WiC Watches: Watchmen
Watchmen. Mark Hill/HBO
Episode 103: “She Was Killed by Space Junk”
Three episodes into HBO’s Watchmen, here are things we now know to be true: 1) Jean Smart — playing Agent Laurie Blake, aka The Comedienne, aka Silk Spectre — is a freaking force to be reckoned. The head-to-head she had with Angela Abar, aka Sister Night, was worth the show getting made by itself; 2) Jeremy Irons is an aging and eccentric Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias; and 3) Damon Lindelof really loves to place Easter eggs in plain sight.
The first part of “She Was Kissed by Space Junk” is all about Agent Blake. We open with her using a Trieu Industries phone booth that allows people to make phone calls to Mars, where Dr. Manhattan is listening, maybe. Blake comes home to feed — of all things — her pet owl.
Watchmen. Mark Hill/HBO
Blake is working for the FBI’s Anti-Vigilante Task Force, and she’s good at her job. That’s why Senator Joe Keene Jr. (James Wolk) tracks her down and prepares her to come to Tulsa to investigate the murder of Judd Crawford. During their talk, we learn that Dan Dreiberg — aka Nite Owl, a hero from the original comic with whom Laurie was involved by the end — is in prison, probably because he kept being a hero even after vigilantes were outlawed. Keene offers to help free Nite Owl if Blake goes to Tulsa, so off she goes, grabbing Agent Petey from HBO’s interactive Watchmen site Peteypedia to go with her.
Once in Tulsa, Agent Blake sniffs out the Tulsa Police Department’s top-secret interrogation building and has a delightful conversation with Detective Looking Glass. From there, we’re on to Chief Crawford’s burial, where a member of the Seventh Kavalry has crawled through a prepared hole in a mausoleum next to Crawford’s burial plot, strapped on a suicide vest and takes Senator Keene hostage.
The terrorist claims the vest is synced with the beat of his heart and will blow up if he dies. Agent Blake promptly ignores his warning and puts a bullet through his head. As she explains later, she thought he was bluffing. He wasn’t. Thinking quickly, Angela drags the man’s body into the empty plot and tips Crawford’s casket on top, then runs as a disgusting explosion of body parts and coffin splinters erupt from the hole in the ground.
Afterward, Blake finds Angela in the hole the Seventh Kavalry guy used. Blake tries to intimidate Angela by revealing she knows about her secret identity, and about the KKK outfit that was hidden in Crawford’s closet. Angela fires right back, mimicking an owl while flapping her fingers. You could tell it was the first thing to get to Agent Blake since we met her.
Watchmen Colin Hutton/HBO
Meanwhile, Adrian Veidt is definitely making clones, you guys. He happily sends one up into space, apparently, or rather simulates it. In any case, he turns his latest butler into a popsicle. Veidt needs “thicker skin,” so he finds a herd of buffalo (which are plentiful in this world?) and kills one with a perfect shot through the eye. However, a masked man on a horse fires a warning shot at Veidt, who angrily leaves before being able to skin his kill.
Back at his lordly manor, Veidt receives a letter with a skull and crossbones seal from “the Game Warden” warning him not to test the boundaries of their “agreement.” He also thanks Veidt for the tomatoes. Undeterred, Veidt sends him a response, tells his clones that he’s going hunting at midnight, and dons his Ozymandius suit, which looks exactly how it did in the comics. It’s fantastic.
We end the episode on Agent Blake. She’s in her room at the Black Freighter Motel — a little Easter egg for the fans — and cracks open a case containing a massive blue dildo. It gives a whole new meaning to “Space Junk.”
Decided to go another way, Blake knocks on Petey’s door, and the two have sex. That’s when she leaves to go to the aforementioned phone booth, where she tells Dr. Manhattan this overly-long “brick joke” about members of the Watchmen confronting god at the pearly gates. It’s not bad.
Then, when she exits the booth, Angela’s car from last episode falls from the sky to crash land right in front of her.
This episode was easily the best of the season so far, and that’s saying a lot, because all three have been really good. I loved all the Easter eggs and can’t wait for more head-to-head whipsmart action between Blake and Abar.