Entertaining, but don't watch on an empty stomach.
Overall, this was a fun and entertaining drama. It has a lot of different elements that made it enjoyable, from the main romance and light comedy to serious political drama and martial arts combat and of course, lots of food! And for the most part that crazy mix makes perfect sense. Most of the characters are interesting and show real growth in ways that keep you engaged. The plot has a very good core premise with some nice creative twists that keep things from being obvious. They also do a good job of avoiding some of the more annoying plot tropes common in so many romance dramas. The plot does drag down a bit in the low-to-mid 20s episodes as they fill time with some side plots. And some goofy character behavior that worked early on did become tiring around that point. But the plot recovered very well over the last half-dozen episodes and finished strong.The actors are all very well cast and really deliver well on their roles. Both leads are excellent and have great chemistry. The production values - costumes, sets, special effects, camera-work, etc, are all top quality with only minor, irrelevant glitches here and there.
Caution: Do not watch while hungry unless you have food to eat.
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Very enjoyable light rom-com
This show is exactly what it's supposed to be: A very enjoyable romantic story with some light fun comedy. Most of the 'drama' is lightweight and resolved fairly quickly. The only things that are dragged out are the initial plot premise deceptions between the ML & FL - that's dragged out past it's usefulness but at least when the big reveals happen the show doesn't endlessly drag out the subsequent resolution of the trauma that results. So while this is a very, very slow developing romance - slight spoiler: the first kiss doesn't happen until well past the halfway mark of the show - otherwise the show moves at a fairly brisk pace. Things do happen in each episode and until the final couple of episode long time-wasting montage scenes are minimized.The two leads , Zheng He Hui Zi and Miles Wei, have very good chemistry and look great together. Both carried their roles beautifully and somehow managed to sell the idea that two characters could act like stalkers of each other and it not be creepy - indeed it's cute and romantic!. And the second couple is just fantastic. I really would love to see Chen Hao Lan and Li Jun Xian get lead roles - together or separately - because both actors feel like they can carry a lead role. I especially was impressed with Chen Hao Lan. She plays a very dynamic role as the FL's bestie with her own dramatic story arc of ups & downs. And Li Jun Xian is simultaneously handsome and charming and yet a total goofball when necessary, in hilarious fashion.
The production values of this show are solid, with lots of great wardrobe, settings artwork and really nice soundtrack. A few prop quibbles and oversights but nothing worth crying about.
My only real complaint is just my common complaint I have about how for some reason c-drama writers so often feel obligated to include some sort of 'love triangle', which in this show is in the form of the annoyingly pathetic Li Shi Can character. He plays the part of the stereotypical 'unrequited love interest' who pines pathetically for the FL, but is doomed to be forever friend-zoned. His character was just so pathetic and selfish and boring to watch. Just a pointless waste of screen time and take my advice and just skip rapidly through any scenes with him in it - even some that include the leads. You really won't be missing anything good in this show by skipping his scenes. The writers could easily have left him out completely.
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A brilliantly executed parody!
First off: THIS IS A PARODY!!!! It's apparent from some viewer comments that some folks just never understood that about this show. Those folks were always way too serious and upset about either the ML or the FL behavior early on - which was over-the-top on purpose (because: parody). If you realize this is a parody, just relax and enjoy.Second: It really helps you enjoy the parody if you are a veteran of watching lots and lots of c-dramas (and k-dramas) because that way you will better recognize the zillions of drama tropes and cliches that this series plays with on purpose. Many will be obvious, such as the SML-is-unrequited-love trope and - OMG - The Cliff scene! Many others are subtle and this show doesn't always hold your hand to point them out. You are expected to see and recognize them and when you do they make many of the scenes -- even the serious drama ones - even more fun.
Okay, those two things out of the way: This show really delivers. It is extremely well crafted in all aspects. The cast is absolutely stellar, loaded with talented actors you should recognize and they are all really great in this. Each of the primary cast gets plenty of moments to shine in their character without the series feeling scattered too far from the leads. Both Li Yi Tong and Lu Yu Ning are wonderful, showing wide range in their characters and they have great chemistry. The script is excellent - which is important because it is very specifically criticizing and sending up all the 'bad script' hacks in the script-within-a-script.
Other production aspects are also fantastic. The sets and costumes are all first-rate and the lighting and cinematography are beautifully done. And the music. Oh my god, the music is done SO well! All the scenes are enhanced by very well thought out music.
I really enjoyed this series. If you miss on the first two points I made up above, you might knock it down a bit on the score. But for folks that understand this is a parody and who are experienced watching c-dramas, this show is pretty much perfect. So much fun.
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Wonderful performances. Terrible script.
Mixed feelings about this show. First the positives:Kim You Jung as Jeong Saet Byeol was absolutely phenomenal. This is the first show I'd seen her in and I think her acting was incredible. Her character was simultaneously ferociously brave and strong and joyful and yet also so fragile and tragic. And she delivered that complex character brilliantly. I also loved the performances by Kim Sun Young (Day Hyeon's mother) and of course Ji Chang Wook as Dae Hyun. Overall the talent of the cast was excellent at delivering the characters of this story. Also, the production values of this show were top notch. Sets, wardrobe, cinematography, music - everything was well done.
Now the negatives: The script. How do I put this nicely? It sucked awful in three aspects. First and most obvious is in the nature of the characters the script included. Above I said the performances of the actors was great and it was. But some of the characters were just absurd and offensive. As many have already mentioned, the cultural appropriation represented by the Dal Sik character was jarring. And his various antics were only occasionally funny but mostly just waivering between annoying and offensive. His character could have been written completely different, avoiding all the problems that he represents and the story could have been the same. Better actually. Also, we have to talk about the Male Lead. Again, Ji Chang Wook was wonderful at portraying Dae Hyeon ... but Dae Hyeon was not a wonderful leading man for most of this show. His character was simply not someone that was easy to root for as the leading man through the first 9+ episodes and it wasn't until maybe episode 12 or so that he really started to feel like someone worthy of Saet Byeol's total devotion. From that point on, yes, his character was great. But seriously, he was mostly pathetic and irritating for over 3/4 of the show!
The second major problem with the script is alluded to in that. The pacing was just awful. It took way, way too long to move the various plot tracks forward and it felt like a LOT of time was wasted on silly stuff such as poor attempts at humor as the camera spent large amounts of screen time on Dal Sik's antics.
And the 3rd problem is that the script leaned more and more on obvious cliche' plot tropes as the show progressed culminating with one of th worst ones, the classic, "Noble Idiocy" trope, as the final plot conflict to be overcome.
All in all, it's a heck of a credit to the actors to pull off the performances they did with such a crappy overall script. There were some incredibly emotional scenes - both happy AND sad - performed in this show and the actors pulled them off brilliantly. But the script really dragged the overall quality of this show down.
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Enjoyable, low-stress rom-com
The one-liner: Falling into Your Smile is an enjoyable rom-com that is mostly low-stress and emotionally pleasant.Pros: Both leads are enjoyable to watch. Xu Kai is a little predictable, playing the ML, Lu Si Cheng, as the same sort of 'cold, stoic, super-competent CEO' role that he has played in multiple dramas. Even though he's technically NOT a 'CEO' of a company in this drama, the type of character he plays is basically the same. Nothing new there and while that might seem a criticism, Xu Kai does play it well. Chang Xiao, as the FL, is a different sort. Her character is very reserved towards other characters, guarding her emotions carefully, though inwardly very sensitive. She only shows her emotions strongly to her best friend and, as their relationship grows, to Lu Si Cheng. Otherwise, she holds a straight face towards almost everyone else. This sets up the irony of her in-game call-name because while in real life, Tong Yao rarely smiles, in the game she is always Smiling. Among support characters, the FL's parents and the ML's mother are all wonderfully played in short appearances by veteran actors - especially both moms who each eat up the scenery when on screen. Alas, neither is on screen enough. The plot of the show is fairly straightforward, similar to any sports-competition type drama: The characters work together over a long season of ups & downs towards a goal of winning a championship, overcoming many different types of obstacles along the way. The competition portrayals are fun and exciting. The shift into 3d-animated portrayals of the game events is fun and exciting to watch.
Cons: The behavior of a lot of the supporting cast is cartoonish. The various e-sports gamers, despite mostly being young men in their mid-to-late 20s, are portrayed as having the maturity level of 5th graders. This is supposedly humorous but mostly looks insulting to real-world e-sports competitors who are mostly rational adults. The plot is, as I said, mostly fine, but does lean into the 'noble idiocy' drama trope in a few of the episodes and that's annoying. Also, the show writers commit two glaring ethical sins that really bothered me. Early in the drama, for drama effect, they have a character commit what is objectively a very serious criminal felony - striking someone from behind with a whisky bottle on the back of the head. The sin is that later, this is completely whitewashed and forgiven as if he had done nothing more than give someone a mild shove. Instead of the character being in prison, he is welcomed back to the team with open arms. This is absolutely ridiculous and could have easily been avoided by the writers. If they had simply had the character do nothing different _except_ simply push the guy hard, then everything else written in the show would still have worked without feeling like a whitewash. Then, later in the show, there is a scene where one of the competitors from one of the other teams, isolates Tong Yao in a hallway alone, physically restricts her and threatens her. She has no way to escape the situation other than to bite the guy on the wrist to break free. Later, instead of acknowledging her situation AND HER RIGHT TO DEFEND HERSELF, the writers have Lu Si Cheng scold her for freeing herself and insisting that the only right thing she should have done is to call for Cheng. He even locks her outside of the base for hours and hours as punishment. But this is ludicrous. Cheng simply was nowhere to be called to for help. Lu Si Cheng was completely in the wrong for demanding this behavior of her and for punishing her for 'doing something wrong'. Because she did not do anything wrong. This is victim-blaming and does not reflect well of the ethics and morality of the writers.
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Wonder lead couple and main storyline ruined by terrible script in second half
Strengths: The two leads in this are cast perfectly. Both play their respective roles wonderfully and their chemistry is fantastic, whether they are arguing, goofing off together, being cold & businesslike or romantically hugging and kissing. They are perfect pair for the roles in this series and they make it worth watching. The rest of the cast is also mostly fine, though most of the characters are ... unpleasant for various reasons. Acting talent, for the most part, is not a problem for this show and probably its best feature. The production values (sets, wardrobe, cinematography, etc.) are okay, though there are numerous little glitches such as wrong props, missing bandages, etc., etc., that are easy to spot. Plotwise, the basic story for the main couple (Su Mang and Zheng Chu) is pretty good. It gets a little annoying when they drag out an extended 'noble idiocy' trope over the last several episodes, but still their story is overall fine. And the story for the '3rd' romance plot between Tang Guo Guo and Su Chang is pretty good. Indeed, arguable TGG's character arc is one of the better parts since she really goes through the most dramatic, positive changes throughout the drama.Now the bad: From somewhere in the middle of this series and all the way to the end, the writing went from just fine to just plain awful. Episodes started to get filled with cheap, lazy drama tropes, one after another. Often just to obviously drag out screen time. And then there is the absolute horror show that is the secondary romance plot line involving Tang Ming and the two sisters, Yan Xiaoqiu and Chen Shan Shan. This story is just so stupid and awful and cringe. It doesn't help that Tang Ming is just a completely unlikeable stupid meathead who makes one bad decision after another and ultimately causes so much harm to both sisters and himself. It is nearly impossible to empathize with him, root for him or feel sorry for him when it all blows up in his face. For someone who isn't meant to be a villain, he is one of the most unlikeable 'good guys' in any show I've seen in recent memory. To make his story progress, the writers resort to an unbelievable amount of cheap, cliche' plot gimmicks and it's beyond annoying. Be prepared to start skipping quickly through scenes involving Tang Ming or Chen Shan Shan or you may loose your mind. And - SPOILER - they even resort to killing off one of the very few truly decent, almost saint-like characters just to provide a dramatic 'life lesson' to the idiots in the plot.
This show starts out so strong and I stuck with it to the end just because I loved the two main leads so much from the start and because the tertiary couple (TGG and SC) really grew on me as the story progressed. But it was not easy to stick through all the badly written crap, especially in most of episodes 30-39.
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Mostly really really good. But when it's bad it's really bad.
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.
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Not perfect but entertaining and a strong finish over the last few episodes.
Not perfect. The characterization of the ML was almost cartoonish (cold, emotionless stoic-to-a-fault CEO) at times and often not really believable as someone anyone would like. And the SML & SFL characters and romance was often very annoying and fueled with tropes. The script writing was very good up to episode 20 and then took a nose-dive over episodes 21-24. But then it bounced back and was pretty solid through the final 9 episodes and especially the last 3-4.In particular, Xue Shanshan's steady growth as a character carried the show even through the low points of the story. She has very visible and realistic growth from the bubbly naive young girl at the start to the mature woman she is at the end. Yet even as a mature woman she still retains the charm that entranced the ML (and the viewers) from the beginning. Ziao Li Ying delivers a fantastic performance in a role that is very, very different from say, the grumpy overly-serious swordswoman of Legend of Fei, or the clever, revenge-motivated assassin of Princess Agents.
The rest of the cast is solid. I do think that Zhang Han was given a rather tough role to play as the near emotionless Feng Teng. The script writers made him so extremely tightly wound at times that it was painful to watch Zhang struggle to make him seem like a human and not a cartoon character. I don't blame the actor. You can tell that the script that was given defined him this way. It's (as mentioned at the start) probably the biggest drama trope weakness of this series. But fortunately it was more than balanced by the fun of watching FL's counter point character. And even the ML character finally showed a lot of growth over the last few episodes to make sense.
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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.
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Fantastic acting and production wasted by poor script.
The actors -- especially the two leads -- and the overall production were fantastic in this show. The costumes, effects, visuals -- all were stunning and beautiful. The only real flaw was, well, the script. The script leans heavily on several cliche drama tropes that just made this a real painful chore to grind through at times. The two scripting flaws that really bothered me were (a) a massive over-reliance on 'misconceptions' plot trope (where people jump to conclusions based on only partial information) and (b) plot-induced stupidity where on 3 distinct occasions they made Li SuSu suddenly act very, very stupid and out of character, forgetting her mission. They also tended to 'take her out of the story' for long stretches, either asleep, in a coma or just plain absent for whatever reason. I got very tired of these blatant writer-hacks and had to force myself to not give up watching at several points. And I'm not sure the pay-off at the end is worth it. While I liked a lot about this show - in particular the performances of both Bai Lu and Luo Yun Xi - I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone who values a strong, well-written script over spectacle. Here's a test: If you preferred Good Will Hunting over Titanic, then this is not the series for you.Was this review helpful to you?
Flawed but enjoyable and worth watching.
Not going to be remembered as one of the classics, but still this was an overall an enjoyable series to watch. You do need to tough it out to get past some silliness in the first half-dozen episodes. But then it gets pretty good from there.First the negatives: The plot bogs down here or there - especially early in the series - with some outright silliness that is grit-your-teeth cringy. Especially the FL's behavior in the first few episodes. She's a mid-20s mature woman who acts like a silly teenager. And the ML's character is very flat and stereotypical almost throughout the whole series.
But overall the positives outweighed these negatives for me. The overall plot is good with some will paced 'reveals' of important backstory elements as you go. The series has a good pacing of action scenes without focusing too much on that and the choreography for the fights is pretty good. The scenery and cinematography are very good. Lots of great visual candy in this series with some nice sets. And while the FL's character is annoying early on, she shows a lot of growth throughout and ultimately, imho, it is her character that carries the series over the last half as she almost single-handedly has to generate all the chemistry between her and the ML, whose character is simply written to be too flat and mysterious to the point of being barely interesting. You care about their relationship, but primarily because of the FL and actor Xuan Lu's ability to share herself with the audience. I don't blame Gao Wei Guang - he's a very good actor and I think he does the best he can with the material. It's just the way his character is written is fairly stereotypical and limited.
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Never underestimate Li Pei Yi
Others have written excellent, more extensive reviews so I'm not going to spend a lot of words talking about the wonderful acting, script and production values that make this a top-notch historical c-drama. I just want to lay the thought for new viewers: Do not ever underestimate Li Pei Yi. She is an unbelievably brilliant master of events and everything ultimately plays out according to her schemes. Just when you think she has lost hold of the reigns, things will turn and show how she was riding a completely different horse. What a great character and Bai Lu does a wonderful job portraying her.Was this review helpful to you?
Not a conventional romance drama but way better than I was expecting.
This show was different and WAY better than I was expecting based on the synopsis. While there is a romance that develops (slowly) it is very much secondary to the main plot themes which are about 'found family', mentor-student relationships and an on-going discussion about TCM and how it fits in the modern Chinese world. The latter discussion is very open-minded each aspect, presenting different views from different characters and the show as a whole doesn't get preachy or make any outrageous claims. I'm an extremely skeptical, rational person and found myself really thinking a lot about the different points of view presented. Plotwise, the show is mostly very well crafted and scripted and only uses cliche plot tropes a couple of times. Mostly it avoids them because they are usually unnecessary. The cast is very solid with several very experienced actors. As usual, Zhou Lusi is wonderful, taking hold of the audience's attention and emotions in every scene. Her character is very different and pretty complex with some interesting layers. Seemingly wild, ignorant and silly on the surface, but with a core practical wisdom born of hardship.Was this review helpful to you?
Not really a romance. More a profile of a family with a dysfunctional mother.
The thing that needs to be said - and yes, other reviews have said this but it bears repeating - is that this is not really a romance drama. Yes there are a couple of romances within the story. And indeed a lot of the early story structure looks like it's a romance. But this story is really about mothers. There are multiple, very different mothers presented in this story and in particular, of course, this story ultimately revolves around the FL's not-mentally-healthy mother and her relationships within the family. The FL's mother, Liu Wanyu, is clearly suffering from some deep issues. Some sort of combination of depression, narcism, and oppositional defiance disorder. So she does not act rational. She is near insanely stubborn and given that she is prone to lock onto irrational ideas this makes for some serious socio-destructive behavior. In a word: Exasperating. Anyone who has a family member with severe behavioral/mental issues will relate to just how difficult such a person can make life for the people around them. So large segments of this story follow along as she behaves in ways that drive not just her family members nuts, but of course, also the viewers. Viki comments during this drama are filled with constant exasperation and dismay at the mother's behavior. This is testament to how powerful He Sai Fei's performance is, as the annoying mother. All of the actor's performances in this drama are fantastic. And the production quality is top-notch. Often the camera work is so beautiful you need to pause the video to enjoy a shot. This overall is a top notch drama. But if you are looking for a conventional romance you may find yourself pulling your hair out watching this.Was this review helpful to you?
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Overall a great series, despite a bad plot hiccup late in the series.
First, the bad: This show would have deserved a higher ranking from me, but has to take a hit due to a serious mess-up in the plot in episodes 13-15 when the story just goes down the crapper with a completely unrealistic evil-mommy-returns-from-the-dead sub-arc. Not only is the premise for this particular arc completely implausible, the show implements it by using just a ton of really bad, cheap, stereotypical plot devices. In particular, they lean heavily into 'misunderstandings'. due to excessive lack of communication and 'white lies' between the various protagonists and support characters. The show through the first 12 episodes is so good that the hard turn into the ditch of cheap drama tropes in 13-15 is very jarring. Fortunately, the 16th & final episode returns to what made the rest of the show so good.Now, the good: This show's real plot premise is wonderful and interesting. They flip several classic plot tropes over, in particular by having the female lead (Seo Yea Ji, as Ko Mun Yeong) be a sociopath - yet one the audience actually loves and sympathizes for. Usually, her sort of sociopathic character is either the villain or at best the annoying unrequited love interest. SYJ is absolutely wonderful in this role. Her character's eccentric mannerisms are simultaneously rude and frightening and yet also incredibly endearing. Your heart goes out to her more and more as you understand the pain her character has been forged through. Another trope flip is that the ML, Kim Soo Hyun as Moon Gang-Tae, is, well, kinda often useless due to his own heavy emotional baggage. He's incredibly frustrating and often and emotional coward (he's called out for this repeatedly by multiple characters) and as the series progresses actually outhunt becomes less and less useful for even the 'physical' heavy lifting. But again, despite behaving in so many ways that irritate and frustrate you, his character still gains your sympathy and you want him to survive, thrive and be happy.
Finally, gotta mention Oh Jung Se's brilliant performance as Moon Sang-Tae. He delivers a brilliant performance that just has to be seen. My words of praise wouldn't do it justice.
The rest f the cast is excellent as well. Every character is interesting. The production values are also top notch. The wardrobes, cinematography and music are especially all great. My only quibbles would with the directing, tending to dwell too long on characters just staring into space a lot - that happened far too often in this story and felt like it was often just filling screen time.
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