TGIF FEATURE: Summer of Asian-watching: 'Hell on Wheels,' 'Dark Matter,' 'Human,' & 'Strike Back' & Ballers

IT  USED TO BE that summer meant three months of watching summer reruns on TV. Nowadays, it is a season unto itself. It gives networks a chance to be a little more out of the box and try out new ideas that just missed being included in the fall/winter season.

Two of the brightest shows this summer featured Asians playing major roles: Hell On Wheels and Dark Matter.

Actors (from left) Angela Zhou, Byron Mann and Tzi Ma have major roles in "Hell on Wheels."

HELL ON WHEELS, in its fifth and final season, has saved the best for last.

When the western series telling the story of the building of the first transcontinental railroad  began, it was heavily criticized for leaving out the Chinese workers who built the west to east line, from California to Utah. For the first four seasons, it was all about the Union Pacific effort which built the railroad from east to west - cowboys, recently freed African Americans, Native American and Mormons.

While the first four seasons had their moments, the fourth season has surpassed them all with its story of the Central Pacific and the Chinese workers' contributions to building this nation - not just the railroad.

For the first time on television, Chinese characters were depicted as fully fleshed-out human beings. Some were flawed, triumphant, stubborn, loyal, determined, strong, greedy, manipulative, intelligent or brave -- or as real people tend to be, a little bit of all of these characteristics. The characters depicted on Wheels are a far cry from the Ponderosa's Hop Sing, who rarely ventured out of the kitchen other than to announce to the Cartwright family that dinner was ready.

Kudos to the actors Byron Mann, who plays labor contractor "Chang;" Angela  Zhou, who plays "Fong," a woman playing a boy; and Tzi Ma, portraying "Tao," the foreman o the Chinese workers.

After such a tenuous start, Hell on Wheels is finishing strong. A lot of credit should be given to show runner, John Wirth for including the Central Pacific story. To my mind, that is a more compelling story with the additional layer of the culture clash between whites and the Chinese making for more interesting storylines.

It doesn't avoid the racism that pervaded that era because race relations provide the reason for most of the show's story's conflict.

If you have on-demand TV, you can binge-watch the entire season from episode one to catch up and you'll have plenty of time to do that. AMC has decided to break up the final season in half with the first half concluding this fall and concluding seven episodes to be shown in the summer of 2016. So, even though we call this Wheel's last season, next summer is the "real" last season when we find out the fate of all of the show's characters.

We know how it ends with the driving of the golden spike near Promontory Point, Utah and the historic photo that excludes the Chinese workers.

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The cast of Dark Matter

DARK MATTER was a surprise. With a minimum of fanfare, it is establishing itself as a worthy entry in the sic-fi genre.

Melissa O'Neil is Two, the requisite badass

Dark Matter is a space opera following the exploits of six humans who awake from suspended animation and can't remember a thing of their past. Fittingly, they name themselves in the order they awoke aboard the mysterious ship: One, Two, Three and so forth. Oh, and to add more interest, an android, who looks like a woman, is introduced, but her memory doesn't include the ship's mission or who the awaken amnesiacs might be. 

Two is played by Melissa O'Neil, who is making her television debut with Dark Matter. The Chinese/Canadian from Calgary just a high school student when she became the 2012 winner of Canadian Idol. She was on Broadway in Les Mserables when her agent convinced her to audition for the sic-fi series.

Two is another one of those bad-ass Asian women roles that white producers love. O'Neil has had some training in martial arts so the fight scenes come easy to her. The fight coordinators love her.

Perhaps the only other crew member who could challenge Two is Four, played by Alex Mallari, Jr. Four is a quiet guy but when he is a whirl of flashing swords and kicks when he gets into a fight. Born in the Philippines but raised in Scarborough, Canada, the athletic Mallari has appeared in Robocop, Nikita and a number of other roles before landing the role of Four. 

Alex Mallari as Four

The show's strong suit is action but it is the interaction between the main characters that makes the viewer care about them. The playful back-and-forth banter is one of the show's appeals. 

SPOILER ALERT:

The first episode hints what to expect in the rest of the series. The crew learns that they are not the good guys that they thought they were.

Of all the main characters in the show, Four's backstory has been the most extensivly portrayed. Apparently he is a prince on a world that looks an awful like Shogun-era Japan but there is still the mystery of why he was placed on a ship with other dangerous  criminals.

The show has impressive sci-fi DNA. It was created by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, who were also behind the Stargate franchise. It is another one of the several sci-fi productions being filmed in Canada. Our northern neighbor - it appears - is not adverse to providing diversity in its television programs.

There're plenty of stories worth mining in this series and I look forward to watching it next summer and learning more about the mysterious crew of the spaceship Raza. Dark Matter has already been renewed for another 13 episodes next summer.

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OTHER SERIES of note that have Asians and/or Pacific Islanders in prominent roles include Ballers, Human and Strike Back.

Dwayne Johnson

Ballers stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Mimi=based sports agents who spends his time coddling spoiled but highly paid - athletes.

The Rock is surprisingly quite good in this, showing that his acting range goes beyond the muscle-man hero-typecast that he has been called on to play in the movies. He can portray  contemporary roles in a real-world setting, if you count Miami real. Almost every other setting is in a bar or restaurant filled with beautiful people. I have to admit, its hard to hide his physique even when he's wearing a suit..

Strike Back is a fun, shoot'em-up that has the feel of a video game. It follows a team of highly-trained, secret military unit of British intelligence. There's a video-game feel to the show with the high number of villains who get killed in the course of saving the world.

But the appeal to the show are the characters relationships with each other as drawn up by the writers and actors. The show is not above killing off some of its main characters.

Michelle Yeoh

Strike Back is British-produced and in its fourth and last season. There's only so many villains you can kill and dangerous situations that you can escape from.

I mention this show only because this season is set in Thailand, which gives a great reason to cast a lot of Asian actors, including Michelle Yeoh, who can act the hell out of a character that could easily have become your stereotypical villainess, ala Dragon Lady.

Humans, another British import, is about human-like artificial beings who have human feelings and independent thought. Its a chilling allegorical study of race, sex, gender roles and mankind’s fears of technological advancemen, Humans moves at a slower pace than, say Dark Matter, but it is thoughtful and poses a lot of what-if-it-were-me questions.

Gemma Chan

What makes the series noteworthy is Gemma Chan, who plays one of the "synths," short for "synthetic." It's hard to take your eyes off her when she's onscreen, looking hard to detect any trace of human emotion on her face.

The part-Chinese-Scottish actress, an Oxford graduate, is probably best known in Asian/American circles for her take on Hollywood. "Oh, you are more likely to see an alien in a Hollywood film than an Asian woman," she said.

UPDATE: In earlier versions of this post, I neglected to mention Aasif Mandvi who plays Rafiq Massoud.

All in all, it was a good summer for Asian-watching compared to past years when Asians and Pacific Islanders were relegated to the background at best. In the big picture, though, five shows out of the hundreds being aired, AAPI characters are still barely visible in America's living rooms.

But the summer is only a harbinger of things to come. Hollywood, in its normal practice of copying what's hot, was apparently impressed with the ratings of Fresh Off The Boat so that 2015-2016 TV season looks to be a historic season in terms of shows featuring Asians in prominent roles. Watch for my preview for the upcoming season.

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