Wants to be a sex scene
Let's be real, the writers totally would've included one in the original series if they could have. As I said in my review of The Double, the FL and ML are horny AF and certainly continue to be in this 6 minute special ep.However, I found the sex appeal of these two in the original series to come from their switching. For most of the series they followed a traditional masc/femme, dom/sub dynamic – and it was the moments where they swapped roles when the sexual tension became pure electric.
Except for a rare glimpse of a fan in Xue Fangfei's hands, this short does not deliver the same power/sexual dynamic. Not only is the scene a picture of bland domestic bliss, it's also a consolidation of the Good Governance narrative from the original series.
As I mentioned in my review of the The Double, the political plotline hinged on the main characters supporting the 'rightful' emperor. As this 6 min epilogue asserts: the world is at peace. All the Baddies have been vanquished and the people (or at least the noble elites) can enjoy their lives. Nothing is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Anyway, this short was clearly meant to satisfy viewers who were invested in the romantic storylines of The Double. I'm afraid that wasn't me.
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My review of The Double: https://kisskh.at/profile/TheUnhinged/review/392435
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Took me FIVE YEARS to slog through this drama
In the time it has taken me to scrape and crawl through this drama I have:– Lived through 5 Covid lockdowns
– Changed jobs 4 times
– Moved house 3 times
– Learnt 2 semesters of Mandarin, and
– Breathed the 1 biggest sigh of relief when I reached the credits of the final episode.
Class dynamics, who even is she? I'm a hard agree with Graeme Smith who describes this version of Meteor Garden as "unwatchable". In his article for The Interpreter, he says, "A drama about class divisions set in present-day China – where class divisions aren’t up for discussion – was never going to work."
It's true. Everyone in the series looks like they're acting in a laundry commercial. The sets are sparkly clean, all the actors have amazing teeth, and there is no way Shancai would be able to survive off the occasional shift she does at the bubble tea store.
By removing the class tensions that drove the Taiwanese version (and that was still relatively sanitised – it is a soap opera, after all), the creators gutted the life out of the drama.
It's also just hella boring. I felt no chemistry in any of the romantic relationships. I didn't particularly care about anyone's fate. And I say this as someone who *loves* championing an underdog. But because the class divisions "aren't up for discussion", Shancai isn't really an underdog. And so I found it hard to care much about her so-called struggles.
It got to the point where I was using diversions to keep myself watching. One fun game was tracking the disappearances and re-appearances of Daoming Si's earring/s. It was like playing Spotto with continuity errors.
For the sake of pushing through the last dozen episodes, I put the playback on 1.5x speed (as fast as Netflix would let me), which added an unintended comedic element. It also demonstrated how much screen time went to waste.
However, I'm going to be reeeeeally nice and end on a couple of (backhanded) positives. I did appreciate the music covers and the cameos from the Taiwanese version (but this is nostalgia and should be attributed to the 2001 series). I did also enjoy bits of Darren Chen's performance as Huaze Lei. He made the character seem almost complex, particularly in comparison to the cardboard cutouts that accompanied him on screen.
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And that, kids, is how you unionise!
From that start, the plot didn't feel right. Why would a domestic servant have any real romantic feelings for their master? So needless to say the final episode was a big 'ah now that makes sense' moment.That said, as much as I enjoy lower class insurgency and rooting for underdogs, the plotline was terribly executed. Because it spent more time delving into the backstories of the Evil Masters Of The House more than the servants, you had very little sense of who the servants were as human beings.
I understand why the storyline worked that way. It would've been very hard to explore Khaimook's character in-depth, for example, without giving away the big plot twist. However, it does mean the ending feels shallow. Sure – I want these people to land on top. But only on principle. Not because I feel any sentimental attachment to the individuals themselves.
Also, just as a heads up, this series does stray into torture porn territory at times. You can skip those scenes: it's lazy writing and doesn't really contribute much overall.
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