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Well, if censorship forbade the airing of episode 24, it was either airing the 23 episodes, or not airing the drama at all and therefore everyone involved in the production (and the investors) losing a lot of money.

It's still show-business, after all. Half of it is business.

SOOY has 23 episodes instead of 24, like 99% of the modern rom-coms. There's something strange, here. Almost as if an entire episode is missing.

I mean:

- 1 : the ML goes back to a reality where his best friend is dead, while a few minutes ago in his coma-dream, he was alive, how does he deal with that?

- 2 : The FL goes back to a reality where she didn't work hard in school, where she didn't save her parents from poverty, where her brother is a loser and where the SFL is still a mean girl and an enemy while she found redemption in her coma-dream. How does she deal with that? How does she mourn that coma-dream life, how does she re-adapt to reality?

- 3 : The mean guy who had sabotaged her project in the first episode, leading her to quit her job, doesn't suffer any consequences, how fair is that???

4 - The 23rd episode (and the final one "officially") ends up on ... the SML and SFL. How ? can someone explain to me how is it possible that the last image of taht drama is this couple which, I'm sure, 95% of the audience disliked?

- 5: I'm sure I have forgotten other points which don't make sense with this abrupt ending.

It really feels like there was a 24th episode (as is the norm with modern rom-coms) dealing with the aftermath and solving those issues I mentioned. But that this 24th episode was scrapped. Probably because of censorship. And that last episode would have made the drama so much better, making sense of all this adventure.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Like romance. But there's still an audience for that genre.

That's how it is with time-travel C-drama. You have to get used to the fact that because of time-travels bans in chinese dramas, writers have to use the same loophole: coma, traveling into a novel, a movie, a comic book, a dream... that's what I call the censorship ending.

I always take that censorship ending as the fake one: aka the one imposed on the writers and not the one they intended.

It makes watching time-travel C-dramas so much easier this way.

"Also, it was very odd to have the series end on the second lead couple..."

My theory and I'm sticking to it: if it ends so abruptly and strangely on the second lead couple, it's because there was a 24th episode which didn't pass censorship.

That's the only thing that makes sense, for me. Because those short rom-coms always have 24 episodes and this one has 23.

True, Chen Jing Ke has 5 dramas next and I noticed that none of them are costum dramas but 2 are romance dramas and 3 are thriller dramas. I don't think it's bad for his career.

For Song Wei Long and Zhang Ling He, yeah, I noticed that when they started, they had a normal weight and now that they shoot a lot of costum dramas, they look like they are starving. Long has shot The bionic Life and Seven Relics, which lean more towards sci-fi/paranormal stuff with minimal romance so that could be a good move for when he is in his middle 30's.

Some actors are naturally lean; no problem with that. It's just that it's hard to believe them when they play roles which require a specific body type and weight and height.

Ahh, no thanks, not a Arthur Chen fan. Yeah, I also prefer actors who are less thin. For the actor of SOOY, there was a scene where he was drenched because of the rain and his clothes were sticking to his body. He was normal looking, at least for me. Same with the shower scene (in that drama and another, Dear Mr Hermitage, if I remember well).

I have the same issue about actors playing soldiers. One of the first dramas I remember watching was "You are my hero", with Ma Si Chun and Bai Jing Ting. I really loved the story but for real, the actress had more meat on her bones than the actor!

For real! He was this super soldier and his waist was so thin! There was another scene where he was eating with the FL. You could see fake broad shoulders, he wore a padded tee-shirt. Except that a few scenes later, he was gym training with the other soldiers and he was wearing a normal tee-shirt and you could see how frail he was, with shoulders as narrrow as his waist.

Just for that, I have troubles rewatching the drama because it takes me out of the story. It's really a drama where I wished an actor like Johnny Huang, Jin Bo Ran, Chen Jin Ke, or Yang Shi Ze (although I wonder if he has thyroid problems because depending on dramas, I have seen him looking like a skeleton or a bit fat, kind of like the actor who plays MacGee in NCIS) had been casted.

I think some actors, while very thin, can play soldiers in dramas if they train, like Song Wei Long or Zhang Ling He because if you watch their debut dramas, they were less thin and they had large shoulders.

Same feeling here. I started with Kdramas but now, I mostly watch Cdramas.

My favorite genre is light rom-com but also paranormal rom-com like SOOY. But lately, I have watched costumes dramas, mostly investigation dramas, I like this genre. I'm not into the martial arts/demons stuff or political dramas.

Still, there are enough Cdramas to fill that need, thank god because as you said, Kdramas have changed those last years. I think the last one I watched and loved was "Lovely runner". It's like Kdramas target more the international (especially american) audience and I can see it.

Sure, some dramas have more complex storylines and characters but we can have that in american series. I just wish that Kdramas had kept their romantic or light youth dramas. It's sad that I maybe watch only one Kdrama a year, now. As I said, "Lovely runner" (last year) and "Business proposal" (and that was... I'm not sure 2023?).

Yeah, not many Kdramas keep my attention, contrary to Cdramas. Just this year, I have watched SOOY, Fall on You, The wanted detective, The Coroner's diary, ADWAD, EVerlasting longing and Seven relics... and last year Blossom, Derailment, Tibetan Sea flower and the two Strange tales of Tang dynasty.

Yeah, it's sad that for those costum dramas, the actors have to starve themselves. Personally, I prefer actors with a bit more meat. Like the main lead in SOOY. He is more normal looking for a man.

I started watching Kdramas in 2020 and it's crazy how much it has changed in a few years. I mean, dramas had between 16 and 20 episodes. Now, we are lucky if kdramas have 12 episodes. Some have 6 or 8 or 10 !

And yes, I feel it has been americanized and like you, I have practically given up on american series. I long for simple light rom-coms with 20 episodes. Those days are gone, I'm afraid.

I don't know if it's about connection for the endings in time travel dramas. But it's a possibility. If you think about it, a S+drama with famous actors, famous producers and a famous director might have more connections in the censorship bureau than a less known producer/director/actors.

Also, it depends on who is in charge of the censorship for X or Y drama. I remember when I applied for help for my father, his file was going to be examined by someone from the city hall. The social assistant who had helped me fill his file told me that the person who would review my father's file was the worst of the worst among the ones working at the city hall.

If I had been lucky and had another person reviewing, I might have had more help than I ended up getting for my father.

I suppose the same thing can happen to dramas and censors.

China takes entertainment very seriously. I remember when they said that male actors were too feminine and that it was a bad image for young men. Not sure how actors are getting around that one because they look like they could eat some sandwitches!

BL dramas, time travel dramas, parallel universes dramas (the great drama "parallel world" or "The heart of genius"), reborn dramas, reincarnation dramas... so many restrictions.

It's strange for us but that's how it is in China.

The recent drama I watched, which title I have already forgotten (Fall on you? Fall upon you? or something like that) ironically gave the answer to the question "how exactly these rules work".

It's a youth drama about a FL communicating via telephone with the future ML.

The ending? Well, the drama was a novel written by the FL. Her novel was rejected... because of the ending which she didn't want to change.

Angry, she leaves the publisher's office and is hit by a car in front of the ML, who picks up her novel.

He reads it and decides to... rewrite the ending. Without the FL's consent, since she is in a coma. And he publishes the novel (with her name, though, but still without her consent) with HIS ending and it's a success.

If that's not the writers bashing the censors rejecting the creators's vision to impose a censorship vision!

I suppose the censors are so blind to irony that they didn't even realize the ending was about THEM. That, or this drama was so low budget with little known actors that the censors didn't even care about that ending kind of spiting on them.

We are not in the secrets of the gods. Maybe some people working on some dramas have connections, people they know on the censorship board which would give them more space.

Or maybe costume time travel dramas are allowed more freedom than modern dramas.

I have watched this year three dramas involving time travel. ADWAD, a costume drama, managed to get away with TT, although the last 2 minutes after the main leads are reunited, we see that it was all about a writer writing a drama about an actress time traveling/traveling into the script she was working on.

Another drama was "Fall on you", I believe. Modern/youth TT communication. In the end, the FL was in a coma/novel written by the FL.

SOOY, main leads in a coma.

I have watched other modern paranormal rom-coms, like "The heart of a genius" and "The art of being you". Both had last minutes censorship ending : it was a novel written by the FL in both cases.

For every drama, there are BTS stuff we don't know about. But it looks like, IMO, that the rules are more strict, especially those last 3 years, with modern time travel/reborn stories, than with historical dramas. Because I have watched Reset and Love in time and both were about time travel but they are, what 4/5 years old? And they managed to have TT in the end.

Nowadays? the chances are very slim. And as I said, we aren't in the censorhip office and we don't know what the censors imposed on the writers and producers.

It's time travel, which is banned in China. So there's always a last minute "censorship ending", which I recommand you scrap. It's not the ending the writers wanted but had to shoot to bypass the censorship.

Honestly, it's worth watching, just ignore the last minutes of the last episode which are just meant to get the drama aired. The famous "censorship ending".

I never pay attention to it because it's always the same thing, with those kind of time travel dramas: the censorhip ending is like copy and paste, a dream, coma, traveling into a novel or a movie.

"It's like if Lucifer was portrayed as love interest that is hiding his real identity from the female lead while pretending to being a genie that grants wishes".

*****
You mean, like the Lucifer show with Tom Ellis?

Some from a certain religion so little tolerate OUR laws and way of life in Europe that they go murdering, beheading journalists, priests, teachers if they talk about secularism or a certain religion like it's okay to do in OUR countries. No blasphemy law but hey, certain people from a certain religion refuse to accept that and try to impose THEIR religious laws on OUR societies.

Christians, jews, buddhists don't go on murder spree if their religions are criticized, in Europe.

Don't stand Europe's laws? Don't come and live here. Don't stand South Korea's entertainment industry? Don't come on MDL and complain. Don't watch.

Jeez, always the same people complaining.

No.

That's the problem with time-travel. How to solve it. Because there are many theories about time travel.

I don't think 2021 ML was the same after the merging. When he was having a beer on a roof with his friend after it, he said that he didn't feel like the same person.

Other characters in the drama noticed that he was different. Saying good-morning to cleaners and colleagues at his job, being more thoughtful everyone around him.

Also, I think the 2022 ML had the advantage of meeting the 2021 FL in a cozy environment, their merged apartment and to deal mostly with their friends's marriage, making their collaboration even more intimate.

The 2021 ML still had his job, his career, so he was still like the 2022 ML of the first 2 episodes. He worked with the 2021 FL on their friends's marriage but also on other cases, not as personal as the first one.

I think the ending was suggested with the entropy increase/decrease theory which was discussed a few times: a life for a life.

What the writers of this drama missed, I think, was making it more obvious. The FL never discussed or thought about what would happen to the 2022 ML once the overlapping would stop. The 2022 ML seemed more open to his own ending. He was sad, in the last episodes, even while dating the FL. There were moments where it was obvious.

I noticed, while rewatching it, that around maybe episode 15? until the end, he was more of a background character. He was the FL's boyfriend and the one providing intel to the 2021 ML and FL. They were the ones working together, pushing the narrative that they were probably being the ones to end up together.

The 2021 ML got to meet her grand-mother. To rush to save her from that bad weather. To carry her while she couldn't walk.

I think that because he still had his high standing job, career and because in his eyes, the FL wasn't free since she was dating his future self, it took longer for him to soften towards the FL.

The merging apartment really was a cocoon which he didn't have access to. So he had this handicap. But with time, we know that he will become exactly who he was always meant to be once in love and dating the FL: like his other self, the future one.

Could it have been better written? I think so. Two more episodes of them growing closer in this new timeline would have helped too, but, well, we didn't get to see that.

Chinese time travel dramas are so incredibly tricky because of censorship, "Love in time" seems like a UFO in comparison to other modern time travel dramas, where the ending is concerned.

There should be a stick message on MDL to inform the newbies that TT being banned in China, dramas about time travel... won't be about TT because of censorship.

I am so used to that that I have accepted that there are two endings: the censorship ending, and the TRUE ending the writers wanted. I know which one makes more sense and is the true one after watching an entire drama. And I erase the other, calling it "censorship ending".

Well, if you don't mind spoilers... there kind of is. Between the FL, 2022 ML and 2021 ML. Both fall in love with her.

IMO, the ending made sense. The first timeline was wrong. Everything was wrong. The FL was in a coma. The one who caused the accident got away free because nobody witnessed the accident. He caused his sister's marriage to collapse and nobody knew. The second couple is divorced.

The ML lost his job. His boss was jealous of him and set him up.

That timeline was wrong. The goal of the time travel/overlapping appartments was to destroy that timeline (and therefore everybody in it), and create a new, fair timeline.

We saw that the leads couldn't live in each other's world. After 46 minutes, they are sent back to their respective present. So that's the logic of this universe. Therefore, the FL couldn't go to the future to live with 2022 ML and the 2022 ML couldn't go to the past to live with 2021 FL.

Plus... everytime something happens, 2022 ML's memory is updated. Making 2021 and 2022 MLs connected. Honestly, I could see the ending coming because of that.

When the future is changed, this wrong reality collapsed. The people vanished. Jurong never knew that she was dead in that other timeline. Her brother ends up in jail. The ML's boss loses it all and the ML keeps his job. The FL is safe. That's the better timeline.

But at the cost of the first wrong timeline. I suggested the merging of the two male leads because it was a logical solution for me. They were already connected. They loved the same woman. At least, this love and this first ML still lives in the ML and not just in the FL's heart and memories.

They both have the same memories of this incredible overlapping appartment because they have both lived it.

The ending could have been much worse. Like the 2022 ML disappearing forever and 2021 FL and 2021 ML forgetting the whole thing. Maybe meeting each other down the line and having this weird feeling of knowing each other. Been there, done that with other dramas.

At least here, the 2022 ML still lives on. His consciousness merging with his past self means that the 2021 ML has two timelines in his heart and mind and in both of them, he loved the FL. There's an entire episode with the FL grieving him, before slowly accepting,how lucky she was, in the end, to have known love and to still have that love if she only opened her heart.

So many timetravel dramas end up abruptly, or it wasn't time travel at all but a coma, a dream, here it's real time travel and we have an episode dealing with the aftermath.

I wish we had that with "Summit of our youth".

Yes. She remembered the coma life and rushed to see the ML. They end on on the same lift and they grab each other's hands, with a subtle smile to indicate that they remember. Without talking because if they talk about, well, everything that happened, then it wouldn't pass censorship.