Review of 'Watchmen' 1.5

That was the best thing about the insane episode 1.5 of the insano Watchmen on Sunday—"Some Enchanted Evening"—sung first by Sinatra at the beginning of the episode and at the end by some group unknown to me. But my favorite rendition of the song that Ezio Pinza first sang in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific all those years ago has always been this one by Jay and the Americans.

As to the tale in this episode, we get the back-story of Looking Glass, who's traumatized as a teenaged boy in Hoboken. Yeah, I know, Hoboken, NJ can be frightening in our reality, but not that bad. In the alternate reality that is Watchmen, Hoboken and nearby NYC are attacked by a squid that kills countless people. Those squids, again, prompting the FBI guy years later to talk about a squid pro quo, giving this episode an odd resonance to our own political situation (I was tempted to use that as the title).

I just want to take a moment here to say that I still have almost no idea what's going on with Adrian Veidt, which is one of the reasons I said I liked "Some Enchanted Evening" the best on Sunday night. I can only hope that he'll escape from his prison before this first season (I don't know, has it been renewed?) ends, and proceed to Tulsa or some place pertinent to the main story, which would give all these scenes of his trying to escape and failing at least some modicum of relevance.

I liked the Jay and the Americans' version the best because of the harmony. I used to sing the song with my folk rock group, The New Outlook, in the Alcove at CCNY when we were still more of a doo-wop than a folk-rock group. The Alcove was indoors, and we sang there rather than outside because we were worried about raining squids—no, only kidding, we liked the acoustics.

Anyhoo, see you here next week, when we'll learn the fate of Looking Glass, I hope.

In the meantime, one more thing: Don Frankel, in a group called Sundial Symphony with Robbie Rist which has recorded some of my songs on Big Stir Records—like "Looking for Sunsets (In the Early Morning)"—always sounded a lot like Jay.