Watchmen: Laurie Blakes Joke Explained
HBO's Watchmen introduces Laurie Blake, AKA Silke Spectre II, who channels her father, The Comedian, with a joke about heaven and a brick.
HBO's Watchmen episode 3, "She Was Killed By Space Junk," finally gives the show some major connections to the original Watchmen graphic novel by introducing Laurie Blake, AKA the former Silk Spectre II, who transmits a "joke" to her former lover, Dr. Manhattan, on Mars via a gaudy public phone booth apparently intended for the public to send messages to Manhattan almost like a prayer to a distant god, Laurie even says "the assholes down here still think you give a shit."
The joke itself is a play on a classic old multi-part joke about a brick, with the first part serving as a fake-out/set-up to introduce the brick, ending with an unfunny or unsatisfying conclusion, before another joke, sometimes told immediately after, sometimes much longer (depending on how daring the teller is), brings the brick back as the punchline to a seemingly unrelated story.
Laurie's version of the joke takes things a step further to also serve as a character recap for the survivors of the events of the Watchmen novel, but it's also a nod to the biblical parable of the talents in which a master (God), entrusted his servants with a different number of talents (money) while he was away and then evaluates their use of the talents while he was gone. Two of the servants doubled their talents and are rewarded and entrusted with more, but the servant who hid his talent in the ground for fear of losing it was cast away into the darkness. In Laurie's joke, the surviving heroes of Watchmen meet God at the Pearly Gates of heaven to be judged on the use of the talents he gave them and either be rewarded and allowed into heaven, or punished and sentenced to hell.
The episode opens with a shot of Laurie placing the "Blue Booth Network" call at a booth in front of The Iberian Pig and The Square Pub, a location shown in Tulsa later in the episode, indicating the call is placed at the end and inserted non-linearly throughout the episode.
Laurie Blake's Watchmen Joke
"Hey, it's me again. I've got a joke. Stop me if you're heard this one. There's this guy. He's a bricklayer. He's real good at it. He's a master at his craft. Because he's precise. Every brick has its place. Anyway, the guy has a daughter, and he's going to teach her to be a bricklayer because, after all, all a man has is his legacy. So Dad decides to build a BBQ in the back yard. He does the math. He figures out everything he needs. And he shows the daughter everything. Step by step. And when he finishes, it's a beauty. It's a perfect BBQ. Just the way he drew it in the blue prints. Only one problem - there's a brick left over. One single brick. The guy freaks out. He must have done something wrong. He's gonna to have to start all over again. So he picks up the sledgehammer to knock the thing to pieces and suddenly his daughter says "Daddy, wait. I have an idea. She picks up the orphan brick and she throws it up in the air as high as she can. And... and... and then... shit. I messed it up. Ok, I... forget that joke, can I tell you another one?"
"Ok, forget the brick. New joke. Three heroes die and they all show up at the pearly gates. God's there to decide what their eternal fate will be - heaven, or hell? Our first hero was dressed up like a big owl. And God says "I gifted you the ability to make fantastic inventions. What did you do with this amazing talent?" And Owl Guy says "I made this really awesome flying ship and lots of cool outfits and weapons so I could bring peace to the city." And God asks "so how many people did you kill?" Owl Guy seems offended, "zero," he says. I didn't take a single life." God frowned, "Sorry, Owl Guy, your heart's in the right place, but you're just too soft." God snaps his fingers, and the hero goes to hell."
"Where was I? Oh, right. The pearly gates await our next hero in line for almighty judgment. Our hero number 2 is confident he can game this out because that's his God-given talent - smarts. Some might even say he was the smartest man in the world. "So what'd you do with that big brain I gave you?" asks God. "Well, as a matter of fact, I saved humanity," says Smartypants. "Well how'd you do that?" asks God. "Well, I dropped a giant alien squid on New York, and everyone was so afraid of it, they stopped being afraid of each other." "Okay..." says God. "Um, how many people did you kill?" Smartypants smiles, "Three million. Give or take, but you can't make an omelet without breaking a couple of eggs." "Christ," God says. "You're a fucking monster." "Am not," says Smartypants. God snaps his fingers, the hero goes to hell.
Okay, we're down to the nitty-gritty now. God cracks his knuckles, ready to administer the reckoning. Now, hero number three is pretty much a God himself, so for the sake of telling them apart, he's blue and he likes to stroll around with his dick hanging out. He can teleport, he can teleport, he can see into the future, he can blow shit up, he's got actual superpower. So, God asks Blue God "what'd you do with these gifts?" and Blue God says "um, I fell in love with a woman, then I walked across the sun, then I fell in love with another woman, then I won the Vietnam war, but mostly I just don't give a shit about humanity. God sighs, "do I even need to ask how many people you killed?" Blue God shrugs, "a live body and a dead body have the same number of particles, so it doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter how I answer your question because I know you're sending me to hell." "How do you know that?" asks God. And Blue God sounds very sad when he says "because I'm already there." And so, a mere piston in the inevitable machinery of time and space and God does what he did and what he will do, God snaps his finger and the hero goes to hell.
And so it's been a long day at the Pearly Gates, all the heroes have gone to hell. His work done, God's packing up to go home. And then he notices someone waiting, but it's not a hero, it's just a woman. "Where did you come from?" asks God. "Oh I was standing behind those other guys the whole time, you just didn't see me." "Did I give you a talent?" God asks. "Nope, none to speak of" says the woman. God gives her a good, long look, "I'm so sorry, I'm embarrassed, seriously, this almost never happens, but... I don't know who you are..." And the woman looks at God and she quietly says "I'm the little girl who threw the brick in the air." And a sound from above. Something falling - the brick. God looks up, but it's too late. God never saw him coming. It hits so hard his brains shoot out his nose. Game over. He's dead. And where does God go when he dies? He goes to hell. Roll on snare drum. Curtains. Good joke.
I don't know why I keep coming to these phone booths. Telling you stupid jokes. But sometimes it's nice to... Sometimes it's nice to pretend. The assholes down here still think you give a shit. Even though you've been living on another fucking planet for 30 years. But we're not really worth giving a shit about anyway, are we?
What Laurie Blake's Watchmen Joke Means
On its face, the joke is Laurie echoing the nihilism of her father, Edward Blake, The Comedian. The three big heroes who survived the story, Nite Owl, Dr. Manhattan, and Ozymandias all had blood on their hands. Nite Owl was the "pure hero," but failed to stop Veidt from killing millions (to save billions) and also went along with the lie after the fact. Ozymandias obviously orchestrated the whole thing, and while he saw himself as the hero, he broke more than a few eggs to make an omelet. And Dr. Manhattan was too uninvested in humanity to prevent it from happening and merely retreated to Mars instead of dealing with the consequences.
Of course, as shown in the Warhol painting in Laurie's apartment, there was a fourth hero alive at the end of that story - Silk Spectre. Although she didn't face judgment in front of God in the same way the other three did in her joke. Instead, when God asks if he gave her a talent, she says no, and God reveals doesn't even know who she is, once again echoing her nihlism. Instead, she seems to see herself as some sort of reconning. The brick from the first story returns and kills God as she ironically quotes Rorshach's journal from the murder of her father, Edward Blake: "Roll on snare drum. Curtains. Good joke."
In fact, the section immediately before the Paggliachi "roll on snare drum" part of of Rorshach's journal can now be directly applied to Laurie: “Dollar Bill , The Silhouette, Captain Metropolis...we never die in bed. Not allowed. Something in our personalities, perhaps? Some animal urge to fight and struggle, making us what we are? Unimportant. We do what we have to do. Blake understood. Treated it like a joke, but he understood. He saw the cracks in society, saw the little men in masks trying to hold it together...he saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection of it, a parody of it. No one else saw the joke. That's why he was lonely.”
Laurie's motives aren't entirely clear, but her entry to the show feels vindictive. She works for the FBI to hunt down masks while Daniel Dreiberg, who she was with at the end of Watchmen, is in federal custody. Now that the police wear masks, she no longer does, and she sends messages to Dr. Manhattan, damning him for never caring about humanity. However, her indication that she's left that life behind seems to be the real joke, as the briefcase she keeps with an image of her with Dr. Manhattan and a big blue sex toy clearly inspired by him and has Agent Petey wear a mask when she sleeps with him - just like Nite Owl's need to suit up to be with her in Watchmen.
She doesn't seem to think Dr. Manhattan is listening, or that he even cares about the people of Earth, but as she leaves the booth, a car drops from the sky to land in front of her and she looks up in the sky to see Mars glowing brightly, so maybe the blue god is listening and does care, or at the very least, he might still have a sense of humor. Or maybe it was just dropped from the same mysterious ship that picked up Will Reeves and there's no association. It doesn't make it any less funny.
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