Post by niecie on Aug 10, 2013 15:57:14 GMT -5
There are things I like about this episode, and things I don't like. I love getting to see such actors as Benson Fong and Philip Ahn in this episode, and yet when they cast the girl to play the Chinese princess, they couldn't pick an Asian actress? What about Bebe Louie, who played Mei Mei in TNOT Inferno and Song in TNOT Turncoat, or Nobu McCarthy, who played Anna Kirby in TNOT Sudden Plague?
There's also the fact that Jim, while knowing that his partner has been made a captive and faces a gruesome death if Jim doesn't deliver the princess to the ship by a certain time, sure takes his sweet time about taking the girl anywhere! Instead he spends an awful lot of time just standing around chatting with her and kissing her. Hey, Artie's life is on the line here!
And also, much as I love Artie, I am not enamored of his Chinese disguises here. Ross had a much better makeup job in the 1980's playing Charlie Chan, and I've seen screen shots of him on a game show in the 1950's where, with no makeup job at all, he somehow molded his face with superb muscle control to look far more Asian than he did as the nervous-looking (illegal?) immigrant in the teaser and the very round-headed Captain Sumetra disguise he wore for the bulk of the episode.
Curiously, Artie in disguise speaks a far more pidgin style of English than most of the real Chinese characters in the episode. I don't know if that's a product of the times or what.
We start out the show with a boatload of young Chinese sneaking onto a dock where they are referred to as 'merchandise.' As we pan down the line, we find that the final man is Artie, looking hardly Chinese at all. (Was he counting on it being dark?) Jim, of course, is lurking behind some boxes on the dock.
A discrepancy is discovered: there is one man too many. A woman comes into view, a woman I think of as the Dragonlady. Nasty woman! She walks along the line asking questions in Chinese (of some dialect; closed captioning says it's Cantonese. There are many Chinese dialects, and I wouldn't know one from another.). Artie answers her by apparently repeating the same words the others said. Me, I'm thinking at this point that this was a very bad idea, trying to pass Artie off as someone he's too tall and European to play, in a language I find it doubtful he knows. Maybe that's a prejudice on my part, presuming Artie's expertise would be in European languages (Ross' seven languages were Yiddish, Polish, Russian, English, French, Spanish, and Italian), but I do find it hard to believe Artie would know enough Chinese to be conversant, especially when there are so many dialects to choose among.
And then comes the reason I think of that woman as the Dragonlady. She declares in English that one of the thirteen is a spy, therefore kill them all. Artie visibly reacts to her statement. The Dragonlady's minions uncover a Gatling gun and Jim tosses an explosive cufflink (or button?) to cause a small smoke screen, then dives at Artie knocking him into the water as the gunner starts firing.
Man, I wish some of the others had had enough presence of mind to jump into the water as well! But probably not.
Artie's joke about the Cantonese egg roll recipe seems to show he's supposed to be conversant in Cantonese. So that's one mystery cleared up for me.
And then Artie makes a fortune cookie joke. But I'm not sure if those are authentic Chinese fare. They may even be anachronistic. I've been told fortune cookies were invented by a Methodist minister some time after the 1870's. Must... do... research...
The nested boxes Jim opens are beautiful. And contain -- ta da! -- one of those dubiously authentic fortune cookies.
And then Jim breaks open the cookie and drops the pieces of it on the floor! Man, whenever I get a fortune cookie, I always eat the cookie! (And usually toss the fortune unread. Now you know my priorities!)
So Jim has a walking stick. I expect it to be a special one. *grin*
The hostess who greets Jim at the door of the restaurant -- that actress could have played the princess. So could any one of the old dude in the wheelchair's bevy of beauties. *sigh*
Now when Jim walks past the painting of the dragon on the wall and the eyes rolls to follow him, I always wonder how anyone could possibly press their face up so close to the wall on the other side for the eyes to look like that. And the eyes are so far apart! Surely they can't be human eyes!
Then the wall slides open and the hatchet man pops out and throw his hatchet at Jim -- and Jim catches it! Great as imagery, but really stretches my credulity.
And next we have a floor that drops open to expose a pit lined with sharp spikes AND a sliding wall to make sure that anyone in the hall falls into said pit with said spikes. Someone was really pulling out all the stops here!
I was right about the walking stick; it fires out a projectile on a line, just what Jim needs to get across the pit. Jim's clairvoyance in choosing what to take with him on his missions strikes again.
Once Jim is across the pit, he saves the hatchet man who had just tried to kill him. They take a few steps and, yep, yet another floor panel opens up, this one dropping them both into the water under the building. My, what an architect that building had! Sliding panels, eyes in the painting, trap doors, other kinds of sliding panels. (And after the building was finished, no doubt the bad guy who commissioned it had the architect eliminated. tsk)
Yay, Jim has Benson Fong as his personal shadow! (Well, I wouldn't mind that too much -- if he wasn't a treacherous hatchet man ready to sell anyone out at the drop of a hat.)
Artie in the second costume. The silk suit is gorgeous! The bald wig, on the other hand, keeps puckering in the region of his temples.
Well, I do get a kick out of Artie pom-pomming some Stephen Foster music to himself as he's putting on the disguise. They gave him a LOT of Stephen Foster tunes to hum, whistle, and sing over the course of the series. Foster had died during the Civil War, so his tunes were not anachronistic -- and probably public domain as well, an added bonus.
I get a kick as well out of Artie answering the door of the train in his Sumetra disguise. He jabbers away in, according to the closed captioning, Cantonese, only to have Philip Ahn look at him strangely and say something like, 'I'm sorry, I only speak Cantonese.' *snerk snerk snerk*
The big dude who accompanies Philip Ahn doesn't have much in the way of expressions, does he? Artie has some great comic lines through here, about how he should stop answering that door, and how he doesn't get paid enough on this job.
One thing I definitely like is that Philip Ahn knows precisely who he's dealing with -- he addresses Artie as 'Mr Gordon' -- AND as soon as he's done playing the part of the inoffensive messenger boy, his voice changes and he no longer does the broken English. They did that part right in my opinion, so why did they mess up so badly on casting the princess??
Why is there a cobra?
One thing about Wheelchair guy's plan of forcing Jim to take the princess to the ship by midnight or the Rube Goldberg device Artie's in will kill him -- if the girl has to be on the ship by midnight AND the trap is rigged to go off at midnight, how will Wheelchair know the girl is on the ship to release Artie? Doesn't Jim need to get the girl to the ship and return to save Artie by midnight?
Then why does he stand around chatting with her and smooching her???
The princess also gets called merchandise.
The Bad Guy followed Jim straight to the place where the princess was being hidden. Did no one anticipate this?
The young woman who comes down the stairs (and proves later to be a fake princess) would have made a good real princess too, in my opinion. Philip Ahn's character does some good bluffing! And that young woman -- she is very brave, since she no doubt believes that, once the ruse is discovered, she will be killed for not being the real princess. I love her dignity and devotion to the real princess, to sacrifice herself like that.
But really, didn't anyone catch on that Philip Ahn went upstairs to get the princess, and after Big Bad and his minions showed up, Philip Ahn came back down the stairs with a small figure following him -- and no one caught on who the small figure was? (In all fairness, I didn't catch on the first time I viewed it!) And yet she's in plain sight for so long, in that really bad old guy mask!
The angle at which Philip shoots the dart doesn't match up with the angle at which the dart sticks out of Jim's neck.
Paralyzed Jim makes for more wasted time in getting Artie set free! Yes, yes, Artie does get released by the Big Bad, but Jim doesn't know. And frankly, the way the Big Bad strolls around Artie admiring the trap he's in instead of setting him free really makes me dislike the Big Bad all the more. But that was the writer's aim, of course.
That girl is entirely too interested in playing smoochy face!
Any girl from 'Captain Sumetra's' bevy would likely make a fine princess as well. Cute how Artie goes from lying in a death trap to eating grapes with a group of cute girls.
I do wonder just how Artie was planning to get out of lopping Jim's head off! He's only spared from doing so by outside interference.
Yay, the lobster pit. And Benson Fong showing his true colors yet again.
I do like it that, though this is first season, when Jim and Artie take out a couple of guys to steal their uniforms, Artie is shown punching one of them instead of getting knocked out till the fight's over.
Remember the princess' line about Jim fighting twelve men? She wasn't far wrong. Freezing the frame on the high shot of Jim surrounded by the fighters shows there to be eleven men ready to take him on. It's a lovely fight, beautifully choreographed (although I've been told kicks where neither foot is anchored on something really don't work because the energy of the kick doesn't get transferred effectively to the one being kicked). Jim wins the fight, of course; he's James West!
Jim might should have closed the doors behind him as the Big Bad was chasing him. The spike pit makes a return appearance!
But then the Big Bad might should have gone ahead and shot Jim from the doorway instead of stalking dramatically down the hallway, getting closer to Jim -- and to the pit.
And thus the Big Bad gets hoist by his own petard. Yup.
So they make the restaurant jokes at the end, then walk off arm in arm -- but where are they going? Wasn't the exit to the right instead?
There's also the fact that Jim, while knowing that his partner has been made a captive and faces a gruesome death if Jim doesn't deliver the princess to the ship by a certain time, sure takes his sweet time about taking the girl anywhere! Instead he spends an awful lot of time just standing around chatting with her and kissing her. Hey, Artie's life is on the line here!
And also, much as I love Artie, I am not enamored of his Chinese disguises here. Ross had a much better makeup job in the 1980's playing Charlie Chan, and I've seen screen shots of him on a game show in the 1950's where, with no makeup job at all, he somehow molded his face with superb muscle control to look far more Asian than he did as the nervous-looking (illegal?) immigrant in the teaser and the very round-headed Captain Sumetra disguise he wore for the bulk of the episode.
Curiously, Artie in disguise speaks a far more pidgin style of English than most of the real Chinese characters in the episode. I don't know if that's a product of the times or what.
We start out the show with a boatload of young Chinese sneaking onto a dock where they are referred to as 'merchandise.' As we pan down the line, we find that the final man is Artie, looking hardly Chinese at all. (Was he counting on it being dark?) Jim, of course, is lurking behind some boxes on the dock.
A discrepancy is discovered: there is one man too many. A woman comes into view, a woman I think of as the Dragonlady. Nasty woman! She walks along the line asking questions in Chinese (of some dialect; closed captioning says it's Cantonese. There are many Chinese dialects, and I wouldn't know one from another.). Artie answers her by apparently repeating the same words the others said. Me, I'm thinking at this point that this was a very bad idea, trying to pass Artie off as someone he's too tall and European to play, in a language I find it doubtful he knows. Maybe that's a prejudice on my part, presuming Artie's expertise would be in European languages (Ross' seven languages were Yiddish, Polish, Russian, English, French, Spanish, and Italian), but I do find it hard to believe Artie would know enough Chinese to be conversant, especially when there are so many dialects to choose among.
And then comes the reason I think of that woman as the Dragonlady. She declares in English that one of the thirteen is a spy, therefore kill them all. Artie visibly reacts to her statement. The Dragonlady's minions uncover a Gatling gun and Jim tosses an explosive cufflink (or button?) to cause a small smoke screen, then dives at Artie knocking him into the water as the gunner starts firing.
Man, I wish some of the others had had enough presence of mind to jump into the water as well! But probably not.
Artie's joke about the Cantonese egg roll recipe seems to show he's supposed to be conversant in Cantonese. So that's one mystery cleared up for me.
And then Artie makes a fortune cookie joke. But I'm not sure if those are authentic Chinese fare. They may even be anachronistic. I've been told fortune cookies were invented by a Methodist minister some time after the 1870's. Must... do... research...
The nested boxes Jim opens are beautiful. And contain -- ta da! -- one of those dubiously authentic fortune cookies.
And then Jim breaks open the cookie and drops the pieces of it on the floor! Man, whenever I get a fortune cookie, I always eat the cookie! (And usually toss the fortune unread. Now you know my priorities!)
So Jim has a walking stick. I expect it to be a special one. *grin*
The hostess who greets Jim at the door of the restaurant -- that actress could have played the princess. So could any one of the old dude in the wheelchair's bevy of beauties. *sigh*
Now when Jim walks past the painting of the dragon on the wall and the eyes rolls to follow him, I always wonder how anyone could possibly press their face up so close to the wall on the other side for the eyes to look like that. And the eyes are so far apart! Surely they can't be human eyes!
Then the wall slides open and the hatchet man pops out and throw his hatchet at Jim -- and Jim catches it! Great as imagery, but really stretches my credulity.
And next we have a floor that drops open to expose a pit lined with sharp spikes AND a sliding wall to make sure that anyone in the hall falls into said pit with said spikes. Someone was really pulling out all the stops here!
I was right about the walking stick; it fires out a projectile on a line, just what Jim needs to get across the pit. Jim's clairvoyance in choosing what to take with him on his missions strikes again.
Once Jim is across the pit, he saves the hatchet man who had just tried to kill him. They take a few steps and, yep, yet another floor panel opens up, this one dropping them both into the water under the building. My, what an architect that building had! Sliding panels, eyes in the painting, trap doors, other kinds of sliding panels. (And after the building was finished, no doubt the bad guy who commissioned it had the architect eliminated. tsk)
Yay, Jim has Benson Fong as his personal shadow! (Well, I wouldn't mind that too much -- if he wasn't a treacherous hatchet man ready to sell anyone out at the drop of a hat.)
Artie in the second costume. The silk suit is gorgeous! The bald wig, on the other hand, keeps puckering in the region of his temples.
Well, I do get a kick out of Artie pom-pomming some Stephen Foster music to himself as he's putting on the disguise. They gave him a LOT of Stephen Foster tunes to hum, whistle, and sing over the course of the series. Foster had died during the Civil War, so his tunes were not anachronistic -- and probably public domain as well, an added bonus.
I get a kick as well out of Artie answering the door of the train in his Sumetra disguise. He jabbers away in, according to the closed captioning, Cantonese, only to have Philip Ahn look at him strangely and say something like, 'I'm sorry, I only speak Cantonese.' *snerk snerk snerk*
The big dude who accompanies Philip Ahn doesn't have much in the way of expressions, does he? Artie has some great comic lines through here, about how he should stop answering that door, and how he doesn't get paid enough on this job.
One thing I definitely like is that Philip Ahn knows precisely who he's dealing with -- he addresses Artie as 'Mr Gordon' -- AND as soon as he's done playing the part of the inoffensive messenger boy, his voice changes and he no longer does the broken English. They did that part right in my opinion, so why did they mess up so badly on casting the princess??
Why is there a cobra?
One thing about Wheelchair guy's plan of forcing Jim to take the princess to the ship by midnight or the Rube Goldberg device Artie's in will kill him -- if the girl has to be on the ship by midnight AND the trap is rigged to go off at midnight, how will Wheelchair know the girl is on the ship to release Artie? Doesn't Jim need to get the girl to the ship and return to save Artie by midnight?
Then why does he stand around chatting with her and smooching her???
The princess also gets called merchandise.
The Bad Guy followed Jim straight to the place where the princess was being hidden. Did no one anticipate this?
The young woman who comes down the stairs (and proves later to be a fake princess) would have made a good real princess too, in my opinion. Philip Ahn's character does some good bluffing! And that young woman -- she is very brave, since she no doubt believes that, once the ruse is discovered, she will be killed for not being the real princess. I love her dignity and devotion to the real princess, to sacrifice herself like that.
But really, didn't anyone catch on that Philip Ahn went upstairs to get the princess, and after Big Bad and his minions showed up, Philip Ahn came back down the stairs with a small figure following him -- and no one caught on who the small figure was? (In all fairness, I didn't catch on the first time I viewed it!) And yet she's in plain sight for so long, in that really bad old guy mask!
The angle at which Philip shoots the dart doesn't match up with the angle at which the dart sticks out of Jim's neck.
Paralyzed Jim makes for more wasted time in getting Artie set free! Yes, yes, Artie does get released by the Big Bad, but Jim doesn't know. And frankly, the way the Big Bad strolls around Artie admiring the trap he's in instead of setting him free really makes me dislike the Big Bad all the more. But that was the writer's aim, of course.
That girl is entirely too interested in playing smoochy face!
Any girl from 'Captain Sumetra's' bevy would likely make a fine princess as well. Cute how Artie goes from lying in a death trap to eating grapes with a group of cute girls.
I do wonder just how Artie was planning to get out of lopping Jim's head off! He's only spared from doing so by outside interference.
Yay, the lobster pit. And Benson Fong showing his true colors yet again.
I do like it that, though this is first season, when Jim and Artie take out a couple of guys to steal their uniforms, Artie is shown punching one of them instead of getting knocked out till the fight's over.
Remember the princess' line about Jim fighting twelve men? She wasn't far wrong. Freezing the frame on the high shot of Jim surrounded by the fighters shows there to be eleven men ready to take him on. It's a lovely fight, beautifully choreographed (although I've been told kicks where neither foot is anchored on something really don't work because the energy of the kick doesn't get transferred effectively to the one being kicked). Jim wins the fight, of course; he's James West!
Jim might should have closed the doors behind him as the Big Bad was chasing him. The spike pit makes a return appearance!
But then the Big Bad might should have gone ahead and shot Jim from the doorway instead of stalking dramatically down the hallway, getting closer to Jim -- and to the pit.
And thus the Big Bad gets hoist by his own petard. Yup.
So they make the restaurant jokes at the end, then walk off arm in arm -- but where are they going? Wasn't the exit to the right instead?