[SPOILERS FOR WESTWORLD AND LEGION AHEAD]
One of my favorite shows of the past year was Westworld.
From the pilot (which is the best short film of the year, as well) to the first season finale, I was hooked in a way that I hadn’t been for a long time. I even took part in a little bit of Reddit-sleuthing, which is something that I’ve only ever done for Game of Thrones and its Song of Ice and Fire book series. I was obsessed with it.
But the thing that I recognize (both now and somewhat at the time), was that the show was flawed. I accepted that from the outset; this was a show that revolved around a specific bit of plot machination; it was built to be confounding, and muddled, and confusing. It had to be, to sustain momentum through the ten episodes. This was a season that punted on character motivation and development and exploration until perhaps the last possible second; the smile on William’s face as the hosts shot him in the arm, coupled with the slow walk to the stage of Dolores and the horrifying realization that dawns on Teddy as she does so, finally brought those characters to a real, grounded place.
It was stunning, and moving, and even funny. But they took a long time to get there, in the service of the plot twist of William and the Man in Black, and of Dolores and her journey through unstuck time (Thandie Newton’s Maeve is an exception, but only slightly, due to the muddled nature of its execution). I’m not suggesting ways to make it better, because that’s a fruitless and self-defeating exercise; what I am suggesting is that Westworld could’ve and should’ve grounded this more in character and character motivation, and in reality, at the expense of a cool twist.
By keeping the twist, you run the risk of it being empty; by using the characters to further plot, instead of using the plot to further the characters (until the last moment, at least), you risk the audience being left cold at a crucial moment. The smile that spread across William’s face mirrored the one on my own; but only because I had filled in a lot of the blanks in my own mind, as to who he was. I was willing to do that work, in the hope that the show would figure it out later on. But that is not the job of the audience; it is the job of the show, and if the audience has to be create their own continuity to make sense and care about the outcome, the show has failed.
And that, finally, brings me to Legion.
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Legion is helmed by all-star Noah Hawley, best known for his work on the FX show Fargo. Fargo is a legitimate masterpiece; if the reels for season three were to be lost in a house fire, this show would still be remembered as one of the best ever made. It’s that good, and it’s that memorable. It’s also notable for its auteur-ness; it’s a Noah Hawley production, from start to finish. After seeing the debacle that was True Detective season two, we can all appreciate how difficult it is to be, essentially, a one man show.
Which is why the faults of Legion are so puzzling.
Legion leans very hard on its central premise; each episode is a cacophony of visual and auditorial clues that point to the unreliability and unreality of the on-screen proceedings. You’re never sure what is real and what is fake; if you’re aware of the character of Legion, from the comic books, then you’re probably really unsure of what is real and what is fake. I have only a tangential relationship to the character, and I’m constantly on my toes.
It’s this constantly-on-my-toes-ness of the whole thing that is the problem. How am I to know what kind of man David Haller is if we’ve never been presented with concrete evidence that the man we’re watching is David Haller? If Haller was infected by this ‘parasite’ (a discovery of which I am still puzzling over, as I have no idea how Loudermilk came to said discovery) as a child, then have we ever seen the real David? Is there a real David?
Digging deeper into that: we’re never really sure, especially in the pivotal fifth episode, that we’re even grounded in reality anymore. By the time they return to the David’s childhood home, even Syd and the team aren’t sure if they are anymore. How are we to invest in the proceedings if we’re unsure if they’re even really happening?
This sense of unreality is heightened by the frankly baffling oscillation of character motivations. Ptonomy Wallace (Jeremie Harris) is a different character from episode to episode, and sometimes from scene to scene. His beginning realtionship with David is normal, and friendly; they overuse Wallace as an exposition mule when he interacts with David, but otherwise the relationship worked. Then, without warning, he becomes much more hostile to David, openly arguing to just let him go, and stop searching for him. One could argue that this is because of his work within David’s memories, and the difficulty and danger they find themselves in.
But that makes no sense, either, as he’s regarded as one of the leaders of this mutant group, and would recognize, as Dr. Byrd does, that David’s power alone makes him worth the risk. He even points this out, telling that this war is bigger than one man and his sister; how he can recognize that they are in the fight of their lives but not understand why they would take the risk on acquiring the most powerful weapon on Earth is mystifying. David is literally the most powerful person he and they have ever encountered, and Wallace wants to just move on.
Dr. Byrd has her share of problems, too. She’s mostly a full character, if a little predictable; wise leader, taught by the tragedy of a loved one. We’ve seen this before, but it’s more or less fully realized. But her problem is one of timing; her husband still being alive (or rescuable) adds needless complexity in this short first season. If her motivation to acquire David was to help rescue her husband, that’s cool; it adds a layer of personal heartache to what can be an abstract ‘save the world’ plot. But this possibility is raised by Wallace in this fifth episode, with only three to go, and is mostly dropped for the remainder of the running time. Why do we wait so long to bring this up as motivation? Why not make that clear from the outset? These episodes have plenty of room, and plenty of time, to play with that idea much earlier. Dr. Byrd, if this is introduced a part of a thematic package (say, one about dealing with personal struggles amidst larger global ones ), becomes a real person; someone that has problems that make sense to the audience on a much deeper level then ‘save the world’.
Then there is Syd, whose dimensions are as narrow as David can provide; she barely exists outside of him and their relationship. She’s probably the second-most powerful mutant on the show, being as she can switch bodies with someone and control their powers for a time, and yet she hardly has any exploration of her character and feelings. She can’t touch, and that is difficult for her; but we only see that in the context of David and his problems. He creates this world for her to be able to touch him, but nobody else. Does she have friends? Does she have hobbies? Does she have anything, at all, outside of David?
And finally, we get to the Loudermilks. An interesting premise, of two people sharing one body, but it’s also dropped on us, with full expositional force, in the midst of the fourth episode. We’re supposed to feel the devastation of Kerry’s injury, and the heartache that Cary endures; but we don’t know these people, outside of one flashback and a dump truck of exposition. Why do I care about what happens to any of them? I don’t know any of them.
* * * *
The mediocre character work is only a symptom, however, of the larger problem: Legion isn’t about anything.
This was the central problem of Westworld, too. They cobbled together this idea of becoming aware of who you are, and of fighting against social conditioning, and of who people really are when faced with total freedom from consequences. But we never really go in depth in any of it. We take the bits necessary for the philosophical underpinnings of any one episode, which allowed a character to spell out their motivation for that particular action. We discard those in the next episode, and move onto something else, and it’s, again, only in the end when all is revealed and we’re faced with the truth does literally any of it make sense. But it’s a hollow sort of victory; we get what they were going for, but have very little to show for it. We have bits and bobs of ideas, but no conclusions, or even evidence, for one point of view or another.
Legion isn’t about mental health, or dealing with unrealized power, or surviving trauma. It’s not about learning to trust again, or fighting for a cause bigger than yourself. It’s not about personal sacrifice, or falling in love, or the pain that comes with victory. It’s just a bunch of dope-ass visuals and screams; it’s just a red-lit bathroom and Aubrey Plaza (who is unbelievable on this show) grinning manically. Things happen, and they tell us what those things mean, and then we move onto more things like it. It’s your friend describing a cool project, showing you drawings and explaining the lore, and then never finishing. It’s concept art, with voice over.
* * * *
And yet, it’s still interesting.
I don’t love this show, but I am invested in it. I’ve built some continuity in my head, as I did for Westworld, and I’ve been able to glaze over my issues on the first watch. It’s harder now, because either there is less here for me to be invested in, personally, or because I’ve wised up some after Westworld, but either way, Legion leaves me cold more often than I’d like.
I want more, frankly. I want to feel as if this show is going somewhere. I don’t want to have to guess at everything; I don’t want to have to build this world by myself. Syd is interesting, and sad, and funny; Wallace is powerful, and angry, and confused; I want to know more about these people. David’s internal struggle is interesting, sure, but it’s not as interesting as the people around him.
Some will argue that I’m being impatient; some will argue that all of my issues (or most of them) are easily explained by the unreliability of the narrator. Those people would be right. But I’m more interested in the journey than the destination; I want to walk through the forest, and feel the grass beneath my feet, and hear the running water of a nearby stream. I don’t want to get to the shiny thing at the end, and look back, and realize that I was on a treadmill, with a picture of the forest running beside me, tricking me into thinking I was going through somewhere, and something.
I want to feel Cary Loudermilk’s pain; I want to feel the terror David as he’s chased through his mind; I want to care about Dr. Byrd and her weird-ass beat poet husband. I want to care about these people, and I have to work too hard to do so. Legion should scrap the twists after this season, and I think they will, just as I think Westworld will. But they will still have the legacy of a first season that was little more than a preamble for what was to come.
And that kind of sucks.
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