A better episode this week (I’d give it an eight), though I’m very concerned about the season’s pacing now. With only five episodes left and so much ground left to cover, I don’t see how they can possibly make it to the cave without some major cuts. With that in mind, I have to question why they wasted time with Eileen and Izumi (which is effectively just an Easter egg for series fans) rather than covering some of the more pertinent Aberdeen events. There was plenty of fat in the Yokosuka arc that could have been trimmed too.
That said, I kind of like the fact that the wude are spanning the entirety of this section of the story (although they forgot the title card for this week’s, if I’m not mistaken), and also that Xiuying is still refusing to help Ryo. I’m not blown away by the new Fangmei, but I don’t hate her either and like that they’re taking some time to explore her character and background a little more as well as Wong and Joy’s. Also, Ryo paid for his room at the Come Over Guest House in full, which I’m thrilled to find out!
It feels a little hypocritical to complain about the pacing while praising some of the new additions (which are effectively why the pacing has slowed so much in recent weeks), but it’s a bit more complicated than that. I don’t like the disjointed pacing (fast one week, slow the next) and I don’t like that a lot of key stuff has been skipped over or cut entirely. This could have been avoided if they’d planned for a few extra episodes or just committed to a fixed pace throughout. Instead, I can see big sacrifices needing to be made to get the story over the line.
To be honest, part of me is now wondering whether we’ll even make it out of Kowloon before the first season ends. In a way I’d prefer it if we didn’t, as I don’t want them to butcher Kowloon for the sake of making it to a cliffhanger, but it would make their decision to start the show in the cave a strange one as it would make no sense whatsoever from a narrative point of view.