Official synopsis: Martin Odum has the uncanny ability to
transform himself into a completely different person for each job.
But he begins to question his own identity when a mysterious stranger
suggests that Martin isn't the man he believes himself to be.
http://www.tntdrama.com/shows/legends/season-1/episode-1/pilot.html
SPOILERS AHEAD!!
The episode opens with shots of terrorist damage 9 months
previously & then switches to Martin Odum now working as legend cover Lincoln
Dittmann in the camp of white supremacists in Virginia who had done
the terrorist acts. He was embedded there by the FBI to meet their
leader & arrest him, but had had no luck for 6 previous months until he was called
in to talk to the boss there. He was about to get the meeting until
an unplanned raid by another government agency almost blew his cover
& that of an informer also in the camp. Martin barely escaped an explosion, was angry about that &
his nearly blown cover, protested loudly to his boss when he went in to his office to report
the situation & ask to salvage it. In the office his old boss Crystal (Ali Larter) didn't want him to
continue on the job because she thought he was unstable, but she got
overruled.
In between all this, we meet Martin's son & ex-wife, the son
misses Martin & he's apologetic for not spending more time with
his son. He promises to get him Chinese food. Later we see Martin
about to buy Chinese take away from the restaurant below his apartment when he sees a man he'd seen before, who had warned him
that someone didn't want him to know that he, Martin Odum, was also a
legend. Martin can't make sense of this right now, and gets on with
his undercover job as Lincoln Dittmann.
Dittmann is instructed to meet the white supremest terrorist "Founding
Father" boss in Chicago, and so he goes there. His office technical
team spends some time bulking up Dittmann's legend with computer records
to support his story for any background checks that will be run. They
almost botch it up by misspelling "Dittman." Two N's!
Dittmann meets his contact in a strip club, but then his FBI team are
suspicious when they lose contact with the previous informer, fearing
something bad has happened to him. It did. Crystal then goes undercover
fast to bail Dittmann out, and they barely get away with the
operation still intact. They regroup & send Dittmann in to the
meeting with a wire so the team can listen in & provide backup.
Martin, as Dittmann, doesn't like what the terrorist boss tells him,
and while he is trying to figure out how to stall for time, the FBI
team's presence is blown by a stray radio transmission. Chaos ensues,
and Martin calls the terrorist boss' bluff & saves them all from
being blown up. The bad guys are arrested. Operation done.
Back at home, after debriefing, Martin drops by his support tech
Bobby's house & finds out he's been killed, perhaps because of the info
that Martin was having him dig for, to identify the man that had been
following Martin. Now he's really worried & upset, agrees to meet
the strange man when he calls again. And then that man is killed in
front of him on the train platform, still leaving him with with the
question, "Who is Martin Odum?"
What I enjoyed most about this series debut episode, besides
Sean's fantastic multiple performances obviously, is the suggestion that Martin
Odum, the supposed "real person," may be just another
legend. I think this is complicated by the presence of his son &
ex-wife, with whom I assume he has a lengthy history. Or does he? Are
they part of the implied lie? A mystery I am eager to follow each
week as more puzzle pieces are revealed along with more of Martin's
"legends" for his covert jobs. All I ask at the end of the
10 episodes of series 1 is:
#DontKillSeanBean!!
If you saw LEGENDS on TNT & liked it, please let
them know what you thought in this survey:
http://spr.ly/6184mFie
There are questions about Sean's character, feeling for show, etc.
