Title: Legion Season 2 Episode 5: “Chapter 13”
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Superhero
Platform: TV – FX
Director: Tim Mielants
Writers: Nathaniel Halpern and Noah Hawley
Rating: TV-MA
Release: May 1, 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]
“The end of the world is coming daddy. We don’t got a lot of time.” Lenny Busker – Legion
Lenny Busker (Aubrey Plaza) is in an interrogation room that appears to be upside down. Clark (Hamish Linklater) walks in and she tells him, “This room is scary.” Clark ignores her. She frantically asks, “Where’s David. I really want to talk to David.” Lenny begs for various drugs to get high, but Clark ignores her pleas. He asks her to give her name. She tells him it’s Lenny Busker. He asks what Lenny stands for. It’s Lenore, after her grandmother. Lenny: “She was, she was. Let’s just say she was a real salty broad and leave it at that.” Clark shows her a blank card. Lenny asks, “Are you guys suspending the laws of gravity or something.” Lenny tries to convince Clark that she was a hostage and that she escaped. He asks her how. Lenny starts describing her childhood. Her grandmother put booze in her Rondo Citrus Soda and would let Lenny drink some while they watched cartoons after school. Her mother couldn’t have any more children and her father had trouble getting work because he enjoyed porn more. Clark whispers, “Are you the Shadow King?” Once Clark believes he won’t get anything useful from Lenny he gets up to leave, telling her they are going to drop her in a corner of the building and no one will see or hear from her again. Lenny drops this nugget before he gets out the door, “He knows where the monks hid the body.” She also gives him this warning upon his exit, “The end of the world is coming daddy. We don’t got a lot of time.”
“Nothing’s felt real to me for a very long time.” Oliver Bird – Legion
Oliver Bird (Jemaine Clement) is driving Amahl Farouk (Navid Negahban) in a Bentley convertible in the desert. It appears they are heading towards Farouk’s body. Oliver is not looking forward to digging up the body. Farouk thinks it’s because he is scared of a dead body. Oliver assures him that isn’t the case, “No. It’s a new suit. Cream. Cashmere flannel.” He doesn’t want to get it dirty. They have a debate about reality and morality. Farouk emphasizes how great what they are doing will be. Farouk: “But the reward is a sunrise you’ve never seen. Unreal.” Oliver: “Nothing’s felt real to me for a very long time.” They arrive at the burial site. Oliver is doing all the work while Farouk sits comfortably and supervises. He soon gets tired of the lack of progress Oliver is having in digging up the coffin, so he raises it up. Inside the coffin is a woman’s body. Farouk: “There she is.” He looks at Oliver, “The device.” We get a flashback of Oliver and Lenny’s raid of Division III. While there they stole the device that Farouk and Oliver are going to use now.
It is Ptonomy Wallace’s (Jeremie Harris) turn to question Lenny. Ptonomy: “See we have three concepts. The past, the present, the future. The past I get. It’s everything that happened before. And the future is everything that’s still to come. But what is the present? My theory is…there is no present. There’s only past and future. The past and future of what.” Closing her eyes, Lenny asks Ptonomy what color are her eyes? He says they are brown. She opens them, her new body’s eyes are blue. Ptonomy is shocked. Lenny promises him that she is with them. She was faking being evil when she was under Farouk’s control. Ptonomy asks is she faking now. He grabs her head to get inside her memories. Inside her memories he sees little Lenny with her grandmother drinking their spiked Rondo Citrus Soda. He then sees a vase and flowers dropping to the ground covered in blood. Now he’s out of her memories and we see the delusion creature crawl into his ear again. He sees the Vermillion and Admiral Fukuyama, and he sees that inside the Admiral’s basket is the face of a monster. When Ptonomy returns to reality he is strangling Lenny. Lenny: “Shit. Buy a girl a drink first.” He stops and staggers away from her.
The Narrator (Jon Hamm) is here to explain conspiracy. Narrator: “Human beings are pattern seeking animals. So strong is our belief that a pattern must exist, that the human mind will reject the pieces that don’t fit. Which is why when we encounter coincidence we often see conspiracy.”
“Then perhaps the idea of life and death is obscene. Maybe not obscene, but irrelevant.” Oliver Bird – Legion
Oliver and Farouk observe workers coming out of a ditch to get doughnuts from a doughnut truck shaped like a submarine. Farouk asks if Oliver has a problem with the morality of killing humans. Oliver goes through a long explanation of atoms and the nature of things. He finally concludes with, “Then perhaps the idea of life and death is obscene. Maybe not obscene, but irrelevant.” Farouk tells Oliver that they are Homo Superior and that they can do what they want to us. While he talking, Oliver starts thinking about Melanie (Jean Smart). Farouk: “Morality is not the problem.” Oliver: “I’m going to kill you.”
“He’s a mutant with psychic powers. He’s not a god.” David Haller – Legion
Lenny’s head is lying on the table, when she looks up, David Haller (Dan Stevens) is sitting across from her. They both smile at each other and David offers her some Twizzlers. David [chuckles]: “You know what hit me earlier? I had no idea…what silence was. Until Farouk was out of my head. True silence.” David asks her some personal question. David: “Did you ever date men.” Lenny: “Of course. [Talks about a boy in high school.] “If he was gonna jab something hard in me, I sure as shit was gonna return the favor.” David tells her she is still working for the Shadow King. Lenny doesn’t deny it, but she can’t tell him what Farouk wants. He kept her and Oliver’s bodies in drawers when he didn’t need them. She only saw what he wanted her to see. David: “Why are you really here?” Lenny: “Because I missed you.” David: “Lenny…how are you real?” Lenny: “You tell me. The guy’s like a god.” David: “He’s a mutant with psychic powers. He’s not a god.” David sees flashes of him and Amy as kids. He asks Lenny whose body this is. She doesn’t know, she woke up with this body.
Farouk and Oliver follow the submarine doughnut truck to an isolated house near some wind turbines. The home is guarded by Division III soldiers. Farouk picks up where Oliver left off. Farouk: “I’m more powerful than you.” Oliver: “Then again, maybe I’ve found your weakness.” Farouk asks Oliver to humor him and give him a hint how he’ll kill him. Oliver: “What is 1+1?” Farouk: “Two.” Oliver: “Incorrect.” Farouk: “You are a true snake.”
We see Lenny’s naked body covered in blood as she tries to walk with her unfamiliar body out of the desert. We hear Amy Haller (Katie Aselton) singing “Happy Birthday”. David: “You’re not lying. You really don’t know how you got there.” Lenny: “I told you…I…just…woke up.”
“There’s a word for it. What is it. Dread.” Ben – Legion
The woman of the house is Amy, her husband Ben (Ryan Caldwell) drives the submarine. It appears they are in Witness Protection to protect them from the Shadow King. Amy tells him about the dream she had again, she describes the Vermillion, she was one of them. Ben has a feeling that something bad is going to happen, “There’s a word for it. What is it. Dread.” Suddenly the wind turbines stop moving and there is complete silence. Amy looks out the window and she doesn’t see the Division III troops. There is a knock at their door, Ben goes to answer it. Ben doesn’t come back to the kitchen so she goes to check, she sees dust where Ben should be and the beer bottle he was holding. She hears water running in the kitchen sink and she slowly walks back in. It’s Oliver washing his hands. He tells her David is back and he is there to take her to him. He’s acting creepy but she plays along and tells him she is going to get her coat. Oliver uses his telekinesis powers and floats Amy up on the kitchen table. The vase with flowers covered in her blood hits the floor. We find out that the body they dug up was Lenny, they took a piece of her flesh for the device. Oliver uses the device to transform Amy’s body into Lenny. David sees this and runs away from Lenny. She runs to him to comfort him. David promises Farouk, “I’m coming for you.”
Lenny is in a room that violates the laws of gravity. She wants to talk to David but first she is interrogated by Clark. Clark doesn’t believe a thing she says, for good reason, with her criminal record, being a drug addict, and her probably still being under Farouk’s control, why would he. Ptonomy doesn’t believe her either but gets a shock when he finds out her eyes are blue now. He tries going into her memories, but it looks like Farouk bobby trapped them and Ptonomy sees a vision of Admiral Fukuyama being a monster. We don’t know if that is true or Farouk has planted a seed for Ptonomy to kill the Admiral in a later date. David finally talks to Lenny. The two old buddies get back into a comfortable rhythm with each other. David doesn’t believe her either at first but realizes that even though she is probably still under Farouk’s control, she doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know his plans or where her body comes from. When we’re not at Division III, we are on the road with Oliver and Farouk. They dig up a body, but it isn’t Farouk’s. We find out that it is Lenny’s body. They are following a doughnut submarine truck back to Amy Haller. Their adventures aren’t happening at the same time as Lenny’s interrogation, they happen before she shows up at Division III. They take the device Oliver and Lenny stole earlier in the season and use it to transform Amy’s body to Lenny. He sent Lenny so David can see it. He is declaring war on David, and David promises to come for him.
The episode started as a mystery, who is Lenny and why is she there. The interrogation scenes reminded me of Unusual Suspects. The episode ended as a horror movie. It was a body horror nightmare. The last scene was the scariest scene ever on Legion. This was Aubrey Plaza’s best performance of the season. She was the Lenny we met at Clockworks, except more desperate and vulnerable. Lenny was trying to be her usual slick self, but her time in Farouk’s control has her more frazzled than ever. Only David [and Oliver] can know what it’s like to have Farouk in your head 24/7. His remark about not knowing what silence really was is telling. Lenny knew exactly what he was talking about. Jemaine Clement also gave a strong performance. You could see the desperation Oliver feels being under Farouk’s control. He is a powerful mutant himself, but he knows he isn’t a match for him. Oliver is smart, and I believe him when he says he is going to kill Farouk. I don’t know how he plans on doing it, but I wouldn’t bet against him. He was terrifying in the scene when he turned Amy into Lenny. His eyes were completely dead. Amy was in extreme pain, but he didn’t show any compassion for her at all.
Like Chapter 12, the music was outstanding. While Lenny is alone in the interrogation room and Oliver is driving Farouk around in the Bentley, Heroin by The Velvet Underground & Nico played. While Oliver is digging up the coffin, Werewolf by Cat Power is playing. A cover of Don’t Come Around Here No More is in the background while Oliver uses telekinesis to lift Amy and use the device on her. I couldn’t find the cover by Jeff Russo & Noah Hawley, so I’ve included the original from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It’s still effective.
Grade: A-
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