Movies & TV / Reviews
Legion 2.8 Review: Chapter Sixteen
Loading...Is David a liar? We know he lies, so the answer has to be yes, right? But we also know why he lies, and we can’t blame him. How does that impact Syd and their romance? It’s been said that every love story is a tragedy if you wait long enough. Given that humans love and humans are mortal, that has to be true in the end. Syd knows this, and she manages to make love seem like the most trite and banal concept in existence, even as she leaves the life she knows to follow her fella. Spoilers for Legion – “Chapter Sixteen” follow.
It sucks to be Ptonomy—infected in his sleep and then killed by a monster David could have stopped all along if only he knew. Ptonomy isn’t alive as such, but some part of him is preserved in the mainframe—which we see represented by giant binary code. The monk is in there too, and he’s not looking so good. This week we learned an old monk adage: “To create fear hold up a mirror.” Nobody likes taking a long hard look at themselves. Except maybe Farouk. I was disturbed to hear one of the mustache chicks speaking as Ptonomy, who I really enjoyed as a character.
As the search for Farouk’s body continues, David reveals that present-day Syd and future-Syd are not in agreement about the best course of action. David can’t tell his lady the whole truth, because she talks to Farouk and Farouk reads minds. So David isn’t hiding things from Syd as much as he’s hiding them from Farouk. But will she accept that as an answer? Would you or I? Hard to say, since we don’t actually know any super-powerful mutants.
The Monk as a teen was…enlightening. I enjoyed the Hush Woman telling the story of the Princess of True Reason. Everything we do impacts everything else. This might seem like a given, but when John Hamm relates this same concept in a modern tech context, our minds were collectively blown. Whenever you are sad, no one else can be completely happy—which is probably why no one ever is completely happy. So what’s the significance of Ptonomy unplugging the monk? Does that mean the mustache chicks can’t get the information that he has? That’s important, since the Mink knows where the body is. When we see Farouk with the much older Hush Woman, we have our answer. David learns the same information from another source. The body is in Le Desole—the dessert.
David makes a plan to find the body, and everybody gets involved. I loved the visuals here, and throughout this episode. It’s gotta be difficult to think of a non-boring way to montage the passage of time while things get done. Later, we’re sad to see David so sad as he notices Lenny exhibit Amy’s mannerisms. It’s not Lenny’s fault, and David knows that. She’s still terrified she’ll wake up and be dead again, back with Farouk, trapped and basically alone. Despite what’s happened, David seems protective of Lenny. It’s not especially surprising when she sneaks out of Division Three, presumably for the same reason Syd left—to help David kill the monster.
Clark’s “girl talk” scene was pretty entertaining. Sure, he’s gay, but I don’t know that this alone makes him ‘one of the girls.’ None of what we learn in that scene is particularly surprising. Joan never married. Clark’s romance had a sad ending. David isn’t telling Syd everything. But Melanie dropping eaves on them? That, I did not see coming. We don’t learn until the end of the episode that Melanie, perhaps in a more suggestible state due to depression and drug use, is now under the control of Oliver, and therefore Farouk. This is bad news for our team of heroes. It’s also very sad for her. Melanie is one of the most human characters on the show. She wants to be authoritative and a good leader, but she’s full of doubt. She’s lonely, unsure, and wracked with worry about dozens of things—any two of which would emotionally incapacitate most people. I worry that she’s becoming disposable. That would be an ugly commentary about the place of other human beings in our lives. Which brings us to…
The Delusion. The biggest delusion is that other people don’t matter. John Hamm tells us the parable of the people in the cave. Then flips the script to what sounds like it’s gonna be another tired diatribe about how nobody can communicate anymore because phones are better than they’ve ever been. On the surface, such an assertion doesn’t even make sense. We’re all talking to each other all the time. We never stop communicating. How could tech and social media possibly be making communication worse?
Well…we can’t agree on truth anymore. Is it a chicken, or a duck? Is it Yanny, or Laurel? Is that hideous dress gold and white? Black and blue? Something else entirely? The delusion of the narcissist is that no one is real except them, and maybe their loved ones. The visuals of how we interact with each other, how certain insults get splashed around as if they mean something deeper and more sinister. How what we envision is nothing like reality, but it’s the part that impacts us the most. If you’re on social media, you probably cultivate a personal brand without even thinking about it. We all decide what we’ll share and what we won’t, what language we use and what we’ll avoid. When the majority of our communication is filtered that way—we don’t have to win a “better or worse” argument about the internet to know that things have changed.
As an aside, it’s witty that John Hamm should be the person narrating these segments. He was in the only episode of “Black Mirror” that I’ve ever seen (I know…I’m busy) and it had essentially the same theme. Keeping all this in mind, Oliver’s poem asking “When will we end this human war?” is far more ominous. Does it ask when we’ll end war, or when humans will end themselves? That probably depends on how David and Syd do in their search for Farouk’s body. If the skeletons in the tent are any indication, it doesn’t go so well.
Geographic disorder? Is that a thing? There’s a thing called Geographic Tongue Disorder, but it’s not about alternate realities or time lines. And why is their suddenly a minotaur? Just when we think we understand what Legion is getting at, they do something weird that ensures we don’t rest on our laurels…or our yannies. Whichever.
Two episodes remain in this second season of Legion. I kinda feel like I know less now than before this clarifying episode. The TV description literally says that the “path forward is revealed.” Sure, we found out that the body is in the desert and everyone is looking for it. But we already kinda knew that before. Still, I can’t stop watching.
See you’s next week.
