TrashFire

Pros:
- Has my favorite opening scene of any cdrama I've ever seen. It establishes the metaphor of life as a ship at sea, demonstrates the main lead's courage, brains, and kindness, and gives the viewers a memorable shot of our main girl staring at a beautiful view she won through hard work
- Fun love lines. The relationship between the main leads was trusting, mature, and fun to witness. I loved them together and that their journey as a couple felt natural to me. I loved all of the other couples that ended up together as well
- Complicated characters. I absolutely love that many of the characters weren't lumped into one basket of good or bad. Specifically, members of the Hwa family were flawed in a way I found engaging. When the family had arguments, it made their reconciliations more meaningful. The Emperor was also a deeply flawed person, yet I still cared about his relationship with his nephew. I especially loved the scene where he imagines the scene of his son, happy and carefree before he grew up twisted and power-hungry -- that gave a great insight into the Emperor's psyche and the struggles that he faced despite being the most powerful. Characters like the maids also got arcs, which doesn't always happen and I'm happy that it did in this show.
- Lu Yuxiao was far and away the best actor. Her performance was layered and infused with a lot of heart, and I was always rooting for her character.
- This is the first I've seen Hu Yitian but he was everything a ml needs to be
- Hard work pays off. Even though I think she was a successful business woman a little too easily, I still enjoyed watching our FL churn out ideas and plans to make money.
- The focus on family dynamics. Because you love your family even when you want to kill them


Cons:
- Incredibly strong live laugh love energy throughout the show, which won't be a con for some people. I just would have preferred to see the main characters fail a little more. The show makes her success a product of hard work, but the fact that she herself never fails because of decisions she makes causes her to be a little too perfect in my opinion. She does indirectly cause the Emperor to take their money and send them away, but the entire family is back to live laugh love in a few minutes. You're telling me that you're all the happiest you've ever been while doing back-breaking labor? This show is fiction for a reason.
- Not sure if this is an unpopular opinion, but I still find Zhang Jingyi's acting to be quite wooden. She played a high-achieving, put-together woman well, but failed to portray many subtle emotions that aren't abundantly happy or sad. I found myself wishing she could demonstrate more complicated emotions.
- Most of the men didn't have character arcs, which does make sense as they were absent for the majority of the story. But I would have liked seeing how they would have adjusted to living in a women-run household.
- The final villain's scheme felt rushed. I really enjoyed the connection between the FL and the female villain talking about the beauty of being at sea. That was a great moment, but there wasn't much else beyond it. Also, she was right that the Emperor was corrupt lol
- The concept that the ML could fix the security bureau/police force forever all by himself. The show was more nuanced with portraying women's struggles, but I guess they went with a magical, offscreen fix for this issue even though it's the reason for all of the men being exiled in the first place
- Not sure if this is a con but it was funny to see how many of the family's problems were solved by the Emperor dying. It wasn't their hard work that reunited the family in the end, just the death of a tyrant
- I didn't like the side braid. I was glad to see it go