This drama sends SUCH a bad message. I know many Asian dramas have a similar narrative, but I've never seen any that are anywhere near as irredeemable as this one. It's fairly normal to have a rich, jerk of a guy, one the drama tries to guide the audience into thinking is just "misunderstood". Then along comes a girl who, through her love and other redeeming qualities, helps the guy change and turn into a great person. This drama, however, takes the jerk aspect far beyond normal, into seriously abusive. There are so many warning signs that he is dangerous, but the drama just treats it all like it's normal, just entertainment! He tries to control her by giving her a curfew, telling her who she can and can't hang out with, stalking her when she does go out without his permission, he has a horrible temper, both towards her and others, he forcibly grabs her wrists (hard) on multiple occasions, forcibly kisses her (hard) also on multiple occasions, constantly berates her verbally - and all of this BEFORE they are even dating! Not to mention that he puts a hit out on her until money changes his mind, that his actions indirectly cause the death of someone close to her AND that he at one point gets her drunk, undresses her and sleeps with her (they leave it unclear as to whether he was attempting to fool her into thinking there was sex involved or if there was actual sex involved). They totally glossed over that last one, like "potential rape? who cares? let's make a joke out of it, it'll be funny!" As someone who lives in China and has seen firsthand the naivety of some Chinese young women as well as a wider acceptance of domestic abuse (compared to America), I find it really disturbing the message that this show sent to young girls. It's like they were saying "Don't worry that he treats you like trash and tries to control you - he really is a good guy underneath that and truly loves you! Just persevere through all this abuse and he'll eventually change into the great guy you know he could be!" I'm sorry, but no - the message they should be sending is that guys like that turn into guys who beat their wives and deserve to go to jail.

Read More

Incestuous?

I watched this, partially b/c I like Xu Kai and Zhao Lu Si, but also b/c I was hoping it would NOT actually be the incestuous story the description made it out to be. From the get-go, they had 15 year-old brother Jun Xi looking at his little sister like he was (romantically) in love with her. And that was BEFORE any of the characters realized she was switched at birth. Like, what the actual crap? Are we going for a Jaime-Cersei vibe here? It is so weird to have a young teenage boy be in love with his sister. And it's not much better to have them fall in love when they're adults, after the truth has been revealed and they've been apart for some years. I mean, it's still very incestuous feeling; they grew up believing they were brother and sister! And then I was thinking (hoping), maybe it's one-sided and she'll reject him as soon as she realizes, but nope. Her little kiss on the clear plastic/glass while he was sleeping next to his painting made it clear that wasn't the case.

Reading through other reviews / comments, it seems like a lot of people were confused at the end as to who she married. I don't know why. People are also calling Xu Kai the male lead. Looking at the poster will clear both of those up right away (and if looking at the poster doesn't clear up who the main ML is, then just look at the cast list - Xu Kai is the second male listed.) The poster clearly shows Xu Kai off to the side while Zhao Lu Si and Jiao Rui in an embrace about to kiss. Plus, the wedding scene showed Han Tai (Xu Kai) walking her down the aisle, but he was essentially playing the role of a father in a Western wedding, handing her off to the groom, who was Jun Xi (Jiao Rui). Chinese weddings have adopted some things from Western weddings, but even when they've adopted certain customs, they often do them differently than we do. I think it's pretty clear she married the brother and then died, hence him walking alone through the tunnel.

Anyway, I gave this a 6, mostly because I know the actors are good actors and the production quality and music were OK, but the brother-sister love thing is just too weird for it to get any higher rating than that.

Read More

They make you hate the main characters from episode 1

I honestly don't know what the writers/show-runners were thinking. From literally the very first episode I was actively rooting against the main lead. It didn't take long to start disliking the others. How can they start off making you care about characters only to have the main characters come in from out of nowhere and ruin their lives / kill them, and then expect you to care what happens to those main characters later on? And no, this wasn't the sort-of redemption arc you see in Western shows like Game of Thrones - at least in GoT when a character turned from generally bad to sort of a sympathetic character, they had multiple episodes of character development in between. Not here, no. They just expect you to immediately be on the "good guys" side because they're the "good guys". I finished the show after several months - but only because I hate to leave shows unfinished. I honestly never cared about any of the mains or their romances or whether they lived or died. the sacrifices they made for each other throughout the show, the losses, etc. none of that hit home whatsoever because I just didn't care.

Not to mention the sets, the costumes, the actors, the lighting/makeup, none of it was top quality. I've seen that set used on multiple ROC-era shows and it never fails to look fake. I suggest don't waste your time.

Read More

Very slow to get started; ending dragged

It took me about 10 times longer to watch this show than it takes me to watch a typical drama. I was so bored the first few episodes that I went and watched several other dramas before coming back to it. Then about 5-6 episodes from the ending I got bored again and dropped it for another month and a half. Part of it was that I didn't like the female lead at all - she was super annoying and I personally think the actress is ugly (not just 'not pretty', but actually ugly). I didn't enjoy watching it because I got annoyed every time she was on-screen. Also, she was so stick thin that I think she must be anorexic - that's probably why she got the lead role, because Chinese people are so obsessed with thinness and think it's beautiful. But that thought kept distracting me and pulling me out of the story. It did pick up and get more interesting in the middle, but slowed down again towards the end. The last episode in particular dragged. The first half of the episode was sooooo boring, then they introduced a completely unnecessary and aggravating new plot element that made me wish I had just stopped watching after the first five minutes of the episode, then it dragged some more and then they wrapped up that plot element in the last thirty seconds. I don't know what the point of that entire last episode was. This was not the worst drama I've ever seen, which is why I'm not giving it a 2, but I don't think it deserves the 8.1 rating it currently has.

Read More

Disgusting/boring/tropes/too fast

I've been forcing myself to watch this for one reason only - it's on Disney+ and I want to encourage them to feature more Chinese content. However, I think I'm going to drop it and just turn it on, either on mute or while I'm in another room, to make it seem as if I'm watching it.

I honestly don't know what they were thinking when they made this show. First of all, they give into the Chinese stereotype that overweight people are stupid or evil. It's a very common stereotype in Chinese dramas - many shows that feature an overweight character show that person as being less intelligent than others, or super low-class/evil. But this one was more egregious about it than most shows. Two of the main characters in the first few episodes are overweight - one is mean (though she is eventually redeemed) and the other is a complete idiot. And they make a HUGE deal about what a complete idiot she is - the emperor even says he likes her because she's too stupid to be crafty so he doesn't need to be on his guard around her. I get that from a Chinese production - it's not right, but it's part of their culture so it's at least understandable - but Disney should know better.

Second, I think they must have been going for an asmr experience. They cranked up the sound on all the eating sounds - chewing, slobbering, slurping, etc. Plus they zoom all the way in to just show the person's mouth as they're making all these gross noises. I literally never knew eating could be so disgusting. I will admit, I'm not into asmr; I'm also not into cooking or food in general, but this show just completely grossed me out with all the noises and close-ups. That's the main reason I think I'm not going to watch the rest of it - I just can't take it any more. It honestly makes me queasy thinking about how gross and disgusting all the noises were.

Lastly, everything felt far too rushed. This is a short show and that's fine - I've seen short shows that do a great job exploring the few plot lines they have time for. In this one though, it's like they were trying to have as many story lines as a normal-length show, so they just cut corners to squish it all in the time they were allotted. It constantly felt like we were jumping forward and resolutions happened that just made no sense based on what we've seen. Like they were trying to show us that the train (metaphorically) went from country A to country B, but didn't show us any of the train ride in between, so it just made no sense. And it didn't help that they spent SO much time just showing food being prepared or eaten - no story line being advanced during that time whatsoever, just food.

In all, it felt like they were trying to do too many things and wound up doing nothing well. I hope that Disney will continue to make/partner with Chinese shows, I just hope they do a better job picking them out. If they were trying to test the water out on East Asian shows and see how it went, this was a terrible choice to do that with.

Edit: I finally watched the rest of this show (started skipping through all the eating and cooking scenes) and I'm dropping two stars off the already low 5 stars I originally gave it. By around episode 14, I HATED the female lead. Like I hated her just about as much as I've ever hated any antagonist, bad guy, villain in any show. I wanted her to die - and not just die, but suffer, for a long time, both physically and mentally/emotionally, before she died. And she's the main female lead, the person you're supposed to be rooting for? I still have no idea what the crud Disney was thinking when they approved this show for their first foray into Chinese drama. Not only did I hate her because of how she treated someone (trying not to get into spoilers), but she was just plain a badly written character. She was completely one-dimensional, with no character depth whatsoever. ALL she knew, all she could talk about, all she thought about, was cooking. On the one hand, her obsessive one-dimensionality reminded me of someone with autism that's got a special interest and just can't talk about anything else. But on the other hand, I'm autistic, and I'm not nearly that one-dimensional. I can talk about and think about more than my special interest. She's just a horrible character all the way around. (And I don't blame the actress - I blame the writers.)

Also, the ending(s) just made no sense at all. I get that the last episode was a special alternate ending, but what about the second-to-last episode? The very last 5 minutes or so they jumped from one thing to another with no explanation of how something that was done - and could never be undone - was suddenly, randomly, undone. It just made no sense at all.

Read More

This should have been a full-length series or a movie

The main issue with this drama is that it suffers from what they were trying to do. They essentially tried to stuff the same amount of scenes into a 10-minute episode as they would have in a full-length drama. Consequently, they had no time to really flesh out the characters or develop the plot. This made it seem like things were just randomly happening or characters had sudden and inexplicable change of hearts for no reason whatsoever. From the very beginning, they just jumped into new settings and new scenarios with no foreshadowing or development whatsoever.

Beyond that, they had pacing issues from trying to end every 10 minute episode on a cliffhanger of some sort. It almost always felt very forced - going from just a normal scene talking to suddenly some huge thing happening. And that happened over and over again every ten minutes. Everything was just so rushed. They had enough of a "skeleton" of a story that they could have padded it out into a normal length drama. They should have either done that or seriously tighten the story up and make it into a film, dropping multiple scenes. I don't know what on earth possessed them to make it this ridiculous length.

Aside from that, the FL's character was ridiculous - they were going for the foolishly comedic type of character. But I've literally never seen a drama make one of the main leads into this sort of over-the-top stupid characters. Normally when they have a character be that stupid for comedic effect, it's a side character. Or if they have the FL start off as naive and innocent, she doesn't stay like that for long. This girl's stupidity lasted at least 85% of the show - and when she finally started being normal it was a sudden switch because of their timing issues. What made it worse was that every other character was written and acted like this was a serious drama and then you have this one character, the FL, acting over-the-top stupid like this is a comedy.

Overall, it's a relatively short watch and it was a decent story with good costumes and sets, so if you want to watch a drama that doesn't require a time commitment, this is an OK drama.

Read More

Great writing, lots of intricate plot lines

This is by far one of the best historical dramas out there, especially if you're looking for something a bit more upbeat than the usual (and a bit less on the catty harem fights.) The story was great, with plenty of twists and turns, but the plot wasn't so complicated that it was hard to follow. The cast did a great job, the sets and costumes were beautiful, just everything about this drama was awesome. I originally started watching for Xu Kai, and while at first I was dismayed he wasn't getting as much screen time, the story was just so good with all the elevated story lines of the "secondary" characters, that I wound up not really minding.

Read More

I enjoyed this drama for the most part, though I think they could have done a lot better with it. The bare bones of the drama was a really interesting story/mystery, but I think they suffered from a low budget and poor writing. The main lead's wig took some getting used to - it came unnaturally far forward on his face, especially in front of and above his ears. And his look when he was "transformed" (trying to avoid spoilers, though I think you'll see it in the first episode) was downright ridiculous. They could have made him look cool like that, but instead it looked like a campy B-movie from the 1960s. The ladies' costumes looked like cheap prom dresses - some of them were pretty for sure, but they just looked cheap and not really historical (though I am willing to give some leeway to a fantasy drama when it comes to historical accuracy.) But one of the antagonists actually had a dress that had a visible zipper (a big white zipper) down the back of her dress! That's just tacky. None of the characters had many costumes - the leads had more than most, but even then I'm pretty sure for the male lead, they were reusing parts of his costume and just paring it with different overcoats. The female lead would commonly sleep in her clothes, which was weird, especially since they actually mentioned once that she had fallen asleep without changing her clothes, as if that wasn't a common occurrence. Probably my main issue though is that they dressed the dowager consort and did her makeup like a hooker. Like her makeup is really what made her look old - it looked like really heavy makeup from the 1980s or something. And they'd always put her in really cheap strapless/sleeveless dresses. She just looked ridiculous.

Story-wise, I don't think the writing was good at all. The story supposedly took place within just 2-3 months I think. But that first month, SO much happened that it just wasn't plausible that it was only a month. Someone got stabbed (deeply) in his left shoulder but was up and about with no problem within a short period of time, like it never happened. And someone died and they were all weeping and oh-so-sad but barely one scene later they were all laughing and joking and they never talked about him again. Stuff like that kept happening - I was literally shocked when an episode showed that it had only been a month - it just wasn't realistic that only a month had passed. The bare-bones of the story were great, the writers just didn't do a great job of fleshing the story out in a realistic way.

Whoever was in charge of consistency between scenes didn't do a great job. Like they'd have rushed away from town/home wearing one outfit and not carrying anything with them, but the next scene, while they're still away, they're wearing a different outfit? Or someone's hair goes from a mess to suddenly fixed nicely w/ accessories, despite being in the middle of nowhere with no one to do her hair.

Despite all that, I kept watching, mostly because the episodes were relatively short and there weren't that many of them. It was kind of a fun watch - there were some funny moments and some sweet moments. I certainly don't think it's the best drama I've ever watched, but I've also seen worse - I would have stopped watching if it was absolutely terrible. I mostly kept watching b/c I had seen a clip of a scene towards the end that made the drama look interesting, so I kept watching just to see how the mystery unfolded. It turned out to be a relatively minor part of the series, but I don't regret watching. It's fun if you have a little bit of time and enjoy fantasy stuff.

Read More

BORING - Main leads have all the chemistry of an old married couple

I hate to drop shows in the middle of watching them, but this drama is so boring, I don't know that I'll ever finish. I really had high hopes for the show given the high ratings, but now that I'm watching it, I can't even wrap my head around the fact that anyone would rate it highly. The main couple have all the romantic chemistry of an elderly married couple - which is not to say that they have no chemistry, at all but it's more like they're old and comfortable with silence vs. passionately falling in love. They don't even have anything in common, so when they do have a scene alone together, they don't have anything to talk about and there's a lot of awkward silences. I kept pushing through hoping it would get better. It did get slightly more interesting when a natural disaster happened and the focus was taken away from the main story line for a few episodes, but literally as soon as the two main characters had a decent-length scene together I got super bored and lost interest. I actually stopped watching during the scene where they confessed to each other - that's how boring it was. I tried to come back to it, but I'm not sure why I'm wasting my time trying to push through on this show. I honestly don't even care about any of the characters. The second leads aren't any better than the mains. The female reporter is a somewhat interesting character but the guy she likes is such a stupid character I can't stand watching him. And I'm not talking "stupid" as in a comedic character, nor am I talking "stupid" as in a naive in love character (tho he is that), I'm talking "stupid" as in genuinely low IQ. And that doesn't even make sense for his character, b/c he was in the army and now has a leadership position on the SWAT team. It would seem like you'd have to have a certain amount of intelligence to do that. Another reason I can't understand all the high ratings is that the show is full of all the tropes you expect to see in a romantic C-drama. Honestly, w/ a rating of 8.7, I feel like the show better be amazing - no tropes, novel characters and story lines, great acting, great chemistry, etc. This story has none of that. It's not the worst C-drama I've seen, but there's absolutely nothing interesting about it.

Read More