This review may contain spoilers
Started with promise, ended up excruciatingly mediocre
I was pretty excited to watch this drama! A story centered around one family and their struggles was just what I wanted right now and at the start I thought that's what I'd be getting. Unfortunately, this show begins to struggle after the first quarter, and after the second half I began to struggle to get through each episode.
I really liked a lot of the side characters, but there were far too many for many of them to get interesting development and the sheer amount made the show drag. I liked the focus on women and their roles, particularly around marriage, but I feel like the messaging got rushed and shoved to the side. Similarly to most people my favourite characters ended up being Shaoyao and Shen Huan.
Hua Zhi starts as an interesting character. She traveled through her whole childhood and as a result isn't particularly interested in "womanly arts" or any of her family members apart from her grandfather. She's selfish and doesn't particularly care how her actions effect others or reflect on her family. She's headstrong and confident! After her family meets disaster she has to spend time with them and get to know them better. Slowly she realizes the importance of family... and then she suddenly becomes a business genius? After that she stagnates. She simply does not grow or change for the entire rest of the show, any mistakes she makes are immediately forgiven (not that she makes many) and she knows how to deal with every situation almost perfectly.
Other characters had some development, particularly the third madam. I thought her development was fairly realistic and I appreciate that it took her quite a while to lay down her pride and realize her mistakes. However, basically every character stagnated by the time we got to the wedding arcs.
By the latter half the story was a bit of a mess and the leads weren't strong enough for me to make me care. I finished it but barely. It feels like the writers tried to include too much, there was business drama, family drama, relationship drama, political drama and intrigue. So many terrible things happened but they all got brushed aside 30 minutes later so it never felt like there were real consequences or stakes.
(Spoilers)
Oh no, the emperor suspects us of colluding with the Grand Dowager and Hua Zhi suspects Yanxi's identity! It's okay though, that all gets resolved the next episode.
Someone attacked us on the way back from the north! But it's fine, there will be no lasting consequences or injuries.
The emperor does something horrible, but it's nullified or brushed aside within an episode or two...
The last two episodes were a particularly egregious example. I like a happy ending, but there was basically no lasting damage to anyone in the show from everything that happened apart from two deaths which don't really seem to impact anyone outside of the episodes they're in.
By the end of the show everyone is a better person, but otherwise their situation has basically returned to what it was (apart from Hua Zhi and Yanxi).
All in all this felt like a pretty significant waste of my time. If you want some background noise it's not bad, but if you want to think about it even at all (I watched it while sick so I was about 70% with it) it falls apart pretty quickly. A shame :/
I really liked a lot of the side characters, but there were far too many for many of them to get interesting development and the sheer amount made the show drag. I liked the focus on women and their roles, particularly around marriage, but I feel like the messaging got rushed and shoved to the side. Similarly to most people my favourite characters ended up being Shaoyao and Shen Huan.
Hua Zhi starts as an interesting character. She traveled through her whole childhood and as a result isn't particularly interested in "womanly arts" or any of her family members apart from her grandfather. She's selfish and doesn't particularly care how her actions effect others or reflect on her family. She's headstrong and confident! After her family meets disaster she has to spend time with them and get to know them better. Slowly she realizes the importance of family... and then she suddenly becomes a business genius? After that she stagnates. She simply does not grow or change for the entire rest of the show, any mistakes she makes are immediately forgiven (not that she makes many) and she knows how to deal with every situation almost perfectly.
Other characters had some development, particularly the third madam. I thought her development was fairly realistic and I appreciate that it took her quite a while to lay down her pride and realize her mistakes. However, basically every character stagnated by the time we got to the wedding arcs.
By the latter half the story was a bit of a mess and the leads weren't strong enough for me to make me care. I finished it but barely. It feels like the writers tried to include too much, there was business drama, family drama, relationship drama, political drama and intrigue. So many terrible things happened but they all got brushed aside 30 minutes later so it never felt like there were real consequences or stakes.
(Spoilers)
Oh no, the emperor suspects us of colluding with the Grand Dowager and Hua Zhi suspects Yanxi's identity! It's okay though, that all gets resolved the next episode.
Someone attacked us on the way back from the north! But it's fine, there will be no lasting consequences or injuries.
The emperor does something horrible, but it's nullified or brushed aside within an episode or two...
The last two episodes were a particularly egregious example. I like a happy ending, but there was basically no lasting damage to anyone in the show from everything that happened apart from two deaths which don't really seem to impact anyone outside of the episodes they're in.
By the end of the show everyone is a better person, but otherwise their situation has basically returned to what it was (apart from Hua Zhi and Yanxi).
All in all this felt like a pretty significant waste of my time. If you want some background noise it's not bad, but if you want to think about it even at all (I watched it while sick so I was about 70% with it) it falls apart pretty quickly. A shame :/
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