Highlander (TV Series) The Road Not Taken (1992) User Reviews

First Ambivalent Character

[David_del_Real_Reviews_in_IMDb · 8/10 · 7 December 2017]

First Ambivalent Character.

Highlander the series episode three shows us the first really complex character in the storyline in the sense that his allegiances for good or evil are not clearly defined. Kiem Sun has been working in the same formula for hundreds of years based on old Chinese Alchemy saying that he wants to help mankind but his good intentions frequently don't seem so. Kiem Sun will be the first of many characters along the series that will make us wonder time and again which side they are on, and even when his real intentions were never fully predictable, I think that we could all assume from the start that he was just pretending when he seemed not to be good at martial arts, and we were glad to see we were right when we could see a good sword fight at the end of the episode.

Thanks for reading.

IMDb Review written by David del Real.

Mexico City. Mexico December 2017.

to drug or not to, (to "cheat"...)

[jtsjtssmokey-703-366973 · 7/10 · 2 March 2014]

Richie knows this friend who dies, knows how he feels about his mind but esp his body and health, never has and never would be apart of the drug world, so when he dies, somethings up. Duncan recognizes something, reminds him (of course) about the past and an "old" friend.

Of course Richie is right about his friend, after a cop "generalizes" him (dead friend, an ya we all are guilty of the judgement statement...), and all found in his system is herbs an stuff, the suppose safe natural stuff ?...

Duncan finds "old" friend who had an assistance who "stole" his "brew", of course Duncan faces him up with what he is really doing...wont work, now is the time yadayada...

This assistant almost gets Richie and a friend (girl ?) killed after offering "tea" to others he wanted to trick into drinking the "killer brew", Duncan get there but its his old friend who takes over and kill his mortal assistant (knows about them), says something that has Duncan reply "now you have crossed the line", hmm friends...maybe but 1 now Duncan willing to kill..."

As Duncan destroyed the "plant or/and formula" whatever because the "gathering" is there, happening (now called micro...)no way to use it to "help" with the gathering.

I do enjoy seeing the actors who guest stared on other shows during the 90s, like 2 of them who were also "bad guys" on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, liked that show too.

Old friends

[skteosk · 6/10 · 18 February 2024]

The episode opens with a disturbing if rather cheesy sequence of a man going crazy at a diamond merchants and then collapsing in pain, later dying. It turns out he's an old friend of Richie's, and the way he died reminds Duncan of an encounter with an old friend of his own. Soon, both Duncan and Richie are partnered with old friends to uncover the truth.

With Tessa only appearing briefly at the beginning and end, the focus is split between Duncan and Richie's separate investigations, along with a third thread where we see that the real culprit is the slimy Chou Lin, rather than Kiem Sun, possibly the campest Immortal ever. His motivations don't really go beyond wanting to use his new powers to rob banks, but at least we get that. Richie is rather eager to kill the person responsible for his friend Gary's death, whether he's an Immortal or not. Duncan gets two nice sword fights at the end, one against Chou Lin (who he apparently intends to spare) and one against Kiem Sun (who he actually does spare but at the cost of their friendship). It gives us another sign of the types of episode this show can do, although Duncan's firm insistence that the Gathering is happening will start to feel a bit silly as the show goes on.

We meet Richie's rather cute old friend Angie, who'll be back in Revenge is Sweet, and there's a second appearance from Sergeant Powell, previously seen in the first episode. We get another tidbit of Immortal lore: They can fight on holy ground if they don't intend to harm each other. The show continues to do musical montages, seemingly unaware of how silly they'll look in 30 years.

Very A to B episode. Some over-acting by the actors. Slow pace. Weak story. Ok, it's a bit of a lemon.

[reb-warrior · 5/10 · 28 February 2020]

Richie's friend dies of an apparent drug overdose. Richie knows his friend was a fitness nut and wouldn't do drugs and is determined to find out what happened. Duncan thinks an immortal is behind it. Tessa is sent off somewhere since she has nothing to do with the story (lazy writing in my opinion).

There's a flashback of Duncan meeting his old friend and teacher, Kiem Sun. Both actors over-act in their scenes. Adrian Paul's accent slips, and you can clearly hear his English accent and not his modern Scottish accent that he does throughout the series.

Turns out Kiem Sun is creating potions to curve mankind's violence but the potion ends up causing a cerebral hemorrhage. He vows to continue to work on it even it take another hundred years, to Duncan's dismay, who warns him it's dangerous and Kiem Sun should be preparing for the "gathering."

Richie along with his old girlfriend Angie traces things to Kiem Sun's employee, Chu Lin who stole the potion in an absurd notion to use it to control people so he can steal diamonds. Beginning to see why this is a bit of a lemon yet?

The episode is a lemon but still entertaining in some parts. Richie is very funny when he questions a bartender. There are some good fight scenes. But the pacing and story overall is very weak. Keep your ears open later in the series, in season 3, "They Also Serve," when Kiem Sun's name is mentioned in one of Duncan's flashbacks. I gave the episode a 5/10.

Silly instead of tough.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 24 November 2021]

As I watched "The Road Not Taken", I found myself laughing. After all, the episode is supposed to include lots of tough guy with a lot of street knowledge. However, the folks were all so white bread and clean, I couldn't help but laugh at the casting and costuming. And, when folks tried to act mean and menacing, I thought they were all pretty funny instead of being intimidating.

The episode begins with an Asian guy committing a robbery and looking like the Terminator. However, after he leaves, he falls to the pavement and dies!! The cops assume he died from an overdose and that is what gave him super-human strength...but Richie knew the guy and insists he never used drugs. Much of the episode consists of him and Duncan investigating to determine who has been using Chinese dark arts and herbs to create angry zombie-like folks.

As I mentioned above the casting and costuming was dumb and looked more like a bunch of rich kids pretending to be bad...while wearing carefully coiffed hair and stylish clothing. In other words, it came off as very fake...which made this a very weak episode...the first one in the series that made me cringe just a bit.