"Into the Badlands": Beefcake without Bonding in Post-Apocalyptic Oklahoma

A post-Apocalyptic tv series without zombies?  How retro!

Into the Badlands (2015-2019) is set 500 years after our civilization ended.  The Badlands (aka Oklahoma) has developed a society nearly identical to the Warring States period of medieval China, with feudal barons (mostly elegantly-dressed ladies) struggling for power with their armies of clippers (Ninja warriors who fight in slow motion).  There are cars and electricity, but for some reason no guns.

The religion seems to be a Buddhist-Taoist mix, but the architecture, interior design, costumes, and even the cars are strictly 1930s America.

Why, after 500 years, do they mimic the 1930s?  It's a ludicrous cultural development.

The Badlands are misnamed.  Sure, most of the men are cogs (slaves), and most of the women are dolls (sex slaves), but anyone who can fight or have expert sex can rise through the ranks to become a baron.  Besides, there is sunshine, and people bathe. Outside it's a Road Warrior world with gray skies and dirt, where ragtag bands squat in the rusty relics of the old civilization.

Why has no one built anything new?  500 years ago, Magellan was just starting his round-the-world voyage, and Martin Luther had barely started the Reformation.  We've built a lot of new things since.

There are two focus characters.  Sunny (Daniel Wu, top photo) starts out as head enforcer to the evil, unpredictable Baron Quinn (Marton Csokas, left), who has a Southern accent for some reason, and a ridiculous beard.

Quinn has an ex wife and a new concubine, who also happens to be the lover of his son Ryder (Oliver Stark, below).

Sunny is morose and angst-ridden, particularly when he is assigned the task of killing the only doctor in the Badlands, who also happens to be the father of his girlfriend Veil.  Who is pregnant.

And Quinn wants her.

So Sunny tries to arrange passage out of the Badlands, but he just ends up a slave in some sort of horrible Road Warrior mine.

He spends the rest of the series trying to get back into the Badlands to retrieve the Woman He Loves.

The other focus character is the teenager M.K. (short for Monkey King in the Chinese tale Journey to the West), a teenager (Aramis Knight) with an untapped pool of Dark Energy that pops out when he's angry.  So everyone wants to apprentice him, capture him, or seduce him.

At first he's an apprentice clipper (called a colt), and then he joins a weird Buddhist fighting-ninja monastery.

Sunny and M.K. are together for the first few episodes, so I thought that they were going to develop into a gay-subtext couple.  No such luck; they never really seem to like each other, and soon they separate.

Sunny gets a comic-relief sidekick, the rotund British-accented Bajie (Nick Frost).  So how did he get all the way from London to Oklahoma?

M.K. doesn't pair up with anyone in particular, although he does kiss some girls, and he has an occasional male buddy.

Otherwise the show is rather intensely heterosexist.  A man for every woman, a woman for every man, and so on.  Chippers in training are told that they will get power "and women."








Gay references: The Woman Sunny Loves escapes from her jail cell, and later claims that she seduced her jailer, Edgar (Ladi Ereruwa).  But she is apprised that he only likes men.

There appears to be a Sapphic pair later on, in episodes I haven't seen yet.

Beefcake:  A lot.  Sunny is shirtless every five minutes, and.  M.K. and his fellow apprentices do not seem to own shirts.

My grade: D for the ludicrousness of the future society, A for some striking visuals, D for the gay characters, A for the beefcake.  Average: B.

I can take it or leave it.  Or fast-forward to the good parts.