EPISODE 2 RECAP
The girls arrive at the Dowager’s palace as summoned. Huang-ah-ma’s face tells you that he doesn’t want to do this at all. He just knows something will go wrong but kind of has no choice but to sit and wait for it to be over with.
To be fair, the meeting begins with a genuine effort to be nice from both sides. The Dowager asks some basic questions and Ziwei and Xiaoyanzi try their best to answer them.
But things go downhill when the empress starts stirring up trouble with vague statements about Ziwei and Erkang’s romance.
The Dowager seizes the chance to make snide remarks about Ziwei and her diseased mother. Like: don’t be like your mom and dare to get to know men before you marry them, blah blah blah.
Xiaoyanzi, of course, can’t stand it. She speaks her mind about the hypocrisy of palace rules.
It isn’t long before Xiaoyanzi gets chased around the garden by guards.
Erkang and Yongqi arrive on time to get Xiaoyanzi under control. But at this point, the Dowager is already hell-bent on punishing Xiaoyanzi.
Luckily for everyone, Princess Qing’er arrives at the scene. And this is where the magic happens. Qing’er says something (quite several things, actually) to the Dowager, giving compliments left and right and the next thing we know, the Dowager is laughing and brushing the whole thing under the rug.
Back at Xiaoyanzi’s palace, the two couples reflect on what happened and the Erkang wonders what could possibly have gone wrong. They prepped for this meeting after all.
Ziwei suddenly remembers her humiliation earlier on and starts pushing Erkang out the door. She’s like: what’s gone wrong, huh? YOU, that’s what. Get out of my house before people start s***-shaming me again.
This gives Erkang a good reason to return to the point he has been banging pots and pans about from the beginning: LET’S JUST GET MARRIED RIGHT NOW.
He’s got a point this time though.
But Ziwei has her reasoning too. She just got her dad back so spending time with him is on the top of her list right now.
And for the rest of the day, these kids are like: let’s talk to Huang-ah-ma; no, wait, let’s not talk to Huang-ah-ma.
In the end, they decide not to talk to Huang-ah-ma.
A convo between the emperor and the Dowager. She makes some good points too, if we’re honest. Like:
Yongqi might be emperor one day, can Xiaoyanzi play her part as empress? Also, Erkang is great and Qing’er is great and they should be together, OK? Thanks, bye.
Moving on to less serious stuff. The gang go out and join Liu Qing and Liu Hong on the opening day of their restaurant.
Things are going great when Xiaoyanzi bumps into a grumpy dude. They both respond unreasonably so a fight breaks out. It’s that man who led a group that attacked the princess from the desert we saw in the previous episode.
SOME SIDE NOTES
Qing’er and Erkang give each other a lot of looks in this ep.
Nanny Rong is as nasty as usual.
Lastly, I can tell that they’re making Xiaoyanzi sillier and more chaotic on purpose. I can’t say I like it, but Vicky Zhao’s acting makes it all tolerable.