Legion, which has been only escalating the surreal musical interludes that turn me into a pinwheel in a high wind, has in this latest episode rolled out a six (SIX) minute long literal silent film sequence set to a remix of Ravel’s Boléro, and just, respectfully, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Advance notice: this recap is going to contain me getting very intently excited about neurology, as well as multiple links to articles about cocktail ice.
In fact yes, this X-Men program is probably my perfect television show.
And this, one of my favorite TV episodes of all time.
OF ALL TIME.
Season 1, ‘Chapter 7’
We’re returned into the middle of it, gliding along one of the empty hospital corridors of David’s mind as it fucking bends like a sinking ship.
Oh my god am I about to yell Inception again over this DREAM BREAKING DOWN?
Well I can tell you something that’s certainly breaking down: Kerry’s composure. Our strange, scrappy Kerry is absolutely terrified out of her wits, trying to escape from The Eye in this flickering warren of remembered hallways left behind in David’s head. Walter follows her, whistling, unbothered, while phantom figures surge up in threatening swarms and then recede again, the halls all going dark, electrics popping in rains of sparks. Which is just exactly the right kind of breakage here — not crumbling, not flooding, but this jolty electrical snapping. Oh flip it’s like misfiring synapses, ah that’s why!! GOOD THEMATIC ALIGNMENT.
Anyway, this scene is UNREAL TERRIFYING. The sound mixing keeping Kerry’s frightened whimpers so clear and present! The agonizing slo-mo! The Lost-y whispering! A maniacal crowd of phosphorous-pale figures suddenly cranes in too fast over the camera and no joke I gripped a blanket in a spasm of terror — so as much as I’m still mystified by how how scared and panicked Kerry has been here compared to how she is on the outside, I think I get it, yes.
Unfortunately friends I still have not watched a real TV minute of American Godz, but I did see this gifset and chuckle “oh Bryan!”
I’m still planning on sitting down with this show someday and probably chuckling “oh Bryan” a lot, but that day will probably be in… oof, a few months?
Actually while I’ve got you all here, some Wellntruly TV Watching housekeeping:
1. So doing more than one show at a time has been UNDESIRABLE and I see why I had never done it!
2. I’m still just a handful of episodes into the last season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and am every day sadly bewildered that I’m not watching the next episode like I so dearly want to, but it’s going to have to wait for another couple weeks.
3. Because: I’ve been watching Legion on FX’s website with my parents’ cable log-in, and the series is going to EXPIRE from their streaming service in 12 days, so I gotta focus on finishing that one up.
4. Minus pining for DS9, mainlining Legion is not at ALL a hardship, as for the first time since declaring Twin Peaks my heart’s own true TV show just under four years ago, I’ve had to rethink some things.
5. FUCKING HELL THOUGH BECAUSE TWIN PEAKS IS COMING BACK TO ME THIS GODDAMN(FINE) WEEKEND, AND SO LIKE, WELL.
6. I feel personally wronged by Peak TV right now, tbh.
IT’S A BOTTLE EPISODE. Or, well it’s not strictly a bottle episode, as the definition has gone since it was first a “ship-in-a-bottle episode” on Star Trek. But while this one does have new sets, the use of the old ones, and the reason for why, feels like such a smart, grinning embrace of ~that bottle episode conceptual fun~ that maybe, maybe, this episode has just redefined the term into something more bottled than ever.
Regardless. Like the best bottle episodes, going contained just blows everything wiiiiiide opennn. Smart, and I’m grinning.
In addition to what this episode is doing As Television, there is heaps to unpack in this one in re: its depiction of mental illness and treatment. Which is why I have called on my bff Jen, Legion fan and irl therapist. Jen is in the third year of her PhD program in psychology, and is just out there treating patients and doing research on best practices and generally being a wealth of practical, compassionate psychological insight.
“I knew I was going to adore this episode as soon as I watched the last scene in Ch. 5,” Jen writes. After my request for CONSULT, she happily rewatched Ch. 6 “after spending all day working on an assessment report for my clinic (for like, added thematic immersion).” Her ensuing almost-doctor’s notes will appear throughout this recap, and I’m sure you will appreciate them as much as I DO.
Season 1, ‘Chapter 6’
Hey so WHAT IF everyone we’ve met at Dr. Bird’s Midcentury Commune For Magical Misfits were in fact other patients at Clockworks. What might their thoughts and behaviors look like if mutations were taken out of the equation?
HERE WE’LL SHOW YOU:
Melanie is fixated on the death of her husband, so much so that she has created a fantasy that he’s just frozen in a diving suit, and will come back some day. “But you see it, right?” Therapist Lenny asks, “How you’re the one who’s frozen?”
Ptonomy was powerfully impacted by the death of his mother, and can recall the entire scene in photo-perfect detail. “I like to think I’m a time-traveler,” he says. “I go back, back, back. But all I can do is…watch.”
Cary and Kerry have completely attached themselves to each other, to the point of believing they are mystically connected, even the same person. “Who’s it hurting?” Cary asks. “That’s what I want to know,” Kerry adds.
Well catch me laugh-whimpering to myself for days after watching THIS ONE, woof. Legion does horror, Tarra done lost her mind.
Season 1, ‘Chapter 5’
Fall has come to Summerland.
Rain is pattering through the evergreens, which have been slowly dropping loose needles and branches on the MRI machine in the lawn, making it start to look like some old Dharma Initiative pod. Appreciated.
Cary watches with intense anxious focus as they bring Kerry in on a stretcher. “Oh careful careful,” he whispers to himself. How about be careful with my HEART, Cary. This unendurable sweetpea!
Like a taut string has suddenly been cut, he wheels around and into his lab to help them in. The audio goes muffled immediately, the first of what will be many sound manipulations in this, A Very Auditory Episode.
“David,” Melanie calls through the hush a few times, until he walks over to where she’s standing on the other side of the glass. “I met your husband,” he replies in his mind. Oh BABE, you can send now! Oh my cracked little Xavier. “He’s a…Beat poet?” David asks curiously, but Melanie just gives him a sort of inscrutably terrified expression and glides off stage left.
Actually come to think of it, the fact that Oliver and Melanie are married is bewildering and wonderful. Hahahaha.
Later, Syd finds David sitting alone on a dock, as they do so oft. Two points of interest:
1. This dock is way crooked now, oh fuck me up with this MAGICAL REALISM. The season changing and now all this structural weathering — the sense that so much has happened in the seemingly week or so since David has left Clockworks that the environment is reflecting it.
2. In a whole run of incomprehensible outfits, this is easily David’s best look yet, omg, what is happening, I’m delighted.
Yay the Legions are back! So, something I wanted to ask you about/flag to your attention - this is the episode where I started to notice chains of circles everywhere. Obviously there've been circles all over the place the whole time, but around this point I also started noticing lots and lots of straight lines of connected circles, like that ladder. (It's been a bit since I saw this ep, but Philly's earrings in the real estate office are another example.) So like... what's up with that?
ALSO: would you mind telling me where you get (or how you make) your Legion screencaps? I went looking for an image of Philly in the real estate office to make sure I wasn’t misremembering, and I wound up having to just go on Hulu and fast-forward…
OOOOOOOOOO!
[laughs at own joke for far too long]
I had not paid any particular heed to this, but I sure will now! I love a visual theme.
And in fact, I hand-craft all my screencaps from whatever streaming service/network website is airing the show. After gettin my pile together, I then import each one into the copy of Photoshop Elements a roommate once gave me that was included for free with some actual legit design software she’d bought — which should give you some indication of the quality of that program — and try to clean those suckers up a bit. Tragically, it wasn’t until after I was no longer screencapping Hannibal that I did some poking around and discovered a far more sophisticated way to lighten shadows and adjust color contrast, which would have vastly improved those….
Anyhow, for fun here are Before & Afters for the Legion ‘Chapter 4′ Chains of Circles collection:
I don’t claim to be some sort of maestro at this, but they are better right? In addition to just being personally satisfying/meditative, it’s worth the time I spend doing this?
I have truly and too deeply loved many television shows in my time. I have written tens of thousands of words about some of them, hundreds even! But there have been a few among them that I have loved specially, personally. Shows that make me feel off-kilter in my joy, almost suspicious that someone peered into my soul, and found there a well of spooky sweet stylized absurdism, and they hauled up a bucket of the stuff, and from it made Twin Peaks, and Pushing Daisies, and Legion.
So that may be partially why these are only getting longer.
Season 1, ‘Chapter 4’
First up here I just want to give a quick shout-out to the masterpieces of cagey chiasmus that are FX’s episode descriptions.
FX’s Legion: THREATS, SEARCHING?? ?
Anyway full disclosz I first watched ‘Chapter 4’ with my bff Jen, right after consuming a strong cocktail, a cup of Turkish tea, some champagne, and a mug of ice cream in fairly quick succession. I proceeded to lose my mind THOROUGHLY and with GREAT VIM.
Here is how it started:
Me, singing at the black screen: “Shooww me Jemaine Clement!” First shot:
Me: [scream]
“Good evening,” Jemaine Clement addresses us from his Mylar lounge, and like, yes Jemaine, it is, thank you. He proceeds to deliver a short lecture on human nature as the camera slowly pulls back. We are the root of all our problems, he proposes, through our own confusion and anger. “Violence, in other words, is ignorance,” he declares, and he should have stopped there, but then blurts out “Figure your shit out, that’s my…what I’d say.”
He scoops up his glass to take a drink, but the liquid inside has turned into a solid ice cube. It slowly slides out and falls to the floor, the camera obligingly zooming back in so that he can start over.
Hi so I love every fucking thing this scene is doing and I’m only halfway through it. Rather like me and this show I guess.
I just started Legion this week, and had taken note that you'd started recaps of the episodes. So I took time to read the ones you'd done so far, and they are FABULOUS. You are so good at picking up the little nuances that I miss on my first watch through. But I literally just finished ep 4, and I was flailing about all my feelings, and I had to come and say I'm so excited for when I get to read your reactions to this episode. Thanks for the excellent conent!
What a lovely message to receive!! And oooohhh my friend, am I ever looking forward to getting to DRAPE MORE WORDS OVER THIS SHOW. Soon! Later this week probably! Aaahh!
Heyyyyy! I've got a night off after a very long week and I've decided that the best possible way to spend it is to pour myself a glass of wine (or two) and re-read your Hannibal recaps. Thank you for being so insightful, witty, and wonderful. Looking forward to revisiting How to Properly Scream!
My activity feed is just BOOMING with people on my Hannibal rewatches today, and it’s such a heartwarming blast from the past. You are so, so welcome! It’s a total treat to find people still reading and enjoying my posts :)
