Hime

I was going to say I liked it but did not love it. Not because of the cast nor the acting, but because of the plot which was draggy at times and cliché and full of holes at other times. But guess what?

Then the last episode came and the writers pulled something that was so 2010 that I could not believe they were really going to do that....but they did. I felt like throwing my laptop against the wall.

Like, seriously? You have such a great cast and nice piano music and you ruin it all because of an awful script. Sigh

I am out of words. All I can say to the people that have not reached the last episode yet is to have a box of tissues near you and hide anything you could think of grabbing and breaking in a fit of anger. And dont forget, breathe in, breathe out.

It is a happy ending, otherwise I would have included it on one of the reasons. LOL
But like I said, for the last 20 episodes you barely get any screen time of the main leads and as soon as they get together we do not get much of them as a couple as one would expect. So if you want to watch for the romance, I am not sure it is worth your time.

About your last question, we are not perfect. Being tired after a busy day at work, being in a bad mood, having received bad news, and so many other things can cause us to say harsh words to people we love when we dont intend to. At that moment we just want to be left alone so if a person we care about keeps bothering you or said something that did not sit well with you, then it would not be surprising if you say something a little more harsh. Humans are very complex.

Yeah, definitely. And her meeting his grandmother too.

Ok, I think I cleared some things up. Thank you.
About Ling Wei, I was also assuming that, I just wish it was actually explained and not left for us to guess.

I am still confused about SC sudden change of attitude tho. He was always helping and protecting her and then in the last few episodes he was suddenly saying he hated her and his mind was clearly somewhere else which translated into him doing awful sculptures. So it feels like something else happened but I dont remember any event that would make him like that out of nowhere.

I think it is because with that cast and being a school romance drama they know they can get more attention by promoting it instead of this one. I watched Professional Single and loved it, but I am also going to watch this one since I also like this kind of drama. Hopefully it will be a good thriller, not too predictable nor draggy.

Was the drama cut short? I feel like I did not watch certain situations that were mentioned later on.

A few examples are:
I dont remember Yuan Qian ever meeting his grandmother. In fact, that call she made to him was the first time I even saw the grandmother’s face.

Also, when Qin Shen "went missing" I did not realize anything until it was mentioned that he was not there for a few days. I dont remember him getting a call saying his mother was sick or anything to make him up and go and not even text Yuan Qian that he would be away for some time.

And finally, what happened between Qin Shen, Ling Wei and Si Cheng that made them break apart? That was never explained in detail. I know Si Cheng likes Ling Wei and Ling Wei likes Qin Shen but that alone would not be a good enough reason for best friends to stop being friends or for both of the guys to hate Ling Wei. Also, Si Cheng is pretty nice to Ling Wei for most of the drama and only in the last few episodes he seems to suddenly hate her?!

I am quite confused about these. Maybe I missed something since I started watching this as it was getting subbed so for example, after I watched episode 10 I waited like 2 weeks to go back to the drama so I could watch a few more episodes.

Can someone who have finished just tell me if these were actually never explained or if I am just a dummy that cannot remember watching it? LOL

The best conversation of this drama would have to be:

Yuan Qian: Do you want to be a dog?
Qin Shen: Woof.

Only people who have watched the whole thing will understand. LOL


That said, this was one of the best Chinese school romance dramas I have watched. The pace was perfect - they did not get together in the first few episodes but also did not take until the last episode to start dating. The pace was very realistic and everything happened naturally. Their interactions were also the cutest thing I have seen in a while second to only watching videos of kittens and puppies. I barely skipped and I tend to skip when things get draggy so that says a lot about the plot and the characters. Definitely a drama I intend to re-watch in the future.

There are some things I am wondering though and that I will explain below, but only read if you have already watched the drama.

I will try to keep it short. I did NOT like it.

The storytelling was bad and almost made me drop it in the first week, then after the second week I realized it was not worth waiting for this drama every week so I just left it alone until it finished airing. And just now I went through the rest of the episodes with a lot of skipping.

What I did not like:
- The plot itself and the way the story was told. I think not even the writers were sure about where they wanted to go with it;

- The fact that 90% of the characters were either bad guys or grey characters that you cannot exactly call the good guys. How am I supposed to relate to people that earn their paycheck by fooling other people into giving them theirs???;

- The main leads barely spent any time together and the screen time was filled with a bunch of "supporting" characters that I could not care less about;

- And finally, the end, which managed to be as bad as the rest of the drama.

What I liked:
- The cast and the few moments the main leads were actually together in the same scene.

LOL
Yep, most times we start a Thai or a Chinese drama that is not fully subbed, we are always at risk. Only Korean dramas seem to be safe to watch while still airing. They always get fully subbed.

Exactly. He thought too highly of himself and thought whatever he thought was right must be right. And that was only one of the many issues with this drama that made it have lower ratings than one would expect with such a great cast and a promising plot that had all its potential go to waste.

There was definitely some wasted potential here and with such a good cast, I was expecting more than this mess.

I understand the infant mortality part, what I meant is other than that, he did not seem to do that much.

Also, you say they focused on the romance, I say they TRIED to do that but failed miserably. As someone who enjoys romance in my dramas, I would rather have this drama have no romance than what they gave us. They managed to not please either the people who went into the drama for the story nor the people who went in for the romance.

Overall this drama was a failure. It felt like the writers were not quite sure what they wanted to do.

I had previously found it with a search but it seems the subs state is the same. Episodes 9-13 have not been subbed for a few weeks. I am afraid to start watching just to have those episodes never get subbed and having to watch them raw without understanding a single thing they are saying.

More like the SML steals the FL from the ML, who btw is his bro, right before they get married. If you are looking for romance, or even a well-written story, you might want to stay away from this one.
I wish they could cast the main leads in a better historical drama. They were wasted here.

Oh ok, then I agree. I am definitely not happy with the way they wrote her character. Or any character really.

I knew the romance would go nowhere so I was hoping at least we would have strong well-written characters and good palace politics, but we did not even get that. We got a Queen that looked pretty and that sometimes seemed like she was doing something, and a sick Emperor that seemed to always be overworked because he was always taking care of his country, but actually was busy making kids - no wonder he was always getting worse, instead of getting some rest he was going at it all night. LOL

So yeah, I think the problem is with the script itself.

Idk why people would dislike Yan Yan. My problem was with Ming Yi, playing the nice guy when he only kept doing what was best for him. That is proven when he goes ahead and betrays his "love" for the Queen and gets a concubine to relieve his stress while his wife is doing his work. And he even hides her from Yan Yan until she gets pregnant, because at that point there was no way he could keep hiding it from her. So it was a double betrayal.

That really set me off. How dare he do that after all he made Yan Yan and De Rang go through?? In my opinion, he was as selfish as the bad guys, but under the pretense of a nice guy, which only made me dislike him more.

The amount of views has nothing to do with how good a drama is. A drama can get a lot of views because of the actors or because of the hype that is created before and while it airs.

In terms of plot, this did not meet my expectations and I feel the actors deserved something better. The rating here is 7.8 with the confirmed rating being 7.55, and the average rating of people who actually finished watching the drama is 7, which means there were probably some people rating it 9 and even 10, but there were also people rating it below 5. It depends what people were looking for in this drama.

I was looking for a good plot, and I didnt really get that. I have been watching dramas for about 10 years and have watched dramas with similar plot lines that were a lot better than this one.

Even the way they filmed the food was very amateur. Really, the biggest flaw of this drama is the production.

In my opinion, this is rated so low because it has 3 major problems and the plot is actually not one of them:

1st - the filming: some scenes have shaky cameras and weird zoom in and out;

2nd - the editing: not much to say about this, chopped, one scene does not feel connected to the next one;

3rd - the subs: which, at least at the moment, are machine translated and dont make much sense.

That said, I feel that they could have actually made a drama out of this plot, a shorter one - like 24 episodes long, had it been in the hands of a different team. This whole thing is screaming low budget and amateurs taking charge. Really, a shame that this was not in the hands of someone who actually knew what he/she was doing.