Into the Badlands

[DSC01 he/him]

Anyone see the premiere on Sunday? It followed The Walking Dead, so some of you had to, but I'm surprised to see no relevant thread here.

 

I think it's a really promising show. It could almost be a fantasy series, if they dropped the whole post-apocalyptic thing and just went with a whole new society. While the reason they give for the absence of guns is pretty flimsy, I'm willing to accept it, for the sake of awesome kung fu sword fights. 

 

Thoughts?

[Briar King]

I liked it. I like it even more since it's set in NOLA and get a kick out of my state being the Badlands. I didn't hear anything about why guns are banned or what yr it's in. Maybe my dvr missed a minute at the start?

[DSC01 he/him]

They don't say what year it's in, just that society was in shambles after something or other happened, and the barons got things in order again, after an indeterminate period of time. All of the currently reigning barons (except the Widow, of course) are the first generation, so this society has only been around for 20 years or so. The reason for banning guns was simply that the barons figured that a populace with firearms would make it difficult to maintain their absolute rule. As long as medieval weaponry is all that's available, the barons' highly trained experts will always be able to dominate whatever the peons throw at them. That makes perfect sense.

 

What I think is flimsy is the notion that this edict would work. People have said, "Well, you get executed if you get caught with a gun." Okay. So? You used to get executed for stealing a horse. People still did it. And those horses didn't let you put down an unstoppable killing force at a distance. Like I said, I'm willing to roll with it for the sake of the show, but it's a pretty thin explanation.

[DSC01 he/him]

Okay, technically a double post, here, but it's been about a week since the last one, and I've seen the second episode since then.

 

So, I was apparently wrong about how long it's been since the barons took over. It's possible that the baron system has existed for quite a while, so the whole "no guns" thing makes a little more sense. It is conceivable that they could be totally wiped out after an extended campaign against them. Actually being able to eradicate firearms seems a less likely outcome to that campaign than a number of others that I think of, but sure--whatever.

 

The martial arts scenes remain great, but I'm worried about story and character development. The world that they've created is full of possibilities, and the characters have a lot of potential, but it seems to me that there's a real danger of the show serving neither characters nor plot and making everything a setup for a sweet kung fu scene. Trying to make everything in a show serve one element that the writers think is cool generally sinks the show (I would argue, for example, that Lost--a show that I initially loved--suffered from the writing only serving a sense of mystery).

 

Right now, the story seems to be spinning its wheels a bit. One of the leads escapes one baron, ends up in the clutches of another, and then ends up right back with the first baron at the end of the episode. That introduced him to a couple of other characters, of course, but it made everything he did in that episode seem almost pointless. He's right back where he started. 

 

On the other hand, a character played by Steven Lang was introduced, and he's cool (the actor, that is; the single scene he was in didn't establish how cool his character is or is not), so that's good news.

[Briar King]

Nah that wasn't pointless. Think about it.

He meets a potential major ally, has the trail thrown off him for now, and now is a Colt.

Only 1 of those things could have happened if he stayed.

I always cringe a bit inside when one person takes on 5 guys cause the odds irl of taking on that many aren't good let alone 25-30... Someone would stab from behind really fast irl but man does it look awesome when 1 person decimates a squad on tv.

Edited November 24, 2015 by Briar King

[DSC01 he/him]

True, it's not totally pointless. I was actually going to mention what you did, but I didn't want to ramble on forever.

What I'm saying is that they should have found a way to accomplish that without having the character move around in circles. I can think of a couple of ways that they could have done that. Not perfect ways, necessarily, but I don't know where the story is going yet.

[Briar King]

Ep 3 was very meh. I hope last 3 aren't on that lvl!

[DSC01 he/him]

It had its moments. The action scenes remain pretty awesome (Quinn vs. the Widow, for example), but they really need to give us more, story-wise. For example, why is Quinn's son considered so incompetent--even by his doting mother? The main strike against him right now seems to be that he ordered an attack on the Widow when he shouldn't have. That may have been a tactical blunder, but it doesn't seem so far removed from what Quinn himself might do (in fact, it seems more like it is exactly something that Quinn might do).

 

Then there's the brain tumor plot. Last week, he killed the doctor because he knew about it; this week he's volunteering the information to that doctor's daughter. I guess we're supposed to figure out that the scene of him staring at his x-ray is him regretting his haste in killing the doctor? That's not how the scene read to me. I figured that it was just like, "Oh, crap. I'm going to die. Brooding time." But when he just out and tells Veil that he's dying, we've got to figure out some way that his confession makes sense.

 

That seems like another example of the weird circles they take the plot in. First we have M.K. escape, get snatched up by the Widow, then end up back with Quinn. Yes, it accomplishes something, but it feels like the story is going in circles. The tumor is a subtler example, but it's still sort of a circular plot trajectory. "I'm sick; better go to the doctor!" --> "The doctor knows I'm dying; better kill him!" --> "I'm dying; better go to the doctor!" And his actions do actually make sense. One can see a despot flying off the handle when he finds out he's dying and killing his doctor, only to calm down and decide that he needs one after all. But the viewer has to imagine that into the story. The show itself doesn't give much insight into his motivations.

 

One interesting thing I've noticed is that some reviewers have said that Quinn's character is just cartoonishly evil, with no complexity. I kind of thought that there might be something complicated to the character--something about the way the character is acted makes me think that even though he's ruthless, there's more to him than a 50s comic book villain. I think both of us are just reading things into the character that the show isn't providing. And that's an issue. You shouldn't have to make educated guesses about extra information that isn't in the show, just to make the plot and characters make sense.

[DSC01 he/him]

Finally! Some story! It doesn't speak well to this show that I forgot about it last night and only remembered to watch it after seeing an article about it in my Facebook newsfeed today. But it finally is moving the story forward and being interesting for something other than cool fight scenes. I hope it keeps it up (though I'm pretty sure that there are only two episodes left, so...).