From Hong Kong to Beijing (2023)

Another victim of the Ruco Chan curse

First 10 episodes:

So far this drama is good, and I know for a fact Ruco Chan is not going to die at the end of this drama because it is a comedy first and other drama is secondary.

I’ll provide a more thorough review once this drama is completed, but overall this is very funny and has some great moments in it. The one thing that seems to ruin the immersion for me is the blatant advertising of products in the show. Usually it is just Sea Horse Furniture’s mattresses that ate advertised, this is fine as it doesn’t get in the way of the plot, but here there have been so many products advertised it made me go “Why that? Why there?” For example, I never thought I would see Po Chai Pills being advertised so clearly, and yet here it is shoved in our faces. These product placements make me shake my head.

Hopefully this show has a good ending! Let’s wait and see!

Update after completing the show:

I feel like drinking Malvira wine for some reason. If you're happy, Malvira. If you're sad, Malvira. If you're horny, Malvira. Man, they really go a little nuts with this product placement in the drama that I really do not want to see another Malvira bottle of wine for as long as I live.

I swear TVB is out for Ruco's blood because they decided to give him this role where he is a massive useless idiot. I don't understand why his recent dramas all have great starts but have extremely lacklustre endings as the drama slowly deteriorates from something potentially good into something so full of s**t. I am calling this the Ruco Chan curse because all of his recent dramas, where he has been the main male lead, have been this way. Will his run of nonsense end eventually?

The story starts off with Ruco being this really lucky guy who had gotten to his current work position out of pure good luck, but due to a bad financial decision by his wife played by Jinny Ng, they lose all of their money, so they both decide to go to Beijing to start over with Ruco as a CEO for a company there. He is later joined by his siblings, played by Tony Hung and Joey Thye, but then there is a huge plot twist where it turns out he is not really the CEO of the company but a target of a elaborate revenge plot by ex-colleague played by Marco Lo, who wanted revenge against Ruco because Ruco's luck resulted in Marco losing everything in Hong Kong. Ruco is then tasked with a redevelopment project to turn an abandoned park into a 500 million RMB cash generating area within a year or there would be consequences.

This was quite a good start and the premise was full of potential, but it was completely wasted. The main characters all bounce off each other well at the beginning, and many of the jokes and antics were truly hilarious that made the first half of the drama easily 8-9 out of 10. And then - of course - the Ruco curse hit, and it hit hardcore.

We get introduced to a girl played by Jacky Cai that Ruco once met many years ago for one day, ONE DAY, where they shared the day and it made Jacky smitten with him. She asked him to return a year later to meet up again but he was unable to make it due to having stomach problems, so a lot of the drama after they meet again was basically her secretly pushing Ruco to do things that would drive a wedge between him and his wife. She clearly wants to take the wife's place; she even imagines being with Ruco, marrying him and having his son, so how more obvious can it be that she wanted to get with him? This, of course, make his wife suspicious and grow enormously jealous, but Ruco keeps hanging out with Jacky despite his wife actively showing her distaste, and do you know why? Because Ruco is useless!

After being given the task of turning the abandoned park into a 500 million RMB cash generating area within a year, Ruco was unable to find any investors at all. We watch as he hopelessly tries to get investors, so it ends up with Jacky helping him out the entire time, getting him all these investors and big brands to sign up to the project, so clearly Ruco had no choice but to keep her closeby. What I found really stupid was that right near the end when things were really bad between Ruco and his wife, we find out Jacky had been fired from her consultant job because she had been spending too much time helping Ruco out, so what did she do? She just ups and left, leaving a note saying good luck to Ruco and his wife after all the damage she had caused, and realising she would never win Ruco's heart. What the actual f?

Ruco's onscreen wife Jinny also has her own romance issues as well outside of being jealous. Due to some circumstances, she ends up meeting her pop idol played by Edmond Leung, and suddenly ends up competing in a singing competition where he is one of the judges. He becomes her mentor later as well, causing Ruco to become insanely jealous. When we think things get really bad, Jinny makes the decision to give up the competition for the sake of her husband and family, which I thought was a huge move in trying to save her marriage. This makes Ruco looks like a huge a**hole, even after he decides to tell her she can continue to compete. This doesn't mean Jinny doesn't have her bad moments, she made a couple of romance analogies that made no sense. The one that triggered me the most was her explaining how marriage was like having a song list of favourite songs and when you get married you can only listen to one song on repeat for the rest of your life. No, marriage is not like a song, that is nonsense because a song only describes one emotion at that moment in time, marriage to a person you love is full of many emotions and memories.

There were many other romance issues the other characters encounter, but Ruco and Jinny's issues pretty much takeover the 2nd half of the drama that it becomes all encompassing and it just drags the show down into the dirt. And that guy Marco Lo who wanted to get revenge, did he do anything else later in the drama to make things interesting? Maybe try to undermine Ruco to spice up the drama? No! He pretty much just scolds Ruco in a few company meetings, and right at the end of the drama - out of nowhere - decides to be nice to Ruco and help him out. That came out of nowhere and made no sense, a massive waste of potential tension between these characters.

And the final scene... oh man. Tony Hung gets the final scene as he finally admits his feelings for his friend and confesses to her, and she agrees. Yay, everybody is happy and they start hugging, then the entire family appears, the camera zooms out to see the entire family but one person is missing. Ruco and Jinny are back together, Tony Hung gets with his girl, but the sister Joey Thye was all alone despite getting with her man. Why was the guy missing? Wasn't this a full family shot to end the drama? Why was one person missing?

Please stop this TVB.

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