So there's a new series about Marco Polo and his travels along the Silk Road! I know next to nothing about Marco Polo or his writings, all I know is that he's considered the first Westerner to detail East Asia, though I'm 99% sure he's definitely not the first European to go there, but let's just ignore that because this show is about him
And wow he does not need to be in this show. The first episode is meant to be the expository episode, laying out the basic scenario, who the characters are, why they're there etc. And this series decides not to do that in a coherent manner. We see Polo being offered by his father as a servant to the Khan. Why? I have no idea. Something about priests that didn't make it to the Khan's court? And also maybe his father hates him but also loves him? There's a long montage of scenes of Polo travelling with his father's caravan to the Far East in which they get caught in a storm, travel across deserts, lose priests and are attacked by a sand demon (?????). Nothing that happens in these scenes seem to have any relation to anything that happens in the rest of the episode. In fact, nothing that happens in the rest of the episode has anything to do with anything in the episode
Okay, that might be unfair. There's build up to some kind of assault on the Song capital which first requires an attack on a fishing village. This is some kind of test for the Khan's song, Prince Jingim, to prove that he's a true Mongol and not basically Chinese. Despite only have 500 soldiers because his uncle didn't bother turning up (probably stuck in traffic with the rest of his hoarde), he opts to still attack the clearly thousands of Chinese troops in the village. Will he win? Yes, probably
Speaking of tests, Marco Polo himself undergoes a test at the end of the episode. He has to walk through why I'm going to term 'The Passage of Whores' not touch them even though they're all over him 'cos they love some white meat. It's a dull scene if you have no interest in naked women (and after suffering through this scene I can confirm I really don't) but Polo is a red-blooded Italian male so he must be going through agony not touching at their vaginas and what-not. Honestly, it's a scene that doesn't need to be in here. Along with all the rest of the scenes of naked women doing sex on men. I understand they're challenging shows like Game of Thrones and Spartacus and other such programmes but these scenes are pointless and gratuitous. The only women who have a speaking role where she doesn't have her muff out are the Dowager Empress of China and someone else connected with the emperor but I don't remember her character. Perhaps this episode is an outlier and there are better female characters later on, but I have heard the phrases 'naked swordfight' being whispered around the internet and I don't hold out much hope that this will be between two buff guys
The rest of the episode I can barely remember. Something about a blind man teaching Polo to fight and Polo getting to wander around the capital (but not look at the pretty lady with the chinese lanterns). Inconsequential crap that might be important later
One positive is that the sets will look very nice once they fix the lighting and accept that not everything has to happen in gloom
I'm going to stick with this show, I have nothing else to watch over Christmas, but considering the fact that they spent something ridiculous $90m dollars on this, it's just left me feeling rather disappointed
