CKDramaddicts

Yes, exactly. It was a black tie the day with the nursing home visit, then a thin striped black tie the day of the interview, and then the next day was the anniversary celebration, where we only saw everyone in evening wear.

Every day is so eventful, lol.

The premise reminds me a little of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse...wonder if there's any similarities? (I can't believe that show was from 15 years ago now. 🤯)

The contrast between his role in My Sweet Mobster and When the Phone Rings!! :O

I think she knows now he said it because he didn't think she was in real danger, but the words still haunt her, and she's simply taking advantage of the situation to try and get her husband to divorce her so she can be free.

I was combing through the episode staring at tie patterns to figure out when the epilogue clip happened, that's how ridiculous I'm being. 🤣 As far as I can tell, that particular tie was never worn during the episode, which were consecutive days, so it must have happened earlier that day before the 70th anniversary party? Unless it happens after the events of Ep 4....

I love childhood connections, but at this point, I can't help but giggle at the predictability of its appearance. 🤣

🤣 While you're at it, make them air it daily 🤣

Almost from the get-go, this drama made me think of the Burning Sun scandal and all the real life headlines about the dark underbelly of the Gangnam clubbing scene.

It's very gripping, but also a disturbing watch, especially when the director apparently consulted with club promoters, police, and prosecutors to give the events/cases more authenticity, and the author of the novel that inspired this script reportedly spent six months as a driver for call girls and interviewed homeless youths to capture the dark side of life in Gangnam.

I find C dramas can be just as over the top. K dramas have "makjang", C dramas have "dog's blood" (狗血). 😂 But yes, sometimes, sound off would be nice. 😅😬

yeah, I could totally see that happening to me as well. It's hard to connect or empathize with her character because of the way she is being portrayed, even though I want to because she's clearly going through serious and scary crap! I had the same issue with Healer. I get it's totally personal preference, but PMY's portrayal didn't work for me and as much as I enjoyed Healer overall, I wasn't as emotionally invested as I wanted to be. I'm not automatically adverse to the cute-naive thing either, but it somehow does take away from the gravitas of the circumstances - I agree she already looks it, no need to do more. And one or two tantrums is enough to get the message across too, doing multiple times an episode becomes tiresome, dilutes the moment and packs less emotional punch.

I am liking this so far .... except I wish the FL would stop screaming so much and play the character a little differently. A little is fine and makes sense obviously, but there's been so many extended scenes of screaming tears in the first three episodes that I'm finding it extremely grating, unfortunately. 😬😅 (To be clear, obviously she's going through a lot of serious trauma from her medical diagnosis to being legit kidnapped, but there are many ways to convey the heightened emotions.)

Even knowing how things are going to end, I can't believe they dragged this out an extra 8 episodes to make sure **nobody** is spared! Who greenlit the final script, lol?

Oh no! Fangs of Fortune was on my to-watch list as well...

I was waiting for your review when I started watching (I went in with eyes wide open since I simply wanted to watch LXY in an angsty meaty role) and I generally agree with your take! When Luo Mei finally accepted Xuanlie, I thought, surely, this was some scheme to get closer so she could gather evidence and foil any future nefarious plans! I kept waiting and waiting. Baron Chen was great, but his character did get tiresome.

When that arc ended, I thought, 24 episodes would have been a great length to wrap things up! Every other subsequent episode that followed was set up as yet another opportunity to finally give everyone a flawed, but at least happy ending. But Nah! Why do anything sensible at this point, lol?

When I finally got to the scene with the stupid Xiyan King, I literally laughed out loud and thought "flower chomping, superstitious old fool" indeed!🤣🤣🥀🤣🤣 (At this point, I also thought cynically that the censors must love how the story is demonstrating the terrible consequences of religious/superstitious beliefs, lol.)

Anyway, I just started ep 29 and can't fathom how there is still 4 episodes worth of story to tell. At the same time, I honestly have no regrets about watching this since I went in knowing exactly what awaited and probably enjoyed it a lot more as a result.

In Western productions, they might have a team of writers, with a different lead writer for each episode, but in general, the overall story direction is already set and everyone is on the same page with showrunners typically having the final say. In China, you might have a combo team who always work together as partners on scripts. But shows with multiple writers are usually situations where writers are brought to "fix" a script, or writers who are on hand to make changes to the show as it is being filmed to add scenes for certain characters (for example, an agency or big investor wants to push their particular talent and give them a bigger role and more lines than was originally intended and is demanding those changes) or to work around difficult filming situations that might arise. My understanding is these writers that come in after aren't necessarily working with the original scriptwriters or even the director. They may be taking direction from higher up -- the people putting money into the production. Sometimes original writers quit because of unreasonable demands or are fired. In any case, unlike Hollywood, where the overall story is already established and the writing and directing is simply split up by episodes between half a dozen or more people, in China, productions that usually have more than 3 writers usually end up with messier scripts.

I now see what you mean. I guess like real life, even when the truth is revealed to the world, people often refuse to believe it. (Also, I find it hard to believe that after a decade, the street where her mom ran her shop has not been cleaned up yet, lol)

after I posted this, it occurred to me (duh!) that the same applies to LXY, who has played the villain and ambiguous supporting grey characters so well too.

Unless more happens later, by the end of 23, they did make it official with the imperial edict that spelled out in detail that the Crown Prince was behind everything and redeeming Jinghe and offering three years tax exception to the people of Qingzhou.

Also, he honestly got off way too easy.

Okay, I'm now at end of 23 and how are there still so many more episodes left?! I guess this is where it all begins to unravel? 🤣🫣