Disliked or Dropped Chinese Dramas

This one was unwatchable to the core!!! I can never get this drama's popularity and high rating here. It is rightfully very low rated on douban (in fact could have been lower). The show starts out illogically, and there was only so much suspension of disbelief I could do. FL was supposed to be a smart woman, but she is a dumbass. Her stupidity is masked as smartness by the makers. She doesn't even understand the stuff she talks about. She tells her brother that one's parent would never think or do bad to their child, even after experiencing the sh*t her father put her through. There are many such stupid moments by her. 

On top of the illogical plot, the production quality is one of the worst I have seen for a period Cdrama. And ofc, it is not to be attributed to the time it came out because just go and have a look at period cdramas released even before this one. The filter used here made everyone look like ghosts, you can barely make out a person's face at times. The skin smoothing and skin coloring is just yucky. I actually vomited while watching this! For a supposedly high budget show, this was 1000 times worst than low budget shows. Both in terms of plot and production quality.

International fans will overrate garbages like this, which leads people to believe that this is actually the level of shows made by China. Facepalm.

A female wrote this? I have seen such great shows about females, female perspective, and even just treating females as equal and respectable beings in dramas written by men (Sakamoto Yuji, Bakarhythm, Wang Xiong Cheng, etc). No wonder she had such a trash thing to say when Kris Wu rape allegations came to light. This writer herself is a sexist, misogynist, and scumbag of a female. People like her should be banned from writing and expressing their views.

Please tell me you guys were trolling when you were praising this one. You guys tricked me into believing this would be a well produced and well written drama with one of the strongest FL ever. It wasn't anything like that! I tried to drag my feet through this for the sake of ZLY & LQ, but I couldn't take this seriously. The writing is terrible: logic holes everywhere and things follow the 'because the writer says so' rule. The FL carries a huge and very visible as a weapon hairpin in her hair into an area where weapons aren't allowed. She finds out the top secret base very easily, opens the noisemaking heavy doors, and as she walks in, loud footsteps of hers are heard. Yet, the people inside had no clue and they casually talk loudly to their guards that I did this this this due to this reason. The guards already know it all beforehand as they executed that plan. All of it is heard by FL who came in VERY loudly in that small room. A character is showered with multiple arrows, kicks and falls, yet survives. That too without any medical help. In a prison.

The FL is not as powerful or smart as advertised. Instead, you get a godly ML. He is smarter than everyone, more powerful than anyone and the coldest. All of what I expected the FL to be, the ML was. How was this any different from the tons of cold ML dramas out there? She keeps falling in traps, and could barely fight the powerful lords. She even lost to another woman spy, who should have been the real FL.

The production quality is horrendous. Light comes from everywhere, and it certainly did not come from the candles and lamps lit. Saturation and brightness was so high, my eyes hurt while watching. The styling was so bad, even short trash dramas do better. The set was so poorly made, I laughed. The pool within the pleasure pavilion had color changing lights within them. How could I take that scene with maids seriously? It seems like they used 90% money to pay the cast, and 10% for everything else. 

It was too juvenile and low quality production for my taste. 2D characters, 2D plot. Wan Peng was the only good part of this show, as she acted better than 98% Korean actresses when portraying a teen girl. 

I was charmed by Zhou Yu Tong's portrayal of Fan Ning. She was amazing, dressed well and carried her character like a queen. But this was it. I cannot like Gong Jun's character even though I love nice MLs more than anything. The writing was also subpar. I disliked what was to come in the 2nd half, and how they reduced FL's power in the 2nd half. I also disliked the secondary couple a lot. They both followed the typical rich man/poor woman & cold man/warm woman trope which I dislike the most. The other characters were nothing special too.

Also, for a drama depicting a woman in power, I hated that they tried to imply that she cannot become the CEO because she is not married + didn't have kids yet. Another woman who had a lot of power as the most important member of boards of director declined the idea of her becoming a CEO because she cannot understand the brand properly because she is not married and has no kids. Somehow just because she was a woman, she was declined by another woman because she was refusing to accept the 'feminine' and 'motherly' way of life. I was enraged, especially because she was a positively depicted character. And this was what led FL to want to marry and give birth. I wanted to rip all hairs out of the creators because of this. 

If you are looking forward to watch a feminist show as a feminist yourself, I advice you to back up fast rn. There are tons of better feminist shows from China, even ZYT's other shows do better as feminist shows.

Before I talk about the flaws, I just want to highlight the sole reason why you should at least give it a chance: the character of Shen Li Ge aka the FL

I really really really wanted to love this because I loved the character of Li Qin here. This is the first time when a character is so good that I keep considering to continue watching for her sake every now and then. Maybe I'd finish this someday as I skip watch her scenes and other crucial scenes. She is magnificent and very very very strong physically, outdoing everyone including the ML. Female characters like her are what pulls me towards Chinese dramas so much. She is worth it if you can tolerate all the negative things I'd say.

Things I found not so bad yet nothing special are it's cinematography and production design. Although it is unrealistic to the era it is set in, the set was grandiose. However, I cannot praise much because a) it is not realistic to Liu Song period, and b) because I have seen better cinematography from other cdramas. Also, the romantic and family chemistry is just lovable. Actors that don't play villains have done quite a good job.

Now the bad part. The plot keeps going in circles. The minister plots, they fight, the minister is about to be gone for good, something saves him, repeat. I have heard that even when he goes out of picture, same stuff happens with other villains. The adopted sister has a lot of plot armour. For someone of her status, she sure is able to pull off a lot of schemes without being implicated for them. The plot is not complex enough for an political drama. Villains are laughable. I value plot over everything, and cannot stand below average plots, which is why I had to give up. This is the most I could do solely for a good character, so I absolutely love LQ now. She is phenomenal. 

I wish this was my first period drama (non-Minguo) instead of that lackluster and downright bad Legend of Yunxi. I would have loved this one as my first period drama for sure! 

I might pick this back again. I dropped it back when I had a different taste, so who knows if I end up liking it.