Watchmen Was Pretty Bland Overall
I’m sure there are a lot of people writing a lot of articles about the Watchmen show that aired on HBO and how it destroyed the legacy of Watchmen or whatever. I saw the show, so I’ll give you my take.
It’s a pretty bland show.
Politics aside, source material aside, from start to finish it’s a plodding, uninteresting slog. The characters are not particularly interesting, the acting is not particularly good. Everything about this show just feels like roughly the same quality level as one of those CW DC Comics shows. It doesn’t feel like it has that HBO-brand quality level.
The only things that are interesting are the Ozymandias bits — and I wouldn’t have recommended expanding those, they were only interesting for what they were, little once-per-episode shorts. Lady Trieu was somewhat intriguing as a character but she came in the show too late and only climaxed at the very end.
The overall plot, which I guess was supposed to be the main plot of the show, felt like the biggest afterthought to the whole thing. It’s like ordering steak and potatoes but they give you this tiny, tiny steak (the Ozymandias and Trieu bits) and a gigantic pile of potatoes (all this stuff about Cyclops and Sister Night).
I’m going to spoil the show, sorry. I don’t think anyone cares.
They kill off Dr. Manhattan which was pretty stupid. What happened to “the world’s smartest man poses as much threat to me as does its smartest termite”? Dude sees the future. This was really dumb.
Overall, this show was the sequel to an entirely self-contained story that no one asked for, no one wanted, and it didn’t really justify its need to exist. It’s about as relevant to Watchmen as the Fight Club 2 sequel comic is to Fight Club. That is to say, not at all. An asterisk, at best. They’re gearing up for… another season, I guess? Why? Seems bold to assume anybody wants that.
I dunno. I kind of only kept watching this show because I forced myself to about three episodes in and there was nothing else I could find to stream so I went along for the ride but, man, it was kind of a slog overall. Watchable, but barely. Maybe a D+, C-. Everything was just so mediocre. The characters were lame, the plot was lame, the acting was blah, the special effects were blah. I think… I think The Tick might have been a more enjoyable show.
What made it worse was that this show took itself really seriously and thought it was super important and profound, but really it was just overall a pretty dumb, very average show. At least The Tick knew it was a pretty dumb, very average show and leaned into it.
