Reel Tastes & Travels – a light dose of entertainment to wake you up

‘This is the rear palace, a garden where 2000 women stir and scheme.’ – Maomao

This episode follows more of a case of the week structure, focusing on the detah of a mid-level concubine called Lady Jin, apparently from food poisoning. In parallel, an attendant, Tao, who was due to be married and leave the rear palace soon, has gone missing. Though in a more subtle indicator of the palace hierarchy, Lady Jin takes up a lot more of everyone’s mindspace than Tao.

At the start of the episode, Jinshi requests a private meeting with Maomao to discuss his plans to set up a school to improve literacy rates among the maids in the rear palace. She smilingly approves leading to a hilariously alarmed reaction from Jinshi and Gaoshun who instantly worry that something is wrong given her uncharacteristic pleasantness. Maomao demonstrates her keen insight into the dynamics of both the higher and lower strata of the rear palace, suggesting they move the school away from the southern side which is frequented by higher ranking nobles and consorts to avoid offending their sensibilities. She also suggests positioning it as vocational training to enhance its appeal to their intended audience.

Perhaps using the school as a convenient excuse for a private discussion, Jinshi also asks her to look into mushrooms around the palace and dispose any poisonous mushrooms that could be accidentally eaten. One thing Apothecary Diaries does excellently is tying together seemingly small incidents across episodes. Jinshi alludes to the time Maomao picked matsutake mushrooms and ate them with the palace doctor. A seemingly inconsequential line but it helps connect back to previous interactions and further supports why Jinshi would assume she has a good knowledge of mushrooms.

Maomao is in seventh heaven until she runs across a weird smell, again linking back to an earlier episode where her new acquaintance mentioned a weird smell in a part of the palace (suspected to be a sewage leak).

Putting her quest (and questions) aside, she later goes to attend the memorial of Lady Jin and we find out a bit more about the concubine. Quite a nasty piece of work! Although the daughter of a high ranking official, she was not favored by the emperor and was consumed by jealousy towards anyone who was. She had a reputation for making things unpleasant and targeting others (even Gyokuyou) though she was smart enough that nothing could be proven. And for the last year, she had been bedridden due to a mysterious illness. Maomao connects the dots and realises that Jinshi suspects someone from the Jade Pavilion is behind Lady Jin’s food poisoning and hence the discreet request for her to investigate the mushrooms.

She notices Lady Jin’s attendant has a wound on her hand and during a brouhaha caused by another concubine who had been previously injured by Lady Jin, she sees that the corpse is also covered by blisters on her face and the mystery starts to make sense. She searches and finds a highly poisonous mushroom on the palace grounds in an overgrown area.

On questioning Jinshi, she discovers that Lady Jin started showing symptoms of poisoning about a year ago. It is assumed that she accidentally touched the toxic mushroom when targeting the other concubine. After that, she became withdrawn and barely spoke to him when he visited. Apparently unable to bear it, she killed her by eating the mushroom. That’s the final piece of the puzzle for Maomao.

<<Spoiler alert>>

It turns out that Lady Jin actually died a year ago (whether by accident or intention is left slightly vague). To cover it up, her attendants disguised Tao (yes, the Chekhov’s gun of a missing attendant mentioned at the start of the episode) as Lady Jin. Hence, the sudden onset of symptoms and personality change to disguise the switch. However, with Tao’s looming release from service, the other attendants panicked and moved to cover up their deception.

Another thought-provoking episode on the plight of the women in the rear palace, both the concubines and the attendants. To be unfavoured is to be stuck in limbo with no real route to escape. It is hardly surprising how that could warp a concubine’s temperament, especially if their comfortable background does not prepare them well for such challenges. And for the attendants, they are equally stuck while they serve out their term of employment. It is sad that Tao, who was within touching distance of a chance at happiness, ended up a victim as a result. Even more haunting when you consider that she is almost an afterthought in the episode despite the arguably critical role she has in the case.

Stray Musings

• Gyokuyou’s pout when deprived of nosing here way into Jinshi and Maomao’s meeting is quite endearing
• Maomao, whether she realizes it or not, is warming up to Jinshi. She shows him the scar on her arm from the toxic mushroom that she encountered years before, something she has never shown anyone before, and even casually mentions her experiments on herself to him