Lenny in the Sky with Diamonds.
Spoilers follow for this episode and the comics on which Legion is based.
Things are beginning to fall into place in this fifth week of Legion -- well, by Legion standards they are anyway -- as we now have a better sense of Lenny’s true nature, and that of the Devil with Yellow Eyes, and of David himself.
Not that David is quite himself when “Chapter 5” begins. Having escaped the astral plane at the end of the last episode, with the not-so-nice Lenny persona now in tow, David is a little too cocky, a little too self-sure back at Summerland. While his newfound mastery of his powers allows David to create a safe place where he and Syd can (seemingly) interact in a physical sense, his interactions with Melanie make it clear that Lenny is now at least partially calling the shots.
Is David already more powerful than Melanie’s husband Oliver was/is? Oliver has been lost in his little early-1970s domain on the astral plane for over 20 years, whereas David made it out lickety-split. And he’s even now creating worlds there himself -- without getting trapped -- like the white room for him and Syd that is straight out of Dave Bowman’s Beyond the Infinite pit stop/final resting place/rebirth chamber from 2001: A Space Odyssey. But at the same time, the camera pans to the bugs crawling on the fruit in David’s room and you just know there won’t be any Starchild being born here. Of course, Melanie later implies that Oliver wound up trapped in the astral plane because he became so dependent on it, spending more and more time there until one day he just didn’t come back. Certainly one can see how a similar fate might await David, particularly if it’s the only way he can truly be with Syd.
But for the moment David, or David/Lenny rather, is more interested in freeing Amy. In so doing, the carnage wrought by his attack on Division 3 is striking and bloody, with bodies either partially destroyed or fused with their surroundings. It’s a shame for Division 3 that they were so ill-prepared for his attack, though in his dying moments the outfit’s presumed leader mentions that “we had it all wrong.” He realized too late what was really going on with David, but is it also too late for Melanie and Syd?
The scene (partially) explaining David and the Devil with Yellow Eyes’ parasitic relationship with him was made palatable despite its heavy exposition for two reasons: We’ve been so hungry for answers on this show, and also because of Cary’s really cool sky-ogram. But the working theory for now is that the Devil has been psychically feeding on David at least since his childhood, rewriting his memories anytime he starts to remember the vile thing. And boy, we get our best look yet at the Devil this week and he/it is indeed horrible.
Of course, comics fans have clued in by now to the likelihood that the Devil is Legion’s version of the X-Men villain the Shadow King, an age-old psychic creature that takes over the physical forms of telepaths just like David. Additionally, this episode also tied itself more closely to the comics with the revelation that, yes, David is adopted (Xavier?!), and that David does have multiple personalities floating around inside his head: Benny, Lenny, King, the World’s Angriest Boy in the World… Some of these may just be aspects of each other, but then again, the end of this episode lands us -- and all of David’s allies -- right back in the Clockworks asylum from the first episode. Are Melanie, Syd and the rest also personalities living inside David’s head? If so, the mind-blown poster for the show will prove to be quite apt.
Some notes:
- “He lives in an ice cube.”
- I like how Legion is letting David burn through the “bad guys” established in the pilot. First there was the interrogator who was turned into a burning skeleton, and now the old man played by David Selby who seemed to be in charge is also toast. Of course, these guys aren’t the true threat to David on the show anyway…
- This is one of the more adult episodes of Legion to date, complete with nudity, astral sex, and Division death!
- I’ll never get enough of Ptonomy’s Tommy Gun and derby look.
- Bill Irwin finally gets to exercise a small bit of the masterful clownish muscle that he’s famous for during that wordless interaction with Melanie.
- And add yet another highly appropriate song to Legion’s soundtrack: The Muppet Movie’s “Rainbow Connection.”
The Verdict
As the final 10 minutes of Legion’s “Chapter 5” kicked in and things amped up with the conceit of all sound (aside from some music cues) being temporarily dispersed by David/Lenny, the episode proved itself to be another excellent installment that mixes style with intrigue. One supposes that Cary’s magic collar will come to the rescue at some point, but for now it seems the more pressing issue is for our heroes to find their way back to reality… if they even exist at all, that is.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire