Western expectations of instant divine omnipotence collapse in the story of the Jade Emperor. This episode reconstructs his biography from a crown prince known for philanthropy in the Kingdom of Pure Felicity, through his abdication to cultivate the Tao on a cliff for 1,750 eons of 129,600 years each, and then 3,200 trials of roughly three million years apiece, to his victory over a demon who completed only 3,000 trials and had already overrun a complacent heavenly pantheon.

Once in charge, his record as an administrator gets a hard look: the clay humans deformed by a sudden rainstorm, the four dragons imprisoned under mountains for bringing rain without authorization and transformed into the Yellow, Yangtze, Amur and Pearl rivers, and the Milky Way summoned to separate his daughter the Weaver Girl from her mortal cowherd husband. The hosts ...