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EP. REVIEW: The Apothecary Diaries

We see him crouched down at the site of a fire at the start of the episode, and that begs the question of whether it's the same one Maomao and Lihaku were investigating or if it's a different one somewhere else in the imperial compound.

“Say, I hear some important official just bought out a courtesan from your place.”

“So it seems.”

Guess I can’t blame him for this one, Maomao thought. When the employment contract had been concluded and Maomao was to go with Jinshi, her overexcited sisters had prettied her up in every way they knew how, finding the most special clothes for her, doing her hair, and covering her in a mountain of makeup, until she looked like anything but an ordinary maid headed to an ordinary posting. She remembered her father, for some reason, watching her go as if watching a calf leave his barn.

To enter the palace looking like a tarted-up courtesan was bad enough, but Jinshi’s presence attracted yet more attention, and Maomao found a very uncomfortable number of eyes on them. She’d changed as soon as she could, but no doubt quite a few people had seen her before then. Still, she was struck that Lihaku could be speaking of her, to her, and have no idea. But, she supposed, what more could you expect from a dumb mutt?

...our interpretations of this are affected by you being familiar with the LN and me having only the anime to go by. I'm sure that in the LN Maomao herself, as well as the scene(s) in question are described in more detail, with more direction as to how things are supposed to be interpreted, and there it's made clear that she's not a great beauty. But in the anime both "Maomao gets put into fancy dress and make-up" scenes so far have communicated that she's actually really pretty, let alone being dolled up like that.

Honestly, the thing that interests me most is the long bit where that gate blocks our view of her — it’s a conspicuous choice of staging/cinematography/whatever, but I confess I’m not clear on what it conveys.

You see that gate from another angle later and you realise it's not part of a wall or a building, it's actually freestanding. It's a purely symbolic entryway, I presume to represent the barrier between the outside world and the closed rear palace, a barrier which others pass between every day but consorts never until they die or are released.

Interestingly enough Loulan and her attendants DON'T go through the gate, they bypass it and it remains closed. Hmmm...

Anyway my memory is pretty spotty but I feel like I might be confusing Lakan with another character from the novels. The character I'm thinking of didn't come across as sinister as Lakan had been presented and came across more neurodivergent.

Anyway my memory is pretty spotty but I feel like I might be confusing Lakan with another character from the novels. The character I'm thinking of didn't come across as sinister as Lakan had been presented and came across more neurodivergent. spoiler[He had trouble distinguishing people's faces and when someone's face did register he visualised their faces as game pieces.
]

I took it as a more not so thinly veiled threat against Maomao as presumably one good way to lower a courtesan's value would be to affect her appearance through some manner of physical violence. I suppose a non-violent way would be to stop any customers from coming to see her... Of course if her intellect was her most valuable asset, doing something to affect that would also work to lower her value, but then presumably Lakan wouldn't be interested in her.
Regardless, I thought Lakan was saying that he would have no problem lowering Maomao's "value" if he couldn't use her.

He brought it up within the context of talking about the courtesan, so I thought it was pretty clear he was referring to the courtesan, not to Maomao.