"It's Summer and We're Running Out of Ice" is the premiere episode of the first season of Watchmen, which first aired on HBO on October 20, 2019. The episode introduces the show's lead characters of Angela Abar/Sister Night, Judd Crawford, and Wade Tillman/Looking Glass.
Synopsis
In Tulsa in 1921, O.B. and Ruth Williams grab their son Will and try to escape the city as members of the Ku Klux Klan openly attack other Black people on the city streets during the Tulsa race massacre. They put Will on a car leaving the city, O.B. giving him a slip of paper saying "Watch over this boy", and take shelter in a nearby building. Moments later, the building explodes, killing his parents. At night, Will wakes in the grass beside the road to find the car knocked over, the adults shot dead, and an infant girl alive in the grass, abandoned as he had been. He picks her up, calms her, and carries her away from Tulsa. In 2019, Officer Sutton is shot by a suspected member of the Seventh Kavalry during a routine traffic stop. Tulsa Police Chief Judd Crawford has the full force put onto investigation of the Kavalry. Officer Angela Abar, secretly the costumed Sister Night, abducts a suspected Kavalry member and brings him to Detective Wade Tillman, known as Looking Glass, to deduce the location of the Kavalry's base at a farm outside town. The Tulsa police lead an assault on the farm, but kill most of the Kavalry members. Two Kavalry survivors take suicide pills when captured, leaving no leads. Angela's family has dinner with Judd and his wife, after which Judd makes plans to see Sutton. On his way out, his car runs over a spike strip and he gets out to investigate. Later, Angela gets a call from an unknown man that knows who she really is and tells her to come to a specific tree alone. She drives to the tree to find the old man in the wheelchair there waiting for her, along with Judd's lynched body hanging from a tree. Meanwhile, in a country manor in an unknown location, the manor's lord returns after riding on horseback. His servants, Phillips and Crookshanks, wish him a happy anniversary, and present him with a pocket watch as a gift. The lord thanks them, and tells them he is writing a play, The Watchmaker's Son, which they will partake in when it is complete.
Production
The Tulsa race riot scenes were the first scenes shot for the show, and filmed in Cedartown, Georgia on June 1, 2019, on the 97th anniversary of the event. The crew had brought in a priest prior to filming to remember the event and pay homage to those killed during it. The episode makes numerous allusions to the musical Oklahoma!. The episode's exact title is a line taken from the lyrics of "Poor Jud is Daid", one of the songs from that musical, and Judd Crawford is interrupted while watching a performance of the musical to learn of Sutton's attack.
Reception
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the episode has an approval rating of 94% with an average score of 8.42 out of 10, based on 33 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "Along with a breathtaking Regina King, Damon Lindelof successfully remixes present-day issues with superhero themes in the highly entertaining 'It's Summer and We're Running Out of Ice.
According to HBO, the first episode of Watchmen had more than 1.5 million viewers on its first night across television and streaming services, the strongest debut performance for the network. The first broadcast of the episode, at 9 p.m. EDT, had 800,000 viewers, making it the most viewed debut episode for any premium-cable show in 2019.
