Why did Shi Yan ignore her texts for so long after she got to the hotel? That was crazy rude and I don't blame her for being pissed about it. That whole sequence was like some bizarre throwback to the early episodes when Shi Yan behaved like a total jerk all the time.
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Not as bad as some of the earlier episodes, but the writer is still playing games with 'misunderstandings'. I really hope this show moves past that. I'm so tired of the way it is recycling the same plot circles such as "Mom forces Shuyi to go on blind date with Yu and so Shiyan gets jealous" and the "Shuyi thinks Lezhi is Shin's niece" and so on and so on. All these 'misunderstandings are just way over due to have been cleared up. As story devices go they are all stale and boring. And there are so many of them! And did we really need to have an obsessive stalker trope added to the show? I guess it means we get to look forward to Shiyan punching Yi Yang's face in at some point.
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This was a much better episode because for the most part the characters behaved like normal people for a change. A little annoying that the writer has decided to bring in a 'unrequited 3rd wheel' character out of nowhere. Clearly just to create some stupid annoying 'love triangle' drama. Hopefully they won't waste too much time and energy on that. The new guy is clearly an unethical creep so we the viewers know he has zero chance of being with Shuyi in the long run so any plot time spent on him will simply be wasted time, dragging out episodes.
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In this world, everybody keeps it secret that they know or even have a relationship with someone. They don't admit to already knowing someone. They hide that they are family with someone. Literally every character in this drama is either hiding a relationship they know about or being in a hidden relationship. Or (now) lying to their parents telling them that they are in a relationship that they aren't. And given that this show is now tracking 4 couples (and hinting at a possible 5th, with King Nan and Chen Sheng), this is getting absurd and exhausting. The show is just going so over-the-top with 'misunderstanding' drama trope that it isn't funny. or entertaining. It's just annoying and exhausting. I have to wonder if this is all a sadistic joke on purpose by the writer? She did similar crap in "As Beautiful As You", but it wasn't THIS crazy extreme. And mostly in that show the problems were isolated with the abusive behavior of the ML. This one has moved past the abusive behavior (which while bizarre, was never quite AS abusive as in that other show) but has totally gone crazy with the 'misundertanding' tropes with so many lies and confusion everywhere. Such a waste of a good cast.
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Insists on dragging out things, keeping the couple characters separated by 'misunderstandings', again and again. And the script keeps having characters -- especially Shi Yan and only slightly less so Shu Yi -- behave in bizarre, unnatural ways. This show has. great cast and the overall plot premise is fine and I like to complete things that I start. But this is a real grind to get through at this point because of the constant recycling or dragging out of the 'misunderstanding' drama trope. At least so far they have kept away from the dreaded, stupid, "love triangle" trope. But I wouldn't put it past this writer to go there.
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There were a couple of tiny glitches, but for the most part this was the first episode where Shi Yan behaved for the whole episode like an actual human instead of a sullen petty robot. It was refreshing to have Shi Yan and Shu Yi move in a forward direction with both their personal and professional relationship with (at least for this episode) no more stupid contrived misunderstanding tropes. Hopefully this is a turning point going forward?
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But it's still really strange how the characters behave at times. Did nobody actually review the script carefully before they accepted it?
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Again and again, she keeps throwing the 'misunderstanding' trope at us! The characters keep talking in half-formed sentences, replying to questions with vague questions, no one ever completing an actual fully communicated thought. Other characters see or hear just fragments of information and then keep jumping to stupid uninformed conclusions. It's gotten absurd and exhausting Is this supposed to be entertaining? Is this going to continue throughout the whole series?
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This is the first episode this whole series were Shi Yan actually starts to behave like a normal person towards Shuyi`. He's still slow to communicate, but she manages to squeeze real responses from him and for a change his responses start to make more sense. Hopefully this trend will continue, but I'm scared to put too much hope in it, given this script writer's love of 'misunderstandings' and the cartoonish 'cold cruel CEO' tropes. She also wrote As Beautiful As You and that one was full of similar awful behavior by the ML that never gets properly accounted for. I'd love to see Dylan and Bai Lu paired up in a show with a much better script than this show.
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The script for this show is just so weird. Both lead characters - especially Shi Yan - just continue to behave in bizarre ways. And every 5 minutes the plot seems to want to introduce yet another stupid misunderstanding for at least one character. It's getting exhausting. Real humans do not act anywhere close to the way these characters do.
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This show is an exhausting exercise in how a script writer can go way, way overboard with absurd, contrived 'misunderstanding' plot tropes. We are 9 episodes in and the characters do not behave or communicate anywhere close to the way normal human adults do and so fall into one stupid 'misunderstanding' after another. And there seems to be no end in site as the episode ends with what is obviously yet another misunderstanding as Shuyi obviously mistakes Shi Yue's weichat address for that of Shi Yan's. Speaking of Shi Yan, this ia a good point to talk about what an absolutely crap character he is, that the writer has handed off to be played by the (then young) Dylan Wang. I can't blame Dylan at all. The character has clearly been scripted to be have like a 12 year old petulant, moody child with the _worst_ communication skills and that is exactly who the character has been straight through these 9 episodes. There is almost nothing 'likable' about him so far yet in this series and so it is extremely difficult to root for him as the romantic interest of Bai Lu's character. Yes, I'm sure that the writer will magically transform this jerk into a great guy by the end of the series. But it's just so stupid and unrealistic. People can't really change THAT much and he has way too far to go to become a likable character. This whole 'cold, emotionally stunted CEO' that falls in love with an changes just for Cinderella is just so tired and over-done in C-Dramas. Who on earth finds such characters to be 'attractive' as the male lead? Shi Yan screams, "toxic!" in every way. Oh well. I like a lot of the rest of the cast and I will grit my teeth waiting for the show to finally turn over and away from these two stupid, annoying plot tropes and hopefully become something more. The many positive reviews can't all be wrong, right?
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Side Story of Fox Volant Episode 37
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Pushing past all the pain, misunderstandings, lies and forgotten promises, Nan Lan frees Miao Renfeng and once unleashed, he is an unstoppable killing machine. Great episode.
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Side Story of Fox Volant Episode 35
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I'm personally really tired to the over-reliance on the 'noble idiocy' drama trope for both FL & SFL. Both ZiYi and Ling Su are stupidly, idiotically torturing themselves (and also harming the ones they love) for absolutely no good reasons by keeping their extreme secrets. ZiYi's head seems to be brainwashed to believe all kinds of absolutely stupid nonsense planted in her head by that psycho "All-Knowing Nun" master of hers. And Ling Su is just driving strait over a suicide cliff by not revealing her need to return to Medicine Valley just to stay alive. Each has contorted their thinking into believing they are doing this for 'selfless' reasons, but both are actually hurting - or going to hurt. - other people because of this. Noble Idiocy is one of the most annoying, hated drama tropes and there is almost never a good plot reason for using it other than to drag out contrived drama. It never feels realistic because it requires characters to act unnatural - not like real humans.
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Side Story of Fox Volant Episode 22
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The way they spliced footage of their duel in with that between Miao and Hu Yidao from 18 years prior was so cool. The fact that Miao was still blind and could duel with Hu Fei like this was incredible, though it may have helped that they were often replicating the movements of that duel from the past so maybe that helped Miao out. The episode ends with Fei and Renfeng's goals and interests aligned and Fei and Ling Su set out to the Capital in search of answers. She sadly realizes that Hu Fei loves someone else but still is willing to stay with him for now. We are now 22 episodes complete and three plot mysteries bother me: 1) Whatever happened to Ma Chun Ha after the Shang Fort incident? 2) Whatever happened to Nan Lan's father's sword? 3) What exactly is the reason that Tian hates Miao so much that he tried to poison him 18 years ago (and ended up killing Hu Fei's parents)??
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Side Story of Fox Volant Episode 16
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having Ziyi give up on romantic love, leaving Hu Fei all because of the absolutely stupid, idiotic teachings by her Master, the 'All Knowing Nun', that romantic love will bring bad karma. What a complete pile of horse crap. It makes zero sense philosophically and it's a ludicrous thing to be teaching anyone. This really makes me suspect that the Nun has some sort of ulterior motives. At any rate, the writers are using this as a cheap plot contrivance to send our two lovers on separate journeys and we the viewers can only hope that they find their way back to each other soon and that they don't drag this out for dozens of episodes. Otherwise the rest of the episode is pretty well done. We get some good action scenes and, we also, unfortunately get some tragedy involving Nan Lan which leads to Tian turning angrily to his evil side. Hu Fei finally may have found himself a master to teach him in an unlikely place.
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