Into the Badlands - 'Two Tigers Subdue Dragons'

"Meeting in a graveyard. That can't end badly."

It's been a while, but I had a chance to catch another episode of Into the Badlands the other day.

The Widow continues to agitate, setting Quinn and his closest ally... I want to say Solomon, because it's Edi Gathebi from The Blacklist, but actually he's called Jacobee. The Widow raids one of his gold shipments and leaves the body of one of Quinn's clippers. This causes a parley to go pear-shaped, leading to a mass brawl which Jacobee's side would have won handily if not for their insistence on making a hugely top-heavy miner's pick their signature weapon. MK catches Tilda making sure things come to blows and, although he blacks out trying not to rage-murder her and she escapes, this allows Sunny to prove the Widow as behind it. However, Jacobee tells Quinn he rattled the Widow's cage; he needs to deal with her. They get back to find that the Widow has killed most of the Clippers at the Fort and bought off Quinn's cogs.

Elsewhere, Tilda questions the Widow's methods and gets a verbal pummeling which reveals that most, if not all of the Widow's 'daughters' are rescued victims of abuse. Veil offers a treatment to Quinn, which is effectively poison that might kill the tumour before it kills him. Jade tries to make nice with the Baroness, who says that if she were her mother, she would advise her not to sleep with Quinn and Ryder at the same time. Oh yes; it turns out Jade and Ryder were close before she was engaged to Quinn.

Pissed at being overlooked and cock-clocked by dear daddy, Ryder plans to meet with Jacobee to sell out his father, only to be taken to meet with Zephyr and the Widow, who have plans to unseat Ryder and Jacobee alike, and offer Ryder his father's domain in exchange for MK.

And then Sunny tries to bargain for passage downriver for Veil and MK, only to be told that the price is MK, who murdered a boatload of fellow cogs during one of his funny turns.

I'm now two thirds of the way through Season 1 of Into the Badlands, and wondering if I shouldn't give up on looking for parallels with Journey to the West. it is gorgeous, however, and the action is spectacular, even when one of the combatants is wielding an awkward pick axe.