Title: Legion Season 2 Episode 2: “Chapter 10”
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, Science Fiction, Superhero
Platform: TV – FX
Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
Writers: Nathaniel Halpern and Noah Hawley
Rating: TV-MA
Release: April 10, 2018
Cast: Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza, Bill Irwin, Jean Smart, Jeremie Harris, Amber Midthunder, Jemaine Clement, Hamish Linklater, Navid Negahban
Feature image: Source
[Spoilers]
“You remember it, so it happened.” Lenny Busker – Legion
We open with a kaleidoscopic lollypop that is the roof of a carousel and is the lollypop that Lenny Busker (Aubrey Plaza) is holding. She, Oliver Bird (Jemaine Clement), and David Haller (Dan Stevens) are sitting on the carousel horses. Lenny begins to speak about their junkie days together and David questions if it even happened or if she even existed. Lenny: “You remember it, so it happened.” David will help them find the Shadow King’s body because Future Syd asked him. He has one condition, that they don’t hurt anyone. Oliver goes to a fortuneteller booth to tell the Shadow King [Oliver in this case] that David will help him find his body.
Two SUVs are driving in the night. One of the SUVs has David, Syd Barrett (Rachel Keller), Ptonomy Wallace (Jeremie Harris), and the Fukuyama-bots. David asks Ptonomy about the Fukuyama-bots. Ptonomy tells David that they are androids and that they call them the Vermillion, [so I will call them that too now]. David hits the roof of the vehicle; they are here. Syd opens a music box at the fortuneteller booth and it takes her back to a memory of her childhood. Back at Division III headquarters, Oliver and Lenny are doing a song and dance number [Swinging on a Star] while they unleash havoc. They destroy the guards in the similar manner that David/Farouk destroyed the Division III guards last season. They add a twist by turning one of the guards into a pig and another one into a fish [like the song lyrics]. Oliver walks by Melanie Bird’s (Jean Smart) room but she doesn’t see him but she hears him say something about a monk. Cary Loudermilk (Bill Irwin) sees Oliver and tries to talk to him hoping some part of him will hear him. Unfortunately, he is dealing with Farouk and Oliver drops him through a floor. Kerry (Amber Midthunder) comes out to fight, “Let’s dance asshole,” but Oliver freezes her and looms over her. Downstairs Cary tries to defend himself with a spoon against Lenny but she tweaks the spoon, causing Cary and Kerry not to be able to recombine normally. David, Ptonomy, and Syd finally arrive but they are too late. They find Cary’s arm sticking outside of Kerry’s chest.
“Maybe don’t piss off our only hope of killing the monster.” Melanie Bird – Legion
Melanie reports the Mi-Go order monk hiding in Division III to Admiral Fukuyama. A Vermillion accuses David of lying. Melanie: “Maybe don’t piss off our only hope of killing the monster.” Since Cary is inside Kerry, David tells Kerry he wants to go back into the amplification chamber to find Farouk. Cary: “You could explode.” David: “Well, I trust you…so let’s try to avoid that.” The voice in David’s head tells him to tell them the truth. The other voice tells him not to. David is back in the chamber and we get a psychedelic light show. David is in the chamber to find Future Syd. The scene has a static feedback feel. He is there to find out why she asked him to help Farouk find his body. “You’re so different,” David says to future-Syd. “Time does that to people” she replies. She is surprised how sweet he still looks. David asks her why they need Farouk. She tells him that they need Farouk because of the plague that is killing everyone. David asks how it started. Syd: “It started like any other idea, as an egg.” David asks if he is dead. She tells him it’s complicated.
“A wise man once said: Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” The Narrator – Legion
The Narrator: “A wise man once said: Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Using a tick and a bloodhound as examples, the Narrator says that animals experience reality by their biological interactions. They don’t think about it. The Narrator: “Human beings are the only animals who forms ideas about their world.” He says that we perceive the world through our minds. Humans must agree what is real. Oliver teaches a child that red is green and green is red. When the child is older and tries to cross the street on green, he gets run over. The Narrator: “Because of this, we are the only animals that go mad.”
“You and I, we are les dieux, Gods…What did John Lennon say? Bigger than Jesus.” Amahl Farouk – Legion
Clark stops David to talk to him in the dining hall. Clark doesn’t trust him. He believes he had a hand in the invasion of Division III. [He’s right] Clark: “We see everything.” David calls Farouk. David goes to the field in the astral plane from the beginning of the episode. He walks over to the fortuneteller stand and rings the bell. To David’s surprise, instead of it being Oliver, Amahl Farouk (David Negahban) appears himself. Farouk tells David he needs to work on his powers, “The kiddie table. You gotta get up from the kiddie table…Come and sit with the big boys. It’s all about respect, my man.” Farouk continues, “You and I, we are les dieux, Gods…What did John Lennon say? Bigger than Jesus.” David didn’t come here to chat; Farouk knows this, so he and David wrestle. Farouk changes form and becomes a samurai, so David counters and becomes a tank. Farouk counters David’s move and becomes a windstorm. They end up wrestling again. David tells him no more violence. He makes Farouk promise. Since they agree, David will now find the Mi-Go monk in Division III. Lenny pops up after David leaves and asks Farouk to let her go. He asks here what she would do with her new life. What will she do when that life ends?
“I don’t wanna be out here the whole time.” Kerry Loudermilk – Legion
Laying down, Kerry is talking to Cary who is inside her. They are trying to figure out how to get him out. Kerry reluctantly begins singing the Tra La La song. It takes her and Cary back to their childhood. This helps Cary get out. Kerry is stuck being on the outside and she isn’t happy about it. Kerry: “I don’t wanna be out here the whole time.” They discover that she has white streaks in her hair.
David is thinking about what Farouk said to him while Melanie is talking to him. Melanie: “We all die eventually. The real tragedy is forgetting to live.” She advises him to take Syd and leave. He can’t worry about the world, things might get bad for a while, but the world will survive.
David goes to the rooftop. Syd has switched bodies with her cat again and she is licking herself. Once she switches back, David tells her about Future Syd. She tells him to do what Future Syd told him to do. She and David will look for the monk together and keep it a secret. The monk they are looking for is hiding in the room with the chattering teeth people.
In the last episode, we learned that Future Syd asked David to help Amahl Farouk find his body. David meets with his avatars Oliver and Lenny in the astral plane. David is to provide a diversion for Oliver and Lenny while they search for a Mi-Go monk in Division III. David asked them not to hurt anyone, so of course they killed people left and right. I’ll give them credit for one thing; they didn’t hurt the kid guards, because Oliver told them to run. I don’t know if Oliver broke through to save the kids, or if Farouk isn’t completely evil, but the kids went unharmed. Lenny does something that keeps Cary and Kerry from recombining as usual. Kerry is stuck on the outside and has to live life day-to-day like the rest of us. The reason they are looking for the monk is that the Mi-Go monks know where Farouk’s body lays. Of course, David is upset with the carnage at Division III so he meets with Farouk to get a promise he won’t hurt anyone else. We finally meet Amahl Farouk, and David Negahban does a great job with the character. Farouk thinks he’s a god and encourages David to act like one too. They engage in combat, but instead of dancing, they wrestle, and take on other forms to combat each other. It is very clever. David finally confides in Syd what is going on. Syd trusts David, and she trusts her future self, so she joins David in the hunt for the monk. I can tell them where to look.
This week’s episode was a little straighter forward than last week. We know that David is a double-agent working with team Farouk to help them find his body. Syd says they need Farouk to defeat a plague that has killed most of humanity. She doesn’t say why David can’t fight it in the future, but I get the feeling David is the cause. She remarked on how sweet present David is and that leads me to believe Future David isn’t so sweet. David might be the big bad of the season. Even though he is trying to do the right thing, David is betraying everyone, and he isn’t fooling anyone. The only person he might be fooling is himself. David’s not only a double agent for Farouk; he’s one against himself. He would hate to admit it, but he’s considering the ‘god’ thing. I wonder if that will have something to do with the future plague.
The episode was gorgeous as usual. I liked the first shot of the episode with the kaleidoscopic lollypop. David’s journey to the future was visually stunning. There weren’t that many songs in the episode. Lenny and Oliver sung Swinging on a Star during their attack on Division III. Here’s a version from Bing Crosby if you’d like to compare the two. Kerry and Cary sung the Tra La La song from the Banana Splits to get Cary out of Kerry’s body. I forgot how crazy Saturday morning cartoons were back then.
Grade: B+
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