James Dimmock / AMC
Should You Let Into The Badlands Cut The Line On Your DVR?
AMC's hoping its fight-filled new drama will be as addictive as...well, poppy-based narcotics, probably. Your editors consider whether to move into The Fort.
What Is This Thing?
In a post-apocalyptic future where guns have been outlawed, the feudal Badlands are ruled by Barons, each of whom controls a different indispensable commodity: Sunny, our protagonist, is the pre-eminent Clipper (bodyguard/cop/PI/enforcer) serving under poppy baron Quinn. But might the serfs of this oppressive system dare to dream of a different kind of life in a better place that may or may not exist? Or should they just be satisfied getting to be really good at kung fu?
When Is It On?
Sundays at 10 PM on AMC.
Why Was It Made Now?
The Walking Dead has, basically throughout its existence, been AMC's highest-rated show; it makes sense that the network would develop another action-oriented show as its lead-out.
What's Its Pedigree?
The series was created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the writing team behind Smallville and the feature films Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights, among others; Knights director David Dobkin also directed the Badlands pilot and at least five other episodes. But there aren't really any big names in the cast. Daniel Wu, who plays Sunny, appears to have been in a lot of martial arts movies. Martin Csokas (Quinn) played the titular protagonist of Falcòn; you might remember him as a bad guy in the film The Equalizer, but his hair and beard styling here make him fairly unrecognizable. Sarah Bolger (In America) plays Jade, who's about to become Quinn's second wife, in a wedding being planned by his first wife, Lydia -- Orla Brady, who recurred on Fringe as Walter Bishop's wife -- because in this world barons are allowed to marry as many women as they want.
...And?
It took two commentators to give this one a full consideration.
Our Players
The Talk
I will confess that, before I watched the pilot, every time a promo for this thing came on during The Walking Dead, I would dive for the remote and Dave, out of spite, would pull it away and leave it on to torment me. In that its very existence, while it seemed to have nothing to do with me, infuriated me anyway, I believe I described it as "the Apple Watch of TV" (at least until I started also seeing promos for Donny). But Into The Badlands kind of won me over, a little, which I never thought anything this self-conscious AND steampunky could possibly do! So much fighting!
I have my issues with the pilot for sure, but you can't really watch kung-fu for story, so the fights better be worth it -- and they mostly were, although I don't know how long we can expect that to continue. Are you going to keep watching?
In the age of Peak TV, I'm not sure I loved it enough to make room for it -- not with [checks] SIXTEEN Frontlines backed up on the DVR. Because as good as the fight scenes are -- they're beautifully choreographed in the pilot, as well as staged in compelling settings, and in the second episode we start to see some female fighters seriously kicking ass, which is always more interesting to me, AND they're shot and edited so that you can actually see what the fuck is going on -- all the stuff around them is so smurfy. I appreciate the effort taken to create this world and design it as this sort of western/Asian pastiche (the creators' Shanghai Noon/Knights influence cranked up to 11, moved to the post-apocalypse, and...not trying to be funny). But it's also hard to take it seriously, and impossible to take it as seriously as it takes itself.
That's my issue with it, too. I started calling it Low Winter Sunny in my notes, and I like Daniel Wu a lot; he has a fun energy, bitter but serene, that's very watchable, and his Sunny is not as given to bloviation as the other characters. But this is everything I tend to dislike about post-apocalyptic scenarios: the unthinking reversion of society to a violent patriarchal polygamist system; the moppets can't act; soap doesn't survive The Wars. I'm not sure it's going to do anything innovative enough to make up for...well, all the reasons I don't watch Game Of Thrones.
Wu is definitely doing everything he can with that role, but given that we know Gough and Millar can do action comedy, I do find the tone too dour. I mean, at least they're trying to differentiate it from its schedule neighbour The Walking Dead by designing the look of this world with a lot of vibrant colour, but it is, unfortunately, taking its humourlessness in an even less recognizable milieu.
I am also a big non-fan of what Marton Csokas is doing as Baron Quinn. I get that a louche Georgia accent can provide a lot of cover for a non-American actor, but 1) why can't he just use his real accent, and 2) the character isn't sympathetic, which is fine, or any fun, which isn't.
Oof, I agree: Quinn is for sure the least compelling character in the pilot, and that thundering preacher routine is such a cliché. Also, we would have gotten that it's some weird other earth based on his pants; they didn't also have to burden an attractive man with every hair choice on his head (though I assume we owe a debt to whatever makeup artist talked higher-ups out of also doing something weird to his eyebrows while they were at it).
Nor an attractive setting with every Everything That Rises Must Converge vintage affectation. I counted about five things in that first scene with the widow that made me roll my eyes. A parasol? Really? And then at the same time it reminded me of that beautiful, sad shootout in Road To Perdition, and then I just got annoyed that the show kept making me think of better properties (i.e., the sewer escape and Shawshank).
Speaking of non-American actors being handicapped by weird accent choices: poor Emily Beecham. The Widow is supposed to be Quinn's biggest foe, and apparently homicidally pursuing M.K., the kid Sunny saves from some nomads' trunk, brings back to The Fort to apprentice as a Clipper, and then frees over some hooha about M.K.'s mysterious pendant. But when she sets up an (admittedly cool) ambush to test whether Sunny really is as good as his reputation -- which of course he is; it wouldn't be much of a show otherwise -- she gets out of her car after he slaughters all her men and is only impressive in that it's not often you hear speech coming out of a block of wood. Having watched ahead, I now wonder if she was cast more for her fighting than her acting? Or if it's just concentrating on doing that featureless accent that's making her forget to...act?
In her defense, said speech is from the weakest Vaguely Threatening Foe Of Boss Tries To Seduce Hero To Dark Side Mad Lib in the book. Not that I disagree with your "as an actor, she's a great martial artist" assessment. Ditto Aramis Knight as M.K., although he kind of grew on me after a very loggy start.
I feel weird about TV that wants me to look at shirtless boys that much, too.
I wish this TV knew more what it wanted to be, because I don't think it's great at either thing, but if it threw its lot in more fully with a Hong Kong kung-fu Fight Of The Week plan, I'd watch it. If its real preoccupation is with steampunkiverse world-building and chess-board arranging, I'll have to step out.
Me too. Or if it can't, maybe someone else could just turn Kung Fu Hustle into a TV show and solve literally all our problems.