Sean Bean lives through the whole hour. There, now that we’ve got the Internet-mandated shitty joke out of the way, we can talk about Legends, Bean’s much-ballyhooed return to television. Legends is very much a TNT show, so if you go into it expecting anything but, you’re going to be disappointed.
Bean plays Martin Odum, an undercover operative with the FBI who, according to Director Yates (Steve Harris, late of Justified), is the most “naturally talented operative” they’ve ever had. Odum spends most of “Pilot” in disguise as Lincoln Dittmann, a stuttering, awkward ex-construction worker trying to join an underground militia, the Citizens Army of Virgina. It’s easy to see why Bean took this role: he gets some choice fight scenes which play well to the actor’s burly physicality and real-life toughness (never forget), and he gets to stretch as an actor as well, taking on Odum’s many roles. The way he plays Dittmann is especially impressive; he smiles too easily and too broadly, laughs nervously, and carries himself like someone who’s been kicked in the ass by life.
Odum has a team, of course, even though he’s a Lone Wolf who Doesn’t Play Well With Others. There’s Crystal (Ali Larter), his supervisor with whom he once hooked up, obviously. There’s three tech nerds, Buchanan, who’s critical of Odum’s methods; Bobby, who is, uh, Indian; and Maggie (Napoleon Dynamite‘s Tina Majorino, looking seriously beautiful with a pseudo-pixie cut), the newest member of the team. Fun fact: I can’t find out who played Bobby anywhere. Not IMDb, not Google, fucking nowhere.
The team actually gets some cool scenes in, where they build Lincoln Dittmann’s “legend,” i.e. his fabricated backstory. This show uses the term “legend” a lot; I noticed it immediately, but not in a good way. In more of a Mindhunters way. Nevertheless, watching the three of them build Dittmann’s life – credit card statements, emails, receipts, medical records – from the ground up is fun to watch, and we don’t see the nitty-gritty of undercover work in many other shows.
Dittmann’s task is to bring down the “Founding Father” of the CAV, who is mysterious and fanatical and thus played by Zelkjo Ivanek. (Odum’s mole Russell Stillman is played by Brad William Henke, who after dying on shows like The Bridge and Justified, is well on his way to becoming the Sean Bean of TV. And yes, he does die on Legends.) The CAV isn’t super important; Legends is a show about an undercover operative, not a domestic terror cell, so right away I was kind of concerned that the show would start with a case of the week.
There’s more to Legends than that, though, as Odum is being followed by a mysterious hooded black man. He sees him first when he stops by to see his son and ex-wife. His ex is played by Amber Valletta, and it’s a particularly thankless role. I shit, you not, IMDb credits her as “Martin’s Ex-Wife.” Odum asks Bobby to look into the man, and Bobby is subsequently killed. When the man finally reaches out to Odum and tells him to meet him at Union Station, he’s stabbed by a female assailan before the two of them can talk. So Legends had one hour and killed a black guy and an Indian guy. I guess it could have been worse for Bobby; he could have ended up as a racial punchline on a shitty Chuck Lorre show. Anyway, the guy bleeds out, but not before giving Odum a book containing “the answers,” and leaving Odum cradling a corpse, shouting “Who am I?”
So I’m gonna stick with Legends. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but come on, this is TNT we’re talking about. If you go into one of these shows expecting revolutionary television, then you’re the idiot. The central mystery has good potential, the ensemble is ill-defined but still promising, and Sean Bean is one of the most compulsively watchable actors I can think of, so that alone is reason enough to stick around.
UPDATE: Bobby was played by Utkarsh Ambudkar, who has appeared in Pitch Perfect and Rocket Science.
UPDATE #2: Martin’s ex-wife is named Sonya.
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