WatchmenVision

  Ever since Watchmen's finale let me down I've been wary of any show that manages to convince me that it's Good, especially as it hurtles toward its finale. Yeah-yeah, someone else bemoaning another Lindelof closer, I know - which is another, albeit smaller, reason I don't want to hate it because up until See How They Fly, I've loved his endings; Leftovers' finale is my favorite episode of the series and Lost's finale, while it's not perfect, is still very much LOST, for much better than worse.

  But Watchmen's finale was u n r e c o g n i z a b l e. I'd never seen a show that was as good as Watchmen was, for 8 whole hours, only to totally botch the landing like this anomalous episode did. The cold open is a gobsmackingly idiotic screenwriting scheme to show how our central villain came to be. Then our main character is reduced to reacting to things rather than doing anything - she's positioned on the literal sideline of all the action. And our villains are outdone by script-sanctioned stupidity and some physics-defying fan service (squid is on the menu again!). I mean it, for the first 8 hours this was an intelligent, nuanced, and downright cool show. It's maddening.

  Anyway, I could ramble forever about it, but that's not the point of this post.

  Episodes 5 and 6, Little Fear Of Lightning and This Extraordinary Being, are still two of the best hours of television ever produced. It's the power of episodes like these, as well as It's Summer And We're Running Out Of Ice and She Was Killed By Space Junk, that made episode 9 such a frustrating letdown. I wouldn't be gutted by heartbreak if I wasn't in love in the first place and watching these week-to-week was a passionate moment in my complex relationship with this show.

  There've been plenty of shows that have just outright lost my interest along the way, like Mr. Robot s2, Preacher s3, Legion s2, Fargo s3, Evil episode 2, Killing Eve s2, Game Of Thrones s1, and Lovecraft Country episode 3. I can usually sense bullshit and dip out before the ship sinks but Watchmen didn't have any red flags.

  Or maybe it did and I wasn't paying attention.

  Even without seeing it all 'til quarantine (The Righteous Gemstones, Lodge 49, Euphoria, Black Summer), 2019 had some of the best TV of the decade; it kicked off with Russian Doll in February, followed by the return of Barry in the spring, and Mindhunter in the summer - all great seasons capped off with fantastic endings. Even Orange Is The New Black, one of the most bastardized shows I've ever given my loyalty to, had a satisfying ending despite Jenji Kohan's typical bullshit throughout s7. So by the time Lindelof's Leftovers follow-up came around in October, I wasn't just drunk on hype, I was dipsomaniacal - nothing could convince me it wasn't gonna be fantastic TV. And that's my fault, which I didn't realize at the time.
 
  Despite my conspiratorial mental gymnastics; something happened in the writers' room with HBO wanting something more concrete and accessible; there's a secret unreleased 10th episode that recontextualizes it all like Part 18 did for Part 17 of The Return; I accepted it.

  This is Lindelof's ending.
It's done, it sucks, move on.

  So after sobering up I went on to enjoy Better Call Saul, DEVS, The Outsider, and Perry Mason quite a bit, but not without some [thankfully unwarranted] apprehension. I never gave myself over as completely as I had to Watchmen.

  Until WandaVision, that is.

  This show has become an obsession. And I don't mean that in an ironically cutesy, memetic way. I mean I am diagnosable, that's how obsessed I am. But I'm also self-aware and trying to keep my guard up. This could take a nosedive in quality despite how great it's been so far.

  The first two episodes conjure plenty of mystery-box intrigue but they also function surprisingly well as straight-up sitcom episodes. Usually these kinds of retro-kitsch throwbacks wink too much for me, doing half-hearted bits to canned laughter, but there's no meta cynicism to be found. They were literally filmed in front of a live audience who are actually laughing, and me along with them because they're genuinely funny. Episode 1 is a riff on The Dick Van Dyke Show and I Love Lucy (Dick Van Dyke was consulted for authenticity) while episode 2 is Bewitched. The cast is fully committed to everything without any pithy too-good-for-this smirking and eye-rolling. Olsen, in particular, brings so much to every episode. They don't make any distracting nods but, instead, just use those classic shows' frameworks to do their own thing - with creepy bits injected to let you know something is wrong. Sometimes you'll see something downright disturbing while the chipper sitcom music will defiantly keep the tone 'lite,' which is consistently effective - the balancing of tones is as immaculate as the pacing.

  Every new episode brings us a decade closer to now and new zeitgeist shifts evolve the show a little more, slowly revealing what's going on. But new mysteries are piled on top of freshly-answered questions. Episode 8, the penultimate episode, functions like a Retrospective, but unlike the usual design of The Clip Show format, showing us what we've already seen, these ain't re-runs. We're taken through an odyssey of buried trauma and anguish, giving reason and weight to this loving sitcom 'reality' with shit that's been kept from us.

 

  What they also manage to do--and I really love this--is tell this story in a way that feels like a comic book. Every episode is a new issue, since reading a new print every month has an episodic structure to it, and it's just as much a character study as it is a mystery. It's not like most comic book movies which condense everything into a 90-minute origin story set-up that leads to an effects-heavy conclusion - the sequels are always more interesting for this very reason. WandaVision has Marvel pacing everything out and giving its two most neglected Avengers a worthy 6 hours to stretch their legs. Each episode is only 30/35 minutes, at the most, and the tense cliffhangers are framed--both stylistically and narratively--like exciting panels on the last page! It's frustrating but it's designed to lure you in for another week - and it works.

  Ever since Friday I've been having flashbacks of Watchmen's wreckage and it won't stop until I see the finale at 2:30am this coming Friday. I have faith in WandaVision because, so far, it's my favorite thing the MCU has ever produced. Then again, Watchmen was my favorite thing Lindelof had ever done

...up to a point.