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You Don’t Need to Love Comics to Watch ‘Legion’
FX’s new mind-bending show is the mid-week puzzle your TV diet needs
There is too much going on in Noah Hawley’s new FX project, Legion, to let it pass by unexamined. It’s also too good. Even if you are suffering from comic book overload, this show should be in the starting five of your Season Pass.
The relationship between Legion and the comic book television sub-genre is more musical than it is visual. Arrow, Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Powerless are packing stadiums from coast to coast on an arena rock tour while Legion is playing 12 songs in 14 minutes at CBGB’s. This show is different.
It would be unfair to say that comic book TV shows are formulaic — all TV shows are. TV doesn’t have the luxury of being a punk enterprise; who would have the energy to watch that? There has to be some structure involved to tell the story at the center of the show. How that structure gets manipulated and the story arc revealed is what separates individual TV shows from their genre. The Wire and Law & Order: SVU are both cop shows, but I wouldn’t say that The Wire could have been Law & Order: Charm City, or that you need to start at season 1 of SVU to understand the series.
Legion is a comic book show in broad strokes only. The first episode was the best pilot I have seen since HBO’s The Night Of. It is a challenging watch that requires the audience to suspend its disbelief, but what good television show doesn’t? Legion is a mid-week cable gift begging to be pulled apart and discussed. FX is doing something cool, different, and presents the right kind of challenge. If this show had promotional pins, my jacket would be covered with them.
