So much potential, wasted on a truly horrible script.
The cast is fantastic. Love both leads and the supporting cast is excellent as well. In particular, Guan Xue Ying is brilliant at making you hate her psychotic unrequited female rival character. The production quality is good. Some of the martial arts scenes are fantastic. Indeed there are plenty of enjoyable entertainment moments scattered throughout this series.
But the script is god-awful. The writers rely heavily on a relentless stream of cliche' plot contrivances, one after another and the plot loses all credibility again and again. The villains never truly get punished despite getting caught. They just keep coming back again and again repeating the same stupid schemes. And no happy ending either.
The chemistry between the leads is fantastic --- when they actually get to be together! But the plot gimmicks employed by the writers just bury all that goodness. The chain of absurd, improbably events , one after another, that the writers contrive drag what should be short story arcs of 1 or 2 episodes out to 8-9 or more episodes!! It's easy to forget just what led to where the story ends up at various points. In particular, the long stretch of contrivances they use to keep the main leads apart is just crazy and drags across a huge span of episodes.. The script leans heavily into plot-induced stupidity again and again to create unnecessary drama events that just drag the resolution of larger plot lines to a slow, frustrating crawl.
I'm so disappointed. I really like the premise of this story. And Li Qin and Qin Hao both are wonderful to watch in their scenes. But I can't recommend this show. It's just too exasperating and the end-game payoff is just not worth enduring it.
But the script is god-awful. The writers rely heavily on a relentless stream of cliche' plot contrivances, one after another and the plot loses all credibility again and again. The villains never truly get punished despite getting caught. They just keep coming back again and again repeating the same stupid schemes. And no happy ending either.
The chemistry between the leads is fantastic --- when they actually get to be together! But the plot gimmicks employed by the writers just bury all that goodness. The chain of absurd, improbably events , one after another, that the writers contrive drag what should be short story arcs of 1 or 2 episodes out to 8-9 or more episodes!! It's easy to forget just what led to where the story ends up at various points. In particular, the long stretch of contrivances they use to keep the main leads apart is just crazy and drags across a huge span of episodes.. The script leans heavily into plot-induced stupidity again and again to create unnecessary drama events that just drag the resolution of larger plot lines to a slow, frustrating crawl.
I'm so disappointed. I really like the premise of this story. And Li Qin and Qin Hao both are wonderful to watch in their scenes. But I can't recommend this show. It's just too exasperating and the end-game payoff is just not worth enduring it.
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