M.K. finds a friend in Baijie.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Into the Badlands was a very Sunny-driven show in its first season, but much less so in Season 2. That's generally been to the show's benefit. If anything, "Black Heart, White Mountain" proved that it's possible to focus too much attention on Sunny and the gang, to the detriment of the show's other major players.
Sunny may have defeated Cyan in mortal combat last week, but Cyan nearly had the last laugh as he left his opponent to die a slow, painful death while tormented by visions of the life he might have had. A solid premise, to be sure. There was certainly an emotional weight to seeing Sunny "reunited" with Veil and meeting his son for the first time. Sunny this season has been a man truly haunted by the ghosts of his past and the hundreds of lives he took as a Clipper. This hallucination/fever dream brought all of that psychological drama to the forefront.
My problem with this storyline is mainly that it felt a little repetitive and drawn-out. These scenes tended to lose their impact after a while as they kept recycling the same beats - Sunny is happy to be with his family, something strange and unsettling happens, the real world begins to intrude, etc. It all wrapped up well enough with Sunny's one-man stand against hundreds of spectral opponents, but I was still left with the impression that too much time wsas being devoted to these dream sequences and not enough to the other subplots.
The brief clash between the newly minted Baroness Jade and the Widow definitely suffered as a result. I would have liked to see more of this conflict, both the massive war unfolding outside and the big reunion between Jade and her ex-husband. What we did see was pretty enjoyable (Marton Csokas' ridiculous accent notwithstanding), but the whole thing felt a little truncated. That said, it is nice to see the Widow/Quinn alliance bearing immediate fruit. In general, Season 2 seems slightly better-paced than Season 1, despite being four episodes longer. That bodes well for Season 3, given the recent announcement that it'll be expanding to 16 episodes.
It will be interesting to see what role Jade plays in the remainder of the season. Jade again proved herself a stronger person than Ryder, remaining defiant in the face of certain death. Perhaps that's why Quinn spared her, or perhaps he simply can't bring himself to kill another loved one and relic from his old life. But given how much hatred Jade harbors for Quinn, you have to imagine it's only going to be a matter of time until she makes him regret sparing her life.
While Sunny's dream sequences bogged down this episode a bit, they did have the advantage of allowing the writers to build up a connection between M.K. and Baijie. I've mentioned before that Aramis Knight has a weirdly deliberate approach to line delivery that sometimes bogs down his performances, but if anything that only makes him more effective as the straight man to Nick Frost's jovial Baijie. It was fun watching the two get to know each other a little even as they raced against time to save the dying Sunny. Baijie continues to grow more compelling the more we learn about his tragic past as an Abbot and why he's tried so hard to leave that life behind.
Their quest culminated in an exciting showdown back at the Master's compound. I'm a little disappointed to see the Master devolving into more an overt villain character, but there was definitely something appealing about seeing M.K. and Baijie fighting a losing battle against several dozen Abbots and acolytes. Baijie showed himself to be quite the crafty fighter, turning the Master's own minions against her and transforming the claustrophobic battlefield into a sea of chaos.
None of the fight scenes in this episode necessarily stand out as the best of the season. Sunny's final sword fight was more about the significance of seeing him confront his demons rather than stylistic swordplay. As for M.K. and Baijie big battle, we're now seeing the limitations of casting Nick Frost in a role that suddenly demands a fair amount of martial arts action. Frost is a great physical comedian, but he's no martial artist. You could see director Stephen Fung doing his best to mask that problem, but the result is too many weirdly framed shots that detract from the flow of the action.
It's also disappointing that we didn't see more of the Master's martial abilities this week. Here was the perfect opportunity to show what the ultimate warrior in the Badlands is capable of, yet we only got a few brief glimpses of her swatting aside her bloodthirsty pupils and staring fixedly at M.K. and Baijie. It's all the more annoying that the final shot of the Master saw her surrounded by half a dozen opponents, yet the episode left the resulting fight completely up to the imagination.
The Verdict
While it definitely had its moments, "Black Heart, White Mountain" stands as the weakest installment of Season 2 to date. This episode spent too much time focusing on Sunny's repetitive dream sequences and not enough showcasing Widow and Quinn's dramatic attack on Jade. But at least M.K. and Baijie made for an entertaining duo, proving once again that Nick Frost is one of the show's strongest assets this year (even if he isn't much of a fighter).
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