Guardian: Episode 4

[adisgracetothescholars]

Introduction

moggiesandtea: And we’re back, just like the episodes of Guardian are on the YoYo YouTube channel.

kitsunec4: So don’t say we don’t hold to our stupid life decisions and follow through lololol.


Plot
tammaiya: So we pick up where we left last episode with Shen Wei being busted by Zhao Yunlan at the scene of an apparent crime-in-progress— quite literally, since as I’m sure you all recall, this show has no sense of pacing.

moggiesandtea: If you don’t remember that about the show, don’t worry, it will remind you, at length, throughout this episode. We open with a brief retread of the end of Episode 4: there is a screaming crying lady, whose name we find out later is Zhang Danni, there is dark energy keeping Shen Wei from booking it, there is Shen Wei carefully putting his secret identity glasses back on before turning around to face Zhao Yunlan.

tammaiya: Naming the woman in this episode “Zhang” was such a weird choice to me. Like, I know that Zhang is a common name, but you literally JUST had a lady called Zhang in the last episode, and there’s no reason this woman needs to be. Are you trying to confuse people??

rageprufrock: Honestly, it wasn’t so much the pacing I didn’t remember but the entirety of this episode until I did my second watch through, at which point I literally said out loud at one point during episode four, “I genuinely do not remember watching this the first time. But I know I did.” So you could say this masterwork really left an impression on me.

hollyberries: It’s one of the few instances we’ll see of Shen Wei being held by dark power, which doesn’t have any consistent rules that I can figure out within these 40 episodes. Especially as Shen Wei’s supposed super power is -- learning. Yes. He just knows how to do stuff with dark power.

arrghigiveup: Well he has to see someone with the power use it first. And then he knows how to do it. Somehow. Eh. *handwaves*

tammaiya: Couldn’t they at least have made it a mimic skill? Learning doesn’t even make sense. I know in the pile of logical inconsistencies strung together by masking tape that is this trash heap of a show it is pointless to get annoyed by this one specific instance of it, but. AUGH.

lazulisong: I think i finally decided for my own sanity that this was a decision made because he couldn’t be what he was in the novel so they just sort of came up with a really drunken idea about how he could be better than everybody at everything and also do all the shit required by the plot. I do wonder how far you could push it tho.

rageprufrock: Every time I re-remember what the plot to this television show could have been I’m infuriated all over again.

lazulisong: it could have been good. But here we are.

kitsunec4: Does he need those glasses? Is it a purely #aesthetics decision?

tammaiya: They’re his Clark Kent glasses, kitsunec4. Only even stupider, because he already wears a mask as Envoy, so what the hell are the glasses actually meant to conceal? I laughed at this so hard because it’s just so… deliberate? It’s not an incidental aspect of his mild-mannered professor guise, he’s so concerned about the glasses that in the middle of being totally busted in a crime scene, he pauses to put them back on before turning to face Zhao Yunlan. Shen Wei. Honey. Seriously?

kitsunec4: I dearly hope Shen Wei isn’t dumb enough to think that his ridiculous eyelashes don’t already give him away in his Black Envoy get-up. My personal wish is that there’s some baby tailor super smug about the entire Look of Prof. Shen and they’ve probably shoved a box of business cards at said walking advertisement for a well-fitted suit to give out.

arrghigiveup: Probably the only way he manages to afford those suits

hollyberries: Those suits and shirts are so tightly tailored Zhu Yilong actually changes the way he holds himself in those getups. If you watch interviews, he tends to hunch in on himself, but these suits force him to keep his shoulders straight and his arms out. He looks stiff and like a mannequin who hasn’t quite learned how to walk, but I suspect that’s an acting choice.

lazulisong: oh totally he’s walking like a man who actually read the novel and said to himself, this is a character who isn’t quite sure how humans behave but is going to try his damnedest.

moggiesandtea: Meanwhile, Zhu Hong and Old Chu are in another section of Dragon City back alleys. Lao Chu is totally casually threatening a regular human when they get the call from Zhao Yunlan that a suspect has been caught! It’s Shen Wei.

We return to headquarters where Zhu Hong is in charge of the interrogation and Zhao Yunlan is in charge of slouching in a chair with his feet propped up. He’s smirking, of course. After Shen Wei manages to get Zhu Hong to storm off--something about her not being a fully evolved Yashouren--Old Chu takes a turn, during which he cleans his puppet menacingly. No, that is not a euphemism.

rageprufrock: My feelings around the subject of the puppet are difficult to express using the medium of language.

arrghigiveup: I love how Zhao Yunlan can’t keep himself from laughing. It’s very “you may be a murder suspect but fuck, I am helplessly attracted to you being a subtly snarky dick.”

Also, as an extension of the whole “Shen Wei channeling Black Cloak Envoy while in professor guise does Things to me” thing, I’d like to mention that I am also very attracted to the whole infuriatingly calm and just slightly and subtly superior attitude that he pulls with Lao Chu here.

moggiesandtea: Zhao Yunlan finally steps in and tells Shen Wei they’re letting him go for now.

arrghigiveup: So to go back to that point about Shen Wei being infuriatingly calm-bordering-on-smug, this is his face after successfully needling Zhu Hong:



“Aww lookit you; you’re such a cute bb snake!”

This is his face while Old Chu tries to be intimidating and tell Shen Wei he’s not even comparable to the toenails of… his own alter ego (lol).



moggiesandtea And after he’s tried to touch Old Chu’s puppet, to the shock of all.

rageprufrock: Which is an achingly dick move, if you think about it in the context of the fact that Shen Wei knows exactly what the puppet is and means, and what Old Chu’s reaction is going to be. So this goes beyond the realm of “weird flex but okay” into the annals of the biggest dick energy, emphasis on dick.

arrghigiveupAnd this is his face when Zhao Yunlan sits down and asks him directly “I’m going to get straight to the point and ask you one question: the recent serial murders, as well as the previous cases, do they have anything to do with you?”



Shen Wei’s been denying his involvement all along, but that one change of facial expression tells you, clear as day, that Zhao Yunlan is the one person that he actually cares about convincing when he says “No.” And Zhao Yunlan, visibly frustrated as hell and clearly knowing Shen Wei’s hiding something, still lets him go without any further questions. We’ve mentioned this before in our episode 2 recap, but they really do such a good job at building that push-and-pull tension of attraction, trust, and suspicion.

rageprufrock: This 👏 scene 👏 got 👏me 👏 lit.

tammaiya: This scene is a shining moment in an otherwise generally meh episode (even by Guardian standards), although I’d say the BEST scene is a little later on (moonlit walk in the park!).

lazulisong “I know I’m like really attracted to you and shit but please I’m begging you put in one gram of effort” oh also this is the first we start seeing the more casual looks Shen Wei eventually pulls.

moggiesandtea: We are treated once again to the one establishing shot of Dragon City, which is actually crap at giving you any sense of which building the next scene is going to take place in. I didn’t figure out we were supposed to be in the hospital until halfway through this scene. Anyway. Old Chu and Guo Changcheng are following the normal human Old Chu was menacing the night before, because he is acting suspicious. Zhao Yunlan joins them, and it’s interrogation/info dump time!

kitsunec4: It is so much more egregious on a rewatch how often this show does an info dump on the characters and their audience. What a goddamn disaster.

hollyberries: I’ll be honest, I tune out when they info dump and tune back in when Prof Shen and Zhao Yunlan are onscreen. Means recapping Guardian is a delightful fount of rediscovering how dumb this show is.

moggiesandtea: Normal human is named Lin Yusen, and he knows about the murders because the woman he was crushing on and following through a park late at night planning on confessing to her, because that’s totally normal and not concerning at all, jfc dude. Anyway, the woman he was stalking was abducted in front of him and now he wants revenge for her murder!

Zhao Yunlan tells him to mind his own business. Hey guys, do you think the censors maybe got a little cranky with the whole ‘the police have suppressed all the information concerning the serial killer’ thing?

kitsunec4: The question here really is, were the censors too busy having a stroke over uh. Everything else? To even notice this?

hollyberries: They’re not huge fans of civilians interfering in police work, true, but how do you get offended at that when the plot is so palpably worse?

moggiesandtea: I was thinking more along the lines of government coverup casting the police in a poor light, but really, there’s so much for the censors to have kittens over.

arrghigiveup: Separately, is no one going to mention Lin Yusen’s idea of a useful sketch?



rageprufrock: Okay how dare you. That’s an artistic masterwork.

moggiesandtea: Having told Lin to mind his own business, Zhao Yunlan has him take him to the park where this abduction took place, because he is nothing if not consistent in his messaging. Shen Wei is waiting for them right outside the hospital, because of course. And here I got distracted by his snuggly sweater blah blah Zhao Yunlan lets him come too.

arrghigiveup: Which is totally normal procedure for a civilian who, just the day before, was sitting on the wrong side of SID’s interrogation rooms.

...No seriously, Zhao Yunlan spends quite a bit of time both before and after this point telling Lin Yusen to stay out of things and leave the investigation to the professionals, and yet, two sentences from Shen Wei and it’s “When you get stubborn, there’s just no way to refuse you. Let’s go!”

hollyberries: Some keen-eyed fan compiled scenes of all the double-standards on this show from these two, and I think there are like, five videos full.

lazulisong ohhhhh my god, China.

rageprufrock: (There’s also a series of “before and after marriage” compilations showing how fuckin’ whipped Shen Wei is.)

moggiesandtea: At the scene of the crime, Zhang Danni shows up having hysterics again because there’s someone after her. Lin Yusen takes off after mystery guy in the bushes and Zhao Yunlan follows, having told Shen Wei to protect Zhang Danni because sure, why not. Mystery guy attacks Shen Wei, who blocks him easily.

It looks like Shen Wei has been injured, but no, he wipes off the blood and there’s no cut underneath. Zhao Yunlan is suspicious, but he’s also distracted by his need to yell at Lin Yusen to let the professionals do their job. Shen Wei goes on a poetic lecture about the meaning of Lin Yusen’s name.

At a cafe, Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei question Zhang Danni, who makes a big deal about how she’s too scared to walk home alone. Zhao Yunlan has “our most harmless fresh meat” Guo Changcheng see her home. Both Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei are apparently suspicious of Zhang Danni, because no shit. Zhao Yunlan is also suspicious of the fact that Shen Wei never seems to get actually hurt, and we get treated to nice montage of all the times Shen Wei faked things like ‘thrown off a roof landed in a bush.’

rageprufrock: Also, it’s worth mentioning that if you pay attention closely to the three-way interplay in this scene, Shen Wei has a pretty visibly negative response to when Zhang Danni puts her hands on Zhao Yunlan -- who gives Zhang Danni exactly zero to work with and packs her off with Wall Wall so he can continue to try and eye fuck the truth out of Shen Wei untroubled by her presence.

moggiesandtea: Guo Changcheng walks an increasingly handsy and weirdly super flirty Zhang Danni home, so you know there’s something up with her.

kitsunec4: Well, for one, the acting is not real great here...and who tf would be interested in Wall Wall Moon anyways?

tammaiya: Other than Lao-Chu, anyway. Who is moronsexual and clearly keeps asking himself why he’s like this whenever Wall Wall does something monumentally stupid again.

moggiesandtea: And indeed there is. Mystery Guy From The Bushes (who we find out at the very end of the episode is named Jia Hui) is waiting for her, and they proceed to fight about the fact that Zhang Danni keeps flirting with all these men. She slaps him and yells about why should she consider his feelings etc. etc. This is not a healthy relationship.

They have a mission from Anime Villain, who is apparently named Zhu Jiu. I can’t remember if this is new information or not. I don’t think they had a continuity editor for this show.

kitsunec4: Real talk, Moggies? I still. Can’t remember his name. He is just forever Anime Villain.

lazulisong: I also do not remember ever hearing this dude’s name until at least ep 10, and I know I still don’t remember it. He’s just Anime Geek McBadwig to me forever.

rageprufrock: Reading this recap is literally the first I have ever known about him having a name at all.

tammaiya: For reasons unknown to man, I actually sort of paid attention on my first watch of this objectively atrocious show, so I did know his name, but to be honest, I still call him Anime Villain in my head so it always takes a moment to remember his real name.

moggiesandtea: Suddenly it is night and Zhu Hong is posing as the most obvious bait ever while Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei go on a romantic night time walk and discuss the meaning of Shen Wei’s name. Someone very important gave him that name, guys.

kitsunec4: I love me a good slow-burn.

lazulisong: I think we all sort of sat up and leered at that line, I mean, I knew I was going to write about these nerds when Pru started talking about them, but this was a big factor in me deciding to jump off the cliff.

arrghigiveup: I get what you mean by the slow burn, but also on the other hand:

ZYL: If my mom knew I had an intellectual like you as a friend, she’d be overflowing with joy.
SW: Between two friends, what’s precious is intimacy. If she saw the way you are now, she’d definitely be happy.

The subtitles use “intimacy” as a pretty close approximation of 知心 (zhī xīn). 知=know, 心=heart. It’s a term that can be applied to family, friends, and lovers, but if you call someone your 知心 you are saying they are your confidant, someone who gets you so well they know your heart. This is the term Shen Wei uses in reference to his and Zhao Yunlan’s friendship. A friendship that, from Zhao Yunlan’s point of view, has only existed for how many days now?! If I knew someone for only that length of time, I’d hesitate to call them much more than an acquaintance, let alone 知心.

hollyberries: It’s also interesting that Shen Wei chooses to use 知心 instead of the ubiquitous 知己 (zhī jĭ), choosing the heart over the slightly more platonic sense of self (which is the literal translation of 己).

lazulisong: hashtag and they were soulmates!!!!

rageprufrock: I think part of the reason my little gay antennas perked up at this scene -- even more so than many of the scenes that came before -- is the performed intimacy of the moment in addition to the language. They are inexplicably sharing a moonlit walk in the park together, devoid of any of the tension or space that would be all too understandable for them to have dividing them given the current situation. They are sharing quiet personal truths -- the origin of a name, that Zhao Yunlan’s mother (in the television series) has passed, but that she’d be flushed with happiness that an intellectual like Shen Wei had become a friend. We’ve discussed this at length before, but Chinese is a fundamentally formal language, and it reflects a fundamentally less casual society. This entire scene is achingly intimate, from the Chinese point of view. This is like Before Sunrise: Dragon City.

tammaiya: Oh god, this scene. First you’ve got Zhao Yunlan with his “good friends” in episode 3— and sure, he was trolling, but he intentionally chose to troll in the most encroaching way possible— and now he’s basically talking about introducing Shen Wei to his mother (if she was still alive) and Shen Wei is talking about “intimacy”? No one is putting the breaks on this thing.

moggiesandtea: While they’re strolling along, the sting operation goes very wrong, and Zhu Hong is abducted. They also happen upon Lin Yusen setting traps in the park, giving Shen Wei the perfect opportunity to make a big fuss about pricking his finger on one of the traps because he is a totally normal human, no really. Zhao Yunlan fusses. A lot.

arrghigiveup: I am yelling because Shen Wei literally and very deliberately goes and pokes his finger at a spike until it bleeds, pauses for a second, and THEN does that dramatic inhale-through-the-teeth sound that you do when you wince. Honey, please.

And Zhao Yunlan, bless his heart, actually falls for it (for now) and starts almost-yelling about “what do you mean it’s just a small wound do you know this could cause TETANUS” and insisting that he’ll take Shen Wei to a hospital later. Which, I really want to know if he actually did, because that would’ve been hilarious.

lazulisong: Shen Wei’s great at being a human.

rageprufrock: I mean he’s got good company because it is e-m-b-a-r-r-a-s-s-i-n-g that Zhao Yunlan is insisting on a hospital visit for a fucking papercut.

hollyberries: Though as the resident accident prone garden idiot, please go to the hospital for a shot if you give yourself a cut and there’s dirt or rust in your wound. Please. One shot lasts ten years and you also dodge a painful death.

moggiesandtea: There’s a digression where Zhao Yunlan strolls back to the SID with Lin Yusen, talking about how Lin is an idiot but Zhao Yunlan will still look at his application for the police after he graduates. They run into Brother Wang the grocer and his heavily pregnant wife. Since this is a show with zero budget for things like extras, you can assume that this will be significant at some point.

FINALLY Zhao Yunlan strolls into headquarters and finds out there’s a situation. Good thing the tracker Jin Ling gave Zhu Hong is working.

The boys search Zhang Danni’s place and find human Zhang Danni’s body shoved in the wardrobe. Her face is completely removed--did I forget to mention that that’s this serial killer’s thing? That’s this serial killer’s thing, face removal.

rageprufrock: Actually a creepy thing! Which I appreciated! And which they should have played up way, way more. The conceit alone is really chilling, although it also makes me wonder all sorts of other things -- is it just the face? Does she also adapt her body shape and height to that of her victim? Can she do any age, any gender? There’s a lot more room for body horror and creep there, which alas, went unexplored.

arrghigiveup: I was also wondering about whether it affected the body. Also you could probably do quite a number of nefarious things with identity theft.

hollyberries: They had to stop at the closet door for censorship reasons, rageprufrock, the violence and gore subclause covers corpses as well, which is why in Medical Examiner Dr. Qin the props department’s sterling work would often be blurred out.

arrghigiveup: I know I should know better than to expect logic from this show, but they take way, way too long to find that body, considering the fact that it’s been in there at least 2-3 days by now and should have stunk.

tammaiya: Maybe it takes a while to die after magic face removal? Oh god what a horrible thought. Anyway, I shouldn’t try to make excuses for this show, they clearly just didn’t even think about that.

moggiesandtea: Zhu Hong, meanwhile, is tied to a pillar and Jia Hui is trying to be threatening. Mostly he’s whining about how he’s doing all of this for Zhang Danni. Zhu Hong has no time for this bullshit and breaks free. The boys show up and a rescue is effected.

Shen Wei is for once not in the middle of all this excitement. Instead he is in another random alley, being taunted by Zhu Jiu’s disembodied voice. Apparently Anime Villain has set a trap for Zhao Yunlan and the SID. Shen Wei is not pleased.

The SID crew is driving back to headquarters with an unconscious Jia Hui when something flashes in front of them. Like idiots who have never seen a single horror movie, Zhao Yunlan and Old Chu get out of the SUV. Old Chu is almost immediately taken out by this green fog that’s apparently some kind of drug that only works on Dixingren? I don’t know, it’s never explained and we never see it again.

kitsunec4: I genuinely forgot this was a thing until I rewatched while not in a haze of marathoning all the episodes ever and thus did not before question this complete lack of continuity. Omg

hollyberries: Yeah this is where I’m like… so they’re gonna use this green fog against Shen Wei in the future right? Nope. He’s immune to it. (Seriously, what is this guy made of?)

lazulisong: spite, he’s made of spite. Also plot armor except for when he doesn’t because the authors need him to bleed pretty, which is why they hired Zhu Yilong.

moggiesandtea: Zhang Danni steps out from behind a tree and proposes a trade, Da Qing for Jia Hui. We get the pair’s backstory: the two met up above ground, fighting over buns from a trash can, and Jia Hui proposed teaming up. Zhang Danni, who used to wear a mask covering half her face, revealed her face (to Jia Hui, we never get to see it), which was apparently horrifying. Zhang Danni goes on a rant about how all men see is outward appearances, and Jia Hui gets the bright idea to use his Dixingren power of STEALING FACES to get Zhang Danni a better face.

Now Zhang Danni wants to collect all the beautiful faces in the world. sigh

hollyberries: I’m usually a sucker for sad backstories, but the level of storytelling in this script, sigh.

kitsunec4: We all collect odd things, though she must be preserving them somehow….

lazulisong: Okay but more importantly, how do Dixingren powers work. How is STEALING FACES a thing that you could be born with. What sort of genetic lottery do you have to lose that your power is “stealing faces and putting them on other people” and, I suspect, not even permanently. Unless she’s like actually getting bored with them, as far as I can tell, she has to switch them out every few days anyway.

tammaiya: Based on the way the guy says it, I think she just gets bored and one should have been enough.

rageprufrock: I mean this really just more triggered a cascading series of questions in me about the logistics of Dixing versus Haixing, how come some people who escape Dixing into Haixing seem to have been able to make a life for themselves, whereas others are foraging for trash can scraps. Also how did they even reach the surface world? If it’s so easy to get up here, why isn’t there a crush? If it’s not easy to get up here, was it an accident? Why come at all? What’s happening? Where am I? Why am doing this? Is this really what we’ve all been put on the planet to do?

moggiesandtea: I can’t remember the exact sequence of events, but Zhang Danni ends up starting to go into green glowy power overload because Jia Hui has been hurt? Or something? Then, Lin Yusen runs up with a Molotov cocktail and blows all three of them up. The only reason Zhao Yunlan and Old Chu aren’t hurt is Shen Wei shows up as the Black Cloak Envoy to contain the explosion within a force bubble.

arrghigiveup: Sidenote: The reason why Jia Hui got hurt? Is because Old Chu hit him shortly after having used his puppet strings to drag Da Qing back to safety. Despite supposedly having been previously paralysed by the green fog. That was a really short-acting paralytic. Or they just failed at continuity within a single episode; could be either one.

moggiesandtea: Zhao Yunlan is really pissed about Lin Yusen dying, then even more pissed that Shen Wei is taking Lin’s body along with the bodies of Zhang Danni and Jia Hui.

arrghigiveup: Black Cloak Envoy is silently wide-eyed and devastated over Zhao Yunlan being pissed off at him.

moggiesandtea: Anime Villain is pissed about his plot being foiled and demonstrates this via dramatic chess piece slamming.

The episode ends with Shen Wei as Black Cloak Envoy having one of his meetings with Old Chu. He explains that Lin Yusen had been permeated with dark energy somehow, and he had to take the body away before it hurt anyone. Shen Wei warns Old Chu to be careful.

We close with one final flashback, where we learn that dirtbag Kunlun gave Shen Wei his name way back when, and Shen Wei made him a promise.

kitsunec4: YELLING 5EVERRRRRRR, this was the point where I probably had to stifle my screams of “oh my fucking god this is so gaaaaaaay” into a pillow.

arrghigiveup: There are just. So many things. Starting with “he gave Shen Wei a name” through to “he gave Shen Wei a super poetic and GRAND name” and ending off with “Shen Wei kept that name for 10,000 fucking years and didn’t even bother with a fucking alias fucking hell” *insert crying emoji*

hollyberries: He also stuck an already-licked FLESH COLOURED LOLLIPOP into baby Shen Wei’s mouth then cackled like an old uncle pervert. Y’all. It’s so gay.

tammaiya: Even without the associated imagery, lollipops as a food are something you can’t share without being all up in each other’s germs. This goes beyond indirect kissing, it’s incredibly intimate. Or uh. Perverted maybe. (By the way, the first time I watched this I kept yelling “BUT WHY ARE THERE LOLLIPOPS IN ANCIENT CHINA” and was repeatedly assured by the rest of the Collective who’d already watched most of the show that there’s a reason. A terrible reason, but what else would you expect from these screenwriters.)

lazulisong: Shen Wei’s huge, shyly surprised eyes really make that scene, Zhao Yunlan must have felt like he was deflowering a maiden.

Also HOW DID THAT, OF ALL SCENES, GET PAST THE CENSORS?????????

rageprufrock: [lights cigarette]

Character Beats

moggiesandtea: A dialog highlight from Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei’s romantic walk in the park: Zhao Yunlan makes the statement that “what’s precious between friends is intimacy.” He also makes the observation that his mom would be so proud of him for having such a smart friend as Shen Wei, which is how we learn that Zhao Mama is dead because the show writers are cowards.

kitsunec4: We were deprived of Zhao Mama terrorizing her dirtbag child!

lazulisong: lmao I will die mad about that. I will go to hell still mad about Shen Wei not being bullied by Zhao Yunlan and his mom and staring at them with piteous, starving eyes.

hollyberries: Zhao Mama making dumplings and hitting Zhao Yunlan with a floury rolling pin as Shen Wei frozen in post-coital terror in the living room. Zhao Mama calling him ‘Xiao Wei’!!!

arrghigiveup: It could have been so good ugh.

rageprufrock: Okay, to actually provide some context to the above: in the novel, Zhao Yunlan’s mother is alive and well, and actually the first person Zhao Yunlan comes out to -- and then tries to drag Shen Wei over to meet his mother empty-handed, like not even with fucking supermarket fruit. Because despite his mother’s probable best efforts, Zhao Yunlan is a fucking spoiled genius only boy child and has no fucking domestic education at all, which is why he needs a mans like Shen Wei who is polite enough for 10 spoiled genius only boy child people to check him before wrecking him.

Production Choices

moggiesandtea: I mentioned the complete lack of a budget for extras, right? So at this point you can pretty much assume any character who gets a name and anything approximating screen time/lines of dialog is going to make a reappearance and play some kind of significant role.

hollyberries: I wonder if they ran out of money right as they hired Zhu Yilong and Bai Yu, because, well, almost nobody else can act on their level.

kitsunec4: Just keep reminding yourself that at least they cast the right guys for their main characters. They did at least that right!


Final Thoughts

hollyberries: If you take this episode as one long romantic date in the park, you won’t lose out on any ‘plot’ or ‘character development’ happening. Or hell, internal worldbuilding.

rageprufrock: This episode was truly, truly forgettable. Like not even memorably bad.

arrghigiveup: I mentioned this is our chat, but this episode took me literal days to get through for this recap because my attention kept wandering every 5 minutes. It was a handful of moments of delicious SW/ZYL interactions which I dedicated entire paragraphs to, interspersed among long stretches of bullshit.

moggiesandtea: Honestly, this episode is such useless filler, although if you dig really hard you can pick some things out that might be relevant later, such as something being up with Zhu Hong, but let’s be real, they can’t manage internal consistency for the length of one episode.


Join us here in two weeks for a discussion of Guardian: Episode 5 and more yelling! Definitely more yelling!

Comments

[chirals]

Yay, Guardian recaps are back!

I also somehow don’t remember anything of the plot of this episode, which, now that I went back and re-watched it, I can't say I regret.

Luckily, I also don’t regret putting up with A LOT for a pretty face + great chemistry + iddy romance tropes, which is 95% of the appeal of this show (LOL at Before Sunrise: Dragon City). The other 5% is hot people being tied to pillars, which is something the show is very into.

[chirals]

Also, I only found your recaps recently and created this account mainly to say how glad I am that you guys are doing this.

My Chinese is not good enough to keep up with Chinese fandom, and I never got the hang of Tumblr, so having an English C-drama discussion forum that comes from a fandom perspective is such a godsend.

Keep up the great work!

[arrghigiveup]

We all had collective amnesia about this episode; it's amazing. We remembered the flashback to Kunlun giving Shen Wei his name, and like, nothing else XD

Glad you're enjoying! =D

[tammaiya]

Everyone except me, that is. I remembered it and wished I didn’t, LOL.

[galaxysoup]

These recaps give me liiiiiife! Not only are they super hilarious, I really appreciate the extra cultural depth.

WELCOME BACK!

[aubreyli]

I missed you and your recaps of our beloved trash show so much!

I agree with this episode being kind of forgettable. I remember pretty much two things: 1) Shen Wei's hilarious interrogation, wherein he trolls everyone until Zhao Yunlan gets there and then it's all Sincere, Slightly Hurt Eyes; and 2) the lollipop flashback. That was the scene that cemented Zhao Yunlan from Garbage Man to Garbage Boss, for me.

The romantic midnight stroll through the park was delightful because independently, the elements aren't... that ridiculously shippy? But it was the combination of the blatantly romantic setting AND the inappropriately intimate dialogue AND the fact that ZYL literally just thought SW was a murderer a few scenes ago -- cue me, clutching at my pillow and shrieking.

Thank you for returning and delighting us with recaps! I can't wait for episode 7.

[schneefink]

In hindsight, how did I never even think about that lollipop *sigh*

[kitsunec4]

Mmmmmm, the lollipop was almost too ridiculous and much?

[naye]

I had completely forgotten about that green gas. Completely. And also about... most of the rest of it.

The interrogation scene I remembered, particularly after reading about it in this interview with Zhu Yilong. Apparently it really made people sit up and take notice of just how different Shen Wei is with the first two and with Zhao Yunlan - and how well Zhu Yilong portrays it. Have to love the screenshots you have of it here - it's such a good character moment.

Also still cackling at this:

hollyberries: Yeah this is where I’m like… so they’re gonna use this green fog against Shen Wei in the future right? Nope. He’s immune to it. (Seriously, what is this guy made of?)

lazulisong: spite, he’s made of spite. Also plot armor except for when he doesn’t because the authors need him to bleed pretty, which is why they hired Zhu Yilong.

[xparrot]

Haaaah these reviews are amazing, I am so glad you are still committed to them in spite of common sense and everything else! The translation and cultural notes are especially appreciated.

This ep was forgettable except the SW/ZYL scenes make it totally worthwhile. I love the faked finger-prick -- of all injuries, how very Sleeping Beauty of you, Shen Wei -- and ZYL threatening to drag him to the hospital (so did he??? I mean, it's not like Shen Wei can actually say no to Yunlan ever...)

I'm still flabbergasted that the lollipop flashback made it past censors. I'm not even sure American standards would let that one fly, there is subtle, and then there is Zhu Yilong's cheeks hollowed around candy. Mmm-hmm.

I'm apparently in the minority in that I think the drama was pretty clever with Shen Wei's power, giving him something that makes him about as equivalently OP against other Dixingren as the Ghost Slayer is over the rest of Hell-dwellers. And sure it's vague but so are most superhero powers...(I do wonder if his healing/general invulnerability is due to a power he picked up or the Hallows-granted immortality. ...and then I realize I'm spending precious cognitive power on this show when its writers definitely did not, and I stop...)

[galaxysoup]

I also liked the explanation of Shen Wei's powers! Even though it was probably an authorial handwave I thought it fit his character pretty well, and I liked the parallels it made with Ye Zun's consume-everything power. They both have the ability to absorb other people's powers, but where Ye Zun's is only ever destructive Shen Wei's is more passive and has the potential to be collaborative.

[tammaiya]

My main issue with it is that... it doesn’t really make sense to me, particularly since it’s supposedly genetic? Putting aside how ANY of their powers make sense, a special ability for learning would make sense for skills that can be acquired (eg other languages), but how can you “learn” something that is basically a genetic mutation? A human can’t learm to fly by studying birds (at least, not without using tools to do so), and it doesn’t seem like Dixingren can learn each other’s abilities by studying either. It would make more sense to me if he could absorb their abilities by touch, or something. Without some kind of extra step to explain how it works, it doesn’t seem to mesh with the rules of the world that they’ve built.

... I mean, not that ANYTHING is internally consistent in Guardian, I should probably not even bother thinking about it this much.

[xparrot]

My completely BS explanation is that Shen Wei's "learning" is via "dark energy" -- whatever that is and however it works. Dixing powers work by manipulating dark energy; Shen Wei's particular form of dark energy allows him to rewire his cells/midichlorians/whatever so that he can imitate others' dark energy.

It's really unclear how he actually "learns" -- the powers we see him pick up seem to be when a power is actually used on him, we don't see evidence that he can gain powers just by reading about them in a book or something. (e.g. he knows about snake-Yashou hypnotism, but it looks like he actually learns it and reflects it back when Zhu Hong uses it on him. ...unless that's not what's going on there at all! *handwavehandwave*) So I think he does need some kind of contact, with the power itself if not with the person wielding it.

...apparently my subconscious has been dwelling on Shen Wei's power when I wasn't paying attention, because I have a lot of thoughts about it! Seriously, subconscious, I'm sure there are better things you can do with your time! ^^;;;

[tinny]

Ooooh, thank you so much for continuing your recaps!

I haven't made it to Zhao's mom in the novel, that sounds like an awesome wasted opportunity (like so many...)

I keep wondering about the actual significance of Chu's puppet. Is it ever explained? I mean, he's the "puppet master", and can generate puppet strings for reasons, but other than that? I assumed the puppet is important, but it just looks so ridiculous, it always made me laugh.

Very good points on Zhu Yilong's acting here, down to the way he holds himself. It is funny to see it again knowing Shen Wei's backstory. This show is better on a rewatch for all those little details. (And for the chance to just fast forward through the crap. :))