Legends - Lords of War - Review

The third episode of Legends moved the spy drama’s plot forward a little, with the completion of the development of a chemical weapon, the rescue of the Hubbards, and Martin’s (or Dante’s) infiltration of the major players behind the weapon’s creation.

The episode had some good. It was mostly solid in its pacing and progression of the story, if a little predictable in its ending. We were introduced to an intriguing guest character, Ana Paulanos. We learned an interesting detail that reminded us of Odum’s fragile mental state, and that is that while undercover he’s transferring details of his legend to his real life, as he confused the details of Dante’s marriage proposal with his own to Sonya. And finally, we saw how hard Odum’s job is – and the toll it takes – as he was forced to murder a stranger to maintain his undercover alias.

But there were several small details that strained credibility. For starters, Maggie was able to geo locate the phone of the weapon’s buyer and identify its location as a hotel. This is believable enough, but how did Odum know which door within the hotel to knock on?  I found the fact that the FBI had a voice sample of the Colonel and was able to identify him so quickly too convenient, and wondered what information Maggie was able to pull out of the word cloud of the very common words being spoken (with the exception of a few proper names, which would have been flagged and researched anyway without a word cloud).

While last week I appreciated the fact that Agent Rice wasn’t playing by Odum’s rules, this week I felt the point was stretched a bit beyond believability. Rice was visited in his office by Gates – a great scene between the two – but I found it uncredible that Rice (an FBI agent), didn’t seem to understand that there are ops more important than his case, the murder of a homeless man on a subway station. If he’s so put out that a fellow undercover operative lied to him, that he’s taking it personally to the point where he’s willing to risk his own career and potentially thousands of lives, then the FBI needs to work on their hiring personality-screening methods.

I rolled my eyes a little when the last shooter emerged from the warehouse the team had just raided – took everyone by surprise, and then fired rapid machine gun fire at an upward angle into the air and didn’t hit anyone. Of all of the swat team personnel gathered outside in this location, Crystal was the only one who reacted and got the shot to take him down.

My final criticism is that three episodes in, I was hoping to start to see deeper character development for the two main female characters on the team. Crystal – whose character I had hoped last week was beginning to deepen – this week regressed and she mostly delivered snipes meant to diminish Odum’s successes. She’s got a chip on her shoulder. We get it. Meanwhile Maggie has yet to have much of a role other than being the amazing tech genius and exposition girl, as she narrates in detail everything that is going on in the op as the group monitors Odum’s undercover missions.

While I'm still enjoying the series and have high hopes for it, I felt like this episode took a step backward. What did you think? Was I being too hard on it? Let me know in the comments.