The Apothecary Diaries Episode 14

Those consorts just can’t function without Maomao! I don’t blame them. I would also not be able to do anything without Maomao once I had a taste for her efficiency. She seems to make life a whole lot easier. Especially if you live in a palace and people are trying to assassinate you a lot. Like me!

For a second there, I thought that everything I wrote last week would be moot and Maomao was going straight back to the inner palace. I would have looked so silly about emphasizing the change and all. But it was just a short-term engagement to teach a special class. And Maomao gave them a lesson only a very practical girl who grew up in the pleasure district could give.

It was a fun scene, wasn’t it? I really loved seeing how each consort reacted in her own way. And Gyokuyou’s positive enthusiasm endeared her to me yet again. I actually like all the consorts quite a bit but if I was Emperor and had to choose just one, I know who I would pick.

Actually, I said I like them all but what do you guys think of the new pure consort.

For a while, I thought that the honorific (pure, virtuous, wise…) was given based on the consorts’ personality but it seems to be more like a posting. There’s always a pure consort and I guess the woman just has to live up to the role rather than have the role adjusted for her. I should have guessed seeing as Riishu is the Virtuous consort. And well, she can’t stay that way forever…

When we left off last week, I was under the impression that this episode would be all about this new consort and the opening scene just confirmed it for me. It was really nice. One of the most stylized scenes we’ve seen in the show so far. The colours were stunning. I hope we get more artistic set pieces in the future because it really elevated the feel of the show for me.

But as we got past the introduction, we really didn’t get much information on the newcomer. She’s an enigma. Even Maomao found her hard to read and that’s not something we’re used to seeing.

As we know, the inner palace is a delicate balance of power and intrigue. Any change could really stir things up and this is a major one. I wonder if Maomao is going to get sucked into something troublesome again! At least she’s a bit more removed from all that now.

This episode felt like a set-up for things to come. We did get a small mystery with the warehouse explosion but that was resolved pretty quickly. By the way, I looked it up and flour really can explode pretty much exactly in the way that it was described in the episode. I’m now paranoid about baking bread….