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Against the Current — my thoughts

I really wanted to like Against the Current. I’m a fan of Tan Songyun and have generally enjoyed her dramas, so I went into this one with high expectations. Unfortunately, despite giving it my best effort, I eventually had to drop it.

My biggest problem was the pacing. I don’t dislike slow dramas quite the opposite. I can really enjoy a deliberate historical drama when the slower pace is building character, atmosphere and emotional tension. But here I eventually felt that the story was moving slowly without giving me enough emotional payoff.

The biggest problem for me, however, was the romance, particularly when I considered everything that happened between the two leads.

This wasn’t simply a case of two lovers being separated and finding their way back to one another. She was engaged to him, her family came under suspicion, and his family abandoned the engagement. Her family was subsequently slaughtered, she lost her entire former life and was forced to survive under a new identity.

And what really bothered me about his role in all of this is that he didn’t even appear to try to warn her.

I’m not saying he could necessarily have stopped what happened. The political situation was far bigger than him. But surely, if this was the woman he loved and intended to marry, there should have been some attempt to reach her, warn her or protect her.

Instead, he listened to his grandfather, accepted the situation and did nothing that, from her perspective, could demonstrate that he had fought for her.

Then he married someone else.

That makes his later pursuit of her much harder for me to accept.

Because from her point of view, this man wasn’t simply someone she lost. He was someone who stood by while her entire world disappeared, and then carried on with his own life.

That is a huge emotional wound.

And this is why I found the imperial edict particularly frustrating. Instead of him having to genuinely earn her trust again, the story uses an imperial decree to force the two of them back into a relationship.

I understand the political reasoning behind it, but dramatically it felt like a shortcut.

In fact, there is something almost ironic about it: a woman whose life was devastated by political power is then denied the freedom to choose her own future because of another exercise of political power.

I wanted to see him earn her back.

I wanted him to acknowledge what his family did. I wanted him to understand why she couldn’t simply forgive him. I wanted him to regret that he hadn’t tried to warn her. I wanted to see him patiently rebuild her trust rather than simply finding a way to make the marriage happen.

That would have given the romance so much more emotional weight.

Instead, I never really felt the romantic connection develop.

The family drama also didn’t work for me. There are so many potentially fascinating themes here betrayal, political survival, family loyalty, trauma, class and the consequences of choosing your family over doing what is right but I found the treatment surprisingly shallow.

And some of the relationships and character behaviour didn’t always feel convincing to me within the historical setting.

Which is particularly disappointing because Tan Songyun is one of the reasons I kept trying.

I could see what the drama was attempting to do, and I completely understand why some viewers enjoy its extremely slow-burn approach. But slow burn only works for me when the emotional tension continues to build.

Here, I eventually felt like I was waiting for the romance to begin rather than enjoying watching it develop.

So, unfortunately:

Dropped.

A real disappointment because I genuinely wanted to love this one.