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Watchmen: Nostalgia is a helluva drug. (spoilers)


RumHam

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I just re-watched the last episode and have a question for comic readers (or viewers more attentive than me.) Is the fact that the seventh cavalry has lettuce significant somehow? I thought that it was just a link to the shooting of the cop. ie the killer was probably a lettuce farmer or something. But then I remembered after shooting the cop the guy threw the lettuce at cop car like it meant something. 

It's kinda weird that Angela is going to jail for covering up Will's murder of Judd when she was going to take him in before he was abducted. I don't understand why she didn't come forward with what she knew at that point, if only to use official channels to find out who picked up her car.  I guess I never understood why she didn't report finding Judd's body right away. She didn't even know Will was her grandfather until later. 

Also minor flaw in the Defense Of Police Act: It seems like anyone in Tulsa could access or destroy sensitive files (cops just started using computers again in this universe so it's all paper.) by buying some Reflectine and making their own looking glass mask, approximating his clothes and gait and walking into the precinct like they belonged there. 

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2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Because she knew will was her grandfather and she wasnt going to sell him out. 

She didn't find out he was her grandfather until after she'd taken him to the bakery and tested his DNA at the cultural center. Then once she gets the phone call confirming he is her grandfather she decides to take him into custody, only Trieu steals her car with him in it. 

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Angela already knew Will (he used to hang around the bakery); I assume she didn't want to turn him in because she thought it implausible that he was the killer.

That was a pretty awesome episode. My highlight though was still Spectre:

Quote

All right, ladies and gentlemen. You gathered up the usual suspects, beat the shit out of them at your little black site, stuck them in Mirror Guy's interrogation pod, and you've got absolutely fucking nothing to show for it. So now we're gonna do things my way.

 

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20 hours ago, RumHam said:

She didn't find out he was her grandfather until after she'd taken him to the bakery and tested his DNA at the cultural center. Then once she gets the phone call confirming he is her grandfather she decides to take him into custody, only Trieu steals her car with him in it. 

I think she wanted to get to the bottom of what happened herself and assumed that an old man in a wheelchair probably had accomplices.  She also probably assumed (naturally) that the Seventh Kavalry was involved, and didn't want to arrest a black man publicly for the crime until she figured out how they were involved.

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On 11/19/2019 at 8:29 PM, RumHam said:

Is the fact that the seventh cavalry has lettuce significant somehow?

Coppola's Godfather had dead fishes.  Lindelof's Watchmen has lettuce.  Deal with it.

As for Angela's motivation to not turn Will in, I think the narrative explains itself.  She encountered an old man she knew and did not believe actually killed Judd, or more precisely was not capable of killing him in such a fashion.  So, she broke procedure and tried to get answers from him herself.  Once she found out he was her grandfather - which means she was inherently compromised - she rushed to take him in officially.  Obviously, that got shot to shit with her car being picked up by a giant magnet, with Will's apparent acquiescence based on previous ominous comments.  At that point, she did not report because...well, how the hell do you explain that without sounding either crazy or corrupt (or both)?

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On 11/20/2019 at 12:29 PM, RumHam said:

 But then I remembered after shooting the cop the guy threw the lettuce at cop car like it meant something. 

I took that as simply going "see you asshole, my truck just had lettuce in it. You just got killed over lettuce"

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23 hours ago, RumHam said:

She didn't find out he was her grandfather until after she'd taken him to the bakery and tested his DNA at the cultural center. Then once she gets the phone call confirming he is her grandfather she decides to take him into custody, only Trieu steals her car with him in it. 

That's fair, and I misinterpreted it. Okay, so why didn't she turn him in as soon as she got there? Because part of it was personal - this was a dear friend of hers - and part of it was that this guy, for some reason, knew her and wanted her and her alone to go out there. If she calls in the police she loses all of that connection. It's not like she just stumbled on him - he called her to come out there and he knew that she was police, meaning he knew her secret identity and knew that where her family lived. That was a very specific threat to her. 

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6 hours ago, karaddin said:

I took that as simply going "see you asshole, my truck just had lettuce in it. You just got killed over lettuce"

But if all he had on the truck was lettuce, why not just let the cop search it?  

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10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

That's fair, and I misinterpreted it. Okay, so why didn't she turn him in as soon as she got there? Because part of it was personal - this was a dear friend of hers - and part of it was that this guy, for some reason, knew her and wanted her and her alone to go out there. If she calls in the police she loses all of that connection. It's not like she just stumbled on him - he called her to come out there and he knew that she was police, meaning he knew her secret identity and knew that where her family lived. That was a very specific threat to her. 

Well, I thought it was also about the fact that she, initially, disbelieved that he actually did it.  If she turns him in directly, he likely takes the fall, it all gets pinned on him and the whole backstory of why likely would go unanswered.  He'd likely just stonewall and say it was all his own doing.  Also, the situation is probably less complex if he/they had simply just threatened her, because the response there is likely more clear.  In this case though, what is she to make of it?  Why is her grandfather involved?  What does that mean for her?

They have all the leverage on her/the situation and she had none on them.  She, seemingly to me, was trying to find something to leverage back with.  Turning him in actually puts her even more at a disadvantage, it would seem.  He/they know tons about her and she knows (almost) nothing about him/them, especially not their intentions or aims.  Simply turning him in is just a dead end to what is really going on.

To hazard a bad guess, maybe Lady Trieu knows about the whole 7th Cavalry thing, knows about Judd and the Senator, but wanted to put Angela on the scent, possibly, in a vigilante way, doing what they couldn't likely do explicitly and publically.

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7 hours ago, briantw said:

But if all he had on the truck was lettuce, why not just let the cop search it?  

Presumably because there was something under the lettuce.  Or, their plan all along was to shoot a cop in order to draw Judd out.

1 hour ago, .H. said:

Turning him in actually puts her even more at a disadvantage, it would seem.  He/they know tons about her and she knows (almost) nothing about him/them, especially not their intentions or aims.  Simply turning him in is just a dead end to what is really going on.

This seems to rely on the assumption her colleagues would just unthinkingly arrest and charge Will without any further investigation.  We haven't gotten much on how the masked police actually conduct themselves, but that seems fallacious considering what we have seen from Tim Blake Nelson's Room 23 IAT.

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1 minute ago, DMC said:

Presumably because there was something under the lettuce.  Or, their plan all along was to shoot a cop in order to draw Judd out. 

But per Keene, Judd was working with 7K. Keene didn't want Judd to die. Keene wants to figure out what Night knows about Judd's death. 

Their plan might have been all along to start the war again, to use that teleporter to do...something. But it never had Judd dying, at least not in the way he did. As Keene said, 7K has never not taken credit for a cop killing. 

To me this implies that either Keene doesn't know about Trieu and Will's existence, he knows about them and is actively fighting them, or he's a pawn in their schemes. 

 

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5 minutes ago, DMC said:

Presumably because there was something under the lettuce.  Or, their plan all along was to shoot a cop in order to draw Judd out.

Right, but in that instance there is something else on the truck.  I was responding to a poster who said that maybe all they had was lettuce.  If that was the case, why in the hell would you kill a cop rather than just let him search the truck?  Clearly the truck must have been hiding something.

Also, I don't think the plan was for that guy to get pulled over because he seemed pretty upset when he saw the cop car behind him to the point where he accidentally spilled his drink.  He wasn't trying to get pulled over.  I also don't think the Kavalry killed Judd, as that seems to contradict what Keene said to Glass, and Glass probably would have called him out if he were lying.

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2 minutes ago, briantw said:

Right, but in that instance there is something else on the truck.  I was responding to a poster who said that maybe all they had was lettuce.  If that was the case, why in the hell would you kill a cop rather than just let him search the truck?  Clearly the truck must have been hiding something. 

I think he would have been fine with him searching the truck. The problem was that the cop saw the Rorschach mask. I figure the 'got a warrant' kind of thing was simply him pushing back against the cop on general principles. 

 

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35 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think he would have been fine with him searching the truck. The problem was that the cop saw the Rorschach mask. I figure the 'got a warrant' kind of thing was simply him pushing back against the cop on general principles. 

 

He didn't ask for a warrant.  He asked to see the cop's face.  

At any rate, I think he obviously had something in the truck because of how flustered he was when he got pulled over.  That wasn't the reaction of a man who has nothing to hide.

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57 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

But per Keene, Judd was working with 7K.

I don't necessarily trust Keene in that regard, especially considering who he was saying it to.  It is certainly a way to get Glass to comply.  It might also be true, of course, but I'm not taking that at face value yet.

58 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

As Keene said, 7K has never not taken credit for a cop killing. 

True, but Keene is pretty derisive about the 7k in general.  It's possible that there's more of an illuminati group he's a part of that is responsible (e.g. with Trieu/Will, as opposed to your inclination he may be fighting them).

1 hour ago, briantw said:

Also, I don't think the plan was for that guy to get pulled over because he seemed pretty upset when he saw the cop car behind him to the point where he accidentally spilled his drink.  He wasn't trying to get pulled over.

Eh, I'd have to rewatch the scene.  Even then, it could be misdirection - not like Lindelof's any stranger to that.  Anyway, was just throwing that out as a possibility.  But yeah I agree that it's much more likely he shot him because there was something else in the truck.

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1 hour ago, briantw said:

I assumed based on what happened later in the episode that what was in the truck were those (presumably illegal) batteries that the Kavalry was using in a later scene when they were ambushed by the detectives.

Yeah, that was my assumption as well.

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4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think he would have been fine with him searching the truck. The problem was that the cop saw the Rorschach mask. I figure the 'got a warrant' kind of thing was simply him pushing back against the cop on general principles. 

 

 

4 hours ago, briantw said:

He didn't ask for a warrant.  He asked to see the cop's face.  

At any rate, I think he obviously had something in the truck because of how flustered he was when he got pulled over.  That wasn't the reaction of a man who has nothing to hide.

Kal's suggestion was pretty much my take as well. I'm not saying its right, just that its how I read the scene - I haven't read the comic, or watched the movie so I really had no fucking clue what was going on that early into the story, was mighty confused by the cop refusing to show his face etc, and the "he really only had lettuce but the cop saw his mask" was my attempt to make sense out of the scene.

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