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| Hero, right? |
So… what in the hells can I say about most of a season of Legion in a single blog post?
So, Season 2 follows the shifting alliances in the hunt for the Shadow
King’s body. David struggles to follow future Sid’s directions without leading
his allies into harm’s way. At the same time, Lenny – or the part of her mind
that exists within the Shadow King since her death – begins to show her
independence from the primary consciousness of Ahmal Farouk, asking to be given
a body and a new life in return for her service.
Weirdness abounds.
Farouk is able to get to his body first, while David – enraged by the
discovery that Farouk has restored Lenny by overwriting his sister’s soul and
warping her body into a facsimile of Lenny’s – sets up an elaborate gambit, planting
subconscious prompts in various allies in order to set up a situation in which
Farouk’s powers can be nullified. This gambit does pay off, enabling him to
defeat the Shadow King in a bravura clash of swirling chalk figures –
seriously, this series is hella stylish – but at the same time Farouk reveals
to Sid that he has also managed to contact future Sid, and that the danger that
she wants Farouk alive to face in the future is David, because David is, at his core, broken in such a way that he
can only ever pretend to connect to
other humans, all the while seeing them as lesser beings and his to do with as
he pleases. Consequently, Sid tries to shoot him. He erases her memory of the
event and her motives in order to restore their relationship which, once she
discovers it, leaves Sid understandably pissed as hell.
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| Really, really stylish. |
Division 3, backed by the Shadow King, confront David, who basically
declares ‘screw the lot of you’ and swans off with Lenny to be bad guys or
something.
Now, not wanting to dump on the Defenders line – or not on any part of
it that isn’t Iron Fist, anyway – but
this is some seriously tight storytelling. A lot happens in the course of ten
episodes, and I would hold this up as another example of why the US standard of
20-23 episodes isn’t necessarily the best model for television drama. The
standard was developed in a time when the idea of serialised fiction in an
ongoing series was almost unheard of. Serial fiction was the purview of the
mini-series – 3-6 episodes of ninety minutes or more – while ongoing series,
like Star Trek or Bonanza, would have an anthology format.
But then, Babylon 5 happened, pretty much.
Arc plots became de rigeur, and while some series make it work, most end up
with a mix of arc episodes and filler of indifferent quality, telling a story
that ends up over-stretched. A shorter season maintains the quality and
momentum of a series much better than a longer one.
On the other hand, presumably revenue is determined by how many
episodes you can stick adverts in, so…
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