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This show is good. It's not winning any awards but much like Banshee it's a fun action romp with lots of interesting characters. I'm really liking Leary and between him and Kai n Banshee, Tropper writes some really engaging bad guys.
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Apr 21, 2019 11:54
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That was a very fun episode that honestly felt better than peak Banshee. It was the quintessential western story to tell too but the little differences made for a good time.
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May 6, 2019 21:20
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Chas McGill posted:It's very entertaining...arguably has a little more complexity than Banshee, too. Part of the problem I had with Banshee is that it really strained credibility in the town, the various groups that lived there, the impersonation of the sheriff, also while the last season sucked I wasn't really a fan of keeping the Ukrainian mob arc around for the second season. So far the world of Warrior has been much more believable and all the various cogs turning against and with one another feel legit and purposeful, rather than just there to tell a story for the season. Aside from the obvious setting comparison, it feels like Deadwood in that all the characters could continue to exist with one another for seasons to come.
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May 7, 2019 19:57
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If you liked Banshee from a comic book perspective then I'd recommend Scalped by Jason Aaron or any of the Ennis/Dillon collabs.
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May 8, 2019 11:57
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I really enjoy how they have a very clear difference in philosophy in how they film the fights between the Western and the Asian groups. The Western people don't suddenly have kung fu skills and I'm looking forward to seeing how they choreograph the inevitable fight between them.
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May 14, 2019 21:17
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Fun episode. The fight was pretty enjoyable and the 'out' made sense in the context of everything. They're building up a lot more minor plot lines than it felt like they did in Banshee which I like because I don't find any particularly group of the cast uninteresting. Troper does a good job world building when he tries and it feels like he's trying much harder here and it's paying off. In the beginning of the episode I almost wondered if we'd see a Game of Thrones esque twist with Asam getting killed, but they haven't quite built up the world enough that I think the show could stand to lose the main character. The speech from the Lady of the Whore House about how Asam lost because he wasn't fighting for a cause was an interesting line that I felt like could have worked to justify his death had he actually died. His story of coming over to find his sister, do the right thing and save her, only to get swept up in her gang war and killed, could have been a very good foundation on which to continue the story of "San Francisco". I guess it's too soon to hope for the next Thrones or The Wire but from what I've seen in this show, I kind of trust that Troper could pull it off. That said, I really dislike flashback episodes. While they obey the rule of 'show, don't tell', I'd much rather have backstories like that remain somewhat obscure in the viewers mind because it feels like it if is really that important they'd put more work into them as opposed to just ~5 minutes of screentime with characters we aren't actually invested in because they're the younger versions of characters we know. I can't be too critical on them, a good flashback is hard to do. I also found the way the characters spoke to each other as a bit too direct for an actual Asian family but that's a bit nitpicky as well.
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Jun 1, 2019 17:53
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Ok, finale. Some parts felt a bit rushed. I almost feel like it would have worked better as a season opener rather than a closer. I really enjoy Leary as a character though. I thought he might make the boys leave the black fellas alone and get them their drink but his little speech was fantastic. Superman punching Ah Sahm was great and their fight was an excellent tease for things to come. I get the feeling Ah Toy is going to unknowingly set her new girl up to be a fall guy. The real Ah Toy lived to be 100 and died of old age so we'll see how the show handles this. The real life characters in the show are going to be interesting to watch. Deadwood didn't hold to historical canon if it could tell a better story so I'm hoping they play with this here. Good show. I want more. PaybackJack fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jun 9, 2019 |
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Jun 9, 2019 18:14
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dirty lousy tramp posted:I was watching with half a brain so - how come Ah Sahn is back with the boss's son at the end of the episode? They turfed him out. I sort of feel the overall arc of his character in this episode is that he doesn't want to work for anyone, sees how the people on the bottom are being treated, realizes that he can't help people from that position and rejoins so he can eventually gain more power to actually be able to fight for the Asian community rather than for an individual group. Young Jun asks him to come back early on in the episode because YJ thinks his old man is weak and that the old ways of doing things need to be changed. I think Ah Sahm sort of chooses a path at the end and the path is towards carving out a bigger piece for Asians.
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Jun 9, 2019 20:07
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I hope you're all watching Jett because if Banshee split into two shows with the Roadhouse part of it becoming Warrior then the heist part of it became Jett.
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Jun 24, 2019 17:39
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I thought maybe Sophie had some sort of plan but it turns out she's just a petulant child. That's fine I suppose since every other character has these long term schemes going on, there's room for a character that's impetuous. Next week's fight should be pretty good. I like how every week Li Yong has a scene where he regrets putting Mai Ling in power.
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Oct 25, 2020 15:05
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VagueRant posted:Anyway, for as fantastic as 99% of the cast are, Mai Ling feels really miscast. Not a bad actress, but her cutesy little voice and mannerisms make her impossible to see as serious or intimidating in this kind of role. Like you can really see in the scene with Ah Toy this episode because even when she's being acquiescent to Mai Ling, Olivia Cheng has some serious presence and seems like she's the badass in control. (While even outclassing Avasarala from The Expanse for the wildest outfits on TV!) I'd say that's pretty intentional. Mai Ling hasn't been running her show for very long, whereas Ah Toy has been for many years. Mai Ling is a girl that's coming up from essentially nothing to take over this role. She's got a plan but not the experience or poise to wield her power effectively and in a way that others respect. One thing that the show does well is make the characters all feel quite different. Ah Toy, Mai Ling, and Penelope are all three women trying to run a business but each of them has a different motivation/goal/style of doing it. I do agree that the show isn't laying too many seeds that as an audience member I can get invested in. Feels like it's written week to week rather than with a long term destination in mind. They definitely need to give Ah Sahm a clear direction since he's kind of the central character and his arc needs to hold up all these other subplots.
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Oct 27, 2020 16:27
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That fight was way too dark. While we have a direction for Ah Sahm it's not exactly a clear path and he isn't making any moves that would put him in a position where he'd be able to command the Tong unless his plan was just to manipulate Jr. into doing what he wanted which seems like a bad plan.
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Nov 1, 2020 14:09
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Wasn't as good as the first season's out of town adventure, but I liked Bisping's cameo although after the fight it was kind of obvious everything from then on the rest of the tournament didn't really matter. The whole story was pretty obvious from the get go so I was kind of hoping we'd see something a little more straight forward with the tournament itself.
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Nov 7, 2020 12:05
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Inspector 34 posted:That's pretty cool! I keep waiting for the moment when Nellie turns out to be a duplicitous a-hole but maybe good things can actually happen. I kind figured she wasn't when the other business partner went to the church and started that plot line. I'd guess that next week she'll realize that Ah Toy is a murderer and be unable to accept that but keep their arrangement going as it's best for the girls. If she does betray her it will be in a way where she probably just takes the actual ownership away from Ah Toy in case Ah Toy is found out for being behind the killings. Ah Toy was kind of dumb burning her bridges this week so I guess it was a theme. I'm really not looking forward to seeing Ah Sahm turn on Young Jun. If they knew going in that this was the end of the series then killing the Mayor, Penny, and Sophie then having it fall on the heads of the Chinese would have been a good send off to those characters. I guess we'll see where they go with the sisters from here.
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Nov 15, 2020 19:00
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That was a good penultimate episode and I'm excited for next week's finale. The season has been kind of dancing around a bit and I wish it was a bit more focused on getting to this specific point. I feel like the Leary fight has to have some kind of fix because we already saw him and Ah Sahm throw down and Leary hasn't been spending this whole season training like Ah Sahm has. It also felt like maybe Leary was kind of seeing the futility of what was happening and was going to be the one to turn things around on Buckley. The Jun reunion felt a bit rushed but the whole pacing of the season was off so oh well. I'm going to have a hearty laugh if Penny's arc actually ends with her just getting stabbed by Buckley.
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Nov 29, 2020 20:31
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Good stuff. The "Ah Sahm is a hero" thing was a bit heavy handed but I liked everything else. I think they could have given Leary a few scenes where he beats up some Chinese guys in his ring to learn how to fight their style but it still worked. God drat was the actor that played Leary jacked. He was like the Irish Brock Lesnar with those loving traps. The Penny storyline got a good chuckle out of me because it went down like it should have. Happy that Ah Toy got to keep her relationship. Father Jun leaving was kind of a shame since they just started really making his character interesting in the last couple episodes as well. If this is where it ends I can accept it but I'd love at least one more season. Open Source Idiom posted:
Thanks for the recommendation on this one. Slipped under the radar and it's gotten better after a rough first half an episode. On episode 4 now and I like how they're doing backstories with the various other gangs. Seems obvious given the title but they're doing more than I expected and really fleshing out the politics.
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Dec 5, 2020 20:32
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Hughmoris posted:RIP Quarry I'm amazed that we got as many seasons of Strike Back as we did. That Jett wasn't picked up anywhere is disappointing as poo poo though. Quarry was solid too.
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Apr 18, 2021 17:54
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June 29th can't come fast enough!
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Jun 8, 2023 20:13
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Open Source Idiom posted:Yeah, it feels like half of them are there so the Irish subplots can inevitably team up with leads in order to defeat Buckley / Mai Ling(?) but there's at least one too many. IMO if that's the show's endgame then the show really only needs to keep one of the cop (/ex-cop) husband and wife pairs. I think it's a credit to the show that each of the the main characters has a fleshed out group of side characters; replete with their own antagonists and allies. Some of this stories could use more/less time, and some of them I wish had been brought into the show in a larger role earlier, but not just forcing the secondary main characters to just exist off screen in limbo is a feature of this show I enjoy. I'm a world building guy though.
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Jul 17, 2023 11:44
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That may have been my favorite episode. I always love enemies finding common ground kind of stuff. One of the great things about this show is how deep all the villains are; you were almost rooting for Buckley when he twisted the knife with that victory speech. Leary is still awesome, and Mai Ling glowing about her wedding is a wonderfully soft edge to the character.
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Jul 27, 2023 18:39
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Li Yong is like the dumbest nice guy in the show. The response he should have had was when those elders approached him was to immediately bring their heads back as a wedding present. For a guy that has so much power and influence in the Tong I honestly wonder what he thinks about on a day to day basis, because he seems somewhere between blind and clueless about how poo poo actually works. Still I'm curious to see if he ends up fighting Ah Sahm to hurt or save Mai Ling; I kind of feel like he's the kind of guy that would be like "You made me kill my best friend, so I'm going to go kill your brother or he's going to kill m, but it's going to hurt you either way." I love that we got that great fight with some cool kung fu stuff, and then immediately turned around into two white guys going to war, like a pair of boxers, in a jail cell. This show really respects the idea that tough guys are tough regardless of whatever style they train. I'm shocked that Young Jun didn't have to kill his dad, that was a good call though. VagueRant posted:Seeing Ah Toy dice that guy was satisfying but what an absolute deadend that plotline was. I wouldn't say it was a dead end since the point was showing that Ah Toy is back in fighting shape. When the dudes first came to her parlor one guy almost killed her, now she's back in form and rolls three of them at once. The problem is that Lai has gone rogue so Ah Toy is probably going to have to go avenge her. 
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Aug 4, 2023 15:24
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masterpine posted:Holy jesus gently caress the dispatching of Stricklands goons... That was up there with the best of Banshee. I hope that wasn't how Li Yong leaves the show although if he's done it's decent enough. I liked that the revenge plot for Mai wasn't given too much exposition.
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Aug 10, 2023 18:07
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DJ_Mindboggler posted:One thing the show has been good about is the cross-cultural nature of kung fu. Chinese/Eastern martial arts aren't portrayed as "superior" necessarily to Western fighting styles, the Chinese characters are just generally more practiced in them. Strickland was a cavalry officer who has lots of actual battlefield experience using a saber, he's by no means a dandy using a decorative blade. Lai has had only a year or so of training, it's not impossible he'd be a better sword fighter than her. Especially since he's physically much larger, and as the Leary/Ah Sam fights showed, physical strength isn't ignored as an advantage (though not an overwhelming one) in fights. Actually it makes sense he'd be good at dueling with a Saber as the weapon was used as a dueling blade in the latter 19th century. I think the last 20 years of MMA have done a lot of disprove the "myth" of Kung Fu. It's a shame there hasn't been something as instructional in teaching people how swords work.
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Aug 13, 2023 19:05
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It definitely felt like a weird time to just play the "Ah Sahm can't let his sister die" card but in theory I like the double turn of him and Li Yong; with both getting fed up with their respective bosses, switching sides so that they can have a final showdown with out pitting family against one another. I think while the moment itself was weak, the build to it was a bit better as we had some moments where Ah Sahm got to reconnect with Mai Ling a bit. Personally, I would have had him going to the train and have a goodbye with Yan Mi telling her that he has to go save his sister in that moment, rather than have him just straight up turn on the whole Tong right away. He could have had some scene where then he's doing the "protective fighting" deal where he doesn't want to hurt either one, and just wants to stop people from killing Mai Ling with outright trying to kill them either. Instead they just flipped a switch and it's like "well, time to kill a bunch of guys I just called brother literally a second ago". It was just too jarring and rushed. Leary making some shrewd moves this episode which is great to see. Hong's end was really out of the blue and I had to google the character that killed him. I was glad they didn't just end the Nellie/Ah Toy relationship back in the midpoint of the season, those endings always feel too clean for my taste. I'm sad that Buckley is getting played because I was kind of hoping for him to just hook up with a white Mai Ling and then have her find out about Mai Ling and have some fun bonding moments between the two as Buckley plays an uncomfortable third wheel. This episode also made it seem like Archer is a grifter which definitely is odd since she came across as a woman who knew the local political scene and was fairly connected; not something a traveling con duo would be knowledgable or connected enough to. Again, a rushed plot line. There's definitely too many hanging threads for the series to wrap up, so they better have known there was another season planned.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:18
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:I was kinda hoping that Ah Sahm would get to Long Zi hideout half dead, and then get shot by Mai Ling because she assumed he was also there to kill her. Just go for it! But I guess the showrunners have plans for future seasons: You know when he got stabbed in the fight with Young Jun and Hong there was a brief moment where I thought "Wow, does Tropper have the balls to straight up kill off his lead like this?" It wouldn't have made much sense overall, but if this was the last episode then I figured that you might as well go all out with some crazy surprises and having him die there, for them to get to Mai Ling and be run off by a returning Li Yong(who then kills Mai Ling himself), would have been a good conclusion for the major arc of the show.
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Aug 17, 2023 21:36
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