Watchmen has a violence problem: Damon Lindelof's shifts from darkly comedic to deathly serious violence isn't quite working

Men's Health

"Showrunner Damon Lindelof has been clear about his thematic intentions, explaining that the series was partially inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article 'The Case for Reparations' and was designed to explore race and policing in America," says Josh St. Clair. "That intent alone sounds ambitious, and when one then uses a literary source material with its own political bent (Watchmen was, in many ways, a parody of superhero worship and Cold War bomb culture), things get really ambitious. Because of the ensuing thematic juggling act, Watchmen can feel weighty and cumbersome—Lindelof attempts to stuff so many references into an hour-a-week episode that it can become unclear both what's going on and what viewers ought to take from this chaos. And then there's the violence supposedly carrying these serious and ironic messages. Veidt's violence, humorous robot/clone killing, plays out in a sharp contrast to the racially charged violence in Tulsa—lynchings, assassinations, cop-killings. Irons' scenes are designed, tonally, to inject the episodes with a bit of darkly comic levity. The problem is that such moments of good-natured violent fun don't quite feel earned—and when matched up with the violence we're seeing in Tulsa, the tonal difference almost feels inappropriate."

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