aelfgyfu_mead (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2018-07-30 08:03 pm
aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2018-07-30 08:03 pm
Legion (belated repost)
I haven't posted in so long that I forgot to post here with automatic cross-posting to LJ. So I'm posting here days after LJ, where a friend has helped with some of my confusions. You can go there to see the discussion threads if you want: my LJ entry.
So I've finally finished watching the second season of Legion! I have thoughts and feels! And they're all spoilery!
I loved Legion s1. I was still counting it as the best thing I was watching into s2. And then the bloom began coming off the rose. I could handle a whole episode where plot didn't really advance but we learned something. I could handle two, maybe. But I lost track of how many we got. There was the episode that was apparently entirely inside David's head, where he saw alternative lives. Or maybe only we saw them? I wasn't even sure whether he saw them! When I first saw it, I thought the episode where we found out what happened to Lenny and Amy was amazing and that I was just unable to handle the body horror. Thinking back, I'm not sure they needed to draw it out so much.
So I was a little dissatisfied with the pace, and I was increasingly unhappy that Ptonomy seemed so unimportant this season. He had a conversation with Lenny, but he never really tried to enter her memories. He didn't work with David. He simply didn't appear a lot. And now he's . . . dead? Undead? Will we ever see him again? I'm ticked. I like the character, I want to like him more, and I think it's really problematic when the characters tend to be white and the black guy gets killed off, while the villain is Arab, and the Native American lives to commit violence. (Yes, I know the question of "villain" is fraught here. I'm getting there. But we can at least agree that a major villain is Arab.) I want Ptonomy back, in his own body!
I'm still fuming about the finale, which I saw Sunday. I pretty much started screaming when Farouk walked in wearing his suit and shades and no psychic suppressor and could barely control the screaming enough to hear the dialogue. Poor Brilliant Husband! (Doofus seemed untroubled by my fury.) My biggest complaint about the finale is: why the frell do they free Farouk? It looks like he could use his powers at any time! I can try to justify it, but I cannot understand how all the characters at once, including apparently Admiral Fukyama*, can decide that since David is now the bad guy, it's just fine to let the other extremely powerful mutant, the one with a much longer history of destruction, go unchecked! I didn't see any indication he'd tampered with any minds except Syd's. Why did the Admiral, Clark, Kerry, and Cary allow this to happen? Why did the Vermillions permit it?
I'm upset that Syd turned so easily against David. She recognized that Melanie wasn't really herself and should have known Farouk was at least influencing her. She should have known those scenes were highly selective. Yes, we could see her worrying about whether he knew right from wrong, but only shortly before she sees these things. She also saw him agonize over what he'd done and what he ought to do. She went awfully fast from "my man" to "I'm going to shoot you in the head while I can." I didn't feel it was fully motivated. Maybe if we'd seen more of present Syd outside the episode about her past they could have sold me. Maybe if I hadn't already been thinking it made no sense for her to go so close to that hole without alerting David, I'd have been less resistant.
And I'm furious at David. He did indeed do terrible things. He seems genuinely to be schizophrenic; whether he would have been without Farouk's tampering with his mind his whole life is kind of moot is dubious, but he certainly is now. But as I said, we've seen him agonize. When Syd confronted him with what he'd done to her, "You drugged me and had sex with me," I wanted some glimmer of recognition, and I didn't feel like we got it. I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. That may have been deliberate by Noah Hawley, who clearly has a very forceful vision for the show. I'm just not sure any more if that's a vision I want to see.
I felt that the first season was very coherent, and I came to care about all the characters. I'm not sure I want to care about David any more. (That I still due is partly a tribute to the writing but perhaps more a tribute to Dan Stevens, who is just amazing in this; I'd never have guessed from Downton Abbey!)
I was getting tired of the harping on delusion without knowing whether we were talking about delusions in general or a specific delusion that left people catatonic with chattering teeth, and I'm still not sure what it all meant. It seemed the catatonic people were victims of a virus but each had their own individual delusion, which wasn't what the delusion-as-virus narration suggested. If it was leading up to the gang's near-assassination of Fukuyama, that was a lot of build-up for very little payoff. If it was about David's self-delusion, or any of the season-long arcs, why did they seem to drop it a couple of episodes short of the end?
I love the show's originality in so many elements: visually, narratively, in the little details and the voice-overs, even in the recaps ("Ostensibly, on Legion" is possibly the best recap lead-in ever). The cast is superb—Aubrey Plaza is mind-blowing.
I felt really cheated by the last episode, though.
Can anyone help me out here? Agree with me? Persuade me it was more justified than I think?
Next time on thoughts and feels: four seasons of 12 Monkeys!
So I've finally finished watching the second season of Legion! I have thoughts and feels! And they're all spoilery!
I loved Legion s1. I was still counting it as the best thing I was watching into s2. And then the bloom began coming off the rose. I could handle a whole episode where plot didn't really advance but we learned something. I could handle two, maybe. But I lost track of how many we got. There was the episode that was apparently entirely inside David's head, where he saw alternative lives. Or maybe only we saw them? I wasn't even sure whether he saw them! When I first saw it, I thought the episode where we found out what happened to Lenny and Amy was amazing and that I was just unable to handle the body horror. Thinking back, I'm not sure they needed to draw it out so much.
So I was a little dissatisfied with the pace, and I was increasingly unhappy that Ptonomy seemed so unimportant this season. He had a conversation with Lenny, but he never really tried to enter her memories. He didn't work with David. He simply didn't appear a lot. And now he's . . . dead? Undead? Will we ever see him again? I'm ticked. I like the character, I want to like him more, and I think it's really problematic when the characters tend to be white and the black guy gets killed off, while the villain is Arab, and the Native American lives to commit violence. (Yes, I know the question of "villain" is fraught here. I'm getting there. But we can at least agree that a major villain is Arab.) I want Ptonomy back, in his own body!
I'm still fuming about the finale, which I saw Sunday. I pretty much started screaming when Farouk walked in wearing his suit and shades and no psychic suppressor and could barely control the screaming enough to hear the dialogue. Poor Brilliant Husband! (Doofus seemed untroubled by my fury.) My biggest complaint about the finale is: why the frell do they free Farouk? It looks like he could use his powers at any time! I can try to justify it, but I cannot understand how all the characters at once, including apparently Admiral Fukyama*, can decide that since David is now the bad guy, it's just fine to let the other extremely powerful mutant, the one with a much longer history of destruction, go unchecked! I didn't see any indication he'd tampered with any minds except Syd's. Why did the Admiral, Clark, Kerry, and Cary allow this to happen? Why did the Vermillions permit it?
I'm upset that Syd turned so easily against David. She recognized that Melanie wasn't really herself and should have known Farouk was at least influencing her. She should have known those scenes were highly selective. Yes, we could see her worrying about whether he knew right from wrong, but only shortly before she sees these things. She also saw him agonize over what he'd done and what he ought to do. She went awfully fast from "my man" to "I'm going to shoot you in the head while I can." I didn't feel it was fully motivated. Maybe if we'd seen more of present Syd outside the episode about her past they could have sold me. Maybe if I hadn't already been thinking it made no sense for her to go so close to that hole without alerting David, I'd have been less resistant.
And I'm furious at David. He did indeed do terrible things. He seems genuinely to be schizophrenic; whether he would have been without Farouk's tampering with his mind his whole life is kind of moot is dubious, but he certainly is now. But as I said, we've seen him agonize. When Syd confronted him with what he'd done to her, "You drugged me and had sex with me," I wanted some glimmer of recognition, and I didn't feel like we got it. I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. That may have been deliberate by Noah Hawley, who clearly has a very forceful vision for the show. I'm just not sure any more if that's a vision I want to see.
I felt that the first season was very coherent, and I came to care about all the characters. I'm not sure I want to care about David any more. (That I still due is partly a tribute to the writing but perhaps more a tribute to Dan Stevens, who is just amazing in this; I'd never have guessed from Downton Abbey!)
I was getting tired of the harping on delusion without knowing whether we were talking about delusions in general or a specific delusion that left people catatonic with chattering teeth, and I'm still not sure what it all meant. It seemed the catatonic people were victims of a virus but each had their own individual delusion, which wasn't what the delusion-as-virus narration suggested. If it was leading up to the gang's near-assassination of Fukuyama, that was a lot of build-up for very little payoff. If it was about David's self-delusion, or any of the season-long arcs, why did they seem to drop it a couple of episodes short of the end?
I love the show's originality in so many elements: visually, narratively, in the little details and the voice-overs, even in the recaps ("Ostensibly, on Legion" is possibly the best recap lead-in ever). The cast is superb—Aubrey Plaza is mind-blowing.
I felt really cheated by the last episode, though.
Can anyone help me out here? Agree with me? Persuade me it was more justified than I think?
Next time on thoughts and feels: four seasons of 12 Monkeys!