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by fooDog
Jun 30, 2023
15 of 15 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 7.0
Story 7.5
Acting/Cast 7.5
Music 6.0
Rewatch Value 4.5
This review may contain spoilers

interesting concept, good execution, but strange premise

This drama is a good take on the Groundhog Day concept, which reminds me a lot of the series "The Long Night". The reason is both of these are well acted, well packaged short dramas with a tendency to glorify the police force. And both of them have the same weakness: as suspense/ plot driven dramas, the 'big reveal' is a bit of a letdown therefore making the rewatch value limited.

To the screenwriter's credit, the short number of episodes are not repetitive despite returning again and again to the scene of the crime. The first couple of times the FL Liu Qingshi and ML He Yun are just trying to figure things out and they do so in a mostly logical manner. However after that they begin to explore the backstories of the people on the bus and this brings some diversity into the story. Everyone is well acted particularly Tao Yinghong as the spot on intense asian mom and our very natural and convincing FL. Bai Jingling as the ML is fine but I think his best role is still later in Destinied.

Weaknesses: I did feel that some of the side stories drag on, such as the anime boy Lu Di and the watermelon man Ma Guoqiang. But the biggest weakness is similar to the Long Night. The whole drama works to make the cast look like noble and self sacrificing people especially the policemen. But in order to do this they make the villain's motives quite unnatural. In this case, they make the villains very mentally ill. The other obvious drawback is that a lack of shortcomings in the lead characters makes them feel underdeveloped. Combined with the fact that this is a mystery drama, this means the whole thing can become viral a la Squid Game (which it did, in China at least) but then not be worth a rewatch.
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