Petch kinda pissed me off when he was half-heartedly trying to convince Lisa to marry him and had to be talked off the ledge by her. "Good intentions and goodwill can be as beautiful as love." Dude, it's episode 14, cut it out! You know Lisa has good friends and a caring family and they're all rich as fuck! One bad thing happened to her and a hundred powerful people flocked to her side to support her! Meanwhile the woman you claim to love has nobody on her side! If you marry Lisa with nothing but "good intentions" to take care of her, who's going to take care of Fah, who needs it more?
I know he wasn't serious about it and looked relieved when Lisa told him he didn't need to sacrifice himself, and to be fair Fah has gone out of her way to discourage his interest, so like, fair enough, but at this point in the story they're supposed to know better than to involve other people in their drama at least. The fact he needed Lisa to shut down that delusional marriage scenario instead of doing it himself was very annoying.
He deserved to feel bad at the end of the episode lol
Yes!! I was shocked when he said, "They probably laughing thinking the Jutathep's men are so weak. Especially…
Eh, I don't find that part inconsistent with Petch's character. He's a very proud man (which is part of why Fah likes him) and it makes sense that he'd react badly to getting rejected. Even the nicest people in the world have low moments when they say mean things, and from his perspective Fah has been sending him mixed signals while he's been all in and transparent about his feelings, which is a legitimate reason to get angry IMO.
I thought it actually added to my understanding of his character that Petch would be hurt and angry at Fah in private and tell his cousins not to mention her name to him, etc., but the moment he saw her at the company he switched to his usual courteous and calm demeanour. It was like he couldn't sustain the disrespectful attitude you describe when Fah was actually in front of him because Fah is so undeniably lovely he can't lie to himself when he's in her presence.
They could have handled Petch's development in episode 13 better. One moment Poom is telling him that Fah loves him and Petch replies that Fah is a liar who can't be trusted (because he already knows about her mother on top of everything else) and doesn't matter to him at all, then Fah leaves the company after helping him one last time, then Poom comes to him again and says Fah loves him, then Petch is like, no, she doesn't because she approached me under false pretences, then Poom says, but she didn't want to, then Petch says it doesn't matter if she wanted to do it or not because she still did it, then Poom and Vit say she didn't know the full extent of her crazy mother's history because her mother downplayed some details, AND PETCH SAYS, OH WELL, IN THAT CASE!!! AND RUNS AFTER FAH????
Like what the hell?
It's not like Poom and Vit said anything he didn't already know or guess, or anything Poom hadn't said to him before, so how did that convo trigger the big dramatic change of heart that should be the pivotal moment of the final act in every romance?
It would have made more logical AND dramatic sense to have Petch seek out Fah for one final confrontation after he had her mother's identity confirmed, telling himself he was looking for her 100% out of anger but obviously wanting to see her one last time, and then witness one of her mother's episodes or something and realise how difficult Fah's life really is (because he's seen less of Rumpa's abuse of Fah/craziness than either Poom or Vit), and then help Fah handle the situation and assure her he wouldn't run away in the future.
Sorry for the rant. This isn't actually a huge deal, but it's bugging me because it would have been so easy to fix this part of the script...
Sooo... do we know if there's a third series in the works, one that takes place in he present day? Because if a bunch of young couples got together in the early to mid-90s, their kids would be ready to star in their own romantic melodramas by the late 2020s?
The more time passes, the more convinced I am that this show only gained such a rabid following because of Duke Su/WXY’s portrayal of him/the fact the international cdrama community is full of overfixated spinsters who thirst after WXY in weird ways.
The direction was clumsy and massively over-the-top, there were too many cringe moments, the FL was far too perfect & never faced real trouble or inner conflict, Duke Su’s background and motivations were never explored and he remained a cipher throughout the show, XFF did so many selfish things while claiming to avenge Jiang Li and the narrative took her side uncritically, and worst of all, the romance had terrible payoff, and I’m not just talking about the ending. The leads built up some good tension in the first ~15 episodes and then became a totally different, much more boring couple (which is a common problem in cdrama). The scene in the rain was good, but like… what else was there?
The delusional virgins shipping the leads on the basis that they’ve done promo together also creep me out.
Mediocre? Are you serious? cause this doesn't make sense to me..he is one of the best actors in China & he expresses…
What the heck are you saying lol. Yang Yang is not a good actor! He's handsome and he fits some roles better than others (You Are My Glory for example), but he can't make facial expressions, let alone brilliant ones.
I actually like him, but criticizing his acting is totally legitimate.
Untill fah clarify her identity, i don't think she can be openly in a relationship with petch.. At the end of…
Honestly, I don't know how they're going to resolve the mother's subplot. So far Fah has been talking about taking her mother to see a doctor as a silver-bullet solution, but her mother's biggest issue is that she's a bad person who wishes ill on others and has no affection for her own child. I don't know if they had psychiatric drugs that could fix her personality in the 90s... Plus, people with serious mental health problems usually continue to struggle (and need care and patience from their loved ones) even after they start taking medication, and in some cases they refuse to cooperate/accept treatment. Realistically, there's no scenario in which her mental health issues stop being a burden on Fah.
So I expect they'll either give her a magical personality transplant after she goes to the doctor, which would be unrealistic, or they'll straight-up kill her off to get her out of the way of our leads' fairytale happy ending, which... ugh.
Thank God Fah finally put Petch out of his misery because he was starting to lose his mind... But on the other hand, she let him off too easily IMO. Cousin-in-law this, cousin-in-law that—that's not even a real thing! Petch, stand up!
So I'm on episode 6 and I'm wondering if the show ever picks up the pace...? It's been one interrogation session after another for hours now. I'm getting tired of watching people get tortured in dark rooms, so I'm starting to think about dropping the show unless it introduces some new dynamics to the plot soon. The distortion of communist ideology and history to fit modern-day Chinese nationalist propaganda is also a bit too stupid, even though it's present in every single show about this time period to some extent.
Kinda hate Deng Lun for letting greed destroy his own career.
Oh please, greed? If you’re a multimillionaire celebrity and you’re not doing a bit of tax evasion, what are you even doing? I assure you every superstar in Chinese entertainment is doing the same thing he did; he was just unlucky enough to get caught, either through his accountants’ incompetence or because he annoyed someone important, and we were unlucky that it happened right before this drama was supposed to come out and not after.
This sounds WILD and MESSY as shit, and it has ROMANCE between a widower and his wife's killer's wife? Drama of the decade incoming, sign me da fuck up!
Thank God Poom has two brain cells to rub together and realises inserting himself between Fah and Petch would just make everybody unhappy because those two were getting on my last nerve.
The family feud angst that's coming up is going to be so much less annoying than the stupid love triangle angst.
The last 2-3 episodes hit EVERY terrible jdrama cliche, from the SML being a manipulative psychopath and everyone talking about how that just proves how much he loves the FL, to the male characters tossing the FL back and forth like a piece of meat based on who can "make her happy" without asking her about her feelings once, to the FL not speaking up to voice her opinion even when that's literally all she needed to do to get her happy ending, to all the evil characters who spent the entire drama making the leads miserable getting redeemed in the last 20 minutes, etc. etc. etc.
Ono-san was one of the biggest weirdos I've seen in a drama in a long time and Kaori should have told him to keep his nose out of her business at the very beginning when he started pulling her aside to lecture her about her sex life and tell her shit that only hurt her to hear, BEFORE he started ruthlessly sabotaging her relationship and her job, monopolizing her time, and screaming at her about how he deserves her so much more than the ML. (She didn't tell him to fuck off after that either, by the way. The narrative framed all of that as him trying to protect her happiness and stop her from getting hurt, if you're wondering.) The fact the last two episodes were mostly about him and the leads wouldn't have gotten together at the end if not for the classic jdrama move of the pointless SML no one cares about reluctantly allowing the FL to choose the man she actually loves after he got tired of gaslighting his love rival and pressuring her to choose him instead left me sour on the whole show.
Just once I'd like to watch a romantic jdrama that doesn't go from a 6 or 7/10 down to 2/10 in the last episodes.
The FL is weak, indecisive, immature, self-absorbed and incompetent, the ML is your typical perfect emotionless secretly devoted mega successful flawless zero-personality math genius icicle non-character, he treats the FL like she’s an annoying child (which is how she acts, granted, but I don’t find the dynamic between a disappointed father and his stupid daughter sexy or romantic), the actor playing him has zero talent or charm, the dialogue and the screenplay in general are childish and cliched, and the direction is bad (overuse of flashbacks, breaks the 4th wall too often, unclear transitions between timelines, there are whole characters and subplots, as well as countless infodump “conversations,” that are transparently only there to provide commentary on the main couple’s relationship, etc.).
China makes this exact same drama about an annoying, unremarkable girl and the perfect, emotionally constipated guy she puts on a pedestal who’s inexplicably in love with her but acts like he hates her 10 times a year and it objectively sucks almost every time. I have no idea why people have convinced themselves this version of it is good, but the difference between how fans talk about it and what it actually is shocked me.
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I know he wasn't serious about it and looked relieved when Lisa told him he didn't need to sacrifice himself, and to be fair Fah has gone out of her way to discourage his interest, so like, fair enough, but at this point in the story they're supposed to know better than to involve other people in their drama at least. The fact he needed Lisa to shut down that delusional marriage scenario instead of doing it himself was very annoying.
He deserved to feel bad at the end of the episode lol
I thought it actually added to my understanding of his character that Petch would be hurt and angry at Fah in private and tell his cousins not to mention her name to him, etc., but the moment he saw her at the company he switched to his usual courteous and calm demeanour. It was like he couldn't sustain the disrespectful attitude you describe when Fah was actually in front of him because Fah is so undeniably lovely he can't lie to himself when he's in her presence.
Like what the hell?
It's not like Poom and Vit said anything he didn't already know or guess, or anything Poom hadn't said to him before, so how did that convo trigger the big dramatic change of heart that should be the pivotal moment of the final act in every romance?
It would have made more logical AND dramatic sense to have Petch seek out Fah for one final confrontation after he had her mother's identity confirmed, telling himself he was looking for her 100% out of anger but obviously wanting to see her one last time, and then witness one of her mother's episodes or something and realise how difficult Fah's life really is (because he's seen less of Rumpa's abuse of Fah/craziness than either Poom or Vit), and then help Fah handle the situation and assure her he wouldn't run away in the future.
Sorry for the rant. This isn't actually a huge deal, but it's bugging me because it would have been so easy to fix this part of the script...
The direction was clumsy and massively over-the-top, there were too many cringe moments, the FL was far too perfect & never faced real trouble or inner conflict, Duke Su’s background and motivations were never explored and he remained a cipher throughout the show, XFF did so many selfish things while claiming to avenge Jiang Li and the narrative took her side uncritically, and worst of all, the romance had terrible payoff, and I’m not just talking about the ending. The leads built up some good tension in the first ~15 episodes and then became a totally different, much more boring couple (which is a common problem in cdrama). The scene in the rain was good, but like… what else was there?
The delusional virgins shipping the leads on the basis that they’ve done promo together also creep me out.
I actually like him, but criticizing his acting is totally legitimate.
So I expect they'll either give her a magical personality transplant after she goes to the doctor, which would be unrealistic, or they'll straight-up kill her off to get her out of the way of our leads' fairytale happy ending, which... ugh.
The family feud angst that's coming up is going to be so much less annoying than the stupid love triangle angst.
Ono-san was one of the biggest weirdos I've seen in a drama in a long time and Kaori should have told him to keep his nose out of her business at the very beginning when he started pulling her aside to lecture her about her sex life and tell her shit that only hurt her to hear, BEFORE he started ruthlessly sabotaging her relationship and her job, monopolizing her time, and screaming at her about how he deserves her so much more than the ML. (She didn't tell him to fuck off after that either, by the way. The narrative framed all of that as him trying to protect her happiness and stop her from getting hurt, if you're wondering.) The fact the last two episodes were mostly about him and the leads wouldn't have gotten together at the end if not for the classic jdrama move of the pointless SML no one cares about reluctantly allowing the FL to choose the man she actually loves after he got tired of gaslighting his love rival and pressuring her to choose him instead left me sour on the whole show.
Just once I'd like to watch a romantic jdrama that doesn't go from a 6 or 7/10 down to 2/10 in the last episodes.
China makes this exact same drama about an annoying, unremarkable girl and the perfect, emotionally constipated guy she puts on a pedestal who’s inexplicably in love with her but acts like he hates her 10 times a year and it objectively sucks almost every time. I have no idea why people have convinced themselves this version of it is good, but the difference between how fans talk about it and what it actually is shocked me.