Legion 2.04.
Apr. 27th, 2018 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI’m at a conference right now, with minimum online time, so, in all brevity: the one where David spends most of the episode in Syd’s head.
Syd was the character who I thought for the longest time existed only in David’s imagination in s1, not least because their romance-by-montage in the pilot seemed so obvious wish fulfillment. She became more “real” to me later in the season, but still less so than the other characters. Does this episode change that? Yes and no. It’s certainly the most extensive look at Syd’s inner life we’ve had so far, and it’s very artfully done, by which I don’t mean the visual style (though of course that’s per usual good, too), but the approach, which shows us key events from her past from literally different angles, as David demonstrates telepathy doesn’t necessarily mean actually being able to figure out your loved one’s emotions and thoughts. (Btw, I do think this show has the niftiest visualisation of telepathy I’ve ever come across because of the way it depicts mind-scenarios.) Though he tries. There’s a meta level to this where the various interpretations he comes up with and which Syd denies - it’s about being lonely, or the need for love, or the fear of rejection for one’s darker side - are all standard narrative tropes in such situations.
(Sidenote: David being a telepath and thus able to provide Syd with a love life is basically the one reason the show has given us for her commitment to him, but that’s not what the episode is about.)
The final explanation he comes up with and which she agrees to - that it’s about survival - is also interesting in terms of what on earth Future Syd is up to with her insistence that Faroukh should get his body back. Re: The Life and Times of Sydney, one inescapably notes that the depiction of events gets darker every time, and also goes from Sydney-as-victim (of bullying) to Sydney using her mutation to switch bodies in order to physically hit back at her accusers, then immediately frame the obnoxious boy who earlier tried to kiss her for it, to Sydney basically committing double rape by switching bodies with her mother, then having sex with her mother’s unknowing boyfriend. That David early on confidently declares there’s nothing he could find out about Syd what would stop him from loving her (not least because he’s a screw-up himself) reminded me that in s1 Syd gets a long look at his past as well, which, and not just because of the Shadow King infestation plagueing him since toddlerdom, contains some ugly episodes which don’t seem to deterr her. It’s the kind of thing that sounds good in fanfic - I love you no matter what - but if the declaration doesn’t also come with “but I’m not going to let you harm other people because of this”, it’s also enabling and abdication of ethics. Young Syd being, well, starved for touching, curious about sex, resentful of everyone, including her mother, having it all makes the motivation for her action understandable, but the action is still rape of both her mother (who didn’t consent to the body switch) and the boyfriend (who had no idea whom he was actually having sex with and was as horrified as her mother thereafter), and she didn’t do it spontanously, she had time to think about it.
In other news (aka the bit outside of Sydney’s mind): Cary and Kerry are fine (for now), yay! And everyone else woke up from the chattering coma post-Monk, which, hm, is interesting, because if that’s not it, what then causes the apocalypse Future Syd hails from? (My money is still on David and that Future Syd wants a change to the timeline where he’s killed by the Shadow King instead of killing Faroukh because, well: it’s all about survival.)
Syd was the character who I thought for the longest time existed only in David’s imagination in s1, not least because their romance-by-montage in the pilot seemed so obvious wish fulfillment. She became more “real” to me later in the season, but still less so than the other characters. Does this episode change that? Yes and no. It’s certainly the most extensive look at Syd’s inner life we’ve had so far, and it’s very artfully done, by which I don’t mean the visual style (though of course that’s per usual good, too), but the approach, which shows us key events from her past from literally different angles, as David demonstrates telepathy doesn’t necessarily mean actually being able to figure out your loved one’s emotions and thoughts. (Btw, I do think this show has the niftiest visualisation of telepathy I’ve ever come across because of the way it depicts mind-scenarios.) Though he tries. There’s a meta level to this where the various interpretations he comes up with and which Syd denies - it’s about being lonely, or the need for love, or the fear of rejection for one’s darker side - are all standard narrative tropes in such situations.
(Sidenote: David being a telepath and thus able to provide Syd with a love life is basically the one reason the show has given us for her commitment to him, but that’s not what the episode is about.)
The final explanation he comes up with and which she agrees to - that it’s about survival - is also interesting in terms of what on earth Future Syd is up to with her insistence that Faroukh should get his body back. Re: The Life and Times of Sydney, one inescapably notes that the depiction of events gets darker every time, and also goes from Sydney-as-victim (of bullying) to Sydney using her mutation to switch bodies in order to physically hit back at her accusers, then immediately frame the obnoxious boy who earlier tried to kiss her for it, to Sydney basically committing double rape by switching bodies with her mother, then having sex with her mother’s unknowing boyfriend. That David early on confidently declares there’s nothing he could find out about Syd what would stop him from loving her (not least because he’s a screw-up himself) reminded me that in s1 Syd gets a long look at his past as well, which, and not just because of the Shadow King infestation plagueing him since toddlerdom, contains some ugly episodes which don’t seem to deterr her. It’s the kind of thing that sounds good in fanfic - I love you no matter what - but if the declaration doesn’t also come with “but I’m not going to let you harm other people because of this”, it’s also enabling and abdication of ethics. Young Syd being, well, starved for touching, curious about sex, resentful of everyone, including her mother, having it all makes the motivation for her action understandable, but the action is still rape of both her mother (who didn’t consent to the body switch) and the boyfriend (who had no idea whom he was actually having sex with and was as horrified as her mother thereafter), and she didn’t do it spontanously, she had time to think about it.
In other news (aka the bit outside of Sydney’s mind): Cary and Kerry are fine (for now), yay! And everyone else woke up from the chattering coma post-Monk, which, hm, is interesting, because if that’s not it, what then causes the apocalypse Future Syd hails from? (My money is still on David and that Future Syd wants a change to the timeline where he’s killed by the Shadow King instead of killing Faroukh because, well: it’s all about survival.)
