In this episode, Wai Siu-bo is Doing the Most, for both good and ill. Our clever fool saves some talented martial artists with his tricky thinking, but he also lets his jealousy run away with him and schemes to take out a rival in increasingly unnecessary ways.
Some evil monks are after, what else, the sutra. The Reverend is injured and can’t fight her way out of this, but while her martial arts disciples are weighing their chances, Wai Siu-bo turns straight to strategizing. But the threat of painful death from a nefarious sect is practically old hat for Siu-bo at this point. Much more pressing, for him, is Cheng Hak-song, the aristocratic martial artist who’s taken up with them and who’s anxious to get cozy with Or. Siu-bo has no good breeding or martial arts talent, but he’s not about to let that stop him from besting his rival.
Let’s start with Cheng Hak-song, who I alluded to last week but didn’t discuss in depth. While he’s handsome, well-to-do, and chivalrous enough to Or, he’s an absolute snob. Much of the time, this is directed at Wai Siu-bo purely to be an ass. At one point, he proclaims, “You are vulgar, shameless, and cheap. It is below me to talk with you.” At other times, though, it actively gets in the way with their present circumstances, such as when they’re on the run from the monks and Cheng argues that he’s too highborn to hide out in a pigsty.
As such, it’s understandable why he angers Wai Siu-bo beyond merely being the guy Or prefers, although Siu-bo again goes way too far with it. Siu-bo ultimately lands more on the side of trickery and humiliation over actual killing, which is something he considers, but we reach a point where we move past “comeuppance for a snobby nobleman” into “petty piling-on.” This is especially true when Siu-bo’s schemes are all contrived to denigrate Cheng at the same time as they aim to elevate him in Or’s eyes. Dude, I get that Cheng sucks, but sometimes the woman just isn’t into you.
In the more action-oriented parts of the episode, though, Wai Siu-bo holds it down. He’s still useless in an actual fight, and Cheng makes a sneering remark about “some shameless man who runs away like a turtle,” but as long as he can scheme, he gives his crew a fighting chance. Siu-bo pulls off numerous tricks and bluffs against the monks, buying him and his friends an opening to stay alive just a little bit longer, until he comes up with his next plan.
And that’s the beauty of the character. Surrounded by skilled martial arts with years of training, by powerful and well-educated people, this illiterate peasant who can barely fight is still the man. He’s conveniently aligned himself with so many conflicting groups now, but even when it’s dizzying to keep all of his allegiances straight, Wai Siu-bo has them running in circles.
It wouldn’t be a Duke of Mount Deer review without a few shoutouts to Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s interesting acting choices, so here we go. There’s a great bit where, after Cheng insults him, Wai Siu-bo storms off angrily and proceeds to have a whole-ass shouting match with himself as he stomps down the street. And there’s this positively delectable moment of nonverbal acting where two of Siu-bo’s opposing worlds collide and he has to recalibrate: he spins around, smacks himself in the face, and then forcibly pushes the corners of his mouth into a smile before he turns back around and works his magic. I love it so much.
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