In Review: Watchmen – This Extraordinary Being

Synopsis: Deep under the influence of Nostalgia, Angela gets a firsthand account of her grandfather’s journey.

Review: This episode explores the life of Will Reeves and some of the mythology behind the minutemen.

The Story

Having swallowed an entire bottle of Nostalgia pills. Angela begins to live a first-hand account of Will Reeve’s journey from his childhood trauma’s to his time on the police force in a corrupt department with a strong contingent of the Klu Klux Klan. When Will encounters this and witnesses the corruption first hand he is spurred onto becoming Hooded Justice, which becomes the lynchpin event that inspires the formation of The New Minute Men.

Angela experiences all of this via the pills and ultimately learns the full truth behind the murder of Judd Crawford.

The Acting

Jovan Adepo puts in a solid performance as the young Will Reeves. The scenes he has with his wife in the episode are very grounded in the harsh reality of the life he is living and the way the actors portray the stress that having a double life can have on marriage is brilliantly done. Regina King has very little to do in this episode due to the fact that Angela Abar is pretty much out of it on the pills throughout the episode.

Overall

This was a really good episode. I loved how Angela’s experience of living Will Reeve’s life via the pills was done in black and white film stock and thought the various transitional scenes from the present day to Angela’s vision quest were nicely executed.

I also thought the story about Will Reeves’s journey into becoming Hooded Justice and him joining The Minute Men was really entertaining and disturbing at times to watch. The level of violence was amped up a fair bit. One of the most disturbing moments was when the three white officers beat Will up and go so far with lynching him as a means to warning him off.

Overall. This is a key episode for this series and a must-watch.