LAW & ORDER --SDU

I thought I'd kicked my addiction to the Dick Wolf franchise several years ago and then I discovered another drug of choice (administered as DVDs on my laptop) in Hong Kong TVB, most recently The Four, a detective series set in 12th century imperial China, for all practical purposes, "Law and Order--Song Dynasty Unit."

No Dick Wolf here, but one feral character in the series, played by Ron Ng (who was the common sense guy opposite Raymond Lam's impulsive partner in Lethal Weapons of Love and Passion), now ultra attractive, surly, sullen, silent and very sexy, named Cold Blood, perhaps because he was raised by wolves.  There's a theme that has shelf-life!

I settled into this thoughtful Christmas present after finishing a Shang/Zhou (~1100 BCE) series called The Legend and the Hero, full of historical references and mythology, fox fairies and the usual imperial coup, this one successful in taking down the cruel and mad Shang emperor to be replaced by the Zhou ruler.  The Chinese are fascinated by the chaotic transition periods between dynasties.  This series drove me to the history books again (justification for watching), and was quite memorable for one remarkable subtitle:

The Shang emperor (played operatically by Steve Ma) is advised by his court to rescind some ridiculous edict.  He refuses because he would lose face.  "I'll become a laughing stork!" he shouts with incredible flourishes of his long sleeves. Indeed.  Perhaps this is a Chinese idiom with which I am unfamiliar.  I love it.

Moving ahead a couple of millennia brings me to The Four, young constables in the last days of the Northern Song Dynasty.  (*SPOILER ALERTS**) They investigate thefts of swords, medical travesties, exploitation of peasants by landlords and imperial enterprises, and of course are involved in preventing an imperial coup (though in the final end, the Jin overcome the Song), and providing one rather lyrical subtitle: "How could a big guy like him be fooled by a fool like Fook?" All fooked up?

Raymond Lam's character, Heartless, is particularly interesting; he had been crippled as a baby in a family feud, unknowingly by the brother of his colleague, Iron Fist, a powerful martial artist played by Kenneth Ma, who was the goofy but loyal halfwit ("kidault" in the subtitles) friend of Vincent Zhao in  The Master of Tai Chi. No bowl haircut here, Kenneth looks pretty good in the Song half-topknot, long-naped style that the men of this period sport. (You can usually tell the dynasty from the hair.) Not sure exactly who this is here, looks like Ron in another role, but you get the idea.

The crippled Heartless, orphaned scion of a weapons manufacturing family (though he doesn't know it at first) zips around the countryside in a bamboo wheelchair, like Raymond Burr's "Ironside," outfitted with arm rests that shoot darts and with easy accessibility to lots of clever concealed weapons. What Heartless lacks in footwork, he makes up for with hands and fingers, accurately tossing small blades all over the place. The wheeled contraption is agile too; with a push of a button he can flip himself out of the way of oncoming attacks.  Forget that annoying scooter chair--if I'm ever in such need I want Medicare to pay for this bamboo model!

Raymond's family was responsible for developing something called the Invincible Arms; locating the design and producing the weapon provides a subplot.  The weapon is bizarre, the RPG of its day: a large sword-like WMD that, with a twist of the hilt, shoots hundreds of darts at the enemy before launching a bronze frisbee that sprouts a huge Cusinart chopping blade, making salsa of everyone who missed a dart, before finally exploding in a fireball over the whole mess. The plot ends in a kind of mutual assured destruction detente; the bad guys have produced the thing, but so has the wheelchair-bound Heartless (who of course isn't really completely).

In the end, the constables win their battles, but lose in other ways.  As is typical in these series, pretty much everybody dies in the end (well, that goes for real life too) and no one manages to hook up on any kind of permanent basis with their soulmate.  Alas, the wolfish Cold Blood, experiencing a glimmer of emotion at last, about to pledge his love to the daughter of the dead master of the martial Federation, arrives just in time at the monastery to find her taking Buddhist vows, trimming her own gorgeous hairstyle to the scalp. Iron Fist's love postpones his marriage proposal to run her father's martial arts "gang." (They really did belong together.) There is some hope for the fourth constable, Chaser, a potential philanderer whose beloved (Iron Fist's sister through his own adoption) just goes off to another province, with the implication that they will unite eventually--except death intervenes.  Heartless's lover, actually a spy for the bad guys who in the end sucks the poison out of the victims imprisoned by her master, runs away after Heartless plays his flute for her as she succumbs to her own poison. She doesn't die, being full of strong magic and qi, but the poison has so disfigured her face (another common theme) that she cannot bear to burden Heartless with her scars. He discovers this, she rides off into the sunset, beautifully veiled, and death intervenes again, in this case, coming for Heartless.  Since I seriously doubt any of my readers are actually going to watch these things, I do not apologize for spoilers.

So "Law & Order--SDU" has everything wu xia dramas always have -- orphans with fateful origins, ambiguous leaders (good or bad?), revenge missions, a martial arts culture, intense father-daughter relationships, unrequited love, magical power and swords, horses, great scenery, extremely beautiful and beautifully costumed women, and of course, buckets of blood spurting from mouths.

It beats today's news and the usual crimes in that other wolf's New York.