Watchmen Review: A God Walks Into Abar (Season 1 Episode 8)

A god walks into a bar as Jon Osterman and comes out Cal Abar on Watchmen Season 1 Episode 8, “A God Walks Into Abar,” a time-bending episode of a different sort that ties up some loose ends, but ties everything up in a story of love and tragedy.

To tie the episode around Jon and Angela’s first encounter, and to make all encounters play out all at the same time on Doctor Manhattan’s fluid timeline, helps to settle some moments that needed clarification, while opening up the possibilities of what could possibly come next.

Damon Lindelof and Jeff Jensen make sure to never lose sight of the love story, despite the flashiness telling a Doctor Manhattan story brings to Watchmen. Keeping to that love story, and setting up everything for a future that he’s already lived, allows for the pieces to click while never pulling away from the emotion, the frustration, and the shared respect that Jon/Cal and Angela share for each other.

The intimate nature of their courtship, where knowledge and curiosity drives them both, makes for what could have fallen apart with ease a game of back and forth, where godliness for one is only as powerful as Angela allows it to be. Her dismissal and playfulness with the concept allows for her more sarcastic, cynic voice to come out, and lets Regina King have some fun with her role.

Doctor Manhattan, as a character, can either fall toward dullness for being endlessly knowledgeable and therefore cheating tension, or he can be endlessly fascinating. With Watchmen here, he’s the kind of character who arrives at fate’s door with a healthy curiosity to destiny or fate that rattles out infinitely for him, always happening and always to fulfill his duty.

It can feel like Manhattan is void of emotion, where everything is an non-linear puzzle to be solved (or perhaps has already been solved, and he’s simply going through the motions). But that’s where Angela comes in, as his way to finding and securing the emotion he wants and needs.

It’s also found in the life he leads as a child, where the basis for Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks come from, an idealistic world of kindness and caring. It’s the things along the edges that give Jon Osterman his humanity. Jon learns a lot from his childhood about god, religion, and sex, and it becomes an important lesson for his current timeline.

Cal’s transformation back to Manhattan casts a long shadow, as his time is brief but full of importance. He’s accepted his fate because it’s meant to happen, his capture and ultimately his potential death, and allows it to happen. But he fulfills Angela’s promise to protect him, a moment he says is when he falls in love with her, tying them together one last time before the teleportation ray gun snatches him away.

But the capture of Doctor Manhattan could mean anything currently. The Seventh Calvary mean to destroy him, but there’s still the question of whether or not he can be destroyed so easily. He mentions during the bar scene that his essence could be transferred and consumed, so that that person can become as powerful, so that is likely Senator Keene’s ultimate plan.

Yet that requires a certain level of cooperation on Manhattan’s part, unless he is coerced or the mesmerism that Will Reeves discovers over the course of Watchmen Season 1 Episode 6, “This Extraordinary Being,” is used in some form. That’s if Manhattan can be forced to do anything, really. He’s fairly assigned to his fate, and possibly his destruction, and so maybe his death is all part of the plan.

Adrian, meanwhile, is also having a bad day. His disappointment after the Watchmen graphic novel events emanates from him at his base in Antarctica. It’s not entirely the recognition that bothers him, but rather that the utopia he so dreamed of never comes to be. That this sparks Manhattan to send him to Europa, the moon of Jupiter he’s currently trapped on, answers that looming question.

At the same time, though, it creates the question of where Adrian fits into it all now. Is his story a cautionary tale, to be careful what you wish for, and that his scheme that continues to this day sparked something far darker than he could have possibly imagined? It could be, but there is an air of importance to him beyond his corrupting of a paradise.

A sobering moment comes for Angela during Watchmen Season 1 Episode 8, “A God Walks Into Abar,” when she potentially starts the murder of her friend Crawford by having Manhattan mention his name to Will Reeves in the past. It’s a simple, effective moment that shows that despite there being a being who lives at all points in time, some things are made by our own destiny.

Some things are not to be controlled, and are moments that balloon into something far more down the line. It’s just like the meeting of a blue god and a Saigon cop, a moment that will balloon into something more in a decade. While tragedy may break the Abar family, there is still time to correct the horrors that Seventh Calvary mean to do.

There’s still whatever Lady Trieu is up to with the Millennium Clock, and there’s Looking Glass somewhere with a Calvary mask. Angela, too, is likely to be fired up and in need for vengeance. Whatever comes next for Watchmen, it’s created a monumental story about those who are in need of their story being told, and it is cementing itself as a television titan.

Some stray thoughts on the episode:

• A quick little moment to comment on, the title of the episode, “A God Walks Into A Bar,” changes as Manhattan crosses through it, changing the title to, “A God Walks Into Abar,” a nice little pun on Angela’s surname.

 

What did you think of this episode of Watchmen? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Watchmen airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.

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