1
burhaa aadmi
Hic Sunt Dracones
This review may contain spoilers
This was a really interesting remake. Up until about episode 48, I was going to give it a score of around 6.5/10. It took the Japanese concept and invested it with warmth and humanity, and created characters to care about. The core concept was significantly better than the original, and if the drama had been 24 or 30 episodes instead of 53, I probably would have scored it 7.5 or 8. Now however I can only score it at 5 because of a troubling issue with the ML which resurfaced in episode 49.
There was still a lot to like about the drama which is why I'm giving it 5 but it could have been so very much better. If they had cut 20 to 25 episodes, if they had handled the female villain arc better, and if they had made the lead pair a union of equals, without the patronising paternalistic promotion of the ML’s flawessness, this would have been one of my favourite mainland dramas ever. It had so much going for it that I am disappointed it fell on the home straight.
WHAT FOLLOWS IS VERY SPOILERY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
The FL’s mother was a vicious sadistic criminal, without any redeeming qualities whatsoever. The FL’s very NAME derived from the fact that her mother attempted to kill her as a child. The mother physically and verbally abused her daughter throughout the entire series without remorse or apology and without ceasing. She bled her dry financially and crippled her emotionally. The ML never fully acknowledged the scale of the damage this evil woman inflicted on her daughter. He had his own childhood trauma, but he grew up materially comfortable, and never fully appreciated the sheer horror of the female lead’s background. He was always dismissive, his words constantly implying that what the FL’s mother had done was not that big a deal. At one point, he seems to have helped the FL to simply let go and cut all ties with the vicious fiend who gave birth to her. I was fine with that, letting go of resentment is one thing, and makes sense. But he undid all of that in episode 49. According to the subtitles that I saw, he said when the hellish hag got sick "yes she extorted money from you, but she was doing that for the family not for herself" that was a lie. In that lengthy scene, a third of the episode or so, He defended the abuser against the victim and emotionally manipulated or even bullied the FL into giving this evil thief another huge sum of money simply because she happened to be sick. This is the woman who prevented her own daughter from seeing the grandfather who saved her life and raised her. This monstrous mother lied to her daughter to steal money from her while the grandfather was dying. And after all of that, the ML takes her side over that of her daughter, his fiancée. That incident in episode 49 was simply the most extreme example of something that had been made manifest throughout the series. The ML’s constantly minimising and failing to grasp the enormity of what the female leads mother had done. In the end he still spouted the usual "but she's your mother" BS. It was the apex of the Drama’s adherence to the usual East Asian Drama trope that the ML must always ultimately be right in all things and at all times. The FL must learn the error of her ways and adjust her thinking and behaviour thanks to the benevolent paternalistic wisdom of the ML. That whole incident soured the drama for me and I kind of fast forward through the last four episodes. The final four or five were also the most makjang. Several of the characters suddenly had all sorts of things going wrong in a way that felt like makjang. I was grateful that it was only the final 4 or 5 45-minute episodes out of 53, Taiwanese Dramas often have 4 or 5 90-minute episodes like that out of 16-20 episodes. Still it was tedious and disappointing to race through the end of the series with my finger resting firmly on the fast forward button, especially as the last couple of episodes were unabashed paeans to the supreme superlativeness of the ML, he was THE SAVIOUR, the fixer of every problem, the source of ALL the answers. It actually made me miss the J original, where the FL definitely did NOT say things like “without you I had nothing anyway”, as the FL here does in the penultimate episode in response to the ML unilaterally and without any consultation committing their entire resources to a project of his design.
There was still a lot to like about the drama which is why I'm giving it 5 but it could have been so very much better. If they had cut 20 to 25 episodes, if they had handled the female villain arc better, and if they had made the lead pair a union of equals, without the patronising paternalistic promotion of the ML’s flawessness, this would have been one of my favourite mainland dramas ever. It had so much going for it that I am disappointed it fell on the home straight.
WHAT FOLLOWS IS VERY SPOILERY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
The FL’s mother was a vicious sadistic criminal, without any redeeming qualities whatsoever. The FL’s very NAME derived from the fact that her mother attempted to kill her as a child. The mother physically and verbally abused her daughter throughout the entire series without remorse or apology and without ceasing. She bled her dry financially and crippled her emotionally. The ML never fully acknowledged the scale of the damage this evil woman inflicted on her daughter. He had his own childhood trauma, but he grew up materially comfortable, and never fully appreciated the sheer horror of the female lead’s background. He was always dismissive, his words constantly implying that what the FL’s mother had done was not that big a deal. At one point, he seems to have helped the FL to simply let go and cut all ties with the vicious fiend who gave birth to her. I was fine with that, letting go of resentment is one thing, and makes sense. But he undid all of that in episode 49. According to the subtitles that I saw, he said when the hellish hag got sick "yes she extorted money from you, but she was doing that for the family not for herself" that was a lie. In that lengthy scene, a third of the episode or so, He defended the abuser against the victim and emotionally manipulated or even bullied the FL into giving this evil thief another huge sum of money simply because she happened to be sick. This is the woman who prevented her own daughter from seeing the grandfather who saved her life and raised her. This monstrous mother lied to her daughter to steal money from her while the grandfather was dying. And after all of that, the ML takes her side over that of her daughter, his fiancée. That incident in episode 49 was simply the most extreme example of something that had been made manifest throughout the series. The ML’s constantly minimising and failing to grasp the enormity of what the female leads mother had done. In the end he still spouted the usual "but she's your mother" BS. It was the apex of the Drama’s adherence to the usual East Asian Drama trope that the ML must always ultimately be right in all things and at all times. The FL must learn the error of her ways and adjust her thinking and behaviour thanks to the benevolent paternalistic wisdom of the ML. That whole incident soured the drama for me and I kind of fast forward through the last four episodes. The final four or five were also the most makjang. Several of the characters suddenly had all sorts of things going wrong in a way that felt like makjang. I was grateful that it was only the final 4 or 5 45-minute episodes out of 53, Taiwanese Dramas often have 4 or 5 90-minute episodes like that out of 16-20 episodes. Still it was tedious and disappointing to race through the end of the series with my finger resting firmly on the fast forward button, especially as the last couple of episodes were unabashed paeans to the supreme superlativeness of the ML, he was THE SAVIOUR, the fixer of every problem, the source of ALL the answers. It actually made me miss the J original, where the FL definitely did NOT say things like “without you I had nothing anyway”, as the FL here does in the penultimate episode in response to the ML unilaterally and without any consultation committing their entire resources to a project of his design.
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