I guess this is not just a one-time thing so I had better stop cluttering my KDrama master list with CDramas.
As with my KDrama reviews, the classifications are as follows:
- R – Recommended
- D – Dropped (i.e. I stopped watching without completing)
- G – Give me my money back (i.e. I persevered until the end but I regretted it; the show has potential but did not deliver in the end)
- No indication – Just okay. Not bad, but not exceptionally good either.
2019
Ashes of Love (R) (ok, this is Cdrama, not Kdrama, but it’s sooooo good I watched all 63 episodes back-to-back twice in two weeks. The second viewing was so much better because you understand all the nuances the drama has: I was dried-eyed in my first viewing but bawled my eyes out during the second. The best written character, tho, is definitely the Night Immortal. Although I really ship the Fire Immortal and Jin Mi from the get go [how bloody cute is Jin Mi I just want to bite her cheeks!], the Fire Immortal is the privileged, beloved youngest prince of the Heavenly Realm. In contrast, the elder prince is born out of wedlock and always has to fight for his place. He is also given a deeper back story and a clearer motivation – with the Night Immortal as his foil, the Fire Immortal’s character is mostly flat. For me, the highlight of the series is definitely the ambiguity of the Night Immortal’s character: where his ambition stops and his love begins, no one can say, least of all he.)
Princess Agent (D) (First episode was so good that I cried, but after that it lost any semblance of coherence. Maybe the subs were just bad because this show has glowing reviews, but I didn’t even make it to the teen episodes.)
Ten Miles of Peach Blossom (G) (After the phenomenal Ashes of Love and a dismal selection of Kdrama lately, I decided to give TMPB a chance, especially since it’s touted as the best Cdrama ever, even better than Ashes. Yeah I don’t know how they came up with that review. It’s pure romance where the plot and characters are twisted any which way just to further the stupidly lackluster romance. It’s not even the sweet kind that you swoon over. I was way more invested in the secondary couple Bei Feng Jiu and Dong Hua Dijun than the lead couple.)
Sweet Dreams (Deng Lun did quite a number on me on Ashes, and so did Dilraba Dilmurat in TMPB so I decided to give this show a go. I liked the story – at least the corporate battle becomes incorporated into their romance – but the show’s selective conflict solution annoyed me. Like some parts are super dramatised while other issues are suddenly resolved. I’m also annoyed that the dream bit is almost completely abandoned as the show progresses since that is the initial main attraction. If you are planning to watch it, I would suggest that you skip the final episode because the show is generally decent but the final episode ruined all their good work.)
The King’s Woman (D) (I had wanted to watch this one even before I started watching CDrama, but sadly it’s a huge disappointment. I did not make it past episode 10, and even then I had already forced myself to persevere in case things pick up. Basically it’s very similar to Empress Ki, but inferior in quality. Like, it’s a romance without a ship. I don’t ship Gongsun Li with the King because he’s just such a nasty character [like, his idea of showing affection is having your lady love literally hunted down by assassins and she’s supposed to be flattered by that ooookay] whereas the other guy Jing Ke, her abang seguru, well, he’s just about the worst actor I’ve ever watched and he has absolutely zero chemistry with Dilmurat. Dilmurat’s character is also so bland – she’s not funny, she’s not charming, she’s no strategist, she’s not a particularly good swordswoman – in short, there’s nothing to make me root for her. And the cinematic choices are also weird – the director likes to zoom in and make a frame pop in moments of surprise but the experience is just jarring; there are so many unnecessary scenes [once, it was six freaking minutes of Dilmurat just walking like I get it that you want to say her destination was far but SIX whole minutes out of a 40-minute episode?]; and the numerous flashbacks were more confusing than helpful.)
The Eternal Love (okay, this one was clearly a guilty pleasure. A silly romcom with minimal plot and a time-travelling sassy-mouthed heroine? Of course I eat that shit up. I enjoyed the early bits – their bickering and falling in love – even if it felt like the it was written by a 5th grader, but the later half of the show really rendered the whole thing moot. Like the final 4 episodes crossed genres and basically cancelled out everything that happened that you kinda wonder what the point of the first 20 episodes was. If the rest of the series was written by a 5th grader, then the final 4 were by a 2nd grader.)
Goodbye, My Princess (D) (The princess is not that adorable, the plot is a mess, and it takes forever to develop so goodbye, my princess.)
General and I (shaky R) (The best parts of General are when Bai Ping Ting and Chu Bei Jie are pitting against each other on the battlefield; with thousands of lives and the sovereignty of their respective nations at stake, how do they balance love and affection for one another with their conscience and professional duty? Sadly, that bit is all but too brief – once they got together, they teamed up against the world and it’s pretty obvious that no one stands a chance against their combined intellect.
I like how BPT is characterised: she is absolutely feminine and untrained in martial arts, but none can rival her strength in terms of willpower and resourcefulness. In fact, I like how diverse the female characters are: the manja and girlish Zui Ju is a highly skilled physician; the business-savvy Lady 13 of Yan is a martial artist extraordinaire who is able to back off gracefully when her love is unrequited; the lonely Princess of Bai Lan utilises people’s low expectations of her to become a strong ruler; the unscrupulous Noble Consort Zhang decides to sacrifice everything for ambition when she is unable to win love; and Yang Feng, a little meek, a little stupid, but always gives her heart out in friendship.
Why I rate this show a shaky R is because the overall ambition is clear, but it keeps making questionable decisions along the way. For example, I think He Xia’s Revenge might be a more apt title since that is the only theme that consistently runs through the narrative and keeps it coherent. And it such a funny thing to me that the show gives all moments of introspection, with one small exception of CBJ, to the villains. Like I fell for CBJ early, and I fell hard, because he ruminates on his role as a saboteur againsts HX’s entire family: the cloak and dagger role sits not well with him, but he perseveres because it was a necessary evil that would prevent whole armies from going to war and slaughtering thousands. But after that? We never hear any of the main guys’ deeper thoughts and dilemma again, so we could only deduce their characters from their actions. Instead, the show allows quiet moments to Noble Consort Zhang when she begs her own father to sacrifice himself for her ambition and to HX when he realises that he truly loves the Princess of Bai Lan but in a game of thrones, one of them must die and it mustn’t be him. Did I care for the heroes’ predicament? No, not really – because the show does not spare intimate moments to acquaint us with their doubts and fears and instead is so proudly confident of their intelligence and righteousness that as a viewer, I had no stake in their outcome. But the villains? I know they will lose, but because the show treats them like humans, I was interested to see what they would do as they struggle towards their inevitable endings.)
The Eternal Love 2 (a masterstroke of capitalism that basically flipped its entire fan base – oh did you like Season 1 fuck you that’s not how it happened at all let me tell the same story again but different. You can see there’s a definite upgrade in Season 2 in terms of production values and writing – for once, they stuck with the palace drama and did away with the ridiculously convoluted heavenly elements – but I’d say Season 1 was more fun. Like, Season 1 was innocently fun whereas Season 2 kinda struggles with its own self-awareness. While the symmetry was nice – in Season 1 we had 2 lady leads in Xiao Tan vs. Tan Er, and in Season 2 we have two male leads with Time-displaced Mo Lian Cheng vs. Linear MLC – the writers definitely struggled with which ship to pursue. I really rather hoped the two MLCs would work together to win XT’s affections, perhaps even the Time-displaced covertly assisting the Linear, but they had to enter into a ridiculous rivalry, with the writers clearly favouring the Time-displaced with no reason at all. Still, if you’re looking for a stupid, fun show – this is definitely it.)
Bloody Romance (D) (I just couldn’t get into it and dropped it after 3.5 episodes.)
The Legend of Fuyao (R, and yet simultaneously G) (Fuyao‘s rating is weird because it is structurally written like a video game: there is one main overarching arc, but there are smaller arcs along the way – each arc has its own settings, characters, and mini-bosses. Some of these arcs are very well written – the Taiyuan arc, for example, with the delicious dilemma of how to avenge your entire family’s massacre when you were lovingly, unknowingly brought up by the murderer; and the Tianquan arc, where the fragility of a person’s identity and self-worth is examined in heartbreaking detail – while others feel like afterthought fillers – like the Mount Xuanyuan bit which ends in a whimper and the Tiansha arc which is just silly (although with a wonderfully lonely theme song – that they then overplayed until it lost its poignancy). What frustrates me the most, tho, is that the main arc also fizzled into nothingness and the main boss is a non-issue: after warning us for like 60-plus episodes that Fuyao can trigger the apocalypse and Wu Ji is the only person who can stop her, the threat that she poses never materialised. Like, such an anticlimax. And after spending 60-plus episodes gracefully slicing his way around, Wu Ji the demigod (?) (yeah, I’m confused about him because he’s defo human but also god so IDK) suddenly decided the only thing he could do to stop Fuyou is to beg his teacher not to kill Fuyao the apocalypse trigger and, when the teacher refuses, cry. And then she did trigger the apocalypse, supposedly, but before anything happened the whole thing ended and I wasn’t sure if they died or survived or what so yeah the show is recommended for the arcs but the overall execution was a letdown.)
Oh My General (D) (infantile. Simple gender bender with no exploration of anything. I mean I tried switching off my brain but I felt my IQ slipping so I had to stop.)
Go Princess Go (D) (see above. If anything, it’s even worse. At least in General there are slivers of character development; the characters in Princess make no sense whatsoever.)
Mengfei Comes Across (this was more of a sitcom than a CDrama – each episode is roughly self-contained, with the leads’ romance as the long-running arc in the background. It’s cute – well, Mengfei is cute – but some parts are a little too excruciatingly exaggerated. Still, in its own way, it is probably the most realistic harem drama I’ve ever watched: you take a bunch of spoiled girls, some barely out of their teens, pamper them with all kinds of luxury, put them together without giving them anything to do except vie for the attention of one man, and the result would most likely be petty squabbles and jealous rivalries rather than intense political conspiracies. And despite the fluffy shenanigans, some episodes are surprisingly thoughtful – like the critique on consumerism and women’s beauty standard – and some even brought tears to my eyes. One that stands out was Concubine Qu’s depression – any vivacious 16yo who marries into the palace only to immediately be given the cold shoulder by the emperor is bound to be depressed – that manifests a bouts of binge eating and an obsession with designer bags. Unfortunately, the final 3.5 episodes are unsubbed on YouTube, so I don’t know how the show ends. Fortunately, I don’t think my guess is terribly off the mark.)
Emperors and Me (first half R, and then it all went to shit) (Like super intriguing why are you immortal how?? and then they had built in a beautifully plausible explanation and then decided to go with the reset ending instead like yep reset everything to before the first thing happened so none of this ever happened at all like I wish I had a reset button for my 12 wasted hours.)
Battle of Changsha (initially I was going to give this an R, but show kinda lost its steam somewhere around the mid-point, so it’s just normal) (Definitely a character driven show, so if you’re a plot person, you’ll find this one lacking. My favourite character is definitely the incorrigible Xue Junshan, a smooth operator master opportunist who somehow manages to maintain a clean conscience. The show is gut-wrenchingly tragic even though our focal point is the Hu family – prominent, reasonably well-off, coddled by everyone even during and throughout the war. Imagine how much worse things were for peasants.
My maternal grandfather fled to Malaya from China with his parents as a child and got adopted by a Malay family when he lost his parents here. If we’re to do the math, it would have been right around this time. He never talked about his childhood so I don’t even know when he came or where he was originally from or if he had anything to do with Changsha or indeed if it was the 2nd Sino-Japanese War that he’d fled from, but the show made me understand how he could not bring himself to ever forgive the Japanese.)
The Rise of the Phoenixes (D) (Another palace drama – well, I can’t seem to get enough of them that’s true – but, the most important thing in a palace drama is that the audience has to root for the hero who is vying for the throne. In this one, I didn’t. They keep trying to show the Prince of Chu as utterly cunning and morally righteous, but I don’t buy it. Because the backstory is so convoluted I didn’t understand what the hell is going on – one moment it was 18 years ago, then another it was 8 so I’m like??? Another thing is I don’t ship the main leads like ehhh there’s nothing that’s making me root for them to be together so I dropped it.)
Legend of the Phoenix (D) (I had heard that Something Something Phoenix was a good show, and when the last one was disappointing, I thought it was this one. I’ll admit the main leads are a little more cute than the previous couple, but it was not enough. Like, he’s supposed to be this super-smart strategist whose family had all been executed for high treason and yet he’s kept by the Empress – so you’re naturally intrigued by his character, right? How did he survive? How is he in the service of the Empress? Why does he seem to be accepted at court? What is his personal mission? And then we see him treat the female lead who is head over heels for him in a most courteous manner and yet clearly dismissing her – because he cannot jeopardise his personal mission, right? – only to turn around 2 seconds later to become a wanted felon because of some stupid shenanigans she’d committed? Yeah, nah. I have no time to watch a stupid hero who lacks direction. Besides, the overall plot was also unclear. By the time the hero becomes a wandering felon, the heroine enters the palace as a court maid and then spends her days championing her sisters from bullying by court officials (which in real life would see her losing her head in no time) and scheming to get the Empress’s favour. But to what end? Don’t know, and worse, don’t care. So bye bye.)
Prince of Lan Ling (D) (do you know how hard a series has to work for me to drop it at episode 30? Yep. Now, it started very promisingly, with a cheeky heroine and a valiant hero who are both smart, so I keep thinking the series would get back on track. The problem is, around about episode 10 they fell in love and became stupid, and then around episode 20 they got married and got stupider and the villain’s main scheme is to break them up like ?? One thing I appreciated about this show is it shows that both sides have justifiable claims in war, and I like how the hero and the secondary hero lamented the fact that they’re sworn enemies when they could have been good friends were they not a General of Qi and the Emperor of Zhou, but even that is not enough to save the series. I mean, when you start shipping the heroine with the secondary hero because the main dude is just being obtuse, that’s not a good thing, is it? If you want a smart and cunning general who is also almost paradoxically gentle, go watch General and I: Gao Chang Gong – the eponymous Prince of Lan Ling – doesn’t even hold a candle to Chu Bei Jie.)
Secret of the Three Kingdoms (D) (I reaaaaaaally wanted this one to be R, but by God the pace is so infernally slow that I dropped it on episode 11.5. Yep, like halfway through an episode. Like, the first episode was so good; it was done with such subtle nuance that you get the hero’s character and potential for tragedy without it being in-your-face, you know? But then it just kinda stayed there. I kept thinking that things would start to get interesting soon, but it just never picked up at all. Oh, and another thing, IDK if it was actually historical or anything, but why were the costume design and hair styles Japanese? Like, since the show was very slow, most of the time I found myself wondering why they Japanese why they Japanese why they Japanese instead of focussing on what’s happening.)
Love and Destiny (GGGGGGGG) (Jiu Chen is really the stupidest hero I’ve tolerated in a looooong time, and perhaps the only reason for that is residual fondness for Chang Chen from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I mean he’s stupid because he’s supposed to be 160-bloody-thousand years old, but he makes decisions like a randy teenager. Like, we don’t even have to discuss the professional God of War side of things – he really basically said fuck all of you now Ling Xi is the only one that matter and she matters more than the entire cosmos – but even his techniques at wooing his lady love is just overall creepy stalkery and proprietorial, eurgh. Like, he has such a massive god complex but in the show he’s a literal god in the show so I wanna complain so bad but I really can’t. I like Ni Ni’s Ling Xi/Lin Mo better because she supposedly goes through three lifetimes and you actually see three shades of character – the naive Earth fairy Ling Xi; the gentle Lin Mo; and the mature High Immortal Ling Xi following her reincarnation. But what I’m not happy about is how she achieves the reincarnation. First of all, what tribulation? What Lin Mo has to go through is nothing? Just normal human life? Not even particularly wretched at all? Like yeah she’s deaf mute, but she’s the pampered Young Mistress Lin, not some slave girl or even a maid of the Lin family. And if some of her family dislike her, her father absolutely dotes on her like the sun rises from her eyes or something, and the rest don’t abuse her intolerably. And then she dies and is automatically reborn as a High Immortal? By that token, any of us mortals would be High Immortals like 16 times over. And you know how some MCU stans are like, I wish Marvel would give us clips of the Avengers just chilling and interacting when not facing threats? Yeah, well, in this series there are whole episodes of Jiu Chen just sleeping, and multiple episodes of Lin Mo just waking up for breakfast, going to work, coming back, and then cooking dinner like… when is something going to happen? So yeah IDK why I persevered for 60 episodes to watch something that could satisfactorily be told in like 10. Because the thing is, when you have buildup episodes, you’d expect a major climax, right? Nope. Watch Lin Mo go to and fro work and then when finally they have to battle the Demon King (yeah, the main villain, who’s also absolutely stupid) they did it in like 2 minutes and then both hero and heroine are trapped in an abyss with supposedly no escape, and on different dimensions even, and then suddenly cut to 300 years later and they have both magically escaped the chasm with no explanation and then they live happily ever after the end. Like expletives.)
Princess Silver (super R) (The most compelling Chinese show I’ve ever seen. If I’m honest, Silver outranks even Ashes of Love in terms of writing, but I’m loath to say that as Ashes has a very special place in my heart. [Not that it’s a competition. And actually it’s thanks to Ashes that I gave Silver a chance – the sweet Night Immortal is reincarnated a the mysterious Rong Qi, Emperor of Qi.] Anyway, there are 2 reasons for this. Firstly, the show itself is tightly layered and we discover things bit by bit alongside the amnesiac titular heroine – and you’re wrong if you think for a moment that you’ve got everything figured out. Like, the writers take all the predictable tropes and just turned everything around into neat plot twists. There are roughly four arcs, as I define it – the princess-spy; the hostage-wife; the ambiguous consort; and the reconciliation – and as you enjoy the current arc, the next arc, when it arrives, will leave you breathless like you’ve been hit by a freight train. And yet – and this is the genius of the show – the writers gave enough clues and foreshadowing that you are not blindsided and the horror and tragedy of each arc are absolutely potent. To be honest, some episodes felt a tiny bit draggy but I’m watching the series again (yep, restarted immediately after I finished the first time), and now that I have a full picture of the entire situation, every little bit that the show shows you serves a function. It’s just gasp after gasp after gasp as I finally grasp what’s actually going on in those “draggy” scenes. So yeah – this is one of those delicious shows that will allow you to discover new aspects with each viewing no matter how many times you watch it.
The second reason why this show is compelling is because the characters are all compelling. Whether they are the leads, secondary, or minor characters, they are given full-fledged personalities and motivation. This is the first show I’ve seen that tries to define the idea of loyalty fairly: there is no such thing as absolute loyalty. No matter how pure a character is, how well-intentioned, there will always be something that can compel them to commit betrayal. Sometimes, the show argues, a betrayal in itself is actually an act of loyalty, if you’d care to see how a person can be hemmed in and how they try to make the best of an impossible situation. And you know how some shows forget a character and you’re left wondering why they bothered to introduce them in the first place? Well, Silver is the opposite of that. In this one, characters whose arcs have seemingly ended sometimes come back in a way that makes complete sense and I just really appreciate how tight the show is. About the only thing I’m not happy about is how ridiculously heroic the main lead is. Don’t get me wrong, he makes mistakes, redeems himself, etc etc and in general is a swoonworthy character but let me just give you an example: in one scene he is tortured by having his shoulders pierced with hooks and suspended from the ceiling, and the next moment he manages to escape and immediately is able to use a bow to shoot down enemies? Nah, given his injuries he most likely wouldn’t be able to curl his fists or hold even light things – you’re telling me he’s able to string a bow? Fine. The show has too many other merits so we’ll overlook this little sin.)
Love O2O (G for plot; R for just how dreamy the hero is) (Plot? What plot? The writer ain’t ever heard of the conventional plot structure, I don’t think. Instead, this show is made up of multiple sub-plots with no overarching arc. And yet, in its way, that kinda makes the show more realistic. Like a slice of real life. Because real life is made made up of a series of both intertwining and unrelated incidents. It is a rare life indeed that follows the conventional plot structure – unless, maybe, in retrospect.
That being said, Love O2O [btw, this means “online to offline”. Don’t be like me and watch the whole show without knowing what it means and then wonder what is that weird title.] is cute. Poignant. We follow a bunch of university students and watch their shenanigans. These are good kids. Naughty and mischievous but good. Sure there are some stupid decisions made – after all they are immature kids – but by and large, they are kind, brave, tenacious, idealistic. We follow the show as they graduate and try to establish their own startup gaming company: the sheer guts and grit, the audacity, can only be possessed by the young and inexperienced, the starry-eyed innocence of those who Life has not knocked down.
On the other hand, I am not happy about the show’s treatment of the heroine, Bei Wei Wei. When we first meet her, she is an introverted 2nd year Computer Science star student who is kind to all she meets and happens to be the faculty beauty. She also happens to be a top ranking player of the online game that the whole university seems to play. In short, the show establishes her as a person who is a badass without being in-your-face about it. Then she meets and falls in love with Xiao Nai, the final year Computer Science star student and college heartthrob. If she is smart, Xiao Nai is portrayed as a genius. Which is fine. Except that once they met, the show allows him to overshadow her too much. Suddenly her accomplishments are no longer important (although the show hints that she keeps achieving them); the show implies that as long as he is successful, it does not matter if she is or isn’t, because he will take care of her.
Despite the show’s callous treatment of Wei Wei, I cannot help but be seduced by Xiao Nai. Who can? Certainly not Wei Wei herself. Because unlike the show, Xiao Nai is not callous with Wei Wei. The breathtakingly good-looking senior is a genius, is steadfast, and treats Wei Wei with the honour and respect that she deserves. For all that he is overwhelmingly suave and slick, he truly appreciates all her good qualities, allows her as much room as she wants for self development, and encourages her to always be better and happy. And he supports whatever decisions she makes.
Yeah, Xiao Nai is just about the most perfect guy you’ll ever meet. He is just such a lelaki idaman. Or else he’s a serial killer. I tell you, hidden behind the gentle and caring demeanour are nerves of steel and a quiet cunning. In fact, even those around him might not realise just how petty he truly is. Oh, Xiao Nai is a person who keeps scores and gets even. It’s just that his methods are always so meticulous and elegant that his opponents never see him coming until they’ve already been completely obliterated. So yeah, we leave Xiao Nai at the end of the show as the CEO of his little company, a rising star of the gaming industry but I’m pretty sure that, given his personality and life trajectory, he’d become a serial killer at some point in his life. And he would get away with it. And we’d root for him to get away with it, too.)
2020
Hello Dear Ancestors (D) (Yeah I cannot handle the dumb lead, the Young Master of the Zhen clan who is so mollycoddled he is indecisive and incompetent in any era. On top of that, he seems to have an unhealthy obsession with his elder brother; it was so unsettling to watch because it really felt incestuous. I mean, when he wakes up in modern times, first thing he does is fall in love with a girl who looks exactly like his elder brother? I mean, he suspects that she’s a descendant of the elder brother and he still proceeds to have a relationship with her? Granted that the elder brother was adopted and thereby not blood-related, but still. That’s your great-great-great-great-grand-niece and you still wanna boink her? It does not help that on top of his incompetence the lead looks like a 15 yo prancing around town cluelessly stalking his niece. Stalking, ok, stalking. That’s not sweet or romantic, that’s just plain creepy. Another thing to mention is the voice dub. Remember how the love interest looks exactly like the elder brother? That’s because they’re played by the same actor. Or, rather, actress. They just had her standing on a box or something to make her seem taller in olden times and they exploited the voice dub loophole by having a male actor voice the elder brother. Like, CDrama’s voice dubbing has always been annoying but this show takes the cake. So yeah this show is just bad all around except for this one song.)
Cinderella Chef (with a title like Cinderella Chef, one naturally expects a silly romcom but CC is certainly not a show that does anything by half measures. When it’s good, CC is surprisingly well done; when it’s bad it’s downright atrocious. Structurally, it’s like 2 seasons of shows meshed into one and I’m not entirely sure why they did that. If you break up the episodes, they’re roughly:
E01: we just need the heroine to travel back in time we don’t even care about the nonsensical reason.
E02 – 20: super silly romcom that does not take itself seriously like anachronisms a-galore but the show does not take itself seriously so we viewers just roll with it, too.
E21 – 28: an outcome of spending around 20 episodes on silly shenanigans is that the characters are well-developed and, silly or not, we get attached to them. And herein lies the genius of this show: an action has consequences. Usually romcoms treat consequences lightly; this section of the show is about the most intense episodes I’ve seen in any C- and Kdramas. Like, the silly shenanigans have dire and lasting consequences that call to mind the moment Wang Wook forsook Hae Soo and Court Lady Oh’s death in Scarlet Heart Ryeo – that’s how intense and devastating these episodes were.
E29 – 42: so like the first arc ended and like (spoilers) 95% of the characters are killed off so now the writers need to introduce new characters. They do this by making the leads estranged (a logical outcome of the first arc’s conclusion) and having the female lead suffer a psychosomatic loss of sense of taste (an understandably catastrophic condition for a chef). Honestly, though, this stretch gets very annoying because the leads’ reconciliation is dragged out unnecessarily.
E43 – 55: the show returns to the familiar (read: tired) territory of court intrigue. Like, complete with every cliche you could think of even as the show parodies and satirises each of them. I don’t know why the writers think viewers would be happy with this arc after the refreshing first arc where a lost marquis infiltrates a medieval equivalence of the triad, rises to be the 3rd boss and designated heir, marries and falls in love with the mayor’s daughter who happens to be best friends with a rival gang’s ultimate boss. It really feels like roundabout episode 28 the story has finished but the writers don’t wanna stop writing yet so they just tacked on an unnecessary second arc using every conceivable cliche.
E56: And then that ending? Suddenly skips ahead to 10 years later? You seriously want me to believe that after such desperate situations the leads would lead an uneventful life for 10 years? Nah, that’s just lazy writing. Still, like I said when the show is good it’s really good so I have no choice but to forgive the less perfect patches.)
King is Not Easy (G) (just WTFFFFFFF? Like, what is it with Chinese shows that try to be ALL genres at the same time? Like, this is The Eternal Love S01 all over again, except it’s a bigger sinner. A much, much bigger sinner that I’m going to put in bold the possible genres so we can count them.
The show is actually very cute up to episode 16? 17? It’s a straightforward body-swap and harem drama where the King Freaky-Fridayed with a court maid and we watch the unlikely duo form an alliance and gradually fell for each other. I really, really enjoyed the first leg: the female lead was excellent at embodying the king-in-a-maid’s-body; they made the characters believable like the maid-as-king didn’t suddenly become smart and talented at statecraft; and the side characters are fleshed out beautifully, especially the iron-willed Dowager Empress who sold her body and soul in order to secure her son’s throne. I was a little less impressed when the leads swapped back because the king went back to being the king but the maid’s demeanor and intellect remained similar to the king’s. That’s forgivable, I guess, until suddenly we got a war drama as the king marches off to war with, get this, a winged barbarian tribe with magical powers? So it’s not only war, but war with the supernatural? And then it turns out the whole first run that I’d enjoyed was not just a dream but a dream-within-a-dream a la Inception, a fact which gave the male lead and me trust issues – like, what am I watching right now? Is this going to turn out to be another dream? What can I believe? What can I not? And then before I can properly resolve that issue, the series crossed genre again into time travelling and framed narrative – like, the whole everything we’ve seen so far is nothing but the manga that the female lead in her modern-day reincarnation has drawn but it’s also real that the male lead crossed time and dimensions to escape from the manga into the modern world to stumble upon the mangaka female lead. As if that’s not enough, the leads now switched bodies again and then the show ended without any satisfactory explanation. Like ????????????????
And another thing, do people watch next episode previews? I actively avoid them like the plague because they tend to be spoilery. So you can imagine my annoyance when I discovered on episode 17 that there have been easter eggs of the leads leading the life of a modern couple following the previews. I had wondered why the show’s poster would feature the leads as modern people and stumbling upon the eggs made me think that perhaps I’d been missing an essential part of the show. And – remember that I was on episode 17 when everything stopped making sense – perhaps that’s why I understood nothing that happened. You know, like maybe it’s a parallel narrative thing. So I grudgingly went through the whole show again from episode 1 to see if the eggs would help explain things but by God that was such a waste of time. I mean, to be fair I enjoyed the couple – they’re cute, and I love that the unbreakable strength of their love is expressed through humouring each other’s silly antics rather than grand romantic gestures – but structurally the eggs added nothing to the show. If anything, they contributed to more confusion. Like, is the modern couple the leads after the final episode? But the house is different? Are they them at a later point in time, when they’ve moved to a bigger place? But at some point the modern couple swapped bodies and then didn’t become greatly perturbed by it because “it’s not like it’s never happened before”. But, if the modern couple is them then that statement wouldn’t fly because the mangaka female lead wouldn’t have experienced a body swap previously since she merely drew it. If you wanna say that she remembered it from a previous lifetime, then we’d need to add reincarnation as another genre, and that becomes even more problematic as she is reincarnated but he falls out of the pages of a manga?
So, how many genres was that? Seriously, guys, just pick a genre or two at most and stick with them. Why confuse your audience like this? And don’t you dare call them plot twists because they’re not.)
My Amazing Boyfriend (D) (I dunno ep 1 just didn’t catch me so I just dropped it. Like I quite like the heroine but the male lead was just creepy and the rest of the cast couldn’t act for shit.)
Nirvana in Fire (D) (IDK why it’s got so much glowing reviews like everybody keeps saying it’s the greatest CDrama there ever was but there was nothing extraordinary? Nothing ordinary, even. In fact, it’s severely underwhelming and downright boring. Like, it’s your usual court intrigue but worse because the contenders for the throne are all stupid. Like stupid stupid. Like the hero dude plays them all like a fiddle like… they’re so unworthy opponents? And there are no cute characters that draw you in, no big secrets that intrigue, no nothing. So, again, IDK why everybody liked this one but I forced myself to watch 9 episodes and I found myself praying for the episode to just end so I left.)
Oh! My Emperor (this show never pretended to be anything other than silly, so I cannot quibble too much. I mean, modern girl time-travelling right into the lap of the emperor is such a tired cliche, and yet, I cannot get enough of it. So I have only myself to blame. Still, I really enjoyed the show’s light moments when the characters are just falling in love or bonding with their friends, but the show does this thing where it gives you 20 silly episodes and then the final episode is intense drama. Like, the show is supposedly comprised of 2 seasons, but IDK why they would lie to viewers like that. Like season 1 ended right smack in the middle of things and if you don’t follow through with another 21 episodes in season 2, it’s just a very unsatisfactory ending. Not that finishing season 2 explained anything satisfactorily. If anything, you’ll actually have more questions. In short, this is what the show expects of its viewers: just watch the fluff and ignore all plot holes.)
Boss and Me (D) (not even 10 minutes into the first episode and I couldn’t bear another minute of it.)
To Get Her (D) (usually my cuppa, but I was up to episode 6 and I still didn’t really care about what happens to any of the characters so I decided there was no point staying with it.)
The Longest Day in Chang’an (D) (by all accounts this is a great show, and I actually agree. Very high production value. Like, it opens with a long shot accompanied by a diegetic plaintive song about a concubine’s seduction of the emperor and introduces us to the main guy: a former master spy on death row who is promised clemency by a young scholar-politician, bosom friend of the Crown Prince, if he brings down a terrorist cell that plans to bomb the city during the lantern festival that takes place today. See that? Everything is in high polish but I just couldn’t get into it. I think it might be because it takes itself so very seriously: that would be a virtue for a 2-hour film, but for a 45-minute-apiece 48-parter, it demands a very high mental and emotional investment. I would totally recommend this show – I just need to get into the right mental space myself before I could actually watch it. Also, for the 2 episodes that I did watch, the show should really be called “If the Tang Dynasty had Google” because it’s really set in the Tang Dynasty, but the characters have all sorts of info at their fingertips, complete with a GPS for a foot chase scene! Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s all explained “logically” in the show but still…)
The Romance of Hua Rong (D) (just… really bad, ok? Don’t even waste your data on this.)
Lost Love in Times (D) (3 episodes in and the hero has overthrown his supposed father and succeeded him as Emperor – so what else is there for us to watch? Cause like, the hero is backed by a magical faction so even if some of his numerous brothers would challenge him for the throne, there really is nothing for him to worry about. So why the heck is this show 56 episodes long? It’s never a good sign if you have to go read up on the synopsis. Apparently, the romance between the leads will be tested so much that the heroine will split the universe and create an alternate timeline just so she could save the hero. Oh so that’s what they will spend 53 episodes on? But from where I’m sitting – what romance? I mean I like the hero’s righteous prince persona, but he has no chemistry with the heroine at all. Nothing happened between the leads, not even a love-at-first-sight kind of situation. And then out of nowhere the hero is grabbing her and hugging her all the time. Like, sir, that’s just creepy, if not downright sexual harassment. And yet we’re supposed to believe that they’re so madly in love that the hero would propose marriage and plan to enthrone her as empress by episode 3? Nah.)
Love Through a Millennium (D) (snail-paced. And not funny. And not intriguing. And not cute and does not make me root for the leads to get together. Is there something wrong with these shows or is there something wrong with me? Like I literally dropped like THREE freaking shows just today. Seriously, writers, directors, producers – freaking get your acts together, will you?!)
The Destiny of White Snake (D) (I love Yang Zi dearly, and she’s super adorable as the spermatozoa snake – as somebody mentioned in the comments section – but her character was upsettingly stupid so I had to abandon it. Besides, there was no chemistry with the male lead so there was no incentive to stay.)
Well Intended Love (G) (at first, despite the red flags, I fell for Ling Yizhou hook, line, and sinker that I wondered why they had to give the show such a stupid name because it put me off for like a whole year. Then the red flags proved to be an actual deal breaker and I understood the title – because Validating Rape Culture would put too many people off. Look, spoilers will follow ok. So fresh-out-of-college aspiring actress Xia Lin gets diagnosed with leukemia. Although devastated, she finds out that Ling is a compatible bone marrow donor and sets out to beg the cold and arrogant CEO to help her. The CEO demands that she marry him in return, and they settle on a 2-year contract marriage. So early on in the marriage, the prickly dude is super sweet and I melted puddles in my living room for him, so you can imagine how Xia Lin stands no chance against him. And I mean, at first glance, this dude looks perfect: He’s rich, fairly good looking, but most importantly, he’s kind and gentle towards you. Until Xia Lin discovers that Ling faked her medical diagnosis: since he owns the private hospital Xia Lin went to, he worked in cahoots with some medical staff in order to force her to his side. The reason he offered? She showed him kindness a couple of times during chance encounters in the past years, so he “fell in love” with her and had her stalked. If that is not the classic abuser/stalker/rapist male entitlement argument then I don’t know what is. The only redeeming grace here is that Xia Lin is truly a strong female character and she did not fall for any of his bullshit. Well, I guess later on she did, because she went back to him. But then by staying with the show, so did I, I guess – so maybe a better title for the show should be Stockholm Syndrome.
Because essentially that’s the argument – even though Ling stalked her, tricked her into marriage, and at some point literally imprisoned her, at least he’s not as bad as some of the other villains in the show. These other villains, though, rather than lifted the show, actually bogged it down. The 2nd half of the series was full of bizarre plot twists of stupid villainous plots that got dragged on and on that I wondered why I didn’t stop watching. And then the main villain is revealed to be Ling’s stepbrother – as if it wasn’t transparent as day the 2nd time he showed up – whose plan was to take revenge on Ling’s estranged mother for making his late mother’s life miserable by tormenting Ling’s precious wife. Then it turns out Mama Ling cared for neither biological nor step sons and all parties involved are just bazinga’d. Given that the whole show hinged upon Ling’s and his stepbrother’s crazy sense of entitlement due to their twisted childhood and upbringing, I think the best title for this series would be Shitty Parents Raise Psychopathic Criminals. As a final note, I must mention that the two secondary couples are cute, much, much less problematic than the main couple, and have sufficient character development, so kudos on the show for that but as for the main show, I’m terribly sorry I ever started it. Suffice to say I’ll not be continuing with Season 2.)
Unique Lady (D)
The Night of the Comet (D)
I Cannot Hug You (D) (the vampiress heroine is literally hunting the male lead as a food source under the guise of pursuing a romance with him – that’s totally predatory. And worse, the male lead totally suffers from a mental illness. Not saying heroes cannot suffer from mental illness, just that this bit makes him an even more vulnerable victim than the average guy and that makes this show very hard to swallow indeed. If you can’t see what I mean, just try switching the genders and you’ll immediately spot the problem.)
Go Go Squid (show is called Squid after the heroine’s online moniker, but the show is really focussed on the male lead. Like, the female lead started out interesting but slowly lost her essence when she fell in love – an issue that the series was actually aware of and commented on, so let me leave it at that. It’s a little icky calling it a bildungsroman because dude is 30 years old, but the show is essentially that: an ex-star-CTF-player-turned-CTF-club-owner masquerades as an uber introvert with the worst case of bitchy resting face to disguise how much of an immature coward with mega abandonment issue he is. At 19, on the verge of world championship, Han Shangyan’s entire world shattered because his team captain discovered that he had fathered a special needs child and decided to step down in order to better care for her. For ten entire years, Shangyan carried around the grudge of this “unforgivable sin” and had built a life in spite of his bitterness at being unable to professionally compete. But, 1) team captain was only stepping down because he felt no longer qualified to lead the team and wanted Shangyang to replace him; 2) team captain had a valid reason? It’s not like cap sold out or betrayed them for another team?; 3) team captain’s girlfriend, also part of the team, was able to be a professional and look beyond the personal issue (child was fathered before they were together and cap had just found out now along with everyone else) so why couldn’t he?; and 4) nobody told him to quit competing and in fact everybody begged him to stay. So he had no right to stay angry at the team for “shattering his dream” for a whole decade. Like, making a rash, emotional decision at 19 is perfectly understandable; sulking and blaming everybody else for it even when you turned 30 is just absurd and childish. So, since the hero is such a baby, the romance side really disappointed me.
What saved this show from getting a G is if you looked at it as a sports show. Granted, the whole CTF thing is a mere plot device – the show doesn’t even show us a proper gameplay once and I still have no idea what CTF is after 41 freaking episodes – but the beauty of that is you can replace CTF with any competitive niche and you’d still get the same story. The sensitive treatment of the vicious cycle of competitive sport is a highlight for me – how the fame of one champion is built upon the “death” of thousands of other aspirants; the blood and sweat and tears of dedicating your life to something that might end in utter failure; the opposition from the very people whose support you’re hoping for; the fact that you are simultaneously friends and rivals with your teammates and opponents; the clock ticking on how much time you have left to compete; the toll of training and competing on your physical selves and personal lives; the mismatch of ambition and talent; and the courage to face reality and accept failure.)
The King’s Avatar (omg RRRRRRRRRRRRRR) (in the beginning I hesitated to start this series because the reviews said there was no romance, that it would be all straight up gaming. I don’t know why I thought that might cause the series to be dry, but that turned out to be a major, major strength of the show. The highlight of the show, of course, is the superbly rendered, breathtakingly beautiful CGI gameplay. Like, the fight scenes are so elegant they legit make me feel like joining an MMORPG immediately. And the thing is, victory doesn’t unrealistically always side with the heroes so all the battles, no matter how “small” the stake, are absolute nail-biters that’ll push you right to the edge of your seats. Truthfully the fights are so enjoyable with high rewatch value that I sometimes find myself wishing the show would skip the human scenes in favour of the game.
On the other hand, stepping back and looking at the scheme of things objectively, what gives the fights significance is the emotional attachment viewers have with the human characters that operate the game combatants: the rookies, the gifteds, the self-doubters, the cocky ones, the desperate ones, the lonely ones, those doing well, those playing badly, the idealists, the corrupt, the pupils, the masters. The game allows us to track the trajectory of their growth and it’s just refreshing to watch. The most refreshing of these characters, of course, is the hero Ye Xiu, who, played by the lovely Yang Yang, looks like he’s literally stepped out of a manga. Good looks aside, tho, the story follows the professional eSport player and team captain as he is kicked out of his team and sets out to build another professional team with a new character and a self-made weapon. Now, it sounds like he would have an understandable reason to sulk for 10 years like Han Shangyan from Go Go Squid but Ye Xiu is eternally unperturbed. Most people assume that he’s building another team so he can take revenge for his unfair dismissal but that could not be further from the truth: he simply loves playing and to play at the level that befits his skills and expertise he needs a professional team in order to fight professional-level rivals, so he builds one. That’s not to say that he is impervious and unfeeling – which would be unrealistic – it’s just that as a master tactician and opportunist, Ye Xiu is naturally future-oriented and always seeks the advantage in any situation he faces. Anger and grudges don’t benefit him, so he simply does not bother. And personally, as a teacher, what I like most about him is that he is a truly talented teacher: he genuinely enjoys helping others grow and he knows exactly the push, whether soft or harsh, that a person needs at any given time.
Of course the show has weaknesses. One is how flushed the newbie team is. Like, they seem to be doing okay even though they don’t seem to have any sponsors. I mean, at this point they wouldn’t have gotten any prize money yet, right? Hmmm, suspicious much. Another is the uneven development of plot. In the beginning they were ambushed from all sides by so many guilds and then all of a sudden all the malevolence simply dissipated instead of intensifying? Highly unlikely. Then Ye Xiu almost randomly having a twin brother – he popped in once and then is never seen again. Also, since there is such a big cast of characters, the show is unable to keep track of many of them beyond the initial introduction that quite a few of them ended up being quite two-dimensional, for instance headstrong and brash Tang Rou, erratic Bao Rongxing, analyst extraordinaire Luo Ji, under-qualified An Weiyi. But it’s a testament to how compelling their journey towards becoming fully-fledged pro-gamers that those sins are easily overlooked in our anticipation of the next match. Oh, and one final thing I’d like to note – damn it feels like a Fuyao reunion in here, and that’s a cool bonus for me.)
Eternal Love of Dream (D) (dreadfully tedious. Without a main couple to support, the stupidity of the Bei Fengjiu and Dong Hua Dijun pairing becomes painfully obvious.)
Advance Bravely (D) (the reviews say it’s BL – boy love – and that’s fine. But what’s not fine is stalking your “love interest”. That’s not love that just criminal and plain creepy get the hell out of here.)
Joy of Life Season 1 (R but G because of cliffhanger ending) (This is by far the kookiest show I’ve seen ever. It has very good plot – very tight, very good. Like, it’s layers and layers of conspiracy and characters constantly one-upping each other and they give you hints so you guess and you feel smug about it but then the reveal comes and yeah you’re right but there are so many other twists accompanying that correct guess. And the pacing is good, too. Like, you’re just hurtling through surmounting one obstacle after another with the hero who is roughly just stabbing in the dark. And there is a delightful assortment of characters and all of them are fully fleshed out [except maybe the Emperor like he’s wonderfully terrifying but his omniscience approaches that of God – where’s the fun in that?]. But. But the tone of the show is just weird throughout. Like, usually shows would have dramatic scenes and then comic reliefs separately. In contrast, this show seems unable to decide whether it wants a scene to be dramatic or comedic so it just makes a lot of scenes both but they don’t quite work. Those jumbled up scenes are just jarring and weird. And, its biggest sin – gosh, please somebody cut off the limbs of the sound director. The show has beautiful background sounds, but the sound director seems to play them at random? Like, scenes that are not quite sad are accompanied by the most heartbreaking lament and then very dramatic fight scenes get songs with comedic undertones like what the hell is going on here? So this show is generally well-written but some of the film making choices are just bizarre.
Now I need to rant about the cliffhanger ending. See when I started this series I didn’t know it was incomplete – the streaming site I use did not mention “Season 1” in the title, and I didn’t read up on the series due to my deep fear of spoilers. Based on fan gossips, “the drama adaptation is planning for a five-year 3-season run”. Bloody hell. And that’s not even the worst bit. The worst bit is season 2, much less season 3, is not guaranteed and in fact the script isn’t even ready. Can I just go jump out my window now? Because the show ended on an absolute cliffhanger – spoiler – our hero Fan Xian has figured out his parentage and that the 2nd Prince is his true rival. Right now he and the sleeper agent that he has rescued, Yan Bingyun, are surrounded by 2nd Prince’s henchman and are being forced to come under 2nd Prince’s service. Fan Xian boldly asserts that he will not succumb, trusting that he had an ally in Yan Bingyun, when Yan Bingyun literally stabs him in the back. Fan Xian falls to the ground and the story ends there. Now, if the story is to continue we have 2 possibilities: 1) the two young masters are working together and this was staged for 2nd Prince’s benefit or 2) Fan Xian was truly betrayed but he will somehow rebound. In any case, the Emperor did say that Fan Xian needs to be driven close to death before he would realise his true potential, so this plot point fits into that. But since we don’t know whether the story will continue, I will treat the story as finished there. Mid-conspiracy, mid-ultimatum, our spy-saboteur-ambassador hero unfortunately places the wrong bet and paid with his life. As ending to a fictional work, it is highly unsatisfying but in the real world, it’s realistic. Not everybody dies after unraveling all the secrets of their life and achieving all their ambitions. So yeah I’m angry at the producers for cutting this wonderful drama right in the middle of things, but I’m resigned if Fan Xian’s life and story end there.)
The Legend of Hao Lan (D) (completely meh.)
Guardian (D) (totally overrated. First episode was charming enough, but then by episode 4 everything was just tedious and the villain overwhelmingly idiotic so I had to leave it.)
A Love So Beautiful (D)
Dreaming Back to the Qing Dynasty (D) (I desperately wanted to like this one but it’s not exactly funny, not mysterious enough, and it tried really hard to be smart with the quantum theories but the whole thing was clearly way out of its depth. The worst part was its slower-than-snail pace that by episode 4 – 4! – nothing significant has happened yet so since the leads are not quite charming enough I’m forced to give this one up.)
Ming Dynasty (even though the show takes huge artistic license, it was like watching a text book. The pace can only be described kindly as deliberate; in less forgiving moods the pace is indulgent. Everything is examined in minute detail; this is the first time I’ve seen a palace drama where the country isn’t magically rich – this show made the royals tally up everything from the cost of war, to the funding of crowd-appeasing ceremonies, down to their very own daily living expenses. And these practical and political intrigue take center stage in the show: if you’re waiting for the OTP moments there’s just absolutely none. Even any elements of cattiness of the harem is glossed over. Instead, the show is focussed on the price of absolute power: the heady intoxication, the bitter loneliness, the sacrifices, the uncertainties, the guilt, the paranoia, and the fierce defence of that power to ensure survival. The main characters who are fighting for the throne all suffer from tragic flaws of Shakespearean proportions, and that made the story intriguing enough that I stayed until the end. But I think it must be said that Zhu Yawen carried the show on his back: when his character Zhu Zhan Ji died in episode 40-something of 62, the spark of the show died, too.)
Under the Power (D)
Fairyland Lovers (D)
My Girlfriend is an Alien (D)
Fox in the Screen (D)
Love Me If You Dare (G) (I give this one A for effort, because they tried really hard to make it a hard-hitting thriller, but everything is just predictable and silly. Like, you can see all the twists coming 5 episodes before they show up. Like, if you wanna be mindfucked you might as well go watch Zhu Zhan Ji face off with his grandfather Zhu Di in Ming Dynasty or watch everyone scheme and plot against each other in Joy of Life, just to name a few I’ve seen recently. Here… everything is toned down and explained, which robbed us of the joy of discovery. Watching this show was like watching the SparkNotes of the show they probably envisioned for us.
And to make matters worse, they really had to go all out to make Bo Jin Yan innocent so they could have a happy ending like that’s just lame. He’s a criminal psychologist who is probably an empath and you’re telling me he’s never had that split second of second-guessing himself? Never found the lure of the dark side irresistible? Never ever been persuaded by the logic of the other side? You guys have heard of Will Graham, right? Have seen Brad Pitt in Se7en, yes? I mean, on the other hand, it’s easy to see why BJY wouldn’t have gone over – because the supposed criminal masterminds are all nothing but bumbling idiots.
Speaking of BJY, now, I don’t understand his character at all. When we’re first introduced to him, he’s a professor of criminal psychology who’s a genius with a genius temperament a la BBC Sherlock or Sheldon Cooper to boot. And then suddenly he falls in love with his translator/assistant Yao Yao and he becomes completely normal and boring. Like, he even stopped being brusque. And of course, the biggest question is – why did he fall in love with her? Given that he’s supposed to be a genius and utterly deliberate in everything he does, him falling in love for no reason is so out of character. Honestly it was amusing for a bit, but because it made the character development not only problematic but bland, I find I’m totally annoyed by it. The only reason I forbore the show is the shallow one that Wallace Huo is so, so very easy on the eyes, sigh.
And don’t even get me started on Yao Yao. She started as a strong character but gradually becomes stupider and weaker. By the end of the series, she is literally reduced to a damsel in distress who needed rescuing, and once she was, she was effectively out of the action as BJY carries the story alone. Yao Yao? She just sits in her hospital bed crying, waiting for him to return. What kind of “strong” heroine is that? And what’s up with the actress’s choice of playing Yao Yao as someone who moves like an 80-year-old? Like, I saw the actress before in Oh My General and she had so much spunk there that I actually recognised her at first glance even though I dropped that show, so I’m really confused why she chose to be so diffident around BJY even though she’s supposed to be smart, strong, and brave.
Problematic characters aside, my biggest gripe is how do these people understand each other? Do they have a TARDIS translator or something? Because the actions take place in China [Mandarin], Hong Kong [Cantonese], and the United States [English] and yet the characters are shown to be interacting with each other in their own languages seamlessly. Like, what am I supposed to make of that?)
The Legend of Dragon Pearl (D) (lame. Just lame. The rebels looking to restore the Ming Dynasty were supposed to be cool and highly trained super agents but they’re all absolute idiots and their plots are so stupid. If dear Yang Zi wasn’t so damn adorable and didn’t have electric chemistry with the dude playing Kang Xi I wouldn’t have suffered the series for as long as I did.)
Legend of Yunxi (D) (too predictable and rife with plot holes that even hottie-thirst-trap-emperor-who-takes-more-baths-than-any-other-CDrama-emperors antagonist Hu Bing could not prevent me from falling asleep.)
Flipped (D)
Peacekeeping Infantry Battalion (D)
Our Glamorous Time (D)
Novoland: The Castle in the Sky (G) (I have soooooo many gripes with this show that I will just list them in bullet points:
- What in the F is that creepily jarring and jarringly creepy ending song? It’s so creepy that of the many, many complaints I have, this one is listed first.
- The series has such confusing world building: how can they have nuclear weapons but no electricity? Like, they even have flying ships and holographic communicators but still have to use candles? What? Everything is just brushed off – yep, it’s magic. That’s just cheating.
- Why does everything look like a student project? Everything from the elementary script to the kooky cheap-looking sets and props to the ill-fitting costumes.
- Why in the world isn’t the charismatic Prince Regent of Wingkind the hero of this series? Instead we have his stupid nephew who admittedly started as an intriguing character but gradually just became stupider and even more stupid as the series progresses. Like, he started as an iron-willed underage emperor who was willing to take Machiavellian measures if necessary in order to become a good ruler only to forsake everything every time anything mildly inconvenient threatened his girlfriend. I mean, if the Prince Regent had rebelled I would have understood and be firmly in his camp. In fact, I really hoped he had.
- The romance is annoying. First of all, really not sure why the Emperor of Wingkind is crazy about the female lead. Secondly, can you guys just communicate? Both of you keep jumping to conclusions causing so many unnecessary misunderstandings. I think the series hoped viewers would be anxious and sad about the couple’s “plight”, but I find them both aggravatingly annoying since they like to hide important information from the other side, make decisions that affect both of them without consulting the other, and then get hurt because they could not understand what the other side was doing. That’s not “love”, okay, that’s just being childish and selfish.
- A female character was drugged and then raped and the reason offered was because the perpetrator “loved her too much” like ptuiiiiiii. Rape is rape and I’m glad she never forgave him for that.
- The female characters are all useless. The female lead started quite strong and then was reduced to a plot device. Seriously. Like, she supposedly has superhero level hearing but it only functions as a plot device when she needs to sense a character’s arrival or some such nonsense. She never uses her power in any meaningful way.
To sum up, the story is very predictable, but I’m a character person and the characters were initially intriguing and that caught me. However, the quality of the writing steadily deteriorated that I would have left the series had it been longer.)
Arsenal Military Academy (omg so R) (first of all, it’s a military school drama, so you know that means just soooo many beautiful eye candies. But more than that, these eye candies are all beautifully written. They each have distinct characters and personal arcs, and the show devotes enough time to develop them well. At the core, the story is about a bunch of military officer cadets undertaking their 2-year training at the eponymous Arsenal Military Academy around the time Japan made the 21 Demands of the Chinese government; the show depicts the young boys, mostly of affluent backgrounds, discovering their voice and identity as Chinese nationalists resisting Japanese influence. The different personalities bring about colourful clashes and yet it’s beautiful to see them gel into one little clique as they band together through different missions. I especially love that despite them being a little gang, the show depicts them as having separate things and issues and sometimes even the most “senior” lead characters missed out on major events because the plot dictates that they’re out of town or something.
The best thing is, despite it being a military drama, there is romance a-galore. The female lead alone has like 4 suitors, and you’d be really hard-pressed to choose which character to ship her with – because they’re all very seductive in their different ways. And the secondary female lead’s love story is also deeply heartbreaking for her and for the man who yearns patiently for her. What sets the show apart, tho, is the show’s clear priority. The romance never overwhelms the characters’ main objective of driving out Japanese influence, and in fact props up the development of that plot line. Even in the midst of their most jealous moments, the love rivals firmly stand together as a united front against their common enemy, and I think that is such a refreshing thing to watch. Their romantic struggles are encapsulated in the divine ending song Poison – or, as I like to call it, the Shen Brothers’ theme song.
I think the writers deserve special shoutout for making the two female leads so different and yet very strong in their very own way. The main lead, Xie Xiang who masquerades as her dead brother Xie Liangchen in order to enrol in AMA grows from a weak girl who’s always last in any military exercise into a capable soldier who’s able to undertake solo missions and save herself before the heroes could even figure out that she’s in danger. The other heroine, bratty diva Qu Mantin is a superstar who tries to make her own way without depending on men in a world where a well-bred lady is only expected to make a good marriage. And yet, when push comes to shove, Qu Mantin is perfectly capable of gritting her teeth and pulling herself up, and even manages to overtly battle and defeat the Japanese via political overtures and capturing public sentiments. That’s not to say that these two girls are without flaws, but the flaws made them all the more human and likeable.
Oh sure the show has sins. One of them is conveniently skipping anything they could not explain. For example, in the very first scene, we see Xie Xiang about to get in trouble as she goes for the medical examination in order to enrol at AMA. Then she comes of out the hospital beaming that she’s made it, and we are never told how she managed that. And this isn’t the only instance, but it would be major, major spoilers if I were to complain about the other incidents. Another thing that grates on me is we’re told during their orientation that AMA is very strict that anyone caught drinking, gambling, or leaving school compounds without permission would be dismissed on the spot but then all our main characters flout all the rules, especially the no outing rule, quite openly. Like, they’re just always strolling around town getting in trouble with the Japanese – if they had just stayed in school, like 75% of the plot would not happen.
Perhaps the biggest sin is the ending. After about 40-ish episodes, it feels like the series suddenly thinks it should end and so the writers just finished up that arc and the show ended. Thank God they actually finished up that arc, but if you look at the structure of the whole show, nothing has changed since the beginning of the series – except maybe that our protagonists have now graduated. We weren’t updated on the 21 Demands developments, and the Japanese were still at large in China. Like, all the blood and sweat throughout the 2 years didn’t really amount to much. So, to me, the ending feels hollow and that’s the biggest sin of all but all the other aspects of the show are brilliant and I’d recommend this show any day.)
The Story of Yanxi Palace (R) (praise for Yanxi is almost unanimous, and for once it is actually well-deserved. Like, the story started bat-shit crazy – in the best way possible – and held its pace all the way to the end. It’s the first harem drama I’ve seen in a long time that’s actually harem – any state or political matters are determinedly pushed off screen unless it directly pertains to the fight between the ladies. The most brilliant aspect of Yanxi is its empathy – Yanxi will make you hate a character to the core and yet you’d bawl your eyes out when fate turns on the selfsame spiteful villains. Because, in case it still evades, Yanxi makes it clear that the ladies of the harem are first and foremost victims of a patriarchal system that enslaved beautiful, smart women and made them turn on each other. The show reminds us not to judge the ladies: when forced to fight for survival, anyone can be driven into desperados capable of the most heinous acts of cruelty and depravity.)
Yanxi Palace: Princess Adventure (ehhhhh. Vastly inferior to the original. I tolerated it for the few moments that Wei Yingluo would come up and electrify the screen. To be fair, tho, even though the resolution is contrived [and, frankly, unconvincing], the bulk of the story is well-built – but you’ll need intimate knowledge of the original in order for it to make any sense. It feels like this show was a compilation of deleted scenes of the original series that the writers couldn’t bring themselves to abandon.)
The Legends (just… weird. Very weird. But it kinda works, too. This show feels like it is written by a naughty but genius student who is quite lazy to study but always turns in A- works 2 minutes before the deadline who is taking the piss on their teacher by submitting a fanfic of The Hunchback of Notre Dame written in a universe where logic does not exist, to the genre of Chinese fantasy, with the Baby Thanos conundrum as the central issue, a heavy emphasis on romance, and a side of Lacan and Freud for their writing assignment. The final boss fight and ending were severely underwhelming tho so I might demote this assignment to a C.)
The Ugly Queen (D)
Best Get Going (D)
The Handsome Siblings (D) (this is supposed to be a good show, but the characters and their motivation don’t make sense. Like, we are sisters and we love the same guy but he elopes with our maid so we will kill him and the maid, then raise one of his twin sons, then convince him that his twin brother was responsible for his parents’ death so the two brothers will kill each other and that’s how we take revenge on the dude that “betrayed” us. Like what the?? Putting aside the audacious sense of entitlement and that there are so many loose ends like the boys may make other choices in life or just die for other causes before they could follow your script, you have so much time and patience ah to invest into this stupidly protracted and convoluted revenge scheme? On top of that, the actors, for all they’re so famous now, can’t act for shit, and they are more caricatures than actual characters so I’ll not waste my time on this nonsense.)
Winter Begonia (R) (generally superbly written with layers and layers of two dimensional characters interacting with each other and the course of history that the story is gripping. Sadly, the series was affected by the newly introduced 40-episode cap and was reduced to 49 episodes instead of the slated 56. This means that all the good work done by the first half of the series went out with a whimper – the deeply unsatisfying ending left everything hanging except for Cheng Fengtai and Shang Xirui’s relationship status. Even that is done hastily and in way that is out of character.
Begonia is certainly a character-driven piece. Don’t get me wrong, plenty happens in the plot, but you’ll need to delve into the characters to understand all the undercurrents. It is a sprawling story, if that makes any sense. The breakout character is certainly Shang Xirui, a highly talented opera star, and the show follows the story of his relationship with courier magnate, Cheng Fengtai. Xirui is a spoilt little kitten who is loved or hated by those who know him – there’s no moderation when it comes to Xirui – who is deeply philosophical despite his near-illiteracy. The paradox that Xirui embodies allows Fengtai to find simplicity and freedom from duties and responsibilities that he constantly shoulders. Due to censorship issues, the two men are presented as friends, but there is unmistakable love in Fengtai’s eyes every time he looks at the manja Xirui. These two made the series worth watching even if the ending was botched.
But I must complain about the lack of resolution of the Japanese plot. Like, fine, I could read up about how China drove out the Japanese from Wikipedia, but I wanna know if the elder Commander Cao was successful in pulling a Big Boss [if you miss the reference, read up about the Big Boss of MGS3]. And I desperately wanna know the fates of the wild bandit queen Gu Dali who helped her baby daddy, the younger Commander Cao, ambush the Japanese 4 days after giving birth. Like, their uncertain fate drive me insane because I ship them even more than Xirui and Fengtai, and I ship Xirui and Fengtai HARD.)
Ever Night Season 01 (R) (I don’t know how the series does it, but it is deeply addictive despite having numerous sins. The biggest sin is how confusing it is: the show seems to want to tell 12,000 stories simultaneously and we keep being introduced to new storylines and characters even during the final stages of its 60 episodes. Moreover, some of these storylines and characters sometimes seem to be forgotten by the show for the longest time, and then they suddenly resurface. Which makes the show so very confusing. Now, IDK if the bulk of the confusion comes from my lack of knowledge of Chinese folktales and lore, but I feel like the show could have done more to help the audience along. On the other hand, the show is somehow genius in that the questions and confusion strung me along: instead of dropping the show, I persisted because my curiosity needs to be satisfied.
Another sin is the uneven pacing. The show sometimes speeds through certain storylines and then dwells unnecessarily long on others. Of particular interest is the what? 9-episode? lull somewhere in between to showcase a love triangle between the male lead Ning Que, the female lead Sang Sang, and Ning Que’s love interest, Mo Shan Shan. But Ning Que’s ultimate choice was clear as day from the get go, and the diversion did not enrich anyone’s character and did not progress the plot in any significant way, so I don’t know why they had to put it in. Like, the romance was lacklustre and Ning Que and Mo Shan Shan didn’t even have chemistry except as friends. And speaking of chemistry, the main lead couple is another issue. They have intense chemistry, but as siblings or besties. And then in the final leg the show suddenly turned around and tried to convince us that they were in love? That’s just… incestuous.
The best thing the show does is its lessons in… everything. Like mentioned, the show has a myriad of different characters and they all have different personalities and issues, and they are all on different journeys. Which affords all of them different lessons. And it’s so very enjoyable watching the characters wax or wane depending on the choices that they make.)
Ever Night Season 02 (D) (Season 01 finished off some arcs, but there are still so many unanswered questions that as soon as I finished S01, I started S02. Now, the biggest turn-off of S02 is the change in Ning Que. Not only was the actor replaced, but the character was also written very differently that I struggled to adapt to the new guy and his interpretation. However, I would have persevered if that was the show’s only sin, but A LOT of things were revamped including so many other actors that there really was no sense of continuity from S01. For instance, Ning Que’s teacher Fu Zi (“The Sage”) changed from a solemn pillar of wisdom with a cheeky side shared only with trusted few to a downright kooky character – and so did all of Ning Que’s schoolmates. The Grand Prince, who at the end of S01 had been demoted to commoner, is suddenly back as the Grand Prince. Triad Boss 2nd Bro Chu, who went missing for a year, is suddenly back in the capital and actually in charge of things. Like what??? Moreover, Ning Que and Sang Sang’s clinginess as a couple is very hard to stomach because they really are siblings rather than lovers. On top of that, the pace of S02 is just so very draaaaaaaaged out that I was bored. I scrambled to so start the season because I wanted answers to questions posed by S01, but for reasons listed above – and a niggling suspicion that S02 wouldn’t, or wouldn’t be able to, satisfactorily answer them – I had to abandon this disappointing season that feels like a direct-to-DVD sequel.)
Ancient Detective (D) (hands down, this is probably the best Cdrama I have ever seen in terms of cinematography, but the story isn’t quite smart enough to keep up so I had to drop it.)
Fake Princess (simple innocent fun. Feels like it’s written by a 4th grader – small issues are dramatised like crazy. Still, shut down your entire brain and run that treadmill or fold laundry as you watch this show.)
Girlfriend (D) (just… SOOOOOOOOO many red flags that I was literally screaming at the screen. It somehow managed to string me along to like episode 10, but when the ML resorts to moving into an apartment above the FL just to “charm” [read: harass] her into submission, yeah nah.)
Dance of the Sky Empire (D) (this one has potential, but everything is wasted by uneven pacing and unnecessary emphasis on lacklustre, cliche romance that even Xu Kai’s charm couldn’t save it.)
Love of Thousand Years (D)
Dance of the Phoenix (feels very amateurish, like a student production on a huge studio budget. Despite its many, many sins, including blackface and negative body portrayal [like, the heroine’s bestie was poisoned and the effect was an insatiable appetite that made her fat and this was like the worst tragedy ever. It’s cool that bestie remains kind and friendly when she’s fat, but she was disheveled and then she got the antidote and, not to mention that they changed the whole actress, suddenly her plain makeup and hair got very elaborate like what fat people cannot be presentable??], the story was just inconsistent and all over the place. Still, despite the actors being full adults than teens, I watched the show as a high school show and actually enjoyed their growing up process that the show passes muster instead of getting a G.)
Royal Nirvana (D) (first episode was very well done, like, very taut, very high polish that I felt like a violin string about to snap. But then, that’s it. Like, I get the intention but the next episodes failed to live up to the first. If this was an exam, then the authors spent like 50 minutes of their allocated one hour to meticulously work on the intro and then muddled their way through the rest of the essay. And I was bemused to see comments about the Crown Prince being a crybaby but I watched 9 episodes? and yeah dude just cries allllll the time. Like, he is actually capable and does dish out punches as well but he just cries while doing it I’m like dude please stop crying.)
Please Love Me (it’s a silly show that I had no expectation but I actually enjoyed this one very much. Like, the heroine is genuinely a strong female character that’s also utterly feminine and I just loved that. And the other characters all 3-dimensional and nicely fleshed out. Like, nothing serious happens in the series, but it’s really just enjoyable to watch this bunch of friends and lovers go through life. Gotta say, tho, all their good work is undone by the stupidly confounding final episode. I honestly don’t know why the writer decided on that ending when there were so many other possible ways to go.)
Empresses in the Palace (D) (I might have been able to sit through this one if I hadn’t seen Yanxi.)
Maiden Holmes (D) (charming enough for a bit, but then the pace grew unbearably slow.)
The Heiress (D) (so obnoxious I couldn’t even sit through half of the first episode.)
The Story of Ming Lan (R) (this is a grand romance. Like romance romance, not romantic romance. Like, although there is romance, the main lead couple doesn’t even start to properly communicate until like episode 25, and even then, don’t you go wishing they’ll be together by episode 30 cause hahahahahaha jokes on you. In fact, our hero Gu Tingye is absent from the show more than he’s in it. [On a side note, Feng Shaofeng is cool but it’s really quite painful to watch him play a teenager at the start of the series hahahaha. But he really grew well into his character later on.] This character-driven drama is definitely not a show for the impatient – it took me 5 episodes before I was properly hooked, and I only persevered because fans of the show have kindly advised against hastily abandoning the show for the pay off is worthy. And I heartily agree. Ming Lan is the focal point of the show, but the story is of her era of history and of the wide and complicated network of people around her. The best thing about the show is it has sooooooo many characters, and yet each one of them is beautifully fleshed out and brings a unique aspect to the story. They might be as different as night and day, but Ming Lan is all the way up there with Yanxi.)
The Romance of Tiger and Rose (deeply flawed. Feels like it’s written by a first year screenwriting student who’s also taking a paper on feminism, but it’s got heart – even if you’ll have to wait till the end to see it. Still, it’s charming enough that I actually stayed all the way and didn’t regret it.)
Love Better Than Immortality (D)
Intense Love (D)
The Love by Hypnotic (D) (so painful watching a stupid, cowardly hero clipping the wings of a carefree, outstanding heroine.)
Closer to You (the first few episodes R, but failed to maintain its pace. Sweet enough tho.) (Oh to be young and innocent again. To be young and think that your entire world can be crushed at any moment, and yet, poised on the brink of possibility – what a beautiful, beautiful thing. School isn’t my usual genre – I’m just over it, you know – but this series captures the vulnerability of being young so beautifully that I was moved. Those small scars of school that left a lingering trauma, the earnest teacher wanting the best for their students, the little moments that turn out to define you as a person… Admittedly the second half dragged a little and the ending threatened to spiral into a never-ending cycle of groundhog day, but the ending actually managed to address the vaguely pedophilic age disparity so I’m pretty satisfied.)
Dating in the Kitchen (D) (I was really sad to drop this one, but I just couldn’t carry on. I mean, Zhou Lu Si is adorbs as always [on a side note, I fear she’s becoming a type. I hope she’s happy, and if she isn’t, hope she gets her break soon because she’s just absolutely lovely] so we don’t need to talk about her. Except maybe that she’s a leftie but her cooking double was not. Which was not a big deal, but I noticed it hahaha.
The hero the on the other hand… Like, Lin Shen did such a good job with him that Lu Jin is so handsome in a ruthless way and yet his vulnerability of a little lost boy with huge mommy issues shines through. As a CEO-type hero, Lu Jin started very well: despite being a snob – comes with being rich and spoilt – he’s actually kind and polite to everyone he meets. And he’s not a jerk to the heroine, which is a big thing in my book. But we soon realise the extent of his cowardice when it comes to his personal life. Like, he wasn’t able to admit even to his secretary that he liked Lu Si’s Gu Shengnan, much less defend her. He just kinda expected her to fight the whole world for him while he waited. Honestly, when they were forced to break up I cried buckets, but when he didn’t take any decisive action to hold on to her, I just couldn’t continue watching. It broke my heart too much. Like, I wanted to sit Gu Shengnan down and have a slow talk with her: sweetheart, I know you love him, but where do you see you two going? There’s no future with him, except one where you will always have to fight for him while he cowers in the corner, and you’ll soon grow to resent him for it and all the love will be lost. If I could, I’d advise Gu Shengnan to run away as far as she can, as fast as she can. I mean, do you guys even realise that you have absolutely no common ground besides food? If you guys got together, what will you two talk about? Absolutely nothing. So once the novelty of your cooking wears out, what is there to hold you together? Nothing. Because, sweetheart, he’s not looking for a partner in love – what he’s looking for is a babysitter, a mommy-substitute, and that is a disappointing, thankless role and I wouldn’t wish it on you.)
Legend of Lu Zhen (D) (first episode has to capture you but this one just didn’t. Like, everything is so crude and in-your-face. The scheming step-empress, the heartless stepmother, the pure-hearted prince who reluctantly stole his brother’s throne. No finesse, not subtlety whatsoever. No thanks.)
The Legend of Dugu (D) (Only Dugu Banruo and the villain Yuwen Hu seem to be the smart people around, so it was quite difficult to watch. Like, initially he was this Mr. Rochester but his ruthlessness was beautiful to behold so I actually shipped him and Banruo, but then he also seemed to grow stupid after she married someone else. And he was a just a second lead. Don’t get me started on the main ML Yang Jian. He was supposed to be this smart character masquerading as a good-for-nothing playboy to mislead Yuwen Hu, but he never had one smart thought? Like, his fiancee was clearly nasty and manipulating things and being evil and he just wouldn’t accept it even when undeniable evidence stared him in the face. So yeah, 11 episodes in and everyone is freaking stupid so I’ll have to let this one go.)
Love is Sweet (G) (RIFE with plot holes and red-flaggy behaviors from male and female characters, but somehow I couldn’t stop watching it. Even with THE most annoying secondary couple in all of dramaland. And the least subtle product placement scenes ever. I mean it’s Bai Lu and Leo Luo and Kido Gao, so it’s so very addictive despite its sins. BUT, whatever you do, tho, stop watching at episode 32 after the conclusion of that climax – you can’t miss it – because afterwards it’s just downhill and downhill right to the cringiEST finale I’ve ever seen. In theory, getting episodes after the happily-ever-after is intriguing, but there was absolutely no conflict – and you cannot get storytelling without conflict. I mean technically there were conflicts, but they were dealt in such a way that suddenly everything was okay like wth I wanna actually watch the leads take on the threats? It really felt like show switched to a less talented writer after the resolution of that big conflict, and the worst thing is this stupid writer had to go and do Kido Gao dirty by assassinating his character like that. Honestly, I wish I had dropped this at episode 32 and be left with a memorable impression instead of this raging disappointment.)
The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion (unpolished. The ambition is clear – and, by and large, achieved – but in the hands of a more talented writer this series would have been phenomenal. Because we have interesting characters and we follow their growth from relative innocence to being rather jaded, and their progression is actually logical. And yet, despite that, the characters are all somehow one-dimensional, so that’s pretty disappointing. I mean, the hero does not grow at all throughout the show, even as the heroine perhaps grew more ridiculous. And the villains [and the bloody emperor!] are written to be stupid. On purpose. Not like incidentally stupid or accidentally stupid, no – they’re literally stupid. Perhaps the only rather rounded character is the second male lead, Little Marquis Wu – he’s definitely the most fun character to follow – and his courtship with the secondary female lead, the level-headed Elder Miss Fu is a delight to watch. Story-wise, like I said, it’s got a huge potential. Like the subplots all actually contribute to the main arc and allow the hero and heroine’s lives to keep getting entangled and it makes sense for the most part – but a large part also depends on coincidences and convenient solutions. Still, if you shut down your brain, it’s a fun enough show to pass the time.)
Perfect and Casual
The Sleepless Princess (D) (cute enough in the beginning but got seriously bogged down by the teen episodes that I couldn’t keep going.)
Oh! My Sweet Liar! (D) (as above.)
Scarlet Heart (D) (Whoever said the Chinese original is superior to the Korean adaptation is really befuddled or just outright biased. I tried, I really tried, but I just couldn’t go on anymore. I mean, if I didn’t have so much affection for Scarlet Heart: Ryeo I would never have the stomach to persevere through Ruoxi’s affair with her brother-in-law. At least in Ryeo Hae Soo and Wang Wook had the decency to wait until the 8th prince’s wife died to embark on a full-fledged relationship; Ruoxi was tumbling around with Prince 8 even as she ponders how being his concubine [not even main wife!] has killed her elder sister’s spirit. Like, she must have been stuck in Qing Dynasty for far too long or something because no 21st century girl would be okay with that, least of all someone as feisty as Ruoxi was supposed to be. And Prince 8 would go from Ruoxi’s embrace right into making bedroom eyes at her elder sister and I just… Are we supposed to ship our heroine with this fuckboi? Did… did they actually want us to be angry at him so we would ship Ruoxi with Prince 4? Hmmm.
And then that affair ended – thank God – and suddenly she was in love with Prince 4? Like, when the hell did that happen? And the thing is, why did the affair even end? What makes Ruoxi choose 4 over 8? Simply because 4 will ascend while 8 rots in prison? Then that makes her nothing short of a calculative gold-digger, something that’s completely at odds with how the show tries to portray her. Because yes Hae Soo also left Wang Wook, but she left because his ambition began to overwhelm his morality; she left because he forsook his principles for the sake of the throne. Like Ruoxi, Hae Soo also ponders loving a man destined to lose the fight for the throne, but Hae Soo was willing to stay with Wang Wook to the bitter end had he stay the kind and gentle man that she fell for. It wasn’t winning or losing that she considered, surviving or dying, but the fact that he changed into a man who would condone anything in the name of ambition.
And the romance aside, the politics sucks. I was already at episode 18 and nothing has happened yet except rounds and rounds of expeditions to the steppes as if that was the only pressing concern of the Qing Emperor – but by episode 18, the Mongols didn’t seem to pose any threat at all? The machinations of the different princely factions are really quite lame. And the Emperor is really ineffectual. It is made abundantly clear that the Crown Prince is corrupt, but we don’t see the consequences of that and the Emperor really does nothing about it. Prince 4 is supposed to be unwillingly following the Crown Prince in order to further his own ambition, but we get no evidence that he’s doing anything to counter Crown Prince’s malice on the sly. Instead, he’s very effective at covering things up. The thing is, I guess it’s okay that the Crown Prince is corrupt because the narrative frames him as the villain, but so is the supposedly righteous faction of Prince 8. In fact, in multiple incidences, Prince 9, an underling of Prince 8, is even more out of hand than the Crown Prince. In a way, I guess that depiction of the ruling class is rather truthful – where can we find a fully righteous leader? – but as narrative foils to each other, it is problematic that both sides are flawed in the same way.
I didn’t make it far enough to understand Prince 4 and his actual politics, because by episode 18, we still know basically nothing of him whereas Wang So was given such a strong back story from the get go, one that helps the story develop wonderfully. Even Prince 8 – the only thing we know is that his mother is lowly ranked, so he has no maternal backing but that’s pretty much it. Even the Emperor’s clear preference for the Crown Prince isn’t effectively explored to show the emotional impact it had on the different princes. Compare the squandered potentials to Wang So’s terrible inferiority complex and mommy issues; to Wang Wook’s dilemma of wanting to be free versus being forced to join the fight for the throne in a desperate attempt to ensure his entire clan’s survival; and to Wang Moo’s protest at being named Crown Prince when he feels inadequate for the job. The characters of Ryeo are grey and nuanced, unlike the unrounded ones of Scarlet Heart. Nah, most of the time an adaptation is worse than the original but I think Ryeo is an exception because it manages to capture the wonderful spirit of Scarlet Heart even while marvelously addressing the shortcomings.)
You Are My Destiny (D) (if you have even a smidgen of affection for Qu Tan Er and Mo Lian Cheng, stay the heck away from this show. IDK why they would cast someone as vivacious as Qu Tan Er to play a doormat. As for the ML, IDK why his character was written to be so. His character started as the catalyst that helped out doormat pushover FL to gain confidence and start to believe in herself only to turn around a few episodes later to admonish her for not being “obedient” to him when she tried to be assertive. IDK if the show redeems both their characters later but I was out of there.)
My Unicorn Girl (straight up fluff romance chock full of illogical plot holes, inconsistent characterisations, and embarrassingly obvious plot devices, but it’s hard to complain because at the very start of the series the female lead frames the story as a little comic she’s drawn and asks that audiences indulges the liberties she’s taken. I mean, if you continued watching even after such a fair warning, you have no grounds to complain. And I was going to drop the series at the end of episode 1, but, as I’m fond to do, I read the comments and stumbled upon this gem and it perversely convinced me to stay:
Oooh, this one is for the books. In the first episode alone we got pretty much most of the tropes overused in dramas – the female lead disguising herself as a man + who is an orphan sacrificing herself for her sibling + and loses everything in one day + and the “chaebol” male lead + who has prosopagnosia + a silly sidekick and a popular girl at his feet + but doesn’t want to take over his family business. So they meet several times in one day in different locations + one of which is a highly aesthetic, but absolutely random place. + They bicker with each other + but then they accidentally kiss. + And of course it’s their first kiss (or at least for her). + Then at night it’s snowing. + The male lead has an umbrella, but the female lead doesn’t. + And we get a scene of the male lead slowly following the female lead as she’s crying.
And this is just the first episode.
I suppose I cannot poke the show on the romance side, but I really wish they had more hockey scenes. Heck, the moment I finished the show I had to go watch D2: The Mighty Ducks because the action scenes in the show were like appetisers that are unaccompanied by the main course.)
2021
The Untamed (D) (I had made it this far without watching one of the most celebrated shows of CDramaLand, but the show, despite the ardour of other fans, somehow always repelled me. It is possibly the ardour itself that spurned me – these things usually turn out to be overrated – but when my students assured me that this show is not overrated and that the politics take center-stage over the romance, I thought I’d give it a go. I should have stuck with my guts.
Now, the story itself has a lot of potential. In the opening scene we see our hero Wei Wuxian trying to sacrifice himself before being saved by his lover Lan Wangji, an effort that was rendered null when Wei Wuxian was stabbed to death by Jiang Cheng – his adopted brother and bestie. Then cut to the story of the three boys growing up, and we clearly see the story is poised for heartbreak: what went wrong that Jiang Cheng would turn on his little brother like that? Jiang Cheng’s decision to kill Wei Wuxian – was that a betrayal or, through some hidden story, an act of mercy? We just don’t know at this point and we’re eager to find out.
But there is only so far that the curiosity can carry you. By episode 16, nothing yet has happened beyond learning that the boys belong to different sects of the pugilist world, which happened to be dominated by the Wen Clan. The Wen Clan’s ambition is unchecked and the boys’ sects are massacred and they’re basically orphan princes roaming the world to avenge their dead parents and sects. This took sixteen episodes to establish. And somehow within sixteen episodes the show didn’t find any space to explain the motivation for the different sects; like, the Wen Clan wants domination for what? power? money? pride? a belief that their way of life is morally superior to others? Nope, we don’t know. We’re not given any moral [or immoral] argument for their cause. And the smaller sects – not even a few seconds to discuss the beauty of difference? the righteousness of defence against tyrannical forces? where the fine line between honour and survival lies? Instead the show plods along at an infernally slow pace showing… I don’t know what. Like, for all the episodes wasted on the boys’ “university days” at the Gusu Lan Clan lecture series, we don’t really learn anything of Gusu Lan Clan’s philosophy beyond the fact that they’re insufferably pedantic [like, they have 3,500 family rules – wtf can remember anything then?]. If we don’t even know anything about Gusu Lan Clan after spending like 10 episodes with them, what would we know about the other clans? Absolutely nothing.
So I was actually very, very interested to see how Wei Wuxian and his friends find themselves on the cliff there, and what’s their story from that point – because, well, I don’t think it’s a spoiler if it’s reveled in E01, Wei Wuxian will get resurrected. Yes, whatever I’ve grumbled about is only part of the flashback. 16 episodes – hahaha I’m clearly bitter – and we’re not done flashbacking. So in short, the story is interesting enough, but it does not need 50 episodes. I think if this series had been condensed into 24 episodes I would have happily watched it and sung it praises.)
The Moon Brightens for You (D) (I started playing games on my phone halfway through episode 1 so let’s not waste data on this.)
General’s Lady (D) (I’m severely disappointed with this one. The start was quite fabulous: we have a notoriously fearsome general who hides a deep gentleness and kindness clashing with his bratty but cunning bride. Like, in the beginning the female lead’s brattiness wasn’t annoying because she knew when to be a serious badass who could solve her own problems without depending on the male lead. But then it felt like they changed the writer: the two bickering leads suddenly found themselves madly in love with each other and started doing stupid shit in ways that are completely out of character. What’s worse is that in the blurb it says that the general will be impressed with the female lead’s ingenious management of his barracks: I persevered like 5 episodes waiting for her to even care about the soldiers and military issues but she never did so I couldn’t wait anymore.)
My Girl (Despite being a bongok rom-com, I was going to label the show R initially. Although the situation is a little far-fetched, the main characters’ psychological landscape is richly layered and sensitively explored. And I’m not even talking about the main conflict, but the small touches like the inferiority complex of a model who’s had a nose job. However, the show descended into a miserable hot mess in the second half that I came very close to giving it a G had it not been saved by a strong, strong case of second lead syndrome.)
Hikaru No Go (D, but it’s not the show) (IDK which deity does not want me to watch this show and why, but no matter which server I go to, the show keeps buffering chronically. Like, I honestly quite enjoyed this show, especially that strong opening with the child Shi Guang – what a natural actor the little boy is. In fact, I much prefer him to the adult actor. And I really like Chu Ying and his winged eyeliner, too. By episode 6, which is how long I persevered, we haven’t yet seen the full relationship between Shi Guang and his ultimate rival, Yu Liang, but the sight of Little Yu Liang bitterly weeping following his defeat and Little Shi Guang’s tender reaction is enough indication of things to come. Perhaps one day I’ll have the opportunity to revisit this show, but when each episode takes 3.5 hours to finish, even the most interesting shows falls flat.)
First Romance (D) (first episode has to catch you and this one didn’t. Like, for all that my taste lately is for silly and light-hearted romcoms, I cannot see where this one was going at all so I’ll pass.)
I Will Never Let You Go (almost G) (first of all, what a crap final episode. Like, sigh, I was gonna let this be ungraded but that stupid final episode really dragged it down. Now, this show isn’t particularly good, to be honest, especially that stupid title. And then they gave us 51 episodes when things could really be wrapped up easily in 24 or even less. But nevertheless, the show actually has gems like grey characters – like, the meandering way the story is told lets us get to know so many different characters, and one thing they did quite well is how these characters all have their own, and sometimes conflicting, motivations that you can’t quite fault them for making the choices they did. Like, Dongfang Shi is definitely a psychopath, and yet, I can’t quite bring myself to hate him and in fact I teared up the most for this lonely pretender prince who’s forced to lead a rebellion by his power-hungry grandfather. And I like moments when the show ruminates on how the struggle of power is something peasants wish they wouldn’t have to care about because all they hope for is to make a decent living, but they have to anyway because they’re always the casualty. And I won’t lie, the ethics of bio-warfare gave me a pause: like, I get that it is his stratagem and that everything is fair in love and war, but our hero unleashing a plague on his own army when he pretended to surrender so his army will infect the rebel army… Like I guess if he hadn’t done it that way, those soldiers would have fallen in battle anyway, but I still can’t quite wrap my head around it. Like, are we supposed to condone it, or is our hero a war criminal? Of course the show doesn’t quite address it directly, but I appreciate that it’s able to make me ponder it. So yeah the show is faaaaaaaaaaar from perfect, far from moderate even, but these little things made me unable to quite regret watching it.)
Love in Time (D)
Destiny’s Love (D)
The Wolf (ultimately G when the Chinese State Administration of Radio and Television flipped all of us. So sayang because initially the show was defo R.)
Granting You a Dreamlike Life (D) (IDK if the series gets better, but allllll the characters in the first episode are caricatures rather than real characters. I get that the series was aiming for the comedic feel, but everything feels overblown and hollow. I could probably try to sit through a few more episodes if the ML wasn’t such a jerk in the past and an actual alcoholic emotional manipulator who manages the first real interaction with the FL by gaslighting her that his action of impersonating a hotel employee to sneak into her room and film her without her consent and then uploading said recording on the internet is not a criminal act in the present.)
The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty (R) (Your good old Sherlock Holmes set in Ming Dynasty. Actually interesting because the cases are compelling but not so far-fetched that we can see Tang Fan’s, our Sherlock, thought processes – unlike say, BBC Sherlock’s audacious claims. And – spoiler – there is a Moriarty in this series, but even he is well written as a very patient master opportunist rather than the sole author of the entire conspiracy. And the best thing about the show is of course the dynamics between our main leads: the bratty and spoiled Tang Fan – who does not annoy [well, not excessively] because he knows when to be serious; the gentle and patient Sui Zhou, whose ugly aspects of PTSD are not glossed over [which I really appreciate]; and the lonely but talented teenage eunuch playing a big man’s game Wang Zhi, whose initial idea of “investigation” is merely torturing suspects into confession. The side characters also have huge character development, so it is really fun watching this show. To be honest the cases could be more challenging, but the show is fun enough.)
Douluo Continent (D) (tired premise that has been done 12,000 times before and better.)
Song of Glory (G) (promising story ruined by inconsistent characters and big gaping plot holes that stem from lazy writing. It’s like the writers have these great scene sequences that they couldn’t wait to get to that they raced to finish the current arc using any solutions they could think of, regardless if they’re convenient and/or bizarre, and then they got to the anticipated plot point and they found that they have lost interest in that one too and rushed to the next big scene. What a letdown. The set and costume, tho, I must say, are sumptuous, and are probably the only reason I persevered till the end. Like, they couldn’t have invested that much in the set for a shitty story, could they? Well, lesson learned.)
The Big Boss (D) (TBF it does look like it has a cult following – it’s one of those that you will either love or hate, and I unequivocally hated it. Maybe I’m just old now but it was so atrocious I couldn’t even get through the first ep.)
Ode to Joy S01 & S02 (I don’t know why I was absolutely obsessed with these series. Like, for two weeks straight, every spare moment I just spent on their next episode. I was sleep deprived because at the end of episodes, not that the episodes ended on cliffhangers, I just had to start the next one. The only reason the series did not get an R from me is because they aimed to portray modern Chinese women breaking the mould of their patriarchal society only to end up reinforcing it. I mean, I’m not sure the show has even heard of the Bechdel Test, not to mention passing it. But even that is forgivable – evolution is not linear – and the ladies try, and, within the constraints of their socialisation and social structure, they do find their voice. What I really love about the show is that we have the 5 lady protagonists, and they all have their different personalities and issues. With Ode to Joy, it’s all about the ordinary triumph and ordinary happiness – and the show is all the more epic for that. Since the episodes are structured like that, any review would be too long to do the show justice, so I’ll just mention a few things. First, good job, Sound Director – you are a Sound Director worthy of a show called Ode to Joy. Especially during S01. I tell you, that little piano BGM, the one that sounds like a mental pause when you are realising something, mannn that BGM gave me goosebumps and made me cry more than anything else on the show. Secondly, although the shows are in no way related, I somehow kept seeing Fan Sheng Mei as Consort Hua’s reincarnation and the hardship Fan Jie faces as karmic punishment for her past life and this made the show 12,000 times more tragic than it should be.
Thirdly, sometimes the ladies really aggravate me with their issues and idiotic choices [looking at you Qiu Ying Ying and Fan Sheng Mei], but I couldn’t quite muster any anger because these choices are really very human, and that’s the gem of the show. Finally, Lao Tan. Like, don’t get me wrong, Bao Yi Fan is plenty seductive but if I could I would be having words with An Di about choosing him. Lao Tan, on the other hand, is gentleness and steadfastness personified.)
Just Want to See You Smile (G) (quite a beautifully done, simple rom-com with thoughtful nods to the hardworking people of the entertainment industry, especially for the behind-the-scene crews and struggling underdogs, but only up to a little more than halfway. I mean, there are parts of this show that made me literally LOL, and that’s quite an achievement. But then it descended into a bizarre revenge plot of hindustani proportions that I really wished I had dropped the show when it peaked. But I couldn’t because I shipped the FL with the 2ML. Nothing wrong with the ML – he’s a very sweet puppy – but watching a hotshot producer with a chip on his shoulder becoming gila bayang after getting his entire life turned upside down by our klutzy and artless extra FL just does it for me. I mean I knew he wouldn’t get his lady but I wanted to see how he turned out, and he never turned into a jerk so I loved him for that.)
Unusual Idol Love (D) (they gave the dude a mullet and thus I couldn’t go on.)
The Sword and the Brocade (this show honestly did not start well. For one thing, it looked like an inferior knockoff of Ming Lan with elements of Yanxi thrown in. For another, our hero Wallace Chung’s Xu Lingyi looks exactly like Chu Bei Jie from General and I, but the two men cannot be more different in character so it gave me quite a cognitive dissonance. And the worst sin? When you first meet Xu Lingyi, he is not only already married to the heroine’s elder sister, but he has two concubines besides. Like, our pairing is supposed to be the heroine with her brother-in-law? Yuck. But if you gave it a chance – and I honestly don’t know why I did – the show has its own charm. In the same way that it is an extremely slow burn romance between the leads [and you really do come to ship them despite the yucky start], I gradually fell in love with the show as it went on. But the slow burn is real – I have never seen a more introverted pairing. Usually shows will have one of the leads introverted while the other outgoing; in this show, both leads prefer to keep their thoughts to themselves and simply observe the other, so it really took them a long time to fall for each other. But the journey was delightful and worth savoring.
One of the strongest aspect of the show is the strong female lead. Now, Luo Shiyi is completely feminine – she’s kind, she’s sweet-tempered, her strongest skill is embroidery – but that does not stop her from being a complete badass. I love how her character is portrayed to be forward-thinking a la modern women, and yet she is realistically constrained by the social conventions of her time. The best part is that her character is not even pedantic but she was able to leave an impact on other female characters in terms of becoming a full-rounded person. I mean, the concubines are a clear foil to Shiyi: a person can only find true contentment and happiness if they have their own identity and purpose in life instead of sublimating their identity to another person such as one’s husband. Honestly I did not do a complete analysis, but I think this show would pass the Bechdel Test.
Another aspect that I like about the show is that it is quite well-written. The story evolves little by little, but nothing is suddenly sprung on the viewer. Everything is hinted beforehand, you only need to pay attention to the details. And – and this is a spoiler – the fact that the 2ML remains steadfast to the heroine and did not try to sabotage her relationship with the hero even after she rejected his romantic overtures. In fact, the 2ML actively kept helping the heroine and her husband and even gains Xu Lingyi’s begrudged friendship. So yeah, I really thought that I would drop this show after a couple of episodes because I kept comparing it to Ming Lan initially, but I really thoroughly enjoyed this one in its own right even tho, in the spirit of fairness, it cannot compete when it comes to the verbal sparring. Nah, Ming Lan’s ladies would annihilate Great Madam Xu in seconds.)
Sound of the Desert (D) (2.5 episodes in and I still don’t care about any of the characters.)
Count Your Lucky Stars (D) (this show just downright sucks. If it wasn’t for Jerry Yan’s sexy neck and that slow blink thing that he does and his confounding ambidexterity, I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I did.)
The Four (D) (been a real slump in CDramaland lately that I’ve gone into the archives. I’ve only heard good things about the show, but the comically idiotic looking first episode deterred me from going any further.)
Hello Mr. Gu (D) (in the mood for fluffy, brainless romance, but this guy is just all around toxic. CDramas always try to excuse tsundere men due to their past trauma, but trauma is not a free pass to be a dickhead, you know.)
Cross Fire (D) (perhaps it’s unfair, but I couldn’t help but compare this show to The King’s Avatar, with this show being the inferior. The biggest sin was I expected more game play scenes, but except for the amazingly executed body cam long take in the first episode, the few game play scenes were mostly uninspired snippets that grew rather repetitive very quickly. The next sin was the severe lack of shared scenes between the two leads, who seem to have great chemistry by the way, which was caused by the supernatural time rift element of the show. Don’t get me wrong, I love me any time-related thing in storytelling. In fact, initially, the fact that the two leads are living in separate timelines was a major intrigue. Unfortunately, it is not effectively addressed and became a structural weakness of the show. I thought I would watch a sports series; instead I’m presented with a melodrama of the leads trying to change the course of history but not by gaming. Eventually I just grew so frustrated waiting for the two leads to start playing the game together that I just had to leave.)
The Great Ruler (D)
Empress of China (D)
Storm Eye (D) (the show takes itself oh-so-seriously that I cannot take it seriously. Seriously guys – a dash of humour would have done the show wonders.)
You Are My Hero (If DOTS was the popular kid that made it big, Hero is the quiet one who never leaves their small town and now runs the bar or diner that everyone flocks to. Though not the most well-written show out there, I still have a lot of affection for it. Simple synopsis would be “a doctor dates a policeman” – if you’re looking for blockbustery kind of action, look elsewhere because they cheat a lot in this series by setting a suspenseful action sequence and then jumping right off to the conclusion – the bulk of the action happens off screen. But if you want lovey-dovey OTP moments that are actually sweet and not cringey, you’ve come to the right place. The main couple is very mature, very level-headed when facing any conflict – you won’t find any unreasonable sulking type thing here and isn’t that just refreshing? And you won’t find antagonistic in-laws or unsupportive friends. There is a small arc about a wannabe villainess, but even that allows the couple to consolidate their love and trust. The third couple is cute as hell as well. About the only thing that annoyed me was that the second couple, though I adore the characters individually, fails to convince me about their pairing because with their temperaments and sensibilities there is just no way they would make it as a long-term couple. That, and that one time our ace sniper super police captain Xing Ke Lei simply curled up and welcomed death when was stuck in a mine after aftershocks caused some parts of the mine to collapse, injuring him and blocking the exit, while running a fever because he stupidly gave his jacket to his girlfriend Mi Ka when they had to camp outdoors during an earthquake relief mission. Cause I’m sorry but all I could think of was, it would never ever occur to Yoo Si Jin Daewi-nim to give up.)
The Long Ballad (R) (the most introspective CDrama I have ever seen. If you are a plot person, you will find this show wanting. Even I struggled to get through the first 10 episodes, and there are other episodes that feel like nothing happens after that, but you will see that these episodes are crucial as the story is of Li Changge’s journey of self-discovery from an angry, betrayed princess into a mature patriot who understands that the bigger picture sometimes requires making sacrifices. The story is about the development of Changge’s emotional landscape; for instance, there are whole episodes where Changge does nothing but mull on the philosophy of non-interference before deciding that the path of her enlightenment does not lie in being neutral and aloof. Sure there are convenient plot holes and in the beginning Changge was so rash and stupid, but if you gave her a chance you will see that that’s exactly the point of the story. I thought about why I wasn’t angry at her for being stupid as I usually would at other characters and I realized that this was the difference: the other characters invoked my ire because they make stupid choices when they are supposed to be smart whereas Changge, when she was making stupid decisions, was a rash teenager completely blinded by hatred and a desire for revenge. Moreover, the show makes Changge face the consequences of her choices, and sometimes the price is very dear indeed. And the beauty of the show was the mirror-duality of Changge and the final villain: the series shows us and Changge the monster she could turn into were she to allow hatred to consume her. In short, the show is far from perfect, but I really appreciated the thoughtful introspection of the show. Word of spoilery warning tho: a lot of the growth of Changge’s character comes from different characters dropping dead, so you’d best not get too attached to any of ’em. And it’s easy to get attached to them, because there are many side characters, and they are all charming and tragic in their own ways, even those that start off annoying. Me – I love me series that are bold enough to kill off beloved characters when the story calls for it and I absolutely abhor shows that contrive to keep “dead” characters alive for a happy ending, so to me this is a bonus point.)
Word of Honor (D) (the only way to watch this one is as a straight-up romance. Even then you’d still need a pretense of story to further the romance, but the story here is just ridiculous and random with like 10,000 characters.)
My Roommate is a Detective (D) (finally a show where Hu Yi Tian seems comfortable in his skin as an actor, and Leon Zhang is such an eye candy, too. On the other hand, Shane Xiao’s, for whom I have deep affection since her turn in The Legends, character is so insufferable. In one scene, her character’s “prank” could possibly result in Hu Yi Tian’s being raped – like, I could forgive a lot of immaturity, but that scene crossed a line. Besides, the story was really going nowhere. It’s case after case, which are fun enough, but nothing novel and quite transparent that they could not sustain my interest. The only thing that could have sustained my interest was if the characters have great developments outside of the cases, but they’re really quite miniscule and cliched.)
Sword Dynasty (D) (Sword Dynasty would be the most recent in a long list of wuxia I’ve dropped, and it boggles me why they annoy me so much now. It’s inconceivable that I dislike wuxia because I adore the elegance of the warriors’ martial artistry and I’m deeply touched by the moral principles that govern their lives. So when I decided to drop this series despite glowing comments by fellow streamers, it forced me to ponder why the series did not capture me when it captivated others. I don’t know how I can lack self-awareness up to this point: what I dislike isn’t wuxia, but the magic-like overpowered-ness of their cultivation; what confused and bored me was revenge, which goes against everything they stand for, as the main motivation of the characters. Give me the good old swordfight – I mean I don’t mind the gravity-defying jumps so much – after all it is DramaLand, I understand that – but when the characters’ abilities are fantastic and arbitrary and yet categorically dismissed as a result of their cultivation, it detracts from the character and from the story. Basically, it’s cheating, you know. When the rules of physics don’t apply, everything else breaks down and anything goes. As for revenge, of course revenge as a motive would bore me. There is nothing more useless than revenge in my book, I who is a lazy ass. I just don’t see the point of it. My reaction in life is forget and forgive – no, I didn’t get the order wrong – if the sin is not remembered, there is nothing to forgive, so I generally forgive everything by default. I mean, by god, doesn’t it take so much energy to maintain that anger and hatred for your revenge, not to mention all that hard work that goes into your training so you could surpass your nemesis’s level and therefore defeat them? Or worse, after all the years of preparation, what if you overestimated yourself and are embarrassingly still defeated? How futile is that? No, the time would be better spent in other ways so I really cannot understand revenge in general so from now on I’ll know to steer clear from revenge-motivated stories. So to be fair, I did drop Sword Dynasty, but it’s really a case of it’s not you it’s me.)
I Hear You (D) (finally a tsundere man who is actually introverted and prefers to keep his thoughts to himself instead of a toxic, abusive jerk. But there it ends. There is absolutely no logic here and though I adore Zhao Lu Si I felt my IQ slipping so I gotta leave.)
Legend of Fei (D)
Fighter of the Destiny (D) (IDK, it’s one of those cultivation school shows but despite having so many familiar faces none of the characters caught me, you know?)
Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace (D) (I had persevered as far along as episode 69 out of 87, but I just couldn’t carry on. Not because of other things, but because I couldn’t bear to watch Ruyi endure her tragic fate for another minute. Even then I made it that far thanks to Yanxi. The two shows are high-value productions that tell the exact same story – that of the Step Empress of the Qianlong Emperor and her rival and successor, Imperial Noble Consort Ling – from opposing perspectives. While Imperial Consort Ling is the spunky heroine of Yanxi, she is the scheming villainess of Ruyi. What I especially liked was that both shows, for all they are told in direct contrast to each other, are consistent in their interpretation of the characters and event. Granted that the shows take poetic license, but the Step Empress is gentle and kind in both shows, her claws sharpened only in defense in Ruyi and in retaliation in Yanxi; Imperial Noble Consort Ling is interpreted as seductive in Ruyi and playful in Yanxi, but with insidious ruthlessness in both. The Qianlong Emperor started a little better in Ruyi; his younger self is a character that viewers can sympathise with – the Cold Palace incident showcases his cunning but deep heart – but as he ages, his character becomes very hard to forgive. As he becomes established in his role as the emperor, he gradually becomes lost in a world where genuinely believes that he stands alone above everyone else that he makes callous and cruel decisions in the belief that he knows what’s best at all time, blind to his own bias, prejudices, and superstition. The ladies of his harem, whether scheming or forbearing, paid the steep price for his willful indifference and ignorance. Initially I was determined to stay with Ruyi throughout her journey – I knew of her ending from Yanxi, and I wanted to see how Ruyi will interpret her downfall – but I came to a point where I could not bear another second of her derita so I just had to leave.)
I Don’t Want to be Friends with You (the daughter of a loserific single mother travels back in time to figure out who her absent father was as well as intervene in her mother’s formative years. Most of the show is cute as it follows a group of friends from a small town as they graduate high school and attend university but ultimately the show is unsatisfying because all the questions are simply swiped under the carpet of a happy ending. I want to know the answer to the following questions: 1) Did Li Jin Bu really travel back in time or was she simply dreaming? The fact that her mother does not remember that she was best friends with Li Jin Bu in high school suggests that it was a mere dream. Indeed there are high school photos of her mother, and not only is Li Jin Bu missing from the photos, some of the classmates are different from the ones that Li Jin Bu met. This would suggest that even if Li Jin Bu did travel back in time, she had travelled back to an alternate reality and not her mother’s actual past. More importantly, part of Li Jin Bu’s complaint about her mother was her lack of tertiary education, a conventionally desirable job, and a stable home life – Li Qing Tong would uproot their lives every few years or so as if running from loan sharks. And yet, once Li Jin Bu “returns”, everything is simply brushed off. Li Qing Tong had attended university in the past that had Li Jin Bu – a feat which was logically impossible without Li Jin Bu – so now, 2) did the Li Qing Tong of the present attend university or not? The show left it ambiguous, but certainly does not show any stark difference between Li Qing Tong from the beginning. 3) Is it possible that Li Qing Tong is actually a normal woman from the beginning – that it was Li Jin Bu’s immature mind that distorted her mother’s image? This is probably the most logical reasoning – that the whole time travelling episode is a story of Li Jin Bu’s growth, not Li Qing Tong’s. Which is probably why Li Jin Bu’s spirit guide is never properly explained – it is Li Jin Bu’s own subconscious. Because, 4) what kind of spirit guide randomly tells Li Jin Bu that she should be prepared to leave as her time is limited, prompting the poor girl to break up with the guy who loves her as if his entire world is in her eyes, only for them to be miserable for like two whole years before she is transported back to the present? Like, seriously, what a shitty spirit guide. To me tho, perhaps the most precious character of the show is their homeroom teacher, Mr. Wu, who is gentle and kind and genuinely loves his students. It’s for Mr. Wu that I didn’t rate this show G.)
Mr. Right (D) (more like Mr. Right Now or Mr. Always Right.)
Love and Redemption (R) (honestly, reads like a fanfic so I really debate whether to grant this one an R. On the other hand, despite its amateurish flaws, the story is gripping and puts me right on the edge of my seat. Even when some parts are unnecessarily dragged out – there are many instances throughout the series, but especially looking at the final leg here – like, we know what’s coming you can wrap up the whole thing at like ep 52 no need to drag on to 59. But yeah, despite that, the way the series conceals and reveals information bit by bit is intriguing instead of annoying, so I stayed engaged for the entire run. I do wish, tho, that the dragginess had been spent on the back story a bit more because the back story feels a little underdeveloped. Like what’s the relationship between everybody in their past life? How did they come to have the relationship? How strong was their bond? All these things are glossed over in favour of some scenes that didn’t really further anything [e.g. the character Ah Lan and her entire arc were completely dispensable]. I gotta say, tho, that Yu Sifeng is really the most compassionate character I’ve ever seen – so absolutely powerful but gentle and loath to cause harm to anything or anyone. What drove the series for me were Sifeng and his foil Bai Lin Dijun, whose – major spoiler – sense of holier-than-thou caused the whole drama and plunged the three realms into a millennium of misery. Yeah, if I had to summarise the series in a sentence it would be a holier-than-thou politician projects his own evil and prejudices onto his rival and ends up triggering a self-fulfilling prophesy. That’s the basic level analysis. If you wanna delve into the Jungian, a powerful man grapples with homophobia by disguising his lust and obsession for a rival nation’s general under a prophesy that the general will bring untold destruction. The powerful man subdues the general and extracts a female entity who he then gaslit into full submission, all the while making her believe that the general is her ultimate enemy. The entire series is the story of the powerful man’s effort to maintain his control over the female entity and prevent her from awakening, realising her identity, and achieving agency. Yeah, I really don’t know what to make of that, either, but it is fun enough to watch. I do wish the OSTs were better and don’t sound like they were recycled from some 90s tune.)
Please Feel at Ease Mr. Ling (D) (IDK. It’s Zhou Lu Si but I’m not feeling it. Dropped it halfway through the first episode.)
Unforgettable Love (D) (why do they keep making CEO contract marriage dramas? Oh, that’s right – because I keep watching ’em. But this one was really rather more forgettable than most. I mean initially it was cute enough when Miles Wei appears to be a clueless, socially inept geek but when it turns out that he’s a mega control freak who probably needs more psychiatric help than his son… yeah I’m outta there.)
You Are My Guardian (this show has some serious issues in terms of pacing. And plot. Like, the entire Zhou Ran-drug cartel subplot, which actually has potential, is dealt with appallingly that it dragged the whole show down ridiculously. I came this close to dropping the show if it wasn’t for Liang Mu Ze. Like, looks-wise he isn’t exactly my cuppa but I tell you I fell for LMZ through and through. In the beginning I couldn’t figure out why – and some viewers even dropped the show because they claimed that LMZ was so unlikeable – but eventually I noticed that LMZ is just the most patient and mature CDrama ML I have ever seen. He’s terse with strangers, but he’s by no means rude. In their initial meeting, when LMZ accidentally ruined the FL Xia Chu’s meal, and he immediately apologised for it good-naturedly and offered to pay. She’s the one who was being preposterous and wanted to pick a fight over nothing. Then in their next meeting he was admittedly less than cordial, but then his best friend had just taken a bullet for XC and you could understand his agitation. Once you learn of his back story, you’ll see that he was being as rational as one could expect a person in his position. Then they parted on less-than-friendly terms, only to find that his mother has lent XC his house behind his back. And what did he do? Did he immediately throw her out? Did he smash her things? No. He simply gave her a week to move out. Which, if you think about it reasonably, is more than generous. He didn’t even mind that she had been using his bath in his absence – just, now that he’s back, he wants her out of his hair. Anyway, throughout the show there are just sooooooooooo many instances of LMZ’s incredible patience and maturity that I just can’t with him. Oh, he’s got me hook line and sinker. In contrast, XC is so insufferable. While he’s content to let her be, she likes to force him to do things that he doesn’t like. And then she always thinks that only she knows best and forces him and everyone else including her bosses and professors to adopt her position when her opinions are sometimes downright wrong. Usually in CDrama you’d get obnoxious MLs and demure FLs – this show has the opposite, so I really stayed for LMZ. Besides the main couple, the romance between LMZ’s baby cousin and his lieutenant is also fun to watch, but everything else sadly sucks.)
You Are My Glory (omg so dreamily R) (okay, let’s just get this out of the way: Dilraba and Yang Yang are ridiculously beautiful people that just putting them in the same frame already renders me incoherent, but they actually have great chemistry. On top of that, their characters are just very sweet, down-to-earth, and completely relatable – yes she’s a top actress, but she’s adorable instead of spoilt, and yes he’s an idealistic aerospace engineer, but he’s cheeky and introverted instead of conceited. I suppose it is a little too DramaLand how everything went smoothly for them – both families love them, her management company adores him while her fans approve of him, his bosses and colleagues almost couldn’t contain themselves every time her name is as much as mentioned – but that’s why I really, really enjoyed this show. If you ever wondered if a drama could work without any of the exaggerated drama – well, Glory attests that with a strong script and electric performances, it could work. Script? Didn’t you just say that everything went smoothly? What script? Well, I said the show dispenses with exaggerated drama like protracted sulking or meddlesome parents or toxic exes that just wouldn’t take a hint. Instead, we are left in the world of two people who deeply love each other but have to work through the drama of the “mundane”, like what if you got your dream job but it doesn’t pay enough? What if you found the love of your life but you are incompatible financially? What if you love each other but have to spend more time apart than together?
It has to be said that I think the show is a promotional vehicle of the Chinese government’s aerospace programme. I think for some viewers this bogged the show down, but I actually appreciated the aerospace aspect. Firstly, I like that they delved into it in some detail. I mean, perhaps a real aerospace engineer will laugh and think the scientific snippets are simple and childish or perhaps vastly inaccurate – I wouldn’t know because I know nothing about science – but I like that they took the effort to portray the world of the aerospace engineers and the challenges that they face and their aspirations, hopes, and ambition. I mean I’m not Chinese, but as a fellow human I share that sense of wonder and curiosity whether we really are alone in the cosmos and about what other things are out there, and I teared up a little bit when their Search for God mission achieved a successful launch. I mean, if a government wants to launch a propaganda, the least they could do is have Dilraba and Yang Yang help sell it, heheh.
Secondly, the aerospace industry is a manifestation of how rapidly the social and technological landscape of China has changed, and it allows a discussion of the societal pressures that attend it. Some viewers might complain about this, but such social commentaries are exactly why I watch dramas. I’m much too lazy for rigorous scientific research; the news bore me; so the only way for me to observe sociological developments is through the ever-so-subtle notes in dramas. Dramas might be an exaggeration, but by-and-large they are an accurate representation of the conflation between public tastes [if the public doesn’t like it, a drama won’t do well and others like it would not be developed] and governmental ideological dictates [a show at odds with a government’s agenda might get heavily censored or even banned].
Moreover, I think the aerospace side of things helps build the story. Like, a lot of the aforementioned “mundane” drama comes from the the uncertainties and demands posed by the aerospace industry. It will be too much of a spoiler to discuss in detail – hahah, as if I haven’t been spoiling things, sorry – but why things work between the two leads instead of between Yang Yang’s Yu Tu and his ex would make no sense if the aerospace industry is taken out of the equation. Lastly, that whole arc when Yu Tu goes into the desert to run a field test on his gadgets – I shan’t mention details but let’s just say that this swoony show that is just spilling with OTP moments [honestly, this show would have been cloying with actors of less calibre] made me ugly cry so bad that snot was running down my nose. In short, it’s Sunday tomorrow and I’m going to rewatch this entire show from the beginning. *melting puddles already*)
(BTW, Liang Mu Ze & Xia Chu, take note please – this is what normal couples do on the couch!)
Moonshine and Valentine (D) (in episode 1, the hero is somewhat intriguing but the heroine was really bland. Like, she had nothing going for her – wasn’t bright at school, no job prospects, her boyfriend has wavered, if not outright cheated on her, and she’s not even terribly kind or cute or quirky. I gave it another chance and then in the second episode, she tried to buy her boyfriend a shirt for his birthday but didn’t have enough money. Hero swooped in, bought all the shirts but not for her, and then went home and burnt the shirts in what I presume to be a fit of jealousy. Why presumed? Because I immediately left. Yeah nah. After such a healthy, wholesome Yu Tu-Jing Jing pairing, I’m not gonna sit here and watch a toxic, bland couple, even if the hero is Johnny Huang for whom I have developed a soft spot after his turn as Liang Mu Ze.)
The Imperial Doctress (D) (after so many modern shows, I’m really missing a good period, court drama but this show just makes me feel… ambivalent. I wonder how Cecilia Liu is such a beloved name – sadly, she’s never been able to capture me in any of her works.)
Love Scenery (D) (started as an inferior version of You Are My Glory – like, the broad brushstrokes are the same – superstar heroine needs help with e-game from genius hero for some sort of endorsement deal – but there the similarity ends. While the heroines are roughly comparable professionally, I couldn’t help but notice that Jing Jing developed into a gamer formidable enough to hold her own in an amateur esports tournament whereas Liang Chen never evolves beyond being a damsel in distress whose only gaming ability is looting dead NPCs [which makes absolutely no sense as she is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist musician]. As for the men, where Yu Tu is an established scientist, Lu Jing is a university student who is possibly six years younger than Liang Chen. The age disparity gave me a pause. Like, in our patriarchal world, no one would bat an eye if the heroine was six years younger and a college kid besides, but to reverse the position… Even I who fancies myself non-judgmental finds myself pondering about this issue. In Glory, Yu Tu asks himself, his professor, and the world what he, a kind and brilliant man with a promising career, could offer his life partner. In contrast, the bravado displayed by Lu Jing, who never once questions the improbability of his earning Liang Chen’s love, can only stem from naivete, immaturity, an entitled mentality, and a lack of subjectivity. I was content to follow their journey and see how they would resolve this issue, until Lu Jing throws a tantrum in a fit of jealousy by knocking things and slamming doors, multiple times, in increasing severity, an act which he follows up by trying to force her to do things his way, without taking into consideration her position and the different aspects that a superstar needs to consider. This is not cute; this is toxic, manipulative, and could possibly turn abusive, so I’m out of there. If you want to argue that he does this as a young man who lacks maturity… No, this is a person’s character. If he’s slamming doors now when he is young and has nothing to offer, imagine how much stronger he will slam the door once he is older and thinks he’s at par with her.)
Rattan (D) (the story is really thin and kinda random, but some fans mistake the infernal pacing and nonlinear storytelling with suspense and gave it glowing reviews. I persevered much longer than I should hoping the story would pick up but there’s only so much that cinematography and nice BGM could do in place of a lackluster story.)
Begin Again (D) (my sweet, there is a difference between seducing your hubs and outright raping him. Cringe.)
Nothing Gold Can Stay (RRRRR) (the show is a fictional account of Zhou Ying, a legendary businesswoman and Dowager Empress Cixi’s goddaughter. Although fictionalised, some elements of the story are so absurd that they are plausible. Like, you can’t make this shit up, you know? The base of the whole story is the military supply case, the ramifications of which shaped the rest of the events and characters in the story. I really don’t know what else to say about this show, except that it’s like watching a textbook of the gradual reform of China in the last days before the revolution, but it’s a fun textbook. It really does not matter that Zhou Ying’s life was fictionalised for the show, because Zhou Ying is merely the lens through which we experience life in the late Qing Dynasty: the misogyny of the Confucion tradition, the corruption of the imperial system, and the desperate resistance to foreign invasion. Fictionalising allows greater dramatisation, and the show has a lot of sympathy and empathy for all the characters, and I even shed tears for the sinister and perhaps most insiduous villain I’ve ever seen, not to mention immediately shutting down my computer and crying myself to sleep for the “death” of that character – oh, you know which one.
Although the show is 74 episodes long, you don’t really feel it because the show goes from one batshit crazy thing to the next. In fact, I regret that the show ended then because I wanted to see more of Zhou Ying’s shenanigans. And I think the Chinese government is wrong to set a cap on serials because, from observation, all the most epic shows are long like The Story of Yanxi Palace, The Legend of Fuyao, Ashes of Love, Winter Begonia, The Story of Ming Lan, Ever Night, and The Wolf. Don’t get me wrong, there are great shorter series as well, but they are generally comedic in tone. Somehow, Chinese serials are not able to capture the epic in shorter runs, but do so marvelously well in longer series. If it’s up to me, I’d say lift the cap – leave it up to the viewers whether or not they wanna watch long serials, but let showmakers exercise their creative agency however they wish.)
Accidentally in Love (D) (I had steered clear away from this series until I discovered that the heroine was Amy Sun, who I absolutely adored in The Eternal Love. She’s still adorable here, but the whole series was too high-schooley for my tastes.)
The Legend of Hua Mulan (D) (IDK, maybe it’s too old by the time I’m watching? Because it tries to be dramatic but everything is just draggy and ridiculous? Like, the hero is supposed to be a spy-saboteur but he’s just walking around town confused AF and IDK if that’s supposed to be consistent with the time setting of some time between the 4th – 6th century, where tradecraft and forensic science were crude? Maybe. In any case, the show lacked spark so I left it.)
The Chang’an Youth (D) (sorta like 21 Jump Street meets Arsenal Military Academy but very juvenile.)
Falling into Your Smile (D) (IDK, people seem to like this one but there is absolutely nothing to it? The leads don’t even have chemistry – and their stories are so bland that the lack of chemistry becomes very pronounced. About the only thing that makes the show slightly worthwhile is the CGI gameplays, but they are quite few and far between, and quite a lot of the time there isn’t a clear indication of whose characters are which. Perhaps the lack of identification isn’t a problem for people who are familiar with the characters from playing the actual game, but a casual viewer like me could only watch the nailbiting fights in a confused daze because we’re not quite sure who we should root for. Anyway, it’s another rom-com with only fluff so I guess you can let it accompany you as you fold your laundry or something.)
One and Only (initially R but the show was ruined by serious pacing issues in the later episodes, so no indication.) (This is the first time I’ve seen a serious court CDrama at 24 episodes and I was initially impressed. Despite the very slow-burn romance, you can feel the serious political undercurrents and it was as taut as a highstrung violin string. However, the later episodes were so rushed and jumpy that the show almost lost coherence. Not only that – spoiler – the ending rendered everything futile. Like, absolutely nothing was resolved. But I guess that might have been the theme of the show – the futility of human passion – and if it was, then the ending caught it beautifully.
Of the leads, I think nothing needs to be said of Bai Lu. She’s always been one of my favourites, and for the first time we see her as a very proper high born lady and she pulls it off with grace. I like how her character is gentle and proper, but never meek. As for Allen Ren – I’ve never liked him before this because the shows I’ve caught failed to let him shine, but his turn as the contemplative and gentle vassal king who guards the border while on a self-imposed exile is impressive. That small serene smile that accompanies his silence as his eyes say everything that couldn’t be said… I mean on the one hand I’m a little disturbed about the master-disciple love, but on the other hand I can see why a girl could fall hopeless in love with this lonely man. I think it is no exaggeration to say that the Junior Prince of Nancheng is one of the most memorable characters I’ve seen lately.
The sides stories of the supporting characters are also very enjoyable. I only wished the show had spent more time developing the villains because the villains are all either foolish or downright ridiculous. Like, they just wanted the villains to get in the way of our OTPs. I mean yeah I want that too – otherwise where is the drama – but, especially towards the end, things just kinda happened randomly and the villains really made some very questionable choices. In short, this series had a great story and compelling characters but these were ruined by uneven pacing and weird choices.)
The Glory of Youth (D) (I mean I can stomach quite a lot of the Chinese government propaganda actually, but by episode 3 it still feels like we are on a tour of the facilities without getting any story. And I mean I get that this show is a propaganda to try and get more youngsters to sign up for the army, but in which world do we have such polite and indulgent commanding officers? These, on top of the weird looking visuals – IDK, they feel like they filmed it on a camcorder or something – made me give up pretty quickly.)
Love Designer (D) (even if the leads are darling Dilraba and Johnny Huang whose chemistry just sizzles, a series has to have a story. It would be too unfair to say that there isn’t a story at all here, but it’s the same story over and over and over again that I suddenly felt rather friendly towards the Chinese government’s episode cap. Honestly, IDK what the series will do with 45 episodes – even the industry standard of 24 episodes would be stretching it for the kind of material they had. And I really had to stop watching because the characters are all so problematic that I felt like this series was written as a training material for student therapists. While the chief offender is Zhou Fang’s obnoxious bestie Qin Qing who, at presumably 26 or 28, has the emotional maturity of a 6-year-old, absolutely everyone is just a walking red flag: from Zhao Fang who is absurdly naive, to Song Lin who has saviour complex or maybe even god complex, to his little sister Song Luo with her abandonment issues, to Qin Qing’s much younger boyfriend Wu San who looks normal but, for unfathomable reasons, has absolutely no boundaries and puts up with all of Qin Qing’s ridiculous nonsense in the name of love. But, like I said, to be fair, these all have the potential for a nice story – if things weren’t so repetitive and dragged out. But you wanna know the absolute icing on the cake for this ridiculous series? The mothers nagged the girls to get married so much that I 1) feel personally nagged and 2) actually became thankful that my own mother has given up. Gosh, I darn hope I didn’t just jinx it.)
Forever and Ever (D) (snail-paced. Structurally problematic. Worse than any wattpad written by 12-year-olds. By episode 4 we still have no idea what the story was and what the conflict will be. Even their characters are not cute enough to sustain my interest. My affection for the parent series One and Only made me persevere a little bit, but unfortunately I feel like the series has nothing else beyond that so I had to leave.)
Court Lady (D) (IDK if it gets better, but the first couple of episodes were too slapstick for me to stomach so I’ll pass.)
Faith Makes Great (D) (I knew going in that this was propaganda, but I thought I’d give it a go since just about everyone is in it. Unfortunately, the first episode feels like a low-budget production of an outdated national TV channel, so it did not intrigue me. Besides, I know I talk a lot about watching “textbooks”, but episode 1, which was the only one I saw, really felt like a dramatisation of a textbook chapter, and one that is heavily subject to the ruling class’s bias at that. I think I’ll find a better use for my time.)
Palace: The Lock Heart Jade (G) (IDEK how I managed to finish this series that feels very amateurish and very unpolished. More telenovella than CDrama, really. Like, we have a promising story and well-developed characters, but somehow the plot just jumps around randomly. There are so many things that are set up well that are just forgotten. Like Concubine Xi’s adultery. And Consort Liang being a fellow time traveller for no reason at all. And the imposter Nian siblings whose impersonation was an open secret. And Princess Ning Xiang’s rape by the 13th Prince. And after all that, the most anticlimactic ascention ever. And then the ending, suddenly the 8th Prince got transported to the present time? The earlier episodes at least allow us to see a spunky Qing Chuan; although it was logical for her to become more mature as the 8th Princess Consort, the series no longer allowed her any chance to shine and that was a waste indeed. So in short, yeah IDK why I stayed the whole run.)
Addicted Heroin (G) (Gu Hai is insane and should be locked up in jail while Luoyin should really run as far and as fast as he can from this sex maniac and predator. I am ashamed to say I stayed the entire run, not because it is BL but because Gu Hai keeps assaulting and molesting Luoyin every step of the way. I wish I could say I don’t know why I stayed, but I’m fully aware that the answer is Johnny Huang.)
Walk Into Your Memory (D) (all the cliches you could possibly think of are here, and not in a good way.)
Hengshan Hospital (D) (IDK. Usually would be right up my alley, but it just didn’t capture me.)
The Day of Becoming You (D) (I mean no one expects anything groundbreaking here, but come on. It was fun for a bit in the beginning, but there was no story and the “plot” really boils down to any lame excuse to put the leads in the same frame.)
Time Flies and You are Here (D) (everything just feels slightly to the left, you know? Like the story tries to portray a pair of tragic leads, but everything feels comedic, even the texture and colour palette. I would have excused the cognitive dissonance, but the ML had no redeeming qualities about him and I cannot see how the leads would reconcile so I left.)
Ugly Beauty (D) (off to a strong start with an intriguing mystery, but by episode 6 it detracted into a dragged out love triangle that completely doused my interest and curiosity.)
Jiu Liu Overlord (D) (IDK. The story is actually intriguing-ish and the characters are interesting with undiscovered backstories, but somehow the show keeps making them make stupid decisions and do stupid things. Also, senail-paced. Yes, senail. Even slower than snails. It probably could have been salvaged if Bai Lu and Leon Lai had chemistry, but they were meh together.)
Vacation of Love (R) (generally great with a strong, character-based script and some of the most natural acting I’ve seen on a CDrama. Some episodes were really hard to watch because the stories were so heartbreakingly sad because the tragedy comes from small, everyday things that make up Life. If there is one message from the show it is this: Communicate! Don’t shy away from conflicts, talk to each other, fight things out and then you can get it straight and get on with life. In general I’d really sing this show praises, except that I found myself utterly disgusted by the unrealistically cotton-candy happy ending that everyone gets. The show, despite some ridiculously dramatised moments, is unrelenting realistic and honest – why would you go and ruin it with that sappy ending? I mean I’d understand if some of them get happy endings, but all of them? Come on.)
Fall in Love with a Scientist (D) (I couldn’t carry on because everything was just so red-flaggy. I mean, the ML starts the show by crashing the FL’s thesis defense and causing her to fail it. And then he has the audacity to say he’d like to apologise for intruding? Hello, it’s not like you ruined her cup of coffee – you caused her to have to repeat a whole year at uni. And your entitled ass had the nerve to say you didn’t mean for things to end that way? Yep, a real charmer this one. If it was only that, then maybe I’d stay but everything else, including a certified douchebag assaulting the FL after she rejected his advances, caused me to leave. Even the FL wasn’t exempt from criticism – at one point, I distinctly had the thought, man, this is a lot a exposition just to set up how sorry her character is. I mean they could be more economic about it. So yeah, 1 episode and I didn’t think it’s worth it to stay.)
Love Script (D) (at a glance this would be right up my alley: a CEO suffers from severe delusions that he’s a Ming Dynasty prince that people around him were forced to dress in costumes and change their speech patterns – perks of being rich, huh – and in comes the psychotherapist FL whose practice entails her indulging in the fantasies as she explores the psychological issues of her patients. OK, I’ll bite. But even though I already went in expecting nothing but a bongok rom-com and I dearly adore Sabrina Zhuang, I just couldn’t go on. We’re pretty sure that the CEO and the psychotherapist are actual incarnations of the prince and his consort and they promised to find each other again as they were murdered by people conspiring for power, and it is interesting to watch how they will rediscover each other. However, by episode 2, which was how long I persevered, the delusional CEO-prince has nothing going for him: he’s silly, he’s narcissistic, and in contrast to the past life that we’re privy to, he doesn’t seem to care for anyone other than himself. I’ve seen enough dramas to know that some leads pretend to be airheads in order to discern between friends and foe, and I suspect maybe that’s what the show is going for, but this guy just feels silly through and through. The psychotherapy angle, as well, feels like a mockery of the field rather than a fun exploration and casual exposure. So yeah, we’re out of there.)
My Heroic Husband (D) (tries to champion feminism by depicting how absurd a world that sidelines an entire gender is only to end up reinforcing partriachy by making the “hero” FL incompetent and completely dependent on her matrilocal husband “heroine”.)
2022
Serenade of Peaceful Joy (R) (if you are a character person, this is a great show for you. Like, the writing for the character is subtly and beautifully done that nothing big happens on screen, and yet the heartbreak is real and you find yourself weeping on behalf of the characters. Only very strong actors would be able to pull off such nuanced characters, and Jiang Shu Ying as the seemingly unfeeling empress Cao Dan Shu who hides deep vulnerability and a desperate love for Wang Kai’s emperor underneath a steely exterior was just marvellous. Like, I was quite annoyed with her work in The King’s Avatar, but she carries Cao Dan Shu with great poise and grace and for me, she carried the show on her back. Because, like I said, nothing big happens on screen, not really. If you’re a plot person you’d probably get very frustrated by this show as it’s not even a slice of life kind of thing – it’s probably a slice out of a history textbook.)
Love at Night (D) (I mean I get that it is a romance, but can you even try to pretend that there is a plot rather than just random things happening to push the leads into bed together?)
The Legendary Life of Queen Lau (D) (Cute for a little bit, but then the hero proves to be super stupid and the whole show just became super ridiculous. Rather than the main couple, I was much more invested in the love story of the heroine’s parents, but even that couldn’t save the show.)
Love Like the Galaxy (I could finally finish a show after more than six months of not watching anything – and that’s actually not a good thing. Means I’m back to freeze mode, aren’t I? Anyway that’s for me to think about, not part of the show’s review. The show is a little inconsistent. You can see the overall idea, but the execution is wonky and rather choppy. But Cheng Shaoshang is really the biggest avoidant I’ve seen on TV, and it’s for that that portrayal that I stayed the entire run.)
My Bargain Queen (I like that the main couple is not only healthy but normal. Like, the hero is your usual CEO-type, but he’s normal. He’s good at his job, he’s caring of the people around him, he’s polite, he’s kind, he’s childish around people he trusts, and although he doesn’t eat street food, he respects others that do. In short, he’s just normal. I really enjoyed that bit. But that’s about the good bit about the story. Everything else is just a little bit random but tolerable so it’s fine.)
The Promise of Chang’an (D) (The story has great potential, but everything is handled very crudely. I feel like the director is a plot person and they are not able to flesh out the characters with finesse. Everything is just bam in your face that the emotional impact of the scenes just fall flat.)
Dream of Chang’an (G) (Initially the story was great with game-of-throne-like intrigues that kept pouring in left and right that you couldn’t quite be sure about who to trust. Like, they take the adage the enemy of my enemy is my friend so seriously that they all ended up in alliance with everybody while double crossing everybody. However, somewhere around the mid-point of the show all their secrets were revealed and after that the show lost its steam and even felt boring. It felt like the writers were changed? Like, the fast-paced first half suddenly turned draggy and even had so many of those filler background song/flashback scenes. So yeah I watched it till the end hoping for things to turn back around but sadly it never did. It must be said that Qiu Yanzhi stole the show with that collected chess master thing she had. Of course it helps that she’s absolutely drop dead gorgeous.)
Something Just Like This (Johnny Huang and Ling Gui Fei at the helm – how could I resist? And damn, does Johnny Huang just have blazing chemistry with everybody? Anyway the story reads a bit like a sports show with our leads idealistically trying to get an underdog team ship-shape and fighting fit. That bit is fine. Emotionally, though, this show is very difficult for those with abandonment issues. It’s probably me projecting, but really very, very difficult and I had to force myself to calm down about Mr Qian – the heroine’s biological dad – because everything else is sweet and cute.)
2023
Who Rules the World (good overarching plot with intriguing rounded characters that are ruined by messy writing and uneven pacing. My biggest complaint might be the show’s treatment of double identity reveals – yes plural! – because they show has so many dual-identity characters that promises so many surprises and plot twists but reveals are just like, meh. And the other characters react by saying like yeah I’ve always expected that or if they were surprised, they got over it immediately. Like, why did the show even bother then? In a way, the show reminds me a lot of Fuyao because of the idea of vassal states being in competition with their imperial city, but for all that Fuyao isn’t perfect in its own way, I must say that Fuyao is the superior. At least in Fuyao you can tell who is who and where they’re all from – in this show, it’s like, there are so many random names and their little states all the have Zhou suffix so it gets really confusing, especially for a non-native speaker like me. The pacing is really problematic because some episodes got really dragged out while some suddenly rushed through – looking at you, the final four episodes. I mean in the earlier parts, before things picked up, I honestly would have dropped the show if dear, drop dead gorgeous Yang Yang wasn’t headlining it. That, and the fact that they hinted at some back story of the relationship between our OTP but we would never learn how they really met and how they came to have that dynamics at the beginning of the show. That’s probably what I’m most annoyed about about the show.)
A Familiar Stranger (R) (I had absolutely no expectations going into this mini-series, or rather, I fully expected that I was going to drop a show based on the premise of face swapping but this was actually a delightful little gem if you manage to forgive that ridiculous premise. Obviously with a mini-series time is more limited but the show manages to get some serious character development in and the plot actually holds water. I haven’t seen Ryan Cheng before, but him as a bloodied general on his last legs? Chef’s kiss.)
Reset (R) (honestly, Reset feels like a retelling of Source Code – our protagonists wake up in a moving vehicle that carries a bomb and must work to prevent the explosion in order to escape the time loop that they somehow had ended up in. The show probably draws some inspiration from Edge of Tomorrow where every iteration of the story generates another parallel event, allowing the protagonists to collect more clues towards escaping the time loop. Spoiler – the show would never explain anything about the time loop or how our dear heroine initially entered it or why she specifically was stuck in it, but that’s besides the point of the show. The Groundhog Day-ness of the show allows it to be a Roshomon, and by the end of the show we would learn about all the poor souls on the bus and some of the policemen besides, and the stories are full of heart. My favourite personal thing about the show was the fact that Liu Yi Jun aka Fuyao‘s Qi Zhen finally plays a good guy instead of a villain. My least favourite thing? What the hell was that hair on Chief Du? I honestly didn’t even realise that she was none other than Ode to Joy‘s An Di. Like, did they think that if the police chief was drop dead gorgeous that we wouldn’t take her seriously?)
The Blue Whisper (D) (it’s my darling Dilraba with supposedly the team behind Ashes of Love but everything is just too much, too exaggerated that I sadly couldn’t venture beyond episode 1.)
New Life Begins (D) (this show has amazing review, but I find it to be utterly… boring. It’s probably supposed to be a slice of life? but in a period drama setting, but everything is just meh. On top of that mediocrity, I absolutely abhor the malignant practice of getting women to embody toxic masculinity and calling it “feminism”.)
The Queen of Attack (D) (hmm supposedly done by the same team behind A Familiar Stranger but this one does not capture me.)
Sword Snow Stride (fun, but I actually would not recommend it because – I guess this is a trademark of Zhang Ruo Yun’s work now – it is apparently Season 1 and ended in the middle of nowhere. My favourite and also simultaneously least favourite part of the show is the unending supply of great old heroes – on the one hand, their philosophies are delicious to ponder, their politics and morality, which sometimes aligned or misaligned with their philosophies, are intriguing, and some of them are just funny af. On the other hand, these supposedly elite, near-immortal beings are randomly cropping up, a fact that makes the show both fun and meh. Like, so convenient. The hero, Zhang Ruo Yun’s character Xu Feng Nian, also slowly grew more bland throughout the series so that is a huge disappointment. I wished to see more of his father, Hu Jun’s supposedly cunning and unsrupulous Xu Xiao, but he spends most of the series off screen, supposedly playing Go while trying to reverse-psych the emperor. All in all, fun show, but I wouldn’t recommend it.)
The Starry Love (very juvenile. Feels like the makers of Ashes of Love looked around their massive, sumptuous set and decided hmm what a waste to just trash it so let’s make a YA around it instead. Because it really feels like a YA with a bunch of teenagers – even if some of them are literally 2700 years old, the psyche they embody is that of a confused teenager just testing out the boundary between their responsibility and subjectivity. Anyway, as I was saying, it feels like a YA with a bunch of teenagers running around saving the world from destruction wrought about by doddering old men more interested in solidifying their power and securing their legacy than in the peace and prosperity of the realm, exploiting a supposed threat of mass destruction to commit genocide. The whole show feels very juvenile and some episodes are downright silly, but then other episodes portray a close examination of the effect or narcissitic parenting and what is basically a UN summit with the veto powers arguing over each other while other hapless nations watched even when the very thing being discussed would decide the fate of the hapless nations. Is this show very profound? Not really. And yet, I’m surprised that there’s depth underneath all this fluff, so I stayed all the way to the end.)
Love Between Fairy and Devil (if you stopped to think of the story for a bit it’s really typical and some parts very plot-device-y – like the main villain being evil for no reason except being evil and all these realms being at war with each other for no other reason than we’ve always been at war so that must continue. Just that. So the show really lacks any substance. But Dylan Wang looks like that so I stayed the entire run.)
Unchained Love (I honestly wish they had done this as a serious drama instead of a rom-com because Peter Ho’s portrayal of a psychopatic coward’s descend into tyranny and despotism is just chef’s kiss. Honestly, probably the best I’ve seen in DramaLand – just absolutely creepy and scary that there were moments where I would stare at the screen aghast at what his character has done. Even the FL’s fight for freedom has enough gravitas that it would do well as a serious drama, so for the life of me, I’m utterly confused by the choice of making this show a rom-com. I guess the whole plot is just ridiculous that it might strain credulity as a drama – really, sooooooooo many just plot holes that the entire show is just holes – so they had to settle for a rom-com but yeah, Murong Gaogong’s gradual corruption from a hesitant royal successor to an obsessed emperor drunk on power is something to watch. They should redo this show as a serious drama and call it The Lantern Emperor – urgh, I already shudder in fear at the thought, that’s how effective Peter Ho was.)
The Legend of Anle (D) (I really looked forward to Dilraba being a feisty pirate queen, but the whole show feels vacant. We learn very quickly that she is on a revenge plot, but the villains all feel vacuous so I couldn’t sit through the show for long.)
The Longest Promise (D) (stayed for what felt like the longest 1.5 episodes ever, even if it’s Xiao Zhan. The heroine is the insufferable Huirou from Serenade of Peaceful Joy, which I have just finished rewatching, and she’s even more insufferable here so there is no way to save this series.)
2024
Story of Kunning Palace (G) (it’s Bai Lu – of course it caught me. And those first like 15 minutes or so? What a magnificent, intriguing opening that it hooked me right in. But the rest of it? It only went downhill from there. So the story is about a neglected daughter of a lower-ranked minister who clawed her way to becoming the empress meeting her fatal end at the hands of the very people she betrayed… only to end up waking up in the body of her 18-year-old self with her memory intact and a chance at a do-over. I’m totally a sucker for this genre, and in the beginning Bai Lu’s character is quite enjoyable to watch in her frantic attempts to overturn fate. But one thing I’m unhappy about is how her change in character is not addressed – the fallen empress was corrupt and rotten to the core, whereas the awakened heroine might practise unconventional means but her integrity was intact. Like, I feel like a person who could claw her way to becoming the empress in such a court with such intrigue and undercurrents couldn’t have got there if they were pure so her reborn character feels out-of-character to me.
But the worse sin is how the show slowly sheds Bai Lu’s character to highlight the “hero” Xie Wei – and he is one unsavoury character. While his backstory is nice and to be fair he’s pretty cool as a political strategist, him as a romantic partner is super alarming. This guy is narcissitic, toxic, and abusive. Mild spoiler – at one point, Bai Lu’s Jiang Xuening rejects his romantic advances and he literally chokes her. Then he threatens and manipulates her into staying by his side in the most traumatic way possible. What absolutely infuriates me is how the show romanticises Xie Wei’s actions and abuses. Like, hell no, that’s not love at all. Like, I don’t even know how much I screamed and cursed at the screen during the final few episodes once the romantic arch between Xie Wei and Jiang Xuening began, especially as the secondary heroes Yan Lin and Zhuang Zhe are both examples of very gentle, mature men who are super secure who genuinely love Jiang Xuening that they respect her and all her choices. It made me really mad that those men’s love was discarded in favour of Xie Wei’s, whose idea of love is to restrict Xuening, change everything that’s unique about her, and trample all over her free will. Gahhhhhhhh. I’m angry. So please do yourself a favour and don’t watch this show.)
OtakMonyet 
[…] years into my drama-bingeing career I also started watching CDramas, and obviously I also have a lot to say about […]