Knavery

I want to add - Teresa Li and her character got a lot of crap from the comments I saw especially on Viki. It seems unfair and missing the bigger picture.

Lets start with the looks criticism - she looks fine. The male lead isn't the best looking in this drama so why does the female lead need to be the most beautiful? She wasn't my favorite female character but it was a good performance, a good contrast to the other women close to the male lead and she fits with him the best.

If you take a step back from the silly moments and look at her seriously she's pretty good at figuring out what the male lead is thinking or planning around. She's his foil that he can run many of his thoughts and ideas past. She's his emotional support beam as well when he needs reassurance and love.

I think one of the issues is the show uses her as a bit of comedic relief from heavier moments. Her obsession with money is injected to lighten things up.

I'll end with: Qing Niao was my favorite character. I wish her character had been explored more.

I'll start off with what I enjoyed - I think the first thing is the story was reasonably well done with some hiccups here and there in the back half. The characters were compelling and memorable. The characters also had a pretty good dynamic between them. I think pretty much anyone can find at least one character they like.

The show was put together well and I enjoyed it.

The big "negative" here is that they build a complex world for the cast to navigate and in the end... it feels more like a setup for a season 2 and maybe even 3. I want to make it clear that there is a story. There is a reason. There is an ending. This show can stand alone with one season and no additions and say "I told a story".

But despite this it feels like season 1 is to set you up with the background and start of an even larger journey for the characters. I don't know this but I would imagine the web-novel likely does continue past where season 1 ends.

And I'm always wary of planning for season 2 and beyond with Chinese dramas. Season to season they have no issue swapping out the lead actor or actress or both. And the writing and performances are good in this show so these are memorable characters... even those listed as 'supporting' are memorable. I don't want anyone swapped out. It won't feel the same.

This is one of those few dramas that I wish was longer so it could have dealt with a "bigger" story. My complaint about this show is "it could have been even longer and better!".

I think this drama struggles with what it wants to be. Seems like it will be a forgettable to mediocre drama despite the cast doing a good job. Something you recommend from the historical genre but not close to the "best of" list for any of the sub genres (comedy, romance, intrigue, detective, etc...).

There were opportunities to explore things as others have suggested below. And it seems that other mediums like for example the anime did explore these topics.

When there was an opportunity to explore or dive into a topic it felt like the show swerved away in favor of political melodrama and hamfisted twists to the plot. It's a decent show but to me it feels like squandered potential.

It reminds me of Terra Nova on a low budget. An American show about climate disaster and finding a time-slip so people could travel back and 'restart' civilization in a parallel universe. That show could have also explored so many different angles but instead chose a relatively simple plot dynamic with hamfisted twists. Visually stunning but not impressive beyond that.

And don't get me wrong, I liked both shows and I'm not trashing either one. But the first thing that comes to mind when I think of either show is - squandered potential. Super interesting premise but poor execution leading to mediocre watchable TV.

To me this feels like it's going off the rails in the last few episodes.

I'll never understand playing serious games on your phone. That being said the writers did a good job on getting terminology and stuff right. A lot of times writers write a bunch of nonsense that might fool people who know nothing about the subject like hacking or medicine but in this case the things they said were all pretty believable and accurate.

Show kind of drags in the middle. It's cute but not amazing. Strong start. Weak middle. Okay ending. The leads really help with this drama. Both have expressive faces.

Yeah it's certainly less distracting or noticeable in modern shows. He's in another 2022 iQiyi platform drama set in present day and with a normal haircut it's much less distracting. I dropped that one but not because of him.

Maybe it's just period/costume dramas that make him look distracting in a not-good way at least in my eyes.

The male lead looks like the living embodiment of plastic surgery and it's difficult for me to get past that. I guess I've made it through a few dramas where the female lead looked like plastic surgery even though it was a bit of a struggle. Thankfully at 15 episodes this might be easier. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and his look is natural but it looks so not-natural to me.

I think this is a tough one for me because his face is not expressive (just like the female leads I've seen with that plastic look) and Chinese TV everything is dubbed. I feel like you need an expressive face and/or an amazing voice actor who can bring life to the lines. I'm not seeing either after 2 episodes

It's a majorly flawed drama in terms of plot but it's constantly twisting and moving so I guess a flawed plot is better than a slow one or an uninteresting one. Preview doesn't look particularly inspiring on plot front. Seems the bigger play is to get the leads back together in scenes like they had earlier on in the show and hope the chemistry can carry it.

It wasn't that good but at the same time a nice quick short story without getting too heavy. Given that I liked My Heroic Husband the tv show, this was decent enough.

I kind of feel bad for the male lead like they should have given him a bit more success but overall pretty well done and funny.

This is bad and I'd recommend most people skip it unless you really like someone in the cast or you don't mind a drama where everything seems detached and slow moving. I gave up after finishing episode 10.

There's two major components to this drama: a mystery component and a romance component. Simple formula, sounds like it could be good. But it's not. It's painfully slow to start to the point where I believe most will drop it like I did.

The first lets say one third to one half (I dropped at episode 10 of 28)... not much is revealed about the mystery while our leads enjoy riveting moments of staring at the floor looking dejected next to each other. Other intense moments including staring off into space, stating the obvious to each other in short monologues as they look sad about their situation and sometimes there's a rare moment where one looks at the other as they both look shy(?) I guess which is better than staring at nothing.

Sure, I'm slightly exaggerating. There is more to this show than the romance of the two leads but the main focus is on the leads and the mystery and both are done very poorly for the first 10 episodes. And as a result I dropped it.

It's worth giving a go if you like the idea of parallel universes with do-overs. Personally my favorite of the genre is still Running Man out of Taiwan.

I could have lived with the fake-out at the ending and the doctor storyline.

I thought the leads were good and comedy was pretty strong for most of it.

It's a comedy so they ham things up a lot. This was my first short drama out of China and it was enjoyable. The leads were good.

The actress playing the female lead is amazing.

The female lead devolves as the show goes on. The person playing her is a good actress and I hope she gets on something with a better script.

Damn. It's missing from iQiyi's coming soon list but still on their website at least.

A few seem like interesting premises to me, hopefully they get subbed.

I dropped it at episode 9. Yu Da is an annoying caricature and forced on the viewers. I didn't want it. I didn't need it. He's a side character so the question is why is he even necessary? There's no value added and he's a big part of why I'm dropping it. I don't want to watch ~5-10 minutes per episode of an over-animated over-acted character with no depth.

Aside from him the drama itself is pretty weak at moving the story forward. Despite this the female lead is pretty good at her role - the typical innocent female lead who's plucky and optimistic. Male lead of course is some super human that has to be shown off, he played that part well. Kind of lame but I guess I'm numb to this familiar duo whereas I'm not numb to characters like Yu Da.

While the leads have cute moments I'm not sure how they drag this on for 41 episodes.

For me this show was one of those good idea, bad execution shows. I liked most of the cast, the premise was interesting but the execution over 40 episodes left a lot to be desired.