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Happily Ever After? hong kong drama review
Completed
Happily Ever After?
3 people found this review helpful
by final_flash
Feb 27, 2024
20 of 20 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 8.5
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 8.0
This review may contain spoilers

Man what a strong start

Episode 1 just dropped and I gotta say it is a strong start. Him Law and Yoyo Chen are the first couple featured in the first story and the acting here is incredible, just top class stuff. It was also masterfully written because it starts at the current situation and then the past is slowly revealed so it allows the viewer to have some sympathy for Him Law that lingers even after the reveal is made. Him Law and Yoyo Chen play a happily married couple and have a daughter together, but as the episode goes along you can quickly see that they are going through a divorce and the wife is very cold and angry. You feel bad for Him as you see how terrible his situation is, but as you think Yoyo is a hateful bitch, there is a big reveal where Him cheated on her with another woman, and even though she forgave him she found he had been writing a novel about his experience. This made her lose her calm and she goes full on angry tiger woman mode. I was firmly on Him’s side, but after that reveal I was emotionally conflicted. If the story had been told from beginning to end we would not have had that same emotional reaction as we would have known immediately Him was the asshole. Well played writer, well played.

I am now excited for the other stories and this first one is not even done yet! Most of the cast is strong but we do have the yawn inducing Joey Law in there so I am dreading his story coming up as he is awful at acting, but we’ll see how it goes. Good start so far!

Episode 3: man Chris Lai is so cool in this episode. His character here for the first story is elaborated on and we see he is actually is a great guy and really wants to help Him Law and Yoyo Chen be okay together. We see the flashbacks and how he encourages Yoyo to be more open minded to how annoying her husband is. Later, unsurprisingly, we discover Chris has feelings for Yoyo ever since they first met but was unable to act upon them because he was such a girl magnet (and rightly so, he is damn charming). They share a kiss during a time when Yoyo was really upset over her husband, but he managed to push her back to prevent it getting out of hand. This causes some tension between him and his girlfriend, especially when he finds out that it was his girlfriend’s younger sister that slept with Him Law, but he sorts it out by being honest with her sells his car where he shared the kiss with Yoyo so he can forget about it. Man, this was a good episode.

Update: man what a rollercoaster. This show brings to light how complicated and complex it is being an adult and being in love. It shows how divorce can affect the most innocent victims in a marriage: the children, and it shows how someone's love can go through changes and lead to different destinations.

Chris Lai's story is really sad but he is also my favourite character in the drama. He goes from a carefree laid-back kind of lover and matures into a more serious person and we see this emotional growth. His and Winki's story had a really sad subplot that drove a wedge between them, but I am glad in the end it all worked out.

This drama is also the only drama where I found Joey Law tolerable. His immaturity remained almost constant throughout the drama, but he finally matured - along with the former loveaholic Venus Wong - that he managed to save their failing marriage.

The only annoying factor here is Him Law. Man, his character was so darn annoying. He messed up at the beginning, messed up later when in a new relationship, then when he was semi-back with his wife and found out he had cancer in his right leg, he started to push his family away, acting nonchalant and telling his daughter he wouldn’t be around forever, especially when his daughter really needed him. His daughter put it best when she said, "Are you guys crazy?" When she called out her mum on her control freak nature and her Dad for being stupid trying to push them away when he had cancer, and they both just walked away from her. Why do TVB HK dramas always do this? A character finds out he has a terminal illness, so to "protect" his family he doesn't tell them, stays away from them to ease them into not having them around, and then decides to suffer in silence. That's so stupid, when they die their friends and family would all find out anyway and hate them for not telling anybody. Please stop this TVB, be normal for once.

Overall, a great series worth rewatching!
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