I have a live/hate relationship with this drama. All the actors (except Leo Wu to me) acted really well and I cried and laughed mostly with Shaoshang’s adventures and along her roller coaster’s emotions.
Now …. This drama is really well rated, but I’ll go against the trend. I appreciated the Part 1, with the same screenwriter than Rose of Phoenixes, it made a lot of promises and you can enjoy the complex plot, the stories within the story, and the dialogues.
The Part 2 is unnecessary long. 29 episodes, when the first 21 episodes are just a repetition of the same feelings already explained between the 2 main characters “I trusted you, but you don’t” and vice versa, the hatred in Ling Buyi’s heart and his revenge that fuels the main storyline is dragging (example with Shaoshang’s father missing and accused of stealing copper, it took 2 episodes that were completely unnecessary to the whole story). Furthermore, i started to grow tired of Leo Wu’s acting that was lacking to me; he only shows 2 & half emotion the whole 56 episodes; anger / sadness that looks like anger and cute love.
Finally, I’m not happy with how the culprit of the Gu city plot was revealed. Ling Buyi actually knew all along that it was his uncle (as when he was a child he witnessed him killing his father, Li and even hanged his own son on the city wall). We thought that all these episodes, he was looking for clues, etc, when he just went to kill him and could have talked to his majesty who always defend his father, general Huo.
That fast forwarded moments of each secondary characters in episode 52, the whole episode 53 with Luo being a sudden enemy. Then, episode 54 it’s Lou Li but it’s wang yanji (wife of Lou Ben) is “resurrected”…. to get her revenge out of nowhere. All these stretched scenarios are built just for the 2 main characters to get close again …