Really liked this episode.
By audience consensus the last one is viewed as better, but this one struck a larger chord with me.
It was one of the most cinematic of them yet. Everyone is after Jack and he gradually loses his wits. Some surreal and dark imagery which makes this stand out a lot for a kids show.
Seeing Jack vulnerable in the second half shows how even the most composed of people can have faults. and he learns about himself in a profound way. Great lesson.
I won’t spoil it, but there is a fantastic showdown. Some of the best action fights in the show yet.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-01-24T21:56:57Z
[7.6/10] This one started out kind of dull, or at least as dull as an action-packed show like Samurai Jack can get. I’ve often complained about shows having video game plotting, but the first act takes that to a new level (no pun intended). It feels like a dramatized Street Fighter game, where Jack is just fighting off bounty hunter after bounty hunter as though each of them has health bars. Some of them are neat-looking enough, but most of the foes are just some one-off gimmicks that Jack dispatches without much effort or trouble..
But I really like where the episode goes from there. It turns out that those bounty hunters aren’t just cannon fodder. They’re the reason for Jack’s increasing anger and frustration at not being able to find peace of solace in this strange land. Jack has been through a lot in just this half-season, so it’s nice to see him drop the veneer of stoicism and show that he’s a human being who’s kind of at his wits end after all of this.
Of course, the Street Fighter plotting continues, but in a cool way. We get the titular “Mad Jack”, a dark mirror image of our hero, made by Aku’s magic to test him. The design on Mad Jack is really cool, with the dark outfit, the flowing crazy hair, and the black-rimmed red eyes making him the right combination of familiar and frightening.
His fight with the real jack is suitably epic. The show leans into the mirror idea with Jack seeing his own eyes in the swords. And the tree-shattering kaboom that takes place when the two clash is outstanding. There is a certain inherent coolness to heroes fighting dark avatars of themselves (a trick that properties as recent as The Rise of Skywalker deployed), and Tartakovsky and company do it here with aplomb.
But what I like best is Jack’s solution. The realization that Mad Jack is fueled by Real Jack’s own inner demons and anger is a strong one. The sequence where the burning tree is replaced with a calming waterfall is outstanding and impressionistic, and the superb score really sells the transition in Jack from burning anger to inner peace. The fact that it’s this inner calm, the restorative self-healing that Jack performs, that defeats his foe, rather than furious attacks that only fuel Mad Jack, is a hell of a twist.
There is, again, something powerful in Jack standing peaceful and steady as his villainous doppelganger attacks. The defeat that comes from inner strength and calm rather than outer warrior glory and anger is a potent statement for the show to make (and again, helps me understand why Lucasfilm wanted Tartakovsky to work on Star Wars projects).
Overall, this one starts out a little unengaging, but eventually reaches some pretty cool visual and philosophical heights.