I’m in two minds about The First Jasmine - join me in sorting through some of my thoughts on this show.
- It’s beautiful. Someone else on here wrote about the show’s natural look and for example how people have real and not artificial looking skin. It looks like a movie from the 1990s somehow.
- It’s such a good take on trauma and how trauma first is a mechanism to protect us, until it doesn’t. Love how the show was clear that her hallucinations protected Ye Li. And how everyone took it seriously, as an illness - instead of ridiculing it.
- The court schemes make sense and the conflicts and intrigue drew me in. I found almost all schemes to be super clear yet subtle, one exception: still unsure what the real deal was between astronomer, queen and her consort friend.
- The first three quarters were stellar, the last one fizzled out for me. In the last stretch, the writing just didn’t land as well as before. A mix of unnecessary filler + clumsy tone shifts and ‘nothing can hit as hard as the reveals on the mountain.’
- But gosh, what a great revenge thriller in the first two thirds. So subtle, so elegant, so haunted and smart. I found it so satisfying.
- The slightly open ending where everyone is more or less settled was very fitting - everyone has found connection but it also has a tinge of melancholy, because everyone has lost too much and that will never change.
- At its best, this show was heartbreakingly romantic and angsty. At its worst, great opportunities to infuse some sizzle or sexiness or simply human connection between the leads were missed out on. Sometimes they felt like work colleagues to me, so sexless.
- The episodes where we see through Mo Xiuyao’s eyes how Ye Li is living and has lived on the mountain had me crying alongside him, just incredibly empathetic writing. Him guarding Ye Li, standing there with a light to accompany her through her own darkness was so beautiful.
- Based on scenes such as this, I felt those two were so close and so connected. But then, unnecessary jealousy and a lack of understanding for the other person followed. For example, it sometimes felt like Mo Xiuyao did not know his wife. She suffered in the mansion, she was bored, caged, had no mission anymore. But she seemed free when she executed revenge, traveled to him, with him, even when she was back at the Mountain Academy. How could he not see that?
- The Empress Dowager character was really nicely done. Grey character, she did some evil stuff, she had some honorable motivations, she also was selfish, she treated other people as tools, to do her dirty work. Is she a flawed ruler? Or just a regular ruler? Could she have done things differently? Or not? Would others have done better? Are people looking at her more harshly as she is a woman? So interesting.
- I appreciate that the show takes a stance. Not a political realism stance but a stance that is grounded in realism, but also has ideals: treat other people as well as possible, look out for them, cause they are all you have. Life is hard and people are complex. You cannot control life (unless you are Ye Li taking revenge). Trauma will never vanish but you can learn to live with it and move forward.
- Based on the first three quarters, this show could have been a masterpiece. The last quarter fizzles out, which was disappointing to me. But nonetheless I feel that it stays very true to its essence and melancholic tone and philosophy. It wraps up its story in a way that makes sense - even if it loses momentum at the end.
