Honestly, I feel like Justin is just misunderstood. You can tell from the 'present' scenes of him and his home situation that the stuff at home affects him deeply. That he's been acting stressed the past few episodes because he feels powerless to protect the women in his life (e.g. his mom, and now Jessica). This is probably why he just sat there on the couch at the party, because this has happened before, where other men have harmed the women he loves, but psychologically, I guess, out of habit, he didn't feel like he had the power to stop it. Then, maybe coincidentally, but after he visits the home of a "regular family" - that interaction between Alex's dad and Justin broke my heart; the way Justin's eyes literally warmed up and gave Alex's dad a big smile when he got offered leftovers from their dinner - it sort of becomes the tipping point of when he realizes that he does have power to change things.
I really love the entire character arc of Justin, to be honest. The writers did a fantastic job in crafting his story, and the actor did an equally fantastic job in portraying all of Justin's character nuances.
This was a great episode overall. I love the fact that we got glimpses of what the families are like for a couple of the minor characters: Alex, whose dad is strict/firm because he works as a cop, but loving too, as we can see by Alex describing how both his parents cook (e.g. his mom cooks, his dad grills); Zach, whose mother is the atypical overbearing Asian mother, but he has an adorable relationship with his sister (e.g. eating his sister's veggies for her when their mom isn't looking); Mr. Porter, who we slowly begin to find out that everything, at both work and at home, is taking a toll on him; and of course, we get more of the families behind Clay and Hannah.
10/10 to the writers, director, and actors. Stellar job all around.
First of all, Veil's death at the end of this episode was completely unwarranted. After suffering for so long in Quinn's underground prison, she deserves some sort of redemption, and not a supporting role in Sunny's battle against Quinn. She was a major reason as to why Sunny did everything to stay alive, and why he fought his way through to return to her. Why didn't Sunny double check that Quinn was actually dead?! The characters in this season have a notorious pattern of not double checking that their opponents are actually dead. You can't just walk away. You need to make sure the guy is friggin' sawed in half, ok. So upsetting that Veil just flat out died. I mean, Sunny stabbed a sword right through Quinn's body twice, yet it was a meagre little dagger that actually kills him. We spent so much time this season developing Veil's inner strength and her role in Sunny's drive to live, but poof, one mistake and one little dagger later, she's offed. The showrunners need to check themselves.
Second of all, I still don't like Bajie. He's only out there for his own objectives. He seems like a good guy with good intentions, but when it comes down to it, he's only there for himself. I can't wait to find out what happens to him. I assume he will die there in that radio signal tower from his injury... Although he has Sunny's bike, and this is Into The Badlands where characters who you thought were dead will pop back into the story, so. Also, how did Bajie find that tower anyway? Was it in the book?
Third of all, the producers better hire better scriptwriters for next season. They have a ton of story to write about now - Tilda running away, Widow's offer to Waldo, Widow's deal with M.K., Bajie's radio signal to Azra, Sunny becoming a father... I'm going to assume the antagonists for next season will be the Widow and Waldo - both of whom don't have strong morals. We can't trust any barons or wannabe barons in this show.
All in all, a decent season. I'm looking forward to seeing what will be the repurcussions of Bajie reactivating the Azra radio tower.
P.S. What on Earth happened to Jade? She was one of the better actresses in this show, and she just disappeared after that one episode.
I can't tell if it's the writing or the acting, but Asian romantic comedy dramas always feel very clunky to me. They're always super over-the-top, where multiple characters in the show will ignore the actions of an obnoxious Mary Sue character while the rest of them act realistic. It's like watching two characters' completely different cinematic worlds try to merge together to form the TV show's story in the most cohesive way possible.
In this show, it's Eugenie Liu who I have problems with. She acts over-the-top, yes, but compared to other Asian shows I've seen, she acts consciously over-the-top in character, and I think it's this that takes the show away from me. There are some shows where actors exaggerate their acting, but there's a nuance to it that makes their characters still feel genuine and authentic. Eugenie doesn't do that. Comedic acting is a different skill that I find not a lot of Asian actors are good at. But hey, maybe it's a problem with the writing too. It's so tacky, maybe Eugenie just can't do much with it.
Jasper Liu is charming as always though. I'm hoping his character can balance out the annoying-ness of Eugenie's character later on in the show.
