But it also has my hands-down least-favourite scene in the entire series, Zhao Yunlan's actual disgust at Chu Shuzhi's effeminate behaviour, saying he'd never have hired him if Shen Wei had introduced him like that, and Shen Wei basically saying that Chu turning effeminate like that is worse than killing him.
Yeah, this is in several ways a nice episode (all of Zhao Yunlan's ARGH!) but ... that. It's possible to interpret it as Zhao Yunlan not liking wishy-washiness, or a personal opinion/flaw of Zhao Yunlan's (who canonically doesn't like talking about his feelings), but. As you said, they definitely could've milked the comedy in a better way.

It's interesting to be reminded on the rewatches how often she actually kills someone, mostly because she's one of the better villains and isn't mwahahha! evil and basically gets her redemption moment at the end. But yeah, there were a few murders!
Now I want to go through the episodes again on rewatch and count how many people we see Zhu Jiu, Ya Qing, and Ye Zun kill onscreen, and compare that to Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan's kill counts. Our villains do more stuff offscreen (the underground fighting ring stuff, etc), but it'd be interesting to see their comparative murderiness with the heroic references.

Between the two grey suits and the patterns (Shen Wei's suit vs. Zhao Xinci's vest) this is the episode where (I think) I find it most noticeable that the two of them have a similar go-to style.
This is very interesting! Hmm, do you think Shen Wei patterned his humanwear after Zhao Xinci's, in an effort to make Dixingians seem more human or subconsciously or whatever?

The black leather jackets might be the same – I didn't really pay that much detailed attention. But he does change jackets in between, so it happens over at least 4 days, with potential gap days between!

Have a pic without the subs: