Episode 8 – The Apothecary Diaries

Poor, poor Jinshi. Even if you don’t care for him or ship him with Maomao, it’s hard to deny that she has (unintentionally) ill-used him this week. It’s probably good for him to have someone who isn’t caught by his beauty and can’t read a room. That end scene where he drastically misinterprets absolutely everything and completely fails to realize that she has zero understanding of the entire hairpin system is one of the most effective takedowns of a man I’ve seen. I’m sure Gaoshun will clue him in at some point – Gyokuyou’s having way too much fun to do it – but his anguished, frozen chibi is an apt metaphor for his worldview shattering.

It’s a good, light note to end on after a heavier main story. Maomao’s return home also means that she’s thrown back into her father’s job as a doctor in the pleasure district, so while Lihaku’s off getting his mind blown by Pairin, she’s on call. It doesn’t take her long to get back into the swing of things. While she’s initially startled by the girl who drags her off to a brothel, the minute she sees the dead and dying, she snaps into action. This is a similar Maomao to the one we saw at Lihua’s pavilion, but there’s a more authoritative air to her. Not only does she know what to do, she knows that she’s the only person who does and that they wouldn’t have called for her if they doubted her authority. There’s nothing deferential about her, and the second her hair is tied back, she is the most important person in that room. That makes it even more interesting when her father shows up later to go over the aftermath of the poisoning. Maomao now is humble and completely willing to trust her father’s superior experience and knowledge. She defers to him in a much more real way than she does anyone in the inner palace; it’s clear that she trusts him and is keen to learn. There’s a sense that in the palace, Maomao’s deference is all for show; with her father, it’s the real thing.

All of this goes to show that there’s a lot more to Maomao than what we’ve been seeing. It makes sense: for most of the series, we’ve seen her in the place she was kidnapped to work in, and she’s got zero attachment to anything but getting through her term of service safely. She’ll do her work to the best of her ability, but as we can see this week, she’s going through the motions. That makes her observation that the pleasure quarters and the inner palace are similar places so interesting. Maomao knows that both are gilded cages for women, where their sexually desirable qualities determine their status and only powerful men can save them. She perhaps prefers the more open nature of where she was raised because it hides the ugliness less, but they are the same thing. Maomao has gone from one where she’s comfortable to one where she’s not, and the only real difference is who she’s there with. That she loves and trusts her father more than anyone in the inner palace makes all the difference to her.

This episode runs a lot more like a classic mystery story than almost any other we’ve seen so far. That’s neither better nor worse, but it is more in line with what some viewers were expecting from this series, and it is undeniably interesting to watch Maomao play sleuth. The clues are there for us to pick up on, with the hollow wheat stalks as straws being one of the most interesting details, but the most striking is the conclusion. Maomao figured out what was going on because that’s what she and her father seem to like to do, but she doesn’t turn the criminals over to the guards. She solves the case for her satisfaction, as part of her study of human nature. The man was a bad guy; the poisoner trying to right a series of wrongs. Maomao doesn’t make a value judgment on her, even though that’s technically what ought to be done, or at least what mystery fiction has taught us is supposed to happen.

It all goes back to her comment that the inner palace and the pleasure quarters are the same. In both places, the women aren’t in charge of their destinies. Sometimes if they want to survive, they have to take matters into their own hands.

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