absurd

I get your point, though I thought SJS's motivation was that he didn't want Lu Pingfan to take all the blame and get demoted again. They are friends after all. He wanted to smooth it out without big loss and maybe he was wrong, but I don't feel like his reasons were bad actually.
To me the worst in this situation was Zheng Yuan. He was all: "everyone else survives on rations perfectly well, but you don't?". And then he found out Gao Liang was involved and all of a sudden it's "give to officers what soldiers usually eat". SJS was scared of his other superior, it's not the most noble, yes, but putting all the blame on him like Zheng Yuan did and acting all righteous is unfair. He's playing favorites, cause GL told him his sob story and that's the worst you can do as a commanding officer. I'll bet you there are a lot of new recruits that have it as bad GL, but he's singling out this one guy, that never ends well.

Maybe, I'm starting to think there's a lot of cultural differences when it comes to the army. I didn't even understand why it became such a big deal all of a sudden. Sure, it was forbidden, but she literally spent more time with GL in front of her superiors and no one said anything. She comes to help GY in the hospital and bam. "I forbid you from even exchanging letters". What is she, her mother?

To be fair it's been like couple of months, half a year max. People don't grow up that fast. He is pretty dumb though, I think they overdid it a little.

I think, I'm starting to get an idea of how Nanzheng might end up with Gao Liang (according to synopsis). It seems like they are going the "realistic" route and making her and Yiye into "high school sweethearts" that grow out of it as they grow up. She and GL will likely get together after a time skip, when they are older. This is just a guess, but so far seems like the only way for GL/JNZ to be plausible.

Well, we had another instance where Gu Yiye wanted to be honest and take the blame (when GL and JNZ were caught with his book of poetry) and their other commanding officer, whose name I forgot (the one that got demoted) told him not to. Which was actually worse, because that was literally letting someone take the fall for you.
I think in this instance, SJS thought that them sharing the blame (he even added himself to it and the demoted guy) will lessen the punishment. So did GYY, since he did not take the full blame (like he initially wanted to), but gave GL the option of sharing it. They knew GL will get kicked out and has nowhere to go. So while there are some parts where them patronizing GL is annoying, this one actually felt pretty rational to me. They did do it together, no one dragged the other guys at the gun point.
I did like that we finally got some GYY insight, with this dialog with his father. I am really hoping that he will grow very high in ranks, he deserves it.

I see what you mean, but I also think that it's an idiotic way to treat subordinates. If you treat them like children, they are going to behave like children. And they are going to be stubborn about it and sneak around. While a reasonable conversation about how it would impact their careers, might have a much better effect. Especially if they are each told about the other, not themselves.

It's not as bad as it sounds. I would say it's more that Gao Liang is kind of treated with kid gloves by his superiors from time to time, while Gu Yiye gets the "of course he'll do well, it's expected" treatment. No one's putting him down, though. More like they feel he's so well rounded (good family, education, smarts etc.) that he doesn't need help.

Am I the only one who doesn't understand why GY and JNZ can't have a relationship? I mean they are old enough to join the army, but not old enough to know what they want? Why are the officers treating them like kids? And it's not like they are having sex or running away to get married, they are exchanging letters!

Haha, I said exactly the same thing somewhere under the spoiler yesterday. You read my mind! And it wasn't even a compliment, like he literally said no one else will take you, but we are running a charity here, so we got you LOL How does that even work? We don't need smart, well trained soldiers, they don't make us feel as good about ourselves? wtf

Yeah, the rags to riches trope is a bit convoluted here. Maybe it's a cultural thing? Idk, here's hoping it gets better. And god forbid, they make Gao Liang Gu Yiye's superior officer, I would be so mad.

Same, except the leads, no names have stayed in my brain while watching 9 episodes. Guess it considers them useless information

I forgot what episode it was, but Gao Liang the Mulan just killed me with his book of marital arts, channeling his qi among the drying sheets and socks.

No one will care if it's someone else 😁

Never said it was fair :) just that it's a very popular trope, that has been taken too far here. Like it is possible to make GL shine without undermining GY, didn't he even say it? Compete with yourself.

I think in one of the trailers they say it covers at last 30 years or more.

At the end of the day I don't care much that he gets the girl, the romance is mostly background here. The way they are setting it up is annoying though, mostly because of the very spoilery synopsis. While I might have been disappointed later on, when all that build up between JN and GY leads to nothing, it would have been much better than watching all of this and thinking: "ok, but why?"

Well , they need some suspense there, even if we all know that they won't get kicked out LOL

I don't want to debate semantics about politics, I am not well versed in those :) But I do live in country that used to have the same regime as China and saw a lot of movies made by that regime: it's all about hard working nobodies, simple people who have nothing being the heroes and rich being the evil. It's a load of BS, but also not limited to socialist countries. I mean Harry Potter, anyone? All the rich aristocrats are evil and the Weasleys are the good guys.

Hmm, I didn't really get much of "propaganda" vibe from it, I mean it's no more patriotic than say, You are my glory, and that one has nothing to do with military. Modern c-dramas are all like that and considering the theme, this one is actually pretty mild on the propaganda, more of the Arsenal military academy type of military drama, rather that something like Faith makes great, so far.
CCTV thing might be about scheduling, actually, I mean it only got licensed like a week ago. And JSTV is not that high in the pecking order to refuse a guarantied hit.

I know right, it's pretty obvious that GY is superior not just because of his brains, he won in a fight, did better in the shooting exercise and much better in the long distance exercise. How does coming from the rich family help with that? Shouldn't GL be stronger and have more endurance if he worked in the mine?