Review: Warrior pulls the strings tighter (but not taut) in Episode 307

The secret to getting me to mist up during a movie or TV show is to have people on opposing sides of a conflict show compassion for each other. (I will also accept strangers showing compassion en masse). I don’t know what it is; displays of camaraderie despite the odds always get me.

So I had a lot to like about this episode of Warrior, “Gotta Be Crooked to Get Along in a Crooked World.” There’s the scene towards the end when Li Yong finds a delirious Father Jun wandering the streets of Chinatown, and instead of taking him hostage or using him as leverage, brings him back to Young Jun, who’s going frantic looking for his missing dad. This season has been highlighting Li Yong’s gentler side; he’s been urging restraint from Mai Ling and gave her big wide puppy dog eyes when she proposed. Might there be a happy ending for these two?

Then there’s the scene when Dylan Leary — a man who has both advocated and practiced violence against the Chinese in the past, I remind you — seeks out Ah Sahm in Chinatown to try and stop the latest scuffle between the Chinese and the Irish from blowing up into another riot. The shot of two of them on opposite sides of the screen, wary of each other but trying to come to some kind of understanding, has stuck with me. And for the moment, they do understand each other, and violence is averted. Might these two be able to hold their communities together long enough for a lasting trust to form?

Of course not! One of the reasons moments like this work is because we know they’re fleeting. Leary may want peace with the Chinese right now, but only so he can push through legislation that will outlaw Chinese labor completely. Li Yong may be showing kindness towards the Hop Wei for the moment, but what happens when Mai Ling goes full Red Wedding and murders all of her enemies when their guards are down, something I’m terrified she’s going to do? Did you catch that girlish titter she let out when she invited Ah Sahm to her wedding? That was way scarier than any of her steely speeches.

That, I think, is why these moments of solidarity hit so hard for me; they’re beautiful because they don’t last. That tension is a big part of the reason Warrior has remained as good as it has, however melodramatic it can get. The show has real stakes. A lot of these people hate each other in a direct, honest way I don’t see on a lot of other TV shows. The Irish and the Chinese will fight. The Hop Wei and the Long Zii will scrap. Young Jun may indeed turn on Ah Sahm, as the show is hinting. There will be blood. I’m nervous and that’s a good thing.

Warrior bridges the gaps in Episode 307

But none of that happens yet. “Gotta Be Crooked to Get Along in a Crooked World” isn’t about climaxes; it’s about pulling the strings tight before they finally snap sometime in the next couple of weeks. There’s no big dust-up like at the end of the last episode; this one ends with Young Jun having a dark night of the soul as he wonders whether he can trust Ah Sahm. That’s a little unsatisfying, but you can’t reach the other side of a river without building a bridge. We’re crossing one now.

We also get updates on some of the other storylines cooking in the background. Bill O’Hara starts his shitty new job as a manual laborer and gets reacquainted with his wife while taking a bath. Buckley celebrates his opponent dropping out of the mayoral race by throwing himself at Catherine Archer, who gladly accepts his advances. And Yan Mi shows Ah Sahm that she’s been squirreling away counterfeit bills she intends to use to start a new life somewhere after her service to the Hop Wei is over.

Did I mention that Yan Mi reveals this post-coital, and that she’s wearing nothing but a gauzy sheet when she does it? There was a lot of sex stuff in this episode, wasn’t there? Warrior is frank about sex in a way that reminds me of HBO shows from 10 years ago, when they trotted out naughty parts just because. (I’m pretending The Idol doesn’t exist.) I don’t bring that up to condemn or decry it; just something I noticed. Watching Warrior is like time traveling into the recent past.

Verdict

On top of all that, we also get Lee and Chou returning to San Francisco after their excursion last week. They team up with Abigail to kill Happy Jack dead.

So as usual, a lot happens in this episode of Warrior — the show is in danger of becoming overstuffed this season — but it works because there’s real honest tension undergirding everything. Sure, the show can be soap operatic at times, but wait long enough and it always produces moments of real drama, real tragedy, real humanity.

Gotta Have Bullet Points to Get Along in a Crooked World

• Today in things that went over my head, I don’t quite understand how Buckley got Thayer to drop out of the race. I know it had something to do with his meeting with Leary and Douglas Strickland, but I don’t quite know what? Did Strickland extort Thayer with the information he revealed last episode? I dunno, I needed a scene to clarify exactly what happened.
• We get a brief scene of Hong and Marcel bonding during a trip to the market. More at 11.
• I always like scenes between Ah Sahm and Ah Toy. It’s nice to see a genuine platonic friendship between a man and a woman on TV. It’s still pretty rare. These two can relax around each other.
• Ah Toy also visits Mai Ling, who mediates a dispute Ah Toy is having with an angry pimp from the Long Zii side of Chinatown. Then Mai Ling invites Ah Toy to her wedding. I’m so nervous, you guys. That wedding is going to a bloodbath, I just know it.
• Lai is stalking Strickland, no doubt intending to exact bloody revenge for what happened at Nellie’s vineyard. Lai has been around for a while now and we barely know anything about her. More Lai, please!

Episode Grade: B

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