✒The The Blank Wall & Empty Frames ◻□◻Who Liked Her When She Was Frumpy? °Excellent°
An and Rui have been married for awhile, now. They are the perfect couple and have a perfect little girl. He is a manager at a cosmetics firm and she keeps the home. An is practical. She knows how to manage a house and she knows how to stre++++ch a dollar. She adores her husband and daughter and works ceaselessly on everything related to them and their home. She's just stopped working on /herself/. When the couple agrees to house the daughter of An's cousin, the trouble begins. Wen's parents divorced long ago and remarried. They have new families now, so Wen has no family to call her own. As she stays with An's family, she gets a sense of what she's missing and gradually makes moves to take what An has for her own. Wen is young, hot, and very available. That's hard for a man to resist.
TFW is a 2010 release that is rated 7.6 on MAL. It is 1 season consisting of 23 45ish-minute episodes. Inside of ep8, I was very uncomfortable. ‘This sux,’ I was thinking. I'm so glad I stuck with it. The show is actually wonderful.
Sonia Sui (Not a Murder Story) is FL Xie An Zhen/An. I love her character. She is optimism personified. She has an exotic beauty, but by mid-show I wanted to shake her and drag her to the salon for a revamp to look as good as we know she can. The hospital gown she wears in one ep is more attractive than her pajamas. Believe you me, unlike many Kdramas in which the female lead stays underachieved throughout, they give us lots of satisfaction here. This actress is stunning. James Wen (Tears on Fire) is her husband, Wen “Rui” Fan. He plays the attractive-but-weak edge well.
Chris Wang (Youngsters on Fire) is Lan Tian “Wei”. By ep27, I loved this guy. He isn't emotional, so it takes awhile to warm up to him. He understands that wallowing in sorrow won't do any good. He kickstarts An into working on herself. That's always, ALWAYS the answer: Work on yourself. Eventually, Wei realizes that he over-analyzes everything. When it comes to love, he must only ask if he's happy. (Many of life's quandaries are a matter of head vs heart). Patrick Lee from Cosmetic Raiders is hubby Rui's brother i/l and friend, Hao Kang De. He's fun. Perhaps too fun… Karen Hu plays his wife / An‘s friend / Rui's sister, Wen Rui Xuan. Her coloring is gorgeous. She has large liquid eyes framed with sable makeup. The effect is rich chocolate silk.
Amanda Chu (Rock Records in Love) plays the young siren, Lai Wei En/Wen. They do a nice job with her. I got tired of her, but I think we're supposed to feel that way. She's not the prettiest one in the series, but she seems to be a walking pheromone factory. Man can't resist her. She's complex. That's what pain does to a person. We know about her history and understand that she came from damage, and that's all she knows. An lends practical shoes to Wen for a job interview. They're a bit tight, so after the interview doesn't go well, Wei takes them off and thoughtlessly leaves them in the elevator. Later on, she's having lunch with Rui and An is late. Rui explains that An's trying to find the shoes. Wen think that's a waste. He explains: “...she cherishes everything and everyone that belongs to her. Including you.“ Wen knows that An cherishes her. There are some holes that love alone cannot fill, however. The actor who really lights up the screen is Oliver, the cat. Don't you just want to squeeze that scrunch-faced fluff ball? I'm officially a fan of Director Hsu Fu Chun, who also brought us Office Girl-7.5 & The Rational Life-7.
Affairs aren't fair. They don't just disrupt the marriage. They disrupt kids, the wider family, and the circle of friends. They are always a detour to a dead end. Even if a person leaves their spouse and commits to the nu-thang, that just resets the cycle and makes it easier to repeat the pattern. When confronted with temptation or a difficult moral decision, people often don't consider their life beyond that decision. What does the next moment look like? The next hour, day, the next 10 years? Temptation can be intoxicating, but the best thing to do before blowing up your life is to run. Think about living with this decision the rest of your life and FLEE! Most cheaters string the mistress along but will never give up their comfortable life or jeopardize their income. (What a selfish person to do?). Rui is sincere and sacrifices everything for love. Perhaps it was part love / part pride - he needed it to work or be more humiliated. But he is all-in. He really didn't think it through.
TFW plays out as a simple story at first. As the episodes continued, I respected the writer more and more. First of all, here's a light touch, while at the same time, the subject matter is treated seriously. The tone is rather remarkable. It covers a lot of bases: How the attraction can happen. How the wife always knows. How it changes the relationship forever. It also covers the gravity of marriage. To paraphrase, in their break-up conversation, Rui says: ”Your first question was about how we hurt your ego, and your second was about me abandoning my responsibilities. Neither question was about love.” “Both questions were about love,” An begs to differ. What is love? It's partly the willingness to take this oath (marriage vows) and the determination to honor it until the end. Marriage is optional and one should think it over 80 different ways sideways before entering in. “You're using her as an escape from your life.” Rui married An when he was trying to change himself, which is not the right reason. These things are tricky, and many are not even conscious of the inner workings of their own motivations. If you're hesitant, don't do it! Things will drive you crazy that you've never thought of, even if you can't see any wrong in the person ~at all~ on the day of your wedding. If things already grate at you, you don't have a chance of making it long-term.
Over the living room couch are empty frames, like the pretty frame they put around their empty marriage. It's metaphoric. “If I only focus on my goal I might neglect more important things along the way.” The RUT: The moment marriage becomes transactional, it's no longer a love relationship. Meanwhile, if wives get bogged down by neverending responsibilities and forget about se×, men /never/ will. Don't lose sight of the love relationship or the intimacy. Letting oneself go is not love. It's disrespect. What should be done to reverse course? Starting with good nutrition is never wrong, weirdly enough. My health journey has proven to me that our food supply is making us sick, tired, anxious, and depressed. Living on organic (non-gmo, at a minimum) vegetables and meat, cutting out sugar and avoiding grains for a few months will promote weight loss, better health, and a better mood. Never go hungry, but stop poisoning yourself. Once a person has established that baseline, s/he can branch out to more self-improvement from there.
I'm sick to death of people trashing housewives. Everything they do is work that must be done. Are there housewives who let themselves go and allow their worlds to become too small? Absolutely. It's an occupational hazard. It takes a tremendous amount of self-motivation and discipline to make a successful go of it. Working in a cubicle is often more demeaning and soul-sucking, though! Rui gets the housewife experience. “It feels more tiring than going to work. It looks simple but you don't have any sense of achievement when you're done. You go to market early in the day and it's already afternoon when you're done cooking. After all that trouble, you finish the meal in less than 20 minutes. It's the same with cleaning. After cleaning, you see that there is some hair and dust there.” Women also tend to lose their sense of humor in a marriage; not because they are flawed, but because, just like water vapor turns into clouds and rain falls, it always falls on the woman to hold the family together. It's simply counterintuitive to let oneself go and expect a happy, successful life, however. The best people never stop working on themselves.
Enter Wei.
Elegance. The show encourages us to become more elegant. After her marriage falls apart, Wei puts An through charm classes, of a sort: A lady shouldn't yell in public, ladies should always be graceful, a lady should bend down and pick up her keys this way… (It's crazy ironic, since the way they met was fighting over a vase at a shop - She exhibited none of those traits. It was her spark and spirit that caught his attention. None of that means he's /wrong/ though). He makes her wear heels: She complains that they're not comfortable. “How can you call this /training/!”? She pauses at that. We can see her resolve to work through this and not always take the soft option. He forces her to ditch the auntie hair bun-bun. He forces her out of her comfort zone / housewife cupboard and into the world: “Finish a book. Finish a movie. Finish a class.” He says he'll be testing her daily.
“I'm not trying to get into University…” An isn't convinced. Change is HARD. “The most important thing for a modern woman is the thirst for knowledge,” Wei hits back. “You have to find your interest because this is a very big world, but your eyes are only set on your home. So you have to break the wall /inside you/. Only then, will you know how beautiful the world is. People who aren't interested in the world will not be of interest to anyone else, either.” “Repeat after me: I am in my prime. I have the charm of a mature woman and the freshness of a girl. I am very beautiful. But I didn't realize it before. So from today onwards, I will dress up like this everyday until my husband's eyes light up when he sees me.” Wei doesn't pay for An's new, expensive clothes nor serve it all on a platter for her. She has to /want/ it. She has to put in the effort and investment. She applies her own Band-Aids to the new blisters on the back of her heels. I'm a born rule breaker, so I've never bothered with a lot of this stuff. One thing I've noticed, though, is that breaking the rules is no fun once everybody has forgotten them. We have forgotten what CLASSY is. It's sad.
TFW is funny. An ends up on TV in a cooking competition. They have a clip of friends and family cheering her on as part of her intro. Rui Xuan & Kang De are hilarious. He even takes pot lids and mimics the wind-up monkey banging the symbols. It made me laugh out loud.
The soundtrack is well above average. Sometimes the beautiful music stops abruptly when the scene changes, which is jolting. They should have had smoother transitions. I started watching this show at the same time as Two Fathers-7.5, making a head-to-head comparison unavoidable. I enjoyed TFW less at first, but it ended up moving me more. The last half is quite profound and full of lines that are worthy of quoting. It looks like it's shallow and then the viewer becomes unexpectedly submerged in its depths.
QUOTES📢
Men are so dumb.
When dealing with you men, how can I be kind?
Actually, perfect women are quite boring.
People that are too smart usually aren't happy.
I always think about how others treat me. I never think about how I treat others.
Only losers complain about fairness.
Love Is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars. ~Tagore~
The only way to surpass pain is to forgive the people that hurt you.
The human heart is hard to understand.
I can't go back anymore.
〰🖍 IMHO
📣8 📝8 🎭8 💓🦋🎨6 🎵/🔊8.7 🔚8 ▪ 🌞5.5 ⚡3 😅4 😭4 😱2 😯4 🤢1 🤔6.5 💤0
Shazams:音樂戀曲 重傷 & Wounded by Freya Lim.
Age 13+ Marital infidelityLanguage: it's mostly clean but they do drop occasional coloRuiul verbiage including some F💣s
Re-📺? Not out of the question
In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:
🇹🇼Taiwan
Age of Rebellion-9.5
Back to 1989-7.3
Black & White-6.8
Love You-7
Office Girls-
Weio Fathers-7.5
💓 -
C🇨🇳: Well-Intended Love 7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine;
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1
K🇰🇷 :
A Witch's Love 7.8;
Love To Hate You 8.9;
Touch Your Heart 8.2;
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
It's Okay Not to Be Okay 9;
Hospital Playlist 9;
My Mister 9.5;
🎎 -
C🇨🇳: Overlord 8.4,
Under the Power 8.6,
The Rebel Princess 9.1,
The Sword and the Brocade 8.6 (in ancient Chinese opera style),
The Rise of Phoenixes 9
K🇰🇷:
My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
My Sassy Girl 8.5;
The King's Affection 8.3;
Mr. Sunshine 9
🔮🐉-
C🇨🇳: Love BeWeieen Fairy & Devil 8.9;
Once upon a time in Linglian Mountain 7.5;
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Handsome Siblings 8.7;
Eternal Love 8.3,
Ancient Love Poetry 8.6;
Love and Redemption 10
⚡/😱 -
C🇨🇳: Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Saber 9-Kung-fu!;
K🇰🇷:
K2 8;
Private Lives 8.1;
Sisyphus 8;
Tunnel 8.1;
Signal 8.6;
The Man From Nowhere 8.9
Black 9;
Squid Game 8.4;
Kingdom 8.3;
Sweet Home 8.4
Japanese🇯🇵 lite romcoms: Maid Sama-10, Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo-7.8, Love, Chunibyo And Other Delusions-8.4, Toradora-8.5
TFW is a 2010 release that is rated 7.6 on MAL. It is 1 season consisting of 23 45ish-minute episodes. Inside of ep8, I was very uncomfortable. ‘This sux,’ I was thinking. I'm so glad I stuck with it. The show is actually wonderful.
Sonia Sui (Not a Murder Story) is FL Xie An Zhen/An. I love her character. She is optimism personified. She has an exotic beauty, but by mid-show I wanted to shake her and drag her to the salon for a revamp to look as good as we know she can. The hospital gown she wears in one ep is more attractive than her pajamas. Believe you me, unlike many Kdramas in which the female lead stays underachieved throughout, they give us lots of satisfaction here. This actress is stunning. James Wen (Tears on Fire) is her husband, Wen “Rui” Fan. He plays the attractive-but-weak edge well.
Chris Wang (Youngsters on Fire) is Lan Tian “Wei”. By ep27, I loved this guy. He isn't emotional, so it takes awhile to warm up to him. He understands that wallowing in sorrow won't do any good. He kickstarts An into working on herself. That's always, ALWAYS the answer: Work on yourself. Eventually, Wei realizes that he over-analyzes everything. When it comes to love, he must only ask if he's happy. (Many of life's quandaries are a matter of head vs heart). Patrick Lee from Cosmetic Raiders is hubby Rui's brother i/l and friend, Hao Kang De. He's fun. Perhaps too fun… Karen Hu plays his wife / An‘s friend / Rui's sister, Wen Rui Xuan. Her coloring is gorgeous. She has large liquid eyes framed with sable makeup. The effect is rich chocolate silk.
Amanda Chu (Rock Records in Love) plays the young siren, Lai Wei En/Wen. They do a nice job with her. I got tired of her, but I think we're supposed to feel that way. She's not the prettiest one in the series, but she seems to be a walking pheromone factory. Man can't resist her. She's complex. That's what pain does to a person. We know about her history and understand that she came from damage, and that's all she knows. An lends practical shoes to Wen for a job interview. They're a bit tight, so after the interview doesn't go well, Wei takes them off and thoughtlessly leaves them in the elevator. Later on, she's having lunch with Rui and An is late. Rui explains that An's trying to find the shoes. Wen think that's a waste. He explains: “...she cherishes everything and everyone that belongs to her. Including you.“ Wen knows that An cherishes her. There are some holes that love alone cannot fill, however. The actor who really lights up the screen is Oliver, the cat. Don't you just want to squeeze that scrunch-faced fluff ball? I'm officially a fan of Director Hsu Fu Chun, who also brought us Office Girl-7.5 & The Rational Life-7.
Affairs aren't fair. They don't just disrupt the marriage. They disrupt kids, the wider family, and the circle of friends. They are always a detour to a dead end. Even if a person leaves their spouse and commits to the nu-thang, that just resets the cycle and makes it easier to repeat the pattern. When confronted with temptation or a difficult moral decision, people often don't consider their life beyond that decision. What does the next moment look like? The next hour, day, the next 10 years? Temptation can be intoxicating, but the best thing to do before blowing up your life is to run. Think about living with this decision the rest of your life and FLEE! Most cheaters string the mistress along but will never give up their comfortable life or jeopardize their income. (What a selfish person to do?). Rui is sincere and sacrifices everything for love. Perhaps it was part love / part pride - he needed it to work or be more humiliated. But he is all-in. He really didn't think it through.
TFW plays out as a simple story at first. As the episodes continued, I respected the writer more and more. First of all, here's a light touch, while at the same time, the subject matter is treated seriously. The tone is rather remarkable. It covers a lot of bases: How the attraction can happen. How the wife always knows. How it changes the relationship forever. It also covers the gravity of marriage. To paraphrase, in their break-up conversation, Rui says: ”Your first question was about how we hurt your ego, and your second was about me abandoning my responsibilities. Neither question was about love.” “Both questions were about love,” An begs to differ. What is love? It's partly the willingness to take this oath (marriage vows) and the determination to honor it until the end. Marriage is optional and one should think it over 80 different ways sideways before entering in. “You're using her as an escape from your life.” Rui married An when he was trying to change himself, which is not the right reason. These things are tricky, and many are not even conscious of the inner workings of their own motivations. If you're hesitant, don't do it! Things will drive you crazy that you've never thought of, even if you can't see any wrong in the person ~at all~ on the day of your wedding. If things already grate at you, you don't have a chance of making it long-term.
Over the living room couch are empty frames, like the pretty frame they put around their empty marriage. It's metaphoric. “If I only focus on my goal I might neglect more important things along the way.” The RUT: The moment marriage becomes transactional, it's no longer a love relationship. Meanwhile, if wives get bogged down by neverending responsibilities and forget about se×, men /never/ will. Don't lose sight of the love relationship or the intimacy. Letting oneself go is not love. It's disrespect. What should be done to reverse course? Starting with good nutrition is never wrong, weirdly enough. My health journey has proven to me that our food supply is making us sick, tired, anxious, and depressed. Living on organic (non-gmo, at a minimum) vegetables and meat, cutting out sugar and avoiding grains for a few months will promote weight loss, better health, and a better mood. Never go hungry, but stop poisoning yourself. Once a person has established that baseline, s/he can branch out to more self-improvement from there.
I'm sick to death of people trashing housewives. Everything they do is work that must be done. Are there housewives who let themselves go and allow their worlds to become too small? Absolutely. It's an occupational hazard. It takes a tremendous amount of self-motivation and discipline to make a successful go of it. Working in a cubicle is often more demeaning and soul-sucking, though! Rui gets the housewife experience. “It feels more tiring than going to work. It looks simple but you don't have any sense of achievement when you're done. You go to market early in the day and it's already afternoon when you're done cooking. After all that trouble, you finish the meal in less than 20 minutes. It's the same with cleaning. After cleaning, you see that there is some hair and dust there.” Women also tend to lose their sense of humor in a marriage; not because they are flawed, but because, just like water vapor turns into clouds and rain falls, it always falls on the woman to hold the family together. It's simply counterintuitive to let oneself go and expect a happy, successful life, however. The best people never stop working on themselves.
Enter Wei.
Elegance. The show encourages us to become more elegant. After her marriage falls apart, Wei puts An through charm classes, of a sort: A lady shouldn't yell in public, ladies should always be graceful, a lady should bend down and pick up her keys this way… (It's crazy ironic, since the way they met was fighting over a vase at a shop - She exhibited none of those traits. It was her spark and spirit that caught his attention. None of that means he's /wrong/ though). He makes her wear heels: She complains that they're not comfortable. “How can you call this /training/!”? She pauses at that. We can see her resolve to work through this and not always take the soft option. He forces her to ditch the auntie hair bun-bun. He forces her out of her comfort zone / housewife cupboard and into the world: “Finish a book. Finish a movie. Finish a class.” He says he'll be testing her daily.
“I'm not trying to get into University…” An isn't convinced. Change is HARD. “The most important thing for a modern woman is the thirst for knowledge,” Wei hits back. “You have to find your interest because this is a very big world, but your eyes are only set on your home. So you have to break the wall /inside you/. Only then, will you know how beautiful the world is. People who aren't interested in the world will not be of interest to anyone else, either.” “Repeat after me: I am in my prime. I have the charm of a mature woman and the freshness of a girl. I am very beautiful. But I didn't realize it before. So from today onwards, I will dress up like this everyday until my husband's eyes light up when he sees me.” Wei doesn't pay for An's new, expensive clothes nor serve it all on a platter for her. She has to /want/ it. She has to put in the effort and investment. She applies her own Band-Aids to the new blisters on the back of her heels. I'm a born rule breaker, so I've never bothered with a lot of this stuff. One thing I've noticed, though, is that breaking the rules is no fun once everybody has forgotten them. We have forgotten what CLASSY is. It's sad.
TFW is funny. An ends up on TV in a cooking competition. They have a clip of friends and family cheering her on as part of her intro. Rui Xuan & Kang De are hilarious. He even takes pot lids and mimics the wind-up monkey banging the symbols. It made me laugh out loud.
The soundtrack is well above average. Sometimes the beautiful music stops abruptly when the scene changes, which is jolting. They should have had smoother transitions. I started watching this show at the same time as Two Fathers-7.5, making a head-to-head comparison unavoidable. I enjoyed TFW less at first, but it ended up moving me more. The last half is quite profound and full of lines that are worthy of quoting. It looks like it's shallow and then the viewer becomes unexpectedly submerged in its depths.
QUOTES📢
Men are so dumb.
When dealing with you men, how can I be kind?
Actually, perfect women are quite boring.
People that are too smart usually aren't happy.
I always think about how others treat me. I never think about how I treat others.
Only losers complain about fairness.
Love Is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars. ~Tagore~
The only way to surpass pain is to forgive the people that hurt you.
The human heart is hard to understand.
I can't go back anymore.
〰🖍 IMHO
📣8 📝8 🎭8 💓🦋🎨6 🎵/🔊8.7 🔚8 ▪ 🌞5.5 ⚡3 😅4 😭4 😱2 😯4 🤢1 🤔6.5 💤0
Shazams:音樂戀曲 重傷 & Wounded by Freya Lim.
Age 13+ Marital infidelityLanguage: it's mostly clean but they do drop occasional coloRuiul verbiage including some F💣s
Re-📺? Not out of the question
In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:
🇹🇼Taiwan
Age of Rebellion-9.5
Back to 1989-7.3
Black & White-6.8
Love You-7
Office Girls-
Weio Fathers-7.5
💓 -
C🇨🇳: Well-Intended Love 7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine;
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1
K🇰🇷 :
A Witch's Love 7.8;
Love To Hate You 8.9;
Touch Your Heart 8.2;
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
It's Okay Not to Be Okay 9;
Hospital Playlist 9;
My Mister 9.5;
🎎 -
C🇨🇳: Overlord 8.4,
Under the Power 8.6,
The Rebel Princess 9.1,
The Sword and the Brocade 8.6 (in ancient Chinese opera style),
The Rise of Phoenixes 9
K🇰🇷:
My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
My Sassy Girl 8.5;
The King's Affection 8.3;
Mr. Sunshine 9
🔮🐉-
C🇨🇳: Love BeWeieen Fairy & Devil 8.9;
Once upon a time in Linglian Mountain 7.5;
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Handsome Siblings 8.7;
Eternal Love 8.3,
Ancient Love Poetry 8.6;
Love and Redemption 10
⚡/😱 -
C🇨🇳: Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Saber 9-Kung-fu!;
K🇰🇷:
K2 8;
Private Lives 8.1;
Sisyphus 8;
Tunnel 8.1;
Signal 8.6;
The Man From Nowhere 8.9
Black 9;
Squid Game 8.4;
Kingdom 8.3;
Sweet Home 8.4
Japanese🇯🇵 lite romcoms: Maid Sama-10, Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo-7.8, Love, Chunibyo And Other Delusions-8.4, Toradora-8.5
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