Legion Chapter Six

I'm loving this show enough that I might just have to make a weekly post about it. It airs at the same time as The Expanse, so Wednesday nights might be a bit crowded on this blog, as these are the two shows I'm watching at the moment (though I also have one episode left in the first season of Fargo and I'm sure I'll want to post about that soon too - that's less time sensitive, though.)

In most genre shows, there seems to be a standard "you're just crazy and none of this is real" episode. I almost always hate them. The one that really frustrated me was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the Trio in Season Six summons a demon that injects her with something to convince her that she's just nuts. The episode actually leaves the question unanswered.

And I get it, you know, someone thought that was a cool ambiguous ending that would leave people guessing. But the problem with it is that when we go into a genre show - fantasy, science fiction, superhero (which tends to be some mix of the former and the latter) - we're already getting invested in this world that is heightened from our own reality. The thing that's exciting about these genres is the ability to escape mundane reality.

So by leaving a story in a place where you're not sure if all the monsters and superpowers and what-have-you are real, it kind of feels like a big middle finger to the audience. It's like you're saying "oh, you like this show about a girl with mystically-empowered strength who fights demons? Well you're getting invested in nothing, because none of that is real!" We know these things aren't real. But we like the genre because it presents to us a world in which that stuff is real, and we get to empathize with characters who then exist in such a world. Putting this into question - even if any reasonable person would make the "no, it is real" conclusion - undercuts the very appeal of the story you're telling.

But with Legion, I don't mind.

For one thing, this is a cliffhanger with a resolution, and the hints pile up pretty quickly that the Summerland Crew's return to (or appearance in) Clockworks is illusory - or at the very least the result of extreme reality warping.

And once an oozing wound appears Cronenberging out of a wall, it's pretty damn clear that the show isn't really inviting us to question the reality of the show. After all, at the end of the pilot, David asks Syd if what is happening is real, and (in what I really have to say was a phenomenally layered line reading by Rachel Keller) Syd reassures him that yes, it's all real, with all the positive and negative consequences that reality implies.

To begin with, Syd is the one sane woman in this faux-Clockworks. She's not totally convinced it isn't real - after all, believing a mental institution you're stuck in isn't real is kind of a crazy person cliche - but from our presumably objective perspective, it's clearly not real. We see Carey and Kerry playing ping pong with no ball, but with an audible sound each time the absent ball should bounce.

She discovers a door that appears and disappears, which we later discover is a means for Lenny to access other parts of David's mind. In a mad dance number, Lenny strides through his memories, dancing and messing up the place and having just a total ball.

Lenny/Devil with Yellow Eyes/Whatever It Actually Is uses her position as the illusory psychiatrist to tamp down on any resistance that the various people who are trapped would be able to mount, but it seems like she doesn't have total control.

She does manage to neutralize Syd - sort of hypnotizing her with some cricket-based music - and ships her off to another part of David's mind. But there are others resisting now. Thankfully, while the people in the house from last week are all stuck here, Oliver (I'm assuming Oliver is the diver, and maybe this makes it easier for them not to have to bring Jemaine Clement in all the time?) reaches out to Carey (Carey with a C is the guy, right?) and takes him through the Astral Plane to give him some freedom. Notably, the bruises he suffered from Kerry's beating return, which I take to mean he's restored to his ordinary (not that it's ordinary in the traditional sense) mind. Carey then reaches out to Melanie, showing her the not-quite-frozen moment that they're all stuck in (while time seems to have slowed to an utter crawl, those bullets are still heading right for Syd's back, and the wound in the wall and the red paint on David's shirt really don't bode well.)

Lenny's eyes appear on the wall in the slow-time tableau room, so Melanie and Carey's attempts at disruption are not unnoticed, but it remains to be seen exactly how much control she/it has.

We do find out a bit more about Lenny's nature. She compares herself to that fungus that infects ants and controls their brains to use them to spread its spores. She says that she originally just wanted to poison David's mind and spread herself farther, but when she saw how much power he had, she figured that she'd try to develop some less destructive symbiosis. But with David potentially threatening her control, she decides instead to lock his mind away.

We're not out of Faux-Clockworks yet.

Remaining Questions:

Given how abstract this show goes, I figure for my episode posts I'll leave some remaining questions here.

We get a mirror of a shot from the pilot that I still don't know if I understand. In the pilot, David is in bed and the door to his room at Clockworks opens. We see under the bed and the door opens and closes with no feet appearing before it closes, but when the camera tilts up, we see Syd waiting there. This adds a very troubling idea that Syd, or at least Syd's affection for David, could all be in his head. But that upsets so much of what happens later that I kind of wrote it off as the show being weird to be weird. We get the inverse of that this time, with Syd in bed and David showing up with a pillow to be a border. And once again, the door seems to open and close with no one coming through until the camera tilts up. What does it mean?

How do Lenny's and David's powers compare? Like a much less benevolent Carey/Kerry, they've shared a body for David's whole life. Lenny can clearly control the actions and perceptions of her host, but I'm assuming all the telepathy, telekinesis, and reality-shaping is David (my understanding is that in the comics, he has multiple personalities and each has its own power, which does kind of explain the name a little better.)

Did David create this fake Clockworks to protect Syd (and himself) from the very real bullets that are currently making their very gradual way toward them? Or did Lenny do it (not necessarily out of spite or cruelty, but because she wants to hold onto her host.)

Less a question and more nerdy pet peeves. When Melanie sees the slowed-down room, she walks around and tries to move Syd and David out of the way, but they're stuck, and she tries to touch the bullet, but it's way too hot for her to touch. First off - how is she pushing through all the air in that room if it's all slowed down too? And second - if time is slowed down, wouldn't the temperature of the bullet be far lower? Actually, wouldn't the whole room be utterly frozen? These are useless complaints, but nerd's gotta nerd.

Also less of a question and more of a... ok, I don't want to rip off the AV Club here, but more of a Stray Observation: The Eye got sucked into this fake world too. He's really all that's left of the Division 3 threat, but he still seems to be a threat. Being a scary asshole (who we hear talk I think for the first time) seems to make Lenny like him, and now he's chasing Kerry for some reason. I hope they know what they're doing with this character.