There are dramas like “Fated to Love You” which totally makes me get into the shoes of the heroine and hate the hero on her behalf(‘cause she’s being too frustratingly docile) while being completely emotionally invested and trying to binge watch, a truly overdramatic drama. Then there are dramas like “Attention! Love” which is like bubble gum, starts off with colourful ambience then progresses to become so tasteless and draggy that you want to spit it out. Iron ladies is neither of them. It’s in the league of "I Need Love" KDrama series and "Sex and The City" in terms of showing strong female leads who don’t act all prude and are not shy to express their sexuality. This show is a lot closer to reality.
The three leading ladies are true to the essence of Iron Ladies. They are beautiful, strong, sexy, independent career women who are also managing their a little to a lot messy personal lives. Their approach towards dealing with the issues of their career and love, the compromises they chose to make and not make, their relationship with the men in their lives, and while doing all these how they discover their uncharted facets and become more of themselves and grow up, is the story of this drama. Though sometimes their choices and decisions made them look like desperate and pushover, that’s how life and love are, difficult, messy and sometimes ugly.
The script is so tight and the acting is so fine that I didn’t lose interest for one moment. I found the acting of this drama different than the usual Taiwanese dramas, in a good way. The characters are well written and performed. All the cast have great chemistry with each other. This is my first time watching Zhong Aviis and I am a fan. This is her first leading role and she nailed it. She and Pan Ada lived and breathed the role of iron ladies.
Wu Ben is as versatile as the makeup palletes in the show. His eyes are so expressive. When doing a photoshoot scene in the show his eyes were like all smart and sexy, whereas throughout the drama they were like a lost puppy. His "smitten at first sight with Ka Ting" expression was so believable.
Lan Gabriel is an amazing actor and so handsome. I found him Hollywood level amazing. His acting is so mature and poised. Everyone is great in this show. This is what I call a perfect show.
The soundtrack is ok, nothing special.
I’ll most definitely watch it again.
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Iron Ladies is about three women who work for the same company dealing with their careers as women and also juggling their love lives. Our female lead Kai Ting is a marketer and is engaged to her long-term boyfriend. Her close friend Li-Sha who works with her is our Samantha Jones who doesn’t believe in love. While, the married Ching Ching is a woman in a seemingly perfect marriage that is not-so-perfect. The story isn’t anything new but it’s very entertaining to watch. In the beginning, I was entertained by all of the ladies’ stories and their relationships, particularly the romance between Kai Ting and Su Can. That’s probably the best thing about this drama, especially if you like noona romances. But though Kai Ting and Su Can are obviously our leads, Li Sha and Ching Ching’s storylines are just as good.
The flaws with Iron Ladies is it’s pacing and story. Oddly enough, I think it suffers from a lack of story and not enough episodes, or more so, it’s ending was very abrupt and the ending could have been fleshed out more properly to have a better satisfying conclusion. The story of these girls feels like they ran their course towards the latter half and the only thing that was keeping it going was the back and forth problems with their romantic relationships. Conflict is always a good thing, but when your conflict is somewhat repetitive and drawn out because it’s clear that you have nowhere else to take these relationships, then it’s a problem. Which is a shame considering that I think all of the girls’ stories were very interesting in the first half and the middle. But despite these flaws, I still guarantee an extremely enjoyable watch.
The cast is great. I think everyone played their roles very well, but the star here is Wu Ben who plays our male lead Su Can. I think he has a natural charisma that shines every time on the screen and he brought his character to life. I look forward to seeing him in other dramas hopefully in the future. All of our ladies were great here too and I think they all played their roles well.
Overall, Iron Ladies is a lot of fun. The romances are fun and flirty. The stories of our ladies are very juicy. It makes you want to grab a glass of wine as you watch. It has a few flaws here and there, but nonetheless is an enjoyable watch and one you won’t regret.
If you like a sweet charming male lead, and fierce women at work, then you’ll enjoy or love Iron Ladies.
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I really disliked this drama. It started off good and had great potential but then just nose-dived. There are basically three plots, one for each girl. The main girl's plot was mostly cute, but eventually it dragged on and devolved into her undermining the guy's masculinity and refusing to understand how he might feel that way. One friend has a decent storyline/romance involving her fear of commitment. The last girl has a horrible, long, drawn-out plot involving her cheating husband and his pregnant mistress and it was just torturous and gross! It was infuriating to watch her cling to the relationship for so long, even allowing the mistress to live with them. I will say the ending of her storyline was the most satisfying but it took much too long to get there. Basically the drama was too long and so they stretched out to romance problems which killed the story. Fabulous 30 had a similar story with 3 girls, 76 episodes instead of 13, and did it a thousand times better. Was this review helpful to you?
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Promising start but very uneven writing
I was going to review this show without spoilers but there are problems with the story telling that won't make sense if I don't make specific references so you have been warned. Spoilers ahead!The show started well and in general, when the writing is good, it works well and a decent watch. It does not shy away from challenging topics and there is no shortage of skinship and sex scenes (low level). The problem is that the promise of three strong women challenging the business world didn't held for long. Within a few episodes, we are really down to 1.5 strong women. If you want to watch really strong FL's then please watch "Search: WWW". Much, much better in that regard. What made it even more complicated is the writers decided to throw lots of societal issues into the story lines and it became a hot mess.
Several messy relationships and conflicting point of views of love, sex and age gaps. Several plot lines went nowhere and others ended up being wishy-washy and lost focus. The ending wrapped most things up with a pink bow and suppose to give everyone a happy ending but some poor writing really distracted.
Two big no-no for me, one is the whole mistress sharing house with the wife situation was an interesting twist. They could have done so much with it and make the wife character stronger as the story unfolded but she was just pitiful and didn't breakout until the very end. The last straw was when the wife found out that the mistress was carrying someone else's baby and did nothing, that is just weird. You can call it revenge (no hint of that in her character before) but it just didn't gel with me.
Another one is when the ML found out the FL is pregnant and without any resistance agreed to go overseas to study for over a year. The show implied that he was absence for most of the pregnancy and even missed the birth of his son?! This is poor writing. During the whole show he was shown to be super sweet and caring but when his GF is pregnant, he just decided to go away willingly?! Missing his son's birth is just wrong. There are compassionate leave and airfare is not that expensive. The whole setup was unnecessary with little gain. Why writers and writer-nims still insist that once someone goes overseas to study/work, they are locked away in a different universe for the whole duration is beyond comprehension.
Yet another promising start but ended with a thud.
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The young artist's lunch time sticky notes are very interesting. The leading lady's commitment to save her team's jobs is touching. The second leading lady's love reunion is heartfelt. The team's desire to help out their boss in her time of need is very convincing.
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There were some aspects that are uniquely culturally different from situations in most American shows, and I found that to be part of the reason it was so interesting. I appreciated that the female characters were smart, good at their jobs, sassy with each other and not irreparably emotionally damaged, which is important and real. Oh, and drawn out mopery was not a problem -- people moped and then went back to working, talking with others, and coping.
Also, passes the Bechdel test - yay!
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Worth the watch
Overall, I enjoyed this series; especially the beginning and middle. I liked that it was about successful career women and friendship with romance on the side.I liked Ma Li Sha and David's relationship the most, even though it was very typical and played out exactly how I knew it would.
Qing Qing's relationship made me the angriest. I couldn't believe she subjected herself to that arrangement in her marriage and after all they did to her, still let them off relatively easy. Why the heck would you set up that homewrecker to marry your husband and not expose that she was pregnant with another man's child?! That would have been the sweetest revenge and it just fell in her lap. Forget taking the higher road, they both deserved to be brought to their knees for what they did to her. Thank goodness it seems like she'll find her happy ending with a new guy too.
Kai Ting and Su Can. Ahh, smh. I didn't feel the chemistry began these two. He seemed like a dumb kid and would have never been on her level. For one, I actually wanted her with the ex. I think he was brought to his knees and wouldn't have cheated again. I get why she couldn't be with him but I liked this pair more so then with Su Can.
Give it a whirl, good one time watch though.
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Adults being a mess or a realistic portrait of humans and relationships
I totally recommend this drama for people on their 20s or 30s, why? because you might find it not just inspirational but also relatable.This is a story about three friends in their 30s, portraying the difficulties and insecurities that women might have at that time specially being successful women in a realistic society. Let's be honest, society likes successful career women? Nah. They like women that are confident and sexual? Nah. Women that do not wanna marry? Nah. Divorcees? Nah. Single women? No :)
The female leads:
One of the friends is a gorgeous divorcee that doesn't believe in love and just sleeps around with younger men, I love her a lot. Also a super young mom.
Another is a married woman that apparently has the perfect relationship, nothing farther from the truth, to the point that her mental health was so damaged. I wanted to slap her most of the time but at the end she was amazing, the very end though.
And finally the FL, a lovely women with the perfect life, great job, nice relationship with her father, amazing boyfriend, beauty and successful, independent, peeeeerfect. However, ought to the fact that she is a workaholic she ended up failing at love, is not her fault tho!
The first women got cheated on, the second was submissive in an open relationship that ended up messing her mental health, and all of this why? because those men were awful and didn't like women with successful career or independent women, and society, specially families were putting a lot of preassure on them.
Now the male leads:
Some of them are just awful, you will hate them. Not gonna talk about it, too bad our society have these type of men.
But I adored the others, one of the female leads son, was lovely.
The ML was too lovely, this is weird in a drama, he was literally so sweet and gentle, a bit naive but not too much, understandable, respectful and caring. He was never pushy towards the FL and always helpful, supporting her.
The other ML was amazing, your typical Casanova but also wise and respectful, I adored him. He was always there for the ML, sincere and honest, giving advice and caring, maybe too honest for his own well being.
The main relationship was healthy, most of the relationships here were shitty, don't worry all characters develop nicely but the main one was amazing. They got time to get to know each other, they were caring and always trying to help the other, they were not selfish and had good communication, except for few moments but this is a drama so... you gotta have drama. However, everything is solved nicely.
The number of episodes were perfect, some dramas are too long that get draggy but here you will watch it nicely, not skipping parts, and at the end you will feel like: hell I can do that, I can be an Iron lady.
Lmao to my own joke, don't hate me.
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