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Last night I watched the latest Knives Out installment, Wake Up, Dead Man, and it clearly wanted to be about Christian faith and MAGAdom, and I guess that is was what it was indeed about, but it makes the extremely weird decision to examine American fundamentalist evangelical Christianity by pretending that it is part of Roman Catholicism. It pretends to be Catholic by using the language and visual trappings of Catholicism, and some of the structures like confession, but you can tell it is really about a wannabe megachurch because:

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I'm binge-watching M*A*S*H and I have to say one of the things I love about Hawkeye is how completely unstoic he is. If he's in any kind of pain, or even just discomfort, he pouts and whinges and bitches and shrieks. You could never write in-character fanfic where he heroically keeps silent about his injury before passing out. If Hawkeye was bleeding out, the whole of Korea would know about it.

Happy birthday, Nineveh-UK!

In a totally unexpected moment of fandom collision, I have just learned from John Finnemore’s substack post on Pictures of Giraffes in Order of How Sure I Am the Artist Has Ever Seen a Giraffe* that in Chinese mythology the mythical qilin is said to appear at - get this, NiF fans - the start of the reign of a “wise, auspicious and legitimate emperor.”** No wonder Prince Yu and the Crown Prince were falling over each other to get to Langya Hall first. And who topped the Langya List of Marketing Directors that year, I wonder?

*Unfortunately, I am not a subscriber, so I didn't get to see more than the Pictures By an Artist John Finnemore is Fairly Sure Has Seen a Giraffe (Even If a Few Details Are Slightly Off), but the commentary was still so funny I had to take myself off into another room so I could have hysterics in peace.

**Obviously this reference goes even more right over your head if the subs you are watching choose to translate "qilin*** talent" as Divine Talent.

***The qilin, as I learned from John Finnemore, is a "horse-dragon with fish scales" that looks a tiny bit like a giraffe if you squint hard. Which means that, amazingly, a vampire yeti is not the silliest creature in Mei Changsu's portfolio.




“Tell me honestly, do you like it? Or should I go back to spots?

"The giraffe Shen Du definitely saw was the giraffe sent to the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty early in the fifteenth century.

"But, you might ask, if Shen Du definitely saw that giraffe, why did he give it overlapping hexagons instead of patches and spots? Well, who can say. Of course, if a giraffe did have overlapping hexagons, like a fish’s scales, then that would make it even more certain that it was not in fact a giraffe at all, but a qilin, the legendary Chinese horse-dragon with fish scales that appears at the start of the reign of a wise, auspicious and legitimate ruler. Kind of like how the Yongle Emperor, who has just now started ruling, is wise and auspicious and very legitimate indeed, and it’s a real shame about his elder brother being caught in that palace fire, and the Yongle Emperor is very cut up about that, actually, and only wishes he'd known his brother was in the palace when he set light to it. But he didn’t know that, as the prompt appearance at court of this approving qilin makes clear, so let’s all stop talking about it, shall we?" (John Finnemore)

Fei Liu is at the training fields, and of course MCS wants to go there, too. That’s definitely a glimpse of Young Marshal Lin Shu we get when MCS tells Prince Jing how disappointed he is by the lack of discipline in his army. I bet he’s really genuinely shocked. I mean, you vanish for a mere 13 years and your friend forgets everything you ever taught him. He looks really pissed off as he swans out. And I bet Jingyan is thinking how dispappointed Lin Shu would be if he could see him now. The whole sequence is a great bit of storytelling, made even stronger by the fact that Qi Meng isn’t even a baddy, just misguided. He’s SO sorry that he got Prince Jing in trouble.

We meet Tong Lu and it’s evident from this scene that MCS is lying through his teeth when he later tells Jingyan that he’s holding Tong Lu’s mother as a hostage, because the entire Tong family evidently regards themselves as forever in MCS’s debt.

Prince Yu not only wears a robe with golden dragons on it, he also sits on a chair that has woodwork behind it that looks startling similar to his dad’s golden wall in the throne room. It’s no wonder Xiao Xuan doesn’t trust him, even without his backstory. The Crown Prince is much more the sort of person he wants in the position of successor and to hell with what happens to the country once this incompetent is on the throne.

We also get to see more of Li Gang and Gong Yu, both of whom I Love. Li Gang was a favourite from the beginning – he’s SUCH an unlikely Jianghu hero – but Gong Yu grew on me over time. I used to find her passivity irritating, but when you look closely, that perfect face isn’t blank at all, it’s just that, as a woman in ancient China with none of the freedoms enjoyed by General Mu or Officer Xia Dong or even Concubine Jing, she has to keep herself small and graceful and (apparently) passive. I note that running a brothel is pretty much the only way a woman can successfully operate in this world of the three mentioned, Maoyin Court, Red Sleeves House and the other one, two are actually espionage headquarters. And Gong Yu has come to the other one to stand in for the supposedly sick twins, so she clearly does in fact do sex work as well as play instruments. She doesn’t look as if she enjoys that part of the job, either.

Prince Yu chases after Prince Jing and sucks up to him. The subtitles this time say that Prince Jing has consorts, not merely a consort, when Prince Yu says the silk is for his wives. Chinese doesn’t have plurals so it’s up to the translator to decide, but I also wonder if there’s a three-way difference between wives, consorts and concubines? I’d always assumed consorts were like wives, with one of them being the main wife, and concubines were kept (in every sense of the word) women the man wasn’t actually married to.
And finally we meet Prince Ji. He’s so revolting in this scene that I can never feel sympathy for him later on when his intelligence and kindness are revealed. The way he drools over the musician’s “little hands” is just vile.

I was away this weekend so I didn't have time to write down any thoughts but these two episodes, but to things struck me: (1) we get our first mention of Nie Feng, when the harried magistrate receives a report of a beast terrifying villagers, and (2) Mei Changsu rubs his fingers together when he's trying to convince Prince Yu not tp block Prince Jing's investigation of the Duke of Qing. It's amazing how carefully plotlines are seeded in NiF. I particularly like the second one because it shows that MCS hasn't turned up with al his arguments down pat, he's having to think his way through the conversation with Prince Yu as it happens.

I'll watch episode 10 tonight.

I was listening to Cabin Pressure this morning and got to the bit where Douglas is so jealous of Herc that he starts shouting “I am the supreme commander of this vessel!” and suddenly realises he’s turning into Martin. And it struck me, like a bolt of transcendental lightning, that the person who should be charged with writing the Nirvana in Fire sequels is … John Finnemore! Infinitely complex plotting? Check! (see Souvenir Programme 9 if Cabin Pressure doesn't convince you). Profound psychological insight? Check! Expert trolling? Check!

It's lucky there’s only Zurich left to go as I'm now stuck with the mental image of Douglas as Mei Changsu.

I enjoyed this episode but I don’t have anything new to say about it, except that when Mr Shisan was being sad because Mei Changsu looks nothing like Lin Shu, I suddenly remembered that part of the whole Confucian filial piety thing is that you’re not allowed to do any body modifications, because your body was given to you by your parents. You aren’t even allowed to cut your hair, which is why all the men have those amazing top knots. So Lin Shu’s changed appearance is not just weird and unsettling, it breaks a major cultural and religious taboo. When Consort Jing finally meets him and cries because “you used to look so like your parents”, she isn’t being massively tactless, as I used to think, she’s acknowledging the enormity of his sacrifice. And I think this is why MCS tells Mr Shisan, right after his outburst of sorrow, that his mother would be grateful for all Shisan has done for him. He’s trying to establish that the filial connection hasn’t been broken by his changed appearance.

MCS is certainly trying very hard to let EVERYONE know that he and Gong YU are NOT an item, no matter how many sachets of perfume she sends (is it just me or is Mr Shisan being a bit suggestive when he tells MCS the perfume will give him "sweet dreams?"). Earlier we had Consort Jing stitching pouches as a way of getting touch with Liyang, and now we have Gong Yu trying to communicate with MCS via embroidery - everything is just so much harder for the women.

The episode also contains one of my favourite lines, the one where Meng Zhi tells MCS to build a tunnel so he can have a secret rendezvous with Prince Jing and MCS says "Isn't there another way you could put that?" I have nothing new to say about it, but it deserves an honourable mention for being so funny.

Oh, one more thing. Li Gang says, after the assassins have attacked, that a snowy night is good for murder. Apparently in Chinese culture snow is a symbol of corruption because it covers everything up, so when Jingrui walks off through the falling snowflakes, it isn't just because that makes the scene look pretty. I find it really hard to overcome my Western association of snow with purity and beauty, which just goes to show how deeply ingrained these things are. I assume the snow imagery makes the scene hit a lot harder for Chinese viewers.

How far is everybody else with the episodes? I don't want to go charging ahead leaving everyone panting after, but I also don't want to drop behind if people are starting to binge-watch.

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I think my favourite part of this episode is Mu of the Yard going around making enquiries into how all her rescuers happened to show up at Zhaoren Palace at the right time. I bet that even when she was thanking Prince Yu, she took the opportunity to slip in a couple of leading questions. She has a suspect in mind already – no doubt it wasn’t just the fact that MCS cared enough to have her rescued but that the person he asked for help from was Jingyan that got that bloodhound nose sniffing again. Her surprise when Prince Jing says it was Meng Zhi who sent him is hilarious. Then the two of them go off together to make enquiries of the Commander, who soon cracks under their combined probing. It’s such a shame we don’t get more scenes of Nihuang and Jingyan working together.

I don’t have any new observations about either Prince Yu’s confidence that he’s now got MCS on his side, nor the crucial meeting between MCS and Prince Jing to “set the rules.” I will say, though, that I can see why on first viewing I had such a hard time trusting MCS. He has inscrutability down to a fine art. Of course, with hindsight you can see all the little cracks and twitches that indicate Deep Emotions going on underneath the surface, but when you don’t, he seems entirely reserved, and this, as Frank Churchill says in Emma, “is a most repulsive quality, indeed […] There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.”

Xia Dong comes back with all the evidence needed to damn the Duke of Qing, but she’s also found out about Tianquan Manor’s involvement in the escape of the slaves, so Xie Yu decides the world would be better off without her. Once again, I am consumed with resentment that Xia Dong wasn’t cast age-appropriately. It looks just ridiculous when Jingrui says that she taught Yujin when he was a child.

I’m bad at noticing what’s going on in fight scenes, so it took me until this rewatch to realise that Xia Dong is only pretending to be badly hurt the whole time in order to draw out one particular attacker. It also occurred to me, as we see the black-clad assassins come ninjing out of the river in slow motion, to wonder what on earth they were doing in the river in the first place. They haven’t swum across it, because their clothes are dry. Perhaps they spent most of their cultivation time learning how to dry wet clothes with their qi, because they can’t be very good at fighting if even Yujin can beat them.

Xia Dong is very impressive as she savagely beats a tooth out of the fallen assassin to find his cyanide capsule. Credit where it’s due, the actress does a good job here. Covered in blood, the man coughs out a confession that it was Prince Yu who sent them. The audience knows this a bare-faced lie, but will Xia Dong believe him? Tune in for the next episode to find out…