Catching up with "The Great Jang-geum"
To bring us all up to date, Jang-geum is a cooking assistant in the kitchens of the Chosun royal house. She works for Lady Han, and she is more curious than the average cooking assistant. This might be because she’s an orphan—I forget how exactly it happened, but her parents died in some miserable fashion, and Jang-geum ponders wistfully upon this fact from time to time.
Jang-geum has had many adventures, usually using her native curiosity and intelligence to solve vexing problems. Once, she figured out that the prince was paralyzing himself by eating too much nutmeg oil—and she proved it by overdosing on nutmeg oil herself. Unfortunately, she was not only paralyzed, but she lost her sense of taste, so when she had to cook a special meal for the Queen Mother in place of an ailing head cook, she botched the job. I missed how that was resolved (I hadn’t yet quite figured out the broadcasting schedule), but I do know a couple of weeks later, Lady Han kicked Jang-geum out of her kitchen because she was getting too confident in her own smarts. Luckily, Jang-geum went to work for a dying nursemaid of the Queen Mother, whose last wish was to have some roasted rice to take to her brother in heaven. Nobody could find the rice she was talking about until Jang-geum took a trip to the seashore and ran across a working man who was drying some rice like the nursemaid had described. The man said that the rice wasn’t ready yet (it still needed a couple more days in the sun), but Jang-geum wouldn’t have any of it. She took some of the special rice home and dried it over her fire. When she ran into the invalid’s room and gave her the rice, her face fell when the woman uttered that it was close, but it wasn’t the rice she was looking for. A couple days later, the nursemaid was still hanging on, and suddenly the workman from the seashore arrived with the properly dried rice, bringing the nursemaid to tears because she could now die in peace.
Jang-geum learned a valuable lesson that day: that not every problem can be solved by being an over-smart busybody; for some problems, there is no solution but letting things be (gazing through the bars of my Weberian iron cage, I can’t accept this philosophy). Jang-geum used her increased wisdom to plead with Lady Han to let her resume her old place in the kitchen. Lady Han relented, not for the least of reasons that she was now engaged in a vicious battle with Lady Choi over who would be come Head Lady of the Royal Household. The competition had been put on hold for some reason (again I missed a couple episodes), but that all changed when the diabetic Chinese envoy showed up at the royal court. Lady Han refused to serve the envoy sweets, knowing that it could kill him. For this, she was dragged away and put into some sort of solitary confinement. Jang-geum stood up for Lady Han and pleaded with the envoy to let her serve him food that would be good for him. She even agreed to the deal that, if the envoy ate her nutritious vegetables for five days and didn’t feel any better, he could have her put to death. I say she agreed to this judgment, but her agreement came with facial contortions of misgiving and worry that were the cue for the credits to roll.
That brings us up to episode 19. To avoid overloading the blog, I’ll post now—and leave you wondering whether Jang-geum succeeds in satisfying the envoy, saving her own life and redeeming Lady Han, or if the evil Lady Choi prevails in her plans to serve the envoy a sweet and greasy Feast of Imperial Chinese Household, showing how bland and distasteful Jang-geum’s vegetable dishes truly are—and ensuring our heroine’s execution!
Jang-geum has had many adventures, usually using her native curiosity and intelligence to solve vexing problems. Once, she figured out that the prince was paralyzing himself by eating too much nutmeg oil—and she proved it by overdosing on nutmeg oil herself. Unfortunately, she was not only paralyzed, but she lost her sense of taste, so when she had to cook a special meal for the Queen Mother in place of an ailing head cook, she botched the job. I missed how that was resolved (I hadn’t yet quite figured out the broadcasting schedule), but I do know a couple of weeks later, Lady Han kicked Jang-geum out of her kitchen because she was getting too confident in her own smarts. Luckily, Jang-geum went to work for a dying nursemaid of the Queen Mother, whose last wish was to have some roasted rice to take to her brother in heaven. Nobody could find the rice she was talking about until Jang-geum took a trip to the seashore and ran across a working man who was drying some rice like the nursemaid had described. The man said that the rice wasn’t ready yet (it still needed a couple more days in the sun), but Jang-geum wouldn’t have any of it. She took some of the special rice home and dried it over her fire. When she ran into the invalid’s room and gave her the rice, her face fell when the woman uttered that it was close, but it wasn’t the rice she was looking for. A couple days later, the nursemaid was still hanging on, and suddenly the workman from the seashore arrived with the properly dried rice, bringing the nursemaid to tears because she could now die in peace.
Jang-geum learned a valuable lesson that day: that not every problem can be solved by being an over-smart busybody; for some problems, there is no solution but letting things be (gazing through the bars of my Weberian iron cage, I can’t accept this philosophy). Jang-geum used her increased wisdom to plead with Lady Han to let her resume her old place in the kitchen. Lady Han relented, not for the least of reasons that she was now engaged in a vicious battle with Lady Choi over who would be come Head Lady of the Royal Household. The competition had been put on hold for some reason (again I missed a couple episodes), but that all changed when the diabetic Chinese envoy showed up at the royal court. Lady Han refused to serve the envoy sweets, knowing that it could kill him. For this, she was dragged away and put into some sort of solitary confinement. Jang-geum stood up for Lady Han and pleaded with the envoy to let her serve him food that would be good for him. She even agreed to the deal that, if the envoy ate her nutritious vegetables for five days and didn’t feel any better, he could have her put to death. I say she agreed to this judgment, but her agreement came with facial contortions of misgiving and worry that were the cue for the credits to roll.
That brings us up to episode 19. To avoid overloading the blog, I’ll post now—and leave you wondering whether Jang-geum succeeds in satisfying the envoy, saving her own life and redeeming Lady Han, or if the evil Lady Choi prevails in her plans to serve the envoy a sweet and greasy Feast of Imperial Chinese Household, showing how bland and distasteful Jang-geum’s vegetable dishes truly are—and ensuring our heroine’s execution!
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