I did finally finish the second season of Legion and … hoo boy

I was wondering where they were going the mental illness theme, and uh, they definitely went somewhere with it, that’s for sure!  I kind of wish they hadn’t, now!

On the upside, the last few episodes were emotionally involving, had moments that felt real and raw, and made a (last-minute) attempt to move the show beyond mere stylish randomness.  On the downside, they were a complete mess that felt like two or more distinct storylines jammed together inconsistently and executed too fast, and – more egregiously – contained the most weirdly, brazenly incoherent and unreal portrayal of mental illness I’ve seen in mainstream “serious” fiction in a long time.

Honestly, I’m less angry about it than just plain confused how this thing got into the world in the first place.  Like, do the writers actually expect the audience to share their strange (and factually inaccurate) assumptions?  Are they knowingly straying from reality in favor of a stereotypical cartoon notion of “insanity,” and if so, how (and why) do they expect this to sync up with all the parts of the show that appear to be about real (albeit stylized) things happening to real humans?  (I am a bit angry that the social justice flavored critiques of the ending have taken this stuff completely in stride, but I guess that’s par for the course)

Specifically, the ending involves a long, elaborate set of conflations/confusions between:

1. Common, if awful, personality flaws that people can have without being mentally ill (and many do)

2. Psychopathy

3. Schizophrenia

For every pair of these (1+2, 2+3, 3+1), there are one or more moments where the two are implied to be the same thing, or to be connected by some deep link too obvious to spell out, or the like.  More on this under a cut because spoilers

Keep reading

redantsunderneath:

nostalgebraist:

“Legion” is a good illustration of how much more there is to television than the writing.  I find it so fun and endearing that it’s easy to overlook – and occasionally jarring to remember – how I don’t really care what happens, or how little work the writers are doing to make me care about the key conflicts and relationships.

These things are easy to overlook because there’s such a wonderful goofy energy to virtually every individual shot, an energy that says this was fun to create.  You get the sense that everyone involved in the production – actors, set and visual designers, editors, episode directors – kept thinking “I want to do this cool thing, but will they let me?” and then thinking “well, on this show, yes.”  It’s the “oh my god, we’re making a movie!” energy you’d get with a video shot for a class project, except with real industry talent behind it.

It’s set in a version of the near future that looks like the 60s, so there are at least two different ways to get creative about how any given thing looks, and often both are employed at the same time.  The show isn’t a comedy, but it gleefully gives major roles to comic actors: Jemaine Clement is a hipster who’s been trapped in “the Astral Plane” since the swinging 60s, Aubrey Plaza is an avatar of villainous chaos, and the requisite wacky mad scientist is played by Bill Irwin, who’d I’d never heard of before, and who apparently “began as a vaudeville-style stage performer and has been noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s.”  The main character’s superpowers present inside his head like auditory hallucinations and dissociative states, and while this is written in a fairly cliched and unimaginative way, it’s a joy to watch on the level of editing, sound design, and acting.  And so on.

I see what you are saying, but Legion’s problem is that it never feels like a cohesive vision.  The individual scenes are imaginative and very watchable, but the whole thing never adds up in any way.  A good comparison point is Hannibal, another “trippy visuals über alles” show, but which has aethetic motifs and an overriding psycholoanalytic underpinning that makes it all hang together. Legion feels like a writers’ room trying to top themselves over and over to remember or make up their coolest dream, and they filmed that (in inventive and visually arresting ways) but did not take the effort to convert the “fanciful” moments into more universal ones, and integrate all the sequences in a way that achieves a subliminal shape.  I’ve watched it all because it is fun and pretty, but it is frustrating to go through that much material with no real story (not plot specifically, but any story) developing.  

Oh, yes, I agree.

It feels related to another problem, that the writers don’t seem to know what to do with the themes of mental illness and trauma.  At first (like, in the very first episode or two) these things are put front and center and depicted in a very real, harrowing way, using the trippy visuals and editing as a tool.

But mental illness quickly falls into the background, as everyone gets a comfortable handle on “what’s really going on” and the more standard comic book plotting takes over.  At this point the trippy stuff is still there, but it’s flying off in all directions – as if the only lasting residue of the early stuff is “this is a show about mental illness so it’s fine to do any trippy stuff you feel like doing.”  Which ends up being great as sort of a big artists’ showcase, but as you say has no coherence, and is pretty disappointing when you remember the thematic promise and emotional weight of the beginning.

I was thinking about this yesterday when – after writing the OP – I got to the parallel-universes episode in the second season, which takes us jarringly and suddenly back to the territory of the first episode, and shows us the frayed, on-the-edge early David who has long since dissolved (with insufficient justification) into a #relatably spacey but otherwise remarkably normal dude.  Then I press play on the next episode and we’re back to the status quo, David’s off in the dreamtime having dinner with the Shadow King, exchanging soap opera lines like “this is over, I’m not your friend anymore,” seeing things through keyholes which magically appear in the very same room, etc.  It was a startling reminder that, although the material of the former episode causally led to the style of the latter (in the development of the show), the two have now parted ways and lead uneasily separate lives.  Although I still haven’t finished the second season …

Looking at writer’s credits, I want to speculate about how Noah Hawley wants to foreground realistic mental illness and trauma and Nathaniel Halpern keeps pushing the show back toward comic book plotting, but I’m probably just seeing a pattern I want to be there.  (If not, then it’s a very close match for the Lynch / Frost tension on Twin Peaks, which I am convinced is a thing)

“Legion” is a good illustration of how much more there is to television than the writing.  I find it so fun and endearing that it’s easy to overlook – and occasionally jarring to remember – how I don’t really care what happens, or how little work the writers are doing to make me care about the key conflicts and relationships.

These things are easy to overlook because there’s such a wonderful goofy energy to virtually every individual shot, an energy that says this was fun to create.  You get the sense that everyone involved in the production – actors, set and visual designers, editors, episode directors – kept thinking “I want to do this cool thing, but will they let me?” and then thinking “well, on this show, yes.”  It’s the “oh my god, we’re making a movie!” energy you’d get with a video shot for a class project, except with real industry talent behind it.

It’s set in a version of the near future that looks like the 60s, so there are at least two different ways to get creative about how any given thing looks, and often both are employed at the same time.  The show isn’t a comedy, but it gleefully gives major roles to comic actors: Jemaine Clement is a hipster who’s been trapped in “the Astral Plane” since the swinging 60s, Aubrey Plaza is an avatar of villainous chaos, and the requisite wacky mad scientist is played by Bill Irwin, who’d I’d never heard of before, and who apparently “began as a vaudeville-style stage performer and has been noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s.”  The main character’s superpowers present inside his head like auditory hallucinations and dissociative states, and while this is written in a fairly cliched and unimaginative way, it’s a joy to watch on the level of editing, sound design, and acting.  And so on.