Kochase

Eh, there aren't that many dramas with no / little romance. And the ones that don't focus on romance often are quite plotty and a huge mental investment.

I agree that shows like this are meant to be watched with a lazy brain and suspension of disbelief. It's precisely why, as much as I do love my plotty / mentally-taxing dramas, that I like to watch shows like this to balance it out.

The thing about lazy writing though, is that there's laziness born of not getting details right (such as that face mask, though I suspect that might have been more of an intentional anachronism), and intentional reuse of caricatures and unrealistic relationships. As a writer, you can choose to suspend realism on some premises, or some circumstances. But human nature is something that should be common across every / any story. It really shouldn't take much effort to give characters a semi-decent development / believable relationships. And that's a criticism for all dramas of course, not just this one.

But all that aside, the thing that bothers me most is the harmful portrayals of human relationships. Or what the audience learns is an acceptable, or even ideal, relationship between people. I'd rather take the typical 'FL is a damsel in distress and keeps fainting into ML arms' over this sort of attempted portrayal of a 'strong, independent' woman. A strong independent woman is someone who hits her partner? Jeezus christ, she threw a glass cup at him in her temper tantrum. And it cut him. In real life, that's called abuse. And I guarantee there are teenagers or even adults out there watching this sort of stuff on TV and thinking that 'hey I'm cute if I'm being violent and throwing tantrums and throwing objects at my BF'. And sadly, I'm sure a lot of men think no different, that it's totally acceptable to be hit by a woman constantly.

Sorry, normally I do have a decent ability to suspend disbelief, put my brain in off mode, roll my eyes at the cliches and enjoy the parts I want to enjoy. I just draw the line at when lazy writing / portrayals starts idealizing harmful relationships / actions (e.g. Twilight). I've seen a lot of 'FL yells and screams at ML; she looks cute when she's having a tantrum' kind of tropes, but this is a first that contains so much violence as part of the comedic gimmicks. It's not cute or acceptable to physically hit / kick / throw stuff at a person like that, especially to the point of actually injuring the other party like that.

tl;dr I'm a little more overcritical of BYN's character than an equivalent FL character in another drama because they harmfully equate strong independent woman to someone who can be considered physically abusive.

The problem with BYN goes beyond just being a loud, annoying, selfish, spoiled brat. My biggest issue with her is that the kind of dynamic she has with Lu Yao is what many people (men and women) mistakenly think of as a cute and endearing relationship. In reality, you can consider this borderline abusive if not actually abusive; it's how it generally starts after all. Small, playful smacks are one thing. When your partner instinctively recoils like Lu Yao does, you've gone too far. Her degree of controlling his actions, stalking his whereabouts, and constantly hitting him probably come off as hilarious and cute to the general audience, but if this were real life, they'd all be red flags. Imagine if the roles were reversed - people would be screaming abuse.

Additionally, the way she treats her father pisses me off. Even if she disagrees with him, she doesn't ever really seem emotionally conflicted. Her father loves her, but she doesn't seem to indicate much care for him. In Chinese culture, this is a huge taboo. A child that disregards their parent like that is pretty awful. Nowadays, of course there's enough spoiled brats that no one bats much of an eye anymore. But back in those times?

Her *verbal* bickering with Lu Yao is sometimes pretty funny. They throw witty retorts at each other. And she definitely has a right to be upset and roll her eyes at him a lot, because they're both childish in their own ways. But her constantly hitting him should not be considered cute. And her 'strong will' comes from knowing no one would dare touch her because of her father's status. I think her character could have been developed much more than what the show gave. I would have loved to see her grow up as she left the care of her father's wings and had to figure things out for herself, and make the real difficult choices between the people she loved and her moral code. There was a lot of opportunity for development that was wasted for sake of the bickering gimmicks, which were funny and cute the first few times. The next twenty times, not so much.

Totally agree. So many female leads are written rude and obnoxious as a vain attempt to create a 'strong independent' female role. In terms of historical accuracy, her kind of behavior probably would have not been tolerated no matter how spoilt she was. In terms of being written as a character from the modern lens, it's uncomfortable how her gimmick of being violent is passed off for laughs. I *hate* seeing those kind of girls / women in real life. You do not get to hit guys just because you're a girl and you think you're being playful and have attitude. But in that sense, I suppose fiction is loyal to real life - many people think that kind of relationship dynamics is totally acceptable and even endearing. It pisses me off even further to think this show will be something that further enforces what many girls / women might think of as a cute relationship dynamic - Let me hit my significant other whenever I get mad because it must be so cute that a little girl like me is hitting a tall guy like him. When your significant other instinctively recoils like that every time - something is wrong. If the roles were reversed, no one would hesitate to call it abuse.

I actually had moments where I think I could have liked BYN. I don't think she was without potential. I would have loved to see them explore her relationship with her father more, or the conflicts she had to overcome as a result of this. Instead we get no more than a cursory show of their relationship. The times where she 'is conflicted' about her father's involvement feels so canned. Tears and tantrums don't indicate a tense and complicated relationship. They just indicate a spoiled brat. She never seemed to hesitate to throw her father out first in name of 'justice'. We're supposed to believe that someone who can, without hesitation, throw her father under the bus like that, is supposed to be a 'kind' and 'caring' girl? Especially as the sole daughter in that day and age. People with far less love for their parent have done so much more for the sake of filial piety in those days. Either she's kind and caring, and should have hesitated much more to go against her father like that, or she's just childish, selfish, and spoilt. The drama failed to justify that she's worth sympathizing with. Maybe if the show explored her growth from being someone besides her father's daughter, instead of her role as a gimmicky sidekick / forced romantic insertion, she would have been much more interesting to watch. Alas, we saw no growth from her character, except the volume and scale of her tantrums.

And to @Laura's point, actually and unfortunately, there's not a 'billion different things' to watch. I'm not a huge fan of romance. Do you know how many dramas 1) don't have romance as a major part of the plot, but also 2) aren't simply dark, depressing cesspools of political drama with no happy character interactions? Yeah, not that many. This is why I prefer bromance as the main relationship. Writers tend to do a more realistic portrayal of friendships between men than they do romantic relationships between men and women (at least, when they don't write it in purely for fanservice). When the forefront relationship is a friendship / bromance, there tends to be much better balance of plot and character development. When the forefront relationship is a romance, there's a very good chance you're just watching a plot with commercial breaks of eye-rolling romance (unless you're straight up just watching a romance, which I just avoid).

Of course, I won't say having two cute male leads doesn't help. ;)

Yeah it takes a while to die off. I'd say by ep 30 is when she's totally irrelevant. She then comes briefly back into spotlight, but not in any romantic lighting.

And if you want _real_ spoilers... spoilerspoilerspoilershediesinepisode36spoilerend

Yes, but that also gets dropped soon enough. The romance doesn't go anywhere. She becomes a background character.

The romance is a smokescreen. It fades away and doesn't go anywhere. Bromance definitely takes over in the later episodes. Maybe not Untamed levels, but it's there.

If you can hold out, the romance doesn't go anywhere, and bromance comes in strong towards the later episodes.

It definitely does, but comes much later. I mean, you probably should at least somewhat enjoy detective / case shows, since that is the primary plot. But definitely a lot of good bromance growing in the latter half.

Thanks! I’ll probably watch the new cut then.

Is this simply a more edited cut of the original series or are they actually airing some non-originally-aired footage too? AKA what might have been censored by the government for viewing?