skizlock

She was young at the time...

She was just so hopelessly in love and also considered herself in a dream like situation that she didn't even see or had enough attention to understand that as a problem.

It made me question whether the drama was intentionally made with a medieval Chinese mindset. but then the quick transition from kiss to bed, though innocently, still made me come back to realize that was just over-exaggerated dramatization.

The short time the show gave them for their romance was well spent and both were so adorable. I loved how he asked her to just feel, and her holding his hand was just perfection.

Really looking forward for her first main role, I had liked her in Dear Missy as well.

So it was a nice ride at the end. Start and mid were strong, end was stretched. The main couple kind of lost focus as the tension went away.

Didn't like how they handled the second couple, they gave them so much screen time and what do we get, a behind the scenes confession? You got to be kidding me!

But I really loved how they handled the third one. With such little screen time they achieved a whole lot more they lost for the second couple. Just how it should have been for such a long standing best friends relationship to realize love.

I loved this show, it would have been my second best Chinese show yet, a feat in itself, as so few have had me so enamoured. The first being the masterpiece - Meet Yourself.

But, of course there has to be a but. And as the expectation had grown so high, the disappointment was equally harder and much more. So please bear with the essay if you do feel like giving it a consideration, haha.

Am almost finished with it but the ending doesn't really matter anymore to me, the hype has run out and I'll just be finishing it for the sake of it. It was the tour arc that broke the camel's back for me... I came really near to dropping the drama if it had gone just one episode more on that trip.

You see this arc rode on the hype train of the main couple finally getting to kiss and the second couple finally committing to a relationship. Relying on the past experience, a glorious first kiss in a romantic setting or that play in the anniversary show, and a shy romantic confession by Jiumei would have been the perfect central goal of this otherwise wonderful arc.

But NOTHING happened! HAHAHA

There is limit to how many times you can repeat the mind numbing mechanic of both leads closely facing each other, freezing up and not ending up kissing each other, either due to an interruption or just simply not doing it, kekekeke. It seemed so artificial and forced!

It was like I was watching a Japanese anime/drama, with a romantically spineless, beta male protagonist. Who freezes both mentally and physically, when the heroine clearly wants to be kissed or would be receptive to one.

But this drama actually went one more step into the abyss by making the ML say "Are you tired?" when the FML was all ready and wanting to get kissed! I was like what the ______ ____!!!

It reminded me of two separate memories:
- A scene in a western show, White Collar, where the ML's boss but actually the sidekick, while undercover, lures a beautiful lady, who is enamoured with him, with the line: "Are you thirsty?" And how when he tells her wife, who is extremely intrigued that he had to flirt when he has zero skills in such, bawls into absolute laughter after hearing his pickup line.

- Of my 19 year old self, who used to escort my first crush to the university bus and then one day, she asked me whether I liked her, point blank. I froze up! Later made some sorry excuse and lost a potential chance to be with her.

The true first kiss was so meh. Like what the hell were you thinking to kiss her at a staircase under the sun at the back of some building in cosplay. You had so many instances where she looked absolutely dazzling and you did nothing but freeze up.

I am hoping the drama will get back to its superb pace after this and I will only have to cut that blot on its fame of an arc for future viewing.

Edit: It didn't return to the same pace, in fact it fizzled out after the tension was gone.

Gina Jin has always had these few shots in each drama where she looked uncomfortably skinny so its really not something new. She usually wears baggy clothes so it doesn't come off so obviously. I guess the wardrobe managers didn't agree this time around.

Yes, open endings are a bane for me. I don't imagine something to satisfy myself as I consider it not cannon.

Unless of course the premise makes it so that an open ending is desirable, but majorly such are very realistic dramas and I am not here to find some justification to reality with it.

I see dramas as best only when they have rewatch value, Like My Ajhussi for example, it was a great drama but had an open ending. I mean in terms that the leads didn't find concrete happiness in their lives. A 10 minute last scene does not count. It just frustrates me to no end.

Well overall these are just curbs I made so I can control my drama watching hobby. Previously I had the habit of watching everything and anything with romance as genre above rating 7.

I don't know, every time i try a Chinese drama below 8.5, its unbearable, has bad ending or bad characters and the best case being boring.

Korean dramas in comparison can be tried in my experience to as down low as 8. Japanese is a big no for me, regardless of rating.

Chronicles of Childishly Evil NJH:

Hey!
Cellist kim Bok Jo shi!
I have a feeling our destination is the same!

Buhahahaha

---

Cello da!
Well with your arms it should be cello or flute, right?
That's our Chubs!

jhahahaha

---

Book Joo, watch out!
(Uses Book Joo to shield himself as a car splashes through a nearby puddle, drenching her)
Wah! It could have been so bad!
What could I have done without my quick reflexes!
That guy needs to learn how to drive!
Book Joo: YAAAAAAA!!!

HAHAHAHA

Nah , there reaction was extremely lacklustre when they came to know his story. Same when they got to know that it was their uncle who was the father. They were like wood.

Can you imagine if LZS had expressed his anger in front of his father sometime before embarking on his revenge plot, or the leads or Gu family came to know about his secret, how reality could have been so different. LZS was the casualty of being the villain in this story.

That's why I felt the injustice about him, when he was telling his story. I really felt that this guy also deserves a happy end, regardless of how many get to be killed. Manu thousands died on the path of the leads' pursuit of happiness.

I think you are unintentionally, super imposing your understanding from the novel onto the drama, that's why you see it in a better light. My understanding of these characters will never be like how they are in the novel which doesn't have to wrestle with episode limits.

What kind of escapist comment is this? If one doesn't have a good argument, make a silly comment to suppress dissent, is this your idea of exchanging opinions?

As for evidence, lol, everybody accepts what the leads say, its the most common lazy plot device in Xianxia. The belief system is built on many many such small intricacies being ignored to expound on few main decisions and build their evidence.

But sometimes even that is skipped like how GJS investigates embezzlement in the ministries without giving any evidence except for his short report. We are shown zilch about the crimes after he gets support from the three officials. Nothing NADA, just a fade to his completed investigation, lol, obviously they decided to cut it out. Talk about lame scene composition.

The madam accepts life changing decisions from LYR without comment, without struggle. As if LYR is a reincarnated master. No self-made businesswoman with any integrity would accept a 6 month old newbie's decisions thought up overnight.

The managers accept GJS's words without research, without evidence which in fact later does get verified as false and just an assumption. They accept compensation from GJS but forget that this wealth puts them in jeopardy in these times of chaos, the same thing the main house is intending to avoid by giving away their wealth.

GJS gets to move the general's son without evidence, he just has to say check it out or avoid that, and voila, thousands to hundreds of thousands of troops move without any official decree or intelligence report sanctioning their movement.

We can debate endlessly on this. But its very clear the writing is weak, director also has some issues with scene composition.

Now you can have your own opinion, I am not here to change it. I am expressing my opinion.

I am not going to read the book so obviously my perspective will always be limited to this drama. I do read Xianxia but I don't think I would like to read it, now that I have watched it.

Altruism is a sham for the main couple as its just so narrow minded, they completely ignore the consequences of their actions on the larger scale. Simply speaking they are short-sighted.

That's why its o jarring, they are surrounded by deep characters which make long standing decisions with firm foundations but the plot armour forces the leads decisions to succeed by simply not exposing the consequences.

Perhaps its because of their era that they have a muted sense of righteousness but this is not described.

Essentially, this kind of story telling is a break for me. I understand that you have different perspective on this.

3a. The grain part for the military again shows their monstrously naive nature. They effectively drain precious grain from a county which faces the same realities theirs do. But they don't bat an eye when taking their stocks. They have already seen hunger and starvation at large scale when they were on the run. They still do not accept their malfeasance.

3b. This also negates what GJS gave as a justification to their employees about the donation. Clearly, the counties around them can easily supply 40% or more of their granary stocks - 300 tonnes compared to 450 tonnes confiscated in the grain scam which is roughly 50% of their capacity.

4. When LYR came to know that LZS is outside Yangzhou. she should have sent YSA to assassinate him. It was a massive oversight to leave him there when you know, how many he has killed and is particularly vulnerable.

Leads obviously have no qualms killing soldiers for their ends, I don't understand why they leave LZS alone for so long. He essentially suffers no attacks from them, its always him using them and they escaping his machinations. Essentially this makes him the best villain there is and his admiration/respect for LYR just makes him godly.

Idiosyncrasies like these continue till the end, I can list all of them but I think I have written enough.

2a. When they decided to donate everything and not tell everybody about it defeats the purpose. They were still regarded as extremely rich for the most part. If the plot armour did not make it work for them later, they would have been lynched by the mobs eventually, the same as they feared.

2b. This same decision to donate everything was not in line with their business personality. A shrewd businessman, even when donating, would ensure his own survival and future endeavour to survive painlessly. The whole drama of living modestly to that extent was completely unnecessary when there was no one who knew.

2c. Giving away your wealth, amounting to couple months of salary, to your servants does not mean they will survive. Especially when there are so many. They essentially threw them to the world's mercy. When a wealthy family goes down, hundreds to thousands suffer, this has been true since forever.

2d. Rewarding your employees effectively put a mini bullseye on them. The same thing the leads were fearful of, they essentially made many smaller targets for the mobs. Human nature is fickle, the show's overly idealistic view, hides its real face.

No complaints about LZS, I mean his humanity has been shown aplenty. Just perhaps maybe the grand reveal of the actual conflict between them been artificially delayed to the end being questionable.

I have problems with the leads decisions along the line.

1. The first one being choosing to leave the city, where they could instead develop their own private mercenary army or just expand their guards to at least a thousand. Its already evident, they have the situation of warring to their benefit and also the money needed, considering they used 375 ships along with crew to migrate.

Still all their shops were burned down, families massacred in the streets. And they assume no responsibility for them which alone shows the fickleness in their so called righteous agenda. At least accept your mistakes, not one confession throughout. But actually these are not mistakes, they should have known better, they are merchants, risen in a turbulent time. They know the realities of their era.

Drama #307:

I don't have much to say about this one, the couple romance is awesome. The villain is great. The schemes are interesting. The side characters are awesome. And then it all falls apart as you get past the first major twist.

Essentially for me, usually great romance can carry the worst of dramas, but only stupidity breaks up everything. And that's exactly what happens in this one, with every major decision from Episode 14.

All such decisions do not reflect the leads business nature nor their idealistic righteous agenda either. At every turn stupidity takes the prize and seemingly obvious correct decisions do not even make an appearance as a choice.

Even worse the writer makes these decisions work and ignores the obvious pitfalls. I have rarely ever seen a world where I regularly lose immersion due to the implausibility of it all. Its just that fundamentally broken.

To crush my hopes so badly, I penalize it with 7/10.

Man the stupidity actually started from E14, the first major twist.

I was frankly baffled that they had the money to hire 375 ships, crew included. But didn't bother to hire a sizeable mercenary army instead. Considering each ship would have at least 10-50 men, they could easily afford a thousand mercenaries and completely crush the opposition.

Then there was the wealth donation which was completely stupid and an easy way out for them, the trade off was also extremely unplausible for a business and a righteous family.

There was an unintended malicious intent in that decision. The unintentional nature is what actually makes this drama so stupid. With such a measure they essentially threw all their people under the bus. While they didn't even realize the predicament they are in due to greed. Where the young master already tells them what's gonna happen with mobs etc, he effectively moved the bulls eye to them.

The reaction from the MIL about losing everything she has accomplished throughout her life was also lacklustre and beyond belief.

The writers really made them chickens on the chopping block.

I did like her in few of her later dramas but yes this one makes me puke. So much over-acting, over the top cheesiness, cliche galore and nonsensical plots.

Just watching her in pyjamas while having a stranger in her house, makes this situation so unbelievable. Even if you want to retain tenancy, which was her legal right, but living with him as if he is your boyfriend, and not reporting to police of his illegal takeover, I just couldn't wrap my mind around it.

And then there is that irritating personality she is portraying with unrealistic amounts of cuteness and ear blowing shouts...

There is a "not interested" list, reviews and many comments at MDL, I think people just don't follow an organized approach in research about a drama, before deciding to give it time. When they don't find what they were expecting, they give a bad rating. Rather than adding tags, reviews, comments for future readers to better explain the plot or expose wrong genres/tags or simply vent.

If I would have been duped into watching this somehow through the comments, I would have given a long essay in comments and 7.0-8.5 rating.

For me, after reading many comments, I have concluded its not my type, as I want strong straight romance to couple anything - I have no tolerance for queer.

From where I came, the romance was mentioned in the synopsis, genre list, and from the poster I could see 3 couples so I was very hopeful but here reality was upside down. Even with this I felt a little betrayed so i can understand others feelings.

I may even come to like it but it will hold no rewatch value. Just like how it was with My Ajhussi, Chicago Typewriter, The Gentlemen of Wolgyesu Tailor Shop etc.. I have watched many such series, looking for romance in various settings with serious backdrops, only to get betrayed but the drama itself was satisfying but not good enough to stay in my archives.

Generally <8.5, any Chinese series is a no go for me, it has been a consistent trend on MDL and whenever I did try something lower, it only became a disappointment. Because less than 2k people rated it by now that I did the effort to know about it. Frankly for selfish reasons I like this trend on MDL, I get to filter out most series.

Thanks for making the effort to tell why you didn't like it. I would have felt extremely betrayed after seeing the romance genre and from where I came, it did mention romantic relationships in the synopsis.

Unlike you, when I get duped to watch such dramas, I hate them with a passion. I don't care whether they have good acting or cinematography, my feelings, my entertainment factor, ultimately my time that I chose to give it, wasted, matters the most.

That's why I do extensive research before trying them out but sometimes fans just slip with their exaggerated descriptions, though rare but I do get duped.