Watchmen

Right, you can stop the pandemic now.  I’m not playing anymore.  Granted, I’ve only got prosecco problems when it comes to coping with covvers (the mask makes my beard itch, I want to go to the theatre, I could lose my job etc), but as a lifestyle trend it would be really great if we could move on to something new.  Such is the extent of my fatigue that I actively avoid almost all news, as it’s mostly just white male Etonians blustering about the perils of young people and other such evils.  But, my clicks were recently baited by reports of the Emmy Awards.  Sure, there was no ceremony, but this was a normal annual thing that was almost happening.  I’ve harped on here about incredible pieces of TV that have kept me glued to my sofa and, of course, there were those top shows among the nominees – you know, your Euphorias and your Successions.  However, among the winning boxsets I was proud of completing, there was one that had passed me by: Watchmen.

I got the first episode cued up, but it wasn’t until a Friday evening when I was taken by the mood to delve into the story.  We all know I’ve no time for superheroes.  I’ve even been underwhelmed by attempts to subvert the genre (The Boys).  Nevertheless, I had thoroughly enjoyed the film version of Watchmen when it came out in 2009.  Oddly plausible, artfully stylised and with a story I can no longer really recall (which wasn’t helped by a second viewing that I mostly slept through), the film gave me an underlying confidence that I wouldn’t be subjecting myself to mindless Marvel’s punching by numbers.  This would be something better.  And how right was I?  And the Emmys?  And also all the people that watched it when it came out last year and told me then that it was worth a watch?  My whole subsequent weekend was consumed by a need to finish the nine episodes, desperate as I was to solve the mounting mysteries and witness the conclusion of the very complicated plot (unlike the last episode of Dark that I am too scared to watch).

We’ll run through now how watching Watchmen checks off a lot of my boxes when it comes to a good, er, boxset.  First up, we’ve got the alternative reality, last seen blowing my mind in the third series of The Handmaid’s Tale.  In Watchmen, the Vietnam War has gone a bit differently, cars no longer use petrol, interdimensional squids are an ongoing hazard and, in Tulsa, the police are required to wear masks.  If you’re finding this disorientating, then I’ve come some way to approximating the experience of watching the first episode.  Initially, Watchmen doesn’t care if you’re clued up on what’s happening or not.  Somehow, I was thrilled by my own stupidity and electrified by the need to keep up.  Filling the gaps became a desperate urge, mostly because these important elements of context were only ever alluded to in passing, thus making the later expositions all the more plausible.  I was completely sold.

One alternate the Watchmen reality keeps the same is racial tension.  A prominent catalyst to the show’s events is the Tulsa race massacre, something which, to my shame, I had never heard of.  If Watchmen’s only achievement in this world is to make more people aware of the 1921 destruction of a prosperous Black neighbourhood by white supremacists, then for that alone I would doff my hat to it.  Throughout the present-day narrative, the threat of racists remains and looms large.  It’s given an all-the-more-terrifying edge by the way these thugs mask their beliefs with respectability, making us blind to their blind hatred, while they are deaf to reason.  I won’t reduce racial tension to a plot device – Watchmen unapologetically puts America’s issues with race front and centre – but it brings to life a good-versus-evil jeopardy that means so much more than generic white man hero battling generic supervillain.  And on that note, Watchmen revels in its championing of actors that are normally side-lined.  Reams and reams of glorious dialogue proceed without a white man in sight.

My final point to stress is Watchmen’s deft stretching of narrative tension so that each episode thwarts as much as it solves, carefully creating the coming crescendo which forms the mini-series’ climax.  Once enough intrigue is set up, the revelations come thick and fast.  Regina King is our (badass) anchor as we navigate each blow to the psyche, and don’t worry if you at first think that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II doesn’t have enough to do (see The Get Down and Black Mirror for evidence of his range), but around this central couple assembles an array of characters you can’t help but feel desperate to know more about.  I craved more of Jean Smart’s Agent Blake while Hong Chau’s Lady Trieu maintained the perfect level of moral ambiguity until just the right moment.  I won’t spoil things by saying one or two minutes of the finale got just a touch too Marvel-y for me as everything else was a sublime televisual experience.

If we end up confined to our homes again, then Watchmen is the closest you can get to the visceral real-life experiences we have been lacking in 2020.  Maybe we do need heroes after all, but Watchmen’s heroes aren’t preening about in Spandex demanding attention for selective philanthropy.  Instead, they’re driven by their own hatred of systems and belief structures that hold humankind back.  They’re compelled to act against what is wrong, no matter the cost, and this is quite rightly what Watchmen presents as heroism.  Anyway, we seem to have strayed into some very uncharacteristically earnest territory for Just One More Episode, especially when we’re all here for passive aggression and sarcasm.  But what can I say?  Here is a boxset that transcends all the blue willy comments it’s left itself open to.  If only all storytelling could be this good, and this important.

The Boys

Looking back, the last four weeks’ posts have all covered Netflix original productions, with the three weeks before that casting Just One More Episode side-eye on further programmes watched on that platform (including the pandemic’s breakout hit, Tiger King – another Netflix production).  So let’s balance things out with the revelation that I did actually watch something on Amazon Prime Video in recent times: The Boys.  Regular readers will know I am no real fan of superheroes: I’m yet to see a good explanation for the need to wear Lycra bodysuits, and by the inevitable climactic fisticuffs to save the world, I have totally lost interest.  But friends had raved about The Boys and it seemed only right I should give it a chance.  After all, it’s nice to be proven right.

I ended up particularly engaged with the launch marketing campaign way back whenever the show first got released, during a past age when we were allowed out of our houses to touch others at will.  My job in media meant I had been invited to watch an interview being recorded with Joel Dommett.  I’m convinced he’s my twin, even since seeing him on I’m A Celeb (though by listening to his podcast Teenage Mixtape I can see clearly that our music tastes are insurmountably divergent).  I had walked across a humid London with two grads from the office, slurped some complementary wine before enjoying Joel’s chat with Laura Whitmore (pre-Love Island, post-Survival Of The Fittest).  I was just stuffing my face afterwards with free ice cream when we were asked if we would stay for a second interview – turned out they were recording a sesh with Chace Crawford that night too.

Being young, carefree, spontaneous and loads of fun, I was happy to stay.  I jest: in reality I was itching to get back to my flat for some lean chicken, sweet potato and a bit of boxset.  But I had already fully sweated through my underpants on the walk over and self-destructed on my macro requirements with my scoops of triple chocolate.  So, there was Chace, him off Gossip Girl, metres away talking about his new show: The Boys.  Sounded decent.  Nevertheless, the evening ended in faux-pas as we made for the lifts during our exit.  One of the grads declared out loud that poor Chace “is much less good looking in real life” as our elevator arrived.  Little did he realise that Chace was standing right behind him but was too gracious to respond.  With that cringe in mind, I owed it to successful Hollywood actor Chace Crawford (who doesn’t care what media grads think about his face) to watch his new show.

Like Amazon’s other centrepiece, Mr Robot, The Boys has an epic pilot episode.  There is set up galore as we are shown a world where superheroes are a commodity as commercialised as any US sport, with merchandise and revenue streams beyond anyone’s wildest capitalist imagination.  What a fun slant to take on an overdone genre: looking at the business side of rescuing plebs from danger with x-ray vision and glowing yellow eyes.  I could gladly have just followed a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the inner workings of Vought International, the fictional corporation that has globally cornered the market in caped crusaders.  But because this is drama, we need to acknowledge that we are here to see the destruction of this proffered reality for which we have suspended our disbelief, so it’s no spoiler for me to tell you that the first season slowly edges us towards the demise of this morally corrupt business endeavour.

Sadly, so often, a great pilot can result in a huge drop off in following episodes.  Therefore, instalment two bored me and from then I was kind of done, sitting through the rest paying little attention and feeling even less.  Crawford himself is actually fairly marginal as The Deep, whose power rests in his abdominal gills.  He seemed to be there for comic relief, but without realising it.  And it wasn’t that funny, just weird.  Most of the character development had gone into his biceps.  Centre stage was, in fact, Karl Urban, as an anti-hero activist.  I don’t know what else he did as somewhere along the line the terrible decision was made for him to have a cockney accent.  Cue the worst apples-and-pears dialogue ever recorded.  Urban heads up a bunch of misfits taking on the big corp world – in fact, I think they are the titular boys, rather than the badly behaved celebrity heroes (who I kind of preferred).  If I could pinpoint the moment I turned off, it was sadly the arrival in episode two of Frenchie, a generic team member with the rebels who just left me cold with everything he did.  It’s derivative to call things derivative, but he was derivatively derivative (not the actor, the part).

Nevertheless, there’s plenty to enjoy: explosion-based action, wry wit, moral conundrums, romance, intrigue, a lens on our hero-worship of celebrity.  Just as the heroes care little for their fans and the great unwashed they rescue, I felt no real emotional investment in any of it.  I’m pretty sure it’s all based on some sort of book/comic source material.  There’s no way of knowing as I’m not prepared to google it – it’s better just to fire off an online rinsing, isn’t it really?  It’s reassuring to know I won’t need to watch a second season if there ever is one.  I’ll be too busy getting deep into Netflix’s much more user-friendly menu system, holding my breath for another season of Elite.

Misfits

I’ve never really bought superheroes.  People wang on about the latest addition to the interminable Marvel Character Universe and I seem to zone out immediately.  What we can bear to watch comes down to what we can buy as a reality in which a story can play out.  My own mother can’t abide anything supernatural as it’s simply not realistic enough.  As a result, she cheerfully refuses to engage with the entire wizarding world of Harry Potter.  Sometimes I can’t work out why I’ll buy the things I’ll buy and reject the others.  Zombies?  Count me in no matter what (The Walking Dead and Kingdom).  Vampires?  Excuse me while I reminisce about loving True Blood.  I even sat through every season of Lost, long after I’d lost all hope of ever working out what I was actually buying.  But, typically, I’ll reject anything to do with costumed heroes.  So why, then, am I covering Misfits this week?

Well the truth is that I am behind with my boxset consumption and haven’t polished off anything new in a while.  But my viewing experience’s loss is your blog-reading pleasure’s gain, as I know we all love to trawl the archives.  I’ve cast my mind back to a show that did in fact deal with the real-life consequences of developing superpowers: Misfits.  The premise was not only a great excuse for orange jumpsuits, but also a sure-fire way to ponder the age-old question of just how much great power comes with which sort of great responsibility.  The premise was thus: some pesky youths on community service get caught up in a mysterious storm.  Superhuman new abilities ensue, with our drama served up by two sources: our characters coming to terms with their new faculties and the same characters coming across other individuals who enhanced their natural gifts in the storm’s rage.

Whenever I think what power I would have if I were a superhero, I always arrive at the conclusion that I can’t be improved.  I’ve occasionally thought it would be nice to be a bit taller, but I don’t think Slightly Taller Man would be a welcome addition to the Avengers when they’re next doing some of their assembling.  But don’t worry, the kids in Misfits got a good helping of powers each.  My favourite, regardless of power, was Kelly played by Lauren Socha.  At one point she was all over TV and I can’t fathom why this hasn’t continued.  Her voice had a quality to me that was pure entertainment and I just wanted her to say every line.  I’d have taken Misfits as a one-woman show if I’m honest.  Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Curtis) appeared in a few things afterward, based on the strong vest-wearing he did in the show.  He once came to a party I was forced to attend as part of a work campaign (Primal Scream were playing but I just wanted to go home as I had no idea who they were) and I saw him in our VIP area.  “Yeah,” I thought, “there’s that man off the telly.”  Robert Sheehan provided impish charm with a hearty overegging of every scene as the very annoying Nathan.  He later appeared in Fortitude, which remains my least read blog (so click on it), and showed quite a different side to himself (and his private parts).  On the whole, though, everyone did a fantastic job in their parts.  Well done.  But some of those jobs got so over the top that I didn’t stick with things all the way to 2013’s fifth series.  It was the arrival of Rudy, played by Joseph Gilgun, in season three that started to wear me out.  I don’t like it when actors’ enjoyment of their own performances visibly outweighs the believability of their own performance.  You don’t see me at my office desk having a great time.

What made things really work was the gritty British urban setting of the whole thing.  Concrete wasteland is somehow a very plausible place for some inclement weather to dish out superhuman abilities.  But the greatest element of its own realism came from Misfits’ use of irreverent humour.  Sure coping with time-rewinding power and telepathy was deep stuff, but it also led to some LOLs.  This is why traditional hero fare always loses me.  At some point, our protagonist dons some sort of skin-tight outfit and begins posturing about the place as if we can take them seriously now they’ve got a uniform and a generic moniker that indicates their power.  I always think of Bananaman.  And I always hated him for being patronising.  The Misfits’ powers were buyable - probably just manifestations of the things we have about ourselves that make us think we are different to everyone.  I’ll confess here to my own hero creation: Bubble Boy.  Don’t worry; I didn’t think of the name.  My niece came up with that.  As an adult, imagination play is incredibly embarrassing.  I can spend hours building LEGO or playing board games with my sister’s daughter, but anything involving pretending goes beyond my comfort zone.  I was obliged to spend half the summer in the garden with her enacting superhero battles.  She was something to do with a ladybird.  Each battle starts with your pose.  It can be holding aloft a weapon or assuming some sort of proactive position.  Bubble Boy, whose name isn’t actually linked to any of my own digestive problems, draws a bubble with his hands.  Because, yes, he has the awesome power of bubbles.  Be afraid.  Don’t worry, I don’t proceed to assault a ten-year-old girl, as we are normally too busy laughing at our own posing to unleash any real violence.  Which just goes to show we British can’t take anything seriously.  I mean, just look at Brexit.

But if you want silly camp costumes, then Strictly Come Dancing is on every year.  Otherwise, dig out the old Misfits boxset for a masterclass in good British telly.  Nobody stands on a rooftop in Lycra with their hands on their hips.  They scowl while wearing dirty jumpsuits, before making some sort of quip about the whole situation.  The next time you see some disaffected youths, don’t forget that they might just have some superpowers you just don’t know about.