A Little TLC(w): The Duke of Mount Deer: Season 1, Episode 16 (1984)

This was a good episode. It’s another shakeup one—while some of the twists and turns are clearly prefaced, the story as a whole goes in directions I wasn’t expecting.

Wai Siu-bo fulfills his mission from the emperor, though not exactly as he anticipated, and so he begins his journey back to the palace. He chafes under the watchful eye of the monks sent to protect him, and Fong Yee shows up for a surprise reunion, Siu-bo tries to come up with a way to give his bodyguards/babysitters the slip.

It’s almost 100% the Wai Siu-bo Show today. We don’t have any scenes with the emperor and the empress dowager, and the few scenes that don’t feature Siu-bo still revolve around him. I’m a little surprised at how things revolve at the Purity Temple, but I’m glad to have Siu-bo on his way back to the palace. The episode does some interesting stuff with Siu-bo’s “wives”—Fong Yee, the princess, and now Sheung Yee—in terms of both narrative and character.

(Side note: the way Siu-bo almost immediately goes all in on calling these women his wives is definitely problematic, though. There’s a scene in this episode where he chases after Sheung Yee trying to kiss her. It’s framed as comedic and playful, but it’s not great.)

Some fun stuff from Wa Siu-bo today. He maintains his trademark talent for BSing his way out of trouble, this time using another character’s illiteracy to his advantage while pretending he can actually read himself. But when someone attempts to swindle him, he proves surprisingly naïve.

My favorite parts from Wai Siu-bo, and Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s performance, center around his penchant for complaining. Siu-bo has always been one to complain about his lot, sometimes due to genuinely unfair expectations placed on him, sometimes as a ploy to manipulate someone, and sometimes just because he’s bored and/or lazy. His recurring frustration with the temple abbot in these last two episodes cracks me up, and he’s in rare form once he gets assigned his monk protection detail. At first, he’s thrilled to have a quartet of skilled warriors watching his back, but he quickly sours on them when he realizes that means they’re watching and restricting his every move for his own safety. Leung’s depiction of Siu-bo loudly railing against things he can’t alter in any way never fails to amuse me.