An important narrative turning point for Marco Polo‘s first season, “The Scholar’s Pen” is a promising episode that ultimately suffers from the show’s crisis of identity in the six previous hours. Does Marco Polo want to be a thought-out, contemplative historical drama, or a brash, indulgent B-movie action epic? “The Scholar’s Pen” has elements of both; and though the show often seems to want to play the part of the former, it clearly works better as the latter, avoiding long conversations and keeping its foot firmly planted on the gas pedal.
Jia is a perfect example of this contradiction, on full display throughout “A Scholar’s Pen”; when we’re watching Mei Lin whore as a child to pay for a day at the festival, Marco Polo is dipping a little too far into schlock, pushing a disturbing, empty image on-screen to try and encapsulate the man Jia has become. In part due to Chin Han’s measured performance, it sells the character short; however, when he’s fighting Hundred Eyes and his supposed successor on the council at the same time, or brazenly dismissing his sister’s sacrifice for the cause (or so he thinks), character isn’t a focus and Jia can operate as the power hungry, Praying Mantis-fueled war machine the show wants him to be as an antagonist.
And he’s not the only character: Hundred Eyes’ (who mysteriously doesn’t kill Jia, and lets him go in another big scene that happens off-screen) back story isn’t given half the dramatic weight Jia’s is in the episode – and when the show tries to slow down and examine the conflicted nature of a monk sent to assassinate in the name of a king he doesn’t follow, it feels hollow. When Hundred Eyes is in full stealth mode, however, he becomes a mythical blind wielder of martial arts, only increasing the well-shot action sequences in the episode’s climatic moment. Marco Polo wants to be a show about character, at least most of the time; problem is, the show operates best when it’s not trying to build out complex characterizations (once again, Jingim spends the entire hour being utterly useless and indecisive), and only uses depth as a fleeting narrative device, like when Chabi scolds her husband for quoting whatever holiness serves his cause at any given minute.
However, “The Scholar’s Pen” is not an episode that takes a decisive stance on tone – or resolution, for that matter, withholding information from the audience as to what transpires between Jia and Hundred Eyes (secret team-up?) before Jia returns to the court to show Chabi who’s boss. The general mistrust of the Latin also continues, but in dialogue form only, with nobody acting upon any of the vague threats and premonitions they’ve administered about Marco the blossoming war artist (and strategist); instead, the episode continues its snail pace of building up small stories (like Chabi figuring out who Kokochin is, or isn’t) under the assumption it is a deep character piece; meanwhile, we have Jia stabbing someone in the neck with a pen and a woman submitting to a man so she can make a political move by marrying him – a story that could really be awesome, had the show taken any time to develop the two characters beyond good-looking people who have some relation to royalty which they openly reject by being warriors.
This is the nature of Marco Polo, a show that usually only alleviates its frustrations with plot and character through cool action scenes – thankfully, the climatic fight of “The Scholar’s Pen” is a doozy, worthy of the two-episode buildup to get there. And there are certainly intriguing moments within “Pen” – Kokochin’s relationship with Chabi, the nature of Jia’s heartless nature – but the show remains reluctant to dig too far into them, relying on the old fallbacks of possible violence and sexual assault to drive the drama of its stories, rather than the complicated relationships (and gender dynamics of the time, the true untapped potential of the show) it frequently alludes to. As usual, Marco Polo is best when its loud and action-packed, most intriguing in its few quiet moments, and frustrating just about any time a conversation takes place (again, the dialogue on this show is rough, to the point actors like Wong and Han can’t even hide it). “The Scholar’s Pen” is an amalgamation of all these traits, both a promising and frustrating study of the show’s potential.
Photo via Netflix
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