Friday, June 13, 2014

Highlander: The Series 2x08 - Revenge of the Sword


Charlie battles NINJAS as lightning flashes. THIS IS AWESOME! Protect your balls, Charlie!

Oh shit! He gets stabbed by one of them! Is this the end for Marquis DeSalvo?

But wait! Is that... what's Liu Kang doing in the Impact Zone?

Liu Kang proceeds to BACKHAND ninjas into oblivion! THIS IS SO COOL.

He has the same response I do. "NO! CHARLIEEEEE!"

Did they recast Duncan Macleod and decide to take the series in a radically different direction?, they're just filming a movie in Charlie's studio.

Liu Kang is famed actor Jimmy Sang. Charlie taught him everything he knows, but he's full of himself and thinks he can RL beat up anyone on the planet.

He's basically a horse's ass, and immediately offends Duncan by putting a katana to his neck "playfully". He's like one of those small dogs that wants to assert its territory constantly.

Does he look familiar? He should, because he's the same dude who played...

...THIN BOLO YEUNG in "Road Not Taken".

Meanwhile, villainous Yakuza are after Jimmy Sang. The henchman on the left here is Adrian Paul's actual Kung-Fu teacher. He had a small part in Highlander: Endgame, too.

Oblivious to the threat of the Yakuza, Jimmy Sang breaks boards!

Now he's breaking bricks! Look at him go!


Right after this, Yakuza goons try to gun him down, so Duncan chases them and jumps on their car. He's basically Sang's bodyguard at the moment, even though he can't stand the guy. Not sure if this is a favor for Charlie or if he's gettin' paid.

Duncan does a backflip! Hell yeah, this episode is way better than I expected! It's like what this whole show would have been had it come out in the 70's.

Another cool thing about this episode is this guy. He's one of Duncan's old friends. Not an immortal, just a martial arts teacher. He says "Hello, Duncan" without turning around.

Duncan: "How'd you know it was me?"
Hank Schrader: "They say every soul has an aura. Yours is strong. ...actually, I saw your car drive up."

Duncan visits the Yakuza. The guy on the left is his teacher who I mentioned earlier.

The leader of the Yakuza is like an alternate dimension version of Young Hiroshi Yamauchi. Rather than create Nintendo and bring joy to millions, he is in the business of EVIL.
Duncan confronts Jimmy Yang about his Yakuza involvement. More importantly, the director of his movie is the hot blonde on the right. She looks like Android 18. I totally get Cell, because if I ate Android 18 I'd probably get more powerful too.

Jimmy gets angry and challenges Duncan to a fight. Watch out Duncan, he's like the baddest dude on the planet!

Duncan wins, and Android 18 walks around in skin-tight white leggings. Unf.

Jimmy: "Know why I study the martial arts?"

This reminds me of Ghostbusters, when they ask "who ya gonna call?" and the kids reply with "HE-MAN!"

The Old Master talks to Jimmy, trying to help him achieve some discipline.

Parallel Dimension Hironobu Sakaguchi, rather than designing an iconic RPG series, is an assassin. He shoots at Jimmy, misses, and kills the Old Master. ...ah, so that's why he existed. I was wondering what the point of that character was, since he never did much of anything.
The bad guys capture Jimmy and put him in a coffin, then load him into an oven. Why not just shoot him?

The problem is... now they've pissed off Duncan. He shows up and defeats Adrian Paul's Teacher, then saves Jimmy.

Jimmy ends up sparing the Yakuza leader, and we never hear from any of these guys again. Because these things just go away. Yeah.

Decent episode... it just didn't feel much like Highlander. No one really got revenge, much less with swords. It felt more like an episode of Walker: Texas Ranger. The guy Duncan was trying to help seemed like a complete horse's ass, too.


  1. I think you nailed it with "Walker Texas Ranger". The tone of this episode felt familiar in a non-Highlander way. (I haven't seen much of Walker Texas Ranger, actually, but you don't have to see much to get the picture.)

  2. Great post! Your references are hilarious as usual, from Android 18 to "Young Parallel Universe Evil Hironobu Sakaguchi" and the Liu Kang stuff. Seriously, keep it up, you're one of the most consistently entertaining things I read online. I haven't even seen this show but I still got a huge kick out of reading about it.

  3. That kid is lucky Duncan doesn't have an asskicking trigger reflex to a sword being at his neck.