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mortispoxi · 4 years ago

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BBC America’s The Watch Episode Three Review: The What?

Episode Review order: one, two, four, five, six, seven, eight

Hey everybody, my name is Mortis and I’m back again to give you a recap and review of BBC America’s The Watch episode three, The What? If this is the first review of mine you’ve run across, welcome. If you would like to catch up with my review’s on episode one and two, I have linked them accordingly. For those who are returning, welcome back, same rules apply as before. All characters I refer to in The Watch are given personalized nicknames so that when I talk about their book counterparts you won’t be confused when I use the same name twice in a sentence. Quick disclaimer before we begin, I’ve had some people comment on the episode two review that my descriptions of The Watch has made it sound intriguing and that they are thinking of watching it. If you want to see it, all the power to you, but please remember that the majority of what I write about is me condensing down the narrative in a way that makes it more entertaining then it seems. When I watch each new episode, I rarely crack a smile or feel intrigued by what little plot there is, but I know this is not a universal experience so if it interests you then by all means watch it. Just know I don’t make these reviews to get people interested in the show, I make them as warnings.

Before we jump into the review, let’s first hear a word from our River Watch! reporters.

Reporting live it’s River Watch!

News Anchor: Good evening and welcome to River Watch! A weekly update on whether BBC America’s The Watch included Ankh-Morpork’s most iconic landmark, the River Ankh, in its most recent episode. Reporting live on the ground is our field reporter, Mortis Poxi. How are things looking Mortis?

Me holding binoculars: Shit’s still gone!

News Anchor: Thank you Mortis. Now back to your regularly scheduled review.

(If you aren’t aware already, spoilers for episode three, The What? ahead.)

Episode Recap:

Episode three begins with a flashback on Supermodel Sybil’s (Lady Sybil Ramkin) past showing her hiding under a bed as her parents are murdered right in front of her. I have to say, I really did feel like the show runners in this episode pulled heavy inspiration from the movie Kill Bill because the whole scene reminded me of O-Ren Ishii’s backstory which played out in a nearly identical manner. As the episode progresses, we learn that the reason Supermodel Sybil distrusts the watch so much is because the officer on duty that came to her rescue did not do anything to catch the assassin since they had left a receipt that made her parents death perfectly legal. The officer tells her that assassins do not leave witnesses so what she told him she could not go around saying because people from the Assassins Guild might come back to inhume her too. This is how they explain Supermodel Sybil’s tendency to kidnap thieves and assassins as a way of trying to undo the wrong that happened to her in her past instead of, oh I don’t know, going to therapy.

The next scene focuses on Gang Leader Carcer (Carcer Dun) and Wizard Wonse (Lupine Wonse) together in a new hiding place. Wizard Wonse is working on a spell that will allow GL Carcer to connect his mind with Raccoon Vimes (Samuel Vimes) through a shared memory in order to see and hear through the other man’s eyes/ears. Yes, it’s the memory of he and Raccoon Vimes fighting on the tower because apparently the writers must think the viewers have anterograde amnesia and can’t recall an event that gets shown every fucking episode multiple times. They figure out that they are looking for something called Gawain’s Sword (something that doesn’t exist in the canon books) but they have no idea where to start looking, so they’re using this spell to spy on the watch and get clues as to its whereabouts.

It then cuts to Raccoon Vimes asleep in the watch house singing to himself before Supermodel Sybil wanders in with a dragon in a cage (Edit: I’d like to thank @hyaskus for pointing out that the song he is singing is All the Little Angels from Night Watch which I neglected to include because I have swiss cheese brain). They talk about the report she filed twenty years ago, which I have already talked about, and they come to an understanding that she will join the watch, but she does not want to wear the badge since she has negative associations with it. Anyway, she gives Tall Cheery (Cheery Littlebottom) her pet dragon, and they proceed to brainstorm what putting Gawain’s Sword in the hands of Veltricks could mean. After a bit of thinking, ok its mostly Good Boy Carrot (Carrot Ironfounderson) doing all the thinking, they conclude that the message is most likely referring to the statue of Veltricks that stands in the gallery of famous assassinations in the Assassins Guild. They come up with a plan to break into the gallery by having Supermodel Sybil disguise herself up as an assassin and go in when all the assassins have gathered in the front hall to collect the days contracts. Of course, Raccoon Vimes is totally against her rushing in without backup or a means of escape before Tall Cheery points out that there is an entrance in the basement of the Assassins Guild that could be there way in and out. Oh, by the way, as they are talking, they’re bludgeoning snakes and mice to death to try and appease the dragon freaking out in its cage. Anyway, they agree to the plan of Supermodel Sybil walking into the guild by using the mask her parent’s killer wore and for some reason she kept, waiting for the inhumation bell to toll that gathers all the assassins, letting in the goon squad that’s waiting on the other side of the connecting door, then raiding the gallery together. But before they can do all that, the four Stooges must break into the building that connects to the Assassins Guild which means they start a band!

I’m not kidding on this one! The writers took a page from Men at Arms and had the Assassins Guild connected to the Musicians Guild! In the original, the hole in the wall that Edward d’Eath used to escape connected to the Fools Guild, but I guess the watch dressing up as clowns didn’t fit their edgy, punk rock narrative. So instead, they dress up as punk rock clowns (that is not even a joke, see image below) and audition to join the guild in order to gain access to the basement. I guess this was the writer’s trying to say to the audience that they had read Soul Music by including a Band with Rocks In sequence, but it’s not even part of the original City Watch series so…weird flex guys. After singing a song about gold, which I felt was a missed opportunity for Tall Cheery to approach the mic and be like, “This song is called, My Friend is Dead and I’m Carrying a Piece of his Flesh in my Pocket,” they get their membership cards and waddle their way down to the basement entrance to wait on Supermodel Sybil to let them in.

Cut back to Supermodel Sybil in her little mask and cloak, walking into the Assassins Guild about to go to the elevator that leads to the basement. Before she makes it into the elevator, she is stopped by a tall man who comments on her mask and as a way of seeming less suspicious she starts to compliment his mask as well. This leads to the weirdest interaction that has yet to occur on this fucking show which is when the dude essentially starts talking like, “YAS QUEEN SLAAAAY! PERIODT!” when talking about their masks… That's how you know the writers are homophobic, they include stereotypical bullshit like this and treat it like a fucking punchline. While all this is happening, the head of the Assassins Guild Dr. Cruces, who looks like Brandon Rodger’s character Bobby Worst so that’s what I’m going to call her from now on, sees this interaction taking place and is like, “That’s suspicious as hell, Alice go follow her to see if she’s trouble.” Alice, another super weird curveball element I’m not entirely sure where the writers pulled her from other than their ass, is a “little girl” (I put little girl in quotations because the actress playing her is obviously way older than what she’s supposed to be) who is an assassin and I have no idea if they’re Bobby Worst’s right-hand man or her daughter. Either way, she reminded me of Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill because she’s a murderous child who creeps people out by her presence and has a weapon relating to strangulation. Eventually, she catches up with Supermodel Sybil in the elevator somehow and asks her for the password. But, of course, Supermodel Sybil doesn’t know the supposed password and after trying to talk this tiny psychopath out of reporting her, she says fuck it and then proceeds to beat the shit out of this eleven-year-old girl. This grown ass woman turned this kid’s overbite into an underbite with just her foot, which we do not get to witness by the way, and as she exits the elevator, we see Supermodel Sybil carrying around a small crossbow which she didn’t have before.

So anyway, Supermodel Sybil makes it down to the basement level and starts to make a beeline towards the connecting entrance between the Assassins Guild and the Musicians Guild when the inhumation bell goes off calling all the assassins to the front lobby. As assassins begin to file down the hall, Supermodel Sybil hides behind corners and up against walls in order to blend in with her surroundings. This plan would’ve worked perfectly if she wasn’t already wearing a bright red mask and a teal dress that doesn’t camouflage her in the slightest. Seriously, the way she hides was the funniest shit ever because she literally presses herself up against walls as people pass her, meaning that any normal person can see her doing this. All they had to do was look two millimeters to the right and they’ve spotted this weird lady pretending to be part of the wall. She is also wearing these loud ass fucking high heel boots that go CLICK CLACK CLICK CLACK every step she takes so she really is failing in the stealth department. So, either these assassins are super bad at their jobs or they just do not give a flying shit about this intruder. Either way, while she’s heading towards the connecting door she somehow, inexplicably recognizes her parent’s assassin from his missing finger. This dude is in full assassins’ regalia that hides his entire face and body and yet she can recognize this man because of one finger stub. Which is bizarre to me because all these people are assassins so I would assume it is a common thing for people to have scars and missing appendages, but sure, lets go with that. Point is, once she recognizes this man she only saw once twenty years ago and was wearing a disguise, she abandons the original plan to bring the blues clues crew inside to pursue and kill him.

So, she follows this guy up to the lobby where all the other assassins have gathered to receive their contracts and I’m going to speedrun through what’s important because it’s literally just five minutes of straight up bullshit. Here we go!

If an assassin breaks the guilds code by attacking another person belonging to another guild they are killed and stripped of their anonymity.

Bobby Worst thinks she’s super funny and forces people to laugh at her jokes and watch her sing karaoke.

Bobby Worst comments on how Alice hasn’t returned from figuring out who the mystery intruder was and instead of thinking that’s suspicious like a normal person, she shrugs and continues on with her speech.

This is all background noise while Supermodel Sybil talks to Bitchy Death (Death). Let me explain this a bit further, Bitchy Death shows up because Supermodel Sybil is about to fire her crossbow at the man who killed her parents and he basically shows up to neg her on in the most condescending manner. The scene between them essentially boils down to Bitchy Death going hurry the fuck up if you’re going to pull the trigger and her hesitating before asking him if he took the soul of her parents to which he basically says, “Duh bitch.” He tells her the only two certainties in life are death and taxes before vanishing.

Side Note! I honestly believe that Supermodel Sybil was straight up going to commit murder and only backed out when she realized she had an audience. The way she was watching this assassin with such determination on her face spoke volumes about how twisted the writers made her character. When I look at Supermodel Sybil, I’m staring into the eyes of a character that has been stripped of everything that made me fall in love with her in the books and perverted it with the motivations of Edward d’Eath in Men at Arms and every other femme fatale written by a man in the last decade. My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.

While Bobby Worst is droning on and on, Accountant Skimmer (Inigo Skimmer), who was the one who killed Supermodel Sybil’s parents, shuffles out of the crowd and into a back room (I’m calling him this because the show keeps joking he looks more like an accountant than a assassin). There we discover that he has been stealing money out from under the nose of Bobby Worst to commit tax fraud and stick it to the boss. Anywho, Supermodel Sybil confronts him, and they end up in a bit of a scuffle until she threatens to give him a hafada piercing with her new crossbow and he backs the fuck down because this girl has got some moves! No for real, these “trained” assassins are really getting their shit pushed in by these losers from the watch which seems weirdly improbable but they’re the heroes of the story so whatever. She takes him as a hostage so that he can bring her and the bitch brigade (Who are still waiting on Supermodel Sybil to let them in as she does her own thing) down to the gallery to investigate the whole Gawain’s Sword thing.

After literally waiting in Bobby Worst’s karaoke room for like…20 minutes, the inane clown posse starts making noise which prompts the guard on duty to open the door between the guilds and them knocking the guard out. They decide on what they should do first, head to the gallery or try and find Supermodel Sybil. Werechipmunk Angua (Angua von Uberwald) agrees to find Supermodel Sybil because she can still smell elements of her perfume lingering around to which Raccoon Vimes also comments about the smell of her perfume and everyone looks at him weird.

Side Note! The writers really went overboard in telling the audience that the raccoon man is starting to fall in love with the crazy dragon lady through these little comments he makes throughout the episode. I have already mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, this man 100 percent looks like he takes up residency in a dumpster behind the watch house. It is so hard for me to picture a tangible romance between Supermodel Sybil and Raccoon Vimes because every time the narrative remotely referenced a budding romance between the two all I could think of was that “spare coochie ma’am,” meme. He’s nailed the outfit down; all he needs left is his beggar’s cup! But I digress.

So, the watch catches up with Supermodel Sybil who is dragging around Accountant Skimmer with her and she informs them that he is committing tax fraud which is an arrestable offense. They can’t stick the murder charges on him since it happened so long ago and was done legally so they arrest him for evading taxes. Anyway, they finally get to the gallery and find that the sword that would normally be attached to the statue of Veltrick’s went missing years ago and they did all that for nothing. While this is happening, GL Carcer is still using the spell to look through Raccoon Vimes’s eyes, but things start to go awry when the raccoon is reminded of the memory of GL Carcer falling off the tower after Accountant Skimmer says the words, “arrest me,” which triggers the flashback.

Side Note! So, does Raccoon Vimes have a Vietnam flashback every time the phrase “arrest me,” gets said? Is that why the watch went into decline? What if every time someone or himself said those words he would shut down for a couple minutes and the person he was trying to stop would be like, “Buddy are you ok? You know what, I’m just…yeah, I’m just gonna go.”

This jolt of memory sharing causes Raccoon Vimes to look into GL Carcer’s mind and repeat everything the man is saying out loud to Wizard Wonse. We also see fragments of the future where Raccoon Vimes and Supermodel Sybil are together and in love, but it quickly fizzles out as GL Carcer yells at Wizard Wonse to turn off the spell. By this point, the front lobby meeting has ended, and assassins are starting to file back, so the watch and their hostage have to get out of there quick! After the assassins find and release Alice, who had been tied up and stuffed into a gym locker, she circles back to Bobby Worst to inform her about Account Skimmer not being accounted for and that there were intruders in the building. Bobby Worst who now knows about Accountant Skimmer’s betrayal after finding his bag full of money, leaves to sound the alarm. We then get a weird sequence of a panel in the wall coming loose which Alice finds and crawls into to chase down the intruders.

We cut back to GL Carcer who asks Wizard Wonse if, in the brief time they had their minds connected, the raccoon could see anything. Wizard Wonse tells him that if Raccoon Vimes saw back into his mind he had access to thoughts, memories and even feelings. She then asks him what he is so afraid of Raccoon Vimes finding and he brushes off her question saying that they now know the thing they are looking for is a sword and someone stole it years ago.

Side Note! It’s at this point where my brain casually made the joke, oh he probably doesn’t want the raccoon to know he’s in love with him. And then I really started to think about that statement… What if GL Carcer was in love with Raccoon Vimes? I know this is a crazy idea to have but let’s go through my thought process for a second. They have a shared past where they spent their youth in a gang, they spent enough time around each other for GL Carcer to entrust Raccoon Vimes to be the one who kills the captain of the watch and free his fellow gang members, and when Wizard Wonse mentioned feelings being among the things Raccoon Vimes could’ve picked up on he becomes defensive. I hope to whatever god there is that this thought occurred only because I was sleep deprived when watching episode three instead of the writers trying to subtly hint at something, because I swear I will lose my goddamn mind if that’s the angle the show is trying to go for!

Ok back to it, Wizard Wonse figures out where they can look by bringing up the rule about how members of the Assassins Guild get stripped of their anonymity if they disobey the rules. She suggests that they go to the Assassins Guild’s private graveyard to figure out who could have stolen the sword. And because this is already long enough, I’m just going to skip ahead and tell you that they go to the graveyard and learn that Jocasta Wigg was the one who did it and since she didn’t have a death date on her gravestone, she’s still alive and has the sword. For some reason, they didn’t need a big plan or escape sequence to break into Assassins Guild property but seeing how there’s only eight minutes left in the episode, I guess continuity is thrown right out the fucking window.

We then cut back to the watch escaping through a secret passageway Accountant Skimmer showed them but before they make it out, Alice impedes their escape. However, she doesn’t impede them for long because Supermodel Sybil runs up to her and knocks her flat on her ass. This is not an exaggeration or paraphrasing of the scene, she literally runs up and roundhouse kicks this kid right in the fucking face. Of course, after seeing this grown woman viciously attack a child, Good Boy Carrot is like, “whoa, whoa, uncalled for,” an goes to help Alice up. She takes a swipe at him, causing him to drop his city watch badge, and after experiencing firsthand why Supermodel Sybil became so aggressive upon seeing her, Good Boy Carrot nopes the fuck outta there and leaves with the group. Alice picks up the badge, identifies that these people are part of the watch, and returns to Bobby Worst to round up the posse to go and confront them.

When members of the Assassins Guild show up to the watch house, they inform Raccoon Vimes that their intrusion was against the law so they must die for their insolence. Bobby Worst also goes onto say that ever since she called the head of the Thieves Guild a virgin, they’ve had a bounty on her head which is illegal because guild members cannot attack other guild members. The watch makes the excuse that they were in there for tax inspection, which they are legally allowed to do, but Bobby Worst is like, “I call bullshit,” which is honestly fair. As a last-ditch effort, the watch invokes the rule involving guild members not attacking each other, you know the one that’s mentioned no less than three times during the episode, and takes out their Musicians Guild licenses to prove they are exempt. Bobby Worst then makes the excellent point that she did not see Supermodel Sybil take out a badge to confirm she is also apart of the guild/their band. She makes a comment that Supermodel Sybil doesn’t even have an instrument to which Supermodel Sybil starts to sing the song she heard Raccoon Vimes sing in his sleep as a way of saying, “my instrument is my voice.”

Minor Rant Incoming- I would like to point out that she had not taken out ANY SORT OF BADGE to prove that she is a member of a guild and yet for some reason the head of the Assassins Guild TAKES HER FUCKING WORD FOR IT! Swear to god, if Bobby Worst were written with even half the braincells her book counterpart possessed, they’d all be DEAD!

Yadda yadda yadda, the Assassins Guild lets them go free and Raccoon Vimes is summoned to Lady Vetinari (Lord Havelock Vetinari) to talk about his findings. After recounting everything to her, Lady Vetinari tells him that he is to stand down and stop investigating the case. Raccoon Vimes asks her if she is using reverse psychology on him to which she replies, “I don’t know Vimes, am I?” I think Raccoon Vimes flipping her off after that was completely justified because really this whole episode was stupid and deserves the middle finger.

Why’d they have to make this episode confusing as HELL!?

Episode Review/Thoughts:

I think I’ve said this in every end of recap review, but I cannot stress this enough about how buck wild this show is with its constant reference dropping as a way of making up for its lack of consistent plot. The takeaway of episode three is that Gawain is a sword that they need to either kill the dragon or control the dragon with depending on who has the sword. The rest of the episode truly is just asinine bullshit that gives no real substance to the episode. There is an underlying subplot about revenge that I’ll talk about in a minute, but for right now the point I’m trying to make is that I’m three episodes in an I’m still not entirely clear what’s going on. It’s so confusing to wrap your head around what’s going on because they keep name dropping aspects of Discworld books that sometimes have no business being in a show about the city watch! It doesn’t know what it wants the plot to be and as a result it feels like I’m watching a filler episode rather than a main story focused episode.

Although the show runners have tried to say that this story is not one of revenge, this is wholly untrue. There are so many characters within this episode alone that attempt to take justice into their own hands and nearly become murderers themselves had they followed through. It should also be pointed out, those who do have serious revenge narratives are poc’s. GL Carcer says he’s not doing this out of revenge, but I see no reasonable explanation other than revenge against the city and Raccoon Vimes since his whole plan is to wipe out everything in existence because he did not succeed in changing things in the past. Supermodel Sybil almost murdered her parent’s killer because she did not properly have time to grieve or process the loss of her family and takes her frustrations out on the people she kidnaps and those she surrounds herself with. She is following the stereotypical strong/sassy black woman archetype to the letter as she continues to refuse to let go and instead focuses on vengeance. The writers can’t even give this woman closure when she tries to interact with Bitchy Death who constantly is shooting down her questions about how her parents felt when they died and if they said anything to him that could help her move past this trauma in her life. It does not make sense to say revenge is not the road to take when half of your narrative relies on characters performing acts of vengeance on the people/things that wrong them in the past.

Overall, the characters and story are still a mess. I highly doubt that things are going to change seeing as it is already the third episode and they still haven’t laid out a plot that makes sense to both Discworld fans and newcomers. One thing is for sure though, The What? lives up to its namesake because I sure did say, “what?” and “I’m sorry, the what?” multiple times when watching episode three.

Now for the part of the review that’s most fun for me to write...

Things in The What? that made me go, “I’m sorry what now?”:

The makeup department going a bit overboard with the sharpie when doing Vimes’ rocker makeup...

Death has an American accent

The interaction between an assassin and Sybil that went like-

Stereotypical gay dude: Hey.

Supermodel Sybil: Hey.

SGD: Where’d you get your mask?

SS: It’s vintage.

SGD: Shut up!

SS: True story.

“Vimes, I’m trying to sneak around. But the clack of my high heel boots keeps alerting the assassins!”

Day 3 of costume watch, Lady Vetinari still has on the same outfit...

Sybil sneaking around the Assassins Guild like-

Honorable Mentions:

Dr. Cruces partakes in so much karaoke that the Musicians Guild dedicated an entire room for her to use when she wants.

Remember the mirror that talked to Carrot that I mentioned in the episode one review? Yeah, still hasn’t been explained yet...

Me: So this is a Discworld adaption correct?

The producers: Yes that’s correct.

Me: Right. Right...So why haven’t you mentioned that this world is flat on the back of four giant elephants standing on the back of Great A’Tuin the enormous space turtle yet?

#the watch reviews #bbc the watch #bbc america the watch #discworld #the watch #not my watch #review #mp #no editing we die like men

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