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Legion 2.9 Review – ‘Chapter 17’
Loading...The difference between this week’s Melanie and the one we met in season one, episode one is staggering and tragic. A once-driven, proactive, nurturing and calculating woman has become a haze of drugs, regret, and bitterness leaving her vulnerable to Oliver, and Farouk. This week, a weapon is transported. Kerry is forced to contemplate Cary’s mortality. Amy confronts, an old favorite returns, Lenny heads back to an old haunt, and viewers are forced to contemplate what John Hamm has been explaining to us all season. Delusions. Delusions are the key to understanding the season, and the world we live in. Spoilers may be gleaned from the commentary, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet, continue at your own risk.
Why did Clark get clunked on the head and dragged away? We still aren’t entirely sure. Oliver wanted it done. Or Farouk. Or the Shadow King, depending on who you think is who at any given moment. We begin this week’s episode thirteen weeks before that event. Melanie is trying to convey how much she’s changed, how much her feelings for Oliver has changed. While Kerry and Syd ask Mel when she’s coming back to work, Mel doesn’t see the point of any of it. She’s stuck on why she made the choices that she did, where all that pressure came from. Syd and Kerry’s discomfort during her complaining is uncomfortable for us too. Melanie’s realizations aren’t motivating her. They’re making her feel even more stuck. She doesn’t want to be her own person, do her own thing. As offended as she seems at the idea that she’d be willing to “follow” to “tag along” with Oliver—what she’s really upset about is that she was left alone. She wants the time back, and she wants things with Oliver to always be how they were when they were young. Sorry Mel. Even when you’re not surrounded by ultra-powerful mutants, that’s just not how life works.
Reality is a choice. That’s one of the logical conclusions of the delusion concept introduced to us. How do we know who or what is real? We decide. Is Kerry the delusion of Cary? Or is it the other way around? What if there really is no world to save? Or what if the world doesn’t need saving? Or what if one person’s “saving” is another person’s destructing? How would we even know the difference? I’m reminded of the parable of the house fire. A man is sad because his house burned down. But his wife is happy because she wanted a new house, and now she’ll have one. Whether it’s good or bad, real or unreal—we decide.
Finger snapping. There’s a lot of it this week—almost as much as there is shotgunning drug machines. Melanie’s elephant, that used to be David’s, or Lenny’s, or maybe Philly’s. The array of smoking apparatus at wherever Lenny ends up later in the episode. There’s a ton. The finger snapping leads the Loudermilks to bring the weapon to the blue octopus. We all love a good adventure, right? Lenny gets a similar message in between becoming a literal party queen and befriending the new Janine, who used to be the new Barbara, who turned into a ladybug and flew away.
All season long we’ve been hearing announcements about “new symptoms.” If you show any symptoms, you should tell your mental monitor right away. Does that mean that this season never actually happened and that it’s taking place in the mind of someone back at Clockworks? Maybe absolutely everyone only exists in David Haller’s mind—especially given that we only know all of these characters in relation to him. We know that David argues with another version of himself. What if he just has relationships with all of these people in his mind. Now that I type this, I feel a strong need to rewatch this season looking for clues.
Lenny’s return to her old party house is fun. As always, the music is a delight (though not as good as when we hear The Kink’s Destroyer later on). I love the exchange where the new Janine likes Lenny’s eyes and Lenny says, “Thanks, they’re new.” They are, which makes it extra hilarious. Less hilarious is when an irate Amy shows up, transparently, and demands her body back. And when I say she’s transparent—I don’t mean her motivations. She’s literally drifting in and out of opacity. She’s mad, and we certainly can’t blame her. But she’s annoyed at the wrong person. Lenny didn’t do this, and she doesn’t know how to undo it. Is that what the weapon is for? Is that why Lenny has to be involved?
Other great parts of that scene are the “Waiting for Godot” reference, and the post-it-note art. I love post-it art and think it’s a fine way to decorate a room. Amy’s other demand is that Lenny define whether or not she’s a good person. I know very few people who would answer such a question with a resounding YES. And the ones who would are among the worst people with the best ability to rationalize. I wouldn’t say Lenny is a bad person. She isn’t malicious, or hateful, or violent. But she’s also not honest, or trustworthy, and she steals. These are negative behaviors—but depending on the reasons she does them (desperation, depression, addiction) they don’t have to make a person “bad” at their core. Is anyone bad at their core? Again, as to that reality, we all get to decide for ourselves. Speaking of reality, how exactly did Lenny impregnate new Janine? LOL
We had another interesting food reference this week when Kerry asks for cream soda at the Chinese restaurant. Food is sometimes used as a grounding influence or concept in fiction because it’s a simple and easy way to connect readers/viewers with a character or a setting. George RR Martin is famous for doing this. Hearing a character mention a love, hate, or craving for any food elicits a response in the viewer—whether it’s “Yeah, I love that,” or “WTF, that food is gross!” It’s a way to ground a reader in a story. It makes sense that a show with a fragmented, unstable narrative would use food to ground us. Who is Kerry? She’s the chick who likes to fight and drink crème soda. She might also be the girl who thinks Death is an actual person she can fight to keep Cary alive. She’s gonna be bummed if she has to land on that reality.
Lenny loves David and would do anything for him, even if she hates to admit it. Amy knows this and might be able to use it to get her body back. Will she? Maybe, if that is what the weapon is. Was Lenny supposed to be the one who gets the weapon? She does, and the car fire takes her to the desert. Is David orchestrating this? Or Farouk via Oliver? Or are several things being orchestrated at once? We could probably discuss that at length, but ultimately—that’s right, it’s up to each of us to decide. Will we all come away thinking the season was about drastically different things? That doesn’t seem probable, but we humans are great at making reality fit our narrative—which is one more thing John Hamm has been telling us all season.
Melanie ends up back with Oliver, or Farouk, at the end of the episode. Does that mean she died? Is Clark dead too? Will she have to answer for that later on? As a depressive type, I identify with Melanie’s lack of certainty, and her paralysis when confronted with the bad choices she’s made. But like Lenny, the choices don’t make her a bad person even when they turn out to be wrong. And how happy were we to see The World’s Angriest Boy in the World? I love that guy! But what does his presence mean?
Two episodes remain in this second season, which is actually one more than I realized. There’s also a guy named David Haller on this show, and he has a girlfriend called Syd. I mention it, because if this was your first Legion episode, you could have walked away without knowing that.
See you’s next week.
