QAS

I would have to skip YL scenes except when he is fired from the job. He was so annoying.in the drama. Karma owes him a visit.

Faramir was Boromir's brother? I loved the two actors. Sean Bean was my #1 ❤ back then.

The final scene is full of hope. At least, it did not end tragically. We have to grateful for small favors. I would have preferred some dialog between YL and QY, though. it reminds me of the wordless reunion ending between the ML and FL in Winter Sonata (K-drama) made twenty years ago.

LOL So true about the FL and 2FL! Even Mother Liang was a forward thinker... and QY's birth mother in the end, and Second Madam(Stepmother). I have a feeling that the scriptwriter is a woman.

Interesting point! If he had been searching for her for months, and they were living a few miles apart, they should have run into each other much earlier.

It was filmed during the COVID lockdown, so the producers probably said to minimize all close contact. The filming ended in October 2020. I remember that Chinese production studios shut down for a few months during the lockdown. I wonder if that was why the drama is short. Did they start out with 40 episodes in mind, but ended with 34?

I am not sure about the time jump of ten years. She would have taken ten years to write one book only. She was so book smart and brain smart, she would have written dozens of books in ten years, to rival Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures.

When the Emperor drank the tea hurriedly, it was a sign that the episodes were going south...downhill. Karma backbite, Emperor!

I presumed that QY decided to leave LY because of that fool Yuan Lang still on his persecution campaign of LY. She made some deal with YL, but the director shut off the camera, so we wouldn't know what transpired.

It's annoying that the LY and YL have the same two initials. I think YL hated LY for years because the latter was better looking, and perhaps taller. LOL

The scriptwriter might have charted the plot, but as they approached the end of the production schedule, the director might have started deleting scenes. " Just keep the important dialogs, and throw out everything else. We have a deadline to finish the drama." LOL They spent too much time on Yuan Lang and his relentless persecution and his promotion. He's not even among the top supporting characters. I am really disappointed the way the last four episodes unfolded. Eunuch had his fifteen minutes of fame.

LOL If the boy was their son, which would have been nice, the time jump would be four or five years. LOL. He had the strangest hairstyle, btw.

I agree about the happy ending in our own imagination. It must be a small world for both Qiu Yan and Liang Yi to show up at the same bookshop on the same day, within the same hour or two. She went up that mountain in quick time. It would have taken me a day or two to walk that far.

Hairstyling in the Dashuo empire (or whatever it was called) was odd. Qiu Yan started out with a strange hairstyle. Qiu Min had a strange hairstyle at the end. Several characters, as well!

The Liang Mother scene was shocking. I did not expect that. I finally felt sad for Qiu Yan's birth mother, but Qiu Yan was still stiff as a board. She was even stiff, interfacing with Qiu Min.

I recommend Imperial Coroner (costume drama) and Fall in Love (modern drama). The lead couples are cute.

Liang Yi actually looked his best in the final scenes, after he let down his hair, and put on a skirt. His flowing hair and makeup made him look robust. The white pancake makeup was gone, although his hair did look nice with the top knot.

In Season 2, we would see more of Yuan Lang hunting down Liang Yi. That was one of the most boring parts of this drama. He was boring. I could barely pay attention to him. He needs to let down his hair, and find himself a woman. He was so uptight and rigid. He should have hooked up with the Fairy Qiu Min. LOL

This is one drama where they needed forty episodes, to fill in the loopholes. The scriptwriter must have quit after ep 30, and backups wrote the last four episodes. The scripts and dialog were muddled. The massive cave under Eunuch Liu's house was unbelievable. Even Yuan Lang looked redeemable, but that lasted one episode only. I can't believe he went back on his Liang Yi persecution campaign in ep 34, and received a huge promotion to Minister of Whatever Department. He reminds me of my former bosses.

Looking back, there were multiple conspiracies convoluting the plot. LOL

I rated it a 8.5, but dropped it to 7.5 because of the last four muddled episodes. The Emperor saw the writing on the wall, and drank the tea. LOL