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sid_guardian2019-03-08 10:35 pm
extrapenguin) wrote in sid_guardian2019-03-08 10:35 pm
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Guardian Episode by Episode: 03
Welcome to episode 3 of the Guardian rewatchalong, now back on the comm! The icon battle is still ongoing until April. This post has notes on canon details, characterization, and foreshadowing. Imgur screencaps album. Lots of nice team shots!
Previously:
Episode 1, Episode 2
This episode starts and concludes the "lesbian Dixingren murders her lover's rapists" case, and introduces the "face-stealing power" case right at the end.
Foreshadowing and projection
Let's talk a bit about Zhang Ruonan and Wang Yike's relationship! Zhang Ruonan discovered a very scared, lost, and lonely Wang Yike, and gave her a purpose in life. Wang Yike considered Zhang Ruonan her benefactor, and said "As long as I can protect her, my life has worth", and basically this relationship is very intentionally constructed to foreshadow/mirror the eventual relationship of Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei. What happened to Wang Yike – not being able to protect a beloved, hurting one's beloved with one's own powers – must also be a nightmare scenario of Shen Wei's. No wonder he went out of his way to save Zhang Ruonan and pardon Wang Yike.
Note also the way Zhao Yunlan has gone elsewhere to have an emotion. He's likely also re-examining his attitude towards Dixingren.
The other piece of foreshadowing comes via a conversation between Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan: Shen Wei says some things that are in hindsight very harrowing, such as "Some tragedies were destined from the beginning."
Other characterization notes
Shen Wei is still sad and concerned about Li Qian. He also says something really interesting I can only connect with Ye Zun: "Will seeing through people really lessen the hurt and disappointment?"
Meanwhile, Zhao Yunlan doesn't believe in the blurbs of bestsellers, texts about winning the lottery, or coincidences during a case:
We had a very awkward scene where Shen Wei tried to introduce Zhao Yunlan to Zhang Ruonan, and with the awkward hesitations and eventual "I'm his ... good friend", she 100% came out of it with the assumption they were dating. Perhaps the rumor mill has also heard of it, now? :P (We also see Zhao Yunlan speculate about Zhang Ruonan potentially being traumatized recently. Combined with her "Good intentions might not always be rewarded" at the start, this is quite well foreshadowed.)
Zhao Yunlan's interplay with his team is excellent, from everyone just avoiding him a bit while he coughs on them to bringing exactly the right people for the job over. (Zhu Hong might be checked out when she comforts Zhang Ruonan, but given that the latter got gang raped, getting a dude to try and comfort her would've likely been counterproductive.)
"I'm already sick, don't make me skin you alive [for implying that I only give the orders and do zero work]!"
Guo Changcheng has become less useful: this time, he fainted at sight of the corpse. He did, however provide some foreshadowing: "Though a stolen life is short, a promise can remain unchanged for thousands of years." We also hear him express a desire to guard everyone, since this show's version of "this relationship is totally no homo" is to call that relationship "guarding"
There is only one corpse. The other "corpse" is Guo Changcheng.
This is a thing that didn't really come up in this episode so much as something I realized in this episode, but Lin Jing is a decent and nonsexist human being. We mostly see it later on with Sha Ya, but even when Zhao Yunlan wanted him to zoom in on Li Qian, he called his boss a beast rather than zoom in on the boobs. Here, he's the one to explicitly condemn the rapists' actions, berating how they have "hearts more fragile than potato chips".
Zhu Hong gets a few nice expressions:
Cinematography
The camera steadfastly remained around the characters' heads, this episode, but we did still get the usual shots through blinds. After all, asno_detective put it, this is "a show about the tensions between two worlds connected by magical pathways" and the shots through blinds are noir-ish and visually indicative of secrets.
...also, I realized that Zhu Jiu is framed by light:
And a nice, nontraditional crop of footage as a bonus:
Canon details
...We see Zhu Jiu grumble about Wang Yike being captured, but I can't figure out a way to connect this case to the Hallows at all. Was this his way of trying to figure out this Professor Shen – find a suitable pawn who's in a murderous place already, tell her that Professor Shen should've noticed and magically stopped it all, see if he dies or mysteriously survives? IDK. Any better ideas?
Zhao Yunlan's jacket watch
Three! It seems the dead students case happened over two days only. The second jacket, he wears an interestingly nonwestern shirt beneath it.
A few bonus images of jacket #2 (and Shen Wei's wedgie):
Shen Wei's shoes watch
High. The second pic is a bit dark, but you should be able to see the heel.
Did Shen Wei appear maskless?
When he's chasing the face-stealing killer, yes!
Previously:
Episode 1, Episode 2
This episode starts and concludes the "lesbian Dixingren murders her lover's rapists" case, and introduces the "face-stealing power" case right at the end.
Foreshadowing and projection
Let's talk a bit about Zhang Ruonan and Wang Yike's relationship! Zhang Ruonan discovered a very scared, lost, and lonely Wang Yike, and gave her a purpose in life. Wang Yike considered Zhang Ruonan her benefactor, and said "As long as I can protect her, my life has worth", and basically this relationship is very intentionally constructed to foreshadow/mirror the eventual relationship of Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei. What happened to Wang Yike – not being able to protect a beloved, hurting one's beloved with one's own powers – must also be a nightmare scenario of Shen Wei's. No wonder he went out of his way to save Zhang Ruonan and pardon Wang Yike.
Note also the way Zhao Yunlan has gone elsewhere to have an emotion. He's likely also re-examining his attitude towards Dixingren.
The other piece of foreshadowing comes via a conversation between Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan: Shen Wei says some things that are in hindsight very harrowing, such as "Some tragedies were destined from the beginning."
Other characterization notes
Shen Wei is still sad and concerned about Li Qian. He also says something really interesting I can only connect with Ye Zun: "Will seeing through people really lessen the hurt and disappointment?"
Meanwhile, Zhao Yunlan doesn't believe in the blurbs of bestsellers, texts about winning the lottery, or coincidences during a case:
We had a very awkward scene where Shen Wei tried to introduce Zhao Yunlan to Zhang Ruonan, and with the awkward hesitations and eventual "I'm his ... good friend", she 100% came out of it with the assumption they were dating. Perhaps the rumor mill has also heard of it, now? :P (We also see Zhao Yunlan speculate about Zhang Ruonan potentially being traumatized recently. Combined with her "Good intentions might not always be rewarded" at the start, this is quite well foreshadowed.)
Zhao Yunlan's interplay with his team is excellent, from everyone just avoiding him a bit while he coughs on them to bringing exactly the right people for the job over. (Zhu Hong might be checked out when she comforts Zhang Ruonan, but given that the latter got gang raped, getting a dude to try and comfort her would've likely been counterproductive.)
"I'm already sick, don't make me skin you alive [for implying that I only give the orders and do zero work]!"
Guo Changcheng has become less useful: this time, he fainted at sight of the corpse. He did, however provide some foreshadowing: "Though a stolen life is short, a promise can remain unchanged for thousands of years." We also hear him express a desire to guard everyone, since this show's version of "this relationship is totally no homo" is to call that relationship "guarding"
There is only one corpse. The other "corpse" is Guo Changcheng.
This is a thing that didn't really come up in this episode so much as something I realized in this episode, but Lin Jing is a decent and nonsexist human being. We mostly see it later on with Sha Ya, but even when Zhao Yunlan wanted him to zoom in on Li Qian, he called his boss a beast rather than zoom in on the boobs. Here, he's the one to explicitly condemn the rapists' actions, berating how they have "hearts more fragile than potato chips".
Zhu Hong gets a few nice expressions:
Cinematography
The camera steadfastly remained around the characters' heads, this episode, but we did still get the usual shots through blinds. After all, as
no_detective put it, this is "a show about the tensions between two worlds connected by magical pathways" and the shots through blinds are noir-ish and visually indicative of secrets. ...also, I realized that Zhu Jiu is framed by light:
And a nice, nontraditional crop of footage as a bonus:
Canon details
- The SID library is mostly decorative
- Lin Jing is doing Science well by seeing if anyone else can make the Hallows do stuff, but alas, they only want to speak to the manager
- Zhao Yunlan easily picks up and carries Zhang Ruonan
- This is the first time we see the Envoy practice catch and release
- This is the first time we see Zhao Yunlan threaten to cancel Lin Jing's bonus
- It is only in this episode that Zhu Jiu finds out that Shen Wei is not just a university professor
- The SID has a freeze-on-spot gun that they use to freeze Shen Wei onto the spot. It seems to function by dark energy? We see it again during this case, but IIRC never afterwards, even if it'd be useful.
...We see Zhu Jiu grumble about Wang Yike being captured, but I can't figure out a way to connect this case to the Hallows at all. Was this his way of trying to figure out this Professor Shen – find a suitable pawn who's in a murderous place already, tell her that Professor Shen should've noticed and magically stopped it all, see if he dies or mysteriously survives? IDK. Any better ideas?
Zhao Yunlan's jacket watch
Three! It seems the dead students case happened over two days only. The second jacket, he wears an interestingly nonwestern shirt beneath it.
A few bonus images of jacket #2 (and Shen Wei's wedgie):
Shen Wei's shoes watch
High. The second pic is a bit dark, but you should be able to see the heel.
Did Shen Wei appear maskless?
When he's chasing the face-stealing killer, yes!
no subject
Yes, she would, wouldn't she?
I do like that they got a reasonably happy ending - there was some 'price to be paid' but they got to leave together and alive, and I think the dialogue around that reinforced that this was a reasonably happy ending (and that the professor lady might even get better).
One learns to live with the cliffhangers; apparently they're pretty standard for Chinese media? Instead of writing An Episode for a case, they just film 40h (or whatnot) of footage that's a compelling story – like a mega-movie – and insert credits every x minutes to chop it up. Even prestige stuff like Nirvana in Fire is cut like that.
Yeah, I've noticed that. Some of them make sense as classic cliffhangers, while others are really choppy to the point of "in the middle of a sentence".
no subject
Oh, yes, they were very happy that they could stay together in peace, despite all that happened, but I can't recall any dialogue implying that Teacher Zhang might improve. What is the secret dialogue of HEA?
no subject
It's the professor herself who says, to Shen Wei, "For Yike's sake, I will become strong and atone for her sins."
I might have mushed that "become strong" together with what the SID people were talking about!
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