If you’re lost on any of the characters, I did a quick rundown of them at the top of episode 1 that you can consult.
Recap
Time for Dong’s funeral, and the whole Song family is there. Chan wants a viewing of the corpse, but Song sides with his first wife against the idea. Then Ma arrives, bringing Xiaotong and an Uncle of Dong’s. The Uncle is suspicious about Dong’s death and Li’s involvement and demands a police autopsy.
They go to get the body and dozens of CG rats spill out. Chan says it’s not Dong’s body, it’s got gray hair and doesn’t look like it’s been in the water. Everyone in the family eyes everyone else.
Alone with his mom, Yang scolds her for being involved with Ma. Chan vows to get him the top position no matter what.
Yang finds Tian, sad in the garden. Tian is worried his mom did something because of his secret, which he can’t reveal. Yang, pretending he doesn’t know the secret, hugs Tian and promises to be by his side.
Tian goes to his mom with his suspicions, but she denies it and guilts him for suspecting her.
Xiaotong and Mud talk about the power struggle between Song and Ma. Xiaotong feels it’s best to stay neutral. Out in the brothel, they see Dong’s Uncle spending a lot of money.
Jia is responsible for the body switch but needs to get rid of Dong’s body, which she temporarily buried nearby. It’s already sprouted tons of mushrooms that are being harvested by hungry workers while others build barracks nearby. Jia can’t dig the body up with so many witnesses.
Yang interrupts Tian and Pin to start bickering with her and then leaves in a huff. Tian knows what’s going on, and tells Pin a sad love story and urges her to pick love over duty. He’s a good big brother.
Pin is embarrassed when she realizes Yang was listening. Yang promises to help her with the problem of getting her property back so they can be together.
Song tells Bua this is happening because of Zhang’s death. He just wants peace in his family.
Tian goes with shadow puppets to Jiu’s place. Jiu wants to kick him out but is overruled by his siblings and stuck helping Tian put on the show. Even afterward he’s still trying to warn Tian away, using a story from the play to make his point. Tian doesn’t listen, and when Jiu calls him on it, Tian smiles.
Alone, Jiu runs into Ma who has more medicine for his sister and a job he needs done. After Ma leaves Tian walks up, he’d come back for something, and warns Jiu about Ma.
Jiu says he has no choice but to work for Ma. Tian wants him to come to him for help but refuses to tell him who his father is because Jiu’ll just warn him away more.
Li is embroidering with Bua when Chan shows up to say that once the police prove that body is not Dong’s, they’ll go looking for Dong’s body.
That body is being guarded so Jia can’t easily get to it. That won’t stop her though, and she prepares more Beetle Orchid.
There is an air raid, and while everyone else goes to the bunkers, Jia makes her move. She poisons the guards and sets the building on fire. Everyone comes out of the bunkers worrying about her, and Jia appears looking terrible. She blames being clumsy while working with her herbs.
Yang tries to soothe his mother, but she’s suspicious about what Jia was doing while everyone was in the bunkers.
Thoughts
Jia bought herself some time but made things grosser by using another corpse to solve the problem of the first. For a moment there she had two corpses to deal with, one well-guarded and the other unknowingly used as a food source.
Now she’s down to just the mushroom-sprouting-corpse-problem. I find it grotesquely funny.
The fake Dong corpse looked pretty strange. I wonder if that’s to make it suitably gross but also something they could show on TV?
I didn’t mention this earlier, but all the points to this show for the interesting and different woman characters. Mud could be just another shallow, love-crazed woman out to make our main character miserable. The kind of character easily found in many dramas. Instead, she’s in this power team with Xiaotong, who respects her and values her opinion.
I liked that Jiu used the Legend of the White Snake to argue with Tian. It’s a very famous story (it comes up in so so so many dramas) and I bet he already knew it, but his referencing it feels like proof of his interest in Tian’s interests. Maybe that’s why Tian looked more delighted than upset at being warned away again.
Song doesn’t even know the half of it when he tells Bua that he wants peace in the family. He doesn’t know about the two corpses or the mushroom patch or Yang and Pin being a couple or Tian’s secret or how Tian’s sneaking off to hang with someone who does jobs for Ma or… Song really doesn’t know about anything that’s going on. I don’t feel sorry for him, considering the way he tries to rule over the family.