Rating:
Doing these two episodes together was not originally planned, and while episode 52 does, to a degree, set up episode 53, the focus of each is distinctly different, so hardly anything is gained by looking at them together. Hence I will mostly be covering them separately here.
Episode 52
One thing I’ve always appreciated about this series is that it’s full of smart people displaying different types of intelligence. Maomao doesn’t look smart because she’s surrounded by, or matched against, stupid people; plenty of others in the series have their own elaborate schemes, their own ways of figuring things out or even noticing things that she might not. A great example of this comes a few minutes into this episode, when Maomao goes to visit Suirei to ask her about the former apothecary’s journals. Both Maomao and Suirei are too close to Shisui to notice one important details – that if Shisui knew about the signs of the upcoming locust plague and also engineered everything else, then certainly she would have found a way to leave the most important information somewhere hard-to-recognize but still accessible. Being a high-ranking concubine practically necessitates having a sharp mind, though, and Ah-Duo shows she’s no exception. With no emotional attachment, she can spot that truth, and it doesn’t take long for Maomao to figure it out from there once the possibility is pointed out to her.
In retrospect, I really should have seen this twist coming and applaud the series for sneaking in the set-up a dozen episodes ago: the book on insects Maomao was looking at in the clinic – the one she realized had to have been left there by Shisui and thus was the first clue that she didn’t belong there – is the very book she’s now looking for. And I even felt at the time that the book was more significant than just its use in that episode, but had forgotten about it!
The implication from the combination of the book and Jinshi’s map of recent locust instances suggests that deforestation may be indirectly contributing to a building locust swarm by taking away the environment for birds who would naturally prey on the grasshoppers. Encouraging natural predators like swallows is regarded as a biological control for locust swarms even to this day, so Maomao isn’t off base here with her suggestion about limiting their hunting, and it’s interesting to see how the series links human environmental impact to this kind of disaster. However, Maomao’s much less serious additional suggestion leads to one of the most amusing scenes so far this season: the one where Jinshi gets Maomao to feed him by being willing to grit his teeth and try the fried grasshoppers.
The rest of the episode – concerning the albino “sorceress” – is really just set-up for the focus on her in the next episode.
Episode 53
This episode finally fully introduces the young woman who would appear to be the season’s main antagonist (or at least one of them), as Maomao gets taken to one of her theatrical shows by Lahan. Jinshi is also in attendance in disguise, but this time neither of them seems to recognize that the other is present. (This is the rare occasion where the series is stretching credibility a bit, as Jinshi is so keenly aware of Moamao that it feels like something more than a veil should be required here for him to not pick her out.)
To a discerning modern eye, everything in the theater practically screams that this is a classic charlatan show, from the careful staging to the gimmickry behind the magic act to the woman’s flair for performance. And like with any good magic act, the real entertainment is always in trying to figure out how she does it. This series has studiously avoided allowing any actual mysticism to creep into it, and this no different; there are practical explanations for how the albino could tell what number Maomao wrote or what tube the note was put in, and watching Maomao puzzle it out was quite entertaining, as was the very clever explanation behind the gimmick with the tubes in particular. And nothing more than the albino having better-than-normal hearing (women are naturally better able to hear high pitches than men, but she has an extraordinary ear even beyond that) was needed to explain it!
Maomao’s comparison of the albino to a white snake is also significant here, as the Legend of the White Snake is one of the classic Chinese folk tales. The earliest form of the folk tale is a cautionary story about a deceiver who’s a white snake demon who can take on the form of a human woman, and that’s clearly the intended parallel here.
The trick with the metal was as I figured; it would be a stunt easy enough to pull off for someone with sufficient knowledge of chemistry and foreplanning. I’m much less clear what purpose her seemingly drinking mercury was intended to serve, however, or how she was seemingly not harmed by it if she did ingest some. The doves in the wagon with her also felt significant, though I guess we’ll have to wait for a later episode to find out how they are to be used.
Overall, episode 53 is a more pure return to the mystery aspect that was a big component of the series’ first season in particular, while episode 52 is a more plot-focused episode which featured some of the series’ familiar fun.
