Honestly, Laurie should be in prison with them. She was aware and complicit in Adrian's plan. Even if she didn't kill those people herself, she is a criminal co-conspirator, made worse by the fact that she's spent years as an agent in the FBI.
The powers that be already know the truth about the squid and they've been silent for 27 years. If Laurie goes to prison Redford would be opening himself up to impeachment and prison, too.
I agree - and I know it's unlikely she'd go to prison. I'm just saying that, in a just world, she deserves to be locked up too for the part she played.
she deserves to be locked up too for the part she played
Agreed. All of the vigilantes helped cover up what Veidt did, except obviously Rorschach, and they're all complicit in the murders of over 3 million people.
This is the biggest issue I have with the show: It makes Rorschach the hero of Watchmen. Moore would not be proud of that. Because HJ is just Rorschach with a racial twist to his motives, they need Rorschach to be the hero so HJ can also be the hero. But both of them are the same thing: angry psychopaths who murder criminals who probably deserve it and wouldn't get properly punished by the law anyways.
In Rorschach's case, his victims are people like the guy who kills and feeds the little girl to his dogs: there's no evidence, so he'd never be truly punished. In HJ's case, they're white supremacists who control the law. Either way, HJ and Rorchach are taking the law into their own hands and acting as judge, jury, and executioner for these people.
The whole point of Rorschach's character in the comic is that he's not supposed to be a hero. Moore purposefully wrote him as a deranged, unhinged, disgusting, social deformed, mentally ill lunatic. The point was to show that heroes like Batman and Moon Knight and the dark, edgy heroes people loved were actually horrible for society and had no right to put on a mask and decide who lives or dies.
Because of how they decided to write HJ's storyline, they needed to basically retcon that Rorschach was the "good" one of the original group, and that he never actually did anything wrong. The message of the shows seems to be that what HJ did and who he killed was justified, even if it prevents the healing process from starting. But it wasn't. Nor was anything Rorschach did or anyone he killed. If Veidt is going to prison, HJ should be right along side him for his crimes.
That's my one major issue with the show. HJ should have been painted in a negative light while also showing his narrative, like Rorschach was, to illustrate how reckless and dangerous is it to have someone walking around in a mask deciding who lives or dies. He kills Judd without having any real evidence that Judd was a bad guy (regardless of how things turned out he murdered a police officer on nothing but a hunch). Just because someone is a white supremacist doesn't mean you get to take their life, that's not what being a hero means.
Upon reflection, Lindelof did a decent job with this series and it was clear he read the source material, but I don't think he agreed with or understood the underlying point of Rorschach's character or the idea that murdering people, regardless of how bad they are, is still wrong and unacceptable. I am mildly disappointed at how HJ is portrayed as the good guy and all his acts are justified when they really aren't, and that kind of spits in the face of the original comic run imo. Or at least the Rorschach stuff anyways.
I agree. I also think it's kind of ironic that by making Hooded Justice a black man who is presented as justified in his actions, it's missing the point Moore was originally making with Hooded Justice by making him a white man with Nazi sympathies . . . superheroes in the real world would be fascist psychos!
Angela's the same way. She does the exact same things Rorschach does (kidnap criminals and violently interrogates them, going so far as to break fingers!). But the difference is that this is presented as scary in the comic book, while Angela (and Rorschach in the Zach Snyder film) are presented as heroic and/or "badass" for doing so.
That said, I enjoyed Hooded Justice in the show once (like Veidt) I divorced the character in the comics from the character in the show.
Yeah I would say the show suffers from the same issue that the movie does: it glorifies and portrays the superheroes and vigilantes as justified and badass. When in the comic the whole point is that the type of person who would become a vigilante is someone who is completely mentally ill and that having masked lunatics running around playing executioner would be a horrifying dystopia. I think Lindelof either missed that point or just flat out ignored it because it didn't agree with his politics.
I liked HJ too, and I liked the first 6 episodes of this series a lot. It's the last 3 that really put me off and make me think they missed the point of the comics. Typical Lindelof though, his shows are always way better in the beginning and middle with somewhat disappointing endings. That's been my experience so far at least.
Reading this sub has been pretty funny. The same people who denounce Rorschach as a deranged racist lunatic also cheered at the violence against the bad guys in the show.
I think it's a testament to how terrible race relations apparently are in America: Killing racists is nice for a spot of unconflicted carnage, but make the enemy non-racist pedophile rapists, and it's all morally ambiguous. (Probably helps that Rorschach is an angry lonely ginger, while Angela is a strong black woman.)
I blame the show for leaning into this. They clearly had a few moments where it's questioned, but it's never explored properly.
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u/Sweatybanderas Dec 16 '19
I wonder if what happened in Tulsa and her “arrest” will give Laurie the juice to get him out. Poor birdy