Watchmen Season 1 Episode 7 ‘An Almost Religious Awe’ Recap and Review

In last week’s episode we spent most of the episode floating around in the noggin of Angela’s grandfather. It was a pretty great episode. In Episode 7 we are back in the present. We start tonight’s episode with a discussion of the background of John Stewart AKA Dr. Manhattan. A brief but thorough run down of who he was, what he became, what he did, and where he went. A young girl rents “Sister Night” from the grind house section of the local video store and walks through a block party full of Dr. Manhattan regalia. He is quite popular and we can tell from the music we are somewhere in the 1970’s or 1980’s.

She stumbles into her mother and father. She asks to watch the movie. Her father tells her to be scared of people who wear masks and that she can’t watch it. He makes her return it. As she watches a puppet show she sees another local Vietnamese swap backpacks and run into her father and mother where he shouts death to the invaders and blows himself up.

Meanwhile Angela wakes up with Lady Trieu. She still is not feeling great. Trieu tells her agent Blake called her to try and save her life. Angela is hooked up to a device that Trieu calls her treatment. She injects her with the treatment. She immediately gets an internal discussion on what the treatment is. Essentially she has to flush her brain of all of that foreign influence. She does that by flooding her neural network with someone elses spinal fluid. In this case, its her grandfathers. Angela is emotional which Trieu says is a side effect. Trieu wants to know what her last memory was. She lies and says it was her tenth birthday, clearly not ready to tell Trieu everything.

Call comes and checks in with KGB and another officer. They tell him that Angela is fine and that he should go home. Cal presents himself to the guard shack and asks to see Angela. A hologram of Trieu’s daughter informs him that he can’t see her right now but that she is fine. He asks to see Blake.

Blake is listening to Angela recall all of of her grandfathers memories. Her assistant calls in to tell her that “looking glass” is not working with the 7th cavalry but rather that five dead guys with Rorschach’s masks have been found at “mirror guys’ house. Blake heads into talk to Judd’s wife. The FBI agent mentions that Angela’s grandfather was both Hooded Justice and also responsible for Judd’s death. Blake presses the wife on Cyclops and mind control. Blake wants to know about the history of Judd, Senator Joe, Cyclops, and white supremacy. Wife promptly presses a button and the FBI agent and her chair drop down into a hole in the floor but not before she confesses to Judd’s role in everything.

Angela is back getting treatment and Trieu’s daughter asks her a series of questions. Like some sort of psychological eye test. Which person is more trustworthy, more scared, angrier etc. They have a conversation about how one could lie to their kids. That prompts Abarr to get lost in a memory where she is painting an egg in Saigon. The teacher grabs her and drags her out into the street to talk to two Vietnamese police officers. They have the puppeteer who gave the backpack to the suicide bomber and need her help identifying him. She correctly identifies him. They lead him away and she asks if she can witness his execution. The female officer takes off her badge and gives it to Angela telling her to come see her when she gets to be a little older.

Meanwhile Trieu asks Abar which memory she was experiencing. Angela tells her that it was her own. Daughter replies that is progress because it is her own memories she is recalling. The daughter then confesses she has dreams that she is an old lady and wants to know what it is like to experience someone else’s memories. Angela says it hurts.

Its now day 365 of the hearing of Ozymandias. The game warden presides and asks the prosecution for their closing statements. The prosecutor is one of the clones he hatches. She mentions the only rule is that they cannot leave. She rehashes his past crimes, including killing two million people by creating an alien. The prosecution clone does a nice job of summing up all of his bad deeds but highlights why and how he wanted to leave. The game warden asks if he has any defense of his actions. Veidt stands up and lets our a super loud fart. Jeremy Irons using fart humor creates such cognitive dissonance that my brain broke a little. The game warden apologizes for his behavior and announces that there will be a new jury (one of his peers). One of the clones opens the doors and a whole murder of pigs rushes in (i am not interested in what the actual group of pigs is called). The game warden declares that the pigs say he is guilty and all of the clones turn to Veidt and declare him guilty as well. What a weird friggin scene.

Trieu and Angela have lunch and they discuss how the ended up in Tulsa. They discuss the amnesia of Cal. Trieu turns the conversation to Angela’s grandfather. She brings up Trieu’s daughter. The big reveal is that Trieu’s daughter is actually her cloned mother and that slowly but surely she is feeding her mother/daughter her mothers old memories so she can recreate her mother. There is a cryptic mention of doing the same for her father.

Whoa so Agent Blake is no being held in some sort of underground bunker with the rest of the 7th cavalry. Senator Joe congratulates Agent Blake for figuring it all out. He starts to explain his plan and Blake is not super interested in hearing it. She does not give a shit that she is being held in an abandoned JC Penny (love that its an old mall, lots of symbolism there). He mentions its extremely hard to be a white man in america. So he is going to try and be a blue one….oh shit.

Trieu is delvering some sort of press conference. Angela is watching it from her bedroom. According to Trieu Nostalgia is a huge failure because it made people dwell on their worst memories. Angela is overcome and knocks on her grandfathers room. She breaks in and finds that it is not her grandfather at all but rather a giant fucking elephant. So the elephant has been doping her. She pulls out the tether that binds elephant to human and immediately flashes back to the day she was adopted in Saigon. June, who is Angela’s grandma is there to take her home. June wants to know if Angela’s father ever talked about her. Mother and Son had a falling out. He didn’t list her as next of kin which is why it took so long to figure out what was going on. She wants to know all about Angela. Angela tells her she is going to be a police officer and shows her the badge. She also shows her the copy of Sister Night. Coming full circle June explains why her father was scared of people in masks. June says lets go watch this in Tulsa. The soundtrack is friggin killer on this episode (as it always is). As they get in the taxi cab. June passes out on the ground (my guess is that its another heart attack).

She wakes up to an alarm that says “subject disconnecting”. Angela is on the floor next to the elephant. She runs out of the building and boards and elevator. While on the elevator she rides it down to a lower level. The lower level has a dark room with a giant glowing globe. When Angela touches parts of the globe she gets recordings from people who are in booths talking to Dr. Manhattan. She clicks on Tulsa and hears Agent Blake’s phone call. Trieu is there and explains that she runs all of the booths. She tells her that Manhattan isn’t on mars but rather is right here in Tulsa pretending to be a regular human. Trieu tells her the seventh cavalry in less than an hour is going to capture Dr. Manhattan, kills him, and then become him. Angela tells her she is crazy and Trieu wants to know why she didn’t ask who Dr. Manhattan was. Angela smashes through KGB’s roadblock and arrives at home.

Cal is taking a nap with Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Toll’s on his chest while he sleeps. He awakes to Angela looking for stuff in the kitchen. Angela tells him that he is great at everything and is an amazing father but that its time to get into the tunnel. She grabs and hammer and he has no clue what she is talking about. He doesn’t remember and asks if it was from before his accident. She tells him that there was no accident. She then says John you are the one that is wrong and hits him over the head a dozen times and pulls out a metal ring of sorts from his brain. Instantly we see a blue glow and she says “Hey Baby”. Well shits about to get real interesting.