Five Thoughts on Legion‘s “Chapter 1”

FX’s Legion debuted last night and put my brain in a high speed blender. Let’s try to make sense of it all:

1. Make Mine Fargo

If you’re not familiar with Legion‘s showrunner Noah Hawley already might I recommend his concurrently running, currently on temporary hiatus, FX series Fargo? It technically plays in the same world as the Coen Brothers’ ’90s film of the same name, but barely has anything to do with it in any practical sense. Rather, Hawley favors using the sensibilities and the tensions of the Coens’ film rather than explicitly related characters to craft sublimely compelling tangential narratives. Applying that notion to Legion, the name David Haller and the use of the word “mutant” alone place it squarely in the world of the X-Men, even as its first hour owes absolutely nothing else to the idea of a “shared” X-Men film universe. That may change as we move forward, but “Chapter 1” is baggage-free in that regard. It seems to be Hawley’s calling card, at this point. He’s using an established set of concepts to craft a story that stylistically cuts a path all its own, and it’s pretty exciting to see Marvel & Fox allow him to do this. The number one question on every comics fan’s mind seems to be: is this David Haller the son of Professor Charles Xavier? Forget it, my friends – enjoy the show as it stands, because it really doesn’t matter one way or another.

2. Straight Outta Downton (sorry)

David Haller is brought to life by the magnetic Dan Stevens, who purposely drove himself off the road and died in an episode of Downton Abbey so he could be in movies (the show was considerably weaker without him). Stevens plays David as a ticking timebomb, but one with incredible vulnerability. His abilities are scary, but he is decidedly not. Even when he turns a table over in an interrogation with government agents, it plays more as a triumphant cathartic breakthrough than a terrifying display of power. There is a delicate balance struck here, because the “hidden monster” is a common trope in supernatural storytelling and is usually played with a kind of lightswitch effect – one moment a character is harmless, the next they’re tearing apart the room. Stevens plays David with an ever-present fragility and torment, even as he’s crumbling the room down around him. If there’s any criticism to be had, the lack of specificity of David’s mental illness and Stevens’ choice to make David an overly twitchy character might feel a little over the top. Although maybe not as over the top as the source material? At the same time, Hawley is bombarding the character with auditory and visual horrors at such a high frequency that the overall effect is believable. If it were Stevens twitching in silence in a padded room it would be one thing – that he’s constantly having to react to things no one else appears to be seeing or hearing is something entirely different. The ensemble cast seems strong, but this show could be built entirely around Stevens’ magnetism with no problem.

3. Les Jeunes De Paris

“Chapter 1” is an hour and a half long and packed to the gills with memorable moments and frenetic details that likely reward multiple viewings. After one pass through, the sequences that were most affecting for me were the ones that most intimately dealt with the budding relationship between David and Syd Barrett (like Pink Floyd, get it?), another patient at the “Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital.” Syd is played by Rachel Keller (a standout performer in the 2nd season of Fargo. I’m telling you, you should check out that show, if you haven’t already), who lights up David’s world whenever she appears on screen. She acts as the catalyst for David’s self-realization and the plot trigger that removes him from the routine of his hospital life. Whether it’s the way they “hold hands” by grasping opposite ends of a cloth (no touching!) while walking down a hallway, a montage set to The Rolling Stones’ “She’s Like a Rainbow”, or a full-blown Bollywood style dance number set to a French song that recalls one of the better SNL sketches of the last decade, David & Syd’s heartfelt connection provided the episode’s most magnetic moments.

4. “That gum you like is going to come back in style”

David Lynch probably isn’t interested in watching a television show based on a superhero comic book, which may or may not have a greater tie-in to an established movie franchise, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some similarities between some of the scenes in Legion and some of the more frightening aspects of his work. Legion boasts a creature referred to as “The Devil With the Yellow Eyes” that is as effective nightmare fuel as the creepiest scenes in Mulholland Drive or Twin Peaks. There are other effects pulled with the audio and the visuals that are the stuff of Lynchian nightmares too, which brings me to my next point:

5. Style trumps substance (for now)

“Chapter 1” is a tour-de-force of directorial trickery the likes of which rarely ever make it to television, whether due to budgetary constraints or network concerns. Hawley appears to have been given carte blanche to make this episode as weird as he could in an effort to present David’s wholly disorienting world to the audience watching. What that means is that almost every minute of the episode features some sort of auditory trickery (strange voices, distortion, audio/video mismatches) or unconventional visuals (camera tricks, unreliable visual cues, and anachronisms abound). The structure of the episode itself is spliced and rearranged without warning, forcing the viewer to piece it all together. If all of the episodes in the season are like this, I could easily see it becoming a tiresome affair, but for an establishing episode looking to make an impression, it feels pretty brilliant. That’s not to say it doesn’t go overboard several times, but it was pretty generous of Hawley to actually make sense of the full timeline of events by the end of the first chapter. Not all the questions are answered – not even close – but there’s nothing that leaves you scratching your head that you don’t feel they’ll come back to in short order. Overdone or not, Legion‘s opening entry is a challenging shot across the bow of conventional comic book stories adapted for movies and television.

What did you think of the episode? Let us know in the comments!