Knavery

It's produced by a Canadian company with funding from BBC America (Canadians & Americans) and Bell Media (Canadians). BBC America does not get funding from the UK and relies on advertising and subscriptions (it's in my package).

I don't see the big deal. I'm Canadian and describing the show as American is fine with me. It airs on American television and the producer of the show sold it to a network based in America.

I think he's in the Fox Tribe realm with relatives - Bai Qian's brothers so Ye Hua and Bai Qian can have some alone time. Or he's with royal handlers who are getting him to study and practice.... he's the royal great grandson and potentially a future emperor himself.

It's hard to do because the more you reveal the more it legitimately spoils the plot.

There are tribes of 'immortals' (they live a really long time and are hard to kill). The three main ones for the show are: Fox Tribe, Celestial/Heavenly Tribe, Ghost/Demonic Tribe. Fox Tribe is kind of more playful and easy-going. Heavenly Tribe is more strict and the most powerful. Ghost Tribe is basically the 'bad guys'.

At the heads of these tribes are kind of a royalty. So a Fox King, a Heavenly Emperor and a Ghost King. And they're all old with adult children.

Fox King has a daughter (Bai Qian) and a granddaughter (Feng Jiu). So they're obviously Aunt-Niece.

Heavenly Emperor had sons - one was Mo Yuan the god of war. He also has a grandson by another son - Ye Hua who looks identical to Mo Yuan.

There are powerful beings in Heavenly Tribe - some of whom you could argue are nearly as powerful as the Emperor and are older than him.
Dong Hua for instance - if I remember right he's older than the Emperor or at least as old??? Been a while, sorry.

*** But here are the huge spoilers for the main couple ***

How specific do you want me to get?

He is arranged to marry her but never meets her. Before he can meet her - she decides to try to rescue her teacher (Mo Yuan) and is rewarded with losing her memories and becoming mortal.

Ye Hua is set on a mission to destroy a powerful Ghost Tribe soldier. It's a tough fight, he gets injured and has to use his godly dragon form. So he shrinks back down to a small snake-sized dragon and hides in a cave to recuperate after winning the fight.

This is where Su Su (mortal Bai Qian) finds him, mistakes him for a snake and takes care of him. For probably the first time in his life he's really powerless and at the mercy of another. He can only watch and he falls in love with her.

He saves her from a mob who do not like snakes and attack her because of it. He reveals himself as a huge dragon god again to protect her.

He comes to her in human form. She falls for him, they marry. She gets pregnant and discovered by Heavenly Tribe who are not happy about their golden son falling for a mortal and having an informal wedding ceremony alone together. She is brought to the Heavenly Tribe world. She gives birth. She is killed (not officially by the tribe).

With her death she becomes Bai Qian again without memories of her time as a mortal. The engagement is still kind of on - especially now that Fox Tribe knows she's still alive.

Ye Hua and his son mistake her for Su Su immediately when they meet her.

He tries to woo her over because he likes her. At times she has doubts "does he like me because I look like Su Su?".

It works, they fall in love.

Ye Hua figures out Mo Yuan's body is preserved and hidden by Bai Qian and doubts if Bai Qian loves him or her teacher so at great personal cost - he helps bring Mo Yuan back into her life. She eventually gets her Su Su memories back. She remembers how she was treated by Heavenly Tribe, she remembers how she was ignored by Ye Hua.

I won't spoil beyond that. Because then we're getting into how the show itself ends. Do they end up together or no?

The story was unbelievable in a bad way. There's too much stuff that doesn't make sense. The characters are naive when it's convenient to stall the storyline and perceptive when it's convenient to move forward and onto the next part of the story. A lot of flashbacks to stall things too.

The main couple was cute at first but after a while started to bore me so I started to enjoy the secondary couple. Eventually I got a little tired of them too but I was near the end so decided to finish it anyway.

The sound quality of the dubbing broke down for a few seconds in some of the episodes. A group would be talking outside for example and suddenly you would hear echoing. A character would be talking and their volume or the tone of their voice would change. There at least 3-4 instances like this that I can clearly remember.

Finally - while there is a lot of eye candy for the people out there attracted to men, I was disappointed that none of the women were ever shown in a swimsuit from what I can remember.

It's not a bad drama but I'm not sure it deserves all the praise it's getting here.

No need to apologize. I just want to see dubbing go. It still doesn't perfectly match the lips and sometimes you get really poor audio. Something like My Mr. Mermaid comes to mind. You get brief periods where they're talking outside but they might as well be in an echo chamber. Or there might be a brief moment where the pitch on the voice changes dramatically because something went wrong when dubbing.

I would prefer an all-Chinese cast or at the very least if you cast a Korean - have them be somewhat fluent/intelligible but it's a struggle for me to deal with dubbing even when it's Chinese people speaking Mandarin.

I understand it's a complicated language with dialects but that's why you don't see people from the Shetland Islands getting cast in United Kingdom productions without them changing their accents and avoiding words that are only really used in their region. They 'lighten' their accent to a more mainstream British English or American English.

Several years ago I traveled to where my family descends from and they had a whole bunch of words that I did not understand. I have spoken English my whole life and I had to ask them what their words meant. "When you say this, what do you mean?"

He's a neat freak, germaphobe and not very good at interpersonal relationships. She's shameless and a serial liar who uses him while disturbing his cleanliness and neatness. They accidentally meet and he quickly realizes he needs to use her to achieve a goal. She's the ultimate 'user' so she uses him for all sorts of things. They slowly meet at a sort of middle-ground as they respect each other and fall for each other.

Now some of people found her annoying especially early on... I didn't think it was too bad and I really loved their dynamic.

The heaviest I remember the show getting was personal/corporate sabotage and poor family relationships.

She has the stereotypical qualities you would expect of a man from her time - she's courageous, she's the one with the job serving the kingdom, she's a fighter and a general, etc...

While he's more into dance and arts and looking pretty. You would expect a prince like him to be leading part of the army or you would expect him to be an official in the court.

I think at a certain point it stops being a coincidence that you're involved in all these incidents requiring police to show up and you need to learn that maybe alcohol is not for you. "Adult entertainment facility" I wonder if that's a euphemism for you know what... maybe I'm wrong though.

The guy seems to have had second chance after second chance. Maybe everyone just needs to understand he's not a good person and do something that forces a real change.

The dubbing thing is why I mind it less. Ultimately it doesn't matter much for me. The only problem with the Hallyu ban was that it stalled some projects. I don't think getting a Korean actor or popstar matters in terms of the dramas I pick to watch.

Well Braveness of the Ming is a time travel and I'm a sucker for that stuff so...

The cheating seemed kind of outrageous to me. I also never really understood the point of cheating. I mean I have helped people cheat but never a whole exam. I've had people ask me for an answer here or there, I memorized the format and questions on an exam and gave it to some friends who delayed it with doctors notes.

But maybe this is more widespread in Asian cultures - I've seen some interesting news stories and videos of students in places like China and India.

Well... that is ambitious.

A TV show is much longer than a movie and if the lead of the show is constantly played by a new actor/actress - it's going to throw off a lot of rhythm. The lack of rhythm is fine in a movie where you can fix it with the narrator's (main character) voice and it only lasts for 1-3 hours.

This basically means they have to get one of the top actors to play the male lead and he has to be incredibly charismatic and believable.

I still remember the matching green ties from I Do, I Do and that walk. That made me a Kim Sun Ah fan.

I wish everything wasn't so exaggerated for comedic effect. I'm a sucker for time travel though so I am enjoying it.

I prefer this to more recent Japanese shows.

Chinese web dramas are on another level compared to the web dramas of everywhere else. I guess the only criticism was I was hoping for slightly more of an ending for the main characters but I still loved the show and its 2 seasons.

Yeah but if everyone asking for it to be subtitled put in a request to Viki at around the same time it might be more successful. Overwhelm them and say to Viki or Dramafever "hey there's a lot of interest in this show".

I think ultimately if we want a chance someone needs to organize a campaign where we all get together and request in large numbers. Viki has a request form and I'm sure Dramafever does too. But things could be out of their hands even with large volumes of requests.

It's easy to blame them but maybe the interest isn't there or the show producers don't want to license unless they can get a big price tag for it or maybe they want too much control and Viki or Dramafever might get screwed after subtitling it.

I think this is the first drama I was really looking forward to that doesn't seem like it will get subs. Really hope a group out there can subtitle it but the longer this goes on the less likely that gets.

She looks completely different from that Weightlifting Fairy show. She looks and acts really different even in this show - from the drunk girl who was dumped to the weird nerdy (and sometimes aggressive) look to the sexy party(?) girl. Great job by her.

Talented and beautiful.