Review: Warrior rushes to the finish line in Episode 309

Wait, has Dylan Leary been the Warrior the whole time?

I know that’s a silly question, but when the show cut to credits on Dylan screaming in his bar after brutally beating up a sextet of thugs, that’s what popped into my head. He’s the most entertaining part of the newest episode, “All of Death is a Going Home.” In fact, he’s been really entertaining all season, turning from a bigoted enemy of the Chinese into a bigoted enemy of the Chinese who’s also a bit of an antihero in his own right.

The show has made Leary look better by pairing him with Douglas Strickland, ruthless capitalist and grade-A jaghole. This season has been a little predictable when it comes to its villains. Benjamin Atwood was brought in as the new horrible police chief; we were all waiting for him to take a fall, and he fell hard last week when O’Hara kicked his ass. And this week O’Hara is made the new chief of police! He’s rewarded for beating up his terrible boss, fulfilling the dream of wage slaves everywhere.

Similar to Atwood, Strickland’s maliciousness can seem a little over the top…but at the same time, is it really hard to believe that a wealthy industrialist who extorts politicians would break the promises he made to Leary in the name of making more money? Leary, for all his many faults, at least honestly believes in helping his constituents. Strickland is willing to use anyone and everyone to get ahead. Men like him ran the country back then and they run it now. He’s a very recognizable kind of supervillain.

So it’s satisfying to see Leary refuse to play Strickland’s game. It’s fun to watch him blow up Strickland’s railroad project and then throw it in his face. And it’s entertaining to watch him tear through Strickland’s hired goons at the end of the episode, although the violence was a bit much even for this show. The bit where Leary punches a dude’s head into the side of the countertop? Jesus Christ, Warrior, go to therapy.

Watch Warrior, the show with a million plotlines

So Leary has the most complete arc of the episode. Everyone else is in transition ahead of next week’s season finale. Mai Ling and Li Yong get one scene together, although it’s a good one; after Li Yong’s brutal fight with Kong Pak last week, Mai Ling has grown paranoid that Li Yong might hurt her and is surrounding herself with extra security. But she’s clearly conflicted about it, and he’s hurt. Joe Taslim and Dianne Doan both give excellent performances here.

Elsewhere, Hong and Marcel break up after Hong flies into a rage and beats up an off-duty cop. It’s heartbreaking in theory, and I applaud Chen Tang’s raw performance as Hong, but honestly, this storyline was underdeveloped from the start. If the show wanted me invested, it needed to give me more; more about Hong’s hair-trigger temper, more about what he and Marcel meant to each other, and more about this new bohemian corner of San Francisco. It simply wasn’t a big enough part of the show for me to care.

This season, Warrior has overburdened itself with too many storylines, and some are getting the short shrift. I also thought the resolution of Lai’s revenge plot against Strickland was rushed. The show dispenses with it right at the top of the episode, and by the middle Lai might be dead…although honestly I’m not sure. Is she dead or just badly hurt? Comment below.

If Lai is dead it’ll be a waste, because even though she’s been on the show for a while I still don’t have much of a handle on her character. Mostly I’m interested to see how Ah Toy will react. Maybe she and Leary will team up now that they both have a score to settle with Strickland? I’d watch that.

Ah Sahm vs Young Jun

On the other hand, Warrior has been building to a conflict between Ah Sahm and Young Jun for a while, and this episode pushes them closer to the brink.

To summarize, Young Jun’s men are finally good enough at printing counterfeit money so as to render Yan Mi obsolete. Ah Sahm, who has fallen hard for Yan Mi, warns her to get out of dodge, but before she can, Lee and his boss figure out her part in the counterfeiting scheme and arrest her. Ah Sahm goes to the cops and offers to tell them where to find the counterfeit plates if they let her go, so he’s directly betraying Young Jun.

Ah Sahm tells much of this to Chao, which proves to be a mistake, since Chao offers up the info to Happy Jack’s replacement in exchange for his life; remember that Chao, Lee and Abigail killed Happy Jack the other week, so Chao has to give the new guy something good to avoid retribution.

So now the police, Chao, the Hop Wei, and Happy Jack’s gang all know where the plates are. We’re moving pieces into place for what could be a spectacular finale. I hope they somehow manage to rope in Leary too, and maybe even Buckley; I’m ready for all these storylines to collide.

But the most emotionally taxing part will probably be the inevitable fight between Ah Sahm and Young Jun. On top of everything else that happens this episode, Father Jun finally dies, which has the whole tong a bit on edge. I wish this storyline had a little more room to breathe, but Jason Tobin and Perry Yung have done fantastic work as Young Jun and Father Jun respectively, with Tobin in particular impressing me as he’s explored Young Jun’s tender side. I sympathize with both him and Ah Sahm, and I’m nervous that I’m going to have to watch these two friends try and kill each other.

All Bullet Points Are a Going Home

• Why was Chao, of all people, giving a eulogy at Father Jun’s funeral? Isn’t that kind of an endorsement of the Hop Wei? I thought his whole thing was neutrality.
• I loved the 21-axe salute at Father’s Jun’s funeral.
• Yan Mi is a fine character and Chelsea Muirhead is doing a good job playing her, but she does feel like she was brought in to generate conflict among the series regulars. Maybe the finale can change that, or (hopefully) season 4. The show is developing a bad habit of bringing in female characters only to rotate them out when it realizes it doesn’t know what to do with them; Penelope Blake has been mentioned only once this season, her sister Sophie not at all, and I always forget that Buckley’s new girlfriend/advisor Catherine Archer exists until she’s onscreen.

Episode Grade: B-

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