Animation
Good Times
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
They said David Haller was crazy.
Suffering from schizophrenia, he was shipped to the Clockworks psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt and spent six long years there.
But David’s not crazy. (Or, perhaps, not just crazy.) He’s gifted.
You see, he’s a mutant—like Wolverine or Storm or even Professor X, David’s biological dad. Now he’s working with a special team dedicated to, y’know, saving the world and stuff.
Maybe.
But is it possible that David’s both gifted and crazy? Could it be that along with all the dizzying powers locked inside of him, there’s something else locked away, too? David sees its (their?) presence sometimes. It often happens when David explores his dark memories. Like those of a deeply troubled youngster from a book he read as a child, The World’s Angriest Boy in the World. Or images of a fat man with glowing eyes. Or hands clawing and crawling though fissures in a wall …
No, there’s something more at work in David’s troubled soul. Something disturbing. It’s not clear that his memories are really memories at all. It’s as if David’s mind is actually a series of nesting dolls, each bigger than the last. And when she reaches the final one, who’s to say what she’ll find inside.
Like about half the entertainment world seems to be these days, Legion is based on a Marvel character—the troubled, complex antihero of the same name. So perhaps it’s only fitting that the show can also be described as similarly troubled and complex.
This is no Avengers-style smash-bang-boom treat for the eyes. It has neither the relatively light fun of ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., nor the shadowy noir of Daredevil on Netflix. No, Legion feels more like a straight-up horror story.
Everything about the series—from its vaguely ’60s-ish trappings to its Nazi-like villains to the tortured and torturing demons lurking in David’s own mind—is meant to keep audiences perpetually off-balance and uneasy. And it doesn’t help that, as is the case with Mr. Robot, we can’t necessarily trust our own narrator/protagonist, David. So we’re left to wonder, Can anyone else?
David does have deep affection for at least one person in his life: Syd Barrett, David’s girlfriend and a fellow mutant who, awkwardly, can never touch anyone without swapping consciousness with that person. (They have found a loophole for that predicament, though, meaning they, ahem, have very intimate on-camera relations.)
Legion is well-written and absolutely bonkers—a show that took a left turn at Twin Peaks, took a few pointers from Radiohead videos and just kept right on going. Visually, it can be quite stunning, oscillating from coolly clinical imagery to dreamlike beauty to nightmarish madness (particularly when depicting the unsettling milieu of The World’s Angriest Boy in the World).
But it can be a mess, too. And this show isn’t above flashing some skin, either, including fleshy shots of people’s sides and rears. We see David sexually engaged with Syd and other paramours (either in flashbacks or dreams). The accompanying movements and sounds can be quite explicit.
And remember, Legion is a horror story at heart, though one that aims at being more psychologically disturbing than physically disgusting. It does not—at least at this juncture—wallow in blood and gore like The Walking Dead or gleefully spray it around like American Horror Story. But the visuals can be shocking nonetheless.
Oh, and hey, the language ain’t so hot here, either.
As superhero stories grow ever more entrenched in the culture, storytellers are seeking new ways to appeal to different sorts of fans. Indeed, Legion barely feels like a superhero tale at all. But that bold experimentation can come with a dark side. Comic book-based shows like this one don’t cater to kids anymore. And that can lead to content that’s troubling for any age.
David wakes from, apparently, a year of being “away,” somewhere in his own mind. He discovers he’s now a part of something called Division 3—sort of a mutant-powered strike force that, currently, is trying to track down the body of the Shadow King. But it seems as though the King may have a bit of a hold on David and could be twisting the man’s mind for his (its?) own nefarious ends. (Buckle in: Things are about to get strange.)
David and Syd renew their acquaintance by having virtual sex. We see a lot of literal skin, including his rear. (We also see both of them in elaborate underwear.) They have intercourse in several different locations. Later, David apparently gets naked again (though we don’t see anything critical, other than his torso and a bit of his hips) to float in a watery concoction that’s 5% strawberry juice. (He refers to it as a giant daiquiri.) David also walks around in a towel. He engages in a something of a dance-off with Shadow King minions, including a demonic entity disguised as one of his old friends. The entity, which is female, somewhat erotically dances with both male and female supporting dancers. Later, someone greets David with the words, “Hey, sexy.”
Division 3’s leader, Admiral Fukuyama, wears a basket on his/her head and communicates through four women with mustaches and Prince Valiant haircuts. They’re apparently one entity, and they describe themselves as “the Machine That Bleeds.” But becoming that entity was allegedly very painful, we hear, described as “the volcano puncturing the molten core.”
In an apparent visual metaphor, baby chicks (representing healthy ideas) hatch from eggs, but are then killed. Another egg baby—this one an inky, misshapen blob representing a delusion—eats a bloody chick corpse. Furthering the metaphor, we hear the story of a man who suddenly came to believe that his leg was not his own. We see him stab his own leg. Then later, in a blood-spattered bathtub partly obscured by a shower curtain, we see the man in shadow labor to cut his own leg off. There’s talk of killing people.
Characters drink martinis. We see David undergo some sort of shock-like torture or therapy, either in the past or in the future, or maybe in the present. There’s talk of the astral plane. Someone speculates that “the devil is some guy named Lucifer who beat up kids for their Lunchables,” but whose reputation grew over a few hundred years. Someone says “b–ch.”
In an effort to track down David’s sister, Amy, Melanie decides to go deeper into David’s “therapy.” During those sessions, she (and we) learn that David was a junkie. And Syd, who also gets a chance to dive into David’s apparent “memories,” comes face to face with a monstrous being with yellow eyes.
The show begins with a gratuitous shot of David and other mutants gathered in Melanie’s facility, showering. (We see a man’s rear end and unclothed women from the side, with the camera lingering on their hips and middle section.) In one of David’s memories, he has noisy, passionate sex with an unseen woman underneath him (though they’re covered in that scene). David and Syd recall a time when they switched bodies: David admits to fondling Syd’s breasts, while Syd says she masturbated. (Both activities are indicated via gesture, not word). But in that same conversation, David talks about how nice it was simply to hold her hand.
David, in some other state of mind, also talks with his dead best friend, Lenny, who insinuates (using crass language and hand motions) that Amy is being repeatedly raped by her captors. David eventually sees his sister in this unreal, dreamlike state, and Amy confirms Lenny’s information. Meanwhile, back in real life Amy has been tortured, with leeches plastered over her face and arms. (We later see the welts.)
We also glimpse some disturbing images in David’s memories and subconscious: The titular character from The World’s Angriest Boy in the World comes to life and stalks a childlike David and Syd. Melanie walks through David’s “mind” (depicted as a largish house) and begins reading the same book, in which the main character decapitates his mother. (We see the boy gleefully holding up a cartoon head; on the next page, a city burns.) The book slams on Melanie’s hand of its own volition, almost like a brick. When she pulls it free, her fingers are grotesquely broken and twisted in a half-dozen ways. (When she later awakens, however, Melanie’s hand is uninjured.) David is subjected to some injections.
Syd thinks that her ability proves we all have souls. “We’re more than just this,” she says. In flashback, we see David and Lenny get high, giggling on the floor. David admits he was under the influence most of the time back then, and we also see him rob someone’s home, presumably to raise money for drugs.
Characters use the s-word once, along with one use each of “a–” and “b–ch.” They also misuse God’s name three times.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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