Dogs & Cats, Living Together: TV's Legion

aubrey plaza: was real, now in head
silent secret service escort team: head
syd: head

everyone else: tbd

i am on record as being extremely literal and trusting and gullible when watching TV shows and movies so maybe i'm missing something big here, but at the end when he says "are you real? is this real?" and syd says "i'm real. this is real. i love you, and i came back for you" i was like YES!!! and i'm gonna be pretty pissed if i was wrong to feel that way

yeah i think that breakdown is wrong. aubrey was real, now in head, yes. but it is a show about a mutant w/ powers to go along w/ his other problems. there isn't much of a show if silent secret service escort team and syd are in his head. (not to mention that would mean that all the gov ppl were also in his head otherwise how'd he get out of there.)

I had a cold last week and I am willing to suspend all ideas until I rewatch the show, which I can't seem to remember at all this morning

like did each of the secret service-esque people use a mutant power or was that something I dreamt happened after watching the show and taking cold meds

you mean at the end? yeah they were force-throwing baddies left and right, popping them right over the tree line toward the horizon with a jerk of their elbows

whew, I was ready to chalk that scene up to the nyquil

Dan Stevens overacts like crazy in this show. And the interrogator in brown is kind of unwatchable, not sure why. I love Fargo but am struggling to see the same kind of subtlety and intelligence here

i'm ok with the overacting cause the guy's reacting to stuff that's in his head, plus it'll all kinda hyperreal/surreal - but yeah, i hope he starts getting a little more real and honest with his performance

I don't know that 'honest' is a good goal for a performance basically ever, but particularly here, which (comic nerdery) is closer to a Shade the Changing Man TV show than anything else.

I found the interrogator (Hamish Linklater, no relation) to be incredibly watchable, hope to see more of him. Which may mean that I need to see more Fargo?

(not to mention that would mean that all the gov ppl were also in his head otherwise how'd he get out of there.)

The idea I guess would be that he has all these powers himself but he is along the road to being convinced that he's sane, so he has to imagine people who can use them.

I don't understand accusations of overacting in a show that exists in a state of heightened reality the way this one did in the pilot. Like, nothing that was going on was particularly "realistic" so I don't see how Stevens' performance crossed any lines that, for example, Plaza's didn't also cross.

otm

now picturing a mumblecore version of Legion & i already hate it

the last season of 'girls' reveals all of the titular women were actually in one character's head

lol

I dunno, to me it feels like Plaza's tuned into her own inner frequency. Stevens often seems like he's doing "hey look at me being crazy", little hyperactive face twitchy stuff a la Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys. Maybe I just like Plaza's "don't give a fuck" crazy better and that's all there is to it. To be fair, in the big moments where Stevens needed to be super locked-in w/Syd he abandons the hyper-alert sparrow act mostly.

that's because being both people in a conversation is hard work

Heh

Lenny was apparently written as a middle-aged man until the show-runner met Plaza - she insisted on keeping the lines as was - which does explain her enthusiasm for the idea of having tits.

So awesome!

first ep really reminded me of brit series Utopia

(I liked it!)

This show is great, Rachel Keller is completely entrancing.

I think it's fairly clear that the dude is mentally ill in some way, even if Jean Smart insists that his delusions are just a manifestation of his ability.

feel like even if he isn't suffering from a genetic neurological condition years and years of dealing w/ his powers/hearing voices would be enough to do longterm traumatic damage

This show is great, Rachel Keller is completely entrancing.

― ridiculous perm ban decision (voodoo chili), Thursday, 16 February 2017 20:57 Bookmark

fuck... it literally never occured to me that i wasnt watching rachel blanchard

second episode was super creepy

man I am loving this

just finished ep 1. just now realizing how funny it is that only when charred skeletons started falling into the swimming pool did my wife say "that was weird."

lol

http://www.mymbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/02/Legion-1.02-Chpater-2-vapour.png

that children's book

right?!

at first i thought it was maurice sendak's pierre but it was much darker

having the faceless shadow-dad makes it way creepier

feel like they're eventually going to get over this syd no-touching thing by having telepathy mind sex

yeah i think so too, it's got a short shelf life otherwise lol

hoping she meets someone else whose with a superpower that lets her fuck that person instead, just to drive the hysteria level up

sound design in this is so great, the way they so clearly layer voices to whispered, tinny, etc

Yes, I've been meaning to say that too. Dan Stevens' tic-acting is wearing incredibly thin for me but the approach to sound design is really something else. I don't think I've ever seen a TV show be so adventurous (I guess the "going crazy" aspect gives them this license)

The whole MRI business was about to give me a goddamn heart attack. Hey Bill Irwin - love your work but your character needs to get fired I think

yeah that MRi was terrifying noooope no thanks

I am vapefrog

otm

#vapefrog

Just caught up with the first 2 eps. Love this. BF made the observation the story moves in a rather Slaughterhouse Five way which I thought was a good point (if not perhaps on purpose).

I liked Dan's ticcy schizoid mannerisms!

How close to the comic/Xmen universe is this hewing?

At the moment:

. David Haller is a character in the X-Men comics
. They say the word 'mutant'
. Er...
. That's it

All the other characters in the show appear to have been invented for it (though what is reality, etc)

Right. So, the thing that immediately spoils this guys backstory if you look him up on wiki (ie who his parents are) is not going to be relevant or a thing here? I guess no one knows now that I type that out.

yeah, doubt it's a thing, but who knows?

It occurs to me they did have that memory scene where he couldnt see his dads face...

well now you have to know the spoiler that in the comics he never met his bio-dad until he was a teen and was raised by a stepdad

AH! ok that makes sense. Yeah I dont know this comic's story at all tbh. I dont suppose that will matter?

not a bit

ooh yay :D

I remember really enjoying an awful lot of Season 2, but have no memory whatsoever of what happened in the end.

David broke bad

Those who’ve watched the show and read the comics: can someone explain how david’s multiple personalities relate to his powers. I know that in the comics, his power is to absorb abilities as personalities, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the show. Yet his increasing instability seems to be directly related to his split personality in the show?

What gives???

This season has been a massive improvement btw, the fairy tale episode from last week was batshit in the best way. Makes me wish Mantzoukas was in everything.

They haven’t really delved into the personalities bit in the show, although they’re setting that up to be the drop in the finale, maybe?

In the comics, he originally had multiple distinct personalities (although only three iirc, and a couple were based on actual people he’d absorbed during a bombing) that each had a different power, and didn’t coexist in the real world, although they interacted in the astral plane. This evolved over the years — he’s had moments of clarity where he could command a multitude of powers, and also periods where there was a mental prison/hotel of sorts where he could interact with characters with different powers and bring them to the forefront or “steal” their powers for use.

I’m kind of surprised by how little has been explained in this season and the finale is either going to give us a piecemeal explanation and some resolution, or a fuller explanation and less total conclusion, imo

For instance, what is up with those time wraith things?

I think the time demons were always lurking in that hallway, waiting for someone to destabilize the timeline enough to set them free

if i dropped out on this midway thru last season can i jump back in this season and not be totally lost? i love zouks and i'd give this show (a show i liked a lot in the first season) another shot to watch him in it.

Zouks is only in episode 6, which is totally self-Fontaine’s, so you could always just watch that

*self-contained, not self-Fontaine’s,

I loved this season! The ending was surprisingly sweet, and some of the visuals were really beautiful: The stop-motion bits, the creepy-as-fuck time demons. I loved the ending for the poor toothless time-traveler, and I felt like the more out-there stuff was more purposeful than in season 2. I plan to re-watch this once they put it out in HDR.

I need to rewatch it in a more focused manner but the good episodes were up with the best of the series and I feel like the ending was as good as we could get.

It didn’t quite hit it on the nose but as a tale of people who were damaged, as everyone is, it became a tale of extraordinary people striving for a better conclusion

We finally got around to finishing this, watched most of the last 6-7 episodes over a week or so. I think I was a little let down by the way that some of season 2 seemed to be cut up into digression episodes - though that said, the one of these in season 3 was excellent - the promise of Jermaine rap battle led us onwards, and by that time we were hooked.

I did like the use of Pink Floyd's 'Mother' to indicate this is a very cliche son-mother thing, it happens.

There's a lot of actors I'll be looking out for because of this - Rachel Keller, Amber Midthunder, Bill Irwin (though holy shit, I just found out the's the other guy who isn't Robin Williams in the "Don't Worry, Be Happy" video), I don't think I'd even seen Dan Stevens before - but man, Hamish Linklater is definitely the catch.

(Should I watch The New Adventures of Old Christine?)

Recently finished season 2 after initially bailing awhile ago, and this show finally clicked for me (and my partner), although I apparently have the exact opposite opinion of most people in this thread. Season 1 had too much dream logic and pointless psychedelia and I can't remember many details, but season 2 felt way more focused and purposeful (except for that whole thing with the black oily idea monster that crawled inside people's heads, although that worked thematically). My partner actually joined in after I was a few episodes into it and ended up rewatching almost the whole season, and a lot of little things in the early season really hold up once you know where it's headed.

Just started season 3 and I'll allow them one music video/musical scene per season, there better not be any more, lol. Also a little skeptical of Farouk just being one of the team now, but maybe they have plans to contain him once David is dead/captured, and I assume he also still wants to kill all non-mutants after that gets taken care of.

Just started season 3 and I'll allow them one music video/musical scene per season, there better not be any more, lol

*noah hawley nervously taps feet and looks around*

Haha. Also, sorry but Rachel Keller is often kind of bad in this?

the character is very flat, but imo that’s kind of what she’s given to work with

True, she has all the worst lines, but she doesn't do much with them compared to everyone else and it sticks out imo (at least in s2).

still love her performance in season 1