CKDramaddicts

Thanks, that's helpful to know!

Is this something I should pace myself and watch as it airs or wait until it's almost finished to binge?

yes, I agree, I think the illicit affair was the driving force behind the censorship, not the content of those cut scenes. And they would never allow a drama on the air if the plot had the protagonist rebel and over throw a "legitimate" ruler, no matter how terrible that ruler was.

Supposedly the series didn't pass the second round of censorship review, so they were really brutal with the editing in order to get it to air. I only just started watching this so I could binge properly and thought the first episode was really well done in terms of pacing, editing, production, etc. so it's pretty disappointing to think how butchered the editing gets later! I'd been hearing about the jarring cut scenes and weird choppy edits from my friends and it sounds pretty ridiculous. (I also just watched Lighter and Princess recently, which I thought pushed the boundaries a bit on what's normally shown in C-dramas, and also had one of most natural romantic interactions between a couple I've seen in C dramas -- no weird, awkward, frozen kisses or hugs.😜)

Noting that it is scoring 7.1 on Douban, which is pretty solid for that platform (Who Rules the World, for example, scores a 5.8), so I feel like maybe the bad reviews are attracting disproportionate attention perhaps...

I haven't been stuck in a show hole in well over a year...the "good" thing with being unable to move on is that I'm more productive with my time and not wasting it on mediocre dramas, lol. 😅

I know this feeling well! I had this issue after watching Jeremy Tsui in The Autumn Ballad. His next release was dubbed and I could not watch or listen to the dubbing. At least Xu Kai's voice blends a little more; Jeremy's is very distinctive and unusually deep, so it's really hard to "un-hear" it. For anyone else interested, I blogged about this a while back: 😅 https://www.solarina.ca/dramaddicts/dramaddicts-blog/2021/10/20/why-are-so-many-chinese-dramas-dubbed

I watched Lighter & Princess after this and left me in an absolute show-hole. On my all-time favourite list. Different from this though, but much better quality.

You have to watch her as the FL in Party A Who Lives Beside Me. I liked her a lot there and didn't think it was possible for her to be anything but lovely even if she tried. So I thought she did a great job making viewers despise her here, acting like an incompetent, petulant and spoiled princess.

Absolutely! <3

Seeing some comments about things that characters said and whether it was a poor translation or not. I watched about 22 episodes on Viki and then switched to a different site for the last 14 episodes. The subtitles on both were mostly good (with the odd error), but I felt like they didn't always capture the nuance or poetry of what was being said. It's not always the fault of bad subtitles -- some things are lost in translation and genuinely hard to capture. For me, this was particularly true for Li Xun's final two lines at the end of the drama. I found them beautiful and haunting. His second last line, "人生若只如初见" (rénshēng ruò zhǐ rú chū jiàn) comes from a famous Qing Dynasty poet some 350 years ago. And in the final line, the subtitles I saw do not reference a light carousel -- like the one Li Xun gave his sister that we see spinning in the final montage of flashbacks. Not that this does it any justice either, but what Li Xun says is, "If, when we die ... our lives truly play out like a light carousel ... the last person I'll likely see in this life ... is her."

Some thoughts on the subtitles and the final two lines of the drama below...

Agree, Jenny Zeng is great too! I loved Ren Di's band in the series. But the whole soundtrack is great. I thought Reset was well done too and interesting, but for me, it didn't pack the emotional punch that L&P did or the absolute joy I got from NLB.

Depends on what you are looking for. I thought it would be draggy too (almost no repetitive flashback scenes), but it wasn't at all, things got resolved efficiently and it had such a wonderful ending. Despite being 40 ep, I was sad to see it end. If you really need and expect non-stop romance to be the focal point or you are looking for heavy intrigue, you'll be disappointed though. What I loved about it was the strong women, the other relationships -- the sisterhood and brotherhood -- and the drama's ability to tell a great story about daily life (which normally sounds boring) and keep it interesting, without a bad or annoying characters.

I've watched a ton of dramas this year and quite a few of them were pretty good - a couple were even excellent - but very few left me in a show hole, let alone one this deep! I binged through L&P so fast and even at 36 episodes did not want it to end, even though I thought the ending was perfect and beautiful and packed such an emotional wallop. This is NOT a light, fluffy watch though, despite the title and poster mood. Zhao Zhiwei's performance in the last two episodes deserves special mention. With so many OSTs indistinguishable from one another, the absolutely fantastic soundtrack, particularly the tracks by A. Young, Chen Xueran, and Pu Shu, also needs to be highlighted. Among my favourite OSTs. This is one of the best Asian dramas I've ever watched and, along with New Life Begins, is also on of my list of best Asian series for 2022.

I'm already on ep30 and sad it's almost over! I completely agree with you - NLB and Lighter and Princess are definitely my top C dramas this year, and probably on my all time list.

oooh, I just started Lighter and Princess and really liking it so far!

Yes! I was hoping they would start their own firm together too.

The quality of this drama is not great (so-so execution, editing, too much filler, some really annoying characters, rushed ending), even though I actually personally enjoyed it in all its soapy mediocrity. I had some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, and there were some great speeches about life/relationships/work by the ML/FL. I quite liked Xu Kai here -- I really love his character's vulnerability, and thought he did a great job conveying that. I didn't find him bland like others have (I found him super bland in FIYS though). I could not stand Wu Fei -- at first I kind of understood her misguided motivations, but I grew to really dislike her underhanded way of doing things, incompentency as a lawyer, and dependence on Daddy. Wang Zixuan was a great FL in Party A Who Lives Beside Me and even Gank Your Heart, but she almost did too good of a job playing a hateful character here that I will need a major cleanse to appreciate her as an FL again in future dramas, lol. I also really like Baby Zhang from her previous dramas too and would love to see her play an FL someday. Li Dai turned out to a great character and even though I was satisfied with where everyone ended up, I was kind of hoping her, the FL, and the ex-boyfriend would start their own law firm together and poach a few of the junior lawyers at the firm! If you want a wonderful drama with much better executed feminist theme, I highly recommend New Life Begins (set in a very fictionalized ancient China), which has one of the most perfect and satisfying endings I've ever seen for a C-drama.

I can't express how much I loved this drama. I absolutely adored all the relationships - the comraderie, the sisterhood, and the brotherhood. No repetitive filler flashbacks, no annoying or draggy plotlines and misunderstandings, no nonsensical and undeserving redemption plots for villains, and incredibly -- no butchered or rushed ending! The changes they made to the book in creating a fictional ancient China was brilliant, as it allowed them to be a lot more creative with the progressive themes and stories they wanted to explore. This series was a masterclass in how to tell a fresh, original, beautiful, and interesting story about daily life without being boring or relying on traditional, overused tropes. Definitely the best drama of the year for me, and one of my all-time favourite C-dramas. My only critique would be that I wished they weren't quite so over the top with the way Shangguan treated the 5th prince (as much as I loved both characters) and the OTP romance sometimes felt secondary to everything else - but "everything else" was genuinely perfect, down to the very final moment of the final episode. I was crying happy tears at how wonderfully everything unfolded to the very end.