Reviews

Brother’s debts become sister’s woes

The episode begins with a young woman working in finance. She has worked diligently for three years and is ready for a promotion. Unfortunately, a colleague has embezzled funds and has disappeared leaving her responsible for the missing funds. When she feels there is no way out she tries to end her life with an overdose. She wakes in the hospital with her gma fanning her and ready to tell her a story. And so it begins. Lin Si Yun is returning home after studying abroad. She is planning on working with a maternity clinic and has brought home needed equipment. Upon arrival she encounters a forward man who says she’s beautiful and asks if she has a way home. Her response is she does. A man on a bike greets her and she opts to walk home with her friends. Once home she finds a memorial for her father and lights incense. Before she gets to speak to anyone, men barge into the house looking for her brother. She learns her brother has squandered the family’s wealth to include mortgaging the family estate. The men are doing a room to room search for him. Her sister in law is very pregnant and about to give birth. She has a confrontation with the man she had met earlier. They agree to give her a 30 day extension and leave. A baby boy is born and gma is cooing over baby while spendthrift son is literally penned in under the birthing bed. 😝 This brother, is as opposite of his sister as one can get. He is trying to push her into an arranged marriage so the new family can pay off his debt. His sister was childhood sweethearts with the prospective groom, but when they went to study abroad, he went to the states and she went to Germany. She doesn’t think he is a bad guy, but she’s not chomping at the bit to get married either. Cheng Ao is the lawyer and clean up guy for the ‘debt collecting’ group. He sees that his returned friend and henchman are quick on the draw to cause trouble. This is proved more than speculation when his friend calls him up about a young woman falling out of his car and dying when her head hit the curb. The henchman had borrowed the car and gone on a date. She was getting nervous with him but he promised to take her home. This turned into him trying to maul her in the car and she jumped out of the car to escape him. But it did not go well for her. Cheng Ao shows up to try to make restitution and Ms Lin is having none of it. She informs him that his friend will pay. It is particularly problematic as the maid is part of the Lin family they are squeezing for loan payment. The episode ends with Mr Cheng offering to buy every issue of the morning press to squash the story. An interesting first episode.

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Episode 1 is good but have some flaws

As a reader of ILYS1892 and a fan of Binibining Mia, I really loved this episode. They introduced Carmela very well, and Heaven's acting was excellent. When I watched her, all I could see was Carmela. Great job, Binibini! I also loved how they opened the episode with that scene (iykyk). The library/storage scene is so great. It was exactly how it was written in the novel, and I got goosebumps while watching it. Overall, the episode closely followed the novel, and I’m so thankful for that. I feel completely assured that they will stay faithful to the novel that Inay Mia created.The cinematography was good, but I didn’t like the editing, which is why I’m giving it 7 out of 10 stars. After the opening scene, there was a one-minute montage of the Arch of Centuries, which I found unnecessary. Then, in every scene set in the school, they kept showing the arch for a long time. That became a bit annoying for me. It felt like the Arch of Centuries was overused. I also didn’t like how they zoomed in on unnecessary things for too long before transitioning to the next scene. I hope the editing improves in the next episode.I'm really excited for Episode 2!

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This was a great show with not enough time.…

This was a great show with not enough time. I had a lot of fun and yeah, it was too short and two little episodes, but they low-key made it work and I wish they put less on the table for us to look forward to because they couldn’t flush it all out. They should do like a special or like a season two I would mess with that heavy with the focus on a second couple because I think they’re ending. I’m pretty OK with their ending, but I would also like that to be like more dove than too. But like it’s whatever there’s not gonna be no season two or a special episode but a girl can dream I had a lot of fun. This is low-key a good show with a good plot. They had good chemistry. It was low-key a really quiet show though, and that low-key freaked me out some parts. Sorry if this does not make any sense. I’m using the voice thing on my phone. OK cool. Okay bye!

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Fighting against the lies

Yibo thinks the cigarettes he saw was the boyfriend. He has no clue that they were from Bao’s guys looking for him. So this POS dad goes to school pretending Heitang stabbed him. I cheered when Xun punched him. He deserves so much more. He tricked the miserable principal into giving him more money. His fake tears should choke him.🤬 I want Bao’s guys to find him.😝 I am also tired of chubby gossip boy. In many ways he is kid version of the dad with his lies for attention and to be popular. 😝 Xun pays the school fund and both he and Tang defend each other fiercely. The teacher knows something is up but she is so convinced past behavior is Xun’s problem that she doesn’t get how horrid the dad really is. Here we learn Xun grew up in orphanage but still not made clear how the teacher knew him. Both Xun and Tang leave school for the day. Here I want to smack chubby for pretending it was a good thing. He is another pos in the making. 😝What is super cute is how Xun and Tang treat returning the money. The threat to accept or never speak again. Their friendship is rooted now. This gets Xun in trouble from every side. His collector boss beats him for getting involved with Tang and the other for hating Qiang. I grin because they have both found their gals and the boss hasn’t let that notion sink in. He knows how grey this is but to focus on IOU’s without focus on any asides makes the job easier. There can be no entanglement with families involved. I love Yu Nian’s pregnant friend.😂😁She takes on the demolition people right to their faces and dares them to deal with her.😂😁 Yu Nian is convinced she was supposed to find the letter but she has no clue where Meiwan Town is. She googles and Meiwan Town annexed to Pushui. Yu Nian travels to Pushui and has a cab take her to the police station in what was once Meiwan Town. She tries to track down Haitang, but is told only relatives can have access. The son who has arrived home to find his mom gone and her car parked in a remote mountain lot is looking for her and is made aware someone was also looking for her. The two meet and it is instant sparks.😂 They each think the other has done something bad to their parent and refuse to believe the other is being truthful. Their bickering is fun, especially when the cop tries to tell them their parents may be taking care of personal matters they don’t want their children to know about.😂 It does not cross their minds that their parents might really know each other and have a history. I wish he would have opened the cookie tin at Tang’s house to see what was inside. They are going to stay together until the parents are found. Back in 1991 Tang realizes her letter isn’t in the mailbox. She tries to call Xun but the two gang groups are being ‘disciplined’ by their leaders. I am annoyed that the younger guys are getting beaten more but their boss knows he has no choice with Bao right there overseeing things.

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Bullies everywhere

Yi Bo gets his daughter home where he steals her earnings, steals the class fund, and beats her. She has had enough. She writes her gma an apology letter which she puts in red mailbox. She bows an apology and steps out with determination to find her father and end things. She takes a knife to the local gambling place where she has every intention of killing her father and then herself. She is stopped by the new kid , Xun, and really resents it. He calms her down and gets her home to discover Bao’s guys have already been there. He takes her to his place instead. He buys her some essentials and food and goes off to billiard place where he teases Hao about crush. Hao leaves to get her some noodles and more of Bao’s guys are there mocking the lame girl. He should have just left, but they goaded him into a fight where he is badly beaten and his noodles wasted on jerk’s head. The police now think Tang is a mental case because that was the easiest story for her father to spin. I am glad he was asked questions about frequenting mahjong place😝 There is a montage of the three suffering from various wounds and the sweet girl that changes movies smiling over his snack. In the present Yu Nian is still looking for her father, Yu Zhi Hong. This time when she sees the security guard he has a suicide letter that a;peared in the red mailbox. He thinks the mailbox is cursed and she knows her father was waiting for the letter. She stuffs it in her pocket and goes home but her father has removed everything in house that would identify him. All the meds were gone and nothing identifying him was there. At the police station she runs a check with her ID. But here is where gets strange. The man that comes up as her father died in prison 20 years ago. She has no explanation and the only discovery she has made is a bunch of train tickets to a place she has never heard of and a postcard that has the same signature as the letter in her pocket.

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Red mailbox / red cat

The story begins with an older man waiting by a red mailbox. There is a red cat close by. It wakes up the security guard. The old man is kicked out but insists on sending letters from here. He ends up missing and the daughter has a chat with the security guard. He says that after her father put the letter in the mailbox he just disappeared. She doesn’t believe him. A young girl with a knife is apologizing to her gma in a letter that is put in that box. There is also a group of three debt collectors that get involved because Ye Yibo did not pay gambling debt. It is the 7th day of mourning for her gma so they take her gma’s money and call it a day. She has words with one of them. Contrary to the job he just did, he helps an old man with his cart that includes a red cat. They do not like the gang boss over them and are very close to having the money they need for a boat. This is their primary objective. The three want out of the ‘collecting’ business and want a legitimate job. The girl works in a stationary/ postcard shop and is asked to do a campaign for them. She titles it writing to yourself in the future. The same old man and cart walk by her and asks for some boxes. She helps him and pets the cat. His cart has the red mailbox on it. The next day the red mailbox is parked outside the shop with a letter for her inside. Her teacher turns out to be related to one of the debt collectors that is now in her home room class. They have words where she wants her gma’s money back and he tells her that her father should pay his gambling debts. The letter inside the red mailbox was a love letter of sorts from the new guy in class. Her debt collector. It is read aloud and a fight breaks out. They both find themselves in the office with her dad. The teacher isn’t aware that the father is scum, but the daughter and new student well aware. He acts like he is a concerned father, but her looks and cringing says it all. The boy rescues the crumbled letter from the mailbox and begins to read when the episode ends. The music is very good. I especially liked the Jiu Lian Zhen Ren song ‘Don’t bully the youngsters’. There is a time gap with the letters from 1991 when the girl writes to 2026 when the old man writes. Interestingly, the cat is in both times along with the mailbox.

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