The Apothecary Diaries #10 — Honey and Dead Babies

This show sure has a hard on for poisoning babies.

Impressions:

I feel like I've said my piece at this point about why the mystery isn't working for me, and as we approach the end of this cour at least and it keeps trying to act like all these tiny non-mysteries are part of some kind of tapestry decade long tapestry only explainable through a monologue as Maomao bustles about random chores, not actually interacting with anybody, let alone investigating, chasing down leads, or the like, I'm finding myself tuning out more and more. It isn't much of a mystery when the first hunch or supposition brought up is always correct. It's just a monologue that has taken a month to get through. Hell, there's a dead body and nobody seems much concerned about that.

Aside from everything I mentioned before about building a mystery story, this episode highlighted another critical thing; that the direction and script are really failing to highlight how Maomao is doing anything special. The direction especially. I understand that they want to play up the reactions to make them clear, but when they have characters turning pale and recoiling in shock at the mere presence of, say, honey, that Maomao is the only person in the room to think "Hey, maybe something is up with that," is coming less across as her being insightful as everybody else being willfully ignorant imbeciles, which combined with the episodes more and more just being Maomao monologuing to herself instead of interacting with anybody is really losing any chemistry the show had between characters.

Next Episode:

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