By Jana Monji
In the Season 1 finale of Cinemax’s Warrior, If You’re Going to Bow, Bow Low, Ah Sahm makes a choice after reconnecting with two women. Three women end the season in positions of power and responsibility while Ah Sahm gets used to losing. Before that, Ah Sahm must bow low.
The episode begins after Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) has left the care of Ah Toy, a prostitute and madam in San Francisco. A timekeeper walks through a rundown dormitory, shaking a box on a stick that gives a soft rattle, announcing, “Five, five, five o’clock.” This is a place for people so poor that they share a bed. One taking over as the other rises to work. Ah Sahm is getting up as his bedmate, Po (Orion Lee) returns from a day of hard work.
When Po gets sick from an infected leg injury, Ah Sahm will try to take care of him and learns that Po (Orion Lee) came to earn money to help his family. He only meant to be in the US for a year, but that was eight years ago and he hasn’t been able to save enough money to return.
Ah Sahm loiters around Coolie Square waiting for work, dressed in dirty, sweat-stained clothes.
He sees Wang Chao (Hoon Lee) who helps White men looking for labor get Chinese work crews, but initially avoids him. Young Jun (Jason Tobin) comes looking for Ah Sahm and asks him to rejoin the Hop Wei, a Chinatown tong. Ah Sahm refuses. After the Hop Wei leave, Ah Sahm goes to Wang Chao asking for a job. Wang Chao tells him that he was younger than Ah Sahm when he “crossed the salt.” Both his parents had died during the Taiping Rebellion. Wang Chao wanted to seek his fortune in the US, but the ship captain had other ideas and “sailed us to Cuba” and then “sold us as slaves.” It took about a week before Wang Chao realized he wasn’t in the US.
Wang Chao says, “I think about the people I left behind. As far as I know, most of them are still there in Cuba.” The reason he escaped was, he tells Ah Sahm, “I know I’m not a f*cking slave.” After 11 years, he escaped. Then he admonishes Ah Sahm, saying, “I’m not buying this whole coolie act.” Wang Chao says, “Warriors have only two paths, get killed or get better.”
Ah Sahm still only wants a job and Wang Chao is still doubtful but says, “As my father always said, if you’re going to bow, bow low.” Wang Chao gets him a job—at Mercer’s company. In the last episode (Chinese Boxing), Walter Buckley lied to Byron Mercer, implying the city would go with a lower bid that didn’t exist. To cut costs, a panicked Mercer decided to bring in Chinese labor.
This brings Ah Sahm back into contact with Penelope (Joanna Vanderham), the wife of the mayor, but although she offers to get him a better position at her father’s company, he refuses. With the money from his first day at work, Ah Sahm buys Po fresh bread and medicine, but it’s too late. Po is dead. Po had worried that his soul will never find its way home, said, “The curse of a thousand coolies will haunt on this country.”
The previous episode ended with Officer Richard Lee (Tom Weston-Jones) on the ground, unconscious after taking a severe beating by the Fung Hai, another Chinatown tong. In this episode, he is in a coma at a beautifully white and clean hospital. Sergeant Bill O’Hara (Kieran Bew) has been spending his nights there because “He’s got no people here. I want to be here when he wakes up.” Or mark his passing if he doesn’t. That’s what he tells his wife, Lucy. In reality, Bill knows he’s responsible for what happened.
When Bill finally goes after the Fung Hai he ends up at the other end of his gun. The Fung Hai leader, Zing (Dustin Nguyen), tells Bill, “You owe money, policeman. I no kill your partner; just make lesson for you. I don’t need f*cking money.” Bill becomes an enforcer for the Fung Hai but he’ll hide that from Lee who returns to work at the end of the episode.
While Father Jun (Perry Yung) and Mai Ling (Dianne Doan), the wife of a tong leader, Long Zii, reach an agreement that the Long Zii tong can import and sell opium within their own territory, the Fung Hai are supposed to be distributors. Mai Ling isn’t happy, but she’ll have more problems.
Mai Ling will later meet with her opium supplier, Walter Buckley (Langley Kirkwood). He asks if she’s going soft since she now has the peace that her late husband wanted and Mai Ling says she is just getting started. She wants for twice as much opium as before, but he reminds her that he’s somebody and she’s a nobody. “Go half a mile in any direction and you’re just a Chinese woman of no consequence to anyone. You could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn’t even rise to the level of police matter.”
Mai Ling counters that a lot can happen in half a mile. Does Mai Ling know that Buckley wants all of the Chinese out of San Francisco and even California?
While her relationship with her city hall ally is tense, her relationship with her Chinatown ally is about to get worse because the police are cracking down on Chinatown, but mostly on the Hop Wei and the Long Zii.
Her lover, Li Yong (Joe Taslim) tells her, “The police are making a statement.”
Mai Ling asks, “Why now? We’ve given them no reason.”
Li Yong replies, “Revenge…someone put a cop in the hospital.”
Mai Ling asks, “Who would be so reckless?” Even as the words come out, she knows. This leads to a meeting with Zing. She confronts Zing about the assault on Lee. Zing brushes that off telling her that it was Fung Hai business. While the Fung Hai are distributing the opium and had an agreement with the Long Zii, Zing tells her “Don’t make no mistake. I don’t work for you.” Then he makes it clear, “If I decide to kill ten cops, I’m going to do it and I don’t need your f*cking permission.”
“Maybe you’re not the partner I imagined you would be,” Mai Ling responds. She says they will look for other solutions going forward and thanks Zing, dismissing him. Zing doesn’t move but Zing asks Mai Ling and Li Yong to step outside. He has his men lined up and the Long Zii men are kneeling on the ground.
Buckley is also finding things are not going well for him. Dylan Leary (Dean Jagger) accosts Buckley at night before Buckley can enter his carriage. Buckley knows about Leary’s reputation. Buckley contends, “You might be surprised to find we have similar goals” because Buckley doesn’t want coolie labor in the city either. He calls Leary a “common thug” and tells him, “you’re not going to influence state politics with threats with a f*cking knife.”
Leary implies it depends upon who one threatens and makes it clear he’ll be watching Buckley. After Leary leaves, Buckley collapses on the ground vomiting.
Leary is not quite done yet. The next day, Leary goes black bloc and takes a gang to Mercer’s factory. The Irish thugs force the Chinese on their hands and knees. Then two men starting crushing the hands of the Chinese using a hammer. Locked in his office, Mercer tries to load a gun, but he dies of a heart attack.”
Suddenly, Ah Sahm attacks the Irish thugs and the rest of the workers escape. Leary knocks Ah Sahm down and recognizes him but their fight is stopped by the arrival of the police.
Leary parting words to Ah Sahm are, “I’m going to find you, chink.”
Ah Sahm says, “I hope so.”
Ah Sahm decides to pay a visit to Ah Toy, saying, “I was thinking I never really thanked you for taking care of me after the tournament.” To show his gratitude, he brought her something: two Irish men, hogtied in her basement.
In Chinese, she asks about the men and Ah Sahm tells her, “They were breaking the hands of coolies with a hammer.” She finds a hammer and a large Chinese man drags one man off.
Ah Toy asks, “So what happens now?”
Ah Sahm admits, “I don’t know exactly.” Then he says, “In the meantime I figured you could use some help now in then, you know, fighting back.”
Ah Toy replies, “Like you said. It’s a fight we can’t win.”
Ah Sahm says, “It’s okay. I’m getting used to losing.”
Ah Toy mentions that Wang Chao told her he was finding work out of Coolie Square, but Ah Sahm tells her he won’t be going there any more because it “turns out I have a different skillset.”
Ah Toy responds that “Confucius says in the middle of chaos lies opportunity.”
Yet Ah Sahm knows, “Confucius never said that.”
Ah Toy slyly responds, “No, he didn’t.”
In the next scenes, we see Ah Sahm dressing up in the black and red of the Hop Wei. The episode ends with Ah Sahm dressed up and walking down the streets of Chinatown with Young Jun and a group of Hop Wei hatchet men.
The first season ends with Penelope sorting through her father’s ledgers, taking over his business, Ah Toy has gained Ah Sahm as a vigilante justice enforcer and Mai Ling is navigating between the tongs and her city hall helper. By showing that being in a tong may be the best of the options open to the Chinese, and giving Wang Chao the episode’s title line, the season finale defines what a warrior is and can be in this context.
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