Our Glamorous Time (2018)

One of the beautiful C-drama I have watched

This is one of the best c-dramas I have watched.

What I did not like:
Male leads friend and vice president is always running behind and chasing after the male leads sister. Chasing someone isn’t super healthy and same for other couples in the series. Not very healthy relationships. Not sure when leads have such good healthy relationships, they showed other 3 relationships really bad.
Some of the building and everything is animation and it is super clear that it is fake, sometimes the background music doesn’t match the scene or is too loud and can’t hear the dialogues well and some of the hairstyles of female Lead and her assistant is really bad, they miss out on closing the loop about of them comrade of male lead.
The character Lisa, her acting is really bad.
It’s hard to make out the timeline in the sense of how many months or weeks had passed between the events in the show.

What I liked:
Good character growth for negative characters which shows that if people want to change then they can and it’s possible to have a healthy competitive coexistence in the industry.

You can see the chemistry between the leads and she is like a small kid in front of him. Even though there are couple of misunderstandings in the beginning, they trust each other and communicate with each other. They support each other’s dream. This shows how a relationship should be so definitely the #goals.
The relationship between female lead and her brother is also very nice! He is over bearing and sometimes steps over the boundary (which is very common in most Asian culture) but he really cares for her and wants the best for her. Just because he is over bearing, doesn’t mean the female lead succumbs to it. She stands her ground even it means she might hurt her brother. She doesn’t get sucked into the “guilt”. She shows that she is adult and she knows what she is doing and she will stick to it and he needs to respect it and come around. Male lead supports her well and makes her understand the brothers perspective but also makes sure to fulfill her wishes.

This is one the show where they show that female lead isn’t like good for nothing or someone from poor background falling for a CEO. She knows what she is doing and she is good at her job. She knows what she can do well and what she cannt and same with male lead. He isn’t the arrogant pompous who thinks he knows everything. When he does mistake, he accepts he made mistake and he explains why he did it and makes sure he doesn’t repeat it, which shows accountability and restitution. They are really sweet with each other and very healthy relationship behavior is portrayed. Seeing ZL acting in The story of MingLan and princess agent, I ended up watching this and really good choice.

Even though it’s long with 50 episodes, it’s definitely worth watching. I might re-watch it again sometime :)

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You will either love this or drop it because it is polarising

You know how some dramas gives you a rollercoaster ride as the story develops and race towards the conclusion. This drama starts off like that but then it hits the flat bit and never goes up an incline again which is a shame as there were potentials but it got bogged down by "messages".

On the surface, it was a story about 4 pairs of lovers. Some have a fairly smooth run, others much more torturous. In between there were corporate battles and business shenanigans. If that was not enough, gun toting drug runners created havoc along the way. Did that sounds confusing, yes, it was.

Like many c-dramas, the start was promising. The first episode was like an action movie. Guns, stunts and explosions filled the screen. It was done well and definitely not your typical meet-cute.

The first half of the show largely settled down to more standard rom-com plots with the usually push-pull and discovering of new feelings. It was also quite interesting to see the progress of designing a new garment and the steps it took to turn the design into a successful product. If the writer stuck to the same plot then I would have given it a much higher score.

The wheel start to fall off around the half way mark. The plot took a silly turn with the drug king pin running amok which reinforced certain "messages" and allowed the ML to play the gung-ho hero one last time. That was pretty much the end of the 1OTP's romantic development though. By then, they were so fated, it was casted in iron and encased in concrete. The problem is that the focus now moved to the other 3 pairs and unfortunately, two of the three pairs were more than a bit cliché with Ning Weikai scoring the worst own goal I have ever seen in any drama! C'mon, writer, you can do better than that. I won't spoil it but it involved a dress and a letter. On the other hand, the relationship between Chen Yayi and Chen Zheng's was fun and organic. Quite refreshing compared with the other pairs. Chen Yayi was outstanding and her characterisation was even better than the FL at times. How she refused to play ball with Chen Zheng just because he was a rich playboy made her a much stronger character. Even as the two developed feelings for each other, she was always grounded and put Chen Zheng in his place when he tried any tricks on her. Honestly, if they separate out their storyline, jazz it up a bit and turn it into a 16 episodes drama (a la k-drama), I would happily watch it.

As I mentioned before, the process of developing a product in the fashion industry was quite interesting but a lot of that disappeared around mid show. While there were some dirty tricks being played between competitors from the start, the second half was all talking. scheming and a race to see how low can their tricks go. Lots of planning and boardroom scenes but there is not a lot of meat. A few drawings were pushed around and a whole product line was created by the next episode including swanky shops. Everything boiled down to scheming and backstabbing. I suppose that would be okay if the show was 40 episodes long (instead of 50) as you can actually see where all the plots converged around that point and if they had stopped it there, it would have been a decent conclusion. However, the "message" really took over the last ten episodes.
I suppose it is time to talk about these "messages". It is not unusually for c-drama to push some messages about Chinese culture or pride in Chinese achievements but this show had many such messages and they were pushed quite hard and with little subtlety. While they were ever present throughout the show, It really amped up in the last ten episodes. When instead of just talking about faceless scheming foreign companies, they actually hired two blonde haired Chinese speaking foreign actors to play the villains and they were bad to the core. Obviously, the domestic audience might well love the patriotic storyline but others might find it too heavy-handed and sounded like propaganda. Your mileage will differ. When seen from that angle, It was odd to see Audi cars everywhere as they were obviously a major sponsor as were other international brands that appeared as PPL.

The OST was ok. Fairly generic love songs and background music. Nothing jarring with the audio which was a plus.
Re-watch value is low as it was a simple, well telegraphed plot. Some of the early action sequences might be worth a second viewing.

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They should have stick to the main points of the novel

I was so happy when the novel apparently became a series drama. I was super anticipating the wits of the both male and female. The first part was actually going well. Until suddenly the changes in character became too visible and I could hardly watch the drama because the script is like gone from the original story.
The highlights of the story was not even shown well on the script. Having the right actors was the best they had in this drama. I was just sad because they wasted all the good acting of all the good actors/actress with the just so so script .
Advise wise better don't read the novel if you watch the drama and don't watch the drama if you read the novel.
It kills all the good points of both novel and drama when you realized the flaws of the drama.
PLUS points I love the male and female lead......
by the way here's the link for the novel...
https://www.novelupdates.com/series/our-glamorous-time/
the novel was super awesome.....

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Interesting plot. Mediocre execution.

Too long. Too ambitious. Mediocre action/fight scenes. Too many love pairings that deserves much attention.

The construction of the story felt like puzzle pieces that doesn't fit. First was the drug/human traffickers; they tracked and attacked the FL for a flash disk that was encrypted. If they just let it be, they wouldn't be discovered. So why?

Then the sudden death of the ML's older brother where everyone around him was a suspect. It got lost in all corporate espionage/sabotage. The ML's competitors were nasty but they got away with it and still managed to get their own happy ending. I'm a sucker of happy endings, but why?

Well, at least this long show have a good OST and a happy ending. Would I rewatch this? Maybe never.

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Something is missing

...I dont know what it is.

A) Maybe the CP was not right?
B) Story sometimes seems confused: romance, design, business or action show. I've seen a few like this and I don't mind ( i always say to myself maybe censoring means they go all out hoping at least half the material is saved)

CP: Love Designer, Something Just Like this, Sunshine of My life to name a few; didnt really have a lot going ( sometimes toolong and boring!) but the CP carried the show to the finish line. You always wanted to see the flirting, the winning the competitions, even the romantic scenes few and far between or loads BUT it worked. Something about the couples brought it home.

imo its just not here. When they are together it seems not much chemistry. Ive seen both in other shows (ML mainly support roles but he did well in Jiu Ling) and felt they did better jobs in selling the chemistry so convinced the pairing here wasn't quite right. Other couples didnt save the show either.

Its still watchable not sure i can do it again. Maybe look for clips or 'movie version' if someone has decided to put the main couple clips in a movie version format that will probably be better.

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BEAUTIFULLY DONE

i delay watching this i thought it was not that interesting till i gave it try.... OMG!!! epi 1 i cant already stop watching...
I love how they integrated Military to his Business... its so beautifully it make it more exciting to watch... i like it more cause there is no evil witch to destroy their love... thou its 50 eps but its bearable about designs & business talks...
Its a story of LOVE & Brotherhood... Its a MUST seen...
The ML is really hot... hope to see him more in that kind of drama... ofcource FL is really good as always
If u dont like the 50 eps just skip other love story like the story of Grace or the friend... hehhe just a tip u can cut the 50 eps...

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Who would’ve thought the my hated character in Princess Agents “Zhao Xi Feng” would be the heroine in Our Glamorous Time?! That in some twisted way Zhao Liying and Jin Han looked perfect together as LIN QIAN and LI ZHICHENG ... the best episode for me will always be Episode 1 and 2 because it was full of action. a.k.a when boy -meet-damsel-in-distress-type. I hope they will have another project together coz they really look good on screen ????????
I also recommend this film to anyone who has interest in fashion. It’s a great eye opener how painstaking it was to design a dress no matter how simple we think it is!

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At around episode 25 I was actually planning to finish Our Glamorous Time, but the following three episodes just drove me insane. The plot was just too silly, the storyline with the bad guys seemed to pop up randomly and without making any sense, there was too much camo in the fashion all the time, and our lead couple became the annoying 'I can't think about anything but you' type and made brainless decisions. Also, I wasn't a fan of Ning Wei Kai and Grace's storyline and found Ning Wei Kai's actions to be increasingly unpleasant. Honestly, just thinking about those last few episodes makes me annoyed again. The one character I did like was the friend/assistant Chen Ya Yi - she was a real scene-stealer.

I like Zhao Li Ying a lot and recommend her drama The Story of Ming Lan instead. I thought Kim Han/Han Jin was awful as the male lead and will probably stay away from any dramas where he's the lead.

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Some of the actors are some of my Chinese favorites. Although i have a few new favorites in there. The story line did start out strong but it did start veering off the script and then it seems that instead of one main line now we got Ning Weikei with one story with Grace, Cheng with Yayi and Jinyuan with (sorry forgot his name.) . Still I feel like all the actors have their strong suits and did a superb job in acting, not over the top or sappy, very believable and sad. All actors in this drama are extremely beautiful and handsome.
The story starts off with the main character being in trouble and being saved by the top Military guy. He saves her they fall in love and there are quite a few bumps in the road.
worth watching and rewatching.

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