Martin may be cracking up, but he’s not the only one. The first four episodes of this show have given only a hint of what’s to come – I think we’re starting to see it. Yes, Martin’s the best there is in completely melding into his Legend and using it to convince the bad guys he is who he says he is, and the DCO tech group are wizards with that internet – but is anybody in this show really who we think they are?
We have Crystal, buttoned down but not buttoned up, ready to jump into skimpy clothes at a moment’s notice – here she is in a bar, suggesting to a man that he “take the night off” from being married – OH! That man is a fellow FBI agent! And he doesn’t quite get that he’s TRANSPORTATION security, watching subway platforms, not playing with the big guys. But here he is, chasing down DCO agents and harrassing them until they agree that yes, there’s something terribly suspicious about Martin’s behavior and it should be investigated!
It looks like Martin’s not who he thinks he is. He already has fears that McCombs, the hooded man killed in the first episode, was right when he planted the suspicion that “Martin Odum” was really no more than another legend. He can’t remember where he proposed to his wife. He tells her, “I’ve got all sorts of scars all over my body, and I don’t have a clue where they came from.” He has no memory of the accident or recovery in February 2004 that she tells him is responsible for the scars, and an internet search for the accident doesn’t help.
With Maggie’s help (look out Maggie – remember, the last young techie who helped Martin, Bobby, was killed shortly after providing his assistance), he decodes the clues in McCombs’ book – a phone number to a man who is paranoid and wants to stay off the grid. The man, Dennis Evans, recognizes Martin and McCombs from a photo of an army company in Iraq – a place neither of them remember being, and at the same time Martin was supposedly in the car accident. With McCombs’ death, now everyone in that photo except Martin and Dennis is dead. Evans says McCombs was looking for someone named Kyle Dobson, and maybe Martin’s connections at the FBI can find him. Evans doesn’t want to know who he is, but has a feeling that this Dobson was in charge of them over there.
Rice and Crystal agree that McCombs’ death looks like a professional hit. They go to McCombs’ doctor, who won’t release any info, until they threaten to bust her for overprescribing Oxycodone. She has video of McCombs ranting, “you think you know, but you don’t know. That’s the tragedy of war, it chews you up. You go to Iraq, they don’t care what happens to you over. Told Evans, he needs to take cover.” She tells them about Dennis Evans, who had come to see McCombs in the psychiatric hospital. And when they get to him – yep, dead, plastic bag over the head. Who is killing these guys? What is the secret?
Rice and Crystal break into Martin’s apartment. “He needs a maid – and an IKEA catalog,” says Rice. Crystal finds writing all over a mirror – has Martin not heard of post-its? and notes with the Len Barlow name. Crystal tells him that Barlow is a legend and that Martin has gone rogue – while it’s looking less like Martin killed McCombs on the subway platform, they don’t have a clue what’s happening. At this point, they know as much as Martin himself does.
Martin assumes another previous Legend, Len Barlow (“I’m a cowboy, born 150 years too late”) and heads to Houston to try to find Dobson. With the help of a former contact, Martin finds Dobson’s girlfriend and tricks her into taking him to Dobson. Had you been suspicious yet of Sonya, Martin’s wife? She calls him while he’s waiting for the girlfriend to leave the bar she had been in; after the conversation, in which she tells Martin she loves him, Sonya turns to a shadowy someone in her kitchen and says, “How was that?” Who is she? Is their child really Martin’s son? Is Sonya in on whatever is happening?
Martin and Dobson’s girlfriend find him in an auto repair shop, with several other hard-looking men. Dobson is sure that he recognizes Martin (Martin doesn’t recognize Dobson at all), and when it looks like the meet will go south, Martin kills all of Dobson’s men, pushes him into the stolen car, and drives off – only to be hit by a truck. Let’s hope this isn’t the end of Martin – the hashtag for this show has been #DontKillSeanBean!
The direction the show is taking is very exciting – much less your standard spy plot and much more mysterious. We’ve seen how Martin can so easily drop into another persona – perhaps because he really has none of his own? How much of this obviously long-established plot does DCO know about? What is Sonya’s role? And who else is involved? It looks like Tony Rice is coming at this problem from a different angle, and I hope that sometime soon he and Martin will work together to figure out this mystery rather than trying to implicate Martin in it. The show is beginning to have echos of The Americans, as well as the Jason Bourne films, and while some of the supporting characters (ahem, Crystal) fall flat, Sean Bean continues to be terrific.
Follow me on Twitter: @ErinConrad2
Legends on Twitter: @LegendsTNT and @LegendsWriters
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