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This review may contain spoilers
When the Morning Sun Meets a Forest, The Right Pieces Fall into Place.
This drama was the first modern one of SWL that I had seen as before it was only some costume ones which were hit or miss. Here though, he nailed his character. I know ZJM from several other shows and knew she would do well. I also knew several of the supporting characters like the SML or LWM and others. This was a story of when the morning sun met a very green forest, the right pieces would fall into place.
Pros: Being a work of Gu Man, who had a lot of say in her works, as she was always the screenwriter as well as apparently selecting the leads and others herself which was a great thing as we saw in YAMG as well. All of her work have been successful in one way or another. In this story, you had two people destined to meet each but due to a misunderstanding orchestrated by a wicked person (we had several here), the ML played by SWL or LYS, a one in a million protégé neurosurgeon got into a car accident and lost his ability to be a surgeon so he became a businessman instead in his family's rather massive and successful empire in the PV industry. He was angry because he thought the person who had invited him somewhere and after his accident ghosted him was a young lady he fell for at first sight, herself the daughter of a wealthy businessman in a different field. That young lady our FL or NXG however wasn't obviously responsible and didn't even know he existed. She was a college student elsewhere with a crush of her own on the SML or ZX whom I gave the nickname "hunk of junk/lack of balls" to. Though she confessed to hunk of junk/lack of balls, he rejected her, because even though he himself liked her but because of his inferiority complex of her being rich and him poor along with the fact that he seemed completely oblivious to how their mutual "friends" treated her, her roommates; once right before graduation letting others accuse her of letting an important interview call for one of them be forgotten by her without any proof other than the ring leader aka toxic chick who along with her wing woman both liking him just came at her. It was later discovered and admitted that another girl had been in the room when the call came through and she was the one who forgot plus at the company itself, though the company made the call, they didn't write it down. So a lot of people dropped the ball but only when the girl remembered, told the college committee and NXG investigated as well as hunk of junk's senior sister (who worked at the company) came forward and apologized to him on the phone only but not to the involved parties, was NXG's name cleared; hunk of junk knew the truth but never said a word. Only the two girls NXG was friends with ever truly apologized.
Because he and toxic chick knew each other since childhood, she used every opportunity to shove that fact into NXG's face and basically imply that they kind of were together or he would always do things for her most of which were lies. NXG texted him about it apologizing for the confession and that she never meant to steal him away but he never replied basically in her mind confirming those suspicions. Their last two years, he spent either never saying a word, sending her mixed signals with his actions like the thesis help attempt, or plain putting her down with his words. In other words, he expected her to be telepathic to his thoughts and feelings. Once they graduated, and she and her cousin JR, went on a little 2 month vacation to Europe which they called a study tour (I'll talk about cheap faux tour in the cons); which was somehow misconstrued to her studying abroad thanks to the cousin's housekeeper telling hunk of junk that when he came by the house looking for her.
I will say that Z "hunk of junk" X played by LWM whom I've previously seen in a tiny role in Moonlit Reunion but more memorably in FOF, was the most complex character in the entire show. Also, he's probably LWM's most different character from both others that he’s done and himself IRL, though only starting in c-ent 3 years ago. He absolutely nailed the part of a guy, oblivious in college of the girl he liked feelings choosing to stay quiet or “resist; hold back” as he pointed out during his tantrum as opposed to saying something back like "wait for me" or "I'm not ready just yet". ZX always thought she would be there, single waiting for him always taking her for granted (as she pointed out to him during his tantrum and her just spelling everything out for him saying he was lying to himself, that with his IQ and EQ, he didn't understand obvious things she said and did, because he didn't want to understand, that he had many opportunities but failed each one and why LYS got her was because he had openly told her he liked her and when she said she liked someone else, he didn't have a problem with that, but would let her pick. He treated her like an adult and pursued her showing her what real love and open communication going both ways looked like) until it was way too late. All of the push and pull between and inside him was shown in his micro-expressions and how only when he started working and came across a situation where bad rumors were spread about him and a few of his coworkers including one of the women, how he recalled the frame job and toxic chick's constant bashing and belittling of NXG in college and how she must have felt after hearing Chris' words; how he nearly sent NXG an “I'm sorry” but instead decided to sit in the darkness and cry. This was after the tantrum episode. Everything was about him and he didn't seem to understand how others felt until he experienced it for himself or someone he was close with now as an adult spoke about it. Though on the contradictory side, he wasn't a complete narcissist as he was able to make genuine good friends; two of whom he later started a successful business with, he himself got that status he always wanted through hard work, and he was able to express gratitude like he did to LYS for helping his friend/colleague after the latter experienced a medical emergency on the slopes. And that's why I'm proud of LWM because he was able to pull off a rather complex character in a show that didn't require that much, if at all.
Now when ML met FL as he downgraded himself from the main office in Shanghai to Suzhou it was half because of the misunderstanding and also because he still had feelings for her. Their start wasn't smooth as he moved her from her department to his and gave her extra work to do in a way to give her a hard time but also to be close to her and get to know her. He was quite puzzled that she didn't remember him and each time that came out in conversation he grew cold and distant toward her and assigned her more work. It wasn't until she landed in the hospital after falling from the balcony and him catching her and venting his frustration at her in the hospital though not completely saying the entire thing and her saying that he was the reason for her bad luck and crying plus later on one of her coworkers telling him how often she got hurt at the factory where she didn't have to be but he made her work there during his as she called it "bipolar" moments, that he finally called a truce between them though she had no idea why. He confessed to her not long after that after running into the university classmates along with toxic chick (who's fake apology and implication of her and hunk of junk being together; who was standing behind her and was only shocked when the study abroad to study tour misunderstanding was cleared up) and hunk of junk, he rescued her from also giving them the impression that they were together causing hunk of junk to panic, get wasted, say really rude things to her, making her cry for the last time over him.
After that, the show just showed two people getting to know each other properly and spending time together as we also learned of both families dysfunctions, his father died when he was young in a different country after he was set up by an uncle or two for a mistake within the conglomerate and was shipped out to work in some remote location where a war broke out. LYS' mom never got over what her family did and moved to Switzerland while letting ML grow up and go to school while living with his paternal grandparents. Mom met and married a wonderful man. FL's mom divorced her bastard husband and FL's father for cheating and the entire series shows him and his first love and her daughter living in a villa. That daughter pretending to be FL is the wicked person spoken about who liked LYS and was the reason for him being on that highway and then ghosting him in the hospital later. When the truth came out, LYS was stunned and distraught understandably, and took a few days leave to travel around for both himself and work. After receiving the letter with the entire story from his side of how they met or when he first saw her and her remembering that day as well, she called him and told him to stop over in her hometown on the way back to Suzhou. They went to walk around the cherry blossoms which was kind of a full circle from two years before when the fake invited him to do the same, and this was when they--both real people--officially got together.
The rest you'll have to watch, but I'd like to point out that like YAMG both mom's of the leads were amazing people who knew each other from a while back so the ski trip other then both moms, also included FL's uncle, aunt, and semi annoying cousin JR, and ML's stepfather was a very happy one filled with love and fun; LYS with his surprise to NXG made the trip even more memorable. Hunk of junk and coworkers ended up vacationing up there as well; didn’t dampen the spirits too much (though it was his younger bro that set him up). NXG's paternal grandparents were also great people; they could barely stand their asshole son; especially after learning what he essentially allowed gold digger first love and fake daughter to do, after NXG laid it all on the table for him and both mom and grandma found out the despicable actions of all three and how he treated both his only actual daughter and LYS. ML's grandfather was alright, he learned a hard lesson himself finally understanding his wrongdoing with ML's father. Other great people were ML's niece (who was ultimately named successor of the big company) and nephew. Having non-toxic family members is rare in cdrama land. Also NXG's coworkers/friends were night and day from her college roommates. They were always supportive and accepting and fun to be around. ZX's coworkers were also nice people.
OSTs were my favorite especially the one in English called "You Are the Light of my Love." The desert scenes were great and costumes as usual per modern drama; I liked it more when FL started dressing like a young lady and not a kid.
Cons: Whoever thought putting so much propaganda into a romantic drama was a good idea, didn't think things through. At first it wasn't a big deal, here and there in a conversation, one could brush it off but than in a college lecture the leads went to, that started talking about their industry and than proceeded to vilify the West and go into politics before trying to tie things up with a pretty little bow with "all countries in the world under the sun will prosper." It was ridiculous and unnecessary. Afterwards at the end of the series it was all countries bad and China the leading in everything technological especially last year and I'm like y'all blind or something? This is a romantic drama not a lesson in business politics. Or the off the cuff remarks that Mr. Zhang would suffer in America because the food and atmosphere is bad/different. I felt like that was a slap in the face to every Chinese American because there's plenty of Chinese food in every city not to mention places like NYC and San Fran having Chinatowns taking up whole portions of the cities where you literally feel like you went to their country. It's not like Mr. Zhang's son lived in the middle of a cornfield in Ohio, for Pete's sake! Stupid.
This show had plenty of money but apparently not enough to even have CGI of European cities on NXG's and JR's study tour that they had to use a green screen and stickers or posters. Continuing, it felt very disheartening when every single evil doer got a slap on the wrist instead of real consequences; bastard father after NXG read him the riot act and grandma and mom found out the extent of his stupidity and harm, just had the benign tumor removed, but though it had supposedly done some harm to his hearing and facial movement; the actor never acted it out so it was a loophole and his business never suffered like in the book. He was still as arrogant as ever. Gold digger and fake daughter were presumably kicked out of the villa with some money intact but no one went to jail and we never actually saw that. Asshole uncle and his son; were allowed to continue being in the company or one at least and both retained their wealth. Toxic chick quit her job and left the city; that was it. None of them got any real punishment. We were all waiting for karma and she forgot about them; I felt that was lax writing; two screenwriters so whomever wrote it, didn't do it well.
While we got a strange proposal and an equally strange wedding (just them two, no family or friends seen anywhere); the time jumps in the last episode didn't make sense especially the last two. One after 10 years and one after 3. Why wait a whole decade after getting married to have a child? And why jump 3 years into the future, just to show a walking creepy as hell robot and cars that can do everything but fly when everyone knows not one country on earth is that advanced nor will be in 2-3 years. It just didn't jive with the rest of the show. Showing a family of 3 with the cute daughter was great, also exiting out ZX with his coworkers was appropriate but the majority disappeared before the wedding and were never seen again, with no explanation given. Things could have been done better at the end with that especially given how important they were to the rest of the show and the leads.
Would I recommend it? I absolutely would. Despite the cons and there were enough to definitely pose questions, pros outweighed them by far. This was a great lesson in how to have the right type of relationship and the right type of friends as well as whom to cherish as family and whom to disregard.
Pros: Being a work of Gu Man, who had a lot of say in her works, as she was always the screenwriter as well as apparently selecting the leads and others herself which was a great thing as we saw in YAMG as well. All of her work have been successful in one way or another. In this story, you had two people destined to meet each but due to a misunderstanding orchestrated by a wicked person (we had several here), the ML played by SWL or LYS, a one in a million protégé neurosurgeon got into a car accident and lost his ability to be a surgeon so he became a businessman instead in his family's rather massive and successful empire in the PV industry. He was angry because he thought the person who had invited him somewhere and after his accident ghosted him was a young lady he fell for at first sight, herself the daughter of a wealthy businessman in a different field. That young lady our FL or NXG however wasn't obviously responsible and didn't even know he existed. She was a college student elsewhere with a crush of her own on the SML or ZX whom I gave the nickname "hunk of junk/lack of balls" to. Though she confessed to hunk of junk/lack of balls, he rejected her, because even though he himself liked her but because of his inferiority complex of her being rich and him poor along with the fact that he seemed completely oblivious to how their mutual "friends" treated her, her roommates; once right before graduation letting others accuse her of letting an important interview call for one of them be forgotten by her without any proof other than the ring leader aka toxic chick who along with her wing woman both liking him just came at her. It was later discovered and admitted that another girl had been in the room when the call came through and she was the one who forgot plus at the company itself, though the company made the call, they didn't write it down. So a lot of people dropped the ball but only when the girl remembered, told the college committee and NXG investigated as well as hunk of junk's senior sister (who worked at the company) came forward and apologized to him on the phone only but not to the involved parties, was NXG's name cleared; hunk of junk knew the truth but never said a word. Only the two girls NXG was friends with ever truly apologized.
Because he and toxic chick knew each other since childhood, she used every opportunity to shove that fact into NXG's face and basically imply that they kind of were together or he would always do things for her most of which were lies. NXG texted him about it apologizing for the confession and that she never meant to steal him away but he never replied basically in her mind confirming those suspicions. Their last two years, he spent either never saying a word, sending her mixed signals with his actions like the thesis help attempt, or plain putting her down with his words. In other words, he expected her to be telepathic to his thoughts and feelings. Once they graduated, and she and her cousin JR, went on a little 2 month vacation to Europe which they called a study tour (I'll talk about cheap faux tour in the cons); which was somehow misconstrued to her studying abroad thanks to the cousin's housekeeper telling hunk of junk that when he came by the house looking for her.
I will say that Z "hunk of junk" X played by LWM whom I've previously seen in a tiny role in Moonlit Reunion but more memorably in FOF, was the most complex character in the entire show. Also, he's probably LWM's most different character from both others that he’s done and himself IRL, though only starting in c-ent 3 years ago. He absolutely nailed the part of a guy, oblivious in college of the girl he liked feelings choosing to stay quiet or “resist; hold back” as he pointed out during his tantrum as opposed to saying something back like "wait for me" or "I'm not ready just yet". ZX always thought she would be there, single waiting for him always taking her for granted (as she pointed out to him during his tantrum and her just spelling everything out for him saying he was lying to himself, that with his IQ and EQ, he didn't understand obvious things she said and did, because he didn't want to understand, that he had many opportunities but failed each one and why LYS got her was because he had openly told her he liked her and when she said she liked someone else, he didn't have a problem with that, but would let her pick. He treated her like an adult and pursued her showing her what real love and open communication going both ways looked like) until it was way too late. All of the push and pull between and inside him was shown in his micro-expressions and how only when he started working and came across a situation where bad rumors were spread about him and a few of his coworkers including one of the women, how he recalled the frame job and toxic chick's constant bashing and belittling of NXG in college and how she must have felt after hearing Chris' words; how he nearly sent NXG an “I'm sorry” but instead decided to sit in the darkness and cry. This was after the tantrum episode. Everything was about him and he didn't seem to understand how others felt until he experienced it for himself or someone he was close with now as an adult spoke about it. Though on the contradictory side, he wasn't a complete narcissist as he was able to make genuine good friends; two of whom he later started a successful business with, he himself got that status he always wanted through hard work, and he was able to express gratitude like he did to LYS for helping his friend/colleague after the latter experienced a medical emergency on the slopes. And that's why I'm proud of LWM because he was able to pull off a rather complex character in a show that didn't require that much, if at all.
Now when ML met FL as he downgraded himself from the main office in Shanghai to Suzhou it was half because of the misunderstanding and also because he still had feelings for her. Their start wasn't smooth as he moved her from her department to his and gave her extra work to do in a way to give her a hard time but also to be close to her and get to know her. He was quite puzzled that she didn't remember him and each time that came out in conversation he grew cold and distant toward her and assigned her more work. It wasn't until she landed in the hospital after falling from the balcony and him catching her and venting his frustration at her in the hospital though not completely saying the entire thing and her saying that he was the reason for her bad luck and crying plus later on one of her coworkers telling him how often she got hurt at the factory where she didn't have to be but he made her work there during his as she called it "bipolar" moments, that he finally called a truce between them though she had no idea why. He confessed to her not long after that after running into the university classmates along with toxic chick (who's fake apology and implication of her and hunk of junk being together; who was standing behind her and was only shocked when the study abroad to study tour misunderstanding was cleared up) and hunk of junk, he rescued her from also giving them the impression that they were together causing hunk of junk to panic, get wasted, say really rude things to her, making her cry for the last time over him.
After that, the show just showed two people getting to know each other properly and spending time together as we also learned of both families dysfunctions, his father died when he was young in a different country after he was set up by an uncle or two for a mistake within the conglomerate and was shipped out to work in some remote location where a war broke out. LYS' mom never got over what her family did and moved to Switzerland while letting ML grow up and go to school while living with his paternal grandparents. Mom met and married a wonderful man. FL's mom divorced her bastard husband and FL's father for cheating and the entire series shows him and his first love and her daughter living in a villa. That daughter pretending to be FL is the wicked person spoken about who liked LYS and was the reason for him being on that highway and then ghosting him in the hospital later. When the truth came out, LYS was stunned and distraught understandably, and took a few days leave to travel around for both himself and work. After receiving the letter with the entire story from his side of how they met or when he first saw her and her remembering that day as well, she called him and told him to stop over in her hometown on the way back to Suzhou. They went to walk around the cherry blossoms which was kind of a full circle from two years before when the fake invited him to do the same, and this was when they--both real people--officially got together.
The rest you'll have to watch, but I'd like to point out that like YAMG both mom's of the leads were amazing people who knew each other from a while back so the ski trip other then both moms, also included FL's uncle, aunt, and semi annoying cousin JR, and ML's stepfather was a very happy one filled with love and fun; LYS with his surprise to NXG made the trip even more memorable. Hunk of junk and coworkers ended up vacationing up there as well; didn’t dampen the spirits too much (though it was his younger bro that set him up). NXG's paternal grandparents were also great people; they could barely stand their asshole son; especially after learning what he essentially allowed gold digger first love and fake daughter to do, after NXG laid it all on the table for him and both mom and grandma found out the despicable actions of all three and how he treated both his only actual daughter and LYS. ML's grandfather was alright, he learned a hard lesson himself finally understanding his wrongdoing with ML's father. Other great people were ML's niece (who was ultimately named successor of the big company) and nephew. Having non-toxic family members is rare in cdrama land. Also NXG's coworkers/friends were night and day from her college roommates. They were always supportive and accepting and fun to be around. ZX's coworkers were also nice people.
OSTs were my favorite especially the one in English called "You Are the Light of my Love." The desert scenes were great and costumes as usual per modern drama; I liked it more when FL started dressing like a young lady and not a kid.
Cons: Whoever thought putting so much propaganda into a romantic drama was a good idea, didn't think things through. At first it wasn't a big deal, here and there in a conversation, one could brush it off but than in a college lecture the leads went to, that started talking about their industry and than proceeded to vilify the West and go into politics before trying to tie things up with a pretty little bow with "all countries in the world under the sun will prosper." It was ridiculous and unnecessary. Afterwards at the end of the series it was all countries bad and China the leading in everything technological especially last year and I'm like y'all blind or something? This is a romantic drama not a lesson in business politics. Or the off the cuff remarks that Mr. Zhang would suffer in America because the food and atmosphere is bad/different. I felt like that was a slap in the face to every Chinese American because there's plenty of Chinese food in every city not to mention places like NYC and San Fran having Chinatowns taking up whole portions of the cities where you literally feel like you went to their country. It's not like Mr. Zhang's son lived in the middle of a cornfield in Ohio, for Pete's sake! Stupid.
This show had plenty of money but apparently not enough to even have CGI of European cities on NXG's and JR's study tour that they had to use a green screen and stickers or posters. Continuing, it felt very disheartening when every single evil doer got a slap on the wrist instead of real consequences; bastard father after NXG read him the riot act and grandma and mom found out the extent of his stupidity and harm, just had the benign tumor removed, but though it had supposedly done some harm to his hearing and facial movement; the actor never acted it out so it was a loophole and his business never suffered like in the book. He was still as arrogant as ever. Gold digger and fake daughter were presumably kicked out of the villa with some money intact but no one went to jail and we never actually saw that. Asshole uncle and his son; were allowed to continue being in the company or one at least and both retained their wealth. Toxic chick quit her job and left the city; that was it. None of them got any real punishment. We were all waiting for karma and she forgot about them; I felt that was lax writing; two screenwriters so whomever wrote it, didn't do it well.
While we got a strange proposal and an equally strange wedding (just them two, no family or friends seen anywhere); the time jumps in the last episode didn't make sense especially the last two. One after 10 years and one after 3. Why wait a whole decade after getting married to have a child? And why jump 3 years into the future, just to show a walking creepy as hell robot and cars that can do everything but fly when everyone knows not one country on earth is that advanced nor will be in 2-3 years. It just didn't jive with the rest of the show. Showing a family of 3 with the cute daughter was great, also exiting out ZX with his coworkers was appropriate but the majority disappeared before the wedding and were never seen again, with no explanation given. Things could have been done better at the end with that especially given how important they were to the rest of the show and the leads.
Would I recommend it? I absolutely would. Despite the cons and there were enough to definitely pose questions, pros outweighed them by far. This was a great lesson in how to have the right type of relationship and the right type of friends as well as whom to cherish as family and whom to disregard.
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