The Defected (2019)

♠️ The Old Dame Plays Bingo °8.2° °excellent°

TD is a good old cop drama. Many of the best cop dramas start with the buddies (comrades? cronies?), then the crime, the crookedness, and finally, court… fade out to the harmonica~> country. There's impossible supervisors, unbridled ambition, coworkers who are brothers while others are enemies, departmental friction & competition, blame-gaming, the truthless press, confidential informants, depraved criminals, criminals that are more likable than some cops, and families that are left behind. Every decision and action is second-guessed. Some of the characters are all bad, & nobody is 100% pure. It's an impossible job. Let's not forget, on top of it all, there's corruption.

Benjamin Yuen is HK police detective, Sing: He's got the failed romantic relationship (He's always working) and the kid who longs to see him more often to prove it. His baby-mama (whom he wishes was his wife) was told by her uncle that there's 2 kinds of cops: The greedy (or ambitious) and the wicked. Sing's ambition prevented their marriage.

Sing appears first and he certainly is the main protagonist, but Bingo might match him in terms of significance. Bingo's story arc is the most interesting. He was a recruit who Madam selected to go undercover and she basically used and abused him until he was tarnished beyond repair. Now he's a thief with the heart of a cop. All he wants to do is take care of his mother who's suffering from dementia. While everyone on the force sees him as scum, the viewer must watch him, time and time again, in difficult situations trying desperately to do the right thing. As I'm writing this I'm on episode 21. I don't know what's coming for him. He's a fascinating character and I'm rooting for him.

Ben Wong plays "Samuel”. He's a straight shooter who does not bend easily. He's fair-minded, does not play favorites, and, of course, is the perfect internal affairs officer. Wheelchair bound, he was paralyzed from the waist down in the line of duty. His current wife is a work rival's ex-wife (Kan). His dream is to clean up the force and revamp it. He's a good guy. What he needs to learn are people skills and a little bit of flexibility. While in the wheelchair, Sam gets an action scene. It's amazing!

“It seems I'm not the only one with life imprisonment,” says one criminal to Madam. Kara Wai is Madam Man, the police director. She's better at being a toxic narcissist and bully-boss than a director or a mother. I've known destructive bullies with the exact same smile. The show's opening is her with a post-apocalyptic, scorched earth background. The more we watch her the more it makes sense. Narcissism is merely unbridled pride. Madam has truly convinced herself that Hong Kong is better with her in it. It might fall apart without her! This gives leave for her to do all kinds of things to maintain and augment her power. Would that this was an unusual thing, but it's the norm. Thus that adage about power & corruption and whatnot. In that way, pride is deceitful. It encourages us to lie to ourselves. Pride is probably the most destructive /vice/, but since it's everybody's worst problem, society has decided to collectively ignore it. We don't like narcissists - we can all agree on that - but we excuse our own selfish actions and words. Pride shows up in other ways: Self-absorption (even if it's self-loathing, it's an obsession with self), constant comparing and competition, unforgiveness and bitterness, constantly being angry or offended, and gossip, to name a few. Every society has a pride problem, but in Asia it's weaved into the fabric of society like no other place, it seems. The tragedy is that living a self-first life only leads to one's own misery and the misery of every poor soul around one. {PSA: Stop lying to yourself. Let it go. No one is as important or flawless as we like to believe. The answer is to forget ourselves, but never stop working on ourselves - that and go volunteer or help someone less fortunate. Take a vacation from you; it's quite freeing.}

In typical fashion, management is quite sympathetic to their own perceived plight while looking at underlings as mere ants. Madam is given multiple chances - more than any ordinary employee would be granted. She squanders them all, opting to plunge the knife in deeper.

Madam’s oldest son was murdered by the Beast in an undercover operation a few years back. Her obsession with vengeance against this drug lord has driven her to steamroll her remaining son, Matt, who has turned into a rigid dogmatist about the rules. He takes over as Sing's supervisor. There's constant tension between them over sticking to the ⚫&⚪ script, or doing the right thing (on paper) vs the thing that will actually work and bring about right results. Sound familiar, anyone? There's nothing new about the concept of child sacrifice to ensure success. Joshua pronounced a curse on the rebuilder of Jericho (“he shall lay its foundation with his firstborn, and with his youngest he shall set up its gates”) that was later recorded as fulfilled. GRRM includes child sacrifice in the conclusion of A Dance with Dragons. {Theoretically, we'll read about the end of Stannis & Princess Shireen Baratheon's time together on earth in the Winds of Winter. WoW may never be released, but I digress.} In modern society people sacrifice their kids in more genteel, but equally destructive ways.

Sacrifice is a theme, but the #1 theme in TD is: Don't pi$$ off a woman too much. Madam goes off the rails in ep23! Let's just call ep23 ladies domnificent. “What does macho mean?” Sing gets this question after he told his daughter he used to not care about her mother as much as he should. He was too “macho” then. “Uhhh, macho means a bad guy,” he responds. (The little girl playing Sing's daughter is utterly precious). Treating women (and others) with dignity is one of the worthiest themes.

Sing and detective “Happy Kok" are BROS. Yes, one of the characters goes by the nickname “Happy Kok”. It's attributable to culture disconnect, and it's innocent. No matter how conservative you are, if that doesn't make you chuckle a tad, you probably have let your sense of humor dry up. What isn't happy, though, is how Madam did a number on him, too. Furthermore, the woman he fell in love with while undercover is being used up by mob bosses. He can't rescue her.

Some characters are oversimplified, like Benz Hui's smarmy Kan Sir, head of narcotics. He's waaaay out of line, making it too easy for the viewer to see what his character is. More subtlety would be better. Some vignettes and scenes are oversimplified as well. This watch, as a whole, is not. There's an educational benefit to watching: One of the baddies they are after has symphorophilia, or the love of disasters. Per Shortform, It's “a condition in which people find se×ual pleasure in witnessing an accident. In some cases, the condition has driven people to destructive acts.” He also has paraphilia~> He's a freak, and se×ually gets off on dark stuff.

“Am I a cop or a thief? Sometimes I can't even tell.” We follow confidential informants and undercover cops. It gets a little fuzzy telling the difference due to the translation. It seems that their system is a little different than ours in that criminals can become part of the force. To a certain extent, the viewer has to ride along with it. Things aren't 100% parallel to Western ways. In the show, the word “defected" is used to describe confidential informants who have gone rogue. They “can do anything,“ Sing says. They are the “worst criminals.” After a mission that might be deemed a success, but for the tremendous casualties, Sing's focus shifts to Bingo. Sing believes he has correctly pieced together what went wrong and believes Bingo is responsible. His mission becomes: Finding Bingo. He doesn't know that all of Bingo's wrongdoings were ordered by Madam.

Crime, and fighting crime, is shown as a bitter war of attrition. More in the world of crime than the world of law enforcement, Bingo finds himself forced one day to explain to an 11 year old girl that her father is dead, his body won't be claimed, therefore he'll be cremated and labeled “unclaimed remains” and buried in an unmarked grave. She needs to mentally prepare herself because there will be nowhere to go to mourn her father. It's a powerful scene. The outcast cops end up forming a motley crew. “Between cop and criminal, see if there is another option,” Bingo pleads. “I thought I would be receiving flowers from him, but here I am the one buying the flowers.” Just after a man confesses his love to a woman, after she waited for so long, she has to bury him. The show starts to break our hearts.

Based on a true story, TD is a 2019 Cantonese language release that is rated 7.5 on MDL. It is 1 season consisting of 30 45-minute episodes. Considering the population of Hong Kong (7.346M) this is an impressive production. The budget betrays itself most with the sound quality, which is very 20th century. Once the viewer gets to the last third of the show, s/he has to remind h/hself that this is based on actual events. It gets pretty outrageous. Viewers might think they have an idea of the way the show will go, but there's a plot shift 1/6 of the way in. As the show goes on, the action ramps up and it gets exciting.

This was my 2nd Hong Kong show. Both, though VG, have a coldness. It's too early to tell if that's reflective of the culture. Still fairly new to (and very much enthralled with) East Asian dramas in general, it's weirdly reassuring to see that fundamental human behavior is the same world-wide. Characters who are noble, angry, shifty, and happy are no different at the world's antipodes, but for nominal cultural differences. Sarcasm, love, hatred, joy, and rage look largely the same there as they do here. A mother sobs when she loses her son in Hong Kong the same way she would in New Jersey. Couples bicker the same way too. “Madam” is the perfect queen b!+ch / toxic mother on a crusade for revenge. We root for Bingo (Philip Keung). Some of us have keenly felt the tug-of-war between work and family time, like Sing. The “Beast” looks authentic, not overdone. The girl informant defrosts our hearts and Loony… well, we've all seen terminators depicted on screen before… there aren't many of him, thankfully. As if Loony isn't entertaining enough, Yeung Chiu-hoi is superb as triad psycho, Kong Ching-lung. The acting is truly excellent. All the elements are well done. It's a worthy story told in a worthy way. This is SO worth it!


〰🖍 IMHO

📣8.2 📝8.5 🎭8.5 💓5 🦋3 🎨6 🎵/🔊6 🔚8.5 ♦ 🌞5 ⚡8,2 😅2 😭7 😱5 😯5 😖3 🤔7 💤0


Age 15+ violence, scary, adult situations

Re-📺? I wouldn't hesitate to show this to someone else

Recommendations:
🇭🇰Hong Kong ~
A Beautiful Life-7.4,
Don't Go Breaking My Heart-7.7,
Hong Kong West Side Stories-7.5

🇹🇼Taiwan ~
Black & White-6.8 (it's really pretty good),
Age of Rebellion-9.5

🔮🐉 -
C🇨🇳 ~ Love Between Fairy & Devil 8.9;
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Handsome Siblings 8.7;
Ancient Love Poetry 8.6;
Love and Redemption 10

⚡/😱/🚀 -
C🇨🇳 ~
The Kings avatar-7.9,
Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Saber 9-Kung-fu!
K🇰🇷 ~
K2 8;
Private Lives 8.1;
Sisyphus 8;
Tunnel 8.1;
Signal 8.6;
The Man From Nowhere 8.9
Black 9;
Squid Game 8.4;
Kingdom 8.3;
Sweet Home 8.4

Read More