TrashyMctrashPicker Form

The acting leaves a lot to be desired. For a 58 episode drama, they f**k up the pacing, character development and overall plot pretty badly. Ultimately, a mediocre watch where my finger started hurting from fast forwarding every episode. Some of the most unlikeable characters in drama land.

Oh Gosh, I forget about the obsessive male leads. One of my least favorite novel tropes. I might give it a go, but weary about how they do the time travel aspect if the female lead constantly makes mistakes . In dramas, since they cut off that element, you just have a teenage protagonist doing teenage things which makes it easier to swallow. In novels, it's always someone older time travelling so their mistakes are just annoying and silly. I'll check out some reviews for it and see if I should give it a go. Some part of me though feels like I've read this or something very similar as it also involved a fourth miss who was abandoned. I'll look through my previous reads.

He easily carries part 2 of this drama. Like really heavily carries it because of his story arc.

I probably won't read it because from the show, things like the female lead being pined after by different men, dealing with constant jealously from others, and having everyone come to her rescue are often very tedious repetitive reads. It's also so pervasive in every historical novel centered around a female lead to the point where they all seem familiar. Not to mention, how many tedious descriptions of a heaven defying beauty you've got to sit through.

The female leads also almost always possesses the super human quality of not just trouble evasion but being unique phoenixes that somehow no one has met before.

I've found Chinese dramas to be a rare case of me always preferring dramas over novels. I have novels I dropped that are pretty good dramas like Joy of Life.

This is a drama I can sense is probably better done than the novel. I've not read the novel but I've read so many time travelling ones with similar plots that you can tell the drama trimmed out a lot of that and probably dialed down the protagonist halo a bit.

The first half of this drama is on par with Minglan in terms of being a slow burn where male and female lead both lead their own lives with maybe an occasional meeting. I love these types of dramas so I really enjoyed the first half of this show. Second half is more dramatic but not enough to muddy up the ride.

The first half of this drama is a 10 and the last half is a 4, and the last five minutes is like a 0.5. The tone from the beginning of this drama is emotional, impactful and just a great set up followed by an admixture of well built slice of life meets an over the top plot point no one needs.

If someone ever asks me why I finished this, heavens knows because this drama has very few positives yet I slogged through it.

She absolutely makes the drama. I'm literally here wondering if there are dramas out there with a female lead like this. Her acting is a stand out for me. Subtly, not dramatic yet absolutely conveys the full range of emotions. I put her on my actress list based on this. I've never seen a more elegant potrayal of a character that also didn't feel over the top or pretentious.

Chris Evans's looks have absolutely not diminished. I honestly don't find Chris Evans to be a good actor though, but he has a whole fan base that is absolutely thirsty for him despite mediocre acting skills. The only actor I feel has improved out of the heart throbe role is Matthew McConaughey.

The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty has the bromance, detective work and also good martial arts. It's an easy watch too.

The male lead here stole my heart for his acting. Sure there are orchestrated drama romance moments with long drawn out stares, and slow motion hand touching but the way he pats her hair, and lightly touches her ears, this man was speaking my love language.

This is fairly tame. Sure, there are sad parts, but I genuinely don't recall any crying on my part. There are definitely significantly more tragic historicals.

That last ep almost made me hate this...

Is there a difference? I never cared much for the OG because for me the characters were down right stupid, but did this redeem that?

This is probably one of the most mature relationships I've seen in a drama.

This is one drama where the male and female lead honestly have no reason to interact yet do because they are the male and female lead and such is the way of the drama. It would so far for me be less stale if they could have made this either solely an adventure drama or solely a palace drama. Doing both for me, takes away from both elements. The male lead just honestly has all the time for palace politics yet is also able to orbit around the female lead, and save her at every turn. Initially, she's pegged as his equal but safe to say, he'll be coming to her rescue almost every episode. Also, everyone saw chemistry between the two leads except for me. I actually liked them both individually and felt they had better chemistry with other characters.

Truly one man's poison. I wish there was more palace stuff because it's so far so mediocre and if they had focused on it, they could have done it right. Instead, it's adventures where the female and male lead interact in a way that doesn't really work for me. Like male lead is a prince that no one has noticed is gone constantly all just so he can orbit around the female lead? They should have chosen either adventure or palace drama and not both.

This for me didn't lack time. They genuinely had scenes that I felt weren't needed. They could have removed some scenes and added others. This show was truly very very slow yet also bizarrely fast in that characters here just randomly knew each other and things happened before any of us could process how we got to these scenes. I mean, if cycling scenes are going to take up 5 mins of the limited time you have, time to chop chop.

Those of us who watched this and don't get the rave reviews, let us unite in what we felt was a poorly paced story where character relationships bloomed from nothing to the point you were like, when did we get here? No one really got any character development here. However, beautiful cinematography and genuinely well filmed scenes softened this. Honestly, the cinematography added a sincere tone that wasn't really present for me in the story. Acting was meh to me too.