grapejuice

I will have conflicted feelings when Joy of Life is knocked off it's pedestal although s1 was better than s2 and, if s3 is remotely like the book, it will be a total banger. (I wonder what JOL s1 numbers were?)

Yep. Girls only and he's an only child so his mom wants him to get a concubine to try for a family heir and to keep the Marquis title. But 3rd sister wants to leave if there's a concubine so Yuan is torn between a rock and a hard place. Apparently his friends are helping him to decide in that scent.

They might be cousins or second cousins but that wouldn't be important.

Apparently, spoilers say, that they're talking about the Marquis and LJQ is asked what he would do.

In that scene? Saying something hopeful with conviction isn't using force. And what he said was just fact. They do have all kinds of time to get to know each other.

Not sure how I feel about your attributing the director's brilliance to her time in the united states and some cross pollination. I guarantee you that many other directors have also spent time studying in the some american ivy league program.

How about we just give her all the credit for her amazing work in this drama. Personally I don't see any american influence in it.

She had a plan for herself before she was married. And now she's still having a chance to pursue it and even widen it despite being married ... so let's see what she has in mind ...

And ... waiting makes the moment that much better :-)

Divorce is impossible given the royal decree. She's probably just saying that they should continue living as they have been and he shouldn't get his hopes up for there to be any grand love story between them.

The director, however, was interviewed and talked about how fate put her protagonists on two different paths but destiny brings them together anyway ... so I guess we can hope that they walk their respective paths successfully along the way to the path that they'll walk together.

Ep 35 & 36

Riveting drama. I have no idea how the writer/director/editor are creating this kind of tension but I kept holding my breath and honestly I just could not look away. The time went somewhere without me and, at the end, I just stared at the screen until a smile came over me.

Full appreciation for the expertise of creatives who can make that kind of experience happen.

Most of us watching have lived lives filled with relative peace, prosperity and more equal rights under the law, so we can only hope to experience monumentally different, historical worlds because dramas like this one make them more real for us.

So today we experienced a moment of sudden crisis where every man, woman and child had to scramble to stay alive. It was frightening. And in the midst of all that we see two vastly different women share a few moments of complete understanding, shared grief, resigned outrage and still some small hope that the future could be different.

And it was quite incredible really. Any falseness would have broken that moment but that didn't happen. I often find myself crying during excellent scenes in good dramas ... but these were hot tears.

And the third character in the room was secretly privy to the truths that were being shared by two women who had become his wife but not by choice. And now we watch to see if hearing their words can change him.

I'm going to be playing that scene many times, I think.

See you tomorrow.

I'm thinking the same thing. I made it a principle to never give a perfect score but ... maybe this time. It's certainly feeling like one at the moment.

Hey you can't say stuff like this and not explain what you mean. There's no story context in that teaser at all so how do you know what is actually going on in it? Splain pls !!!

I asked Brave AI and this is what I got:

t’s an allusion to a famous Chinese poem and historical story, not literally a meal.

The phrase refers to “煮豆燃豆萁” (zhǔ dòu rán dòu qí), usually translated as:

“They boil the beans while burning the bean stalks.”

It comes from a poem traditionally attributed to Cao Zhi, who was forced by his brother, Cao Pi, to compose a poem under threat of death. The full image is:

Beans are boiled in the bean stalks’ fire;
The beans weep inside the pot.
We grew from the same root—
Why torment each other so fiercely?

The beans and bean stalks come from the same plant, so the metaphor means relatives or people from the same family turning against and destroying one another—especially a civil war or internal royal conflict.

So in the drama, “prepare bean rice, cooked over bean stalks” is a coded warning meaning something like:

“The imperial family is about to fight itself. Prepare for an internal rebellion/civil war.”

The brother-in-law understands because the phrase is a culturally familiar literary allusion. It also cleverly avoids saying “royal rebellion” directly, which would be dangerous if the message were intercepted.

TY for repeating yourself. It's late, I had forgotten about these tactics and I was trying to make sense of the comments in relation to Prince Han. I'm remembering now that you've jogged my memory. All are pretty reasonable tactics that thankfully coincided with other goals and objectives too :-)

Good. I hadn't understood how those things related to Prince Han probably rebelling so ty for explaining. I had heard (and forgot) the tactics for keeping the emperor calm and not suspicious ... great strategy on the ML's part.

But I wonder if FL and grandpa Lin also know.

We haven't heard FL suggest that she had figured these things out but she figured out the 200 lash strategy so quickly that you have to wonder if there is anything else that she hasn't tumbled to ....

And did grandfather Lin not consider these tactics too? He seems to be permanently angry with ML for everything now; the marriage, accepting the post that took him to the capital and also for taking everyone else with him. Is the senior Lin not understanding things as well anymore?

How could the marriage decree and bringing the family to the capital be a part of ML's plans to keep Prince Han from rebelling? I too feel like he's playing a long game but I'm not sure that FL and the sister's problem could be counted on in advance to be helpful.

It's how you can tell them apart from the rest ... :-)

Episode rating pages are loading properly again ... for anyone who has had difficulty getting in to rate each episode. Some of us have not been able to get the pages past a black screen but it just worked for me so give it a try to see if it's working for you too.

Haha. That's ok. I've seen enough dramas to know that it isn't satire ... at all ... But next time I see it, I will think of your comment while I roll my eyes and rewind ... :-)

OMG. Staring attractively in slow motion ... describes A LOT of dramas !!! Ty for the lol :-)

That sounds pretty epic actually. Fate. Destiny and more fate.