Patience Is A Virtue — And A Lot To Ask

Plus: 'Watchmen,' 'Parasite,' and what's making us happy by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when we just kept on watching [new Star Wars stuff](. It was the week when Netflix kept giving out exactly and only [the numbers it felt like giving out]( and they looked pretty good for El Camino. And it was the week when Silicon Valley [got ready to return]( while its satirical fundamentals play out in documentary fashion in the real world. Let's get to it. Opening Argument It swept over my Twitter timeline on Sunday night, that moment when people saw the opening sequence of HBO’s new Watchmen adaptation: It takes place in 1921 during the Tulsa Race Massacre, an absolutely real historical atrocity that [you can read more about]( if you, like a lot of people, didn’t learn much about it in school. It’s a shatteringly sad sequence, brutal and terrifying, and it makes a huge commitment. It must earn that sequence and that imagery. It must prove that there’s a reason for it to be there, and that it’s not just the performance of trauma as an inciting incident. [Regina King as Sister Night in 'Watchmen'] Mark Hill/HBO It’s not that the first episode failed to meet this challenge; at the end of that hour, I’d argue it’s too early to tell. But they sent the first six episodes to critics, and at the end of those six episodes — the other five of which will come out to the public in the next few weeks — it’s much more clear what the structure is, and why that opening sequence is there, and what show creator Damon Lindelof is trying to do with this 10-episode show in the universe of the original comic by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons. It winds up feeling like this story is fully rooted in that opening sequence and draws its central reason for being from it. There is a method, and there are resonances, and there’s a broader story — but it takes some time to develop, precisely because it’s complex. There are writers who like to talk about a 10-episode series as a “10-hour film,” as if episodes don’t matter and aren’t real. Watchmen is emphatically not like that. The episodes are carefully structured to work as episodes, to tell focused, purposeful, distinct stories within this larger tale. But it really, really helps to see a set of those episodes together to get a sense of what’s happening. Without that, what the show asks from viewers becomes more complicated: patience, not just with the idea that there are questions left open and matters left hanging, but with the idea that the ambitions of the project will amount to something. It’s hard to ask audiences for patience. I talked just last week in this space about the irresistible binge instinct, and how pleasurable it is to sit down to something that’s given you a whole season at once. HBO still operates on the one-a-week model, which probably has made its buzzy shows like Succession both buzzier and harder to sell to certain streaming-oriented audiences. As a critic, you want to tell people to hang in there, but can you really expect them to just take your word for it? This dovetails a bit with [this week’s show]( about Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. On the one hand, you don’t want to give away too much about the film. On the other, in a culture that needs curation so badly because there is a glut of content, if you’re so closed-mouthed for fear of spoilers that all you can say is “just believe me, it’s good,” do you risk letting the movie slip by audiences that would enjoy it? With Watchmen , when you’ve gotten to see a little bit of where the project is going, how do you provide something like reassurance while obviously understanding that nobody can guarantee a particular viewer that they’ll wind up liking something? It used to be TV critics mostly reviewed first episodes. A lot of the time, it was all they got. But now, with an audience that has to decide whether to invest a little bit of attention at a time over what now feels like a long stretch (entire months!), it can be hard to know what to tell them. “It starts out bad, but it gets better” is one problem; that’s not the Watchmen problem. It’s more like “It’s going to snap together, but it might take six weeks.” And who’s got six weeks anymore? We Recommend I absolutely loved [this story]( about the woman in Philadelphia who keeps the line for the ladies bathroom at Hamilton running smoothly. We’re going to be talking about Watchmen on HBO pretty soon on Pop Culture Happy Hour, but if you want to study up, you can start with [this great piece from Soraya McDonald]( at The Undefeated. Writer and podcaster and general good person Joe Posnanski has written a fine book about Harry Houdini called, reasonably enough, The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini. You’ll find not only a thorough history of Houdini, but also a lot of thoughts about why escapes became so popular, why they could be done in ways that probably couldn’t be done now, and what really happened with the guy who maybe punched Houdini in the stomach not long before he died. I don’t always feel like I understand TikTok, and it always makes me feel 1,000 years old. But [this little one about eating biryani]( is so funny that it made me laugh probably 50 times this week. (And I only get biryani from various good takeout places.) So, by the way, did [this tweet]( if you’re looking for random Internet goodness. What We Did This Week [So-dam Park and Woo-sik Choi in 'Parasite']( NEON CJ Entertainment I took a look at [Amazon’s adaptation]( of The New York Times column Modern Love. Unfortunately, I’m not sure you can franchise love. [Our Wednesday show]( is about Bong Joon-ho’s early awards contender Parasite, which may or may not be playing near you quite yet, but hang in there. And [our Friday show]( considers Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, also a potential awards magnet after it won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: - Linda: Talking about [pie crust cookies]( - Stephen: All Songs Considered and [the decade in review]( - Bilal: [The Kanye West concert film]( Jesus Is King - Glen: [The Lighthouse]( What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: [pchh@npr.org](mailto:pchh@npr.org?subject=Newsletter%20Feedback) Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can [sign up here](. Looking for more great content? 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