‘Legion’ Series Premiere Recap: Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Run

The opening montage of the new X-Men-affiliated FX program Legion encapsulates a lot of what’s exciting about it, and a lot of what’s off-putting about it, too: A baby takes up the entire frame in the first shot, and that baby morphs over time into an increasingly troubled young man, as The Who’s “Happy Jack” plays. Noah Hawley-the showrunner, who wrote and directed the episode, and who also runs the Fargo series-is assuring us that a) the show will make a concerted effort to strongly develop one main character rather than getting lost in a ton of Byzantine world-building like so many other X-Men properties and comic book adaptations in general, and b) it will have a wry, pop culture-heavy sensibility.