qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvb

Well, it's good to not make assumptions about random people on the Internet then. Hope you will consider what I said. Have a good day, and happy drama watching! (or reading)

I'm glad you're reading then. It certainly helps to broaden horizons, since the slower pace encourages more critical thinking. though I do wonder if you adopt the same attitude towards books from different countries as well. I'm not saying you have to watch c-dramas, I am calling out your attitude to avoiding chinese media at all costs. It's completely fine if you don't feel in the mood or taste for them in general. After all it's a completely different culture and mindset to the one you're used to. No one's in the mood to critically analyse the things they watch all the time. But still, you are generalising ""They're all long, artificial, and boring" Clearly you don't believe that. It seems you're saying it to incite me, though the reason is unclear. Obviously you watched this drama and it was an exception. Is it so hard to believe that- there MIGHT be others similar to this one? Or is it just your existing biases saying so?
And actually, Chinese doesn't just refer to a nation. There are ethnically Chinese people all over the world, and the nation itself isn't just defined by their current government. They have a long and complex history of civilization. Behind a nation is not all propaganda and politics, its' people and experiences. While the popular main form dramas might not be to your taste, there's movies, video games, etc, that I've experienced that tend to have more freedom and have varied perspectives.
"People like me love the word racism", is it? Is that meant to be an insult? In that case, what kind of person do you think I am? Lol.

The whole reason why they collided with the truck is because she delayed the bus by attempting to get off before a scheduled stop. If they kept going according to schedule, they wouldn't have crossed the path of the delivery driver or the truck at all, it would have reached the bridge and exploded. In the later loops, they woke up much earlier, so anyway their schedule is thrown off compared to the earlier loops. In the loop just before the last, they try to stall the bus so the police has time to get to the next stop and act like normal passengers to get on, but at that point the bus driver decided to continue on and not stop there because they had wasted too much time trying to delay it, and he wanted to get to the bridge in time. In the last loop they didn't try to stall the bus to my knowledge. Plus, in both loops, the police blocked off the roads after she calls them so they're not able to collide with the truck at all.
I didn't think their choices were that dumb at all. They're definitely not as smart or composed like the police characters for instance, but they acted pretty well for the situation (plus most other dramas in this genre are even stupider with the characters' choices). For the most part, they acted pretty logically, given the stress of the situation and the time they had each loop.

I assumed the crash with the truck is what triggered the explosion. It doesn't make any sense that she would have time to pull it when they were about to crash, it's too chaotic for her to do that. Plus I actually thought this drama series was quite free of plot holes, for this genre, it was the most logical one so far. What are the plot holes you found?

I'm glad you managed to make it past your biases to watch one show, but if you want to pride yourself on attempting to understand a country or culture, watching one show is not enough. You need to see many perspectives, and watch them with a sharp and open mind. In case your reason for specifically staying away from C-dramas is propaganda, everything is propaganda. Just because other shows from other countries follow a more familiar brand of it to you doesn't mean they are free of it. You just need to keep it in mind, it won't brainwash you that easily. Your problem is that you view everything coming out of only this specific country as propaganda made entirely by the government, and not by people with artistic vision, who may be restricted from fully reaching potential by censorship and the like.
The last part of your comment is blatant racism, it's a bit shocking for someone who claims to be aware of political messaging. You specifically state chinese fantasy dramas are pointless. The genres of wuxia, xianxia have existed in chinese culture for a very long time, yet you dismiss everything to come out of that genre as artificial and useless. While perhaps the popular ones that you may have scanned through may not be to your taste, I do believe you have some racist biases causing you to say that. Think about it. What exactly makes all of these fantasy dramas pointless? Do you think they lack any relevance or political messaging to make it have a point to today's society? In that case, it seems you just haven't been mindful enough. After all, everything has a political message, right? However, I can understand the "too long, artificial" part of your comment (if you are referring to the beauty standards). But again, not every production follows those same ideas you think they do. I could say the same for popular Western shows as well, but I don't completely stay away from them, because not all of them are the same. As demonstrated by Reset, there are plenty of dramas that don't go on for too long. It seems to me that you have created a full picture of Chinese media in your mind, and are too comfortable to challenge your natural feelings about it. That's an easy way to continue your life while keeping your media intake restricted to Western-approved media and messaging. Hope you'd consider this.

I think you just didn't connect with the drama. For me those side stories were necessary, the cat guy's story did drag a little but most of them enhanced the theme of the drama. I guess I must be tired of extremely fantasy/ tropey characters so the more real people this drama depicted was refreshing for me. Plus those side stories were not random, it was a recurring theme of the drama that they kept showing the lives of the people on the bus, finally culminating with the story of the antagonists. That way you connect with everyone and no one appears to be one dimensionally "evil".

They actually weren't pointless, all of them were necessary for the main leads to find out things. They don't have the resources that the police do. They can only find out things by being in contact with the police. In the beginning it might feel repetitive because the police keeps suspecting them and interrogating them, but it was necessary again for the leads to get smarter, avoid the police's eye, and then later learn how to work with them while being out of suspicion just enough to get the info they need.