Thanks, Nick! I'm a little behind this week. Trying to catch up...
There are several parts of this episode that don't make any sense, but the ending is a disaster of epic proportions. It starts out with Legend inexplicably pulling a gun on Grant and the First Lady and forcing them into his balloon. Then the balloon follows the moving train which is then hijacked by Colonel Steele. When Steele boards the train and goes to Grant's car, his daughter Abigail is sitting in a chair pretending to be Grant for no apparent reason.
It is a bit convoluted, I'll grant you, but that's not unusual for Legend plots. My interpretation was that he wasn't necessarily pulling a gun on the president, but was acting defensively to allow him time to explain the situation. The plan was to allow Grant and Steele to meet without putting the president in danger or getting Steele arrested/shot for kidnapping. So, I felt that Grant willingly agreed to the plan, that he and the first lady went to the balloon where they would be safe when Steele's men stopped the train, and Abigail was there in his place because they knew Steele would never risk hurting her and she could diffuse the situation. Finally, Grant and Steele could meet near the balloon, away from the rest of his men and out of harm's way, where cooler heads could prevail. I'm assuming here that Legend and Bartok wouldn't have gone out of their way to arrange a meeting like that for just anyone, but they were relying on the fact that Grant and Steele had a longstanding friendship.
This is followed by Potter walking off into the desert
I did wonder about that, because I was thinking at first that this planned tour of the area was going to happen by train, so no need for Potter to go on ahead. But I think he was walking back to the train to take the train to its destination and handle the public relations issues from there while Grant and Steele took their tour by balloon instead.
I'm assuming that RDA was actually upside down this whole time (unless there's some trick with the camera that I can't understand), and it's very impressive how well he was able to carry on this long scene considering that it must have been pretty uncomfortable.
He really was doing the upside down scene, although surely it was shot in smaller segments with plenty of rightside-up breaks in between. I wish I could find some of the discussion that happened when the show aired, with people from the set talking about RDA's endless patience doing that scene himself. It really was incredibly long!
I feel like I'm watching MacGyver with some of this Ken Harrison music, especially during the scene where they're discovered outside the bunkhouse.
I agree! There are certain musical threads that are distinctly western-ish and "Legend," but so much of the music is pure MacGyver!
Final Analysis:
It started out promising with a strong opening scene, the acting is mostly good, and I loved the dialogue with Henrietta. But the rest of it was a bit slow, and the last ten minutes were a train wreck (which is fitting since it involves a train). As for its ranking, I'm putting it behind Episode 2 but ahead of Episode 1 -- despite some flaws, at least there were some good moments, and Episode 1 was just so slow and long that I think it's going to be hard for a future episode to be underneath it.
I never tried ranking them, but I'd put the pilot higher than you did. I think I liked the pilot better than episode 2 and 3, but as I said, my favorite ones are still ahead.
Now I really need to get started on episode 4!
Kate