'INTO THE BADLANDS' SEASON 2 - EPISODE 1 - "TIGER PUSHES MOUNTAIN" - REVIEW

★★★★★

So last night I sat down and finally caught up with the 4 episodes of Into the Badlands season 2 that I've been missing out on and I have to say, If you're feeling jilted at Iron Fist's lukewarm display of fighting prowess, Into the Badlands is here to wash away the bad taste.

A lot has changed for the series since the Season 1 finale. Roughly six months have passed since Sunny (Daniel Wu) betrayed his Baron and failed to save protege M.K. (Aramis Knight) from the abbots who came to collect him. "Tiger Pushes Mountain" picked up with pretty much every character undergoing a fundamental status quo change. 

Sunny has gone from being right-hand man to one of the most powerful men in the land to being a lowly slave in a mining prison. M.K. is now training in a remote monastery under the watchful eye of the enigmatic Master (Chipo Chung). Ryder (Oliver Stark) is busy lording over his new kingdom, even as the Widow (Emily Beecham) and her butterflies begin taking back what's theirs.

Even the setting has drastically changed. Whereas the first season filmed in New Orleans, production shifted to Ireland for Season 2. Right away, this helps the show address one of the more glaring flaws of the first season. The scale is clearly much bigger, both in terms of the variety of locales and the general look and feel of this post-apocalyptic environment.

These changes also help shake up the general focus of the show and ensure that it's not quite so preoccupied with Quinn bullshit family drama . While clearly the Quinns are still a focus, Ryder and his scheming mistress Jade (Sarah Bolger) come across like smaller fish in a bigger pond this year. Conversely, it seems like Widow and her girls are a more integral part of the plot. If anything, Widow seems much less antagonistic now, as she seems about the only voice of decency and common sense left in the Badlands.

All of these changes are welcome. The show has a more ensemble feel and a greater sense of scope and variety.

The addition of a few new players doesn't hurt, either. Chung works well as M.K.'s new mentor, with just enough vulnerability and uncertainty to her role to prevent her from coming across as a generic martial arts master. Nick Frost lends a welcome dose of his magical humor to the show as Bajie, Sunny's new BFF in the mines. If Season 1 was a little too self-serious, Frost's presence immediately helps to mitigate that. As does Stephen Walters as Sunny's new master, "The Engineer." Walters really hams it up here, as if he's determined to fill the void left by Marton Csokas' Quinn, but given the nature of the character and the kingdom he rules, the campy approach fits the Engineer more than it ever did Quinn.

Speaking of which, we learned at the end of this episode that Quinn isn't actually out of the picture. Though the fact that Csokas' name is still in the opening credits kind of deflated that particular reveal. In any case, Quinn not only survived being stabbed by Sunny, he now has Sunny's lover and newborn child in his possession. Veil (Madeleine Mantock) doesn't seem overly concerned about the new arrangement, however, so it's hard to say what role Quinn is meant to play this season.

The series hasn't immediately shed all the flaws of the first season. The performances are still fairly hit and miss. Wu is predictably dependable as Sunny, and he immediately forms a tight rapport with his new sidekick. Wu opts for the silent approach here, which works well given how far the character has fallen and how much he's lost. But there are still too many stiff, stilted performances from the rest of the main cast. Knight in particular has a very deliberate, almost robotic quality to his line delivery that really hurts his character. Ally Ioannides' Tilda, meanwhile, tends to work best when she takes the silent, broody approach. The final confrontation between Tilda's soldiers and the wayward Clippers stood out precisely because of that silence. As for Ryder and Jade, it's probably not a good sign that I left this episode disappointed that neither character was killed off. The Quinn clan may be less a focus this season, but it may turn out that less is still too much.

Let's be honest - most of you probably just tune into this series for the fight scenes above all else (i don't blame you some, some of the scenes are epic). And where Season 1 sometimes went a little too long in between displays of martial prowess, this episode wasn't shy about giving up the goods. And again, with Iron Fist being a bit of a disappointment in the action department, it's nice to be reminded that Into the Badlands remains the reigning champ on TV.

The sheer variety of the fights impressed me as much as anything else in this episode. Sunny was forced to rely on a much more desperate, dirty form of combat as he struggled to escape his captors. There was a real kind of Jackie Chan like quality to that fight, what with Sunny being chained up and forced to use his environment and his attackers' momentum against them. Then there was Widow's prolonged attack on the Clippers, which involved equal parts graceful ballet and swordplay and brutal, almost excessive acts of violence. Balancing out all of that were the smaller fight scenes involving M.K. and his new allies, which give the show a whiff of Chinese wuxia moves. No matter the style, all of these fights were beautifully choreographed and executed. Let's hope the rest of the season keeps up this fast and furious approach to action.