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Episode three and now things get really exciting. Nihuang’s intervention when the eunuch beating Tingsheng insults Prince Jing is brilliant (and of course it would be Consort Yue who sends arseholes to oversee the children of the servants’ prison). The three-way scene between her, MCS and Prince Jing over Tingsheng is even better. Prince Jing is so cold and hostile to MCS and Nihuang is already inserting herself between them, turning Jingyan’s questions back on him whenever he probes MCS too hard. She’s already decided that she and MCS are on the same side, whatever that may turn out to be. And asking the Emperor to appoint Su Zhe to oversee the written examination was a genius move on her part. She’s tag-teaming MCS, whether he wants it or not.

Commander Meng is very Mengish and commandery when he sees off Mu Qing's boyfriend-tester, and we also learn that he and MCS have had an ongoing correspondence for many years. But Meng, like the audience, still doesn't know what really went down with Chiyan army and MCS says we'll all have to wait until the time is right. Meng also lets us know that MCS's appearance has changed completely because of an illness. Really, this time around I suspect Meng's function is primarily expository, either through telling us what he knows or asking questions about what he (and we) don't know, so it's lucky they picked the perfect actor for the role (I have a mental list of NiF characters sub-divided according to whether the actor is utterly perfect for the part (MCS, Nihuang etc.), very good but not perfect (Emperor, Consort Jing etc.), or terrible (Xia Jiang). Obviously there are also actors who are just good or just adequate but they're not as interesting as the extremes. NiF has an astonishingly high proportion of perfect actors, and not just in the main roles).

I notice that when Mu Qing complains about Baili Qi’s looks, Nihuang asks him when he learned to judge a person by their looks. Has she been pondering whether MCS's appearance might be deceptive, I wonder? At all events, it’s a very fair point and I’m glad at least someone at this court is willing to argue that looks aren’t everything. For all her philosophical attitude, though, the poor girl looks sooo onervous when Baili Qi starts demolishing Jingrui at the dinner.

I love all of Mu Qing’s scenes but especially the one where he barges into Snow Cottage and displays a shocking lack of etiquette in interrupting all of MCS's polite bows. Judging by MCS’s face, he hasn’t been this surprised by anyone since the Grand Dowager Empress called him Xiao Shu.

It's so clever the way the plot appears to thicken around the marriage tournament when really it’s thickening around “How will MCS get Tingsheng out of the servant’s prison?” Nihuang’s tag-teaming is working, judging by the glances she and MCS exchange. And MCS, who I note in the previous episode gave his tray of tournament food to Fei Liu, demonstrates his mastery of trolling-by-orange.

And finally I find myself thinking that the pregnant Liyang must have thought the gods were smiling on her when the plague broke out in Jinling and enabled her to escape Xie Yu’s house for the birth of her bastard child. Did she, I wonder, also see the hand of the gods in the arrival of Madame Zhuo and befriend her with the deliberate intention of somehow swapping babies?