The Song of Glory (2020)

No good deed goes unpunished.

This is a melodramatic story about a badass assassin Shen Lige and Liu Yikang, titled Prince Pengcheng who was best known for reforms that heralded a golden age for the short lived Liu Song dynasty (420-479). In real life, Liu Yikang was probably a dull and dusty fellow who promulgated legislation and ably shouldered the burden of tedious administrative tasks artfully dodged by his brother the allegedly sickly emperor Wen. In this romanticized account, Pengcheng falls in love with the beautiful and deadly Lige, who helps him drain the swamp and weed out a bunch of corrupt and rebellious aristrocrats who are disenfranchised by his reforms.

Shen Lige (Li Qin) must be one of the strongest, most badass, most lethal and most gorgeous female leads of c-drama. She makes a grand entrance and her character is awesome up until the bitter end and is the strongest selling point of this drama. Li Qin's acting is so superb her Lige is powerful, engaging, fierce yet still feminine and her expressions are nuanced and emotionally on point. Initially I was not convinced on her pairing with Qin Hao - he is obviously quite a bit older and her "lao tou"/old dude jokes did not help. But Qin Hao is a very compelling actor and in no time, I was rooting for Lige and Pengcheng. While their chemistry is not sizzling or deeply passionate, they are both smart characters that are clearly on the same wavelength and make a formidable team. That said, I feel an actor of Qin Hao's caliber was somewhat wasted on a role such as Pengcheng - he would have made a far more compelling villlain. I also did not like the noticeable skin smoothing they did on him which obscured his micro expressions.

All of the characters in this drama are just simply fantastic. How can you not love Prince Jingling who has the best, most subtly comical facial expressions? Or the completely adorable, wholesome loving, humble devoted goodness that is Shen family? Or the mischevious Zijin and Lige's loyal assassin fraternity? There are so many wonderful, well written characters that are charismatically portrayed and interact with so much chemistry and rapport that you can't help falling in love with them. Guard your hearts carefully though because one of the key takeaways of this drama is that no good deed goes unpunished and compassion and mercy is repaid with treachery and murder. Of course we can't expect all of the characters to survive but there have to be enough survivors to keep us invested in the drama and this one barely makes it. The deaths also have to be "good deaths" at the hands of a worthy opponent and not at the hands of say a puny mutant ninja flying cockroach.

Very much like its predecessor Weiyoung, the villains in this drama are quite enjoyable almost cartoonlike caricatures with very dramatic, somewhat comical facial expressions. Lu Yuan is an excellent, overpowering villian. And Consort Sun relishes hamming it up so much at many points she appears on the verge of cracking up with laughter. However, there are also too many repetitive petty villains with cliché motives and too many lives. The main villains and in particular the mastermind in black (whose identity was obvious quite early on) are interesting characters that should have been better developed instead of digressing into sibling rivalry, green eyed monster and excessive bitch slapping tropes. Unfortunately, the villain spotlight was hijacked by the very pretty Shen Leqing, a well acted but two dimensional character with pedestrian motives. I guess in life and in art, men can see better than they can think.

The story writing is where this exhausting melodrama falls down hard. The plot is predictable and smacks of Weiyoung. Heavy suspension of disbelief is needed because from the get go, a lot of things that don't make sense happen. I rolled my eyes so often that I can no longer tell if my right and left eyeballs have exchanged sockets! But the acting is so delightful and there are so many thrilling moments that for the first 20+ episodes I went with it. At some point however, the excessive plotting and the rollercoaster ride of emotional ups and downs as beloved characters are mowed down with reckless impunity while petty villains survive against improbable odds becomes simply too much. The drama peaks in the mid-30s after the most well developed villain is felled and it further loses momentum after some of my best loved characters are gratuitously killed off. It limps through some repetitive sub-plots towards an unexpectedly good ending which I almost missed because I wasn't that motivated to finish. I find the writers of this drama guilty of writing under the influence of alcohol. They tortured my eyeballs with cruel and reckless depravity and are hereby sentenced to writing commercials for the next 15 years. The surprisingly fitting ending qualifies them for probation after 8.0 years, which is also my rating for this drama.

There seems to be some confusion over the ending so I am copying my a spoiler tagged explanation of what happened from the threads to the comment section of this review.

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Too high expectations leads to disappointment

The story is about a Prince who is trying to make reform to government and is meeting constant objections from the ministers who are not happy with him changing the status quo. His only option is to align himself with the Shen family and get their massive military power as his backing. Good thing for this is the previous Emperor has left an edict bestowing marriage between the 4th Prince and the daughter of the Shen family.

The FL (Li Ge) is an orphan raised by a wondering Shifu. She, her sisters, and brothers were raised and trained as assassins that go after Lords and ministers who ignore the blight of the common people and enrich themselves. To this object, their biggest target, and the worst of the of them all, the one born into privilege and power but is weak and corrupt, who only knows how to protect these ministers, is a Prince. To be more precise it is the 4th Prince Peng Cheng.
Hence the drama starts with our assassins, acting as a dance group, get themselves invited to said Prince’s place for the Consort Dowager’s birthday. Here is where my problem starts, the lead assassin Li Ge(Li Qin) is on the roof behind where the Royal family is sitting, the rest of the female assassins are on stage performing. You’d expect, for someone who has been preparing to kill this target for well over a year, would take this opportunity when they were distracted watching the dance and everyone is relaxed to jump down from the roof and shoot him straight. No- what happened was while she is up on the roof, the female dancers threw away their costumes and shot arrows toward the stage the Royal Family was sitting at. What happens when something like this happens? Obviously, everyone comes to attention, guards rushed in and surrounded the Royals, and this is when the FL decided to jump off the roof and shoot her arrow. It is so illogical, I caught myself screaming “why didn’t you shoot from the roof?!” at my unsuspecting screen. I was upset to have met such an outrageous thing in the first episode. But I will say this, if you leave common sense out the door, the entire assassination performance was eye catching. As you may have guessed, the year-long planned assassination went south real fast. We see a lot of fighting scenes here; I am a sucker for those, and they were pretty good.
Anyway, after the failed assassination a lot more story went on and I met my second problem. FL was trying to ambush and kill a minister that has killed one of her sisters in front of her in that faithful night, and while she is at it she runs into, you guessed it, 4th Prince in disguise. I should point out that said disguise is a mustache. Not a full-blown beard but a thin mustache. And FL did not recognize him. They made such a big show in the first episode about how they planned this assassination for a year and our lead assassin did not recognize her target because he had a mustache. [Sigh] May I ask how they had planned this assassination? Did they not do any recon? Were they told to shoot at the one sitting in the middle? How the bloody hell do you not know what the person you are supposed to kill looks like?
You will consistently run into illogical plots/scenes like the ones I point out above throughout the drama. Once or twice may be annoying but it’s forgivable if there are other exceptional stories to make up for it. But this drama neither had the sense to limit its flaws nor did it have the solid interesting plot to fall back on.

You might say I’m nitpicking, but I assure you I’m not. This drama, which is studded with talent, suffered from truly poor script. Honestly, it devolved fast with its regurgitated plot, the never-ending cycle of set-up, getting caught, getting free, getting set up again, crying, getting free, getting set up again. The plot became unoriginal, the dialogue unimaginative, the scenes draggy and the whole drama became riddled with clichés. I at one point even watched a few of the episodes without subtitles, since I was confident, I would not miss anything important. To add to this, one of the major antagonist was a “love rival”. Imagine writing in a harem drama in this setting. There are a million dramas with this same plot already, why would you bring such cliched story to a drama that should have focused more on the politics and the reforms and basically anything else especially since the FL was supposed to be a badass.
The top acting could not save this drama. I mean what can these actors do with such truly abysmal writing. They are actors not miracle workers - to be fair I count it as a miracle I watched it this far and it’s all credit to their performance.

Another issue is the palace design. This created a great disconnect with me. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautifully designed. It had pools in the rooms, huge sculptures, and I would have been impressed with it if it was a wuxia drama. However, for something that is supposed to be a historical, this did not have the beauty and authenticity of ancient Chinese architecture. I like the feeling of ancient palace designs, the aura, and the mood it sets - this one did not do that for me.
As for music, they had one. There was one song that played on a loop through the entire drama. Nice song, but it was just that one. They may have thrown in another one in there, but I did not notice.

As if I didn’t have my share of issues with this drama, they went a step further and added split screens (side-by-side shots) like a music video. If they had done a fade-out shot, I would have thought I transmigrated back to the early 2000s.

I had such a huge expectation for this drama and what a letdown it was.

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Amazing Acting | Brilliant Ending

This is the story of Liu Yikang, a real historical figure in the Liu Song Dynasty (420-479 AD). It was one of the most tumultuous eras of Chinese history. The aristocrats were wealthy and powerful, and the commoners were poor and suppressed. Parricides, filicides and fratricides were rampant. Historically Liu Yikang’s life ended tragically, killed by his own beloved and trusted brother The Emperor. The drama stops short of his tragic end (fortunately or unfortunately?).

In this drama, a lot of the events and villains are fictionalized. Though Liu Yikang (played by Qin Hao) is a real figure historically, his beloved wife Shen Li Ge (played by Li Qin) and her family are fictional. Despite their more than 10 years age difference, Qin Hao and Li Qin have very courteous chemistry together as a couple as there are no passionate kisses nor hugs (just a peck on the lips or a lean on the shoulder). Nonetheless, such chemistry doesn’t reduce our enjoyment of the plot and story. There are quite a few nail-biting close calls and frustrating near misses scenes throughout the drama, keeping the viewers sitting at the edge of the couch and captivating our full attention.

The drama starts with a bang, introducing Shen Li Ge as a beautiful and talented assassin. Li Qin is so beautiful that she looks amazing in every costume and hairstyle that she wears. As a fearless badass, Li Qin is convincing without losing her elegance. Her acting is on the notch.

Qin Hao is a veteran actor. He has the charisma as a powerful ruler. At the beginning of the drama, many viewers complain that Qin Hao is too mature to play the role. But Liu Yikang was exactly as this age during the time of the story. As the story develops, Qin Hao melts together as the Liu Yikang character; he gives a very convincing performance.

Both Shen Li Ge and Liu Yikang are facing a faceless mastermind. Despite taking down various powerful aristocrats who conspire to hurt them and their family, the plot continues to the very end, eventually revealing the identity of the mastermind behind all the destruction and killings, and his motivation for doing so. Though going through a lot of hardship and heartaches, Shen Li Ge and Liu Yikang combat the villains hand in hand and continue to outwit them with their determination and conviction.

This drama is filled with tropes, such as evil sister, falling off cliff (but not dead), loss of memory, accidentally kisses etc. There are also multiple unnecessary deaths just to make the characters martyrs. Many of the logic is illogical with flaws and plot holes. By the end of the story, there are still multiple unexplained loose strings.

I believe the visual director has had a field day with the palace décor. This is the first time I have ever seen such European inspired décor of the palaces with giant statues and water fountains. The mother consort’s clothing even matches her walls and furniture which may be a bit on the wild side of the imagination.

The ending is very typical of Chinese dramas – open to interpretations. Overall, if you like slimy infallible villains who always seem to outsmart the good guys, you may find this an exciting watch. If you’re an emotional person and have a tendency to invest deeply into likable characters, you may be in for some heartaches. For me, this is quite a good watch mainly because of the two main characters, Shen Li Ge and Liu Yikang and the fine acting of the actors.

With my epiphany which came one day later after the final episode, I find the ending brilliant. This is a drama strongly recommended (despite the tropes).

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Greater than the sum of its parts

After an emotional roller coaster ride and having invested so much time into watching this drama over the past month or so, it's only fair that I write something about it.

Story - Based on a real-life historical figure (google Liu Yi Kang), with added spice by the scriptwriters, this is a semi-biographical and mostly fictional story about love and betrayal, court intrigue and political rivalry.

Acting - Superb and on point by every single member of the cast. You will learn to adore the protagonists and despise the antagonists with equal tenacity (and savagery).

Casting - The cast looked neither out of place nor out of depth. Kudos to the production team for selecting the right people for their respective roles.

Music - Personally felt drawn to the closing credits' song (which is also the main love theme), Hiding My Heart by Bibi Zhou. BGM is generally dramatic with certain tender moments throughout.

Overall:
What it is - Serious and intense, strong and courageous FL, intelligent and stoic ML, clever and ruthless villains, excellent martial arts choreography, and probably the central theme of love based upon mutual understanding and respect that ultimately culminates in sacrifice for the greater good.

What it isn't - Light-hearted drama, weak and silly protagonists and antagonists, poorly executed action sequences, bad CGI, monotonous dialogue

-SPOILER ALERT-

This drama had a really good start, the first 20 episodes were outstanding. Action-packed and fast paced.

Then it slowed down in the next 10 episodes to focus on court machinations. Plenty of dialogues and unraveling of plots.

The following 10 episodes picked up the pace against the backdrop of full scale war.

Finally catastrophe, in the closing stages, resulting in a hugely tragic and dissatisfying end.

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This drama is very good for the most part, for so many eps. I have to say that the ending was such a let down. I will go to more details about it laters.

Story: Female lead Shen Li ge is an assassin. The male lead Peng chang wang is a king of a city.( to me his identity his kind of confusing... hes not the official king yet he still has officials met with him regarding poltics etc) The female lead wants to kill Peng Chang wang , but she fails and one of her friends die. Female lead takes on her identity to become her , because her dying wish was for her to find her long lost parents. Female lead finds warmth through her new family. At the same time the " younger daughter" who isnt blood related ( not 100% is whether she isnt/or not) gets jealous for all the attention Shen li ge gets. The person that killed her friend aka evil dude is named Lu Yuan. Shen Li ge is trying to do everything she can to get him to face the punishment he deserves, and at the same time the King ( peng chang wang ) is also trying to collect the evidence of all the evil of Lu Yuan. so the female and male lead becomes friends without knowing each other identity. Shen Li ge ends up marrying the king , and she changes the way she views of him.

one big main focus is encounters with Lu Yuan, trying to collect his evidence. Shen Li ge is so bad ass , I love her. There are many fighting scenes with her and Lu Yuan. She is a true heroine. I love her character. The king is also really kind, smart. He loves Shen Li ge a lot. Second focus is on war/ trying to get the government into a new system.

The actor that played Lu Yuan did a splendid job of being evil !! He was such a despicable character. On the other hand i couldn't. stand the evil sister....

There were also some super super heart wrenching scenes!!! oh my gosh , my heart. Made me cry sooo much !!!

Besides the story there was always this mystery person/ character who was the mastermind behind shen li ge becoming an assassin. He was the one that manipulated and tried to control people / and he obviously didn't like the king . The story behind him was finally unfolded in the last five episodes but I felt that it was such a disappointment. the reason behind why he did all the evil control was like wth?? Also the ending was kinda rushed and was like what? why ? the whole story barely talked about the actually king king , but in the end he sends a decree .. and make that kind of a ending ( dont want to ruin too much)

For 53 episodes it was over all pretty good!

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Waste of time

At first I enjoyed this drama, there were some twists and turns and then it became quite repeated and predictable to the extent where I was just skipping many scenes. Although, you can tell what will happen next but it was still a bit enjoyable until they decided to “fix” the viewer’s prediction with an awful ending in a failed attempt to throw people off their tail. My expression at the end wasn’t of sadness but was “Is this what i spent time watching for many hours?”
It’s time to start checking the end of these dramas so you don’t get disappointed. I’m done, it would have have been slightly acceptable if it was just a sad ending but it turned out to be unreasonable. This drama is a total waste of time. If you want to waste your time and piss yourself off at the end...then, watch it.

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Good Start but Failed to Finish in All It's Glory

This show had so much potential! It started out interesting. The FL was a force to be reckoned with and the ML was interesting. Even with the plot contrivances to allow the leads to interact, I was ready to suspend my belief because I'm a sucker for court intrigue. The first 10-15 episodes were well-paced and kept my interest. However, after a certain development between their relationship at the latter part of the series, I thought the plot began to drag and I felt like it was going in circles. The palace intrigue no longer became intriguing but more like plot check-ins. Characters who were supposed to be smart weren't as smart as I thought. I felt some characters regressed as the story moved along. Even the plot twists did not feel earned because it sometimes came out of the left-field; there was no previous indication of such plans that made the viewer. I lost interest but forged on because I wanted to see the bad guys get their comeuppance, which literally took forever because apparently they were all made of Teflon. So many random things happened that honestly did not move the plot along or made much difference at the end, but was put there for drama's sake. And the ending was "no comment."

**Disclaimer: This review is my personal opinion. If you love the show, more power to you friend! I'm not a hater or a stan. I'm just a Xennial drama watcher who has watched too many dramas and have become too picky for my own good! Much love.

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Romance of Li Ge and Yi Kang

SOG was one of the few romance costume dramas with an actual love and romance story and chemistry between the ML and FL actors. The ML and FL started off, not on the same page, but the romance kicked in quickly, and maintained the momentum.

The writer and director should have kept the number of villains at two, and cut the drama length by 20%. Grand Consort stayed too long in the story line, backstabbing and front-stabbing Yi Kang, and stabbing herself in the process. Given the attention to detail and filler throughout the drama, the writer and director should have done a better job wrapping up the story. Instead, they gave us yet another ambiguous costume drama ending.

Cons: Too many villains, fillers and flashbacks, MV scenes, disruptive singing, editing, drama length
Pros: Acting and costumes

Favorite characters:
Shen Li Ge
Peng Cheng Yi Kang
San Bao
Shen Ting Zhang
Shen Zhi
Shen Feng
Xie Yun Zhi
Huo Yun
Wang Zi Jin
Chen Shao Xun

Least favorite characters:
Grand Consort Sun - villain
Wan Er - villain
Xiao Xin - Li Ge's maid
Madam Shen
Xue Qiu - villain
Lu Yuan - villain
Shen Le Qing - villain
Wang Mi An - villain

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I THINK this drama is pretty cool and really interesting I lobve the girl lead she is clever and not this cute naive girl lead she is a badass I serisouly think she has talent in acting she acts pretty good,I think the story is pretty good.

I just hope it has a happy ending right now i'm serioul,y waiting for ep 25,The lead boy is okay I'm not saying he is bad at acting I think he did I quite good job ,i like the character and personality of the main male lead And For me is worth to watch.
This drama is airing so you can't know if is worth to watch the whole drama I just hope the rest episodes get interesting and doesn't go down the hill, So YH

edit:
I think this drama started pretty good but through the episoded went abit down I can't really tell exact what I didn't like because I watch it airing and I had to wait for the episodes which somrtimed I didn't really remeber what happened last time ,the ending was abit dissapontibg but realistic but could of been better but at least it is a happy ending From what I remember I will not rewatch it again but don't regret wathcing I still thunk that the FL dad and brother didn't had to die:(
I'm kind of disappointed in this drama started pretty good but it went down the heel

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I don't have enough patience for this.

It's weird because I really enjoyed Wei Young which is from the same writer, but this one is a huge disappointment for me.

The leads' acting and chemistry were great but right from the start, I felt like the pacing was very slow and the plot was quite repetitive. After 33 episodes, none of that really changed. I found myself in an endless cycle of one-dimensional bad people being bad, the leads (allegedly) being poisoned in every other episode, *spoiler alert* rising from the dead and back to beating bad people's asses. I was so sick of all the fake deaths that I reached the point of wanting everyone to die for real. Except Jing Ling, maybe. We couldn't have done it without him. The amount of times he saved everyone was ridiculous ...

I rarely watch shows with 50+ episodes, but when I invest so much time, I want to be captivated by the story throughout the whole thing and that was just not the case here. I'd not completely advise you against watching this, just know that it's gonna be a long ride with a lot of tropes.

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Really Addicted Something Bad

I spotted it on Viki and I actually liked the simple thumbnail for it and I told myself I will give it a try. Yeah, well after that I can safely say the rest is history.

Now, I am not going to comment on technical stuff, script issues etc... because I tend to look at the overall picture that being the running story and the characters.

That being said, now I can only say that I LOVE IT! Never saw that coming, but OMG I love that story and the two main leads. It is nice to see that Lige is a total badass and I also like that though she has been train as an assassin, she does have a moral compass. That is key in terms of her character development and relationship with the male lead Prince Peng Cheng. I do like him, he is lovely and any scene with the two of them has become my happy place putting a huge smile on my face.

I hate with a passion that Grand Consort, that main bad guy the Protector General and that little adoptive sister. I have to give it to the actors because hating them also makes me happy.

Frankly great show! Cannot wait to see the rest.

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