Monkey Challenge: What Is Wisdom?

While the last episode Who Am I? seemed good compared with the rather poor run that preceded it, What is Wisdom? is the first genuinely good episode in a while - certainly the first in the second season.

This is thanks to the memorable and well-realised competition between Tripitaka and an evil magician (the villain-of-the-week) to demonstrate which of their religions - Buddhism or Taoism - is better.

The contest between Buddhism and Taoism is one of the tales in the version of Monkey I have read and, although much of it has been changed considerably, the basic setup is the same - the evil Taoist has rigged the contest so he can defeat the human Tripitaka, but has reckoned without Monkey's magic tricks turning the tables.

The episode ends with another of the increasingly-common cloud-flying chase scenes, but one of the better of these, that sees Monkey extend machine guns from his cloud and dogfight with the magician.