Well, the parts with Ling was pretty fairly handled until the end... The reveal of hwo he really was came too soon; really spoils any sense of mystery about his character... and I felt that they really screwed up his explanation of why he is wants immortality, namely how immortality will help him obtain the throne...
Mei, her part felt screwed up since they basically just took out her introduction and just bumped up to when she meets Scar and Yoki, (something that happened a fair bit later on)... one thing that's missed by this is that we miss out on an important aspect of her alchemy, and miss out on how she heard of Ed which i though was kind of funny since you can see how she paints such a pretty picture of him... plus it seems kind of awkward for her to gush over Ed out loud and in front of his would-be murderer...
And one of the most disappointing things about this episode...
a certain panel from the manga was not shown in the episode
... ah priceless
I think i should lower my expectations for this series and just except that it will not be as good as it could have been, imo... only recently did i realize they had a clear aim of about 50 episodes, which is painfully, and obviously too short to cover the manga well... yes it will still be an adaptation of the manga, but they will cut every single corner possible and squeeze as much into a single episode as they can... so the rushed pacing and scene cuts is inevitable (something i hoped would stop once they got to new material)... quite frankly, i was originally hoping that this would be one of series that would be allowed to break those normal conventions and run longer... Bones is trying to work in like 2 chapters per episode when it seems like quite a few chapters would be better off as one episode... to adapt the manga well, i would think something more like 70 episodes minimum... I can only assume that this was a stupid decision of the producers as opposed to the director... the sad relationship between "art" and "business"