Juniper
Episode 24 of The Virtuous Queen Of Han was screened on AEC last Friday and I think it was one of the best episodes so far thanks to Raymond Lam’s sterling performance towards the end of the episode. Generally, I think that the role of emperors in Chinese series is slightly overshadowed by the performance of the scheming concubines. Some of them run rings around the emperor and it’s like the emperor is so oblivious to their shenanigans but I have to say Raymond Lam’s Emperor Liu Che is no fool and he knows what’s going on even though he may play dumb.
Finally in this episode, Liu Che confronts his witchy aunt (father’s sister) and conniving wife (aunt’s daughter). The problem with some relatives is they will remind you till kingdom come that they helped you somewhere along the way and in this case, aunt helped Liu Che ascend the throne and when confronted with the evidence that she conspired with an equally witchy looking younger woman to poison the future Virtuous Queen of Han Wei Zi Fu, instead of asking for forgiveness and looking repentant, aunt goes on a tirade about how she helped Liu Che and that he should not forget all the things she did for him and she commands the court scribes to jot it all down, lest future generations thinks she is the villain.
The Emperor doesn’t back down. He looks at her in disgust and for every point she brings up in her favour, he barks back at her with her misdeed which kind of negates whatever good stuff she did for him in the past and he also commands the court scribes to “Write! Write! Write”! Oh yes, never back down when attacked by someone who is delusional. The worst thing about the aunt is she thinks that whatever she did (right or wrong) is to protect the emperor and her daughter and that includes killing innocents who may get in the way of her power hungry plots.
Before this episode, Raymond Lam’s performance had been good but in this episode, it was great. It may not have been his voice but he looked commanding and was able to counter whatever his aunt said. This is one emperor who wasn’t backing down and the moral of the story is : when someone who is in the wrong is fiercely defending himself/herself, be twice as fierce and salvo back. I’d get the last word in too if I know I am in the right. So many people won’t admit they are in the wrong and will probably go to their graves defending their actions.
I finally caught up to this episode over the weekend. By the way, the ending theme song for the series sung by Raymond seems to be growing on me!
OMG! You will be thinking about the song in your sleep next and dream of Raymond.
well, I admire that he has have the gift of words. As for me, I am at lost of words when someone showed me their ‘good deeds’ and I really dislike it when people will use the ‘older’ means wiser to put me down. It is really annoying.
I always felt that Raymond’s singing is better than his acting anyway!
I am not a “Raymond LF fangal” but his acting in this drama and this episode in particular is definitely better than what I have seen in his TVB dramas where he is often accused of in the blogs of being “chok” and expressionless!