I think Better Call Saul is one of the best shows currently on television. While the dramatic stakes aren’t as high as they were on its parent show, Breaking Bad, I find it just as engaging because not only is the craft on display second to none, but it’s a show that understands its complex characters so well that it can spin meaty drama from the simple act of having them interact with one another. It’s not a vehicle for nursing home explosions or bloody shootouts, but it’s just as satisfying, albeit in a different way.

And yet, there’s still a minority who never took to Better Call Saul because it’s not as tense or eruptive. They wanted Breaking Bad 2, and while I understand their pain, I couldn’t disagree with it more. Plot and character aren’t mutually exclusive by any means, but for TV at least, characters are what keep us coming back. Why did a show like House, with its hyper formulaic story template, become so popular? I would argue that it’s because House himself is an incredible character, capable of delivering drama on a weekly basis. Why can a show like Better Call Saul, with its less plot heavy take on story structure and way less concept driven premise, work so well? Simple. It has some of the best character work on television. (Note: Better Call Saul does have a concept driven premise. I merely meant that in the sense that were someone to ask you what it’s actually about, you’d have a harder time explaining it than, say, Breaking Bad.)

But what if the Better Call Saul formula was flipped? Not that it should be one or the other, but what would a show that’s light on character and heavy on plot or concept actually look like and how would it engage with its audience? I think, in the end, you would have something like Legion, FX’s first foray into the Marvel universe and a critically beloved show that I completely failed to get into.

Now, before we go any further, I want to try to distance myself from the “hot takes” and the increasingly high volume of awful think pieces that flood my Twitter feed. This is not meant to be a rant or a “takedown.” I love Noah Hawley’s work. Fargo is another one of my favorite shows currently on TV, and though I’ve barely put a dent in Before the Fall, I’m having a great time with it so far and I have every intention on reading his other books as well. If you love Legion and the characters work for you, I’m not here to convince you that you’re wrong. If you haven’t given Legion a shot yet, you should, and I genuinely hope you love it. All I’m trying to detail here is why I personally didn’t connect with the show, that way we can examine what we value when it comes to drama and storytelling.

So. Legion. Not exactly the most immediately accessible show, is it? As someone who was and always will be an annoyingly enthusiastic fan of The Leftovers, even in season one, I usually don’t have a problem with shows that strive for a unique tone or brand of storytelling that eschews traditional television structure. But still, I found myself at an arm’s length, and it took me until the back half of Legion’s premiere season to understand why.

The problem, I think, is the show’s handling of its protagonist David in not only his conception, but also his development and how he fits with the overall structure of the season. Specifically, there are three things about David I don’t know.

**SPOILERS BELOW! Also, if you haven’t seen Legion, I don’t know if the following will make any sense. Apologies if this all reads like complete gibberish.**

1. I have no idea who David is.

I don’t mean this in a biographical sense. The first few moments of the show treat us to a highly stylized montage set to The Who’s “Happy Jack” of David’s life so far: He grew up in a suburb, and from a young age, he could hear voices and cause accidents without touching anything. The voices drove him to medication, substance abuse, run-ins with the law, and eventually, depression and suicide attempts. Eventually, he winds up in a hospital, where the story takes off.

I mean “I have no idea who David is” in a character sense. If you were to ask me who David is as a human being, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I can’t describe to you his personality or predict what he’ll do if put in a corner.

Put it another way: Let’s misuse a screenwriting term for a second and pretend that X character is put in a situation where they have to put minimal effort into saving a cat. (For my non-screenwriters, the “Save the Cat” scene is an event that happens early on in a movie where “we meet the hero and the hero does something - like saving a cat - that defines who he is and makes us, the audience, like him.”) What would, for example, Tony Soprano do? Throughout The Sopranos, Tony demonstrates an affinity for animals. He loves the family of ducks that live in his pool and he reacts… poorly… when he finds out what happens to “his” racehorse Pie-O-My and he barely keeps his temper in check when he learns that Christopher accidentally killed Adriana’s dog whilst in the throes of a heroin stupor. Thus I think we can reasonably assume that Tony would save the cat. He doesn’t really have a problem with murder or harming others for personal gain or petty revenge, but he would save the cat. That’s part of why he’s such a great character.

What would Walter White do? Well, part of the brilliance of Breaking Bad is that the answer to that question changes depending on which season we’re talking about. I think season one Walter would save the cat. At that point in his journey, he still followed some form of ethical code. (Or at least he tried to.) Season five Walter wouldn’t give less of a shit about the cat. He wouldn’t go out of his way to directly harm it, but he wouldn’t save it either.

What would David do? I have no idea. He does have a “save the cat” moment when he steps in front of a hail of bullets when Syd is about to be shot, but that happens in the back half of the season, and to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if I think that moment was entirely earned. He’d probably save the cat, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he reluctantly didn’t or if he just randomly disappeared into the ether. I don’t know enough about David’s default personality, so to speak, that I would be able to reasonably assume what he would or wouldn’t do in any given situation.

One thing he might do: Fuck your shit up.

Now, a lot of this isn’t because David is a poorly conceived character. On paper, he’s actually rather fascinating. I think a lot of it has to do with the mechanics of how Legion communicates story and how its first season worked. Throughout the majority of the season, or at least what feels like it, we spend a lot of time inside David’s mind, be it exploring his memories or the deep layers of his subconscious. Hell, at one point we even visit “the astral plane,” which a number of Marvel wikis have informed me is where “souls” go when they leave the body, and thus someone with David’s telepathic ability could visit the plane any time they wanted to. When we visit these places, David learns about himself and we’re learning about David’s powers and what he perceives, but we aren’t necessarily learning about David’s personality or his values. Most of the time, he isn’t making decisions or driving the story forward. He’s simply learning.

Similarly, a good portion of the time we spend with David in the real world isn’t actually with David, but rather his mental parasite, Lenny. Or The Shadow King or Amahl Farouk or whatever you want to call him/her/it. Sometimes we’re with David and sometimes we’re with the parasite, and those times can be hard to tell apart what with Legion bombarding us with information in just about every scene. The more real estate we spend with the parasite side of David or exploring his memories, the less we spend with David himself, and thus we don’t get to spend a whole lot of time with him simply interacting with the people around him as a “normal” person.

In the end, the conception of David as a character is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is incredible context. David is an extraordinarily powerful mutant with telekinetic and telepathic capabilities who has spent his entire life convinced he is schizophrenic and being erroneously medicated. As much as I don’t know who David is, part of what makes him intriguing on some level is that I would argue that he doesn’t either. The curse, however, is that thanks to the way the show is structured, he doesn’t have a whole lot of time to explore himself, and thus to me at least, he’s a bit of a blank slate. Some people can easily project themselves onto those kinds of characters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that makes the difference between those who love the show and those who don’t. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them.

2. I don’t know what drives David.

Throughout the debut season of Legion, David is presented with plenty of “wants” that drive the story forward. In the very beginning, for example, he’s driven by the want of having a stable relationship with Syd. When his sister is abducted, his goal then shifts toward rescuing her, as well as conquering the mental demon he’s been battling his entire life.

But what does he get out of his relationship with Syd? At the end of the season, he’s rescued his sister and the Lenny problem has a temporary solution. Now what? What was all this leading to? What need has he fulfilled in himself? There’s a decent argument to be made that the entire point of David as a character is that he’s never had the opportunity to define himself, and he probably never will thanks to his extreme powers.

For me at least, that’s not enough. The downside of a character who’s never had a moment to collect is that his goals are constantly in a state of shift, and they don’t feel like the result of an eternal longing or an actual need so much as solutions to immediate problems that distract him from finding himself. Granted, David’s “immediate problems” are a bit more dire than ours, as I can reasonably say that your sister won’t be abducted by a shadow agency because of your telekinetic abilities, nor will you be the victim of a cognizant mental parasite.

Our cognizant mental parasite. Sidenote: Aubrey Plaza gives the best performance of her career so far in this show. Incredible stuff. — Our cognizant mental parasite. Sidenote: Aubrey Plaza gives the best performance of her career so far in this show. Incredible stuff.

Still, I don’t feel like David has actually gained any new insight from solving these problems. When John McClane saves his wife, he learns that he needs to be a better husband and take responsibility for the degradation of his marriage. When David saves his sister, he can basically just cross it off a list and walk away.

On top of that, a lot of the season is structured in such a way that it’s not David who’s going out of his way to learn about his past and the being that co-inhabits his brain. It’s the other people who run tests on him and tell him what’s wrong. (Except in one case, which we’ll get to in a second.) David is often a passenger in his own story. Sometimes it’s because he’s stuck in the astral plane. Sometimes it’s because he’s been put in a medically induced sleep or we’re traveling into his memories for the purposes of learning new backstory.

But it’s rarely his idea to go to these places. David escapes the hospital, accidentally, with the help of Syd’s body swapping power. He visits his memories to work out his power at the insistence of Melanie, who’s also the one that puts him under. He makes the decision to go off and attack the camp, but that decision was heavily prompted by the Shadow King and he couldn’t pull it off without the parasite controlling his actions and impulses. Of course, nobody forces him to do these things, but they all feel more like the result of others nudging him or random happenstance than active character work to me.

One could say that David’s driving force is the desire to be his own man and take control of his thoughts and his life. Whether it be the parasite or an actual mental illness that he almost assuredly has at this point what with being subjected to mental trauma for his entire life, it’s a show not necessarily about overcoming a specific hurdle, but over inner turmoil itself.

However, I feel like that conclusion can only be reached on theoretical grounds. I never actually felt that David’s need for control actually drives the story in the moment because rather than digging into the emotions and trials that go along with such a journey, the show double downs on its own conceptuality. Rather than giving us a quiet moment, the show throws another world changing concept our way, and we’re left scratching our heads trying to figure it all out. (I should say “I’m left scratching my head,” but I want to sound smart.)

In the end, I feel like character development gets sacrificed in favor of concept, and thus I don’t have an emotional core to latch onto for David or the show itself. I understand what drives David, but I don’t feel it, and I don’t know how to sympathize with him. I think I can say the same thing with the entirety of the show, which leads me to my biggest problem.

3. I don’t know why I should care about David.

The cool thing about the X-Men franchise/universe is that it found a way to take these infinitely powerful mutants and believably cast them in the role of the oppressed. Every mutant is different and they cover a broad ideological spectrum, but if encouraged, they could use their powers and wisdom to make the world a much better place. Instead, those in charge choose to oppress them, and this oppression leads to violence, chaos, and a needlessly fractured society that births villains from mutants and non-mutants alike.

Mutants are thus a particularly poignant metaphor for the persecuted, be it people of color or those in the LGBT community or anyone who isn’t a straight white Christian male. (Or at least they could be a poignant metaphor, depending on the story the author or filmmaker wants to tell.) Legion does a beautiful job continuing this legacy, only it deals with a group that doesn’t get as much media attention, or gets it for the wrong reasons, and that is those who suffer from mental illness.

David was infected with a mental parasite at a very young age, and after years of hospitalization, medication, and misdiagnosis, David has never had the opportunity to find out who he really is. Instead, he’s treated like an outsider, and thanks to his treatment by the forces in and out of his mind and the overall demonization of mental illness, David has been led down a path of destruction and death. People he loves will assuredly be hurt. Some already have. And it didn’t have to be like this, for it wasn’t David who struck first. Even if David wasn’t possessed by a mutant, if he didn’t have mental trauma before, he certainly has it now.

On paper, the way Legion handles the treatment of the mentally ill is breathtaking. In execution, I’m at an arm’s length. Instead of allowing David to find himself, the show buries David under layers and layers of abstractery. (Forgive me for making up words.) It occasionally takes the time to dig deeper into its characters, but for me, the density was just too overwhelming and I spent most of the time trying to keep everything straight in my head.

Let’s take the late season kind of/sort of/not really Inception like voyage into the astral plane. The Eye, a shapeshifting mutant, has fired a machine gun at Syd and the rest of the gang. David then uses his power to transport everyone to a new reality in the astral plane and has them all living in a fantasy where, unfortunately, they’re all patients in a hospital ran by Lenny, who soon enough locks David away in a corner of his mind and takes control of his body. In order to get out, he inadvertently creates a physical manifestation of his rational mind in the form of a British version of himself. The two Davids then go to a mental projection of a classroom and literally work out his backstory and everything that has happened on a blackboard.

Legion also has really cool production design elements. Case in point, making the mental projection of a classroom look like a black box theater makes it feel more like we're in David's mind. — *Legion* also has really cool production design elements. Case in point, making the mental projection of a classroom look like a black box theater makes it feel more like we're in David's mind.

Now, part of me loved this scene. It makes me think that the writers knew that some people would feel left behind by all the breakneck concepts, and so they literally sit you down and spell it out for you. But isn’t it a little disconcerting that the only way we can have any clear answers about the man who’s supposed to lead us, both literally and emotionally, is by taking us to class and telling us the answers?

There’s a time for mystery, and there’s a time when you gotta drop some exposition. It’s entirely up to you when you think information should be held back and when you want it directly. But for me at least, I want to know as much about my characters as I can. I want to know what motivates them and what’s ticking beneath the surface. I don’t need a full biography, but I need to know enough so that I feel like I’m watching a character and not just a foil for an idea or a trope or a stand-in for whatever argument the writer is trying articulate or destroy.

At the end of the classroom scene, David finally has a clear idea about where he came from and the knowledge necessary to overcome Lenny. Now, in episode seven of this eight episode season, we know everything we need to, and I should’ve been able to finally connect with David, even if only a little bit. But for me, it was too little too late. I was left with the sudden realization that during the time I was spending trying to keep everything straight in my head, I didn’t actually care about any of it, which led to me wondering whether or not I’ve been waisting my time with this show.

Legion ended its first season a few months ago. Now that I’ve spent some time away from it, I think I can safely say that the answer to that question is no, it was worth it. Again, my goal here isn’t to convince you that this is a “bad” show. I do want to convince you though that, in the end, television is a medium about characters. You can have the most intricately plotted show on the planet, but if the characters driving that story are hard to connect with, be it because of plot or conceptuality, you will leave people behind.

I want to connect with the characters on a show before I connect with anything else. I think, in the end, Legion wanted me to connect more with its ideas than the human beings that drive the story. Those ideas are, indeed, unbelievably fascinating, and I will watch season two because of them. But I walked away from season one feeling absolutely nothing.