‘Legion,’ Season 1 Finale: The Dork Side of the Moon

This recap is excellent. The cast was outstanding and the show had many fine moments but was extremely uneven. The finale bordered on boring. The opening sequence was way too long and unneccesary and the resolution with Farouk unimaginative. There were some episodes I loved and I thought a lot of the story telling was imaginative but too often it relied on other material. Art imitating art does not convey new ideas. So, it hit a double but showed enough promise that I kept waiting for a home run. Maybe next season

It's astonishing me to me that a professional (NYT, no less!) reviewer would fail to acknowledge the cast in this show in the finale review, but harp on other fundamentally less significant story-telling motifs instead. This sterling ensemble is as good as it gets for TV; oh, wait. "Fargo" is as good as it gets. This is just a sliver shy of that. You can fault Mr. Hawley's execution all you want, but you gotta give it up to his casting. Personally, I can't stand most comic book adaptations. They are uniformly limp and tepid. This, however, twists the genre expectations just enough to make it fresh, like the prologue with Clark. Writers of comic book material use so many shortcuts (read "are lazy") because their audience understands the conventions and why reinvent the wheel. But a guy burned over 40% of his body and his recovery? Yeah, not a part of the canon. Without question, the best show I've seen of the 2016-2017 season, and I've seen most of 'em.

"post-credits stinger in which David is abducted by a floating mechanical orb"

Reminded me of The Outer Limits episode "Don't Open Till Doomsday"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Open_Till_Doomsday

I can't imagine how any review could fail to note the tour-de-force performance by Aubrey Christina Plaza as Lenny. Whenever she has been on screen in this show, I can't take my eyes off her, she's simply magnetic. She's a marvelous villain, and as we all know, the villain is the best role. She's got a lot more resources as an actress and I hope she gets opportunities to show us what she can do.

By the way, what is Oliver's "power?" The ablity to blithely, timelessly and expertly float through our fraught existence in a 70's psychedelic bubble? If so, I like it.

I watched all 8 episodes and by the end, took the writer's suggestion and FF'd through many a repetitive, boring, and essentially, trivial visual. I get that the producers want to reach for "surreal" but I don't like it. I don't cross reference musical backgrounds and/or lyrics with past horror films or analyze the shots in the show to compare with past TV classics. I just would like a somewhat coherent story. It's there, underneath a lot of sweet, gooey filler. But I'm losing my ability to stomach it.

Saving grace is the casting - David is good, I really admire Bill Irwin as half of the Loudermilks, Clement as Oliver Bird is amazing and who doesn't enjoy every second of Jean Smart on the TV? Just a very strong ensemble. Wish the story telling was as good.

I thought the segment showing what Clark had gone through since ep. 1 was terrific. If it had been shown within a couple of minutes, it wouldn't have had much impact, but as it was, it gave the character a lot of depth and realism. Suddenly we weren't in weird astral planes with fantastic powers and disembodied villains, we were just in a regular guy's life, who'd gotten severely burned.

I think it was important to demonstrate who Division 3 were and why they were doing what they're doing. Clark isn't some supervillain, he's human, and he's fighting for humanity's survival, as he points out. He's the guy on our side, whereas we've sympathized with David and the mutants this whole time.

The rest was good, although not quite as mind-blowing as earlier eps, and it logically wrapped up the conflict. I liked how it left things, with Oliver possessed and off to wreak havoc, with Clark starting to come over to the mutants' side, and with David captured, in all likelihood by Division 3, unless there's a new threat coming. I enjoyed this so much I'm planning on watching it all the way through again before the next season starts, particularly to catch all the tiny references to older movies and such.

And Mr. Collins, I get that you don't like this, and in all seriousness, if you want, I could write the season 2 recaps for free. I'd go for more objectivity than in my comments. The NYT has my email so if you'd like to accept my offer, please feel free to let me know.

Sean FWIW, I could not disagree more. The finale was character inventive and visually creative from beginning to end. It is also playful -- even camp -- about the genre and that seems to have gone over your head a bit?

Endless quick edits is probably the very worst things to happen to action and super hero films, starting in the late 90s. So I had to frown when you said that action scenes should be faster paced. Just watch the batman vs superman flick if you want more of that? :)

I'm surprised that Collins, who recently wrote an article about "Legion's" horror film references, forgot to mention the latest of David Lynch's homages in the final episode. As Syd looks away from the mirror, indicating to us that Farouk has momentarily taken place in her body, the shot is an almost perfect replica of the same one in "Twin Peaks'" final episode, which indicates Bob is now a part of Dale Cooper. "Twin Peaks" was infamously cancelled after that second season. Nice to know that the same will not happen to "Legion".

Legion and Stranger Things are the final coffin nails in my movie-going life.

The last movie the husband and I went to see was The Force Awakens - mostly for zeitgeist/nostalgia. Legion and Stranger Things are just as visually inventive, smarter, and more entertaining than anything “Hollywood” has to offer - and bonus for not having to spend an insane amount of money on tickets at a soulless corporate multiplex. Hooray!

The only cinematic events I see actually enticing us to go to a theater are, say, the original Godzilla in Japanese, or a Miyazaki festival, at the Castro.

Sincere thanks to Noah Hawley and the tremendous cast of Legion - Emmys all around, especially for editing and sound.

Very entertaining show. The sphere capture at the end again calls out to The Prisoner. A coherent ending for a trippy show that side steps the failures of Lost, Twin Peaks, and to a lesser degree True Detective S1.

The critique that the show does not have depth - if your looking for depth in comic-inspired TV, well, your looking at the wrong place - to Quote Handy from The Tick "Read a Book!".