I have an inkling that this episode of Halo is going to be considered the low point of an uneven season (at least, I hope so).  In future discourse, it might even attain the coveted status of “much-maligned”.

Let’s start with the fly in the ointment – Kwan Ha. Oh, Kwan Ha. She of the Abominable Haircut. Episode 7 is more fly than ointment, to be frank.

A few words before I fire this (critical) broadside. I think that Yerin Ha is a solid actress, and I’d like to see her in roles that are more central to the plot, better-written, and don’t require her to cut her hair with a lawnmower. You can get a lot of insight into an actor’s skill by looking at how they perform in badly written or poorly constructed roles, and Ha does a good job of embodying a pissed-off-slash-traumatized teenager, even when the script dictates that her character do things that are illogical, ham-fisted, and/or annoying.

I just don’t understand how any of that is relevant to the rest of the show. Only the loosest of connections exist between Kwan Ha’s plotline and the “main” story (Master Chief, Silver Team, and, more generally, the war against the Covenant). We could spend a while discussing how I’m going about defining what the main story of the show is, but we’ll leave that for another time.[1]

I feel like the Kwan Ha is being wielded like a sledgehammer by the show’s writers, and the lack of nuance gets grating. Yerin Ha is certainly a good enough performer to get across the character’s anger without having Kwan flip an absolute shit in the middle of her father’s memorial service (Episode 4, “Homecoming”). If you want a more recent example, look no further than the first scene of this episode, a flashback wherein Kwan acts like an asshole to a bunch of people at dinner. I get it, teenagers are dicks. I was one. But this kind of thing just gives you a sour taste in your mouth going into the rest of the episode – it might have worked better to focus on a scene where she wasn’t a teenage jerk, maybe a scene where she talked with her father about her mom’s death. I don’t know. Just spitballing here.

Then you’ve got what the character does. It’s irritating! Here’s an instance from Episode 7  – Kwan’s had Soren’s gun for a couple of episodes now, right? Soren asks for it back partway through the episode and she refuses. Sure, fine, the characters don’t trust each other. A few minutes later, the two of them are taking cover from some disposable baddies and decide to split up to orchestrate an explosive surprise for their attackers. At this point, Kwan offers Soren his gun back – this would work (albeit clumsily) as a way of demonstrating the evolution of the characters’ partnership, were another gun not entirely visible on Soren’s hip. Dual-wielding revolvers has been badass ever since Jesus did it in the Bible,[2] but I’m pretty sure Soren doesn’t even end up doing it. More pressingly, giving Soren his gun back leaves Kwan entirely unarmed – which serves as a clumsy justification for her using a plasma grenade and, later, an assault rifle to take on the goons hunting her. Yeah, it’s cool to see her use these weapons from the games, but there are other ways to work them into the scene – have her swap guns with Soren, or drop the one she has during a scuffle with a baddie, or just don’t have Soren carrying a second gun.

Looking further back in the show: remember how, after arriving back on Madrigal (Episode 4) and seeing a wanted poster with her face on it, Kwan takes her hood off and keeps it off for an inordinate amount of time, all while standing in the midst of a huge crowd in a tightly-packed…bazaar? I think it was a bazaar. Cool word, bazaar. Say it a few times. Bazaaaaar.

This isn’t the Shitting on Kwan Ha Hour, so I’ll move the fuck along, unlike what this episode did with the overall plot. Smarter people than me have already made the comparison between Dune and Kwan’s “spirit quest” in the desert – although I was also briefly reminded of *shudder* The Book of Boba Fett. Desert spirit quests have been overused since God wrote the Old Testament. I felt like her tripped-out fight(s) with Master Chief were just the writers’ way of saying “don’t worry, you didn’t switch to SyFy[3] by accident, you’re still watching Halo! Ostensibly!” and didn’t add much to the arc of the episode. The return to the base from the premiere reminded me that, yeah, this show’s set design is very competent – but also pretty boring, at least in terms of color and originality. Madrigal is boring as fuck to look at. I feel like I’m scrubbing my eyes with red sand, and I hate sand.[4] I want to see more crazy Covenant shit! The showrunners have a huge universe of visual references to draw from, and it’s been disappointing to spend most of the show wallowing in generic science fiction settings that look like a bad mashup of Firefly and a History Channel docuseries about Operation Desert Storm.

There isn’t much on TV that’s all bad, and this episode’s no exception. Time for bullet points:

– Burn Gorman is phenomenal in the role of Gov. Vinsher. First of all, in real life this guy has the name of a second-tier villain from a steampunky young adult series. Close your eyes, and you can just see that motherfucker smugly piloting a Zeppelin above a burning clockwork village.[5] The sunglasses he’s wearing in Episode 7 make him look like a Nazi dentist going on a beach vacation, and the trench coat he’s rocking is probably on the cover of Fascist GQ.[6] His character isn’t exactly nuanced, sure, but god damn is he fun to watch. I’m not sure if the writers intended for Vinsher to be such a cartoonish villain, but Gorman absolutely nailed the role. Fuck it, I’d watch a Vinsher prequel miniseries. It’d be better than The Irrelevant Adventures of Kwan Ha and the Stupid Haircut of Destiny.

– Soren’s role as exasperated babysitter swung back to being charming, instead of frustrating – I think this was mainly a function of his piracy-focused vacation from Kwan-minding, and the way it allowed his character to make the choice to go back to Madrigal to help out. This was a pretty obvious resolution (this show isn’t going to subvert anyone’s expectations re: character development anytime soon), but at least it gave Bokeem Woodbine the chance to flex his acting chops (the guy just drips charisma) without an angsty teen derailing the scene. Woodbine strikes a great balance between bemused and scary, and I’m on board for more Soren storylines anytime, even if it’s just him intimidating weaselly (squirrely?) underlings and inflicting forklift-based violence.

– The action scene at the end was good, for what it was – in a Halo show, it’s always going to be a bit of a disappointment when a shootout happens and the Covenant aren’t involved, because you spend the whole time thinking about all the CGI grunts Paramount could have paid for with the money they blew on a generic gunfight between two side characters and a bunch of cut-rate space fascists.[7] At least this show keeps the action snappy – and watching Soren carve his way through the aforementioned space fascists was undeniably pretty fun.

This episode was 100% missable. Not insultingly bad, as I initially feared it would be, but it doesn’t add anything to the show it’s ostensibly a part of. There are positive aspects to it – especially Burn Gorman and Bokeem Woodbine’s performances – but they aren’t in nearly enough of the episode to make watching it worthwhile. Yerin Ha deserves a better role than Kwan, a character who hasn’t done much except distract from what the main plot and acted stubborn and snarky (and clever when the plot demands it). Think of it this way – would you rather spend an hour every week watching Master Chief or a pissed-off space teen sporting the inbred sibling of a mullet?

Rating: 4/10 (+2/-3)

If you really want Halo in your Halo show, you’re going to fucking hate this.

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[1] For the record, the main story is about a dude named Master Chief who goes to a ringworld called Halo.

[2] Galatians 6:9.

[3] Don’t even think about getting me started on this nomenclature.

[4] It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.

[5] Shoutout to dirigibles, the most underrated form of transport ever devised by man. I swear, you have one little accident and the whole industry goes down in flames…oh, the humanity.

[6] I’m reasonably certain that this isn’t a real publication, but you never know.

[7] Who admittedly have fantastic coats.