The unfinished star formation was a loose end that was just hanging around unresolved for the longest time! Credit to the show for addressing that. I have to feel that maybe the return of Bai Jiu's mom will come into play in saving him, maybe? This episode had less 'action', but in a way it moved better than recent episodes, with fewer long drawn out pauses. The bond between the two male leads, ZYZ & ZYC, is pretty cool to watch grow. That 'bromance' is almost the main relationship of this drama so far, even more so than the romance between ZYZ & Wen Xiao. And now they will be stuck together forever! LOL!
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This episode's storyline is a very powerful chapter in Zhou Yichang's continued character growth arc as he has to endure much of the feelings of shame and helpless despair that Zhao Yuanshou has had to experience. While this episode features some bad things happening, as a consequence, the bond between these two grows. Overall, this episode features a great story ... but again, so many awful long pauses when nothing is happening are just killing the pace of this show. So many 'dramatic pauses' have no weight because they are so commonplace. And as one criticism of the story, it seemed incredibly stupid of the heroes to bring Zhou Yicheng out of prison with them on their investigations, especially into a crowded place such as the nightclub. That was just so dumb. I get it that the writers wanted to have an event showing how the citizens have so easily turned on ZYC. But it just seemed too stupid to have brought him along at this point. Oh, and man, I'm really sick of the stupid dialog that the Li Lun character keeps spewing. He just sounds so over-the-top I can't take him seriously. But we only have to endure a little bit of him in this episode so that was good.
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My god. The editing / pacing of this show is just so painfully dragged out and slow. The cast, costumes & production are top-notch. And the overall story is very good. But my god, so much wasted time with the camera staring at nothing happening or panning slowly across nothing happening or of people staring at each other and doing nothing .... The events of this episode could have been played out in about 20 minutes without feeling rushed.
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So much happens and all the characters play significant roles - especially, finally, Wen Xiao who finally starts to live up to her role as the Baizhi Goddess. I'm guessing that since she became the Goddess she must no longer age or she could not have endured the 300 years in the Time Valley. What did she eat & drink? The fight scenes in this episode are a lot of fun, and mostly good,, though it's getting tiring just how OP the show has made Ao Yin. She's ridiculously impossible for anyone to catch or score a hit on. Would like to see our supposedly elite archer Pei finally tag her with a shot! Also, given that (a) Li Lun used the very last dregs of his former power just to leave his soul fragment behind in Jiu, and didn't have enough power to even possess Jiu if the latter were awake AND claimed to have put half his soul's power into forging the soul-trapping needle ... just why was he so powerful still in his fight with ZYC? The latter was just shown to be at least able to hold his own against a super-malicious-energy-charged Zhu Yan! But now we have a fragment of Li Lun's former power able to break the Cloud Light Sword with a punch and just rag-doll ZYC? That doesn't really make sense except for the show wanting to have ZYC & LL in a big fight scene. The other quibble with this episode is that, as has often been the case in this show, the director has the characters just stopping, pausing and dragging out so many 'dramatic moments' constantly that it's gotten silly. This is fine once in a while for dramatic emphasis, but becomes a bit of a joke when it keeps happening multiple times within the same overall battle episode. It makes it hard to take the urgency seriously when the characters do not have any urgency. And it drags the pacing of the show way down. So many moments are just stretched way out, way too long.
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This episode ramps up the intrigue. Is Zhou Yicheng possessed by the remains of Li Lun? Or did Ao Yin pretend to be Jiu to trick him into using the needle?
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with the deep emotion of his love for Wen Xiao becomes his most powerful defense. The scenes with Wen Xiao and Pei Si Jing in the prison were touching with some sisterly bonding. Unfortunately, the scenes of Zhou, Ying Lei and Bai Jiu tracking down Ao Yin were, constant, constant cringe as the three 'heroes' constantly act stupid and incompetent. Just for laughs, I guess. This show gets real stupid real fast when it tries to force humor. It's just not done well. And the constant, weird vying for Bai Jiu's affection by Ying Lei is old and tired.
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Other than the occasional rare bit of truthful fact, 99% of what comes out of his mouth is childish, cartoon-villain drivel. Why do the heroes sit there listening to his BS for the longest stretch of the middle this episode as if he's some sort of sage nostradomous? At some point you'd think they would have simply recognized that he's a nutcase and stopped listening to anything he says. But for some reason they sit there enraptured while he slowly burns up, giving his stupid villain monologue before he dies.
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A lot of this episode was very good. It was nice to see Wen Xiao finally getting more lines and a more significant role in an episode after being mostly sidelined the last several episodes. But my god, the conversations between her and Li Lun were like a roller-coaster going from her delivery of well-composed questions and answers and then sinking to pathetic Snidely Whiplash level cartoon-villain-speak pouring out of his mouth. Every time Li Lun speaks it's hard to not giggle at his ridiculousness. His arguments are infantile and his words are just silly and impossible to take seriously. I like the growth in Zhou Yichang's character. He started the show as just a dumb jock. Steadily becoming a more complete person, able to see and understand nuance.
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as Zhu Yan wakes up from the blood moon malicious energy spell only to find he's once again committed a very bad thing. Some really good conversations. Ms. Pei and her dead brother are kind of the perfect people to console Wei Xiao since they were faced with similar difficult emotional conflict. And Zhou really stepped up from his usual lummox brain self to prod the massively depressed Zhu Yan with the challenge to stop giving up and wanting to die but instead to proactively make amends. Like others, I'm still frustrated with how useless the show has made Wei Xiao's character so far. And where the heck did Bai Jiu pick plums when they are up on a snowy mountain?
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The show still has a tendency to drag out moments way past their due dates, but this episode was definitely a big improvement and full of a lot of action and plot reveals and movement. One (continuing) negative is the relative uselessness of Wei Xiao. The show continues to just have her standing around - or, in the case of this episode, half lying on the ground - doing and saying very little. Such a waste. In shows like The Glory, she commands the screen and dominates. In this show she's kind of an NPC so far.
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This episode barely moves the plot. It starts out with some promise, with Wei Xiao contriving a 'lie detector' game to try to find out who the mole is in the group. Her setup finally has Chen Du Ling acting to her strengths as a strong female manipulating others .... but then the whole scene ends up going nowhere and we have to put up with more Bai Jiu pitiful antics that ultimately are nothing but distraction. I mean, the show took for-ev-er just to pull up his damn sleeve to show his wrist. So much fake, drawn out 'drama'. Yes I understand that he is a child. But ultimately he signed up for this and he's not supposed to be stupid. He should be smart enough to understand that (a) the group has to take the threat of a mole seriously and (b) he wasn't really put under any more suspicion than the others. So his petulant behavior was just annoying from a character that so far just is more distraction than interesting, And my god - why do so many of these characters wear so many darn annoying bells? The constant jingling as Zhou and Bai Jiu walk is so annoying. Nothing much happens in this episode other than they finally arrive at Mt. Kun Lun Temple.
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Sigh ... this was a real snoozer of an episode. The whole story of Qing Geng and Fei could have been told in about a third of the time. This whole episode felt like filler. The bit near the end of Zhou telling his little headband story to reassure Jiu was definitely pure filler. Each of the moments with Li Lun on the screen, mouthing his comic-book-villain lines also felt like useless filler. The story so far often feels like it barely involves Wei Xiao or Zhu Yan, wasting the two most interesting actors in the drama.
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This episode has a decent basic story and fine performances and production, but the pacing crawls so slowly. The whole thing could have probably been done in 20 minutes without feeling rushed. Fei and Qing Geng are lovely and tragic but also maudlin and sort of tiring to endure. Young Dr. Jiu continues to be annoying every 5 minutes with yells and screams and cowering.
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Running screaming to hide behind Zhou every 5 minutes was no longer funny after the 1st or 2nd time. I hope they don't keep up that gimmick. Overall a bit of a slow moving episode. Not bad. Not great. A little annoying at how easily Zhou is defeated and captured since it relies heavily on the "good guys' strengths are neutralized by bad guys' casual use of poisons/drugs/spells/whatever" plot trope. But at least he appears to have been somewhat willing to get captured on purpose.
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This episode gets points for featuring their first kiss. But loses points because once again the show has an important emotional moment only take place with at least one character totally drunk. This show has used heavy drinking scenes almost as often as it has recycled the Zhou-Chuan-acts-like-a-petulant-child bit. This episode unfortunately also features lots more frustrating, not-funny, childlike behavior by the ML. He really is just so full of problems that even though I hate screen time wasted on love triangles and always root for the main couple, I find myself more and more thinking that the female lead, Chu Li should punt on ZC and go find an adult, mentally-healthy man. But then I note that there are almost no such creatures in this show. The ML is probably the most broken, but so are all the other male characters in one way or another (other than maybe Mr. Xia and Chu Li's dad).
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