Well, it opened with a fight scene, of course. Cinemax's original series Warrior, influenced by Bruce Lee, is about combat in ways that are obvious and ways that are not; it loves some fisticuffs just for the fun of it, but the very martial art-y theme of self-reflection and learning from one's mistakes is also woven through much of the growth of character and plot.
This is probably why, as he takes on his hulking opponent in the Barbary Coast Battle Pit, Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) continues to flash back to his whooping at the hands of Li Yong (Joe Taslim) last season.
He's not fighting for money, as his new manager Rosalita Vega (Maria-Elena Laas) reminds him, because Hop Wei looks after her own. To the viewer, if not to Ah Sahm himself, what exactly he is fighting for is clear.
The issue with Warrior, as you can see a little in "Learn to Survive or Employ a Bodyguard," is that it often needs the show to rest solely on its battle scenes, and they are not sufficiently noteworthy to supply it.
By any means, they're not bad, and actually, they're pretty good, with nice wide angles and minimal cutting, but they're not great in the way you sometimes feel they have to be.
That could come with time, or it might improve the other bits of business enough that you notice less. And we'll see.
But you can see how Warrior Season 2 is very much a direct continuation rather than some sort of reinvention, using the freshman outing 's world-building legwork as a springboard for some more fanciful setting and style elaboration.
New characters like the aforementioned Rosalita and Sophie Mercer (Celine Buckens) are mostly amusing because of how they shake up the dynamics created.
We see Dylan Leary (Dean Jagger) and, most prominently, Mayor Samuel Blake (Christian McKay) and his wife Penelope (Joanna Vanderham) communicate with the latter.
Samuel is clearly driven insane by Sophie, but her youthful idealism is a promising character trait for shaking up the status quo, admittedly born of entitlement.
That is the "Learn to Survive or Employ a Bodyguard" theme. The equilibrium is a constant push-pull between ensuring that things remain the same and make it possible and work on progress behind the scenes.
You see this with Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng) and Ah Sahm, strikingly-outfitted; the latter wants to take extracurricular revenge on a new group named the Teddy Boys, while the former is concerned about the publicity it will bring to their activities and the price that will have to be paid for it.
In this time, San Francisco continues to be at war with idealism and pragmatism, although it is now admittedly starting to resemble a more fantastic version of history than the one you would read about in a novel.
These changes are minor and mostly cosmetic, but they offer a slightly different vibe to Warrior Season 2, Episode 1, than to the first season.
Many who are more buttoned-up, like Ah Sahm and Bill O'Hara (Kieran Biew), are also more trapped in place; poor Bill still works as a debt collector for Zing (Dustin Nguyen), using money taken from him to buy steak for his family, which his wife, Lucy (Emily Child, does not leave unremarked.
Ah Toy and Mai Ling (Dianne Doan)'s more elaborate costumes are symbolic of larger, bolder roles, a metaphor for power. The power of Ah Toy is sexual, Mai Ling's is more traditional-she makes a point of wielding it for the good when she balls out by buying all the fruit from the stand of a vendor so that his sick wife can go to the doctor.
Ah Sahm, Ah Toy, and Lau (Jenny Umbhau) make mincemeat of the Teddy Boys during the midpoint battle scene, as they threaten to lynch a Chinese man for no excuse whatsoever beyond the normal race-related ones-he took their jobs! Their women he raped! The bookend of the episode is a better scrap than the Pit wars.
It plays more with the strengths of the warrior. Without overuse of evident "this is a stunt actor" shots, it is bloodier and crazier and lets Koji and Umbhau show off more.
It also helps to kick the plot into gear, as O'Hara and Lee confiscate the illicit arms cache of Wang Chao (Hoon Lee) to try to compel him to give up the swordsman, which he later addresses with Ah Toy, not most satisfied with matters. Oh, see? With push and pull. Everyone has a secret that they have to keep, which at least one other person knows.
This is a pretty teasing foundation on which to create a second season, and while not perfect on its own terms, this premiere gives off a sense of escalating chaos that suggests that it's teeing up things to come that are far more exciting.
By the time we return to the Barbary Coast Battle Pit, where Ah Sahm wins more easily, some minor progress is completed, and slightly opens up to Rosalita about his motivations; as he starts to realize what he's looking for, he's becoming more centered and dangerous. It is n0t a complicated metaphor, but it’s a good way of tying the choreography into character development.
