Story of Minglan Rewatch - Episode 12

[laleia]

I have no excuse for why this came almost two months after Episode 11. Maybe I'm losing steam? Here's hoping I stay motivated enough to finish this project though!

Episode 12
(Note re: any observations I make on English subtitles — I’m watching episode 12 on YouTube on the CN DRAMA channel.)

Scene - The Lan sisters pay respects to Grandmother!

• Total irrelevant sidebar (given it doesn’t happen in this scene), but it always cracks me up when Big Madam refers to them as the three Lans. Seeing them all in a row like this, I do find it interesting (as I think I’ve observed before) that they don’t get “color-coded” the way dramas sometimes do when they’re trying to help you tell people apart.
• Hmm, it seems like Big Madam is doing the same thing Madam Qin is (沐浴斋戒). I think the subtitles translated it as (and I also interpreted it to mean) refraining from baths when it came up in the previous episode, but I think it might also possibly mean taking special baths and eating vegetarian? Very unclear.
• Molan just confirmed my theory last episode that the three gods Big Madam was praying to were Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian.
• Grandmother looks so incredibly bored as Molan and Rulan bicker.
• Molan reacts much more emotionally than she would later on, presumably a sign that she is younger and still immature.
• It’s interesting because I think Rulan has actually grown and matured more than Molan has in the last 2-3 episodes. Molan still whines and tattles the same amount, and Rulan is still belligerent and aggressive, but Rulan doesn’t get provoked the same way she used to. Here, when she and Molan bicker, her old self would have been incited into staying and having a longer argument but the current Rulan just leaves, which is really the wisest course of action for her.
• Is Molan really crying (because she’s really upset) or is she faking it so she has good cause for complaining about Rulan later? With her, it’s hard to tell. By the end of the show, she’s mastered the art of fake-crying but she’s currently still a work in progress.

Scenes - the exam!

• At the exam courtyard!
  • This interlude cracks me up. I think it’s funny, but I guess it’s also an insight into each of these characters.
  • Changbai sits there and meditatively contemplates the universe.
  • Changfeng is just straight up sleeping with not a care in the world.
  • Gu Tingye is doing some weird elevated one-arm plank while making weird faces. Also meditative.
  • We don’t see Yuanruo but presumably he’s staring off into space, daydreaming about Minglan.
• Minglan moons over Yuanruo!
  • Meanwhile, we get Minglan, who is clearly daydreaming about Yuanruo! She is in fact staring at the lanterns that were lit specifically for Yuanruo at Fan Hall.
  • OK, I don’t understand is how she has a view of Fan Hall from her courtyard, but only for this scene and not for any other scene. First, I would have thought the Sheng household’s walls were high enough you couldn’t see over them! Second, even if you could, I would think that a restaurant (which is what I think Fan Hall is?) is especially inappropriate to have in a position where they can look into one of the women’s courtyards in the Sheng Household. The only explanation I can think of is that the lanterns on hanging off this very tall building structure that is far away and all she can see is the glimmering light and even though we (the audience) got a closeup of the building and the lanterns, she herself doesn’t actually see that much detail?
  • Xiaotao is hilarious. “Other than parents, he has … others … thinking of him.”
  • Ok we just got another shot of the building and it is two stories high so there’s no way Minglan saw it from her courtyard.
• Yuanruo moons over Minglan!
  • I spoke too soon, we now get a scene of Yuanruo staring off into space, daydreaming about Minglan, as I predicted.
• The contestants emerge!
  • Everyone in the Sheng family looks so nervous!
  • Princess Pingning has her chair! As a callback to when she summoned a chair in her Imposing Scene of Introduction where she had a maid beaten. She must be chaired at a moment’s notice!
  • Awww, Changbai and Gu Tingye are such BFFs!
  • Gu Tingye doesn’t have a whole passel of family waiting for him but he does have people who care! Shitou and his only sweet brother and Nanny Chang!
  • OMG Yuanruo is so obvious with how he ignores his parents to moon over Minglan from far away.
  • OK on reflection I don’t think that Minglan did a better job of hiding her mooning over Yuanruo. She keeps on looking over at him too! It’s just that nobody in her family cares about or pays attention to her (other than her loyal servants), while Yuanruo’s mother most definitely noticed (which is not a good thing).

Scene - Minglan and Xiaotao plot!

• I like the detail that Xiaotao closed all the doors to signal that we are about to get a Secret Conversation.
• Minglan is so clever!

Scene - The exam results!

• Big Madam falling is hilarious every time I watch this scene.
• Grandmother and Minglan chat:
  • Grandmother calls Minglan out for her crush on Yuanruo. I love the phrase Grandmother uses when describing how obvious Yuanruo’s gift-sending was. “That’s putting a louse on top of a bald head.” Amazing.
  • Grandmother really wants what’s best for Minglan. She wants Minglan to be the main wife, and to have an uncomplicated family life after marriage.
  • Minglan looks so sad …
  • Grandmother sending Minglan off to look at the exam results is v. cute because she jokes that it’s like she’s the Emperor and she’s sending Minglan off as her 宣撫使 and Minglan bows like a court official.
• Asshole Father and Madam Qin chat:
  • I really do love that the drama has Madam Qin set up the story about people kidnapping high-scoring scholars to be their son-in-law just so we get the punchline/payoff with Changbai in a few minutes.
  • Of course even when sharing this anecdote, Madam Qin manages to do so in a way that makes Asshole Father irritated with Gu Tingye (by mentioning merchants). Honestly, Madam Qin is very good at what she does. Minglan is right to describe her as Concubine Lin on steroids.
• The results board!
  • I have to say that from a visual standpoint, the board of passing names looks very cool and well-proportioned but from a practical standpoint, I don’t understand how anyone is expected to be able to read the names that are listed at the top of the board. They are SO far away. But then I say that as someone who has terrible eyesight.
  • Gu Tingye does the callback joke to the bit about high-scoring scholars being kidnapped to be sons-in-law, which tickles me.
  • I also love that Minglan and Rulan don’t even bother to greet their brother’s friend or wait for their brother to finish, they just run on ahead of him.
  • And then we get a close-up of some potential fathers-in-law, poised to kidnap a scholar at a moment’s notice, as Madam Qin warned and Gu Tingye joked.
  • And of course we must use this joke moment to hammer in Gu Tingye’s reputation, a combination of Madam Qin effectively blackening his reputation over the years + Gu Tingye’s own stupidity (c.f. Manniang).
  • TBH, it’s kind of weird that Gu Tingye personally went to check for his name, and Changbai’s family did the same, but Yuanruo and his parents just … sat … in a carriage … waiting … while their servants did. It’s very much Princess Pingning’s style, I guess.
  • OK, I feel a little better about the visibility of the names, because it looks like their names are written rather larger than I expected (and all of the smaller writing around it is … IDK, additional details about their score? But in any case the tiny writing is not actually names).
  • I like how when Changbai finds out that he passed, and that he placed thirteenth, he doesn’t have any extreme displays of emotion, no excessive gratitude or preening. He is just quietly and sincerely grateful.
  • And then Changbai immediately gets almost-kidnapped and Gu Tingye steps in to rescue him. And as Changbai’s servants/”bodyguards” pull him away, he keeps looking back at Gu Tingye to ask how about his score. That’s ~true love~. :P
  • I’m such a shipper at heart, I love when Gu Tingye and Minglan see each other. But also it is very, very obvious even to a shipper like me that they each have zero romantic interest in the other in this scene. It’s always interesting how slow-paced this show is The two leads barely interact in the first ~20 episodes, they don’t get together until halfway through the show, and it’s not even a “will-they, won’t-they” thing, it’s a “they have lives full of drama that they are dealing with completely separate from the other”.
  • It’s very dramatic that of our four test-takers, Changbai is the only one who passed the exam while Changfeng, Gu Tingye and Yuanruo all failed. To the best of my recollection from the novel, this is a drama-only thing. In the novel, I think they all took tests at different times, I don’t think Gu Tingye took the test at all (?) and I don’t recall at all if Yuanruo passed because Yuanruo was much more of a nonentity in the novel. But in the novel and (I think) in history, there would have been a series of tests that they take. In the novel for The Sword and the Brocade, they even went a little into how while for most tests you just keep trying until you pass, and other tests toward the “end” where if you fail, you can retake it, but if you pass but place too poorly, you get assigned a “bad” job with no chance to improve on it so you’re screwed, so sometimes it’s better to wait to take the test at a later time when you are more confident.
  • I have to say, the actress who plays Princess Pinging is really good at conveying her absolute rigidity. I think it’s her posture? Or her facial expressions?
  • Yuanruo is so obvious.
  • Rulan is quite cute, the way she smiles when Yuanruo compliments her but seems so innocent in her happiness.
  • Minglan tries so hard to cheer up Yuanruo.
  • Wow, Gu Tingye looks so sad about not passing, I actually feel bad for him. (I don’t think I cared particularly one way or another on my first watch.) And his younger brother is quite sweet about it, as usual. And Gu Tingye brings up the son-in-law-snatching again, this time to underscore his ~tragic backstory~. TBH, I don’t fully understand the connection he’s making (I mean, I understand it, I just don’t think it’s as relevant as he thinks it is) but I appreciate that the show is really taking this offhand joke and making it Thematic.
• When Concubine Lin & co. get home, Molan is quite selfish as always in how she views Changfeng’s exam failure. She only cares how it impacts her life.

Scene - Grandmother confers with Papa Sheng and Big Madam!

• Grandmother makes very good points about why not to brag about Changbai.
• Big Madam complains that the capital is too stifling. If I recall correctly, the novel makes a similar point when they first arrive at the capital. They immediately have to be very cautious in all of their interactions, even when in a “traffic jam” with boats when they first get in, because any person they come across could be related to someone important (or could be someone important without their knowing) and must not be offended.
• I think it’s really cute that we started the drama with Rulan being annoyingly presumptuous in demanding that Minglan make things for her (so that Rulan can pretend she made them) to us getting this exchange between Minglan and Rulan framed as a cute conspiratorial moment where Minglan is willingly faking a gift from Rulan to make Rulan’s life easier (though it’s still because it’s helpful for her to be on Rulan’s good side).
• When talking about Changbai’s marriage prospects, Papa Sheng starts with a preamble about his own career prospects where he immediately describes a lot of ranks, titles and positions that mean nothing to me in either English or Chinese.
• Big Madam mentions that her sister visited the other day. The terrible Madam Kang! Is this the first time she is referenced?
• Grandmother is so smooth in how she shoots down Big Madam’s proposal that Changbai marry her sister’s husband’s niece.

Scene - Concubine Lin berates Changfeng!

• Molan again berates Changfeng for quite selfish reasons, about how his failure impacts her life.
• She also laments that she is not a man and can’t take the exam herself. Well, I don’t know if “lament” is the way I would put it. She said that if she were a man, she wouldn’t rely on Changfeng. There are other villainainesses in other period dramas (Yanxi Palace comes to mind) who give off a strong sense that they could have done something more (non-evil, or possibly more effectively evil) with their lives if they weren’t constrained by the limited options available to women and unable to channel their energy towards more productive outlets. Molan is not one of them, to me. I feel like if she were a man, she would be just like Changfeng. It’s an issue with her character.
• LOL that Changfeng disdained Minglan’s kneeguard so much but brings them up here to complain about Molan.
• Concubine Lin tells Changfeng that Molan has the talent of Xie Daoyun. Reading her wikipedia article, she sounds kind of badass.
• The subtitles say that Changfeng tells Molan “Stop saying I didn’t pass.” That’s not what he said because of course, past-tense, it is a fact that he didn’t pass. What he says “Stop saying I won’t pass”, future-tense.

Scene - Gu Tingye gets drunk!

• Poor Gu Tingye and his BFF.
• Okay, Changbai said the second day after the results were posted, Yuanruo’s parents went to interrogate the main proctor about why Yuanruo didn’t pass. How much time has passed??? Given the sequence of events, it really seemed like this was the day after the results were posted.
• Gu Tingye doesn’t know his father very well. He says his father doesn’t care enough about him to speak to the exam proctor. But of course, his father does care. His father is just an asshole anyways.

Scene - Changfeng sets the stage for his punishment a few episodes down the line!

• I was going to give Changfeng some credit and say that he didn’t even say that much and it’s his companions who said the most. But then he immediately opened his mouth and started spouting near-poetry about Prince Yan. So. There’s that.
• The camera focuses in on the guy sitting next to him. I suppose that’s the guy that reports this entire conversation to the Emperor?
• Concubine Lin is really pissed at Changfeng when he gets back the next morning but TBH she’s a terrible parent so there’s no surprise he ended up like this.

Scene - Asshole Father visits the Proctor Dude!

• The proctor says “[Yuanruo’s] essays are beautifully written but they lack a backbone”. That … sums up so much about Yuanruo’s character from start to finish. From the “academic” debate they had last episode where he wavered and didn’t want to take a side, to of course how he handles the whole Minglan situation time and time again, Yuanruo lacks a backbone. The proctor says that Yuanruo’s essays will benefit from further training / training. Similarly, I do think Yuanruo gets a backbone by the end of the drama because some of the more tragic experiences he has gone through since then have trained / honed his character in a way that he hadn’t been tested before.
• See my earlier points about Gu Tingye’s father caring but being an asshole anyways. He cares enough about his son succeeding and I even think he cares about his son (or at least he thinks he does) but he is incapable of … I don’t know … not being an asshole? I don’t even know how to characterize his actions in the next scene.
• The first time I watched, it pissed me off SO MUCH that the screen faded to black when the proctor told Asshole Father the reason Gu Tingye didn’t roster.
• Honestly, watching Gu Tingye storm out, I’m really sad because his dad is about to be so unfair about this entire situation. I don’t know if I can provide any commentary on the first part of the next episode, I fear I’ll just be fuming the whole time.

And that's it until next episode!