I'm a simple girl. If a show has anything to do with superheroes, if it's in any way connected to Marvel or DC, there's a good chance I'll watch it. And I'll probably love it, whether it's dark and gritty like Jessica Jones or charming and family-friendly like Supergirl. Legion is no exception to the rule.
I'm not a comic book reader. I didn't know the first thing about the character when I started the episode, and I had no idea what to expect. Having just finished it, I think I can safely say that this show is unlike anything I've watched before. In a good way. I enjoyed every second of the pilot. The cinematography is spectacular. The bright colors, the flashing lights, almost horror-like moments, blurring the lines between reality and David's delusions, scenes of people dancing - because why not?, seemingly random shots and flashbacks, and the general insanity all create a completely unique atmosphere. It's almost hypnotizing, making it impossible for you to look away, drawing you in. The plot isn't the most revolutionary, but the way the show is shot and edited still makes it feel fresh and original. I like the characters and I'm excited to see what will happen next.
I actually really liked this season premiere. The characters of this show are obviously not as seasoned as their Walking Dead counterparts, but their turmoil and confusion and slow fumbling development only add to enjoyment, imo. In the previous season Maddie was the sensible one, now I think they've handed the button to Travis. Alisha is the next level of idiot though, opening her gob and bragging about their super cool boat to a fucking stranger. I hope she'll be the one to suffer the consequences, but usually other people pay for someone else's mistakes. Also I'm really confused why water isn't an infection transmitter that too stats the fever and kill you. Come on, zombies clearly rot and bleed in it and therefore infect it, and people who swim under the surface definitely get it in their eyes. Obviously you need to suspend your disbelief with the entire concept of zombies because their existence (at least in the way they are portrayed here) is entirely disproved by logic, but both shows in this universe have a clear and established rule of how a zombie is able to kill you. It's obviously not the contact of their teeth with your flesh, but the effect of any organic matter belonging to them (in the case of a bite - saliva) getting into a living human' bloodstream. Considering that, the water should be infected and dangerous. That being said, walkers underwater is still kinda cool.
[7.9/10] It’s hard to put my finger on why, but the messed up relationship between Guillermo and Nandor is one of the best on television. What I appreciate about it is that there’s genuine affection on both sides. Guillermo is legitimately committed to Nandor and worries about his well-being. And while Nandor’s not good at showing it and stunted in his self-centered social skills, he genuinely likes Guillermo, as evidenced by Marwa showing such affection to him at the wedding.
But there’s also resentment and expectation there, one founded on a not great power dynamic and years of broken promises that means there’s genuine issues. I don’t know if “Freddie” is the peak of that, but it’s certainly one of the oddest illustrations of that dynamic between them, and also one of the most tragic.
You really feel for Guillermo. He’s so adorably excited about Freddie, his boyfriend from England, coming to visit. To see Nandor screw it up for him, by making this all about him in the way you’d almost expect, is downright tragic.
It’s also profoundly messed up. There’s something so strangely, Vertigo-esque about Nandor liking Freddie so much that he uses one of his wedding gift wishes to turn his wife, Marwa, into an exact replica of Freddie. It’s so creepy for reasons I can’t quite articulate. It feels invasive, violative, and also amusingly absurd given how it results in both couples wandering around doing NYC tourist stuff. In a strange way, the fact that they’re both enchanted by the same man points toward a certain romantic chemistry between Guillermo and Nandor, and I wonder if the show will ever explicitly acknowledge it, or just keep sidling up to it in subtext like this. And not for nothing, the fact that the two Freddies end up together at the end of the day is out and out bizarre.
The impact on Guillermo isn’t, though. His speech to Nandor about how important it was to have one thing that was his, to be so nervous about his first long term relationship and to have myopic Nandor mess that up in such a strange way is heartbreaking. Harvey Guillen does such a masterful job at delivering that sentiment, in his speech to Nandor, in his testimonial about what happened on the stoop, and in his facial expressions upon seeing his Freddie cheating with Nandor’s Freddie. As is so often the case on What We Do in the Shadows, the ridiculousness of the situation is only matched by the genuine emotions that rest beneath it.
Hell, there’s a weird way in which Nandor is mildly sympathetic here. What he does is terrible and frankly kind of gross. But he’s also just a dope who doesn’t really understand. You get the sense that maybe he’s jealous but doesn’t know how to express that, either because he hasn’t wrapped his head around his feelings about Guillermo or just because he covets someone else in a happy relationship. His misaimed efforts to make amends are naively sweet in their way. He’s just a big dummy who can’t fully comprehend what he did wrong, but in a weird way, means well. The fact that he sends his Freddie away represents that idea, and also provides a convenient and humane way to write Marwa off the show, which I was wondering how they would pull off.
Otherwise, in the pure comedy department, Lazlo taking Colin Jr. on the road was a hoot. For one thing, Matt Berry just spouting off vampire pun band names is an absolute delight. The puns are great and the delivery is fantastic. At the same time, Colin Jr. instantly turning into a teenager, giving up showtunes in favor of Papa Roach and Evanescence, declaring that he hates Lazlo, and seeming bored and disinterested in everything is a little on the nose, but still very funny.
The only part of this one I didn’t jive with was the Nadja story. I did get a kick out of the “celebrity special”, and Jim Jaramusch, of all people, almost stole the show with his low-key line-reads and obliviousness to his friends getting eaten. But Nadja hitting the sauce too hard and turning into a mess/yelling at child performers wasn’t fun or funny. That said, I guess Colin Jr. growing up provides them a good out for the nightclub, so on a practical plot level, I can appreciate that.
Overall, the insane but affecting Nandor/Guillermo story carries this one, with the Lazlo/Colin Jr. subplot bringing the laughs, and the Nadja subplot dragging the proceedings down a bit.
La...la...la...la...la
Now that I've lost everything to you
You say you wanna start something new
And it's breaking my heart you're leaving
Baby I'm grieving
And if you wanna leave take good care
Hope you have a lot of nice things to wear
A lot of nice things turn bad out there
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
I'll always remember you like a child girl
You know I've seen a lot of what the world can do
And it's breaking my heart in two
'Cause I never want to see you sad, girl
Don't be a bad girl
But if you wanna leave take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
Just remember there's a lot of bad and beware
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
And I'll always remember you like a child girl
La...la...la...la...la...baby, I love you.
But if you wanna leave take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
Just remember there's a lot of bad and beware
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
And I'll always remember you like a child girl, oh, yeah.
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile, yeah,
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
And I'll always remember you like a child girl
Brett: "In the '80s everyone has a clique. Nerds, jocks..."
[Nerds and jocks laughing. Mayors laughing maliciously.]
Brett: "... evil mayors who wanna tear down the rec center."Kid: "We're not answering any questions from adults, not until this town lifts the ban on dancing."
Glenn: "I had to stay three hours late to supervise the brats I sent to detention, but then they kept coming of age!"
Andre: "This town is racist as hell. Everyone keeps bowing at me. A kid challenged me to a karate fight, and everytime I say something, somebody rings a gong."
Gigi: "Mmm, mmm, mmm. I thought I raised you better than this."
Brett: "Okay, Brett, it's no big deal. You just wanna stay here longer with your friends. Just a couple spritzes of Nostalgia Max, and they will love it here as much as you do."
Blockbuster Man: "What do you want to see?"
Reagan: "Everything."Myc: "Seriously?" [Chuckles.] "No wonder your dad left."
Kid: "That's it!" [Tires screech.] "Fuck you, Myc!" [Myc flies off bicycle and soars like E.T.]Reagan: "Brett, what's with your whole 'Firestarter', Slimer vibe?"
Myc: "Tragic, dead at 40."
Reagan: "Hey, fuck you."
Review
What a predictable yet great episode. No, seriously, the entire story is surprising. Actually, it's what "WandaVision" should've been but just wasn't. This is great. More of this please.
[7.7/10] I loved about 80% of this one, and it only gets points knocked off for ending the whole thing on such a miserable note. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an episode soar so beautifully for most of its runtime, only to crash and burn at the very end like this.
Suffice it to say, putting the vamps and Guillermo into an HGTV-style reality show is a hoot. I thought it was a little odd that they brought in such talented comedians like the Sklar brothers to do the little ads for the home-renovation show that Lazlo watched regularly. It makes sense now! And they kill it! Both of them absolutely nail the saccharine sunniness and hollow positivity of those sorts of televised cheese merchants. There’s an “I’m your server at TGI Fridays”-esque faux-enthusiasm to everything that makes for an amusing juxtaposition of the darkness and vulgarity that pervades the vamps’ abode.
I’ll confess, I haven't seen a ton of those HGTV shows, but WWDitS absolutely nails the tone and rhythms of the few I have seen. The forced taglines, the false drama of the act breaks, the silly swooping shots, and the goofy graphics are all done to perfection. You don’t have to be an expert in this sort of television to appreciate the attention to detail in the presentation and how it exposes how ridiculous this sort of thing is by merely replicating it.
But it also injects the peculiar ridiculousness of the vamps in all of this. Lazlo as a starstruck superfan tickled my ribs. Nadja being against the whole thing until it nets her a golden toilet made me chuckle. Nandor being so amazed by a “Home Is Where the Wine Is” sign is adorable. Guillermo being against the whole thing for very practical reasons of avoiding exposure, until he realizes he can spin things to improve his “hidey hole” is a great bit. And I love the humor of Nadja hypnotizing the crew, editors, and other nerds not to notice they’re vampires or that one of the hosts was murdered in the first scene.
I also enjoy the subplot about Nandor trying to build a mancave to get away from Marwa. There’s genuine insight to the idea that having someone who likes all the same things as you sounds good on paper, but that in practice, having someone who never challenges you or complements you, only matches you, would be exhausting and unsatisfying. I also appreciate him being hoisted by his own petard, where the fact that he wants a mancave where he can be away from her means she wants a mancave where she can be away from him. It’s a nice twist on the whole thing.
But god, I’ve never liked Devious Simon, or Nick Kroll’s whole shtick for that matter. I can appreciate the absurdity of turning this whole production into a shaggy dog story where it was all a ruse to get Lazlo’s witch skin hat. I have to tell you, though, I find Kroll’s overdoing it as a vampire exhausting, and the “humor” of his parade of hangers on to be dead on arrival. There’s some more funny digs at home renovation shows, about how they’re only fit for people half paying attention in hospitals and airports (which is, candidly, where I’ve seen them). But delivered in this package, the whole thing goes over about as well as a big wet fart.
Overall, I love this one as a format bender and in its ability to mesh the show’s sensibilities with the nonsense of reality television, but the limp, annoying ending brings an otherwise quality episode down considerably.
Streets on Lock follows on immediately from the previous episode with Earn and Alfred in custody for the shooting incident. The episode focuses on the different and equally disheartening experiences of both men in the hours after their arrest. Alfred's bail is posted relatively quickly and he joins Darius, ready to return to normal. Things have changed, though—the shooting itself has vastly increased his popularity among Atlantans. A police officer collars him to have a selfie taken for Instagram, boasting about arresting Gucci Mane, seemingly unaware of the incongruity of this. Rumours abound and he benefits from upgraded food delivery and an increased sense of respect. On the other hand, children are imitating him, fighting over who gets to be Paper Boi when playing with toy guns. A local mother's attitude towards him changes completely when she realises he is famous and he has the dawning realisation that his fame is now such that the hangers-on are appearing.
Earn, on the other hand, hasn't been processed by the system yet and has to endure a Kafkaesque wait. He observes the ableism, rank transmisogyny and inhumanity of the American prison system, even when people are just being held waiting. There is humour here, but also an inescapable and quite profound sadness: this is a country where people aren't cared for or valued, only treated as an after-thought at best and a menace to be subjugated at all costs at worst. There is no sense of release for either men, even when their ostensible freedom comes. Another mistake and they would end up right back in there.
Notes
Reagan: "My latest invention. Behold, the Productivitron."
Brett: "Oh God, robot arms!"
Glenn: "Christ Almighty!""Snake Gyllenhaal"
Mr Mothman: "Hi, everyone. Welcome to Inhuman Resources. I'm Mr Mothman. I'm a Mothman."
Mr Mothman: "Elliot Mothman, you need to finish your master's and get the fuck out of this office."
"WELCOME TO YALE THE HARVARD OF NOT EEING HARVARD"
[Camera pans underground.]
"WELCOME TO ACTUAL YALE"Reagan: "Who's an antisocial weirdo now? Not the girl who invented robot arms to hug strangers. Oh my God, I sound insane."
Barb Shrike: "She gets it. And I absolutely love your skin. How do you get it that scaly?"
Reagan: "Hey, fuck you... using moisturiser! The drier the better, right, baby?"
Zarthax Griswold Walton: "We reptoids have had a great decade. Thanks to propaganda in the media, we have made society more tolerant of our kind, from the Geico Gecko to 'The Shape of Water'."
[Lizard Guillermo Del Toro gives thanks.]
Zarthax: "We even got K. Rool in 'Smash!'"Reptoid: "Come out with your hands up, you pink-fleshed motherfuckers!"
Glenn: I plead the Fifth and the Second!"
[Takes out shotgun.]Mothman: "She's on her 95th HR violation. But who's counting? Me, I'm counting. Mr Mothman is counting."
Rand: "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me 'Godzilla 2000'."
Review
This episode is actually good—yay!
I just can't understand why EVERYONE is lying for Troy. I just... he isn't that much of an excellent fighter to be so worth of lying again and again to your family.
This was the best episode so far in the series. These two last eps were amazing with tension and character development mainly for Alicia (it was a major relief to not see Madison). She starts to develop in a way I was hoping from the beginning. Immediately I was afraid that maybe Madison "saving her" at the end will turn everything back and we would see child-Alicia back but it was so powerful for her to stand up to her mum and say all the things she said. Im just sad that it didnt make any change for Madison. I was surprised she didnt make her go with them at any cost but well... she isnt the favorite child for her so. Still somewhat pissed off at Nick for going after her but I cant have it all and I am pleased with what Ive got from this episode.
In the future I need more leader-Alicia bc we had that for a moment and it was tense and raw and real but I just wanted someone to live to spread the word that Alicia can make decisions for herself and other, good decisions not like her family. I will not even mention that I want her to know that her brother killed her bae... she's so better without them.
The premise of Atlanta is an intriguing one: rather than focusing on the well-publicised excess of those rappers who reach the peak of their careers, we instead follow the travails of an up-and-coming rapper, Paper Boi, and the people around him. This offers a unique opportunity to examine various issues like the treatment of and lack of opportunities for black people in America, the class structure and the ways it grinds people down who are simply trying to survive and the liminal space occupied by those who aren't quite famous. This all sounds like serious stuff, and it is, but what marks Atlanta out from, say, David Simon's material is the wry, humorous tone it takes, mixing cynicism with a subversive and at times surreal sense of the absurd.
Anchoring the show is Donald Glover as Earn. I have mixed feelings about Glover; he's often an irrepressible and charming screen presence but also feels like one of those oversaturated media presences that throws so much at the wall that only a little sticks. Thankfully, he's on the best form I've seen him on here—Earn feels like one of life's amiable losers, crestfallen but cheerful as he is casually discarded by those closest to him. That isn't to say that he's powerless; he manoeuvres past his cousin Alfred's suspicions about his motives and the racist white staff at a local radio station to establish himself as Paper Boi's manager and give himself a chance at something better. This, for Earn, is the so-called 'American dream' and it will be interesting to see how he has to compromise himself and everyone around him as, inevitably, the 'dream' forces everyone to.
All four leads to a good job of giving a sense of character, even in this short episode, and all of the elements to create a compelling scenario fall into place nicely. It's stylishly made with Hiro Murai giving the episode a sense of craft and care that will hopefully continue through the next nine episodes. I'm excited to see how Atlanta uses its central premise to explore the weightier questions it hints at in this episode and whether it can continue to do so while expanding on the inner lives of its central characters.
Wow, what a good episode. Such a departure from the formula of the show. I love when shows do this. There was no action in the episode at all. It was all character stuff.
Seeing the people from the 1950s and their values contrasted with modern day was really good, and how some values are outdated while others need a return. I liked Jack's interaction with John because Jack knew completely what it was like back then. I would have liked more interaction, but i liked the ending with them. I liked the girl from the 50s and her chat with Gwen about sex. I loved how awkward and contradictory Gwen was. She got indirectly roasted in that interaction. The relationship with Owen and that woman though was probably the best part of the episode. Seeing him fall for her. How scared he was of that. You really felt for Owen in this episode, and you really felt for him at the end. This episode showed that you CAN write about sex and sexuality, it's just the way you do it, and here it was pretty tasteful and worked. Shame Tosh and Ianto didn't have anything to do.
Seeing the three 1950's people struggle to cope with modern times, and their reactions at everything was really well done. You connected with them and felt their emotion and understood their confusion and awe at modern day life.
Well, I guess I'm glad to see that Madison is continuing to make hilariously bad choices. At this point, I find her character utterly intolerable. Alicia's right - all her back channeling only serves to make it harder and harder for the Clarks to survive.
Speaking of Alicia, I'm glad we got to see a little more of her than normal in this episode! I am still hoping/suspecting she is going to come out on top of all this. She seems to be the only one with something even approaching a solid head on her shoulder.
Nick's face when Troy thanked him during the shootout in the house made me laugh out loud. Where were Jake/Alicia/everyone else during that scene though? Why did it take Nick so long to realize he would have to take Troy down? How did he know Troy wouldn't just blow him away when he told him he killed Jeremiah? Why was Taqa so upset that Nick stayed in the house with Troy? I thought it was pretty clear to everyone but Troy that Nick was just trying to talk him down.
Anyway, Troy is inevitably gonna come back, right? Like there's no way he's gonna stay away.
An episode that doesn't have a good reputation. But i found it alright. It's the first major exploration of Ianto, even though his character is much connected to the cyberwoman in terms of his development, but it's alright. I thought it was pretty good though how the cyberwoman connects to an earlier doctor who story, when the cybermen tried to invade earth. It's nice to see some actual consequences from that, instead of not at all like is often the case, or there will be some consequences but not NEAR enough to be realistic. All for the sake of the episodic storytelling is why the consequences of major stories are pretty light.
There was a nice body horror element with the failed cyberman upgrade, with metal pieces sticking out of his face and body. Seeing the fear of Jack about the potential of the cyberwoman was nice. But yeah the cyberwoman had a lot of exposed skin, especially her face, so they could have shot and killed her easily. Ianto should have been the one to kill her.
In this show, i don't like how flawed the main characters are. I don't mind flawed characters, but in this show already and later they go too far. I get how this job drives them to the extreme, and it's about showing how flawed humans can be, but it's too edgy and goes too far.
