What Went Wrong with Legacy
by Kristin Battestella
I never expected to see the blink and you missed it 1998 UPN series Legacy again! The 1880s Kentucky horse family scandalous was preposterous then, and it remains tough to re-watch with guest of the week plots once barely passable for sporadic weekly television now glaring binge viewing problematic. Legacy shoots itself in the foot with modern intrusions, weak characterizations, and fly by night storytelling – rushing itself right off the air at only eighteen episodes.
Rather than period piece Americana wholesome like Little House on the Prairie or Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman; cool music, hip horse racing, sassy daughters, and pretty sons immediately set Legacy's erroneous attempt at style over substance in a very busy pilot with broken engagements, attempted steamy, and supposed interracial romance. Cutthroat racing rivals, leg breaking riding risks, pickpocket accusations, fires in the barn, and a little girl in peril deserving their own episodes instead happen in one scene each because every episode has to have a slow motion dressage event. Do gooder patriarch Brett Cullen (Falcon Crest) expects his farm to be the best yet his entire family are apparently embarrassing misfits with blighted crops, ranch rebuilds, and admonishing sibling rivalries resetting per hour. The rebel daughter contemplating art school and rejecting her debutante debut one day is teaching etiquette and protocol the next while the illiterate learning to read is mentioned twice amid gambling lessons that aren't learned between repeated horse scams. Legacy's lack of writing cohesion is a fascinating mix of disjointed filler, nothing burgers, and everything thrown at the screen. Bad investments and ill advised farm loans made so dire every week leave viewers wondering how the post-war Logan family has survived this long.
Debates with an estranged spinster aunt wishing to have the daughters educated in Boston are resolved immediately when Legacy could have used such meddling all season. Notions of those well to do Boston in-laws looking down on Kentucky horse breeders before and after the Civil War are never brought up again as Legacy burns through storylines with all forgiven quickness and going through the motions exposition. The loser in the back and forth elections is still somehow made a political deputy with an office where he solves people's farm problems a few times, and dad Ned is in a coma for a very special episode with Meatloaf music video flashbacks of his late wife. Not even a guest spot from Melissa Leo (Homicide: Life on the Street) can slow down the rapid fire dilemmas amid new hire housekeeper mistakes, riding lessons, school sessions, colts in training, and petitions for women to enter the all male jockey club. If you've seen one episode of Legacy, you've seen them all, and the poorly written double talk dialogue feigning sophistication, shirtless washing montages, and interracial love triangles so chaste they can't possibly be scandalous are terribly banal to binge today.
Legacy's lookalike, generic ensemble is glaringly superficial – brimming with chiseled chins, furrowed brows, squinting scowls, and pursed lips. Should be the star Cullen yells at the kids in contrived conflicts as high and mighty Ned chastises anyone who isn't. Hot head son Jeremy Garrett (Sweet Valley High) circles the drain in repeated horse strife and Grayson McCouch (As the World Turns) as eldest Sean fails at every business venture. Any awkward tomboy in a corset start for older daughter Lea Moreno (DAG) is dropped for multiple romances, and her kissing the adopted bad boy Ron Melendez (Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest) is weird even if he isn't really her brother. Precocious youngest Sarah Rayne (Quest for Camelot) talks back far too much, and their mother dying in her childbirth is mentioned constantly like it's character development. Ten year old Lexi's mature horse exposition implies the character was intended to be an older tween, and Legacy's characters are perpetually underwritten with no growth, only stereotypes and faux sophistication. Instead of focusing on potential familial pairings like our dad teaching the adoptee to ride or sisters working together, Legacy relies on the rival boys with chips on their shoulders having blonde babes dalliances. The wealthy neighbor/his whiskey corrupt son/nasty farm manager caricatures vary as needed in an unnecessary revolving door of villains. Hammy carpet bagger-styled Lane Smith (My Cousin Vinny) disappears early, yet Lisa Sheridan (Invasion) is strung along all season with nothing to do but switch between brothers.
Sadly, recurring Steven Williams (21 Jump Street) as former slave Isaac is reduced to the Magical Negro trope – providing evidence or advice as needed with the safest, precious few mentions of his time during the Civil War with Ned. Sharon Leal (Boston Public) as Isaac's daughter Marita is likewise the sage listener to our poor little rich white girls' problems when not waiting with longing, pick me glances at the forbidden white son. A late episode finally gives these Black characters a separate storyline when a respectable Black lawyer woos Marita, yet somehow it's all about Sean – who got his kicks elsewhere all season despite professing Marita his undying love – being a jealous jerk in a drunk driving carriage accident! He says she is the only one he can talk to while she has to silently take the whispers of this barely there courtship ruining her reputation. Legacy probably had too many characters, and if a Black family's experiences in post-war Kentucky were not only not going to be treated equally with the titular family and are in fact never going to be addressed, then they shouldn't have been token shoehorned into a show that today is totally tone deaf.
Although the horses are always pretty, the slow motion racing montages featured almost every episode are heavy handed and over-edited with cutaways, up close hoof beats, and rearing making for poor, cut corners action. The bustles, bonnets, and costumes are Victorian basic, no one really looks like they belong in the nineteenth century, and the ladies hairstyles are far too modern. The masquerade ball in Legacy's hanging finale is also laughable with contemporary Halloween expensive medieval costumes perfect with their 1880s quickness. This is also the first time I've used FreeVee's skip credits option, tiring of the shirtless shots and a billing order that makes little sense compared to the familial relationships and actual screen time in the forty-five minute episodes. Modern pace and slang likewise take over in jarring conversations where no one has the same put on generic Southern accent. The uncomfortable, fake, old speaketh gentility romanticizes their mighty plantations before the war; smooth talking thank you kind sirs wax on those who haven't been land owners for three generations as lesser Kentuckians. By time they have Black people singing negro spirituals at the end of the season, it feels like appropriation, and the overplayed, intrusive contemporary New Age Celtic music makes one wonder why Legacy wasn't just about a farm family in modern Ireland. “Spirited Jig” is the caption every time the music swells – be it for slow motion who burned the barn ominous, boys will be boys rowdy slow motion, or longing glances slow motion slow motion. Thanks to all the playing dress up contemporary styling and said unnecessary slow motion, Legacy looks and sounds like exactly how not to do a period drama.
Ironically, Legacy realizes that the family sticking together isn't as good a drama as the family divided in the second half of the season – dropping the lame teen steamy attempts and even most of the slow motion montages in favor of the older cast, killer widows, duels, and assault accusations. None of the kids have their own jobs and always run to dad for a loan, but Ned finally has something to do thanks to duplicitous women coming between father and sons and Gabrielle Fitzpatrick (Snowy River: The McGregor Saga) as a mysterious damsel in distress who looks like the late Mrs. Logan. Although the arguments, riding accidents, and deceit are still rushing toward the inevitably abrupt finale; schemers scheming together, doctored books, and foalings gone wrong make for what could have been potential. Rival horses enter the race, veterinarian conflicts arise, and sour tobacco company investments have consequences as the third to the last episode finally gets Legacy's tone right. Poison drinks, suspicion, blackmail saucy, and behind closed doors threats escalate once the ill-intentioned are in the house, and even the horses suffer amid rigged events, burned telegrams, and impostors. I don't think I bothered watching all of Legacy when it originally aired – if all the episodes were even shown. However, had the series hit the ground running with the intertwined heaviness of its last five episodes, Legacy may have survived another season. Instead, Legacy wasted most of its lone season on self-righteous plots, contemporary abs, contrived montages, and short sighted writing that understandably saw the series' cancellation.
