By KARL R. De MESA
All photos courtesy of HBO

For the new viewer, it may be hard to find a baseline anchor when HBO’s Watchmen fires its gun start.

Where does it stand in the chronology of David Gibbons and Alan Moore’s original 1986 graphic novel? What are its conceits and deviations from the characters and events thereof? And how does it view the events in the 2009 Zack-Snyder-movie adaptation of the same title?

There’s plenty to unpack on all those levels but it would be a great disservice to simply spoil the surprises that showrunner Damon Lindelof (who previously helmed cult series The Leftovers), has set in store for the first timer to this mad, alternate history universe of a troubled America.

So here’s what you need to know: The events of the original graphic novel are taken as canon history, but the 2009 movie’s events are almost completely thrown out the window.

Because of the events back in the Watchmen of the 1980s, including an attack by extradimensional squid aliens, Robert Redford is the President in 2019. Technology has taken a divergent turn in that the internet and smartphones don’t exist (in fact people still carry around pagers and make calls from landlines) but electric cars and anti-gravity ships (much like Nite Owl’s Owlship) are the norm. The US won the Vietnam War and made that country its official 51st state. Local law enforcement officers and special agents all wear masks to conceal their identities after a horrific act of terrorism by a hate group called the Seventh Kavalry left police families slaughtered.

Oh, and actual masked vigilantes are outlawed, yet their exploits are honored as both legend and obfuscated history in popular culture and TV shows like the in-show program American Hero Story.

I know. That’s a helluva lot of fictional place setting and concepts to take in and make sense of. But the best part? The noob viewer doesn’t need to have any knowledge of the events in the comics or the movie to enjoy HBO’s new series. He can just come into all this cold because the storytelling as well as the world building is both superb and nuanced and doesn’t leave anyone in the dust.

Why? Because against this soup of alternate history, our main hero among a top shelf ensemble cast, is the almost-everyman Angela Abar (Regina King). She’s a black woman detective who’s a part-time bakery owner and part-time elite police agent.

When she isn’t baking pastries she’s a mother and a wife, and best of all she gets to dress up in a leather trench coat and avenging nun costume with face paint and mask, going under the moniker of Sister Night, her detective alter ego working in the Tulsa, Oklahoma police department.

Along with her fellow masked elite colleagues Wade Tillman aka Looking Glass (excellently brought to life by Tim Blake Nelson), Red Scare, and Pirate Jenny, Sister Night keeps the peace in Oklahoma through good old beatings and investigative work.

Sister Night and her friends are about to be kept very busy, too, as there’s big news afoot that the Seventh Kavalry, the white supremacy terror group that was inspired by writings of the masked vigilante Rorschach (and have taken to wearing his mask as homage) and previously massacred law enforcement families, the very reason that police go masked in the world now, has returned in force with a propaganda video worthy of ISIS to boot.

The bigger news is that a major Kavalry cell is operating right in Oklahoma, under their very noses.

As Detective Abar tries her best to help hunt down the Kavalry, where the series picks up gravitas and meaningful bombast is in its interrogations of race and politics (eerily reflecting our current global atmosphere of tyrants and despots becoming resurgent in supposed democratic countries), the power that masks and anonymity confer especially when it’s law enforcement that goes disguised, and how the tech that’s been developed from the work of a godlike being (in the character of Doctor Manhattan) has dented and distorted humanity’s point of view, its fears, hopes, doubts, and yearnings remade in the shadow of Manhattan inventions.

For example, in the opening episode alone (aptly titled “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice” in reference to the musical Oklahoma!), Lindelof shows the full deck of the series’ emotive cards by exposing us to the horror and violence in the first 10 minutes that depict the Tulsa, Oklahoma, race massacre of 1921.

Watchmen, like Lindelof’s The Leftovers, may become another cult hit after the dust settles, albeit for sure it’ll be a much bigger splashdown in the shape of a smiling, one-eyed squid.

Also called Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street,” the event where black residents were dragged out of their shops and homes and unceremoniously murdered by being shot, stabbed, or strangled is widely considered one of the most atrocious acts of racial violence in US history enacted by white citizens. You’d think the shocking scenes of propeller planes dropping bombs on black houses would be fictional, but no, all of it is real and it was covered up in the aftermath, only coming to fore recently as an acknowledged part of Oklahoma’s dark past.

Another lynchpin of the world and its power play depicted in the first episode is about the “Dimensional Incursion Event” that also occurred around 30 years prior, where a giant alien squid died trying to teleport (and presumably invade the Earth) into New York, killing half the city with its psychic blowout and mentally crippling the other half and millions of others in its vicinity.

Because of this, minor incidents of occasional “squid showers”—where it rains small, one-eyed squid all over America—still happen and traffic stops until all the mostly dead, small (size of a baby’s hand) squid have stopped falling. In lieu of that, most computers, and all phones as well as cell towers, were destroyed because scientists and people believed that such tech had helped open the dimensional portal for the alien squids. Also, the government limits depictions of The Event, issuing trigger warnings for people with PTSD and encouraging them to join support groups to help treat their squid trauma.

Where the surreal storytelling and the meaningful commentary converge is shown not only through the uncanny valley iteration of our reality, but also through the excellent and gorgeous technical accomplishments—from costume to cinematography to camera work.

Plus, I must point out that there’s obvious mastery of the source material. And Lindelof and crew are taking Moore’s notes and running with it to create their own madhouse inspired by his palette.

I dare say, they’ve outdone the grouchy old Englishman (who’s eschewed any credit or participation in any Watchmen adaptations) with their superb philosophical arc, that’s not just a damn lot of pleasure to watch, it also teaches you how to appreciate it by its own merits.

It’s the storytelling equivalent of seeing someone juggle half a dozen balls in the air complete with a chainsaw and flaming torch in the mix. It’s exhilarating how high the stakes are to create something this compelling, revealing something new each time, and which hasn’t slowed down yet seven episodes in. The latest episode “An Almost Religious Awe” explores the world and the motives of each character with mind-blowing plot turns that I had not believed possible when this series started.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?” (“Who watches the watchmen?” in Latin) is a central and recurring self-interview query to the society of this series. Half the fun is in seeing how much Lindelof digresses from Moore’s answers to this question, providing his own while at the same time honoring that original spirit.

While the new viewer may take some time to get accustomed to the surrealism of the story and the world, its dizzying heights of confrontational and musing narrative, its first-rate performances from King and Nelson, Jean Smart (as Laurie Blake, the second Silk Specter turned FBI agent) and Jeremy Irons (as an exiled Adrian Veidt), there are only rewards aplenty when you do settle down to take in the weirdness and the wonderful, the strange beauty, and savage pageantry that HBO has taken a chance on.

Still, who knows? It may not be for everyone in retrospect, unlike the sprawling fantasy epic that was HBO’s Game of Thrones that crossed both generational and class divides to unite viewers in singular fandom. Watchmen, like Lindelof’s The Leftovers, may become another cult hit after the dust settles, albeit for sure it’ll be a much bigger splashdown in the shape of a smiling, one-eyed squid.

As a bonus, the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who’ve already outdone themselves on Gone Girl and The Social Network) only adds another fine layer of dimension to the absurd and magnificent work where we get to deconstruct and interrogate our legends, our myths, and those we put in power.

When the authorities we place in charge go masked and take their faces from the ancient gallery, who’s to say how they will use that facelessness? “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?” You should.

Watchmen airs on HBO every Monday morning at 9 a.m. Philippine time, with an encore at 10 p.m.