Hime

I almost feel like I wrote that comment myself. LOL
I am Portuguese and a lot of Brazilian soap operas will air here. And its the same thing. Main leads will always either have someone else before they are with each other or they break up, go date other people even tho they love each other and then get back together at the end. Meanwhile they will be kissing and doing much worse with these said other people. I also despise cheating. I turned to Asian dramas exactly because these type of content were not doing it for me anymore.

Unfortunately, even with Asian dramas you will find this kind of trash content, mainly with jdramas that even have a lot of cheating main leads that are married and thai dramas too, although less often. There are cases of kdramas and cdramas having main leads cheats too but it is less common and I stay away from these.

I also had a lot of fun chatting with you. It seems we have a lot in common when it comes to our drama watching preferences. ^ ^

Exactly. Some things seem to have been added just to make this more dramatic but had no reason behind it. I still think this was a great drama but it could have definitely been better if the writers had given us a convincing reason as to why she hated the FL so much.

I graduated from a cooking school but decided that I did not want to work as a Chef because I like to cook with more care and attention to details and in a restaurant/hotel kitchen you kind of have to mass produce and just put the food on the plate and deliver because you have to serve a lot of people.

In the places I worked we had up to 800 people all coming to eat around the same time, it was not easy. Also, the working schedule is awful. You never get weekends off, sometimes you go weeks without having days off and most of the time you work the entire morning, have a 4 hour break and then come back to work until midnight. So you dont have a life, you cant go anywhere and you become sleep deprived. It is not an easy life.

So I prefer to cook as a hobby and for family and friends instead. I also have more freedom to come up with new recipes and can work in a stress-free environment.

And yes, I agree, Pasta had some really good cooking scenes. A lot of dramas that have cooking dont focus on the cooking but more on the romance, comedy or other more popular genres. Pasta actually spent a good time developing the cooking part and even the romance was deeply dependent on it.

I think Secret Garden was one of the first dramas I watched too. The first drama I remember watching was the kdrama Pasta since I had just started cooking school and was surrounding myself with dramas and tv shows related to food.

Yeah. I have been watching dramas since 2010 and have literally watched hundreds of dramas so I end up only remembering the ones that I liked a lot, even if I watched it 10 years ago. Some dramas are just THAT memorable. While others I watched 1 year ago and cannot remember what the drama was about. LOL

Yeah. I did not remember watching it either. At first in my comment I had wrote that "I have never watched it" and then realized I did and changed it to "I watched it many years ago". lol

I wanted to fully like this drama but I cannot ignore MAJOR flaws.

- For one, the way the story is told feels very disconnected at times with a bunch of sub-plots that the drama could have done without.

- Second, a lot of characters, but especially the female lead who the writers tried to sell as a really bright person, keep doing extremely dumb things. Without spoiling much imagine someone commits murder and covers it up very well to the point no one even knows this murder happened...but then this person comes to the street and just starts yelling "I killed someone, I killed someone. I killed X and buried her body at Y. But you will never be able to find out because I covered it up REALLY well." Like seriously?? This kind of stupid stuff happens several times throughout the drama but mainly in the first 20 episodes or so which caused a lot of people to actually drop it halfway.

- Third, really average people that should have little power in the Palace, yeah, I am looking at you Zhuo Jin Niang, somehow can control anyone and do whatever without consequences in this drama. Like, she is responsible for the making of clothes, she aint the Prime Minister or someone only second to the Emperor. Come on, it makes no sense.

- And finally, the ending. What was that?? It felt like this was supposed to end somewhere around ep 36-38 but someone invested in the drama and said "go ahead, keep the story going for another 20 episodes"....and after a few more episodes the investor is like "well, I changed my mind" and just leaves with the production being forced to end the drama there.

P.S. - I know most of us watched the 40 ep version which was cut shorter, but even if you have to cut a drama short you need to keep the story consistent and wrap up the drama nicely. If you have watched the last episode you cannot tell me you did not think that was a really chopped up episode.

I was talking about the mothers tho. Plus, emperors having many wives should serve as an example of why you should NOT have more than one wife. These wives and their offspring would keep "mysteriously" dying. That should tell them how problematic having so many power-hungry women in one place is.

Polygamy slowly stopped being the rule and became the exception for a reason. We learn from our mistakes, or at least we should.

There is an actual drama version with 2 seasons but with a different cast. I watched it many years ago so I cant remember if its any good but from the ratings it shouldnt be bad.

Yeah, but these mothers forget one essential thing. When a man has sons to different wives rarely the family will have any peace because the mothers will throw them against each other in the pursuit of a better status and the husband’s favor. Some even kill their own brothers later on.

I think the best method would be to marry their sons to a really healthy woman and have a lot of kids with this one woman. The mother would not throw her own kids against each other and the husband would not be left with a huge headache having to deal with so many women in one household.

Yeah. To me it seems like he just wants to lead a peaceful life and his wives are too much trouble. At the same time he is kind of a momma’s boy and even if he does not want to, he will do what she says just to please her. So far there was only 1 moment where he went against his family for the female lead but what they did was so ridiculous anyway that anyone else in his place that has even a bit of backbone would do the same.

Well, I will keep watching since I want to see how the female lead grows. Until now she has pretty much just been smiling while not doing much. lol

Instead of the typical romance you see in Chinese historical dramas, this one is more realistic when it comes to how things were in those times.

With that said, in the 1st episode the ML has 1 wife (sister of the FL) and 2 concubines. He also has 2 sons, 1 from the wife and the other from one of the concubines. When his wife passes away the FL kind of works as a substitute for her and he also marries her but about a year prior he is pretty much forced into marrying another concubine.

In total, as far as episode 12, he has had 2 wives and 3 concubines, technically they are 4 now since his first wife died, but that means 5 women in his life + his mother who is also a piece of work.

So dont expect some super fluffy romance or anything like that. I am still watching because so far I find it interesting but I have very low expectations from a romance in this kind of setting. You should lower your expectations too if you dont want to be left disappointed.

Just a warning as this might be a deal breaker for some...

I dont know exactly what happened but I see people keep sharing the links to their sites without even using the spoiler option to hide it so it is very easy for them to be found. And some even go as far as to re-upload the episodes. Sigh

Well, you never know. lol

haha Thank you. Some people have showed hate on my comments previously because I am very honest. I try to keep it respectful but when a drama is bad I just say it is bad. lol
So it is nice when people say they enjoy my comments or find them helpful. You made my day. ^ ^

I explained in my previous comment. Maybe I was not very clear.

Basically, in some places this is airing with a 16 episode format with each episode being 1 hour long. In that format, 4 episodes have aired so far.

But in places where it has the 32 episode format, 8 episodes have aired since each episode is about 30 minutes long instead.

I believe if this is like other kdramas, in the middle of the episode it will show on screen a text saying that episode 8 is starting when you are actually watching the 4th episode.

haha I never said your math was bad, just weird. lol
I guessed it was probably a mistake when you were typing and was just messing with you. :P

I found the second half to be a little draggy at times, especially with whole Luo thing which got on my nerves. BUT, this was definitely one of the best female lead’s I have seen and I loved how the male lead was a little shy at times instead of the typical forceful brute male lead.

This had a good amount of romance, comedy, fights, ... Definitely something I recommend if you like historical Chinese dramas.

The ending could have been better but from what I read it was a little different from the novel. But anyway, still a decent ending.

That is some weird math.

Maybe you meant to say that in the 16 episode format 4 episodes are out which means that in the 32 episode format 8 episodes are out?