Watchmen Episode 9: I Leave It Entirely in Your Feet
In 1991 Emily Martin published an article so important that I would call it “seminal” if it weren’t for the obvious irony: “The Egg and the Sperm,” which demonstrated how unquestioned assumptions about gender get mapped onto the two sex cells in the scientific literature (the rugged sperm goes on a hero’s journey while the egg just lies around looking pretty). My sexist subconscious always turns the title into “The Sperm and the Egg,” thereby requiring me to double-check on-line every time I want to make even a casual reference to it.
“The Sperm and the Egg” would make a fine title for the concluding episode of Watchmen, but with the gender valences admirably queered. We begin with the conception of Lady Trieu, as her mother, one of Adrian Veidt’s servants, finds her way into the stash of semen samples that the resolutely celibate Veidt stores behind a portrait of his idol, Alexander the Great. By the end of the episode, Adrian himself confirms that he’s a narcissist, which adds extra piquancy to the notion of Veidt dutifully wanking on a regular basis, probably while staring at the portrait of Alexander, which happens to look so much like Adrian.
Trieu’s mother’s theft of Adrian’s Certified Genius Sperm would make a great riposte to the sexist science writers dissected in Martin’s article. Think about it: the sperm is just sitting there, waiting for her to overcome all obstacles and grab it. Though her facial expression does suggest something sexual about the moment (or maybe that sample is just really, really cold), it’s all about the future mother here. If the gender reversal weren’t clear enough, she tops it all off with a cry of “Fuck you, Ozymandias!”
The main plot of the episode reaches its climax (sorry) after a racist megalomaniacal male in bikini shorts is turned into goo by his own experiment, followed by the foiling of Lady Trieu’s plans via teleporting frozen squid. Lady Trieu’s last words? “Motherfucker!” (In Vietnamese). She’s probably not the first to use that epithet against Adrian, but she’s in either the best or the worst position to deploy it. Donald Barthelme once wrote, “The father is a motherfucker,” but in Adrian’s case, that’s not exactly true. This may be what the kids call “irony.”
Meanwhile, among the many revelations that make up this episode, we finally find out why the series is so obsessed with eggs: Jon/Cal/Dr. Manhattan infused an egg with his essence (hmmm) so that Angela could eat it and partake of his powers. Once again, this looks like a classically gendered scenario, until we recall that it was actually Angela who gave him the idea, back in that Saigon bar.
If the series continues, I hope that Angela hasn’t gained all of Dr. Manhattan’s powers. Particularly, his transtemporal perspective. Both Lady Trieu and Will Reeves criticize Dr. Manhattan for his passivity (Will: “He could have done more”), but they’re missing the point. In the system called “Dr. Manhattan,” passivity is a feature, not a bug. It was nearly impossible for Jon to sustain a human relationship after his ascension to near-godhood; his cryptic musings drove Laurie to distraction, while the only way he could get his ten happy years with Angela was to cut himself off from his powers and his very sense of self.
When Lady Trieu meets her father, she takes him to task for the lack of imagination he has shown in the past few decades. The squid incursions? Nothing but “reruns.” This is certainly one of the many metafictional moments in the series, since being just a “rerun” is what Lindelof is trying so hard to avoid. But it also describes the worst aspects of being Dr. Manhattan: for him, everything is a rerun.
As for Angela, the episode stops just before her foot hits the water, suspending her somewhere between humanity and godhood. Lindelof has said that he wants there to be no doubt that Angela actually gained Jon’s abilities, which makes perfect sense. But the choice of the final shot was an ingenious callback to the graphic novel. Moore’s and Gibbons’ Watchmen ends with the editorial assistant of Rorschach’s favorite right-wing rag about to use the slush pile for material for the next edition. In that slush pile is Rorschach’s journal, which contains the truth about Ozymandias’ machinations. The last panel shows his hand suspended right above the journal, with his boss saying, “I leave it entirely in your hands.” Lindelof flips it around: it’s all about Angela’s feet.
There is so much more to talk about in this episode, of course. By necessity, it was plot-heavy, but it was also a remarkable pay-off on nearly every question the series raised. Lost could never be a perfect puzzle box, because Lindelof and the writers room were stuck in a situation where they were making things up as they went along. The Leftovers sidestepped the problem, not just be refusing to provide answers, but by discouraging viewers from focusing on them in the first place. Watchmen gave Lindelof the chance to create an intricate mechanism with the reliability and ingenuity of a Swiss watch.
When a fan and a text love each other very, very much, sometimes they can produce offspring that exceed all expectations.
Lindelof’s Watchmen is a thermodynamic miracle.