geechoo

tbh I still can't figure out what Overdo's plot is supposed to be about..

there seems to be so much going on. I don't understand how they can finish filming by September lol

he appeared more in promotions than he did in the drama LOL I think this is one of reasons his fans are so upset right now. If he had limited screentime, fine, but why did the production company & youku use him so much for promotions? the advertising was very misleading. This was very much a ZJM one woman show yet they promotions made it seem like it was a high school romance.

Linghe was a cameo in Fox Spirit but none of his fans complained because they didn't use him in promotions.

watched a bunch of edits of the Hong Kong scenes and skskks I NEED linghe in a HK detective series or something! kind of hope his next project after Overdo isn't another costume drama. imo chinese costume dramas are a bit repetitive plot and styling wise

the hong kong episodes of OG was SOOO much better than the high school portion. I wish the entire drama was that tone.

ummm I'd rather not lol her fans are a bit scary to deal with.

the Hong Kong episodes were by far the best in terms of acting, chemistry and directing/cinematography. ngl I wish the whole drama would've been in that tone with them acting as 20 something year olds. felt like this drama was a waste of their 2nd collab because there were far too little scenes with just the two of them in the first 18 episodes.

I watched this drama mainly because I like Linghe and even if I have some rose tinted glasses towards him, I can still say he really improved acting wise. There was a lot of depth in his emotions here and he has gotten so much more natural with his micro expressions. His line reading is also a lot better compared to his earlier dramas. I think only people who understand Mandarin would know lol but he used to kind of read his lines in an emotionless way. a lot of newbie actors struggle with this and since using dubbing is so widespread in cdramas, a lot of actors never have the chance to improve. but linghe really did improve with his line reading.

the novel really isn't that famous. this drama was hyped because of the production team behind it, but tbh the director and scriptwriter also have no experience with youth dramas

they never filmed for more than 24 episodes. fans know this because they followed the entire filming process and the router that came out basically showed that they filmed 24 episodes.

24 episodes is more than enough. one of my favorite slice of life high school dramas is Reply 1988 and that only had 20 episodes. It's just the pacing of this drama is off. there's a lot of fillers where it could've been allocated to side characters' development. And I think one of the biggest failures is how poorly the childhood scenes were because you really needed to believe their connection as kids to understand just why FL was so obsessed (for lack of better word lol) with ML for so many years.

no this is wrong. I'm a fan of linghe. 40 episodes is just for the preparation before filming and production companies always prepare for 40 episodes. the script was only 24 episodes long. they cut some of his scenes but it was never 16+ episodes of scenes lol

also does anyone else find SML just.. kind of pathetic at this point. he's taking the pining SML a bit too far. I don't think he was even like this in the novel. Also isn't he supposed to be ML's friend? He goes to HK and sees ML looking that crestfallen compared to his high school days and doesn't even enquire about what happened? He only cares if ML is going to go back and date FL? I feel like aside from ML, the other characters only care about love lol ML is like filming his own hardship drama elsewhere

If you told me last year that TBT would air better than OG, I'd laugh, so I can't believe it's actually happened lol TBT is a low budget romdrama with a newbie director and Linghe as the only recognizable name in the cast. OG is from a big production company and ZJM is a famous child actress. OG's director is also probably the most famous of the ones Linghe has worked with so far. I just don't understand how they got it so horribly wrong :/

This drama is kind of caught in a hard place because the numbers are definitely a flop for the production value but at the same time, this kind of school drama is rarely successful in China. I think even YangZi's drama with FCC had average viewership and she has so many hits under her belt.

You can have a female centered drama without having poor editing that makes the story disjointed or a poor script that doesn't flesh out characters. Also despite FL having so much screentime, I really don't think her character is all that fleshed out. There's some scenes that aren't even necessary to character development

actually I think Linghe's dialogue is really good. he improved from TBT imo.

but if there's one thing this drama does well, it's cinematography. The poker scene in HK especially looks almost movie esque. Too bad the editing/script couldn't be better :/

ok I'm caught up. I've been reading all the critiques about this drama so far and I agree with all of them but especially the issues with editing/script. This is a slice of life drama centered around FL and her friends and family. ML is an important part of her life BUT he often only appears in dialogues. FL is obsessed with ML but as an audience you're left wondering why because.. he's never shown!! lol I think anyone that's taken any creative writing class would know "show don't tell". This drama is always telling the audience about JQX but never showing what he goes through. Episode 16 + 17 was especially weird because I think it would've been a great time to show the juxtapositon between LQL's happy college life compared to JQX's hard life in HK... but they didn't do this at all. I read a lot of XHS posts asking about why ML did this or why ML did that and fans always have to explain with excerpts from the novel.. this shouldn't be needed if the script was competent!!

So in the end you're just left wondering why FL is so obsessed with ML, and why ML is suffering so much because they never show him.

tbh I think the biggest problem is the marketing doesn't match the content at all. no one is saying a drama focused on a girl's development is wrong but like.. the marketing was completely centered on the main CP. a lot of people only tuned into this thinking it'd be a high school romance but it's far from that.

this isn't airing in china though.

the main complaints are about the clothing not looking high quality enough. then there's linghe fans complaining about his hairstyle. The former would be hard to change because I think costumes are finalized before filming starts. they can maybe do some minor adjustments but I think it'd be hard to get a new set of wardrobe now that filming started.

as for linghe's hair, I think it just looks too much like his everyday hairstyle lol the back and sides should be shorter for that time period. but we'll see if they adjust it as shooting continues.