Watchmen season 1, episode 4 review: If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own

Tiny answers give way to even larger mysteries during the fourth episode of David Lindelof’s Watchmen, as we’re introduced to the series’ main…villain?

Last time, Watchmen reintroduced audiences and readers of the original graphic novel to Laurie Blake (Jean Smart), née Juspeczyk, a.k.a. Silk Spectre II, a.k.a. The Comedienne. The series’ central mystery, “Who murdered Chief Judd Crawford?” took a backseat as it explored Laurie’s current state-of-mind as a character. Nevertheless, it still dropped some odd tidbits; in some cases, such as Angela Abar’s (Regina King) car, quite literally.

One of those oddities was that, in this alternate reality, Tulsa Oklahoma has a towering structure known as “The Millenium Clock.” This clock, we learned, was built by one Lady Trieu (Hong Cheu), a Vietnamese trillionaire whose company, Trieu Industries, bought Veidt Enterprises soon after Adrian Veidt’s (Jeremy Irons) disappearance. In the fourth episode, “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own,” we finally met this mysterious businesswoman.

Dressed in a white to grey half-kimono, half-business suit, speaking in a sing-songy voice, and that hauls around an hourglass, she definitely comes across as your eccentric genius tycoon from many a comic book. Her company also happens to be in the business of genetic engineering and cloning.

Some years earlier, as shown in the episode’s prologue, she gifts an infertile couple with a baby that, somehow, is their biological son. In exchange, the couple sign away their farmland…which also is where the site of where the Millennium Clock will be built. Not to mention the site of where a small meteor hits, which doesn’t seem to concern Lady Trieu in the slightest.

As the episode goes on, we will soon come to learn that Lady Trieu is far more involved in the life of Angela Abar, and that of her grandfather, Will Reeves (Louis Gossett, Jr.) than we realize. At the same time, Lindelof also piles on more mysteries just as he’s hinting at answers to the old ones. What else to expect from the same guy who helped create Lost and The Leftovers, after all?

“To hide the pain”

While the title of this week’s Watchmen episode comes from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (and could be seen as Lindelof preëmptively addressing his critics), it also could relate the stories we give to others about ourselves. Especially those we think are “better” than the truth.

Take Angela, for instance. As a police detective, her whole job is to uncover the truth, even though she has a costumed identity to prevent others from doing the same. More ironic is how she’s also covering up evidence over the course of her investigation, such as wiping down her bakery to remove her grandfather’s prints and destroying his wheelchair. Or making sure to keep Will’s medication hidden from Laurie once her car “returns.”

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Also, the more she uncovers about her grandfather and Judd, the less she wants to know the truth. When she breaks into the Tulsa Cultural Center to confirm that she is related to Will via planting an “acorn” to sprout her holographic “Ances-Tree” (um, okay?), she tells the image of her young grandfather to “stay the f*** away from me.” In turn, it makes for the episode’s best choreographed-if rather unsubtle-scene, particularly in how Angela, in kneeling down to the image of young Will, has her face superimposed over his.

Her willingness to hide the truth also furthers the contrast between herself and Laurie. The former vigilante has no qualms about others knowing and learning about her past–including how she’s the Comedian’s illegitimate daughter. Also, like the graphic novel, she’s become a deconstructionist of superheroes. Sure, her explanation about masked vigilantes donning masks to “hide the pain” of their childhood trauma isn’t anything new to those who’ve read comics. Doesn’t make it any less valid, though, especially in the context of Rorschach and, possibly, Angela herself. Though it is funny how, in spite of her brutal honesty, Laurie still kept quiet about the truth behind the squid invasion.

We’re also meant to think Angela’s husband, Cal (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), is someone who values truth, as shown by his telling their adopted children that “Heaven isn’t real,” and how he “hates” lying to Laurie for his wife. Except hasn’t he been lying about Angela still being a cop for the past three years now, including to their kids? Not to mention we learn there’s some “secret” about him which may have something to do with how he and Angela met in Vietnam. For someone who this episode wants us to believe is all about the truth, it sure makes him out to be a hypocrite.

A better comparison occurs when Angela visits Wade Tillman, a.k.a. Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson) when giving him the pills for his ex-wife to analyze. Turns out in his off time, Wade takes photographs of the squids after the rains just before they melt. It’s also clear from the dialogue that he, like many others in this universe, completely believes the alien invasion from thirty years ago was real. It’s more anecdotal proof the series is giving us that Looking Glass is, pardon the pun, a mirror image of Rorschach.

“Except to serve”

Speaking of the author behind the “inter-dimensional squid invasion,” we’re treated to even more weirdness of Adrian Veidt and his fourth year of captivity. It turns out he doesn’t create the Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks clones at all. He fishes them out of a lake while they’re still newborn babies. Then he places them in what looks like an old-fashioned decompression chamber which accelerates his soon-to-be-servants to adulthood. It’s entirely possible, then, that the Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks clones are the “new life” Dr. Manhattan talked about creating at the end of Watchmen… maybe?

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We also see just why Adrian fished for more clones – he’s brutally murdered all the rest in a fit of rage. At least this gives him more than enough “ammo” for his trebuchet, and thus launches the dead clones into the sky and watches as they promptly disappear. Of course, he also takes the occasion to go into a ranting, villain-style monologue about how he’ll find a way to escape and how he’ll use the clones to do this, even though that’s been obvious for the last three episodes.

What is interesting is that it seems Adrian came to the place by choice, believing it to be a “paradise.” Again, this further cements the popular theory that this place was created by Dr. Manhattan as a means of punishing Adrian for what he’s done. It’s certainly the one explanation that makes the most sense at this point. And even though these segments are just downright bizarre, Jeremy Irons and his performance definitely makes them the most entertaining aspects of the entire series.

“In Three Days…”

Meanwhile in Tulsa, Angela and Laurie have discovered just who may have picked up Angela’s car only to then drop it from the sky. Turns out Trieu Industries has six hovercraft drones capable of doing exactly that. And as both women converse with Trieu in her office/arboretum, the episode doesn’t hide the fact that not only is Will Reeves there, he’s working for her. Of course, as both Angela and Trieu are conversing in Vietnamese, Laurie has no way of knowing this (we think).

In fact, quite a few things are revealed about Trieu from earlier episodes. The girl from the second episode who brought the papers from the newstand? She’s Trieu’s daughter, Bian (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport). Then again, seeing as how Trieu’s company is into genetics, it’s possible she’s not Trieu’s biological child but a clone of some sort. That seems to be hinted at when, towards the episode’s end, Bian has a nightmare that, based on what she tells her mom, could only be a scene from the Vietnam War.

The biggest revelation though? Will isn’t paralyzed. That would suggest he’s capable of stringing up Judd. And given how he’s involved with Trieu, is he even physically 105. There’s also hints, too, that whatever the vast conspiracy is, it’s Trieu who’s behind it. Or rather, that’s what we’re made to think. Between her demeanor, her appreciation of Adrian Veidt (enough that she has a statue of him) and the cryptic conversation she has with Will, we’re definitely made to think she’s the “villain” of the series in the same way Adrian was for the original Watchmen. Then again, this, too, could be a feint.

Also, we’re told something is going to happen within “three days” which, from the sound of things, could have disastrous consequences for Tulsa. Perhaps that’s what the Millenium Clock is counting down towards? And why is Trieu allowing whatever is going to happen to happen?

As the start of the season’s second act, “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own” deliberately slows down its pace and piles on the strangeness. While it definitely makes for interesting viewing, it does make you start to wonder whether there’s all that much to the mysteries Lindelof is setting up here. One does fear that the more Watchmen tries to obfuscate and hide what’s really going on, the less there is to actually uncover. Then again, I guess we can always do what the title of the episode says.

Watchmen returns to HBO next Sunday. What have you made of the series so far? Let us know your thoughts about Watchmen in the comments below!