WATCHING: WARRIOR Season 2


PLOT: "Set during the Tong Wars in late 1870s San Francisco, California, the series follows Ah Sahm, a martial arts prodigy who immigrates to San Francisco from China, in search of his sister, only to be sold to one of the most powerful tongs in Chinatown." (wiki)

"Warrior" is essentially American action-drama television series, executive-produced by Shannon Lee and Justin Lin, that premiered on April 5, 2019, on Cinemax.

One of the main sales"-factor for me, was that this show was based on an original concept and treatment by the Bruce Lee, and via various online fan-made videos, was what the late David Carradine's "Kwai Chang Caine" role in "Kung-Fu" was eventually made using said idea, since morphed to suit the narrative of the 1970's tv series. A side-story perhaps interesting to share here, but did not color my watching experience of the series, beyond "curiosity".

In this iteration, Jonathan Tropper was chosen by the executive producers to be the showrunner for the series. He is known for his earlier tv series "Banshee" - which someone had recommended to me to watch - for its intense fight scenes, which I thank youtube for providing us the summarised version, and hence providing an expectation to what "Warrior" could hold.

I had not taken the time to post about the show beyond these fluff pieces, simply because the series held no sway with my attention. Perhaps my viewing experience was coloured with watches of other series during that time, or my tastes were different then (*hence me being none-too-reliable at times, I admit :p), but to my faded memories, I had felt the story was a tad forced, and situations understandably melodramatic, also dragged a bit longer than my tolerance could take.

I stopped my watch halfway thru the first season (which I found out was "Episode 5" via wikipedia's episodic descriptions), and never came back, even when my weekly watches were "opened" (ie: I had time in-between tv series I followed).



But here I am, because I had two KDramas & a JDrama ended, and just started on another two KDramas, and admittedly was intrigued to see THIS POST on POPCORNX back on my weekly Top-Ten...! Then I jumped straight into Episode One Season Two, primarily because I had wanted to check if the Opening Credit Sequence was the same as S1's ...



If you need to know, the opening is essentially the same, BUT for some different images added in, which reflected scenes from Season 2, or at least the fight scene from Ep1S2 LOL

And what I witnessed were a very intriguing of situation developments, their scripted situations, and new faces, and character "evolution(s)" that actually did interest me. And it became pretty evident there is a "budget" now, with the creation of faux cities, and scenes. Of course THIS money shot piqued my interest!



So Now I am thinking of returning to finished up my Season One episodes (I've read the episode synopsis on Wiki to spoil my own watch tho lol), OR just stick to the "Season 1 Recap" video I posted below ... and will aim to continue watching past S2 E1, where a finite ending is at hand ... or at least before Season Three is announced, if ever there will be one ...

The 10th and last episode of Season Two aired December 4th, 2020. This would be Cinemax' final original offering before ceasing original programming. View previews for both S1 and S2 on cinemax.com/warrior.

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