Watchmen (HBO) TV Show • Page 22

That episode flew by. I’m so glad we have this show

 

Maybe I’ll watch this. It’s a sequel to the book, right?

 

well

 

it takes place 34 years after the book and involves at least two of the book's characters but it isn't an actual sequel to the plot of the book

 

The next two episodes are great, for different reasons. There are answers to some questions in the next one.

 

Episode 4 seemed like a “springboard” episode. One that’s seemingly filler-ish but when the seasons filled out more, it’ll be integral than it let on

 

Episode 6 is a doozy

 

Do all you people work for critic media outlets or something? haha

 

I actually have a pretty standard 9-5 office job, but write about TV as a side gig. Not in the US though.

 

Last episode was so cool

 

Episode 6 is a fantastic piece of storytelling.

 

is this the flashback/black and white episode?

 

Yep. I was actually kind of dissapointed when I started #6 in that we're getting a flashback episode right on the heels of the fifth episodes ending. But, #6 is fantastic.

 

I don't know why it took me so long to realize this but cell phones and the internet seem to be non existent on this show. Very interesting if I'm right. This is true though, no? Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

When Veidt convinced everyone on Earth that tech based on Dr. Manhattan was cancerous, it also led to a wave of general technophobia that slowed technological advancement to a degree that impeded progress on things we have in our world like cell phones and the internet. The internet and computers exist but not to the degree we use them in our world.

For example, one of the Peteypedia documents is a memo from a police chief trying to convince his precinct that the recently-installed computer systems are safe and will make police work easier.

 

Watchmen episode 4

 

seems like it slowed daily stuff like cellphones/computers/etc. but has expanded general tech more quickly, as evidenced by everything we saw at Trieu, the Mars phone booth, the Millennium Clock, etc.

 

Do we even know that the Mars phone booths work? I assumed it was a government conspiracy thing that was put in to make the public “feel like they’re talking to god” if that makes sense. Similar to how the squids are likely done by the government to induce fear.

 

I'd imagine that people like Trieu don't harbor the same tech paranoia that the general public does, just by nature of who they are as people

 

I haven’t read all the Peteypedia stuff yet, so this could be contradicted somewhere, but I have this idea that the phone booths are a way for Trieu to collect data on people based on what they tell to “Dr Manhattan” in lieu of widespread Facebook/Google/etc usage.

 

right, people like that and people who are engineering new tech certainly know it's not giving everyone cancer but probably less and less of it is public-facing tech for that reason

 

It really seems like the booths are government spying tools, I mean they're almost like confessionals in a church (people consider Dr. Manhattan to be god-like, right?). What better way to get people to confess to stuff than convince them they're telling it privately to god?

For instance, if Laurie hadn't already told the government back in the '90s the truth of what Veidt did, they'd certainly know it now lol

 

I feel like Laurie would know if they were a spy device though, why would she still bother doing it? It seemed like she genuinely thought she was speaking to Manhattan

 

She might not know, seems like she's just an FBI agent, she wouldn't necessarily have knowledge like that. And it seemed like she was skeptical that the messages were actually reaching him in the first place, like that he was even listening to them. Just seemed like she was letting off some steam by talking to the phone (like a confessional).