Into The Badlands “Black Heart, White Mountain”

Sunny collapsed at the end of the last episode because, from the looks of things, a dying Abbot tapped him a few times in the chest.  Now, fortunately, this isn’t the sort of universe where Sunny’s heart will explode after he takes five more steps.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t still dying.

Yes, Sunny is dying.  He doesn’t know it yet.  He’s having what looks like a nice dream where he and Veil are farmers, raising their son Henry (now about 10 or so), and living a quiet life without violence.

Wait, how did Sunny know his son’s name?

Never mind.  It looks like that girl from The Ring is hanging around the yard for some reason.  This probably won’t be a happy dream.

In fact, Bajie knows it won’t be a happy dream because he recognizes the bruise pattern on Sunny’s chest as a move called the Hand of the Five Poisons, and each of the five bruises represents an organ the poisons are attacking.  There’s no known cure, unless the Abbot’s Master wants to share it, and she probably won’t.

Except…M.K. found some interesting scrolls in the Master’s room before he made a run for it.  Huh.

Bajie, obviously, doesn’t want to go back there, but M.K. convinces him to drive their badass car over there, sneak inside, find the scroll, and get out again.  M.K. wants to save Sunny and get his friend and mentor back into the Badlands to find Veil.  M.K. has…other reasons to get into the Badlands.

Well, while all this is going on, Sunny’s dreams are turning to nightmares.  Henry finds his father’s discarded sword.  The pigs die suddenly.  Henry starts getting his father’s Clipper tattoos on his back.  Veil dies just before she leaves Sunny.  Man, this is a horrible dream.  I’m surprised Sunny’s mother did appear to tell her son she never loved him.

So, I guess M.K. and Bajie better hurry.  And hey, they do sneak into the monastery, get the necessary scrolls and acupuncture needles, and are sneaking out when, oh, the Master finds them blasts them into a room full of eating Abbots.  Can out heroes escape?  I mean, Sunny can barely hold his own with two or three of these guys.  Bajie and Sunny are heavily outnumbered and…oh, yeah, Bajie suggests cutting the Abbots and then the Abbots will attack each other.

Why won’t they also attack M.K. and Bajie?  Abbots in that trance state seem to attack everything.

Never mind, that works.

And they can even cure Sunny before his dream gets even worse, namely learning that Ring girl is Sunny’s first casualty, and he’s attacked by, well, all the people he’s killed in a manner that looked like something out of a different AMC show.  You know which one.  The one that can’t seem to die and is still running as I type this.

Anyway, Sunny recovers thanks to some quick needle stabs the likes of which are usually the providence of John Travolta to an unconscious Uma Thurman, and all seems well.  Bajie even thinks he knows a way into the Badlands, and he wants to go there because he had a student, a young girl named Flea, whose powers were stripped from her but Bajie helped her get away and he’s been looking for his lost apprentice ever since.

Wait…did Bajie train the Widow?  I’m not sure if that would be predictably cool or coolly predicable.

Speaking of, Quinn and the Widow dethroned Jade, exiling her from the Badlands for all the crimes she committed and…wait, Jade has been a Baron for, like, five minutes, and aside from being a little spoiled when it comes to bath water temperature, I haven’t the slightest idea what crimes she’s committed against anybody.

Then again, I am asking Quinn, Baron Cray-Cray himself, to make sense, so I probably should stop right here.