Review: 'Warrior - Season 2' Offers Texture, Not Depth

Bruce Lee's daughter Shannon Lee continues to executive produce "Warrior: Season 2" on Cinemax, a 10-part series based on the martial art master's writings. Set in San Francisco's Chinatown, the narrative centers on clashes between the Hop Wei and Long Zii tongs (crime families) in the late 19th century, alongside interactions with Irish residents.

Episode One, "Learn to Endure, or Hire a Bodyguard" opens with an ugly, meaty brawl on the Barbary Coast, featuring star Andrew Koji as "Itchy Onion" Ah Sahm. Smallpox is also on the scene, as much of a threat as the ongoing gang warfare, as well as racist residents and police officers. Most are involved in the opium black market, vying for control of the lucrative commodity.

"The Chinese Connection," episode 2, focuses on the illegal drug trade, along with how 1882's Chinese Exclusion Act imposed a decade-long moratorium on Chinese labor immigration, prompting white supremacist gangs to chant "send them back." The third episode "Not How We Do Business" explores consent.

The production continues to be sensual – lots of sweaty fighters and nubile sex workers (with gorgeous albeit rather anachronistic gowns) – with not much depth, a missed opportunity to plumb complex Asian stories and relationships, and provide a more complete history of how Chinese immigrants built much of the Bay Area and west coast.

O.G. Asian actor Dustin Nguyen has graduated to being a series regular as Zing, the predatory and cruel Fung Hai tong leader, who partners with Mai Ling (Dianne Doan), Long Zii's wife.