lau

I want to start this rant review by saying that, if A Dream Within a Dream (or alternatively, Everyone Hates Nan Heng) was trying to rage-bait me, then it has successfully completed its task, because I haven’t written a drama review in almost a year, but this one made me do it.

The premise is interesting: Song Xiaoyu, an unsuccessful actress, gets a leading role next to an A-List celebrity (Nan Feng), but her character is only a pawn to the male lead in a terrible script. She then gets sucked into the story and decides to be as far away as possible from the “God of War” male lead. Though it doesn’t sound too ground breaking, the first episode and its satirical tone of the chinese drama industry immediately caught my attention. The first few episodes were good (although a bit too corny for my taste), but it didn’t take too long for it to go downhill, and fast.

Which brings me to the first (of many) fatal flaw, the female lead of this story. I absolutely despised Song Yimeng’s character. She is supposed to be the only “real” person in a world full of fictional characters, yet somehow acts the most caricature-like absurdly of them all. Her behavior is erratic to the point of being nonsensical. She is terrified of Nan Heng one minute, pitying him the next, overconfident in between, then suddenly in love with him (?). There is no arc here, just emotional whiplash.

Also, how do you go from repeatedly dying in a scripted world without fear to suddenly being terrified of death after your situation changes slightly? The fear itself makes sense, you could argue that, since the situation has changed, she can’t be completely certain a new death scene will result in her restarting the story, but she never has a thought process that leads to this conclusion and explains her fears. And never, not once does she seriously think about going back to her real life? She’s constantly stressed and in danger, yet seems perfectly content to remain in this fictional world just because she has money and a fake family.

Speaking of which, her family dynamics? Barely explored. She immediately latches onto her fictional family without any organic development. Why not let us see those bonds form over time, rather than expecting us to care just because you told us to?

The drama tries to critique the tropes of male-centric stories where female leads exist only to further the male protagonist’s journey. But then it... becomes that exact thing. Nan Heng and Li Shiliu dominate the screen. SYM might be the protagonist, but she spends most of the drama reacting, acting ridiculously, or even, especially during the middle part of the story, off-screen. She doesn’t grow. Even by episode 27, she’s still stuck on the idea that the script is unchangeable. No progress. No inner transformation. Just a tragic family backstory shoved in way too late in a failed attempt at emotional depth and a sense of clarity that comes out of nowhere towards the end of the story that can only be described as reaching Nirvana because she saw Nan Heng mounted on a fake pegasus and dressed in white.

And then, of course, the plot holes. So many. It genuinely feels like they filmed the first draft of the script with no revisions. Characters reach conclusions instantly, they contradict themselves within minutes. Basic logic? Missing. I could list a dozen examples, but here’s the one that broke me: when Song Yimeng, Chu Guihong, and Li Shiliu are “working together”, Nan Heng (disguised as LSL) denies any alliance with the Seventh Prince and even joins a plot to assassinate himself (which, honestly, I found pretty funny). But just a few episodes later, he’s throwing a banquet at Waning River Crescent as Nan Heng, casually walking around with Shangguan He. Subtlety? Never heard of it. And naturally, no one notices, because everyone in this drama is, tragically, an idiot.

As for overall character development. There was close to none. SYM, as mentioned previously, had no character development arc, NH was perfect from the beginning (the viewer just didn’t know about it), the emperor turned a switch and went from hating his son to loving him. As for Chu Guihong, I, innocently, thought that he would have the most interesting character arc, becoming a villain and all, but it just ends up being so incredibly exaggerated and nonsensical, I can't even say I liked that.

Then there's Song Yiting. At first I disliked her because she was annoying (which, fair, so am I), but this woman is vile. She's a predator who attempts to s*x**lly assault Li Shiliu under the pretense of wanting to “ruin her marriage prospects”. There is no gray area here. She drugs a man to force him into s*x and the show barely blinks. I could talk a lot more about this, but choose not to in order to protect my own sanity.

And if all of thatr wasn’t already enough, here enters the Scriptwriter character, who shows up, becomes a moustache-twirling-top-hat-wearing cartoon villain and then ends up helping the protagonists. Just like SYM, no real person attributes, just absolute idiocracy.

I know I have done nothing but complain, but (shockingly) there were things I liked.

The soundtrack, for one, is mostly great. Unfortunately, most of the good tracks are tied to Li Shiliu, and once he’s gone, so is the music. But during his scenes, the audio experience was really good.

The drama was indeed funny. There were many moments in which I caught myself actually laughing out loud at scenes, so I have to give credit where it’s due.

As for Nan Heng, shockingly, I enjoyed his character, for the most part. He carried more emotional nuance than expected and managed to steal the spotlight from the actual female lead, Song Yimeng, in what is supposedly her breaking-the-cycle-of-female-lead-being-a-device-to-the-male-lead story. Ironically, a drama that seems to critique the sidelining of female leads ends up doing exactly that, SYM becomes more of a supporting character halfway through the show.

Well, in conclusion, powering through this drama was like when you drive past a car crash. Horrifying, and yet somehow impossible to look away from precisely because it is so terrible.

Come to think of it, the acting, costumes, setting, and soundtrack all range from at least average to genuinely great. Production value isn’t the issue, the script is, and unfortunately, without solid writing, even the most stunning production falls flat.

A Dream Within a Dream starts off promising, dynamic, and almost clever. But it quickly devolves into a bloated mess of half-baked character arcs and lazy plotting (it seems that the writers wanted things to happen and characters to develop thoughts, but were too lazy to do the DEVELOPING part, and just threw the action into the screen). The very clichés it claims to satirize, it ends up indulging in.

If the goal was to criticize bad storytelling, maybe they should’ve tried writing a good one first.