Into the Badlands, Season 1, Episode 1 - Is the Performance Worthy of the Art?
Despite some things getting lost between the lines of exposition, and ignoring the overall potential of the series' leads going forward, the pilot is a somewhat compelling introduction into the badlands of AMC's newest drama.
Into the Badlands is set many years into the future, where the world has become something of a wasteland and at this point guns have been outlawed. The land is ruled by seven rival Barons who rely on one another as much as they loath one another.
Daniel Wu stars as Sunny, the series lead and a revered Clipper (assassin) for his house's Baron. When we meet him, he gets to show off his martial arts skills almost immediately, before releasing a young boy, M.K. (Aramis Knight) from entrapment. This sets in motion the sequences that unfold here, and begins Sunny's transformation from cold-hearted killer with no choice to a man who very much seems to have a conscience.
The pilot is very heavy on exposition, because it needs to be. There's plenty for us to learn in a short space of time, and so we're (very briefly) introduced to only one other Baron, the Widow (Emily Beecham), whose appearance seemed strange largely due to the setting in which it took place.
There are little details that are skipped over in the process of teaching its audience everything we need to know. The Baron, Quinn, played impressively by Marton Csokas, is in the process of wedding Jade (Sarah Bolger), which is being planned by Lydia (Orla Brady). It isn't quite clear whether Lydia is his current wife or an ex-wife, though it's made obvious that the Baron can take as many as he likes.
Sunny is written early on as a loyal killer for his Baron, a man who is mostly emotionless, and does his job without question. The reveal that Veil (Madeleine Matock) is pregnant with their baby suggests that isn't the case, even before the events of the series begin.
Daniel Wu's character is clearly one that dreams of a better world, but rejects it when others voice those same dreams. I question whether Wu can hold the show as its lead. His character is relatively bland in the way in which he feels like a character we've all seen before. The kind of character born from tragedy and into a world in which he feels trapped.
M.K. is another matter. Considering the rarity at which teenagers make compelling characters, M.K. has plenty of potential. The script writes him with plenty of curiosity, and the developments late in the episode are certainly welcome. Where I expected the show to set up a future in which the boy learns the ways of a Clipper under Sunny's tutelage, the show takes it in the opposite direction.
Martial arts is its calling card, and there are two sequences in which Wu gets to show off his craft. These sequences are fantastically choreographed, though at times there's less skill on show and more editing. While it is a gorgeously realised world, its characters are far less enticing.
The Baron and M.K. are characters filled with enough potential, but Lydia is rather empty and bland. So too, she and Quinn's son Ryder (Oliver Stark) isn't any good for much more than grimacing and prancing around praying for his father's acceptance. They are very much characters built on tropes, overtly cliche with little else in their heads.
What the pilot succeeds further at is creating a world where the places we haven't seen are certainly inviting. The golden city and the other areas controlled by the remaining Barons are places that we are sure to see, and the Badlands are begging to be explored. The same can't be said for the characters, who need a further dimension added to truly make them warrant our attention.
The fights are brutal. We hear every cracking bone, and we hear the blood gurgling at the opening of a dying man's throat. It's vicious and blood thirsty but certainly not overtly so. There's a beauty in the fight sequences that does justice to the art it's portraying.
There's hope in the fact that a lot of world building needed to be done here, and there's still more to do. Unlike so much television and film, this series can't rely on already-built mythology. It has no name to pin on its chest in order to pull its audience in, so it has a hard job ahead.
Still, with further character work, it has plenty of potential. Assumedly, we'll see Sunny venture into the unknown at some point. That will be where the meat is, away from the stand-still nature of the characters who live behind the walls of the Fort. It's a show with plenty of growing to do, and all the pilot might be doing is pushing through some growing pains.
