lilili

I didn't know any of the actors and I'd watched maybe five period idol dramas when I started this, also I don't speak Mandarin or know anything about Chinese internet meme culture so I probably missed 2/3 of the jokes. But I still laughed out loud every episode over things like the BGM including the Sex and the City theme and music from Sergio Leone westerns, the Night Walkers writing fanfic for their boss, "It's fish abuse! Fish abuse!" and so much more. It's like they threw everything at the wall without worrying whether it was too dumb, in fact too dumb is probably what they were going for.

Liu Yuning is legit fantastic in this. He has to be villainous, commanding, taken aback, confused, lovesick, noble, vulnerable, pained and he's good at all of it. He's also funny as hell. After learning more about his personal story and watching his livestreams I rewatched episode 1 and caught so many more jokes about Nan Feng that are directly taken from LYN's career.

I liked the FL but I think that the negative reactions some people have to her are because of structural problems with the script. The biggest problem is that Song Yi Meng's pain and suffering are front loaded at the start of the drama and mostly played for laughs. She's killed an uncountable number of times and wakes up in pain every time she's reincarnated but we don't see the deaths come at the hand of Nan Heng but rather an impersonal fate machine that requires her not to marry her the 2ML.

We do see her mentally go through the script and envision all of the ways Nan Heng mistreats her and eventually turns her into a human pig (cuts off all her limbs and puts her in a jar to die) but again a lot of it is turned into comedy and so it's hard to take her fears seriously, especially because she's a "salted fish" who isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and often misinterprets what's going on around her.

Also, the audience knows much more than SYM and can see how Nan Heng feels about her and how much he's done on her behalf. But she doesn't know, esp because most of the nice things he does in the first half are when he's Li Shiliu. A lot of Nan Heng's actions look threatening to her given her lack of knowledge. Also, she tried many times to fight the script and it forced her and NH to do things against their will. So she's assuming all of the iconic scenes will take place as she read them and she's terrified.

Meanwhile, they had Nan Heng crying while Song Yi Meng was extremely mean to him and when I saw that I knew she was doomed with the audience because a crying man will always win over an angry woman, no matter how justified her anger (and it was justified, he lied to her about his identity for so long!).

Another thing the writers did that frustrated me was Yi Ting had to tell Song Yi Meng hey idiot, what do you think Nan Heng and Li Shiliu have in common instead of her figuring it out on her own. I think that was a big mistake. It made her seem too stupid and it lost her audience sympathy points.

I think a few things would've helped, like exploring SYM's backstory with losing her parents in a fire in the modern storyline. It's obviously a traumatizing event and would explain a lot of her fear. Another thing is if NH & SYM had worked together sooner to change fate, I think it would have reduced the frustrations of the audience a lot and made us root harder for them as a couple.

I also have to say that while Li Yitong was fantastic at the comedy, her performance lacked nuance in the middle of the drama. There were scenes where she should've looked more conflicted about saying harsh things to Nan Heng. It would've been good to see her struggle more to keep her distance from him.

Of course, inherent audience biases against flawed FLs and in favor of tragic suffering MLs (as the drama itself parodies) made it inevitable that many people would hate her.

Even with those writing flaws, I loved ADWAD and it's in my top five list of dramas for the year.