Legion

[shapinglight]

Okay, admittedly I am not going to be around much online this week due to this and that, but I just finished watching Legion season 1 today, and it is absolutely brilliant.

Would love to talk about it with you all. Anyone else watched this?

Comments

[saraqael]

I loved S1 of Legion. I skipped the first episode because I was feeling burned out on tv/movies inspired by comics, but then I saw part of the second episode and was so impressed that I immediately went back to watch it from the start. The show has beautiful production values and the acting was all excellent.

[sueworld]

Thats exactly what happened to me. Now I'm hooked. :D

[rebcake]

I haven't started yet, but MiAmor has and I think we'll start it after we finish "Expanse". Anything with Jemaine is probably going to be okay with me.

Did you see "What We Do In the Shadows"? I think it's one of the streaming things, and it's pretty funny. The director is doing the next Thor movie, so that should be interesting.

[saraqael]

Were you familiar with the comics' version of the character before you saw the show? I remember when the character was introduced, so I was already familiar with his madness and with the Shadow King.

[restfield]

I've seen it and loved it. Should be the series of the year.
As Jessica Jones already proved, superhero series can get amazing when it's not really about superheroes.

[shapinglight]

Yes, everyone is just suberb. And the look of the show is just so well done. The entire thing has this very vividly coloured sort of LSD trip look to it.

[shapinglight]

I was familiar with the character. I read the original Claremont/Sikiewicz comics the series is based on (in fact, I probably still have them somewhere). I remember a character - one of David's alter egos - who was very like the Lennie character, but I don't think she was an aspect of the Shadow King. David had lots of personalities lurking in his psyche, as I recall.

[shapinglight]

Hey there.

:Waves:

I haven't seen What We Do in the Shadows but I would like to. If it's available on one of the streaming services, I haven't seen it, but then I haven't thought to look.

Netflix has season 1 of The Expanse. I must watch it. Lots of people have said how good it is.

I'm pretty sure you're going to love Legion.

[shapinglight]

:)

As Jessica Jones already proved, superhero series can get amazing when it's not really about superheroes.

Yes, Jessica Jones is far and away the best of those Marvel things on Netflix. Even so, there are things in it I'm not too keen on - principally the cop turned super-soldier. Didn't like that plot thread at all. Legion, on the other hand, didn't put a foot wrong, IMO.

[restfield]

Yeah, JJ's supersoldier plotline was all kinds of meh. What's worse, it seemed to be an idea for the sequel's big bad... I really hope it's not...

On the Legion not putting a foot wrong... I've seen people on Tumblr criticizing it for the whole "I'm not a schizophrenic, I just have a mental parazite!" thing. Well, at least they saw it that way. For me it looked much more complicated.

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, and I found the telling of it more interesting than the tale. The writing and directing choices were intriguing (the casting was also good). I ended up watching the entire season in two weeks.

I really appreciate the option of being able to move onto the next episode when there is a fascinating cliffhanger (those work really well on me), though this is one of several shows that begs the question what its fandom might be like if people had no choice but to wait over months to see the whole thing rather than, as I did, barreling through all but the last two episodes in a matter of days.

[yourlibrarian]

I'll be curious to see what you think of The Expanse. I have S2 slowly accumulating on the DVR but Mike wants to see it as well so we've yet to begin it due to his schedule.

[sueworld]

Yeah, although I don't remember much about the comic version I do remember some of what went on. I know this version of David comes across as far 'nicer'. *g*

[sueworld]

Well imo Tumblr can go f*ck It's self. I'm so bloody sick of their moaning and humourless nit picking.

[shapinglight]

I think David in the comics is pretty unformed. He doesn't have the chance to be nice, or not nice. He does have this mad hair that sticks straight up.

There was a Legion comic recently. I haven't read all the issues, but the ones I did read were quite surreal.

[shapinglight]

Now I've finished Legion I can start it, I guess. I just have to find the time.

[shapinglight]

I've seen people on Tumblr criticizing it for the whole "I'm not a schizophrenic, I just have a mental parazite!" thing. Well, at least they saw it that way. For me it looked much more complicated.

Oh definitely. Doesn't David himself actually say that, just because I have this parasite in my head doesn't mean I'm not schizophrenic? I'm pretty sure he says that.

As for Tumblr, I think they just look for stuff to get outraged about.

[shapinglight]

The writing and directing choices were intriguing (the casting was also good).

It was terrific. As for Dan Stevens, I honestly didn't recognise him. He looks nothing like he did in Downton Abbey (of which I only watched the first two series before getting bored and wandering off).

[yourlibrarian]

I found Expanse started out quite slow -- I stuck with it mostly because of recommendations. But it does start coming together at the end of S1 and I thought the scale of the story was promising.

Which is another thing to consider with Legion, its pacing. In some ways I think that being able to binge watch it helped because some parts could have upped the annoyance factor by seeming repetitive or delaying forward movement. But otherwise I thought the way it revealed things was quite good (though I was pretty confused by the indication that his father had been in the facility with him, both unrecognized and seeming too young).

[shapinglight]

(though I was pretty confused by the indication that his father had been in the facility with him, both unrecognized and seeming too young).

Huh? I missed that bit. Which episode was that in?

I know what you mean about binge watching. I can't say I did that in the sense of watching the episodes back to back, but I managed one a day and it worked well like that. Watching week by week might not have had the same impact.

Which is interesting. It suggests to me that some TV shows are now being made to cater to that style of watching rather than episodically, even if they are being shown episodically. Is there some algorithm involved that program makers use that tell them whether people are likely to watch in real time or record to watch later?

[yourlibrarian]

I think it was 2 or 3 episodes before the end, he was the guy who was drooling. Didn't Dr. Bird find him in a closet of David and Amy's old house?

Yes, even watching an episode daily is different from doing it weekly (and, especially, not having to wait in between seasons). I just did binge watch 2 seasons of a show in a matter of days and I suspect I missed much more than had it been a few episodes in a year's time (like with Sherlock).

If there is such an algorithm I don't think it could be used without a great deal of data on a captive audience. I think any changes are actually about money and not viewers. Repeat viewing was always thought of when producing shows, at least by the 60s, but the assumption was it would be done either in reruns or through syndication (where you can also watch an episode daily). But it was never assumed that people would do appointment viewing, even though this was always true for some small fraction of viewers. So very few shows had any kind of seriality and very few had any kind of "previously" or "mission statement" at the beginning (at least outside of the title credits themselves -- such as for Star Trek or the Bionic Woman) because it was assumed (and is still true) that most people watching TV do so erratically and without much attention.

But now even though syndication is massively important in funneling new viewers to shows that are still airing, people can and will control their own viewing pattern through the secondary markets of streaming or DVDs. It used to be of little concern to producers as anything other than extra money. But now secondary viewing may decide what stays on the air because overall viewing has dropped so much. So I think it's only partly places like Netflix making whole seasons available at once for first-time viewers that's changing how things are made. That's still only a small fraction of production, there are still seasonal gaps, and only some people binge watch shows. I think it's mostly the need to recapture revenue that's affecting storytelling.

[restfield]

The drooling guy was the nameless telekinetic guy from their team. The Eye stabbed him into coma and hid him in the closet.

[yourlibrarian]

Ah thanks. See, there's one of the downsides of rushing through a season -- it's easy to forget things or get confused because there's less processing time.

[dragonyphoenix]

Oooh, loved What We Do in the Shadows! I borrowed the DVD from the library.

[yourlibrarian]

Have you seen this vid yet? I thought it did a nice job of reviewing S1 and its style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj-Y8IJelGA