Falling into Your Smile Episode 18

The elephant in the room

Okay, so, a lot of this episode goes as expected. Tong Yao gets suspended for a match and so Lu Yue substitutes in at the mid-lan chair. And while he makes a lot of mistakes that make things difficult for his teammates, the ZGDX team still pulls out the win. Yao is sad. Especially because Si Cheng ignores her, seemingly angry with her. Then finally, in the closing minutes of the episode Cheng and Yao have a talk by themselves about the issue. And this is where, well, the writing kinda stunk it up again. Cheng gets in Yao's face, demanding answers to vague questions and mostly filling the air with the monologue that goes all over the place. He clearly contradicts his own points multiple times during all this. From the very beginning he starts by enumerating how his reputation is harmed and then insists he only cares about her -- but if so, why are you listing how you have been harmed? There are numerous other inconsistencies all over his monologue. It feels like a bad high school debate speech. I mean, the gimmick of demanding she respond to his incredibly vague question with an important and meaningful answer within 7 minutes is just completely arbitrary BS. There is absolutely no 'team leadership' reason for such a gimmick. It's just a stupid contrivance for show purposes. It's all delivered with the expected, 'harsh team captain' tone by Cheng so I can't blame the character or the actor. The writer just had him saying really dumb things. And one of the things really struck me.

At one point late in the dialog, he asks her aggressively, "You clearly were only protecting your teammates, so why were you treated like this?" And of course the real answer - the elephant in the room - does not get mentioned. The REAL reason she is being "treated like this" is because of HIS FAMILY. It's painfully obvious that she was targeted on purpose by his mother because she was mad at Si Cheng for rejecting Su Luo. And it's probable that Si Cheng knows this. So while it is true that, yes, Tong Yao should - as a celebrity e-sports star - not have pushed that girl away. But the deeper, hard cold truth is also that the real blame for what happened belongs to Lu Si Cheng's family issues. And I think he knows it. And so behind all the stupid bluster of his (badly written) speech, he almost certainly feels guilty for having put her into this position.

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