A Drama for Philosophers and Deep Thinkers

(I tried to not write spoilers, but to leave little cues that might also make your viewing experience more enjoyable if you read the review before you watch it.)
So, for me this a drama with so many layers, I don't even know where to start.

At the beginning all I could do was just go with the feelings it created. I think the cinematography and storytelling is so well done, you can just float by on the feelings it creates if you let yourself. Turn off the logical brain and just let yourself be there with these people, living and knowing they will soon die. The pain of it, and the twisted turns the human heart takes to the point of relief.

And that is the second layer. People do start acting weird when they hear the clock ticking, the existential dread causing people to go through all the stages of grief.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression/Grief
Acceptance
This can be seen in all the "restarts" the drama takes. Understandably this was boring for some, but it made a lot of sense to me. I don't want to get too spoilery, but if you have watched it, you can see these stages clearly.

Having had cancer-scare (it was something else, thank deity) myself this year, I understood Dong-Kyungs every emotion and reaction right of the bat. Pretending like it was nothing, getting angry, getting sad, worrying about the people you leave behind, getting upset by the injustice of it and even wishing they would forget about you.

Another layer was Myul Mang and Dong Kyungs journeys to leading fulfilled lives.Both are depressed and wish the world could just end, so they would not have to suffer ever again.
Both felt lonely and out of place, both processing their negative feelings about suffering in different ways, one by being apathetic and resentful and the other by being people pleasing and internalising pain to an unhealthy degree.
One needed to learn how to love, even when faced with the inevitable ending and the other needed how to be selfish, even when faced with the inevitable ending. To truly live means to grow, and to grow means to accept suffering and joy all the same.

What can be more poetic than having to learn to love Doom in order to surive?

Another layer to me was the religious aspects, of having two deitys, one the creator, one the destroyer and both have been made by and for man to explain the randomness of suffering. This is part of many religions. But especially Buddhism has this ethos of having to go through the same suffering in different ways until you accept fate and learn the lesson in this life and grow. Here again, the frequent repetition of their old patterns is explained. Especially the part in the middle where they can both can see what they would have been had they not grown through their pain and their joy in each other.

A whole other layer is hidden in the many symbolisms, the flower, the strange dialogues, pictures and books mentioned in the show. Admittedly, I had to watch every episode twice to really catch them, having been taken up with the emotion of it in the first run. I knew I was missing something, even though I am a philosophy nerd, but one of the more obvious ones was the Pinocchio reference (from puppet to man) and the butterfly metaphor (creeping, metamorphosis, which is basically dying and being rebuilt, and then flying). What I was missing, was that a lot of the dialogue and scenes are based on Nietzsches book "Thus spoke Zarathustra", because I haven't read it, duh. If you want to know more about this, I recommend this blog: https://mindmeltonabun-blog.tumblr.com/tagged/doom-at-your-service

Btw, I am not one to care about OSTs much, unless they are extraordinary, but here I really noticed how well it was cut together with what was happening in the scene.

And no, I don't want to talk about Ep.15. I never rate dramas on their wrap up episodes, because let's admit it, most of them are a mess.

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Hate all the office politics and second lead stories in your romance dramas?

Then this is drama for you. People in the comments are always like, where can I find the whole drama, the episodes are so short.
This drama is pure fluff, this is cotton candy and nothing else.
The episodes are short like some of those "summary of a drama" videos on Youtube. It feels like meeting your divorced friend and asking her what's up lately, and she is like, "Sooo I have this hot younger co-worker..." and you sit there like :flushed: . It is detailed enough, and delivers the dopamine on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

The acting is okay, it's clearly low budget, but supercute.

P.S.: I used this to practice my Mandarin, and it's good for that. Pronounciation is clear and you don't miss much of the story if you don't understand something.

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It's soo pretty, and that's about it.

I am going to be honest here, the reason I was eager to watch this, and the reason I stayed through the whole thing is the same: Wang Rui Chang. And also the other very good looking cast, the beautiful sets, the gorgeous costumes and stunning interiors. And simply because I like gorgeous longhaired men in pastel floaty dresses donning cute smirks.
It gave me bubbly happy feelings after a long day of adulting.
What I did not stay for was the plot. I found the beginning very funny and often giggled in between. A girl pretending to be a boy in an all boys dorm creates many a hilarious situation, especially if that girl writes romance novels about her new friends.
But here is what it is: trying to be feminist, but then the three besties, who apparantly have a GPS chip implanted on her save her ALL THE TIME. Friends and teachers ex machina is boring after a while. And there are so many plot holes.
But at least the side quests are resolved quickly and amiably, so after swooning over Wang Rui Chang acting the sh*t out of this poorly written script, you can sleep peacefully.

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The best mature drama I have watched so far (mild spoilers)

And here is why:
Acting: off the charts (Ep.9 has acting so good, I wasn't sure it was acting anymore.)
Chemistry: off the charts
Characters: So complex and real, that you start getting frustrated and almost bored, the way you would become frustrated and bored with yourself if you wanted to do the effing right thing, even though every cell in your body draws you to do the not-right-thing.

On the surface, this is a story about a smitten guy and a girl, who have kind of an affair, although they are really just in and out of the grey area. But underneath, it's about the kind of relationships adults in their thirties have. They aren't young, wild and impulsive and go-with-the-flow.
They settle, because otherwise they would be out of their personal timeline and then "Perfectlife.exe" would malfunction, and also responsibility for others feelings comes at you hard and heavy for people with a heightened sense of responsibility.
They do shady stuff, instead of breaking up, because in their mind they aren't a lot more than roommates or "family" as Kechuan puts it and it does not feel like betrayal.
They hold on to an empty shell of a relationship for way too long, because they invested too much time and energy and also don't quite know how to be alone.
They date someone, because they seem to fit perfectly into the slot they have drawn for "WIFE" in their 50 year lifeplan, not because they see into that persons soul and find it beautiful, but because they only see the endgoal of having a good, early pension and a, b, c, e... needs to happen before that.
They do whatever they like, with other consenting adults, but need to deal with the
They don't dance to the beat of their own drum, until someone hits their heart just right and it derails their life enough to see everything, every single layer of their life, from a different perspective and they wake up from their trance of eat.sleep.work.

This is a story about the hamster wheel society puts people on, and how you can get off it, all at once or in little steps.

And for anyone hating the ending: It's so real, and so true to WeiWei, because if you had been on the emotional rollercoaster she had been on, any woman as self-controlled and rational as she is would do the same.

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Want to get spooked, but not too much?

This is a fantastic series of short films, each of them being a eery folktale seemingly set around the same mountain in ancient China.
There are plenty of unfriendly and friendly ghosts, monsters and gumihos.
They are beautifully spooky, the kind of thing you would tell around a campfire. They are also beautifully filmed in almost all natural light and great cinematography, with an old forest and traditional houses as the backdrop. They were intriguing and kept you guessing, short as they were you also receive resolution quickly.

I am not usually one for spooky tales, but I wish there were more episodes of this. I watched them while eating lunch, and am sad I now have a boring lunchbreak again, this felt like a mini trip to the cinema.

It was a joy to watch, highly recommended to anyone.

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This is stay-up-all-night drama for me!

I have recently been in a slump, where I get bored after the first-kiss in dramas, but this one keeps the interest up throughout. There is no slump in the middle or end, and even the surrounding side-plot is relevant and interesting enough that I barely skipped ahead, where I skipped I did only because I needed to know what the FL and ML were going to do next. Also the chemistry is great and the acting is really good.
At it's heart, it is a story about personal growth and integration of suppressed personality traits.
Watch this for the heart fluttering and thrill:
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Entering Spoiler territory:
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The setting is interesting and for people who watch and read a lot of romance-plots there are so many hilarious moments, with a very self-aware FL. She is intelligent and witty throughout, even when all the people around her are cookie-cutter romance novel characters (which is so well done, like none of them have background stories, families or lives of their own) and I love how both the FL and ML are so different and more realistic in the "Real World" part of the story, because in the "Book World" the FL often acts outrageous, because she knows nothing can really happen to her, its a novel after all, nobody really gets fired or killed there, especially if you are the FL and ML is your overbearing, never-smiling CEO, who is only nice to the FL. Their actions are well-explained, which I always find important. FL acts crazy, because once in her life she can. ML acts rude, because we only see his "dark side".
But all of this makes sense in the end, because the ML, at death's door and having lived all his life to get recognition from his father, finally needed to face all of the things he had stuffed down in his psyche and FL also needed a playground to be fierce, crazy and brave in, living her life as timid corporate slave before, constantly needing to escape via romance novels. Afterwards both are changed and "whole", in themselves and together.

If for nothing else, watch it for Marcus Cheng playing He Tianxin as he melts away. Trust me, it's really good.

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An oldie, but goldie?

This drama is a classic romp, with a plot as old as Shakespeare, but it still has a fun appeal. This isn't that deep, it does what it sets out to do, romance, comedy and some intrigue.

This drama is actually difficult to rate, because I am very aware that it is an old drama, and somehow feels older than it actually is at the same time. I grew up in Asia, so I am aware that 22 years ago the standards for what can be done on screen, acting and technology were just still very different. But this drama in a sense feels like it is from the 60s, maybe because of the garish costuming. On the other hand, I find the sets really interesting, more realistic than all the current historical dramas that are filmed in the same film studio, this looks rather rough around the edges. This includes the lack of a filter, even though the quality of the cameras itself is kind of a filter... I loved that the General wasn't a wiley, handsome man with pale, flawless skin. No, with this guy you can believe he is a man that battles other men for a living, he also has the manners to boot.

Minus points for the sometimes drawn out side-plots, but since this is a simple, fun drama, at least you can color your nails or knit a sweater without missing too much?

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Watch this Drama! Every plotpoint makes sense in the overall narrative.

Long review: Even two months after I finished watching this, it lingers in my mind, I think about the plot, the side-characters, about the message. And yes, I think about the romance, of course, Song Wei Long has the longing wistfulness down pat.

But seriously, the romance is just a vehicle for the message in this drama, and so is every other side-character. They are all spinning around the question, if personal happiness is more important than coherence in society and the general satisfaction of your family.

Entering Spoiler-Territory:
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Every couple in this show approaches this question differently, and found different solutions.
They don't lead to unhappiness either. He Fan Xings Parents for example chose the first best option in each other and though they bicker here and there, they are generally happy. But they are also quite forward thinking, which contributes to this, giving their childrens happiness a higher priority than fitting into the norm.
Compare this to their neighbour Mrs.Wang, who can only be happy if her son marries a woman his own age and has babies with her. Her son is not honest with her in turn, about how he met his wife (and probably other things as well.)

Her friends also show different facettes of relationships. One very classical, get married/have kids and one is an unmarried, childfree couple. The conventional couple is going through troubles and so is the more carefree couple. It shows that no matter what choice you make, you will end up in troubles, so the question is, will you choose the path that looks like trouble from the start or the one that looks like the easy path but then turns out to be full of trouble as well.

The romance He Fan Xings brother has also is there to show that some paths are seemingly closed by sheer misogyny, as is blatantly pointed out by the character. While everyone finds it odd, but ultimately shrugs their shoulders at this superior-inferior, age-gap romance because the man is the one in power and the older one, the scandal is much greater when the woman in the relationship is older and higher up at work.
As does the plotpoint where for a while everyone assumes Yuan Song is some kind of boytoy for an older, rich lady, though this is in turn reflected when people are equally appalled by the supposed relationship of Ye Lu Ming and his much younger niece. And also kind of in the relationship and power dynamic between Yuan Songs father and his stepmother, who is also younger by quite a bit, but is his equal or maybe even stronger.

Also, Ye Lu Mings approach to love is so realistic, on the one hand you want it to be like magical destiny, but on the other hand he thinks he can control it, if you do XYZ, the girl of your choice must fall for you. But life does not work that way, nothing is foreseeable and troubles will come your way, even if you find the ideal match with the ideal person it might not work out.


I could go on and on about every minor detail, about the growth in both He Fan Xing and Yuan Song, how their levels of maturity complement each other and all that... but just go and watch it.

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A weird and interesting movie

This is one of those movies, where you go "Huh?" for a number of reasons.
For one, the storytelling structure is unusual, if you go in uninformed it is a bit of a trip, making you wonder where it is going and what it is trying to say.
As a European with no introduction to Chinese legends, it is so whimsical and random. If you Wikipedia it and then watch it again, it makes more sense, but not much? And yet I was fully charmed by the story and the acting. I am sure, if I spend more time doing research, there are many easter eggs for mythology fans.
Maybe it is a bit like watching a theatre show without having read the source material. You get emotional, and you don't know why either.

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This is the show I wish all career-girl shows were like!

(This is less of a review and more of a rambling love letter. I had to go back and delete the words "I love" 6 times.)

I love this show so much, I actually stalled watching the last ten or so episodes to save them for days when I hated my job and needed a work-life related pick-me-up.

This show feels, sounds and looks so real, if I had a magic machine which would transport me to a fictional world, I would want to be dropped in right here, thankyouverymuch.

I felt like the working life of everyone was not just a plot device to move them here and there, ending in overly dramatic boardroom scenes. No, some enjoyed their job more than others, but everyone was trying to do their best work, whether they succeeded or not, their struggles were diverse and their motivations to work were real. It was such a breath of fresh air, treating work like it is a real time-suck, but also a motivator, and not something you throw aside as soon as the love interest shows up.
Everyone had not only a job, but also a love-life and a friendship-life and a family-life, that took up an appropriate amount of their time and focus. They also went overseas, and it wasn't willy-nilly and all the foreigners were caricatures, even that part was realistic and well done.
But it is not just that, these women (and men) are written with so much depth and realness, they feel like real friends and co-workers. And it is not just them either, the side characters are really well written and distinctive and real as well. Despite all their flaws and shortcomings and idiosyncrasies, I just wanted to hang out with them much longer. No one was perfect or a one dimensional villain, not even the many antagonists.

And let us not talk about the friendship between Shen Si Yi and Lu Ke, each of them a badass in her own special way and they portrayed that mix of love and annoyance of longterm, closer-than-sisters friendship so well. I am not surprised people thought this should have been a GL, because I have also experienced friendships so close people thought we might be dating.

The acting was on point all around. Don't care for OSTs, didn't find anything particuarly annoying.
The fashion, which is always a plus for me, was very understated, distinct and stylish.

Honestly, the only criticism I have is that there are so few kisses between Lu Ke and Zhang Mang, and I wanted more scenes of them together.

Watch it, that's all.

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A supercute Ad

This is one of those Dramas, that are an ad.
For an insurance company in this case, and also organic coffee and environmental conservation somehow?

I know, it is only 16 Minutes in total, you say. And I say, there is nothing missing and nothing too much in this.

But it has a nice story arc, excellent acting and chemistry and if you don't have much time before bed but need a pick-me-up, you will love this. It makes the end of the day sweeter, you will want to buy fairtrade, organic coffee or go to a quaint coffeeshop and you might enjoy the next rain in your area more.

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A journey like a visit to a friends house

You know those times when you meet someone, but then you part ways they say, "Come visit me sometime, I will show you around." And then you do, and they show you a mix of popular sights, their favourite places, foods and you get to hang out with the locals doing local stuff. It is random fun, inspiring and unusual.

This is that feeling in a show and great for those of us who are too broke to randomly travel to places (and find friends from all over the world honestly). I loved the little insights into these cities that often show up in Dramas as well.

Highly recommended by me.

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