We Are All Alone (2020)

The Queen slayed it .....

Tbh, I went into this drama without any expectations and I felt so satisfied after watching the entire show. I am hesitant to watch modern dramas with more than 24 episodes, because I have seen too much draggy plot where ML and FL fell in love, broke up and then reconcile again. But We are All Alone is an exception, though having 36 episodes, I never felt bored watching this.

Things that I like in this drama;
1.Realistic Truth of Drama Industry
I have wanted to watch a show about drama industry long ago, but never found one. This show portrays FL as an agent, encountering ups and downs in her career. Those ups and downs are not unpredictable but very realistic, they show about realistic truth of making and producing dramas, the ugly side of rumors and fandoms.
The story itself is not very special, but it was executed very beautifully.

2. Strong Female Lead
I would not want to see a dumb and unreasonable female lead in this kind of drama. Fortunately, our FL is so strong, and solves things out with her own capabilities. Qin Lan is perfect in this role, she can act very well and I would say the casting choice is very well done.

3. Production value and Acting
I don’t like those Chinese modern dramas with dubbed voice, where the voice is off. But this show uses their own voice, and it was recorded on-set.This makes me love this drama more.
I would say this is the best Godfrey Gao’s best drama I have watched and sadly, who would have thought that it would be his last drama?
Besides ML and FL, all the supporting casts did a very good job as well.

What I don’t like in this drama:
1.Overly Dramatic Lin Xiang
Lin Xiang character played a very important role. She causes all kinds of troubles for our FL, and this is her character, I understand. But sometimes, I feel like she is portrayed as an overly useless character. I think there won’t be an A-list actress as useless as her character portrayed.

2. Too much screentime for FL’s Dad
I would say, I enjoyed the storyline but her dad’s screentime is a little too much. But that’s understandable.

I’d recommend this drama if you would like to escape from lovey dovey stuff and see the life of a career woman. Kudos to the production team and director for making such a high quality drama.

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We are all alone is based on a same titled novel and portrays the successes and the struggles of Mo Xiang Wan as she navigates her life and her career in the Chinese Entertainment Industry.

Mo Xiang Wan is like the Margaret Thatcher of showbiz, a shrewd agent - talent spotter, talent developer, artist manager, babysitter, problem solver. All in one. A professional with a conduct and no space for love in her life except for her talents. Being considered 'the agent' brings a lot of perks i.e. leading roles offers for her artists, top pick in endorsements... but also a lot of envy in her two arch-rivals: Judy and Zhu He. Judy wants her job and Zhu He, Yu Jiang's wife, shareholder of Qi Li Culture fully backs her, fermenting a volcanic hate for Mo Xiang Wan, her husband's protege.

She raised from the ashes to be successful only to be thrown to the wolves and being forced to rise again amongst them. The thing is people evolve and mature and when the world comes crumbling down, a high conscience means peace of mind and moving on. Qi Li Culture enabled Mo Xiang Wan to succeed, Judy and Zhu He plotted to bring her down but she would not stay down, rising again until the time where Qi Li Culture no longer felt like home and then it was time to part ways and forge a new path.

Although Godfrey Gao & Wang Zi Yi are listed as having main roles in the drama, the only main role belongs to Qin Lan as all other characters are the ones she influences and interacts with and share a similar screen time around Mo Xiang Wan who drives the story - she is the story.

We are all alone portrays love in showbiz; filming scheduling; filming conflict; fan wars; fan reactions and actions and how they make and break an artist; backstabbing; contract disputes; script changes; image management and damage control; love and one of the most contemporary illnesses that exist in the world: depression, here celebrity depression which is often masked with anti-depressions or painkillers taken to ease the mental pain reflected in the body due to sadness or other issues like loss of fans for example, although here in the drama is love sickness. How many young celebrities have suffered from depression? Many but how many have spoken openly about battling it? A smaller number.

Beauty and money do not necessarily equal happiness. They equal the value others attribute to it and that can cause a lot of pressure as beauty fades and money slips through the fingers when artists are no longer popular and have to work three times harder to get a certain level of popularity back. Showbiz is ruthless. We are all alone shows exactly how much.

The story has a regular pace which might appear slow at times but it's well executed and realistic. Here that's more important than speed. The themes it approaches are contemporary and modern, portraying the reality of showbiz, rather than a lovey-dovey romantic story fairy-tale set in Shanghai's entertainment industry which is brilliant and fresh.

For all of the above, we are all alone merits an overall rating of 10 out of 10.

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