Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #425
Anne: Happy Thanksgiving week to those who are in the US. I am officially off work this week! (Mostly because I have like 100 hours of vacation that I'll lose at the end of the year. They are over the limit that gets rolled over.) I'm not going anywhere really, just a quick trip to take the 6 year old to visit his aunt and uncle. (He informs me that I'm his "second" favorite person when his Auntie is around, but I'm his favorite person at home.) In terms of every day life...not a whole lot is happening, except for work and work and then even more work. And me trying to figure out what in the world am I going to give people for gifts this year?
Don't you find that as you get older, there really isn't a whole lot that you want as presents? The things I really need, I can't ask other people to get me. And what they can give me...I feel like it'll just add to the piles of other stuff that I will just end up throwing away. But if you ask the 6 year old, he has a list that is a mile long of things they he absolutely NEEDS. I wish that I was still that easily satisfied.
So, in an effort to take advantage of my "vacation", this post will be slightly different, hopefully, with a bit more substance than my previously hurried ones. With setting everyone's expectations high...let's get on with what I managed to watch these last two weeks.
Life Begins
I started this drama a little after SOSsy, who suggested it in the comments two weeks ago. And 17 episodes later... I really, really LOVE this drama! While this drama had similar back drop plots of arrange marriages, fight for the throne, competition between brothers, national politics, and the harem, I think the main story for this focuses entirely on female relationships and their lives in this fictional time period in this fictional nation of 9 kingdoms. The main story is focused on the 6th prince and Li Wei, whom he choose to marry just because it is expected (and I swear it's also because he did it to mess with her for her stealing his dinner).
Episode 1 -- While the boys up for marriage are discussing the candidates and which one is the most beautiful, the girls are also doing something similar, discussing which one would make the best husband. The former has the official portrait's of the candidates, the latter has an unofficial "book".
And poor Li Wei, who tried her best to demonstrate her lack of everything needed to be a concubine or a wife, is the first to get married.
Episode 2 -- Li Wei, through a series of misunderstandings, thinks Yin Zheng's stomach issues are life threatening and thinks that the day of the princes' imperial exam is the day of his death. In order to mark the day when she can finally go home again, Li Wei marks it on the calendar,
and starts sending letters to her parents when they should expect her home, so to be sure to prepare some yummy stuff for her eat.
In the meantime, Hao Jia marries the second prince, as she planned, despite knowing that his wife will find ways to make her life difficult. But despite her being soft spoken, she is quite keen on how to manipulate the husband's favor towards her, when she got him to offer the tea that his wife just poured for him.
And Shangguan Jing, who came from the city run by women, is married to Yin Qi, the fifth prince, who had to be tied up and delivered to the wedding chamber, where the bride was waiting. Yin Qi wanted to marry Hao Jia.
During dinner, Le Wei is trying her best to follow rules. So she immediately jumps to take from a dish as soon as Yin Zheng touches it with his chopsticks. And in order to make sure she doesn't "take" from any dish more than 3 times...she decides to use a bigger bowl. And right before he leaves, he touches the fish so she can eat from it!
It wasn't until the end, that Yin Zheng realized that she thought he was dying.
Episode 3 -- When the servants tell her to get ready for Yin Zheng's BIG DAY, she does...
...complete with a cut onion to help her cry. After getting that straighten out and Yin Zheng gets better, her consummation night is scheduled. But then her maids tell her that she needs to make sure she succeeds otherwise, or she will be "divorced" if she can't bare children. She agrees that would be "terrible"...
And when Song Wu, Yin Zheng's adopted sister, decides to "fight" for the room that is now Li Wei's, she gets a shock when Li Wei invites her to share her room...
(all in an effort to delay the consummation night...of course). And boy did Song Wu regrets her decision when Li Wei mistaken her arms for food in her sleep and bites down...
In the middle of all this... Yin Zheng is tasked to convince his 3rd brother (Yin An, who is wealthy due to the inheritance from his mother) to return to the palace to avoid an imperial summons. If Li Wei saw this look on Yin Zheng's face when she was going on and on about how handsome Yin An is...
...she would be better prepared...
...and not be SO disappointed.
Episode 4 -- Where Li Wei meets the "Solar Ladies", aka Yin An's harem...
Yin An doesn't remember who is who...
Not even when they point to the "names" floating above their heads.
Episode 5 -- And when Shangguan Jing's state is devastated by flooding, and needs a lot of funds to rebuild, all her friends chip in, including Sisi, who wanted to donate a little something...
...and wonders if this was enough. As part of the never ending schemes of Song Wu to get Yin Zheng to divorce Li Wei, she decided to "torture" the dog, to prove to Yin Zheng that Li Wei can't take care of the dog.
(I think the dog looks really cute.)
Episode 6 -- This started with the Mid-Autumn banquet which was organized by Li Wei, a whole buffet featuring the specialties of the nine kingdoms.
Normally, the tearful goodbye at the end of the visit would probably be at the "door"...but this show takes it one step further and the entire goodbye sequence is with them getting out exactly how they came in.
And it is these unexpected moments of comedy mixed with emotional content that partly makes this drama unique.
The fruit plate was VERY impressive. And Yin Qi has to passed the husband's appraisal test. Of which the ability to play mahjong was one of them.
And whe Yin Zheng started to help him win, THAT drew the attention of the Lady of Dan (who is Shangguan Jing's older sister). The second appraisal was cleaning your wife's ear. And the third was making chili oil. And when Yin Zheng demonstrated his superior archery skills, the Lady of Dan decided that if a marriage alliance is needed, then she will marry Yin Zheng and leave her younger sister free of her idiot of a husband.
Yin Zheng and Yin An head out to collect on the debt repayment, using any means possible.
By beating people up....
After the debt collection, Yin Zheng finds out that Li Wei's status as a concubine when they divorce will cause her reputation to be harmed, so he makes it a mission to get his father to allow him to promote her to a wife. In order to do that, he needs Li Wei to become the valedictorian of the wifey school.
That's because they were all full from having ate the dishes supplied by Li Wei's vegetable garden.
Episode 10 -- While Yin Zheng and Yin An went to Jin State to deliver the funds, Li Wei tries her best to score well on her studies. On the road to Jin...the boys ran into bandits. Where upon, Yin An realized that his little brother knows how to fight.
It was during the touring of this new manor, that Yin Zheng's man servant CANNOT take it anymore. And yells at Li Wei that "He likes you!" (you idiot).
While waiting for more episodes of Life Begins to drop, I was looking through Netflix and came across this, what seemed like a crime drama that involved a dating app. Episode 2 is when I started to think that Sum was a bit nutty. (And BTW, this isn't Asperger's, when did this become associated with psychopathic behavior?) Around like episode 3, it got a bit gritty. Episode 4 took it to a whole other level. And things just kept getting worse. If you are interested in this just know that you will be incredibly frustrated at Sum, Gi-Eun, and Yun-O. The only normal one is Mok-Won, the shaman. This is a tragic love story. And Samantha might be the devil. Be warned, this is quite disturbing.