demithinks

You are spot on with those points! Completely agree!

Oh yes indeed. The female characters all had strong wills including the evil ones. For example I thought it was interesting how the 5th Princess seemed to chafe at the fact that she was a woman and felt herself more capable than her brother , the Crown prince. She was a mean woman no doubt but there was more to her than just being a one-dimensional mean character to advance the story. I also loved even small side characters such as QiQi's grandmother who had cut off her ear.

I saw it more as envy than jealousy in the case of the Empress and Consort Yue.

This is just such a wonderful and perfect drama and I simply adore and love it! I just wanted to comment and say how much I also appreciated not seeing so many usual drama tropes in it.
To list a few:

1. A kind emperor who actually cares about his family and subjects. And of course no empress-consort jealousy and machinations.

2. A family like the Cheng family that actually stood for each other and supported each other.

3. The fact that cousin Yang Yang didn't become evil and jealous.

4. No unnecessary slow-mos of slowly spinning in the air or any number of those tired old camera angles and shots.

5. This may seems trivial but I was delighted not to have to watch even a single character cough up blood in the usual way in dramas when anyone gets hurt in any way. (It's a pet peeve of mine)

6. A separation that made more sense than most separations in dramaland. Also, the separation did not seem unnecessarily dragged out over a multitude of episodes.

7. All the bad guys actually get their comeuppance in all kinds of satisfying ways.

I am sure there are several others but these are some that come to mind immediately. Please feel free to add more :)

Thank you for your opinion and expressing it in such a detailed way. It seems like quite the doom and gloom from your point of view. I just think that the entire entertainment industry is now very different no matter which part of the world we look at. Whether it is Asia, Europe, North America or any other part of the world, there just aren't the kind of old-fashioned, ground-breaking hits of original works like there used to be. I think it is a lot of factors behind this and not just lack of talent and scripts. The way movies and shows are made and promoted, changing tastes, over saturation with different platforms, easy availability of just any number of shows are just some of the reasons. If we look at the Western market too, a decade ago, we had Netflix as the main streaming giant and now there's just too many to even count. The same goes for Asian entertainment and so what constituted as a hit and its definition has also changed over time.
I am old enough to remember a time when ratings would sky rocket because everyone was watching this one show and online buzz and fan war drama were at a minimum. Now everything is quick and fast and so much is out there with so many differing opinions that we just don't watch the shows in the same way any more. I just put it down to evolving nature of things and make the best of what I like and keep it simple that way.

I have been waiting for this drama forever and will be so disappointed if it doesn't come out in September. However, I don't think it's correct to say that Tencent hasn't had a single real hit this year. A Dream of Splendor, Love Like the Galaxy and The Oath of Love have all been big hits in 2022.

I agree completely. I have been watching dramas for so long: Korean, Chinese and Japanese and of course English language shows such as those on Netflix, HBO and Amazon. However, LLTG is amongst the top shows for me in any language and a very rare type of show. Some shows touch the heart but the production values sometimes leave something to be desired because maybe they didn't have the budget for it or something. The Untamed is such a drama for me. I love it with all my heart but do cringe a bit at some shots and sets and CGI effects. Then there are those with beautiful production values but feels a bit empty or leaves one wishing things were told differently like the Rise of the Phoenix or Game of Thrones towards the final seasons. But LLTG seems to have best of both the worlds: it touched the heart deeply with its story and acting and the world immersion was made so good with excellent sets, costumes and action sequences. What a perfect drama!

Totally! I could have kept watching their sweet scenes forever!
Also, now that the drama has ended, can I just say thank you to you, @insideout91, for all the work you put into this page. I thoroughly enjoyed the LLTG community on MDL and am having a hard time moving on. It became a sort of ritual to watch the new episodes, come here for comments and then re-watch the episodes and keep revisiting this page for comments. I am going to really miss it so much. So a big, big shout out to you! Thank you so much!❤️

That's what I concluded. I also thought the twin brother wouldn't have waited the entire night when she had just gone for dinner so he probably found out something had gone wrong and went to get help.

Me too. I do t know what to do besides watch it all over again.

I agree. As beautiful as the scene is and I loved reading it (thank you so much to SpicyLime for posting it) but I also liked how they did it in the drama and it seemed very in keeping with the character of the drama HBY. I was worried the separation would be too long in the drama or the reconciliation might be awkward, but I loved it all. I liked how they handled the separation and how CSS and HBY acted around each other. There was maturity, regret, love, anger (on CSS's part) , sadness yearning all portrayed so well. What a perfect drama!

Me too!

Sigh! Another Immortal Samsara pusher here bashing LLTG! I'd think they'd give up by now.

Thanks for explaining it so well. That's how I saw it too. I don't know about others but I second that it is East Asian culture to flirt by sort of complaining to one's significant other. It's also a mark of intimacy to express how much one needed them when they were not there. I saw the entire exchange more as SS expressing to LBY finally that she really needs him by her side.

I'm tired and hope it gets better with her character arc. If she stays the same, too bad!

I personally don't look down on a good detective drama or crime solving show. They can be campy if not done right but some of the most memorable characters written or portrayed have their roots in the crime-solving genre, whether it be books or shows or movies. In the hands of a good script writer, director and actors, a very good story can be told no matter the genre. And I believe that Wu Lei and Zhao Lusi can do justice to any type of genre as long as they have a good script and director to guide them.

Can we please just have a spin-off series with CSS, LBY and YS solving cases together? Watching them all together at the Liang household trying to solve the murder made me think how delightful it would be to have this trio solving murder mysetries, court conspiracies and national crisis.
It is of-course just a pipe dream but just imagining it makes me happy.

I didn't see it as them trying to repress her. Maybe change her perspective a bit about how when one half of a couple acts out, the other one will get affected. She is extremely stubborn and doesn't seem to understand that being in a relationship comes with changes. It doesn't have to change who you are completely but it is naive to assume that one can completely love and trust another person and not learn to adapt and and change a bit for one another. It is of course toxic when only one half of a couple is expected to do all the changing and adapting but any healthy relationship entails growth and change. CSS often seems to want LBY to be a different kind of man while steadfastly holding on to her own personality as sacrosanct.
Now having said that, the Emeperor's method seemed over the top but LBY apparently rides for a day and night and fights enemies with an arrow in his shoulder, so maybe they know his pain management is of another level,😄

I agree with what you said. Thank you for replying. However, I did realize (but failed to mention) that in those days and times, there is probably no one who can hold the Emperor responsible for his children's actions. Although there are rare historical accounts of some very upright officials criticizing a ruling emperor even at the cost of one's life, I doubt it happened that often. I thought more about how the Emperor seemed to dodge that issue or even failed to express much remorse or self-reflection over it.

I just loved today's episodes 37 and 38. CSS and LBY's chemistry is sizzling and the entire ensemble cast is such fun to watch. This is definitely turning out to be one of my favorite dramas ever. Having said that, I was wondering how all the parents and family members are being held responsible for their children's actions but the Emperor, Empress and Consort Yue have some of the worst children with the Fifth Princess and Third Princess. It seems they are not held as responsible for their children's actions as much as the other people like the Eight Families are.
Also, it felt excessive to execute the "aides" of the Fifth Princess for something that didn't seem to be their direct responsibility. If they were executed to just teach the Fifth Princess a lesson, it seems a bit unfair. Unless it was because they did something that was clearly against the Emperor and the prestige of the ruling family knowing fully well that what they were doing was completely wrong and amoral for those days and would bring the Imperial Family a great deal of criticism and trouble.