Next up is Ptonomy, and he talks about how his mother died when he was just 5-years-old. He says he spends a lot of time in the memory of his mother dying and he likes to think of himself as a time traveler, even though he can only watch memories and not change them.
The next session consists of Cary and Kerry. Lenny tells the two their attachment is unhealthy and says there is no mutant power, the two are just crazy and can’t really share a body.
Then, the patient is Walter, the Eye, and Lenny explains to Walter he has constant anger towards the world.
The last patient is Sydney and Lenny tells her she's isolating herself from the world. Sydney is hesitant with Lenny and tells her this world doesn’t seem real, but Lenny replies by saying it is just time for Sydney to take her medication.
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Throughout each of the therapy session was a very interesting shot. The shot depicted a statue of two hands holding each other in the foreground and in the background was Lenny talking to whoever was her patient at the time. It showed she corrupted the group into believing she was an actual therapist and they are in a reality where they are sick and needing help from Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital.
What is even more interesting is that when it is Walter’s, or the Eye’s, turn for therapy, the shot is the same but Walter goes over to the statue and moves it. He seems uncertain and is hostile towards Lenny as if he knows something isn’t right in the new world they are now inside.
Sydney leaves her appointment with Lenny and walks by an out of place bedroom door in the hallway. Inside the door is banging as if someone is trying to get out. Before Sydney can open and investigate, she is called to the nurse’s station to take her medicine. While talking to Lenny in therapy David says he feels as if he has found himself at Clockworks. He says he has been reading, painting and has a rhythm and a sense of control that he didn’t have before.
I found it a little strange the Summerland group wasn’t all together, it seemed they had formed their own groups. Melanie was all by herself and talking to an imaginary Oliver. Cary and Kerry kept to themselves. While David, Ptonomy and Sydney would all hang out together. I feel like this was done on purpose, by the parasite, so the group would be less inclined to work together and lessen the chance of them realizing they are not in the real world.
The gang heads to the cafeteria for lunch and Melanie sits alone feeding an invisible man while Cary and Kerry sit by themselves entertaining each other. Sydney, Ptonomy and David all sit together eating dessert but before David can dig into his cherry pie the nurse (Amy) takes it away from him and tells him he can’t have any dessert. Sydney offers David her pie, but the nurse strictly tells her it isn’t allowed. David is upset at this and leans his head down as his friends eat the pie. While Sydney is eating, she notices bugs crawling all over the pie so she spits the pie and the throws it on the ground. After inspection, she realizes there are no bugs on the pie.
I thought this scene has a lot of significance. First, it showed David’s parasite was trying to convince them all they were crazy and need to be locked up. Second, it shows Sydney sees the darkness of the alternate version of Clockworks. Color has always played a significant role in LEGION and red is associated with David’s darkness whether it be a red room, strawberries crawling with bugs, or red cherry pie crawling with bugs. This scene showed Sydney is seeing through the fake Clockworks and is seeing the evil for what it really is while everyone around her doesn’t see anything wrong. David didn’t get to eat the red pie because then he might have realized it too.
In the previous episode, Dr. Cary explained that whenever David realized the parasite was inside of him it would rewrite his memory and the nurse taking away David’s pie was a way of preventing him from realizing he is being used and manipulated. The scene ends with the camera zooming in on the pie and Lenny’s face appears in the pie symbolizing she's the parasite.
Inside Sydney’s room, David wakes her up as he comes in and lies next to her. Sydney explains she is having a feeling of déjà vu, except things are happening differently. This is because in Chapter 1 the roles were reversed and Sydney came into David’s room. Sydney starts to express she wants to leave Clockworks but David says he is happy and last time he tried life outside the hospital he attempted suicide. He explains he wants to stay in Clockworks forever because Lenny told him not everyone is cut out for the real world. The parasite is trying to trap David inside of his own mind and trick him into being happy.
The next morning Sydney is walking down the hall and finds the out of place bedroom door is now gone. She expresses her concerns to Cary and Kerry. Dr. Cary tells Sydney about his dream of a large ice cube and Melanie says she dreams about love. Later Cary and Kerry are walking down the hallways of Clockworks and they head to their separate rooms for bed. While in bed Cary closes his eyes and when he opens them he can see the ice cube inside the astral plane. He reaches up to touch it and is transported to a forest and he can see Oliver in the diving suit staring at him. Oliver starts to walk away so Cary follows him.
One of the best things about LEGION is we get some great visuals and special effect and none of it seems fake. The ice cube in the Astral Plane doesn’t look realistic but it also doesn’t need to be since it is technically imagination. However, I loved the visuals of the different colors from the Astral Plane reflecting into Cary’s bedroom. I noticed when Cary was teleported into the woods he had bruises on his face like he did in the real world. I think Oliver is alive and well and is guiding Melanie and Cary into finding the truth about the world they are stuck in.
David and Sydney are hanging out in another room and Sydney is reading a book while David paints her. She explains how her book is about dream states and memory palaces and tells David the book is similar to how she has been feeling about Clockworks and how it isn’t real. She says the hospital is a version of reality and not reality itself. David tells her that she should be careful talking like that with her diagnosis of delusional thinking and seeing things that aren’t real. Sydney becomes confused and David explains he has manic depression and when Sydney says he is schizophrenic and she has an anti-personality disorder; David denies it. She freaks out and runs into the hall where she discovers a strange hole in the wall. When she touches the hole it starts to bleed. She has a flashback of Lenny being split in half inside the same wall. Sydney has a sudden and violent flashback as all of her real memories come flooding back. Lenny appears behind her and tells Syd she needs to try musical therapy and puts headphones on her head. Sydney hears crickets chirping and begins to relax as she is levitated off of the ground and floats back into her bed where she falls asleep.
My favorite part about this scene was the score. As Sydney realizes she is in a fake reality the music gets louder and also becomes distorted. When Sydney tells David she has to go the music makes a drastic turn and the audience hears loud electronic music. The music fits extremely well with the scene and the tone. It makes the audience feel just as confused and scared as Syd is as our ears try to adjust to the loud distorted music which won’t stay the same.
David is walking down the hall looking for Sydney when he discovers the bedroom door. Before he can enter the door Amy appears in the hallways and tells David he is unwanted and everyone has to constantly keep themselves from puking whenever he is around. David looks very hurt and Amy begins to dry heave causing David to walk away from the door.
It is obvious throughout the episode David’s parasite is trying to keep everyone away from the strange door in the hallway. Every time a character gets near the door they are distracted and feel threatened by something, whether it be Amy saying hurtful things or nurses yelling at Sydney.
Inside Melanie’s room Oliver suddenly appears in his diving suit and telepathically tells her to follow him. Melanie walks inside of her bedroom wall and goes through a door at the end of a long hallway. Inside the door is the scene from the previous episode right before David and Sydney are shot. Oliver points at the bullets heading towards David and Sydney in slow motion so Melanie tries to move the bullets but they burn her. She tries to push David and Sydney out of the way, but they are too heavy.
Meanwhile, David goes into Lenny’s office to look for Syd. Lenny begins to rant to David and tells him life is useless and God is the only thing matters because he has power. Lenny says Walter understands this and then reveals she knew David’s real father. She said he always acts so holy and tried to hid David from her. While talking to David she turns into the Devil With the Yellow Eyes for a few moments. Lenny explains she was originally going to poison David and move on but she realized how powerful they could become. She tells him she only needs his body and she could care less about his mind. Suddenly, David is transported inside of a box in blackness and drifts away into space. Meanwhile, the man in the diving suit removes the headphones Lenny put on Sydney. The man takes off his diving mask and it is revealed to be Dr. Cary.
This episode showed us how powerful David’s parasite problem really is. While most of the characters were on the track to realizing they were in a fake world, the parasite kept most of them convinced for a long time. Each character’s weakness was shown in this episode and the weakness was used against them to keep them in Clockworks. In this episode we also got a little information about David's real father. Near the end, Lenny is talking about David’s father and says, “Talk about an asshole, always acting so holy and then giving away his only son. He thought he could hide you from me, but he was wrong”. This is very vague, but thought provoking dialogue and it shows us there is still a lot to learn about David’s past.
If David's father was trying to hid him from the parasite, then wouldn’t it make sense to check in on David and make sure he was okay? Hopefully, we will learn more about David’s father in the final two episodes.
I thought this was a great episode, but I also feel like it could have been shortened while giving the audience the same effect. The episode felt like filler and it didn’t advance the plot as much as I would have liked. However, I still think LEGION is an extremely strong show and I am excited to see what is in store for David and his friends.
Written by James Philbrick, LEGION Beat Writer -- Click to read James' posts
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