a police shooting.

It’s the police vs. white supremacists… masks fighting masks… ideologies locked in warfare…

Knowing Lindelof’s love of complex long-form mystery plotting — from his days on Lost, but also with The Leftovers— it’s no surprise to find that Watchmen has its share of peculiar moments and strangeness. If you’re a fan of the graphic novel and thought you’d have a headstart on newbies, that may not be true. “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice” is an equal puzzle for viewers new to Watchmen and those who know the graphic novel back-to-front. A little information about the source material certainly helps, but only moderately.

Let’s look at some of the oddities:

Baby squids . We’re all aware of the meteorological phenomena of frogs and fish raining down, but squid? This suggests some form of ongoing environmental damage has occurred as a result of Adrian Veidt/Ozymandius (the villain in Watchmen) teleporting a bio-engineered psychic squid to Times Square, New York City. That was a finale Snyder’s movie avoided because… well, it’s weird… and it’s a change I was in favour of. But this show is a sequel to the comic-book, not the movie, so it seems the squid’s arrival continues to affect the world even decades later.

. We’re all aware of the meteorological phenomena of frogs and fish raining down, but squid? This suggests some form of ongoing environmental damage has occurred as a result of Adrian Veidt/Ozymandius (the villain in Watchmen) teleporting a bio-engineered psychic squid to Times Square, New York City. That was a finale Snyder’s movie avoided because… well, it’s weird… and it’s a change I was in favour of. But this show is a sequel to the comic-book, not the movie, so it seems the squid’s arrival continues to affect the world even decades later. ‘Redfordations’. Almost throwaway dialogue in the school scene is worth paying attention to. It seems “Sundancer-in-Chief” President Redford has granted a lifetime tax exemption to victims (or descendants of victims) of racial abuse, as a way to make amends for slavery, segregation, racially-motivated attacks, etc. So the world of Watchmen is more aware of events like the Black Wall Street Massacre and the liberal government is trying to do the right thing, but it’s easy to see why this fans the flames. White supremacists will hate the inequality of black people getting tax breaks instead of them, so it deepens their hatred. Having a liberal President like Redford for 28 years also hasn’t helped right-wing voters. And it obviously means hardworking people like Angela can’t achieve anything without folk thinking they’ve only managed it thanks to her no-tax status.

Watch batteries. The shootout at the farm, dubbed “the cattle battle” on set, shows the 7th Cavalry hiding watch batteries from now-illegal watches, on account of their synthetic lithium batteries. It’s mentioned they may be planning to make a bomb using these materials. Hmmm.

But perhaps the strangest element of the premiere is the introduction of “the lord” character played by Jeremy Irons. It’s long been assumed he’s playing Adrian Veidt/Ozymandius, as he’s the right age and resembles the character (or Matthew Goode in the Watchmen film), but nothing’s certain… yet.

A newspaper headline is glimpsed stating that Adrian Veidt has been officially declared dead now (30 years later?), but has he actually gone to live in an English countryside manor? And why are this lord’s two servants, Mr Phillips (Tom Mison) and Ms Crookshanks (Sara Vickers), so weird? She’s seen massaging his lordship’s thighs as he sits naked at a desk typing, and he mistakes a horseshoe for a knife. And what “anniversary” is the lord celebrating? Is the lone candle on his cake significant? If so, it’s been one year since what — he disappeared? And why is he writing a play?

(I’ve read a theory that the lord’s some kind of automaton imbued with the uploaded consciousness of Veidt before he died, now celebrating a year since his activation… and that’s a compelling idea. What do YOU think?)

“It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice” was certainly an intriguing start to Watchmen and not exactly what I was expecting. But it’s wise of Lindelof to do something new that follows in the wake of Watchmen, as that makes his show just as exciting to explore for newcomers as it is established fans.

There are plenty of cool nods to the more familiar story, too: Dr Manhattan (the blue-skinned “God” who is the only ‘masked adventurer’ with actual superpowers) is still living on Mars, having exiled himself there long ago; Judd owns “Archie”(Nite Owl’s flying machine); and the big must-see TV show in this universe is American Hero Story (a nod to American Horror Story?), which seems to be a dramatisation of the classic mid-20th-century costumed vigilantes (Captain Metropolis, Comedian, Moth Man, Dollar Bill, Silk Spectre, Nite Owl).

American Hero Story is exactly what fans feared this TV series might become, which is amusing. That’s probably Lindelof acknowledging the bad way to do a Watchmen show as an inside joke. (However, being picky, the graphic novel said people in this universe crave pirate stories because “superheroes” are an everyday thing for them, so I’m not sure why the people of 2019 now crave superheroes on TV. But maybe that’s intentional, too, if there are so few masked adventurers around now? Or stories about seafaring pirates ran their course.)

In summation, Watchmen is a surprise. A welcome one. I had no idea where it was going or how it will continue next week. Damon Lindelof has realised that Watchmen was a product of its time — the Cold War era of the 1980s — so his Watchmen is likewise reflecting today’s pressing problems (white privilege, racism) on the same canvas. It’s detached enough from our reality to be “cool” and “fun” but, beneath the surface, HBO’s Watchmen is deconstructing our myths in a manner Alan Moore might appreciate. But don’t be silly, I’m sure he hates this sight unseen and will never watch it.