jaroekin
This review may contain spoilers
This is a drama that’ll stimulate both your mind & soul
Tender Light is a beautifully written mystery thriller with lots of social commentary. Yes, this drama was telling you a story but had a talent of making you feel like you were actually inside of the story and you were a side character quietly watching things as they go along. From the cinematography, to the character building, story building, into the way that they executed the flashbacks, everything was just SO. WELL. DONE. So, the cast, the writers, and the directors all did their BIG ONE. You can tell that there was just SO much care and time taken into this drama and that everyone involved genuinely, from the bottom of their heart took it seriously. And that’s not some thing that you can say about a lot of dramas out there.
But, with all that being said, Tender Light is a ALMOST perfect drama. You might be wondering; what stopped it from being perfect? For me, I’ll have to say the final episode. Episode 28 like all of the other episodes, had great pacing and was just really well written overall…. Except for the last 20 minutes of the episode. The drama starts to kinda go into uncharted territory, and did something that it hadn’t done for the entire series up the that point… “telling us the story instead of showing it.” Let me explain further. The use of exposition in a story isn’t a bad thing, but it only becomes a problem when you’re essentially just telling the viewer/reader the entire story instead of showing it to them. As I mentioned earlier though, this has never been a problem for Tender Light, it’s consistently done a good job of immersing us into the story until the finale. The problem with this episode is exactly that. The finale episode was supposed to wrap up all of our unanswered questions on what TRULY happened on the night of the millennium. This is where everything is supposed to reach a head, and all of the reveals supposed to happen, so because of that; by NO circumstances should the finale have had ANY exposition in it, especially considering the fact that we’ve never really had that before. Now I know with Chinese dramas things can get really tricky because of the censorship rules, for example the relationship between Nan Ya and Zhou Luo. From what I’ve gathered from people who have read the novel, their relationship actually had a lot more presence in the actual story, and it was more of a slow burn. Also based off of what these novel readers have said, it seems as though a lot of their relationship had to be cut out because of the censorship rules. So like I said, I understand how censorship can change the way screen writers are able to tell the story that they want to tell. And I also understand that it could be possible that the show was only greenlit 28 episodes when in reality they probably wanted more in order to properly tell the story. I understand both of these things but, I can’t help but think there was still another way to I guess, “counteract” this problem. Let me give you an example; and be mindful of the fact that this is on the basis that what I said earlier, about there being a possibility that the show was only Greenlit 28 episodes wasn’t the case. because in the event that this drama wasn’t restricted to just 28 episodes, this should’ve been given one more episode to properly wrap things up. The 28th episode should’ve ended right after Zhou Luo says to Fang Lu, “That’s not what happened.” That would’ve been a really cool cliffhanger. Then the 29th episode should’ve started with the flashback of what actually happened that night. Then, instead of the screen just fading to black, and them telling us what happens to Nan Ya and Zhou Luo, they would’ve been enough time to properly show it instead of tell it. And I think with that difference, that would’ve made this drama a 10 out of 10 for me.
So, because of that and that alone, I can’t give this drama a 10 out of 10 in good faith (my true rating of this drama is a 9.8/10 which just shows how close this drama was for me to getting that 10), but I have no doubt in my mind that if that was not the case, this would’ve gotten a 10 from me regardless of it’s bitter sweet ending.
But, with all that being said, Tender Light is a ALMOST perfect drama. You might be wondering; what stopped it from being perfect? For me, I’ll have to say the final episode. Episode 28 like all of the other episodes, had great pacing and was just really well written overall…. Except for the last 20 minutes of the episode. The drama starts to kinda go into uncharted territory, and did something that it hadn’t done for the entire series up the that point… “telling us the story instead of showing it.” Let me explain further. The use of exposition in a story isn’t a bad thing, but it only becomes a problem when you’re essentially just telling the viewer/reader the entire story instead of showing it to them. As I mentioned earlier though, this has never been a problem for Tender Light, it’s consistently done a good job of immersing us into the story until the finale. The problem with this episode is exactly that. The finale episode was supposed to wrap up all of our unanswered questions on what TRULY happened on the night of the millennium. This is where everything is supposed to reach a head, and all of the reveals supposed to happen, so because of that; by NO circumstances should the finale have had ANY exposition in it, especially considering the fact that we’ve never really had that before. Now I know with Chinese dramas things can get really tricky because of the censorship rules, for example the relationship between Nan Ya and Zhou Luo. From what I’ve gathered from people who have read the novel, their relationship actually had a lot more presence in the actual story, and it was more of a slow burn. Also based off of what these novel readers have said, it seems as though a lot of their relationship had to be cut out because of the censorship rules. So like I said, I understand how censorship can change the way screen writers are able to tell the story that they want to tell. And I also understand that it could be possible that the show was only greenlit 28 episodes when in reality they probably wanted more in order to properly tell the story. I understand both of these things but, I can’t help but think there was still another way to I guess, “counteract” this problem. Let me give you an example; and be mindful of the fact that this is on the basis that what I said earlier, about there being a possibility that the show was only Greenlit 28 episodes wasn’t the case. because in the event that this drama wasn’t restricted to just 28 episodes, this should’ve been given one more episode to properly wrap things up. The 28th episode should’ve ended right after Zhou Luo says to Fang Lu, “That’s not what happened.” That would’ve been a really cool cliffhanger. Then the 29th episode should’ve started with the flashback of what actually happened that night. Then, instead of the screen just fading to black, and them telling us what happens to Nan Ya and Zhou Luo, they would’ve been enough time to properly show it instead of tell it. And I think with that difference, that would’ve made this drama a 10 out of 10 for me.
So, because of that and that alone, I can’t give this drama a 10 out of 10 in good faith (my true rating of this drama is a 9.8/10 which just shows how close this drama was for me to getting that 10), but I have no doubt in my mind that if that was not the case, this would’ve gotten a 10 from me regardless of it’s bitter sweet ending.
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