Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

LEGION Recap: 1x03

For an intro to this one just imagine a stream of hearts pouring out my own heart while I flail around in a sea of my heart’s hearts splashing and laughing and gently gnawing on one and you should have ABOUT THE STATE OF THINGS.

Season 1, ‘Chapter 3’

The first three minutes of Legion, ‘Chapter 3’ are perhaps the most masterfully bewitching opening of an episode of television I’ve ever watched. Trying to explain what they are and what they did to me just with words feels like one of the more comically hopeless things I’ve attempted in a while, because it’s so rooted in what you can do with television, with image and sound, with that form of storytelling told in installments. This opening couldn’t have come earlier than the third episode, for instance. A big part of its power is in how it draws together elements we’ve already seen to make a new piece of music.

Also: the music. Lovely darkening movie-score strings, overlaid with a spoken-word melody of a man’s voice telling the fable of the poor woodcutter and his wife who found a crane in the woods — a man’s voice playing from a beautiful silver & wire Rube Goldberg machine of a coffee maker. The strangeness, the gorgeous strangeness! A sort of mid-century A.I. doing the scene-setting heavy lifting of paaaages of dialogue.

But more than anything, the magic in this opening is in how it renders the feeling of telepathy. It is of telepathy, of the stuff of it. Not that we’re supposed to parse everything we see as being experienced by David, sitting at the end of a sunlit dock, but we should get the sense that some is, or that it can be. That there are certain threads of connection he’s beginning to feel between sensation and image and thought, a web of humanity, gone mysteriously tangible under his attention.

The fear people have about telepathy, of course, is the idea of someone observing our private lives. And this episode does something brilliant: it gives us telepathy ourselves. It shows us people literally bare. We see a room of people showering, and see it for all that it is: just human bodies bathing. All skin feels the same under soap and water. Telepathy, Legion says, is not inherently voyeuristic — it’s inherently experiential.

It’s just a stunning sequence. I’ve watched it over and over trying to put these words in order, and every time I’ve just been SWEPT BY GOOSEBUMPS TBH.

“Shall we begin?”

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

sonictoaster replied to your post “LEGION Recap: 1x02”

I’ve only seen the pilot so I’ll have to catch up on these recaps later! I’m looking forward to it.

sherlocks-freebitch replied to your post “LEGION Recap: 1x02”

OH MAN I have to get cracking on the rest of the season, before you overtake me :D

Everyone who is currently behind on Legion gets a sincere and solemn digital fistbump from yours truly, who is every minute aware of the fact that she herself is behind on Legion.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

LEGION Recap: 1x02

Legion is a show that rewards openness. It’s like a Virginia Woolf novel that way, if you’ll forgive me making a very grand comparison that would probably have Noah Hawley spluttering on his coffee. It’s a show that asks that you hold yourself lightly, be loose, let it take you along its own slipstreams. Trying to hold to a traditional cause/effect narrative here is only going to give you a timeline tension headache.

But we needn’t be lost without those old guideposts. As in Hannibal, the paths here are the emotional through-lines. What we see and hear may not be real, may not be now, but what David feels about them — what we feel about them — that is. It’s free-association television. It’s a dream.

Or in David’s case, maybe a memory.

Which is all to say: I watched the second episode of Legion and drifted into all sorts of places. Join me!

Season 1, ‘Chapter 2’

If you liked that V. Woolves reference you’re probably gonna be happy with this: ‘Chapter 2’ begins with David serving up some VO F. Scott realness over a literal boat beating against the current: “And so we ran on, into Summerland, and the place they said does not exist.” Borne back ceaselessly into the past? Well give them a few minutes but, very yes.

Moments layer together in daymare disruption, sunny tranquility and grim men and dogs in the trees and a pleasant clear voice singing and David panting in wide-eyed pain. Dr. Melanie Bird has brought him to her beautiful facility deep in the woods, called Summerland, not ominously at all, where other young rescued mutants have come to, quote, “do the work that must be done.” Again, not ominously at all.

Summerland seems to have an immediately sapping effect upon David, who can hardly keep himself upright in the midcentury modern elevator,

adorable,

and then just fully collapses into the arms of the first person he meets.

As he shudders on a bed, Dr. Bird tells David that they believe he’s a very powerful telepath, and that all the strong minds here in Summerland are overwhelming him.

I’m gonna start a lot of sentences in these with “what I love about X-Men is.” What I love about X-Men is TELEPATHY. Telepathy is like the most awful, awesome power, and also makes you uniquely, fucked-up-edly fragile.

But Dr. Bird can help. She teaches David how to imagine a knob and dial all the voices out except for hers, speaking his name. His breathing eases. Not bad for the first day! Now get some sleep in your nifty little deco bunk because tomorrow we’re gonna start digging into your surely very nice and not at all upsetting memories!

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

letsprufrockandroll asked:

I'm so happy that you're watching Legion too! It is a bit disorienting on the first watch, but for we who love Lynch and Fuller, it is truly right up our alley. Also, your recap is amazing (as always) - your recaps enhance the whole experience to such a degree, I don't know how you manage to do that, sometimes

That is so nice of you to say!! I don’t really know what I’m doing either… sometimes I kind of feel like I’m just trying to amplify the siren song I’m hearing, because I love drowning and feeling out to seeeaaa

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

sodiumflare replied to your post: LEGION Recap: 1x01

I am SO GLAD you are recapping this!!

ME TOO

though also lord beam me strength because I’m realizing this means I’m gonna have to go slowly, while just wanting to gobble it all up

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

LEGION Recap: 1x01

Last spring when I was getting mildly sloshed off cheap French rosés and falling in love with the X-Men, I did not know it was because my compass heart had swung unerringly to the superhero franchise that, in its infinite batshit whimsy, would see fit to produce an eight-episode kaleidoscopic mutant concept piece less than one year later, as if the surrealist inventive fuckery inherent in the X-Men universe had just been waiting for me, DTF.

And then Legion had to wait for me a bit more, as historically I’ve only ever managed to watch one TV show at a time. Why? BECAUSE I DO NOTHING BY HALVES, SON. And presently I am still lost in space with my beloved golden-hearts on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

But then I saw a gifset of what looked like Jemaine Clement in a pale suit on some sort of Mylar-draped soundstage, and that was fucking it. I could feel a give in my ribs as I was pulled toward my true north, to Legion, to the show seemingly made out of scraps and spangles fished out of my own head.

So let’s do it. Let’s do two shows at once. Let’s see what my capacity for sustained enthusiasm actually is. Let’s open up all the valves, let’s set fire to tears, LET’S GO.

Legion - Season 1, ‘Chapter 1’

Wooouuuld you like this show to begin with a deeply stylized growing-up montage set to “Happy Jack” by The Who, hyper-slo-mo snapshots all centered in frame, quaint and retro until our boy hits age of onset and begins screaming it into a distorted symmetrical Wes Anderson nightmare? Hohoho, would I.

I WOULD.

Troubled kid grows into troubled man, until his big haunted eyes see no more hope, and he tries to hang himself with an electrical cord, which sparks like synapses (!!! guys) into a sparkling candle on a cupcake — his birthday. Thirty-odd complete revolutions around the sun for David, the last five spent inside this mental institution, which outfits its patients in burnt orange track jackets with yellow stripes, because THE SIXTIES, groovy.

Dan Stevens does a pretty great American accent, it turns out. His most amazing transformation is still when he left his second chin in Downton Abbey and suddenly looked like his own hot evil twin, but this is good too.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Look at this Legionnaire society developing

COME ON IN THE WEIRD WATER’S FINE

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

LEGION

To anyone who has been wondering how the hell I was not yet watching the Wes Anderson meets Bryan Fuller meets David Lynch meets X-MEN SHOW seemingly crafted to please exactly this weirdo, the key word was Yet, and is now Lol, Recaps So Forthcoming for this, my daymare dream program.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Deep Space Nine RECAP: 6x19

Time to recap another fave of the hivemind! Let’s see what you guys picked for me this time…

[returns] Well gosh dang do you all ever love Benjamin Sisko In A Crisis Of Morality! DRAMA. ETHICS. And, new: INTRIGUE, which also goes by the name GARAK, thank u.

Season 6, Episode 19: ‘In the Pale Moonlight’

Curtain opens on Ben Sisko in his quarters, starting a personal log. I was about to take a sidebar about how amused I am by the whole concept of officers keeping personal logs, because every time one happens I think about how in the earliest days of TOS the writers clearly said to themselves hey, y’know what would be a convenient way to get our characters to monologue about their inner thoughts and feelings? A Starfleet culture of keeping audio diaries. Anyhow that device turns out to be THE ENTIRE FRAMEWORK OF THIS EPISODE, a-lol.

“I need to talk about this,” Ben says, out loud. “I have to justify what’s happened, what I’ve done. At least to myself.” Like, yes you first-person narrator of a Victorian horror story, take us back, make us understand how you will forever be A Changed Man after this Experience. What a classic opening.

[chuckling appreciably]

No one is chuckling in this first flashback scene though. It’s the grim weekly ritual of his crew filing in to check the list of Starfleet officers missing or confirmed dead that Sisko posts on the wall of the wardroom. Ben hates Fridays now.

Evidently the Federation is losing a lot of ships to Jem’Hadar sneak attacks from around the Romulan border. The Romulans had signed that nonaggression treaty with the Dominion a while back, and are apparently planning on turning a blind eye, not getting involved, and generally just sitting back and letting all their enemies destroy each other in their drawn-out war. If the Romulans were to join forces with the Klingons and the Federation, then maybe our guys would stand a chance against the Dominion, but as stands, they’re likely to continue taking these losses, possibly until they lose the whole thing.

Sisko has had it.

Personal Log VO: “That was the moment I made the decision. It was like I had stepped through a door, and locked it behind me. I was going to bring the Romulans into the war.”

MELODRAMA A-FUCKIN-HOY, FRIENDS

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Deep Space Nine RECAP: 6x14

To everyone who suggested this one for Recap Category: Lols — thank you. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.

Season 6, Episode 14: ‘One Little Ship’

We begin grinning, me and Major Kira both. It is, praise Roddenberry, an Original Series set-up: a Captain and his crew out on a starship, about to send a team of officers venturing into a strange patch of space to do some Scientific Research. Our latest galactic Bermuda Triangle has the fabulously Star Trek feature of shrinking down whatever enters it, runabouts included, a notion that has Nerys unsuccessfully fighting off fits of giggles.

“Major, are you laughing at our investigation of this sub-space anomaly?” Sisko asks, with the voice of a man who fully knows that this shit is hilaaarious.

Nerys rallies and tries to hold it together, but then cracks when she imagines her friends being the size of coffee cups. Listen, everyone on Drink Space 9 eventually just TURNING INTO space bevs would at this point not surprise me at all, so at the very least we can let them go hot tubbing in a raktajino.

Worf’s frown endeepens. “I do not see what is so humorous about being small,” he declares, earning him the immediate and undying service of little Ensign Nog. You have my sword, and my shield.

Sisko tries to get everyone to regain a semblance of cool while they receive a last transmission from the Rubicon, but his efforts are only partially effective given that he’s lolling out of his chair while doing so. Dax’s voice comes on all chipper and profesh, and unfortunately my mind instantly imagined her being the size of a Borrower, and I too lost it.

I AM NERYS

Dax tells Sisko all looks well, casually drops that she’s looking forward to Worf’s poem, and signs off. “I have my own ways of torturing Worf.” - Jadzia Dax, 5x06, and not remotely fucking around.

Sisko, still in business voice, pivots to the sidebar. “Mr. Worf. Poem?”

Turns out Klingons compose poems to commemorate great events, like a good warrior people, and Jadzia just had a feeling this mission was gonna be ONE FOR THE BOOKS. That troll’s got beautiful instincts.

Benjamin, who has been friends with Dax for two lifetimes for a reason, asks Worf to share with the class what he’s written so far. But Worf’s saved by Nog, who pipes up over his stammering with an uncalled for update about the runabout’s progress into the accretion disc. Kira leans in toward Sisko: “Now is it my imagination, or did the kid just cover for him?” Uh, yeah, what are squires for? Saving your bacon in social situations, MOSTLY.

On one of the computer screens, they can see the Rubicon getting smaller.

Beautiful transition is beautiful.