Bullet Points: Warrior (S2 Ep9) “Enter the Dragon”
As I was watching Warrior last night, I couldn’t help but think how fitting it was that a series based on the writings of Bruce Lee was airing on what would have been Bruce Lee’s 80th birthday. Add in the fact that the episode shared the name of Bruce Lee’s greatest film and that a weapon that was synonymous with “The Dragon” was featured prominently and it felt like the stars were aligned…
- Jacob Blues: The episode begins with a look back at the event of two weeks ago but from Jacob’s (Kenneth Fok) point of view… Jacob is in the basement of the Blake Mansion when he hears a struggle going on upstairs, he grabs the fireplace poker and goes up the stairs to see Mayor Blake on top of his wife Penny (Joanna Vanderham), choking her to death. Jacob being the loyal valet to Penny, steps in and whacks Mayor Blake in the back of the head with the poker to save Penny and kill the Mayor. We then see the moments that immediately followed, with Penny trying to process what has happened and trying to tell Jacob he’ll be fine… but Jacob reminds her of the kind of justice a Chinese man would be subjected to… realizing he’s right, she hands him a wad of cash and tells him he needs to get out of town. From there we see what Jacob had to endure between that night and to the closing moments of last week’s show where he is in Wang Chao’s (Hoon Lee) shop looking for help.
- The Manhunt is Over: Wang Chao agrees to help Jacob, advising that there’s nowhere in the state of California he is going to be able to hide at this point and the only option is to go “across the salt” and back to China. And the way that Jacob is going to get there, is to hide in a casket and be transported with the Chinese dead that are being returned to their birthplace. Unfortunately for Jacob, Mai Ling (Dianne Doan) had already gotten to Chao, so Chao fills her in on his Jacob deal, Mai Ling then completes her half of her deal with the new acting mayor Walter Buckley and Buckley tips off Bill O’Hara (Kieran Bew) and the police are at the right place at the right time and stop and search the wagon of caskets before it reaches the port and just like that Jacob is in custody.
- Vigilante Justice: But as Bill O’Hara, Richard Lee (Tom Weston-Jones) and some more of San Francisco’s finest transport Jacob to the city jail… they are stopped by an angry Irish mob. The mob proceed to assault the police officers, rip Jacob out of the paddy wagon, beat him severely, before hanging him right on the street outside Dylan Leary’s (Dean Jagger) Banshee pub. Emotions and testosterone are running high amongst the Irish mob and the have now acquired the taste of vigilante justice and they like it… so they mobilize and march right into Chinatown with bad intentions…
- Riot: The Irish show up and just start beating on the citizens of Chinatown, they are knocking over merchant’s carts, going after women trying to protect their children, ripping people from their homes… it is absolutely brutal. Then we get one of the goose bump moments of the episode as Young Jun (Jason Tobin) and Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) are outside and see this angry mob coming their way… Young Jun tells Hong (Chen Tang) to get the rest of the Hop Wei boys… and that’s about the time Li Yong (Joe Taslim) and the Long Zi show up and for the first time in series history, the two tongs are fighting side by side against the Irish! The second goose bump moment in the episode is when during the riot Ah Sahm acquires a pair of nunchaku and it is on like Donkey Kong!
“Enter the Dragon” was an epic episode… so much action, so much carnage and some of the most memorable moments in the history of the series.
Next week is the Season 2 finale (and at this point Series Finale), but before we get to the end of this journey, how about some question filled Bonus Bullet Points…
- Who is ready for Ah Sahm vs. Dylan Leary next week? At the end of “Enter the Dragon” Ah Sahm, Hong and Young Jun go to cut down and retrieve the body of Jacob. As Ah Sahm carries the lifeless body of Jacob away, he locks eyes with Dylan Leary who was standing outside of the Banshee. They’ve teased this confrontation before and it is finally going to be paid off next week.
- How awesome was it to see Father Jun save Young Jun? Not only did the issues between the Hop Wei/Long Zi get put on the back burner during the riot, but the power struggle between father and son was forgotten in that moment where Father Jun proved he still had it!
- How lucky are the Irish that Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng) was on the sidelines for the riot? Could you imagine Ah Toy and her sword out in that chaos and how many heads she could have collected? Fortunately for the angry Irish mob, Ah Toy was inside her brothel recuperating from the events of last week. And fortunately for Ah Toy, Wang Chao and Mai Ling were on the streets of Chinatown as the riot was beginning and came to Ah Toy’s brothel for shelter. And fortunately for Ah Toy, Mai Ling knew a thing our two about nursing wounds. The scenes between Ah Toy and Mai Ling added a new level to their dynamic and also provided a breather in between the scenes of utter mayhem on the streets of Chinatown.
