Skibbies

no, hunan tv does this a lot, it'll "extend" episodes, but what happens it'll do a lot of flashback, and some episodes are 20mins long (to fit with the variety show schedule).

I really really loved the concept of this show, and I like how much everything falls into place as you watch it. I do wish they casted someone else as ML, I think he got better in the middle and he def looks better, but for much of the drama, I was shipping FL with everyone (including her brother) but him. XD

Thanks for writing this great review, so I don't struggle to put my thoughts into words to recommend the drama.

o: surprised by the high score, since the movie didn't quite work for me as well. I was little bored with it, and kinda disliked the ending. I really loved Lei Jiayin's performance though, I wasn't sure it was him for the first 10 minutes he appeared. I don't watch enough Shen Teng or Zhang Yi to really be surprised btu I enjoyed them, YYQX was bit too fade to background for me.

watch the killer is romantic!! :P

Heads up, director/scriptwriter/editor/uploader zhi zhu said the last couple of episodes are too long so ep 30 is the ending, not 28, so it should finish on april 28 on kuaishou?

I found both the leads rather annoying from the start, but I started this like the day before it ended, so I got all the warnings from comments/reviews and that made it bit more palatable I think, still infuriating though. I still don't like them, but I did like the supporting characters. I did find using the case to explore screwed up views of marriage, relationship and love kind of neat, and a lot of them are eerily realistic. I also rather like the unreliable narrator aspect and various events could be up to different interpretations.

That's the thing, the writer woman situation is up to interpretation. Lot of people lean towards he might have just flirted or she had a thing for him, but Mu Dafu didn't actually sleep with her.

If that's the case, then he didn't physically cheat. Emotionally cheating is complicated and debatable subject, which is the entire reason this drama exists. It doesn't help the drama shows that all characters are all unreliable with their version of story, so you can interpret it rather differently.

FL projects a lot throughout the drama, and her constant questioning got very suffocating as it went on. I think a lot of people find ML rather annoying because he wasn't answering the question straight and did the exasperated dance, but then became super annoyed by FL.

ML is far from the victim, even in the best light, he enables FL and feeds into her suspicion at the beginning. At worst, he'd be what you say, a manipulator who's emotionally abusive, also might have some kind of hallucination/untreated mental issue.

It's a family ethics drama :P I think it becomes somewhat clear half way through the drama when you see they are super focused on relationship/how they might be connected to the case AND the fact they are all unreliable narrators.

Oooh I'm surprised your mum was interested. We tried to get our mum to watch and she watched the first two ep, went to bed and never came back, despite our repeated reminders lol. I think she finds it bit hard to follow and have to concentrate compared to other dramas she might have playing while half asleep.

I think there might be some non cdrama watchers? I heard some people talking about their friends/coworkers watching cos of the book? You'd have to have someone who watches cdramas or keep up with the news to know though, I think? Oh wait no, I think NYT and some other sites had articles, but it's unlikely it drew that many people in. I'd be curious to see stats tbh, it'd be interesting.

I liked the first two, but found whole ep 3 dedicated to countdown unnecessary, more characterisation for Wang Miao sort of worked till ep 5, I think 7 had the game, so I stuck around? I liked the game bit quite a bit. ep 8 and 9 were string of total duds and could be deleted. Then it went into game-flashback-game mode so I was okay, even if the flashback was slow too. I remember the early episodes cos I was following the release and stopped right before Chinese New Years cos I heard there were 2 dumb drama original ep lol. Then Knockout broke out and people stopped discussing Three Body for the most part, also cos I binged the rest after all the socialising for CNY lol.

I liked Shen Yufei okay, even though she shouldn't have been around for so long I believe, she was just little too cryptic for sake of cryptic. Pan Han I was sort of okay with too, but reporter I don't care for. They did sort of try to space drama original content out when it started getting back the main plot, too bad a lot of that was cluster at the beginning.

I'm still not that optimistic about Netflix's :P

oooh I'm surprised by the relative low score since it seemed like you rather liked it when you watched it! I think this drama is way too long and would be far better experience even if it cut down just 6 ep, better if it cuts down 15 so it's half as long. It also really enjoyed being cryptic for the sake of it, which I don't care for. ALSO if it would just turn on the lights, omg I was really patient and okay with the dim lighting at first for suspense reason. but it got more and more ridiculous! In latter third, there were just DARK ROOM, but there's lights outside! shen yufei's house with that BLINDING screen sjkfhsdjkfhsjkdfh

he's not illegitimate, he has a different surname (his dad's), while sister has his mum's lol, largely for the surprise twist.

She stayed at home cos she's sickly, they sort of mention it as one off line in flashback. As for saying they are siblings, they do say it multiple times, he says who his parents are, the way xinyan reacts, and also what he calls grandpa/aunt (can't tell in subs though). Grandpa only have two daughters so it'd only make sense for Yan Xingchen to be brother of Zhuang Xinyan, cos otherwise he'd be son of antagonistic aunt.

I thought it went downhill in the third arc in general, esp the start, ep 27 had lots of repeat from ep 1 XD I did like the whole angle of Gao Qiqiang wouldn't necessarily exist and gotten so powerful without help from various departments of government. It's fairly critical of the failure of system (especially in the past :P), and not just bad guys grow out of thin air.

No one wins is the real reality and I actually like that, I think? Li Xiang tried to gather evidence, and he was essentially mentally tortured by the fact he's colluding, but he's also what I think the most regular people could do in a mess of grey. The only reason An Xi survives till the end is cos he *has* two higher ups "uncles" and complicated relationship with Gao Qiqiang, otherwise he would have been Lu Han (the young police who disappeared).

I did wish they kept Meng unchanged, since the plot would make more sense then, but the drama did go the route of "he unknowingly helped" which was better than he got off unscathed like I expected lol. The whole planting "trojan horse" (bribery money) to the inspection team (?) was nice touch too, it does illustrate why it's so hard for "good guys to win". Oh yeah, I also thought last two ep was okay? I thought it'd be boring and all the bad guys get caught, but it cricled back to karma, which I liked, and I loved the call back scene to first ep. I quite appreciated that they did several flashback to 2014/2015 too, because it made the last arc less boring, otherwise last few ep would just be twiddling our thumbs for two old dudes to do its job.

I LOVED Gao Ye so much, even though she appeared so little.

ooh thanks for info

omg that's a lot, is it 2 & 3 together.....? I have friends speculating from last year they didn't gather enough money to start, and I'm always afraid that xinli will start filming yet another project and they don't have enough investments *sigh*

it's announced but i wouldn't count on anything till you see them filming.

I'd use pandemic as an excuse too :P but since it's part of profit guarantee, that's kinda promising.

I honestly don't think the delay is due to pandemic tbh, it didn't stop the other dramas from filming. *sigh* we'll see in 3 months on the filming.

three body's viewcount and tv rating is absolutely underwhelming for a big drama, even not considering its IP. Knockout knocked *everything* out of the ballpark, it's explosively popular on all fronts and breaking records left and right. It basically dwarf all dramas post 2019, I'd say it's more popular than all the 2019 and 2018 popular dramas too.