Who is Doctor Manhattan?
More than any other character in Guards, Doctor Manhattan feels more like a way to convey a point of view than a human being. Her visual story in the comic, "The Windmaker," successfully conveys how she experiences time, but it's still hard to wrap your mind around what it must be like to be Doctor Manhattan. She is a person, in fact, who has not experienced the world as a person – or at least so far from the other person’s experience that her inner life seems almost mysterious. How do you see the world? How is that? be him?
Guards the TV program tries to answer these questions in "God Walks to Abar" (get it?), casting Jon Osterman as a person. The results are equally exciting and very frustrating.
Jon's post breakdownGuards The life of comics is clear or reduced now: after leaving Earth, Doctor Manhattan has, not in another galaxy, but gone to Europa, where he tried to create a perfect world using Crookshanks and Philips, people who gave life based on certain English officials he saw. He returns to Earth in 2009, to fly to Saigon and begin his relationship with Angela Abar. Thanks to a tachyon-coated device created by Adrian Veidt, he spent ten years as Calvin, unable to remember his past. Also, after a brief spell as he is alone in a house in Tulsa, he is captured by Steven Kavalry.
Guards it has been, if nothing else, ambitious and possibly stupid for its creative center. Turning Doctor Manhattan into an amnesiac black man is nothing if not fantasy and possibly a very foolish one.
Thank you that Damon Lindelof has just made Jon Osterman's motto; he is, as he was in the book, a very strange man who can't really associate with a man. That is, man. And Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is pretty much the same, introducing the kind of funky-looking Jon with a charming, something that comes in less of what Jon himself is than in the misused word he says. (To hear Abdul-Mateen sound so clear before Calvin Jon is a bit bizarre, but I think this is similar to him keeping Calvin's post-split double, okay. Anyway, let's go with it.) In times when Jon is laughing, even if it's a mix between the two experience, or Angela's sense of humor, we know what she sees in her.
Abdul-Mateen's performance makes a clear difference with the direction of Nicole Kassell, who takes great pains to keep Jon out of our field of view – impartial, hidden behind a glass or mask, drawn out of a frame – until Cal. Successful comparisons to the unfamiliar scene of the supernatural scene see Doctor Manhattan (e.g. bringing life to Europe), gives Jon a sense of adventure as far too engaging and too small. But the most important thing for her to connect with is not Europa. It's Angela.
Regina King is great in this episode, especially as the new (relative) arrival of Jon. But what Angela did is still a blank spot in the middle of the season. It's nice to see him calm and funny when he meets Doctor Manhattan – at least, when he first believes him – and King and Abdul-Mateen have great chemistry. However, I'm not sure why you are in this relationship. They have enough fun conversation, and maybe a late night dinner. After two weeks, he is claiming a march to find people who can act like them. Does that sound like Angela we know? Worse yet, Jon's presence continues to haunt Angela's headquarters that is “Near Religious Debate.” In her opinion, and now with us, she looks like a pool ball in a baseline based on a hit, Choice on the delivery of the hit King fence, and the hardness Angela has seen until until now.
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There are some really fun moments in "God Walks Abar," but Angela's action comes on a big weak point: The episode fills in the holes from the beginning of the season, trying to provide answers during the construction of Doctor Manhattan – and all of Damon Lindelof's work – suggesting that it would be satisfying further throwing a few additional questions. Take a moment when Adrian Veidt declares that Jon will still be able to use his power in “life-threatening situations” even if he is still human. It's very simple GuardsWriting has been a whole season, it was only to set the moment that we realized that Jon saved Angela from Kavalry when it would have been much easier to trust viewers to find out that that had happened.
In the unanswered hour, we also find out where Adrian Veidt is all this time. He is in Europa, where he was originally intended to be the new community leader that Jon created. He had never been arrested; it was worth paradise. Their scene is, I think, a highlight of the episode, not just because of Jeremy Irons' hair (which is good) or a joke about the distribution (which is bad, but it's very funny when Jeremy Irons always says that hair.). That's because Doctor Manhattan recognizes one of his limitations: you can't think, or how to deal with how to turn things away from time – let's say Calvinist – a plan.
Is Doctor Manhattan really powerless to change the world, or do you just feel that way? The Guards the book does an excellent job of leaving the answer on the edge of the knife. One might come across feeling that Jon is too busy and too ambitious to do anything, or you may think that his full knowledge of the future serves as a collection of slums, The mound-style. Guards The TV show shows that the answer is simultaneous. Jon sees the path laid in front of him – all around him, actually. He had never even thought of finding out how to deviate from it.
The conflict begins very well at the end of the episode, when Doctor Manhattan is captured, and it looks like he's about to be destroyed. In a way, the conclusion feels absurd – Doctor Manhattan is actually a god, and the idea that some gun racers will be able to get rid of him is absurd. But Abdul-Mateen's performance suggests that Jon, for the most part, is keeping up with the plan, because he thinks (you know?) What will happen. Even in the final argument when he does Doctor Manhattan's stuff (blasts highs, stops bullets), he actually prevents Angela from being shot before going into exile.
How does all this wrap up? Beyond what seems like an obvious question – who will become the new god of this world after Jon is killed? – We should get answers to questions about Seventh Kavalry, Lady Trieu's original plans, her father's identity and, most importantly, the identity of Lube Guy. (Oh, and, in a post-credits sequence, Veidt finds another horse, which he uses to start cutting himself into exile.)
Like a masterpiece watch, moving pieces and gear for Guards they all started by clicking into place, creating one machine. I just wish there were a few more parts that were there that would just be nice.
