ShortCircuit

Very little Pasin so far, too.

This kind of series is my cup of tea, and the first season delivered splendidly on it. But this one is overdoing it, making it impossible to suspend disbelief for, replacing what did make it good (the bond between JinMan and JiAn and their resilience) and turned him into basically the Terminator and her into an almost-prepared Sarah Connor.

I am all for nice action sequences, but the knife fights this season, many though they be, don't hold a candle to that one knife fight between JinMan and Bale in S1. The pyros are all over the place, the drones are way too OP and accurate until shot down, the mercs - all part of the BIGGER Babylon - have the shot count of Imperial Troopers while JiAn and everybody on her side are either Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. The way they go down like clay targets is really amazingly underwhelming - so these guys are who JinMan the superman was afraid of?!

If there'll be a S3, what's left for him to do, take over the world or go to other planet to overkill anything there, too?!

The season underrates itself. The simple fact most of us are fans of S1 doesn't mean we're suddenly blind to the faults of S2.

Though anyway, TBH, I was afraid this would happen. It happened to basically ALL Asian dramas that got a S2 or even S3 infused with Western money. I'm looking at Sweet Home, Alice in Borderlands, even Squid Game. I am pretty certain they'll destroy the magic of Moving 2, too. Oh well.

TL:DR: Season 1 of ASfK is one of the best thrillers out there. S2 so far doesn't quite get there. I am happy you're happy with it, but I am not. I'll wait til the end before rating it, as usual, but so far, at the half-point... something's still lacking.

The first season remained within the bounds of human effort and didn't go over the top. They can do reasonable action thrillers if they want to. This time though...

Unless they manage to airlift WooJin to some hospital and he's not already dead.

Anyway - what's this season, an actual shopping mall for killers?! I get it, drones are crazy (they're waging war in the real world anyway), can you please run out of them? Okay, thanks.

AT LEAST Bale is now dead, good riddance. Also good riddance to Jun the cute madman.

Darlings, cutting off someone's head with a knife might look interesting in a SFX (or AI) scene, but seriously LOL, it does NOT work like that. At all. Not with a knife, even combat, not without the smallest recoil LOL. Let's get serious here, shall we?

There's a little way too much force - and way too easy to get rid of them, too, if they're also Babylon - thrown around just to get JiAn. What's it going to be next, a tank? A rocket launcher? A B52? A nuclear bomb?!

PS the scary ghost disappeared, boo! And then she got all better and had time to fall in love in a second with the guy she suspected so much that she put cameras all over the island to guard against him. And then she shut them all down before the mercs got there. Uh-uh.

These two eps are way better though I seriously hope Q is smarter than Kusanagi (I wouldn't bet on it).

So. I was debating with myself if JiAn gets a love line this season, I'm not debating anymore.

TBH it kind of gets very very veeeeery slow. Almost nothing happens. And when it does, it copies what Legend of the Kitchen Soldier did, with the overblown reactions to food.

So he's more of a first-aid worker-level than a doctor (his supposed profession that he actually trained for and all) but an expert at cooking (that he just browsed through that desert recipes book for)? Yeah. *sigh*

I kind of don't like virgin characters that are obviously quite adult - and by virgins I don't necessarily mean physically. I don't like how grown adults react like they never ever even considered being attracted to anyone, of the same or the opposite sex, like ever. Why is Dech so shoked? Is he a monk in his everyday life?!

Anyway - it's been so slow moving that I already had time to get over the initial liking. If the next ep is just as slow, I'll maybe stall or even drop it. I like naked people as much as everyone else, but that's not enough to fill 10 eps. Especially as the MC acts like a nincompoop.

PS I always heard durian is an acquired taste and it smells like you'd want to die and be saved from it. Does frying it into crisps really save it for nose-breathers?

10 minutes in, I really don't like the AI OP. I guess I'll be waiting for opinions after it airs a few more eps before deciding.

PS The little girl actor's acting is really fierce. I like HER.

PPS For a Mango drama, this has one of the best subs I've seen. Old-time style expressions and all. It FEELS like they're not living in modern times and speaking a bit dated language. It's a nice touch TBH and I never expected that from Mango. (Good subs for Hunter WHEN???)

If the FL "merged" with the original SXH's soul and then made a son with a CP that would turn out to be also revived (but in his own body), that would make the son the Son of Frankenstein and Frankenstein's Bride LOL. At least they managed not to do that again. Though I did wonder myself if that's what they implied - he died and gone to the underworld then Dr Xie managed to go get him back, 2ha-style. Because of plot reasons.

Yeah, I can see a lot of people like this like a lot of people (generic term) would love junk food. But it's still stupid, IN MY OWN OPINION.

Anyway, I've happily had it with this drama and I don't care to visit the page again.

I wish everyone many more happy drama watches!

The Grandma Empress poisoned her own grandson by direct bloodline of descent. Because she didn't know and she wanted to destroy her adopted son's family instead. To hell with the Empire and stuff.

The Emperor could've saved his precious brother that we spent way too many scenes with since he was already long dead, but he chose to "respect" his brother's military command (despite being completely able to send SOME help at least. He chose not to).

THEN, because he's ambitious, he decides to steal his brother's son - who would have become Crown Prince anyway - for himself, and "love" him more than his own sons. As one does, you know. That made zero sense. Not to mention that he chose to tell his adoptive mom he will make the prince CP right after telling her her own son died. Nice. Low EQ around the house.

Then his own blood-sons ALL fall for the same woman (and his stolen son, too). Because females were scarce in that two-days travel Empire, so it was needed. Nobody was like her. She's unparalleled. Nobody does incense like her. And stuff. And nobody does cold ice queen like her, EVER. In any drama, either. She's an iceblock.

Moving on. His tragic older son decides to do a fake complot to fool everyone and "lose" his right to the Empire. Yeaaaah, right. She still doesn't love him. What a pathetic fool. He even decides to stab his own full brother because of reasons. The full brother marries his army, since he can't have the ice queen. LOL.

Then another of his sons decides to drink the poison his wife fed him - because WHY?! Anyway, he conveniently leaves her some confession that is absolutely useless. Pathetic.

Then (actually, the first of them) another son chooses to go watch his mom's tomb FOREVER and EVER (nobody mentions him again. He vanished into the dark mysteries of tomb raiding, maybe).

And one other (I had already forgotten about him) decides to rebel because his daddy didn't love him. He obviously fails - because this is a family of failures - and dies. His daddy doesn't even acknowledge he ever existed, afterwards. LOL.

And then the fake-son, the CHOSEN ONE, goes away for like 4-5 years because of reasons, turns up to get fed vinegar by his own son, and is in limbo, legally speaking (since his father made his own gradson Emperor in the meanwhile LOL). Like... What the hell?! Not to mention that it took 20-some years of nobody managing to heal his poison, but then! Miraculously!! A SECRET SECRET EXTRAORDINARY CURE (that nobody mentions and explains how it works) APPEARS!! And he is HEALED!!!! And the only thing remaining is some white hair esthethically pleasing and making him even more handsome.

This whole story was dumb, dumb, dumb!!!! I liked the premise, but as it dragged past the halfway point and all the males in the Imperial family were STILL acting like married-with-children VIRGINS around the ONE and ONLY MOST-DESIRABLE WOMAN of the whole wide WORLD, it got so tiresome. And once you break that suspense of disbelief screen, everything becomes so clearly dumb and despite the nice cinematography and (overused) love songs, you just get... tired.

Highlights: the ML is really handsome. Some of the support cast is great (at emoting, at least, something the FL lacked).

Down points: the whole overreaching stupidity of it all. The completely non-important assassinations and kidnappings and attacks that nobody ever mentioned after they were done (and then they put themselves in danger again.) The complete lack of ANY kind of emotions on the face of the FL (I know Meng ZhiYi CAN act, I've seen her do it. Here she's just a extra-whitened huge-eyed non-expressive cold puppet that looks nice but doesn't inspire anything. Not admiration, not hatred, not love, not care, nothing. What is it?! At one point I imagined it's botox or something. What the hell happened?!) The stupid way ALL the males around her LOVE her. and are 100% devoted to her (I mean, what the heck?! They're supposedly master strategists, but they ALL fall for her?! Did she give them some Gu worms or some incense making them mad?!) The unexplainable disparition and re-apparition of the ML in the last eps. Like, he ded?! Then stay ded. Noooo, he's alive! Surprise, mofos, I'm back and nobody will ever tell you how this magic trick works! (I don't even care anymore at this point).

So yeah. Rated for cinematography and the support cast, but these 30-some hours of my life were completely wasted.

This should've been called The Completely Dysfunctional Homicidal-Suicidal Imperial Family Fails Again.

Since it's everyone's opinion - my own is that the plot is a mess, the execution is a mess, there's no redeeming the FL character, the final eps are the biggest mess of it all, and what saves a bit of it is the ML (despite being a simp brain-love) being handsome and the support cast (by which I only mean the FoF boys. They tried their best with what they were given.)

Her father told him, when he came back in a short visit before the wedding was settled. I don't remember the episode, since they're all mostly same-old, same-old, but maybe around 16-18 or thereabouts,

I'm holding on for the express because I'm so close to the end, and I still like the ML (because he's pretty, not because the character is someone to care much for). But the drama is just not it. I've grown tired of counting how many times the freaking IMPERIAL HOUSE gets attacked, the Imperial Princes get assassinated, try to kill each other, people kidnap then rescue them, or they rescue themselves and NOBODY bats an eye. Like it's supposed to be normal.

You freaking have TWO of them randomly kidnapped and the idiots who KNOW that go around with lights in the dark of the forest... calling their names?! What's THAT going to do, tell the kidnappers you're getting closer? Are you guys out there playing Marco Polo in the dark?! This is so freaking stupid.

Sadly, there are some amazing scenes where one can see what could have been, had the writer been a bit better, or the director knew what they wanted from this drama, or the editor did it better. Like that amazing scene with the CP and the Emperor who's fakely trying to manipulate him into remembering how he cared for him in the CP's childhood. THAT was the level I wiish they had reached for throughout the drama, not the continuous slapstick of boys' harem they had going on for most of it.

Anyway, I'll finish it - for the CP and for Lester Lin and Lai WeiMing, because they put in the emotions. The rest of the cast... *sigh*

The first half, father-and-daughter part was a good action thriller. The later half, the clumsy over the top SK NK nonsense was weak sauce full of PPL.

At least it's done.

Also, them wearing each other's clothes. BF mode, on both of them :D

Final ep really in a week or they'll sneak it in tomorrow?

He's been one of the highlights of TEP, I wish he'd got more leading roles. There's still time though.

Speaking of which, leaving aside he's going to be in the military, he shouldn't mind about being left behind or anything. I mean, 2020 was yesterday, wasn't it?

OMG when he thought ChangYang was a ghost LOL. He was completely certain. Then he pouted 'cause he wanted to keep away and stay by his sacrifice. So cute. I can't understand how ChangYang resists hugging the baby.

That being said, how long has ChangYang been back? 'Cause maybe not just this morning could have been him ghosting around and keeping watch.

(Also, take THAT, dad and sister-from-hell! Nobody can keep these men apart :D)

OMG, QingLang broke my heart. I completely understood that "There are some things I'll never dare to do again". Come here baby, I'll give you a hug.

Also, ChangYang: *takes no sh!t. Not even from his husband* There you go, get him!!

*Round of applause around the house*

I DON'T WANT TO SEE QINGLANG SO DOWN!!!! Why did he fold so easily... ah dammit noble sacrifice. I KNOW ChangYang does NOT agree and would rather let off that school than abandon QingLang.

Also, I hope Shu YiHao loses everything in the worst way imaginable. Because he deserves it.