Legend -- Episode 10: Fall of a Legend

Synopsis in 3 sentences or less:

While fooling around with a young farm gal in a barn, Legend is attacked by her father and he flees the premises.  Immediately after, the father is assaulted and killed by ranchers who are upset with him for building a fence on his property.  Legend is framed for the murder and sentenced to be hanged, but Bartok helps him escape and they race to prove his innocence.

Memorable Quote:
Besides, Drusilla's father simply misunderstood the circumstances, that's all.  ~Legend
A man without his pants leaves little room for misunderstanding.   ~Ramos

Highlight:
Lots of fun moments to choose from -- I'll go with the opening where Legend is literally caught with his pants down in the barn. 

Lowlight:

A minor nitpick, but I think it would have been better if the witness escaped instead of being let go.  It just seems unrealistic that the ranchers would allow him to go free especially after they already shot at him.

Other thoughts, observations, and questions I didn’t ask when I was in fourth grade:

• This series does a good job with its opening scenes -- they're always different (so I'm never sure what to expect) and they jump right into the story.
• The villain in this episode is played by John Dennis Johnston who was in The Endangered as Eddie the bear poacher.
• Wow, the mayor is going hard after Legend in the courtroom, and without much in the way of conclusive evidence.  Seems like this would do some damage to their relationship going forward.
• Not too bright of the sheriff to step outside his office while letting Bartok and Skeeter alone in the jail cell with Legend, especially considering Bartok's inventiveness and friendship with Legend.
• "Bonnie Blue" is a great name.  And I like how she says longingly, "That's my Nicodemus," as he is chased by the posse.
• In episode one I wondered why Legend was running away from the horse at the end, and it's become clear that he has a thing about horses, or more accurately, that horses have a thing about him.
• "You know how horses feel about me!"  ~Legend 
• "Yes, and I know how you feel about hanging!"  ~Bartok
• Some good disguises for Bartok in this episode, first as a gypsy and then later as a priest.
• No hot air balloon in this episode -- that's a first!

Conversation:

The writing credits on this episode are shared by Ron Friedman and Bob Shayne (in addition to creators Michael Piller and Bill Dial).  I reached out to Friedman and Shayne to see what they remembered about their work on it.

RF: I did a page one rewrite and loved the show, which I thought would have done better in the ratings on a different network and a better time slot. Who knew then that Tesla would go on to make cars.

BS: I had never met Ron Friedman who shared credit with me. Later we got to know each other when we both were on the committee that helped steer a class action suit by older writers against the TV industry for age discrimination that won $75 million for the class. We both teach screenwriting at Chapman University these days and are friends.

I wrote a story for Mike Piller, who ran the show. He didn’t like it. (I had had similar problems with Mike at "Simon & Simon" which I helped create but he later ran.) One of the things he didn’t like about it was that I had the two leads being saved by riding ostriches out of the desert to safety. Mike told me that was completely ridiculous and people could not ride ostriches. There was no Internet at the time so I couldn’t Google it, but it turned out people can ride ostriches and there are pictures of some online.

Some months later, I got a notice from the show that I was being given story credit on an episode written by Ron Friedman. I read the script and I couldn’t really find any traces of the story I’d written in it. But I was happy to get the credit and some residuals down the line that came with it. I must say while Mike and I didn’t get along creatively, he was incredibly honest, and somehow he felt I deserved story credit even though it didn’t look that way to me.

So if any of that interests you, be my guest. I really have no idea what the story was that I wrote, other than the ostriches.

It's funny that Piller would object to riding ostriches as unrealistic when the show regularly featured things like zapping people with electric bolts from 100 yards away or hang gliding out of hot air balloons. 

Final Analysis:

Solid episode and one with lots of good humor including the opening where Legend gets chased out of the barn, the scene where Legend is asked to deliver a baby, and the denouement where the woman who Legend went to jail over ends up running off with the lawyer.  There's some good action and the plot moves quickly, and as usual the cinematography is strong (in particular the scene where the horses are going crazy is well filmed).  I'm putting this at #2 on my list.