One would think an attempt on the Khan’s life would kick some life into Marco Polo – and then we get “Hashshashin”, a story about secret assassin orgies, daddy issues, and an entire plot constructed around Jingim’s inability to decide whether to mobilize the troops or not. That’s right; “Hashshashin” never even gets Jingim far enough to decide whether to go to battle or stand strong to defend; it takes forty minutes for him to be convinced he even needs to get the freaking army together – and under the sheer silliness of that, the rest of “Hashshashin” completely falls apart.
Let’s just forget about the whole opium sequence; a series of drug tropes fetishized with lots of female nudity, Marco’s trip into “paradise” is the most laughably empty sequence of Marco Polo yet. The sheer lack of creativity in shooting the sequence alone renders the entire thing facsimile: mirrored kaleidoscopes interspersed with slow motion, monochrome shots of Marco flexing his bare chest is hardly an inspired way to create the illusion of psychedelics, much less make an attempt at genuinely “sexy” television. It’s all just too ludicrous to be believable – and “Hashshashin” won’t stop piling it on, flipping from the red orgy scenes to the blue-lensed moments of him embracing the Blue Princess (because blue is the opposite of red! Fire and ice!), all to deny us an actual conclusion.
That’s right; since Marco Polo won’t open his mouth and actually say who he thinks is the mole, “Hashshashin” limits its own potential as a momentum-builder for the show. Even if Marco slurred the name in the episode’s final seconds, it would at least create some kind of crescendo to end the final scene on; instead, we get a whole lot of nothing, with Kublai complimenting his son for being too indecisive to do anything, and not asking many questions of Marco, not even when he asks for him to pardon his thieving father’s life (a conversation that mostly takes place off-screen, of course; why give the actors something complex to chew on?).
There really isn’t much else to this episode; with everything coming to a halt the moment it’s revealed Jia wasn’t behind the assassination attempt, the snail’s pace of the season itself comes to a complete stop for the last twenty minutes. Hundred Eyes would be able to hear across the entire kingdom, things are so quiet: Jia faces no resistance forming the armies after bringing back the commanders he murdered (does the Empress know he did it, or is she just being sour to be sour there?) and Marco easily pleads for his father’s life, as well as the freedom to hunt down whoever tried to kill the Khan – because last time Marco put on his detective hat, it went over so swimmingly.
(Oh, and we’re told the warriors of the Khan army still fully trust Jingim; you know, since they’ve seen all the stuff – aka nothing – he’s done behind doors since he led the last battalion blindly into slaughter. I guess they’re just really, really faithful.)
Had “Hashshashin” been the second or third episode of the series, some of its faults would be a little more forgiving; but coming on the back of two consecutive weak installments, “Hashshashin” just escalates the frustration of non-movement in the season’s overall plot, as well as the complete lack of character development in favor of more skin, more blood, more lavish set and costume design… and more skin (seriously: this show is challenging Spartacus for the TV nudity throne right now; Game of Thrones can’t hold a flesh-colored candle to it). With each episode, Marco Polo feels more sanitized as it gets “edgier” (a phrase that really just means “less clothed”) – and with it, gets more and more pedantic with each expository conversation and inconsequential plot.
Photo via Netflix
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