Amen.
This was the most poorly handled event in an otherwise near-perfect TV series.
The legendary buffalo soldiers die fast, the ladies are gunslingers? Plot armour.
Another thing: total lack of strategy. Whitey says to hide out, Mary Agnes picks the building, and then Whitey and the saloon manager wait in other buildings? With Louise holed up in the main building, what the **** was Whitey doing across the street? Why - with no signal or plan - did he just walk out into the middle of the road?
Why was the saloon manager still loading his gun after his door got kicked in? The ladies were handing out weapons in a line up, he wasn't?
The skittish one nearly blows her own foot off when first handed the darn pistol, but they've got the older men down in the mine with the kids? None of those men could shoot better than any of the women? Frontiersmen? Old maybe, but still. The mousey churchlady could keep the kids safe and everybody else get in the main building.
Frank's men just sat on the their horses outside the building, seeking no cover, not moving, not advancing...nothing?
The Sheriff and Roy at one point are firing and switching spots back and forth. That's just asking for one of them to accidentally blast the other one in the back.
I think it was particularly frustrating because of how amazing the show was in basically every other scene.
The biggest two things missing were, in my opinion:
(1) a sense of the psychological side of the fight from the women. I thought it was maybe lazy writing or lazy directing not to show several of them breaking down, getting adrenaline rushes, or otherwise reacting as humans once the gunfire started. As soon as bullets rained in, some of them surely would have broken up?
(2) a sense of pacing. Who was doing what, when, and where was not well-plotted. Contrast this siege to Helm's Deep in Lord of the Rings. The fight here is much, much less clear.
It had cool moments, but yeah...not terribly well done.
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