This review may contain spoilers
insulting in so many ways
**Dropped after episode 13**
Okay so I have a handful of complaints, but the thing I want to talk about most is something I haven't seen *anyone* else talk about and given how this character was handled, I'm honestly really really angry that no one is talking about it. So let's talk about Yunwan, the youngest(?) Rong sister who is mentally disabled to the point that she needs a caretaker to help with even basic aspects of daily life.
Yunwan is not a character. Yunyin treats her as a punching bag — constantly taunting her and threatening to physically harm her. Yunxi and Yunshu aren't as egregious with the mistreatment, but they clearly don't see a problem with Yunyin treating her this way. I actually really liked seeing Shanbao's protective streak with Yunwan, I thought it was the most likeable part of her character. But it does feel like a shortcut to making the point that Shanbao is The Good Character™️by having her basically be the only person who treats Yunwan with any dignity and respect and care, rather than putting in some effort to show her moral compass (which is.... inconsistent, from what I saw at least). But back to what I was saying — Yunwan is not a character. She is a prop. She exists solely to show that Shanbao, while having an icy exterior, does feel sympathy and care towards others and to highlight how cruel her other sisters can be. The narrative loves to infantilize Yunwan, with basically everyone referring to her as being a child (which unless she was egregiously miscast, I'd say Yunwan is at the youngest late teens and probably at least 20) and people expressing (performative) pity about how helpless she is. Then after the narrative actually does something interesting with the character by implying that she maybe possesses "the tea bone" (not going to get into the details cause I only vaguely understand it, but basically a special ability to determine what plants will make the best tea), she is swiftly tricked by a servant into going into the courtyard late at night, abandoned there, and then drowned. So like..... way to tell me that you view mentally disabled people as subhuman and worthless!
As for my other complaints...
Hou Minghao and Gulnezer both did a great job with what they were given but oh my god HMH's character was unbelievably f*cking dull. Lu Jianglai starts out with promise as he initially wants to get close to Shanbao for the purpose of recovering his memory and he's supposed to be this really smart investigator and a super capable fighter, but all that is immediately pushed into the background so he can spend 75% of his screentime staring at Shanbao with heart eyes. And it'd be one thing if there was an actual foundation to their romance but it's literally just like a switch flipped bc in ep 7 they go from their dynamic of being slightly contentious and him pushing back against her making unreasonable demands and then his very next scene he's suddenly jealous of her being alone w another man and borderline refusing to leave her side...... like. @ the writers explain to me what the hell happened. QUICKLY. And then their dynamic isn't cute either bc the inherent power imbalance as Shanbao can completely ruin his life with the snap of her fingers. Hell, there's a scene in.... I want to say ep 12? where Shanbao comes to Jianglai's room late at night and brings a lot of her comforts from her room to make it clear that she is staying with him and she kisses him and while the narrative implies he likes her in that way and wasn't against the kiss, he still asks her to leave bc he's uncomfortable with her spending the night there and she's like "don't make me force you" 🤮🤮🤮🤮 Repugnant shit.
The last complaint I'm going to discuss is how this show wants to present itself as a matriarchal society but it completely fails if you look past the surface. It's verrrrrrrry clear that the show wanted to be "male brothers fighting for the throne" except make it about a bunch of women which is cool in theory. But when we live in a deeply misogynistic society and there are stereotypes of women being jealous and vapid and catty, that shit doesn't work if you just mindlessly reproduce it! The show is just uncritically like "Yeah. Shanbao's sisters have no reason to dislike her. Literally no reason, they're just deceptive and untrustworthy and are just laser focused on making Shanbao lose favor with their grandmother and keeping her from becoming the next leader of the Rong family by any means necessary." And the show wants me to think this is feminist I have to f*cking laugh. It's just as misogynistic as the dramas where women exist solely to be the love interest and have no interiority.
And then the gender politics in this worldbuilding just don't make sense in the first place. One of the Rong family servants is seduced by a significantly younger man and they quickly start an affair bc he is using her to infiltrate the residence, and once she becomes aware of this and tells him he's going to be thrown out, he threatens to tell the Rongs about their sexual relationship and she's just like "that doesn't matter to the Rongs lol nice try" and she gets the guards to beat him and throw him out. But then like 5 episodes later when Shanbao has to choose someone to be her husband at the tea ceremony, one of the potential suitors blackmails Shanbao into choosing him.......... if a servant can get a man from a respected family beaten and thrown out with no repercussions, how the f*ck could blackmailing Shanbao ever work?????????? And then as a result of Shanbao choosing this guy, she's scolded by her grandmother for not choosing her favorite of the suitors and she's like "if you were a man you could have a wife and a concubine, so choosing badly wouldn't matter" so......... is this a matriarchy or not bc it sure sounds like the men have rights that the women do not!!!!!! Ugh god I could keep going about how the show utterly fails to be a matriarchal society and how it's just replicating systems of harm but with women in power this time (allegedly) and there's absolutely no insight on any of these power structures so of course the writing isn't clever enough to deconstruct any of this either.
Anyway, whatever I'm going to stop talking about this I don't need to raise my blood pressure any more than I already have.
Okay so I have a handful of complaints, but the thing I want to talk about most is something I haven't seen *anyone* else talk about and given how this character was handled, I'm honestly really really angry that no one is talking about it. So let's talk about Yunwan, the youngest(?) Rong sister who is mentally disabled to the point that she needs a caretaker to help with even basic aspects of daily life.
Yunwan is not a character. Yunyin treats her as a punching bag — constantly taunting her and threatening to physically harm her. Yunxi and Yunshu aren't as egregious with the mistreatment, but they clearly don't see a problem with Yunyin treating her this way. I actually really liked seeing Shanbao's protective streak with Yunwan, I thought it was the most likeable part of her character. But it does feel like a shortcut to making the point that Shanbao is The Good Character™️by having her basically be the only person who treats Yunwan with any dignity and respect and care, rather than putting in some effort to show her moral compass (which is.... inconsistent, from what I saw at least). But back to what I was saying — Yunwan is not a character. She is a prop. She exists solely to show that Shanbao, while having an icy exterior, does feel sympathy and care towards others and to highlight how cruel her other sisters can be. The narrative loves to infantilize Yunwan, with basically everyone referring to her as being a child (which unless she was egregiously miscast, I'd say Yunwan is at the youngest late teens and probably at least 20) and people expressing (performative) pity about how helpless she is. Then after the narrative actually does something interesting with the character by implying that she maybe possesses "the tea bone" (not going to get into the details cause I only vaguely understand it, but basically a special ability to determine what plants will make the best tea), she is swiftly tricked by a servant into going into the courtyard late at night, abandoned there, and then drowned. So like..... way to tell me that you view mentally disabled people as subhuman and worthless!
As for my other complaints...
Hou Minghao and Gulnezer both did a great job with what they were given but oh my god HMH's character was unbelievably f*cking dull. Lu Jianglai starts out with promise as he initially wants to get close to Shanbao for the purpose of recovering his memory and he's supposed to be this really smart investigator and a super capable fighter, but all that is immediately pushed into the background so he can spend 75% of his screentime staring at Shanbao with heart eyes. And it'd be one thing if there was an actual foundation to their romance but it's literally just like a switch flipped bc in ep 7 they go from their dynamic of being slightly contentious and him pushing back against her making unreasonable demands and then his very next scene he's suddenly jealous of her being alone w another man and borderline refusing to leave her side...... like. @ the writers explain to me what the hell happened. QUICKLY. And then their dynamic isn't cute either bc the inherent power imbalance as Shanbao can completely ruin his life with the snap of her fingers. Hell, there's a scene in.... I want to say ep 12? where Shanbao comes to Jianglai's room late at night and brings a lot of her comforts from her room to make it clear that she is staying with him and she kisses him and while the narrative implies he likes her in that way and wasn't against the kiss, he still asks her to leave bc he's uncomfortable with her spending the night there and she's like "don't make me force you" 🤮🤮🤮🤮 Repugnant shit.
The last complaint I'm going to discuss is how this show wants to present itself as a matriarchal society but it completely fails if you look past the surface. It's verrrrrrrry clear that the show wanted to be "male brothers fighting for the throne" except make it about a bunch of women which is cool in theory. But when we live in a deeply misogynistic society and there are stereotypes of women being jealous and vapid and catty, that shit doesn't work if you just mindlessly reproduce it! The show is just uncritically like "Yeah. Shanbao's sisters have no reason to dislike her. Literally no reason, they're just deceptive and untrustworthy and are just laser focused on making Shanbao lose favor with their grandmother and keeping her from becoming the next leader of the Rong family by any means necessary." And the show wants me to think this is feminist I have to f*cking laugh. It's just as misogynistic as the dramas where women exist solely to be the love interest and have no interiority.
And then the gender politics in this worldbuilding just don't make sense in the first place. One of the Rong family servants is seduced by a significantly younger man and they quickly start an affair bc he is using her to infiltrate the residence, and once she becomes aware of this and tells him he's going to be thrown out, he threatens to tell the Rongs about their sexual relationship and she's just like "that doesn't matter to the Rongs lol nice try" and she gets the guards to beat him and throw him out. But then like 5 episodes later when Shanbao has to choose someone to be her husband at the tea ceremony, one of the potential suitors blackmails Shanbao into choosing him.......... if a servant can get a man from a respected family beaten and thrown out with no repercussions, how the f*ck could blackmailing Shanbao ever work?????????? And then as a result of Shanbao choosing this guy, she's scolded by her grandmother for not choosing her favorite of the suitors and she's like "if you were a man you could have a wife and a concubine, so choosing badly wouldn't matter" so......... is this a matriarchy or not bc it sure sounds like the men have rights that the women do not!!!!!! Ugh god I could keep going about how the show utterly fails to be a matriarchal society and how it's just replicating systems of harm but with women in power this time (allegedly) and there's absolutely no insight on any of these power structures so of course the writing isn't clever enough to deconstruct any of this either.
Anyway, whatever I'm going to stop talking about this I don't need to raise my blood pressure any more than I already have.
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