Cloning and the ethics thereof pop up a lot in cinema and TV, particularly sci-fi – whether it’s the “clone wars” and the stormtroopers of Star Wars or the many incarnations of Tatiana Maslany in Orphan Black.
The ostensible motivations for the writers of introducing clones is to introduce an ethical or existential consideration. The Island asked if it was ethical to clone ourselves to create spare parts. Moon similarly asked if it’s ethical to create versions of ourselves to do jobs more cheaply than would be possible. In cinemas right now, we have The Gemini Man (no, not that one), which questions whether the government should be allowed to clone us to replace us with younger versions of ourselves, once we get a bit old and tired.
You don’t have to look too hard at even that little list before you realise that those reasons for the respective movies’ existence are pretty tissue-thin. Rather, beyond a cursory examination of the issues, all these uses of cloning have instead been about giving actors a chance to show off by playing several roles at once, sometimes with themselves.
So it’s odd then that the first TV show in quite some time to really consider what cloning might mean, psychologically, philosophically and existentially is a comedy written by Timothy Greenberg (The Detour) and starring Paul Rudd (Ant-Man, Anchorman, Friends) and Aisling Bea (I Feel Bad).
Living With Yourself
The Clonus Comedy
The show sees copywriter Rudd and interior designer Bea on the downslope of a marriage. The fun’s gone, they don’t talk to one another and their efforts at having a baby have come to naught. Rudd’s career is no better and he’s beginning to lose inspiration – allowing fellow co-worker Desmin Borges (You’re The Worst) to steal a march on him.
Then Borges confesses that he’s got ahead thanks to a day at the spa that utterly refreshed him. It’s exclusive and pricey – $50,000 – but he can get Rudd in if he wants. Rudd caves in and soon, he too is enjoying the benefits of the treatment.
However, it’s not long before he discovers what the treatment actually is: he’s been cloned. Or more accurately, the original Rudd has been cloned and then improved – and he’s the result.
But there’s been a glitch in the process and the original Rudd wakes to find himself buried in the woods in a plastic bag. Soon, the two of them are having to work out how to live with one another. And Bea.
Alan Moore’s Watchmen is probably the best, most influential superhero comic of all time. An examination of the underlying assumptions and psychology of people who would put on masks to fight crime, it almost single-handedly (bar Denny O’Neil) made superheroes ‘real’ – or about as realistic as they ever could be, of course.
But it’s a very dense text and while you can remove certain elements of it relatively easily – bye, bye pirates! – try to unpick it too much and you lose Watchmen‘s intrinsic field: what makes Watchmen what it is. Small wonder then that Hollywood spent forever trying to adapt it before essentially making a frame by frame adaptation of the comic, just with a slightly different McGuffin.
That density of writing means that despite its influence being felt throughout comics and TV, there have been very few straight-on ‘homages’ (aka rip-offs). Nobody has done ‘Watchmen in space’, ‘Watchmen on Middle Earth’ or anything else.
One of the other reasons it’s so rarely adapted is it’s a “sacred text”. So perfect is it considered, no element of it can be removed or changed without true believers getting the hump. Even Zach Snyder’s movie version, which was virtually a frame for frame adaptation of the graphic novel, ended up getting into hot water for changing the ending.
To be fair, it was both a better ending than the graphic novel’s and a necessary adaptation, given the first season finale of Heroes had already used it. But it tampered with the good book, so it was excommunicated.
Faithfully unfaithful to Watchmen
This leads to a problem.
You could do utterly faithful adaptations and get into trouble with the only people who care, but why bother – everyone might as well just read the book.
