*The premise for this episode spoils the ending of episode 20.*
It’s another “how is Wai Siu-bo going to talk his way out of imminent peril?” episode today, a good one. Even though some of the twists are pretty well telegraphed, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s entertaining to watch it all unfold.
Wai Siu-bo is no longer at the temple, but his situation hasn’t exactly improved. He’s been captured by a martial arts adept, a Ming loyalist who isn’t satisfied with his explanations for why he’s serving the emperor. (Side note: Siu-bo calls her “Reverend,” though I’m not sure specifically what group/order she might belong to.) After initially employing all his cunning just to stay alive, he soon has a new job to tackle: keeping the reverend from killing the emperor.
This is a Wai Siu-bo-heavy episode, which means I’m a happy Tony Leung Chiu-wai fan. We see how the emperor reacts to what’s happening, along with a few chess moves from the empress dowager, but other than that, the story sticks close to Siu-bo.
So what’s he gotten stuck in this time? When the reverend attacked him at the end of the last episode, he tried his usual method of “claim allegiance with whichever camp this person supports”—honestly, it’s impressive that he can keep track of everybody who thinks he supports Qing vs. Ming. But the reverend won’t have it, saying that it’s even worse for a Ming loyalist to be serving the Qing emperor.
He's only saved by a secret he knows, but that doesn’t go all that well for him either. The more he reveals to save his own skin, the more he puts the emperor in jeopardy by giving the reverend critical intel. Wai Siu-bo is pretty ride-or-die for the emperor at this point, and he tries to hold his tongue as much as he can. However, it turns out that he can’t even shut himself up, and more than once, he slaps himself for accidentally giving too much away.
As usual, we get some fun bits of business from Leung. I especially enjoy a scene where he’s mostly just sitting and listening as the reverend has a serious conversation with another character. They’re talking over all this drama, and meanwhile, Wai Siu-bo is sitting off to the side tickling his face with the end of his braid; it cracks me up!
This is a nice performance all around. As Wai Siu-bo gets deeper into his dilemma with the reverend, I like the way everything he says starts to feel like he’s on a tightrope—clearly, he knows that he’s in a tricky situation here and one wrong word could get either him or the emperor killed. There’s also a great moment where the implications of one of the reverend’s threats really hits him, and his face falls so subtly but so plainly. I love it.
Before I go, I will mention that the reverend only has one arm, but I’m guessing that’s not true of the actress. Though hardly surprising that a TV show from 1984 didn’t cast a disabled character authentically, I still wanted to point it out.
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