SarahD

This story continues the story from Flourished Peony also starring Yang Zi as Mudan and Li Xian As Jiang Changyang but gets a bit pedestrian in places though Jiang’s ghost, popping up in Mudan’s consciousness broke my heart.
The two main characters continue to deepen their feelings and eventually (and I really do mean eventually 🤦🏼‍♀️) admit their feelings. The bad guys lose but even though they come to a sticky end I still feel very sad for Lui Chang, played so convincingly by Miles Wei as he continues to be a pawn cruelly used by Prince Ning (brilliantly played by Tu Song Yan who couldn’t be a more dominant, dysfunctional and selfish father and the absolute opposite of the cute, shy and supportive one he was in Go Ahead opposite Tang Songyun and Song Weilong) who realises too late that he’s backed the wrong team.
Overall the script writers did a great job, adding depth and subplot magic to this drama through the use of its supporting cast. There are plenty of other relationships that develop and for once we don’t really lose any main good guys to some pointless plot line which is refreshing but the end the concluding scenes was too sappy even for my taste. That said, why on earth the emperor didn’t just stab Prince Ning instead of completely collapsing to him I really don’t understand- this part could have been better written so I deducted points for this.
The production values, fight scenes and costumes/ makeup was top notch and often subtly conveyed additional context that the dialogue and acting alone did not which just gained this drama points in my eyes.
Would I watch this again? No because I was only watching it for the playful banter between Yang Zi and Li Xian and I think they did a better job in Go Go Squid