Legion, Season 2, Episode 9: Chapter 17
Episode 9 is a bit of a "once more, with clarity" deal in regards to the climax of the eighth episode, in that it puts everything in context. First up, though, is the huge sudden whacking of poor Clarke in the head by Melanie Bird, and we get a flashback to thirteen days ago, where we get a brief recap of Melanie's only other major role in this season -- talking to Syd about how men controls women by absence. I really wished the show writers didn't need to hammer down that, yes, Melanie has been acting out of character throughout this entire season, broken by Oliver leaving her. And, anyway, Farouk-in-Oliver has apparently been controlling Melanie throughout the entirety of the second season, insidiously by promising a possible reunion in the future. Thus Melanie's implied heavily to be the Shadow King's actual mole as opposed to David Haller being an unreliable narrator.
We do get an acknowledgement between Melanie and Oliver that really feel like the sort of psychedelic nature that Legion loves, talking about "how do I know if I'm real" and all that, and especially in the conversation between Melanie and the very literal-minded Kerry... but ultimately I still think that this plot twist about Melanie could've definitely been done a lot better. Maybe cut out everything about the oil chickens or Fukuyama's computer mind, and focus a bit more on the actual main plot? I dunno.
The other big focus in this episode is Lenny, who goes to a crazy drughouse, is greeted as the Cornflake Girl, goes on a drug-addled orgy before being confronted by the ghost of Amy, who's not quite gone yet. Time will tell if Amy's actually living in Lenny's mind the way that Farouk and Lenny are in David's mind, or if Amy's a true hallucination. In any case, Amy acts as a creepy version of Jiminy Cricket, asking Lenny over and over again if she's a good person, and if she really is going to abandon David after all the talks about how she loves David.
Meanwhile, Kerry and Cary are going on, trusting David's plan to bring the car to a bar, and the two of them have some neat scenes -- Kerry really doesn't understand figures of speech and the pair really aren't exaggerating when they said Kerry only manifests to beat people up. Cary, meanwhile, acknowledges his own mortality, but Kerry's hearing none of it, because she claims she's going to fight Death itself should it claim Cary. Of course, all of this introspection gets interrupted when Lenny arrives, finally deciding to help out in David's master plan thanks to Amy's words, and she gets into the car that Kerry-Cary have prepared... for it to disappear in a flash of bright light and end up in the desolate desert.
Overall, it's a decent episode, all things considered, and one that's genuinely pretty exciting considering the fact that this is the most proactive we've seen David and Division Three in their fight against the Shadow King, and we're counting down to a huge climax.
No comments:
Post a Comment