A Hot Mess
This is a great drama to watch when you're in the mood for a classic cliche, trashy, garbage fire, trainwreck c-drama. Sometimes, after I watch a /really/ good drama, I have to watch a couple trash ones to bring my standards and expectations back down. This was a needed palette cleanser.Here, every character has a room temperature IQ. Logic and reasoning are no where to be found. Not a single attempt was made to incorporate the PPL in a classy or subtle way. The subtitles are in shambles. I spent a significant amount of braincells trying to figure out if Zhang Tian Ai was wearing some sort of wig or not. It's a mess.
But I finished all 24 episodes, so I guess it's my type of mess.
And! Thanks to this drama, I get to say that Qu Chu Xiao has played both my favorite male lead, Zhang Wan Sen :'), and my least favorite male lead, Chen Yan >:(. Wonderful.
PLOT:
The story is told through Hai Tang's omniscient perspective - she's written a memoir/novel that recounts certain events in her life. Its title is "My Friend Miss Chen Bai Lu" (also this drama's native title). As such a title would suggest, the storyline here mostly focuses on Chen Bai Lu and Chen Yan. She is poor (but was once rich) and hardworking, while he's the rich playboy type. Normal stuff. Hai Tang has little narration monologues here and there, but they aren't subtitled on iQiyi so I'm not sure what kind of context they add.
I can't help but wonder if this was adapted from a webcomic or maybe a webnovel. How the scenes flow and the logic (or lack thereof) of storyline really give me this impression. The happenings in this drama are really quite divorced from reality, in that special kind of ridiculous way that you see in cheap c-webcomics/novels.
The basic "story loop" is like - misunderstanding -> fight and separate -> forgive and get back together OR fight some more -> repeat. It's Chen Yan's misunderstanding 99.9% of the time and neither of them will explain themselves properly. Many things just don't make sense - from the ways the characters react to things, to their general behavior, to every single plotline. The makjang/dog's blood levels are very high, but it gets pretty boring in the last few episodes.
There's plenty of kissing scenes though, if you like those.
The ending is.. open I guess. I suppose it's a sad one (nobody dies though...I think?), but I was kinda happy cause I really disliked Chen Yan by that point ahaha.
As far as characters go, Hai Teng is really your typical naive doormat c-drama heroine. Very kind but no backbone. She has an incredibly unbearable and shrill best friend who is an absolute crazy person and a total Karen.. is that redundant? Yang Ku An exists.
Chen Bai Lu is actually kinda refreshing; compared to Hai Tang, she's on the colder, mellower, and more mature side (relative to everyone else). For the most part, I liked her character, though she is just as dumb as the rest.
Chen Yan is a really...greasy, childish character. He's embarrassing and really pissed me off at some points (the sheer audacity this character has omg). He has some cute moments though, and his bulky old person phone amused me (idk why).
ACTING:
Acting is a solid OK from everyone, nothing too offensive aside from Zhang Tian Ai's dubbing.
I watched this because of Qu Chu Xiao. After being both emotionally victimized and impressed by his acting in Shining For One Thing, I wanted to see him in a lighter role. This was his first drama, so he is a bit green and a little uneven here. Likewise with Chen Ya An. Their acting is overall fine (some scenes are very good even), just a little green.
OST:
Bog-standard BGM stuff. Nothing noteworthy. There's just two OST tracks (I think???) and I don't remember how either of them go.
CONCLUSION:
This was a solid hate-watch. Despite the nonsense plot and the occasionally scuffed editing, this was surprisingly watchable for me (though the last couple episodes drag). I don't know how or why. I struggled to rate this because while it is very lacking on a technical level, I was pretty engaged and did have some fun watching.
Can't help but feel like the director was a bit of a perv though...
Was this review helpful to you?
