9791Egon
London, England
This review may contain spoilers
So whilst on lockdown in merry old England due to COVID-19, I've managed to watch quite a few asian dramas. I've watched around 100 in the last 18 months and about 15 in the last 3 weeks when I've barely left the house (although that includes re-watching some of my favourites). I came across this one and quite frankly, I wish I hadn't.
I have never encountered a chinese drama that is 70 episodes long before and unfortunately, if I come across another, I won't be bothering to watch it because there can't be a story or plot that requires that many episodes and it definitely was not warranted for this series. They could have easily dropped 30 episodes and quite frankly, it still would have been boring but it would have been a lot more succinct.
As with a lot of chinese dramas in particular (I tend to favour korean), they follow very similar tropes regardless of which one you end up watching. There's mis-understandings, mis-communication and at least one really unrealistic event which in this case, is a boy being taken into a family and brought up alongside a little girl (girl is around 4 and the boy is about 7 when this happens). The children grow up together and consider themselves brother and sister and they become uncommonly close. As they grow up, you could say that their romantic lives in particular become complicated because of this close relationship which, at least one sibling doesn't find out they're not actually blood relations until very late on. And then there are other newly discovered familial relations that just get themselves in on the act of making everything unnecessarily complicated... And that's pretty much the story.
Except, on this occasion you can also add in the fact that virtually every episode includes someone being in a hospital or receiving medical care and a sociopath - who is not in any way scary or believable so his inclusion can probably be overlooked.
The majority of the cast did an ok job with what they had to work with, e.g the very boring script and story. But, the Liangshen character or actor (I don't know which one to blame), was either played as or written as perpetually bored. He could not evoke an emotion to save his life. I persevered with watching him for about 40 episodes but then, I fast forwarded through any scene's he was in and it made no difference to what I watched at all. I didn't care what he said or did so the character and the actor that played it was absolutely pointless in the grand scheme of things... And that has brought the acting/cast score down quite a lot.
I wouldn't rewatch this mainly because it would take so long to do so and you get no benefit.
I have never encountered a chinese drama that is 70 episodes long before and unfortunately, if I come across another, I won't be bothering to watch it because there can't be a story or plot that requires that many episodes and it definitely was not warranted for this series. They could have easily dropped 30 episodes and quite frankly, it still would have been boring but it would have been a lot more succinct.
As with a lot of chinese dramas in particular (I tend to favour korean), they follow very similar tropes regardless of which one you end up watching. There's mis-understandings, mis-communication and at least one really unrealistic event which in this case, is a boy being taken into a family and brought up alongside a little girl (girl is around 4 and the boy is about 7 when this happens). The children grow up together and consider themselves brother and sister and they become uncommonly close. As they grow up, you could say that their romantic lives in particular become complicated because of this close relationship which, at least one sibling doesn't find out they're not actually blood relations until very late on. And then there are other newly discovered familial relations that just get themselves in on the act of making everything unnecessarily complicated... And that's pretty much the story.
Except, on this occasion you can also add in the fact that virtually every episode includes someone being in a hospital or receiving medical care and a sociopath - who is not in any way scary or believable so his inclusion can probably be overlooked.
The majority of the cast did an ok job with what they had to work with, e.g the very boring script and story. But, the Liangshen character or actor (I don't know which one to blame), was either played as or written as perpetually bored. He could not evoke an emotion to save his life. I persevered with watching him for about 40 episodes but then, I fast forwarded through any scene's he was in and it made no difference to what I watched at all. I didn't care what he said or did so the character and the actor that played it was absolutely pointless in the grand scheme of things... And that has brought the acting/cast score down quite a lot.
I wouldn't rewatch this mainly because it would take so long to do so and you get no benefit.
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