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First off, let's focus on the positives. The two leads, Bail Lu and Allen Ren, are really good, renewing their quirky chemistry from One and Only only this time in a romance that doesn't have societal and imperial forces blocking them from marriage. The two characters are both 'different' from normal FL & ML characters and both are likely somewhere on the autistic / ADHD spectrum. Both characters are extremely high-functioning, but also each has quirky issues. Ren's character, Zhou Sheng Chen, in particular has quirks that at time feel close to debilitating. But strangely, both characters are immediately drawn to each other and fit perfectly together in complementary ways that just 'work' for their characters. This builds into a slow-paced but incredibly solid love story between two souls that, per the premise of One and Only being their 'past life', seemed destined to finally be together.

Ren has a difficult role to play, being a very different sort of character that is not always easy for the audience to empathize with. He mostly does an outstanding job though perhaps overplays it a bit at times. Some of that may be the fault of the script and direction, though.

Bai Lu's character is also quirky but at least is a little more conventional. She absolutely nails it as this Shi Yi really feels like a modern incarnation of past life Shi Yi. Outwardly sweet, shy and endearing, yet quietly extremely talented and intelligent. The show is by far the most enjoyable to watch when Bail Lu is on-screen. She is able to bring elegance and grace when needed in one scene and goofy cute silliness in the next and she's always so 'real' with her portrayals because she never overacts. An absolute queen of micro-expressions.

The rest of the cast is solid though I can't really call out any outstanding performances since most of the supporting characters just didn't get a lot to do in the story even though they presented as potentially having more to show. The SML character of Mei Xing, played by Ci Sha, has the only other important story arc, as it is implied that he is also reincarnated from the One and Only timeline. He seems clearly to be the modern life of the psychotic prince Liu Zi Xing who was just awful and caused so much pain for past-life Zhou SHeng Chen and Shi Yi in O&O. Past life Xing brutally tortured and killed ZSC and motivated Shi Yi to take her own life in order to follow ZSC. So this 'modern' Xing has a lot of past life sins to atone for and pay penance for. After initially looking like he, as in the past life, also might become bizarrely obsessed with Shi Yi, eventually shows that he's not going to be the same in this life. He holds true as the most loyal of friends to modern life Zhou Sheng Chen. And eventually finds his way to realizing that he loves Chen's younger sibling. His loyalty and faithful service to ZSC is his atonement for the injustices he committed to past-life ZSC. His acknowledgement of his love for Chen's sister Zhou Wen Xing is atonement for his dismissal of the love that Qi Xing Hua had offered in the past life. And the pain he endures as he has to watch Wen Xing's life slip away from him is his penance to endure in this life. If the whole 'next life' premise of these two stories is to be accepted, then one has to believe that in a future life, Mei Xing and Wen Xing will finally be able to be happy together.

So the acting performances were solid and those two main romance arcs, one ultimately happy and the other sad but perhaps hopeful for the next life were overall good. The production values are all excellent. Some beautiful cinematography, great on-point wardrobes and costumes and beautiful sets. Oh, and really nice musical soundtrack as well. What's not to like?

Well ... just a couple of things. For the most part, when the story is moving forward with the quirky but steady romance, it works well and is very intelligently scripted. But whenever the story decided to add an 'exciting drama event' .... it is just a disaster. In those scenes, suddenly characters just start behaving incredibly stupid and bizarrely, seemingly on purpose to just make the drama event as crazy bad as possible. This happens 3 times in particular.

****SPOILERS****
In one scene, Mei Xing, who is very drunk, is being driven back by side character Lin Fei along a highway. Some 'bandits' stand out on the road holding clubs, with the apparent intention to rob passing vehicles. So what does Lin Fei do? First, he slows gradually to a halt. He could easily have kept up speed and simply dared the thugs to jump out of the way. Or he could have thrown the car into reverse to get away and then turned around to leave easily. But no. for no apparent reason he stops. And then he makes it worse by STEPPING OUT OF THE CAR????? That made absolutely zero sense. He should have stayed in the car and called police. And driven away. So both he and Mei Xing end up getting beaten by the thugs (who of course it turns out were actually sent there by the villain of the story but that's irrelevant to just how stupid this scene played out). The whole scene just drops your jaw as you watch it, wondering how any human could be that stupid. Yes, the plot wanted a scene where the villain had some thugs beat up Mei Xing. Fine. But it could have easily, EASILY have been done without looking comically stupid and contrived like this.

Later, in another 'important' scene, Shi Yi and Wen Xing are sitting in a boat with a boatman paddling them slowly along the canal during a festival. Fine. Then, when they decide it was time to go back, for some inexplicable reason both girls stand up in the boat. Naturally Shi Yi falls into the water. Naturally Shi Yi can't swim. UN-naturally, THE BOATMAN CAN"T SWIM EITHER!!! This forces the chronically ill Wen Xing to have to jump into the water to save Shi Yi. This event puts Shi Yi into a coma for a bit and dramatically worsens Wen Xings already poor health. The 'event' was important to the story. But how it played out was just so silly and contrived. It just, again, seems like any half-decent writer could have written that scene so it would play out more realistically.

Another event that I won't go into too much detail is the 'acute appendicitis' event that again, makes no sense. This gets glossed over with no appendectomy occurring which makes no sense. But whatever. Magic medicine made it go away?

The last major plot event that was just bizarre to watch play out is near the end of the series: Through a combined sequence of just incredibly bizarre behaviors and stupid decisions by multiple characters, the 'villain' o f the story, Zhou Wen Chuan, manages to take Shi Yi hostage and ends up hurting both her and Zhou Sheng Chen seriously in a just totally silly sequence. The end result is Shi Yi falls into a coma. And this leads into by far, the WORSt 2 episode stretch of the whole series. Basically both episodes 28 and 29 are utter garbage. Shi Yi spends nearly all of it in a coma and all the other characters act bizarre and strange and the whole thing just drags incredibly slowly. All you can do is grit your teeth and wait for Shi Yi to finally wake up, which finally happens in Episode 30. At that point, seeing Bai Lu again is like fresh air and at least gives a decent 'bounce back' to end the series. But man, both episodes 28 & 29 are so bad they nearly ruined the entire series for me. They are just shocking poorly written after the first 27 episodes had been mostly very well written. They are just full of things, both little and large, that just make no sense because people simply do not really act or do things in the way these episodes portrayed.

I haven't read the books so I can't say whether these 'drama events' are better, more intelligently told in the book or not. But these events were played out just shockingly bad in this show. They really felt like some drunk college freshman in drama club wrote and directed them. And that was so at odds with the way the rest of the show was written.

Okay. That's a lot of complaints about what amounts to 2 full episodes and parts of 2 others. Aside from those bad bits, I found the rest of the series quite enjoyable and do give it a 'thumbs up'. I do think the show is more enjoyable for folks who endured the painful, beautiful tragedy of One and Only. So that may be an impediment for some viewers. But if you have that behind you, Forever and Ever is mostly a much deserved pleasant treat to watch. Just grit your teeth through the above cringe parts.